'Maybe the Dewans didn't attack Morok on sight because they knew that he would have Blinked away and they had no idea how many people he might have brought with him.
'Now that I think about it, the first thing they asked me wasn't how many Rezars survived Dawn's slaughter or how I escaped death.
'They only cared about Morok's identity and make sure that I didn't lead an invasion force inside the Fringe.' Nalrond cast a diagnostic spell on himself, discovering that he was still feverish from the shock of seeing his village rebuilt and inhabited.
"Oh, gods, you are right! There might actually have been other Rezars alive after the Fringes merged or at least some of our books. The Dewans might have kept them prisoners to learn Light Mastery from them and killed them when they refused." He said.
"Slow down. That's not even something that Lith would think. That's a straight-out conspiracy theory." Friya tried to calm him down, casting a few spells that would ease his nerves and the fever's symptoms.
"I get that Light Mastery is a powerful discipline and that your people treasure it dearly, but would it really be worth killing for? I mean, humans would surely do it, but Werepeople as well?" She asked while dabbing his sweat and cooling his skin with water magic.
First magic and physical contact caused an odd interaction between them. Friya felt his fear and anguish as if it was her own while he could finally understand why despite all the things she had Friya felt so inadequate.
He caught glimpses of the events during Nalear's attack that had changed her forever. The repeated rape attempts at the hands of her enslaved peers had destroyed her trust in strangers.
Her failure in saving Yurial had crushed her self-confidence and brought her to abandon the career of Healer not because she didn't love light magic, but because its practice reminded her of the horrors of those days.
Friya had been willing to accept an arranged marriage for the sake of the Solivar Household, but only because she had never understood what being loved felt.
After being adopted by the Ernas, after seeing how deep the bond between Lith and Kamila had grown, she had found herself yearning for the same affection that her parents and friends felt for each other, yet her trauma kept her frozen in place.
Friya's magic had improved tremendously from the days at the academy, but she had remained stuck as the scared little girl who couldn't approach anyone without keeping her hand on the hilt of her blade.
In a way, Nalrond could relate to her. After Acala's betrayal and the death of his entire village, he had sabotaged his relationships due to the fear of finding happiness again.
As long as he was alone, no one could hurt him whereas letting someone get close to him also implied the risk of getting hurt again. It was the reason why Nalrond had refused to become friends even with Lith's family and the Ernas girls.
Even after all Faluel had done for him and the respect she had shown for his secrets, Nalrond still refused to open up to her. He had managed to trust those who were hybrids as well, like Lith or Selia's children, only because they reminded him of his loved ones.
Now, however, the simple idea that the Dewans might be involved in the destruction of his village was enough to make him doubt another tribe of Werepeople that had shown only concern for him.
'Dammit, is this the effect of the Fringe or wasn't I ready to see my village again?' Nalrond thought. 'Whatever it is, if I keep letting my grief blind me, even if I manage to find a way to merge my two natures, I'll live a miserable life.'
"You don't understand. Light Mastery is more than rare." He sat down, letting Friya's spell cleanse his mind and body. "It's a discipline that very few creatures learn and even less manage to pass it down to their own bloodline.
"It requires a deep understanding of the light element to the point that even those who discover it on their own are incapable of explaining how it works."
"Then how come all people in your village knew it and you were even able to teach it to Faluel?" Quylla asked while pondering his words.
They explained why she had failed to teach both of her sisters how to make holograms. Whenever Quylla gave them a lesson, they kept saying that her words made no sense.
"Because we learned it from Dawn who is a receptacle of Baba Yaga's teachings. To relieve herself from the boredom of isolation, Dawn invented a method that allowed anyone to become a Light Master, even to a child.
"What I'm trying to say is that if the Dewans have heard of my tribe's unique ability, there's no telling what they are willing to do to get their hands on Light Mastery. Please, we need to go to their village and find out how much they know."
Much to Morok's dismay, the girls accepted to help Nalrond in his crazy quest and in setting up the array necessary for the ritual to communicate with Mogar. Once they reached the village with a smile on their faces and a spell on each of their fingertips, they discovered that all their precautions had been useless.
The Dewans treated Nalrond like a brother, Morok like an honorable guest, and the girls like their pet cockroaches. The Werepeople shapeshifted whenever Quylla or Friya approached one of them, to make it clear how they felt about their presence, but they never did more than glare at them.
Nalrond chose an isolated home as their residence and after telling Kimo about his intention to perform the communication ritual, he used it as a pretext to cast long-range Life Sensing arrays.
Nalrond had half hoped and half feared to find more Rezars held captive somewhere inside the village. On the one hand, it would have meant that he wasn't truly alone, but on the other hand, it would mean that he had put everyone's life at risk just to follow his obsession.
Luckily, the arrays came back negative and the Royal Forgemaster spells of the girls didn't detect the presence of a cloaked chamber within the village premises.
Such spells could block the arrays, but they would still be revealed by their wands simply because just as Nalrond had noticed during his first visit, the Dewans' knowledge of magic was quite outdated.
Having the same abilities as Emperor Beasts, they could practice all elements and specializations, but without ingredients their ability as Forgemasters, Wardens, and Alchemists were limited.
On top of that, just like Nalrond before meeting Lith, having spent centuries in peace and isolation had slowed down their magical research. The lack of any form of interaction with the outside world meant no threats but also no free exchange of information.
A few villages with a couple of thousands of members total couldn't compare with the development of three countries each comprised of dozen millions individuals who constantly competed with each other.
It needed Quylla a few walks around the village to notice that the Dewans had no concept of Runesmithing or Forgemastering spells, making it easy for her to study the level of their magical equipment.
