Even after the rhinos were led away from the checkpoint, Dalric hadn't moved. His mind lagged. His brain just couldn't process what just happened. It felt like reality and illusion were intertwining. Was he going insane? He started to seriously consider if he was on another world.

As foolish as that sounded, he couldn't make sense of… anything he'd seen. A certain amount of it was manageable and within the realm of 'not knowing what you don't know'. He could chalk it down as 'expanding his horizons' and be on his way.

This? He just witnessed two unenlightened, regular, mundane animals speak the all-tongue. That wasn't possible.

Dalric didn't even know if he could speak the all-tongue at the moment. It wasn't just some simple arrangement of sounds, some pattern of 'ouhs' and 'ahhs'. It was communication through ahjer. It was meaning manifested. It was what the Elders spoke.

It was true, through means no one fully understood yet, that Enlightened beasts could speak it, but that was one of the reasons they were given the title Enlightened. The beasts that had just trotted away were just that, beasts. However organized they were, their ahjer didn’t lie… right?

Should I not have moved so soon after my reincarnation? Has being reborn turned me mad?

His sanity was under serious scrutiny. The facts in front of him could not be.

Maybe I've not been reborn at all. Maybe I haven't even died. Is this the madness of near death? I've deluded myself into thinking I've reincarnated. Come to think of it, even for the Gods, is that truly possible? The contract never mentioned it.

A giant can’t wake up a human. None of this made sense from the start. Maybe I’m trapped in some reality of the Gods’ forging? Maybe I—No. Impossible. The Dance.

Impossible… What is impossible? What’s possible? What’s anything? Have I just finally broken?

He only managed to wrestle himself away from questioning his mental state when the rhinos came back, sans the chunks of stone.

"Tonight is last until complete."

"We know. Run along."

Wait… those rhinos are summons.

He failed to notice that the first time, not for lack of ability.

Well…

Not entirely because of his lack of ability. They were very well made. All living summons required a high level of skill, but there were still tiers to the quality of summoning. Dalric himself, though he had the knowhow, had only ever managed the base level. At that level, summons didn't have fully functioning organs. The two rhinos on the other hand were of such a high quality that they were almost indistinguishable from any other denizen of the jungle. If he hadn’t specifically scrutinized them to re-confirm they weren’t Enlightened, he’d have never noticed.

That revelation made their ability to speak the all-tongue more palatable. If the summoner could speak it themselves it was possible to impart that ability and considering the quality of their summons it wouldn't be outlandish if they did.

The others however…

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It just didn't make sense. They weren’t summons, they weren’t Enlightened, they were simple animals. Maybe more than just simple due to their strength and apparent intelligence, but certainly far and away from anything capable of speaking the all-tongue. It didn’t make sense.

Dalric tried to calm himself, but his mind betrayed him. It fought him every step of the way. He could feel it fraying again. Never had centering himself proved so difficult, fears of madness and delusion sought to overwhelm him while despair crept up from within. His body shook at the internal strife.

‘Look for the sunshine.’

Laekna’s words reverberated in his head. It took a few breaths, but they helped calm the storm. He didn’t know anything. He didn’t know anything. This was not the time for him to lose himself in hypotheticals. Whether he was hallucinating in some Frysta-like forgery or he’d truly been reborn didn’t matter. For the moment, he was free of the Gods’ supervision. He had to act.

He turned towards their walls and flapped his wings. He needed answers, and the questions he had wouldn’t find a response with simple scouting. There was only so much he could learn out here. Plus, sleuthing never suited him anyway.

"Enemy!"

It was time he took a more direct approach.

Dalric soared over the wall as loud roars rang beneath him. Chunks of heated metal set the trees he rose above ablaze. The metallic rings around their paws, while not weapons themselves, turned out to be part of a long range spell. Or possibly they were simply a source of ammunition.

He didn't think on it much, he had neither the time nor the mental space to. Their home had come into view.

“This...”

He wasn’t sure of the details, still sightless, but his sense was telling him more nonsense he couldn’t believe. Before him stood a wall, a thick, elevated, brick-laid wall. But that’s not what shook him, it was what the wall hid behind it.

Houses.

Not just mud huts or misshapen shacks, proper stone-built houses. They were only one storey high, but they were wide and had appropriately sectioned off rooms. They had bathrooms! Toilets! Not quite plumbing, at least as far as he could tell, but having bathrooms alone was astonishing. If this is what they had bordering the wall, what laid deeper within?

“This is a village!?”

The proportions made it obvious it was designed for those of short—

One of the metal chunks finally hit him.

—er stature. A race as small as humans could just about live there, but the doors were clearly for creatures who didn’t have thumbs. That crossed out any valinbarns. More—

Another.

—than just direct valin descendants, though. It crossed out all valinoids. How many races on Frystal used swinging doors, but didn’t have hands? Dalric couldn’t think of a single one.

This village... could it truly be the beasts' home? What am I witnessing?

Uninterested in the astonishment washing over Dalric, a thin beam of light shot towards his head. Unarmored as it was, he deftly dodged.

With his daze broken, he turned his attention to the crowd below him.

"Up up!"

"What is that?"

"I don't know Madam."

"Send!"

"More shoot need!"

"Gather the garrison!"

"Too up.

"How far is…"

The words passed through Dalric without ceasing, his mind had once again been conquered by bafflement. So many voices, all of them speaking the tongue. Few were actually fluent. He heard many broken phrases, more broken phrases than actual sentences for that matter, but fluency was merely a matter of time. The greatest barrier came in communicating your first thought.

He dodged the light beam again, this time noting more of its characteristics.

Similar to Golden Ray, but… cooler? In any case, it's another heat-based spell. That seems to be their specialty. A clue, perhaps.

"It's futile. Bring the destroyer!"

The what?

He refocused on the voices below. One of the speakers clearly held some sort of leadership position. And they seemed to have a fairly good handle of the tongue.

I suppose I could start w—

Dalric dove. A new assailant had stepped in range of his ahjer sense. They were Enlightened. His answers had arrived.