"What are you talking about?" Lith asked, obtaining from Quylla the hologram of what looked like a peach, except it was of a bright blue and its shape was slightly different.
"I can scout the area while you rest." Aalejah proposed. "The Dewan won't bother me and even if I meet other elves, I can always tell them that I'm a Chronicler. The Yggdrasill staff is more than enough to vouch for my status and ensure my safety."
"You'd better not." Ajatar shook his head. "If they invite you to their home, you wouldn't be able to refuse and at that point, we would have to look for you. Also, consider that deception is a bad way to start a relationship, let alone negotiations about the elves helping with Jiera's situation."
"You are right, sorry." She sighed. "It's just that I can't wait to see how my people are faring away from the World Tree. On one hand, we were blessed because we knew everything about Mogar even from our isolation.
"On the other hand, it made us feel trapped. We knew everything about places we couldn't visit and people we couldn't meet. That's why everyone wanted to become a Chronicler.
"It was the only way to get out of the Fringe and see the wonders that the World Tree kept showing us."
"I'm sorry to hear, young elf." Ajatar cast several arrays that checked for the presence of traps or spells that might have been placed to detect the arrival of intruders from the outside, finding none.
When he was done, he surrounded the area with a complex series of barriers that would reveal the presence of enemies and buy them the time they needed to escape if necessary.
Friya tried to open a Warp Steps leading outside, but the barrier sealed the space, keeping the two sets of dimensional coordinates from overlapping.
"Yeah, we need Nalrond, and not only because he's cute." She said after sharing the results of her experiments.
"Cute?" He managed to raise his head from her lap in mock outrage. "I'm handsome. A puppy is cute."
"About that, switch to Rezar. You can't make one of your forms rest more than the other." She replied, prompting his shapeshifting.
"You've already been inside the Fringe. Can't we just perform the ritual here?" Lith asked. "This way, once we are done, we can attempt to parlay with the elves and if it doesn't work we can run away before they have the time to prepare a trap like the last time."
"I wish." Quylla said. "Aside from setting up the circles of runes, we need a secluded place. Drawing enough world energy to seek an audience with Mogar emits a bright radiance that would reveal our position.
"That's why the ancient Rezars used a network of caves for the ritual. To make matters worse, once one enters the Mindscape, you can't bring them out of the protective circle unless they cut the communication.
"Without the enchantments boosting the willpower of the supplicant, being in the presence of Mogar is enough to wipe out your mind."
"I see." Lith nodded. "Where is the network of caves?"
"Beats me." Quylla shrugged. "I've never explored the Fringe. I only remember how to reach the caves starting from the Dewan's village. Friya?"
"I'm a dimensional mage, not a map." She snorted. "I can't remember a single set of dimensional coordinates after all this time. As I said, we need Nalrond. He's the only one who knows how to navigate this place."
"Then please take turns guarding us without me. There's something I want to try." Faluel reverted to her Hydra form, but kept her body compact and slightly taller than two meters (6'6").
She used her breathing technique with all her seven heads, drawing huge amounts of world energy. Between her grandmother's diaries and her disciples' report about their stay in the Fringe, she knew what to expect.
Mogar's presence was so intense that even researching a spell within the premises was enough to draw a sliver of Mogar's attention and learn from it what was wrong with the experimental technique.
By using Lifestream, Faluel was absorbing inside her body both the world energy and consciousness. Her grandmother had used this method to learn more about the secrets of magic and reach enlightenment but Faluel had grander plans.
While her heads kept the breathing rhythm steady, they also started to weave each a different spell she was currently tinkering with. The Body Sculpting spell for the Harmonizer, a new Forgemastering technique for Davross, and her own version of memory crystals were among them.
Instead of receiving a scoff, sneer, or the correction of a single rune like it had happened to Quylla and Friya, a choir of voices exploded in her heads. She wasn't able to tell what they said because the volume was too loud and they all spoke at the same time.
The overlapping voices flooded her heads and broke her focus, making the world energy she had absorbed go awry. Even worse, after awakening Mogar's consciousness, the world energy had regained its original energy signature.
It suddenly resisted the pull of her mana core and turned into mana, poisoning the Hydra's body and wreaking havoc on its way out.
Faluel went from a sitting position to standing on all fours, puking her guts out as the world energy forcefully seeped out of her skin, breaking it open into many wounds.
"Crap, crap, crap!" Quylla rushed to the Hydra's side, using her tier one spell, Injection, to send nutrient potions straight into Faaluel's bloodstream so that the use of Invigoration wouldn't put her in an even worse state.
A breathing technique could heal all wounds and replenish stamina and mana, but it couldn't give an injured body the nutrients it needed to recover. Someone in a situation as dire as Faluel's would cannibalize their own mass and potentially cripple their life force for good if healed recklessly.
Someone with a Lesser Dragon's mass needed more than a single potion but since some of her friends were huge beasts, Quylla always had with her a dimensional amulet filled solely with barrels of nutrients, in case something like that happened.
It took her less than a minute to stabilize the Hydra, but even after Quylla was done, Faluel was in even worse shape than Nalrond.
"What happened? Is there something wrong with the Fringe?" Ajatar asked while checking on her condition and giving her a special tonic of his own creation, just to stay safe.
"No, I'm just a moron." She said amid coughing. "I bit way more than even seven heads can chew."
The Hydra had just finished explaining her mistake when she fell asleep.
"We are here for less than one minute and two of our most vital members are already incapacitated. I'd say we are off to a great start." Lith's voice oozed sarcasm.
He used his Tiamat eyes to scour the land, but he couldn't see much from the ground. Flying up would have been even worse, offering to the enemies a landmark visible from a long distance.
'Usually, I'd suggest sending Aalejah to the elves to parlay and act as a diversion.' Lith thought.
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