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When they were about halfway to the city, Elnara looked up at Lore curiously.

"For all the time we've been together," she murmured, looking up at him thoughtfully, "and for all that I do know about you, there's still so much that I don't know ... and I know you don't like to talk about it ..."

Meaning his past.

She trailed off and shook her head. "No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't ask."

Curious as she was.

He tightened his grip gently, "It's alright," he murmured, "You have... told me a lot about yourself."

And even he had to admit to himself that if he was going to seriously pursue this, he was going to have to explain himself. His own past.

"Oh, yes," Daeron nodded. "There are several other cities here in the Southland, and then there's Rainbow Valley, where I've never been, and the plantation where my father and his siblings were born. Outside the eastern Southland is the human Southland, to the west, and then there are the Westland, Eastland, Northland, and Borderlands."

He paused a moment before continuing on with his story.

"Anyways, Ada was taking me on a trip - visiting somewhere, I guess, I don't know where we were going ... we were attacked by humans only a few days from the city. Ada was injured - badly, I must add - and the men took me away with them."

"Well..." Lore mused, "I don't mind, it's not like it is some terrible secret. Those that study my research know it.. relatively well, at least the censored version," he amended.

Though most could guess what had happened since he was still the librarian of the library.

"I cried," Daeron admitted. "I was just little, and I didn't know what was happening. They made me do a lot of their work for them, and they hit me a lot ... I didn't know it at the time, but they were going to take me to the north to be a slave for them."

"As you know, my people had become... inflicted with a virus that targets the magic within the body, and people like me were the result of an attempt to become immune to it. Naturally, no one knew and so we were just frightening because people thought they were being inflicted with a different virus, one that caused them to lose their magic. Not completely, but they couldn't do what previous generations could do."

He paused for a moment trying to think in how to word this.

"Not all the children were affected, just some of us, slowly. Born with different hair and eye colouring, it was considered a symptom of what we lacked."

"Well," Daeron murmured thoughtfully, wondering how best to explain the concept to Lin, "you know how we have servants here at the castle, right? They do a lot of our work for us - cooking, cleaning, laundry, guarding us ... but they're treated with respect, they earn a wage, they have time off, they can come and go as long as it's not their time to work, they receive food, shelter, and clothing. A slave is sort of the same idea ... but not nice. A slave has to do everything they're told, always, no matter what, they always have to work, whether it's day or night, they don't get paid, they don't get fed much, they are usually given rags to wear, sometimes they have to sleep on a hard floor ... and if they do anything that their master doesn't like, anything at all, then the master will beat them and shout at them."

He paused and grimaced. "The men who took me, they would hit me any time I cried, and if I even just looked like I was going to try to run away, they would tie my feet and hands together."