"How's our patient?" Friya asked while dabbing her sweat.
"Cranky, rude, and whiny." Quylla replied.
"Back to normal, then. His kind attitude during the last few days creeped me out. Do you mind coming outside for a while? I might use your help." Friya sniffed the soup's delicious smell, causing her stomach to grumble.
Yet her time for training was almost over and soon it would be her turn taking care of Nalrond. Lunch could wait a few minutes longer. Quylla nodded, walking outside the house and into the Warp Steps leading them to their secret training area.
After using the Restoration spell to keep the dimensional corridor from being opened again and a Life Sensing array to make sure that no one was around, they could finally relax.
"What's the matter?" Quylla asked.
"I'm trying a new dimensional spell, but Mogar keeps correcting me. I tried countless runes that make it work like a charm, but for some reason, she keeps grumbling every time I cast it." Friya replied.
"She?"
"It sounds like a woman to me." Friya shrugged.
"That makes the two of us. Does it sound like your own voice or someone else's?" Quylla asked.
"Sadly, it sounds like Mom's annoying, lecturing voice when she scolds us. Friya sighed. "I hoped so bad that it would sound like a man, instead. Maybe like someone I know."
"Why is that?" Quylla knit her eyebrows in confusion.
"Well, based on what Nalrond said, since Mogar takes the form of the person that literally means the world to you, I hoped to hear the voice of my true love or something like that. It would have helped my love life a lot."
"Who knows, maybe Mom's your type." Quylla chuckled as Friya produced retching sounds in reply.
"Gross! By the way, whose voice do you hear in your head?"
"Faluel. It must be because she's my mentor and the best mage I know." Quylla lied through her teeth.
She actually heard her own voice when Mogar talked to her, but she was too ashamed to admit it.
"Okay, here's how my spell works and what I tried so far…"
After they had finished treating Nalrond, the only thing they could do while waiting for him to wake up was to practice their magic in turns. Someone had to always remain by his side to make sure that his condition didn't get worse.
During that time, they had discovered one of the properties of the Fringe that Werepeople believed to be lost to time.
Whenever they created new spells, the moment they employed a rune that Mogar deemed to be subpar, she would mess with their thoughts in various ways. If the rune was close enough to the right one, Mogar would straight suggest it.
Otherwise, she would just scoff, click her tongue, or clear her throat with an intensity proportional to how wrong the planet considered the rune. At first, Quylla and Friya had thought to have gone mad.
They had never heard Mogar speak nor could they explain their condition without madness.
The voice existed only inside their heads, it spoke without their consent, and never replied to any of their questions. The phenomenon had scared them so much that they had tried to keep it a secret until they couldn't take it any longer.
As it had already happened several times since they had reached the Fringe, wisdom came from the most unexpected source.
"It's not a big deal. I hear it as well." Morok shrugged. "Mogar must be really bored to create a Fringe in the first place so it goes without saying that she answers to you whenever you talk to her."
"You are not making any sense." Friya replied. "If one could just talk with Mogar, what point would the whole ritual that almost cost Nalrond his life have? Besides, I already tried to have a conversation. It never answers after interrupting my focus."
"The ritual is to ask complex questions that can't be answered with magic whereas your spells are nothing but a way to conjure elemental energy. Guess who produces it?" Morok pointed at the ground, the sky, and then to the woods surrounding them.
"He's right! Runes are just the way mages have found to imitate Mogar and make use of the elements. In a way, runes are Mogar's language that we use to shape world energy according to our will." Quylla said.
"Then why we didn't hear its voice before? I mean, I've used a lot of spells inside the Fringe but nothing ever happened." Friya asked.
"Beats me. Maybe Mogar doesn't like you much but you're growing on her. I hear her voice a lot and she's very annoying." Morok shrugged, not wanting to share with them how he refused to open his fifth eye until they got out of the Fringe.
'I don't know why Mogar wants me to Awaken nor do I care. The good news is that it means that I will get her help and that the process should go smoothly even though my core is already blue. The bad news is that if I Awaken, there's no turning back.'
"I don't think that Mogar plays favorites." Quylla pondered for a while. "I'm pretty sure that the reason why Morok hears the planet's thoughts is the same that allows him to not have a Soul Projection.
"He's at peace with himself and his mind is like an empty room that makes even a small noise echo."
"That's a nice way to say that he's an idiot, but it still doesn't answer my question. Why does Mogar mess only with some spells?" Friya asked, receiving a finger as an answer from Morok.
"Isn't it obvious? It's because until now we've only practiced perfect spells." Quylla said.
"Meaning?" The others asked in unison.
"Gods, Friya, didn't you listen to Morok? He's been very clear. We cast a spell, we speak with Mogar. What do you usually do when someone close to you messes up with words when asking you a question?" Quylla said.
"Either I ask them to say that again or I try to clear it up by rephrasing the question." Friya answered.
"That's what Mogar does in a very rude way. When it understands the meaning of our spell, it produces the intended effect whereas when we cast it wrong, Mogar can't help but scold us.
"Which means that a Fringe is the perfect place to practice new spells because we can use Mogar itself as a teacher!" Quylla said.
"What she said. That's' exactly what I meant." Morok rushed to say while still in awe at the revelation. Until that moment, he had just tried to make Mogar shut up rather than listening to its voice.
From that moment, the three of them spent all of their free time practicing the most complex and difficult spells in their respective grimoire, exploiting Mogar's voice to solve problems to which even their Awakened mentors had no answer.
Friya and Quylla shared their findings with each other because of their bond of trust, whereas Morok did it as an excuse to talk to her and because he had no problem admitting that she was way smarter than him.
Even though Quylla wasn't able to use true magic and its runes, she could still offer him several different solutions that it was up to him to adapt to his spells.
