Chapter 1758 - Willpower And Imagination (Part 2)
"That's rich coming from you." He scoffed. "You have put your life in Faluel's hands just to get Awakened. Even though you are not her Harbinger, she can order you around and kill you the moment she finds you wanting.
"If Faluel really turns you into a Harbinger, you are going to become like Solus. You'll lose your privacy and free will. You'll even be forced to abandon your family if that's what she wants.
"As I see it, your actions are way more extreme than mine even though life gave you everything. You chose to gamble everything just for your thirst for power whereas I'm forced to do it to stop being a monster.
"Until I get rid of this thing inside of me, I'll never be happy. You have no idea how it feels, knowing that the moment people learn the truth about you they'll hunt you down. How hard it is to fight against yourself every day to not scare those around you."
"Is this what you think of me? That I'm a spoiled brat who chose to throw away her life on a whim?" Friya asked.
Nalrond realized to have gone too far and expected her to be angry, offended, or both. Yet her voice was calm and her eyes full of compassion.
"I'm sorry for being an ass." He rushed to say. "I would like to put the blame on the wine but the truth is that I've always been envious of you and I can't understand why someone as amazing as you decided to-"
Friya touched his hand, sharing her life with him via a mind link. Nalrond saw her neglected existence as a kid, always compared to her siblings and harshly reprimanded by her mother, Duchess Solivar, whenever Friya failed her expectations.
Then he experienced her isolation at the White Griffon academy. Until the fourth year, Friya had been completely alone in an unforgiving environment and surrounded by enemies.
Then came Yurial, Lith, and Quylla. It was a brief happiness filled with struggles until the betrayal of Friya's mother caused the death of her whole family. Friya was now more alone than ever, everything she had worked for was gone and she was labeled as a traitor.
Jirni adopting her had saved her life, giving her a place to stay but no direction. Nalrond could see how lost Friya had felt, struggling to find her way in life. She loved her two sisters, but they outshined her in everything and she was afraid that even her new parents would consider her a failure.
She didn't have Quylla's passion for research nor Phloria's ability as a leader. Friya had believed to have found her path after creating the Crystal Shield Guild. It was a thankless job that brought her more trouble than satisfaction, but at least it gave her a purpose.
After her guild had been slaughtered, Phloria had been Awakened, and Quylla had earned her place at Faluel's academy, leaving Friya alone like the day she had lost her family.
The despair from knowing that her sisters and Lith were going where she could never reach them had driven Friya to put her life on the line just to still be a part of the group.
She knew it was a stupid and childish move, but she feared loneliness more than she feared death. Under her charms, her magical power, and witty banter, there was a lonely little girl that just wanted to belong.
The vision broke and Nalrond found himself holding her hand tight while tears veiled his eyes. Their lives had been nothing alike yet it didn't make hers any better. At least inside the Fringe he had spent a happy childhood and had found love.
Nalrond's pain came from everything he had lost. His family, his fiancée, his home. Friya's came from all the things she had never had and that she was desperately looking for.
"I usually don't show my life before the tenth date." She said with a small, sad smile. "I made an exception for you because you are right. I am a spoiled brat who chose to throw away her life on a whim.
"Yet it doesn't make my point any less true. Look at your hand"
Only then did Nalrond notice that the intense emotions he had felt had brought out his Rezar form, ripping through the clothes and clenching her arm with its razor-sharp claws.
His first instinct was to turn back into a human, but it would have left him naked and the claws would have cut her skin as they retracted.
"I usually don't strip before the third date." Nalrond joked awkwardly, glad that the golden scales on his body covered the red of his shame. "Do you mind letting my hand go and turning around? I have to put on some clothes before someone passes by and-"
"Actually, I do mind." Her strength as an Awakened matched the Rezar's. He would need to fight to escape from her grip yet he had no will to. "I know that you have no reason to answer my questions, but I want you to at least hear them.
"Do you ever use your Rezar form outside of a fight or training?"
"No." He replied.
"Even back in your village, did the members of your tribe use it to play among themselves like Protector's kids do? Did you ever stage silly role plays with your girlfriend like Kamila?"
"The kids had no control over their strength, so their parents forbid them to. As for my girlfriend, who wouldn't be turned off by this thing?" He said.
"Did you ever run, swim, or dive into the earth as a Rezar, just for the fun of it?" Friya asked and Nalrond shook his head, tired of the sound of his own voice.
"Then you are telling me that you have always kept your other half bottled inside, not because of others, but because you are ashamed of it." She said.
"I'm not ashamed of it, just afraid. The Rezar inside of me is always angry, violent, and lustful. If I don't contain it-"
"With all the experiments you performed on yourself with light and even with Spirit Magic, didn't you discover that you have two bodies, two cores, but only one mind?" She cut him short.
"Didn't it occur to you that maybe your Rezar half is always so angry because you never let it experience nothing but strife and pain? That werepeople have always been so obsessed with the idea of getting rid of their beast half that they treated it like a disease?
"Magic is based on willpower and imagination. Your Rezar half acts like a monster because that's how you imagine it to be and pin on it all your negative emotions. How can any spell bring down a barrier that your will strengthens every single day?" Friya asked.
It wasn't the first time that Nalrond heard those words but it was the first time he actually listened to them. Each Fringe was a closed ecosystem and a single tribe of werepeople could live there, their numbers limited by the resources it contained.
Each community was tight-knit and those who shared Friya's theories would be shunned, not encouraged.. They ended up either abandoning the Fringe or living their whole life as pariahs, becoming a cautionary tale for the children.