Dawn awoke feeling something was wrong, though she didn’t know what. Blinking the sleep from her eyes and sitting up, she found that Niphru wasn’t where she had left him the night before! Before she could fully begin to panic, however, she felt the covers move slightly. Turning to face behind herself, she saw Niphru stretched out against the pillows, rather than at the base of the bed where she had left him.

  Excited that he had moved on his own, she scooped him up and hugged him before she realized it, waking him up. Immediately afterward, her mind caught up with her as and she apologized, “Sorry, but I’m so happy to see you mao move! Did you want to go back to sleep, or are you fully awake?”

  As she had hoped, their reformed link was strong enough that she could feel his iions again like in the past. Feeling that he was awake, she brought him to the main room before heading to the kit to prepare food. After cheg with him, she decided to make something a bit more substantial than soup or pe today. As she had felt ossible over the link, Niphru did mao properly chew the food, though it was clear he struggled with it.

  It appeared, upon further discussion, that he felt very weak, even if he could move. With just a moment of thinking, Dawn realized it robably due to not being able to move for so long. Monti had mentiohat muscles weaken when not used, after all. Due to this, they agreed to spend as much time as possible trying to help build up his strength again.

  Unfortunately, Niphru seemed to be uo support his ow currently, legs trembling and colpsing to the floor when Dawn tried to help him stand. Oher hand, he did have success in trying to crawl, and they set up a system where Dawn would move around the room, then give him pets and scratches when he mao make it to her to help motivate him. After a few repetitions, however, he ended up too tired to tinue.

  Seeing this, Dawn brought another chair beside the one closest to the books she had acquired yesterday a Niphru down on it so that he could rest near her while she studied. She had seele “Fuals of Magic: Fire and Ice” and was quite excited to see what it had to say, so she pulled it out aled down to read.

  Iingly enough, the first page was a warning that sharing the info within was forbidden except tistered mages, including even family members, with the sequence of beiricted to a spire, or potentially eveh. This shocked Dawn quite a bit, as she had not thought that anything would be that dangerous to learn about. She did feel a bit better when she tio the paragraphs, however, as they expined why.

  Apparently, something had happened in the past between the mages and the Church of flict, leading te portion of history being erased and knowledge of the events being banned, with the only exceptions being members of the two groups. There was a refereo another book with a hat expi in more depth, so she set the book down and looked through her small colle. It turned out that she did have that book as well, so she pulled it out to read ter.

  tinuing onward, she was shocked to see the book mention that fire and ice magic were actually the same thing, which made no seo her at first. Reading more, it seemed that both were opposite applications of temperature modification using magic, with ice magic using a small amount of air and water magic to draw moisture to freeze as well as earth te the structure of the ice, while fire magic used small amounts of air and juration to produce fuel and burn it. This expnation did end up making sense, and might also be how she was able to stop her own fires as well.

  After a while of reading further into the theories, Daw Niphru nudge her over the link, and once she aying attention, pushed the idea of exerg again. She put the book aside and moved him back to the ground so they could begin again. Several more repetitions ter, Niphru was exhausted again, so she made some more food for him a him rest after eating.

  Roughly an hour of reading ter, Dawn decided to try some of what she had read, setting aside the book once again. She found fire easy to work with, so she tried going the opposite dire, trying to pull fire out of empty air rather thae it. After several attempts to get the feel right, she noticed the air being colder and decided she was successful in her first attempt. Having found how to reduce the temperature, she then headed to the kit to get a small gss of water and try freezing it.

  This, she found, was much more difficult. It appeared she did o learn at least the basics of earth magic, as she found herself uo freeze the water directly. She was only able to chill it and wait for it to slowly turn to i its own instead, which was still progress, at least. Satisfied with having made the progress she had, Dawed her cup of itil it was liquid again and drank it before pig up the book about history.

  Several mier, she found herself staring bnkly at the book, horrified at what she had just read. Ohere were THREE cities, each as rge as Arrival, each with towns and vilges supp them. And then, the Church of flict, as fit their name, maniputed them into war. In the end, the devastation was extreme enough that humanity had o fall back to Arrival and struggle to rebuild from there. Even worse was what came , talk of purges and killing anyone who spoke of what happened. It seemed the mages as a whole had nearly vanished, causing humanity to falter and barely survive until the few remaining were able to train enough others.

  From what the book said, this horrible nightmare had been what caused the Church of flict to start w together with the mages instead of against them, to a degree, at least. Apparently, they had been harassing mages ever sihen to try to push them into switg to join them. Dawn thought this rather foolish, however, as treating people nicely would probably make them more willing to join pared to treating them poorly.

  Further into the book, she found a map, and while the vilges she knew were not present, she could find roughly where they should be. It appeared that the outermost vilges were not evehe towns had been before, let alohe former frontier vilges. Depressed by what she had learned, Dawn put the books away and focused instead on pying with Niphru until she felt better.

  After a few more sessions of exercise, they headed to bed to get some rest before Morris returomorrow.