- Yes. The Light Fathers have officially declared that vampires are the result of magical experiments by an archmage. And promised all possible punishments to those who experiment on humans. Anything at all. Even healers were forbidden.
Valentine snorted. It seemed that for the locals, even the idea of a threat from the outside was out of the question, and they quickly appointed a shooter. His companion took the vampire's snort differently and smirked.
- Yes, you're right. Who will listen to the light? They can forbid things, but no one will obey them.
Valentine nodded in agreement with the mage and tried to return to the subject that had been raised before the meal began.
- Tell me, Master. You said so confidently that the barons had been fighting since the Night of Mur... I thought you knew what you were talking about.
- Oh, that. Well, I'm in charge of Nayru's magical archives. It's not just the archive of our kingdom, it's the archive of the Old Empire. Nayru, as you may know, was the capital then.
- Have the archives survived?
- Of course! All intact!
- Then why do they never tell us what happened on the Night of Mur?
- Yes, my friend, because the Light Fathers and the entire Light Church of Demura, it is absolutely not necessary, and the rest are simply not interested. So there are all the archives of the century and no one cares about them. Except that sometimes, inquisitive people like me stick their noses in them.
- And can you tell me what happened then? Because on the Night of Mur the Old Empire fell and all the present nations were born.
Relius laughed.
- That is a mistaken belief, though a very common one. The Old Empire, or the One Empire, collapsed decades after the Night of Moore. The catastrophe that is now fashionably called the Night of Moore merely initiated the processes that led to what we have now.
- And what happened then?
- On the Night of Moore, for some unknown reason, all mages died. In fact, all the true mages. Those who had personal magic managed to survive the night, but they had a hard time. Imagine, Valentine, that one day people, elves and dwarves woke up in the morning and the mages were gone. And I must tell you that the mages then, had a position about the same as they have now in Valeria. Mages made up the bulk of the imperial officials and managers, and of course the military power of the state depended almost entirely on them. Such a catastrophe could not help but reverberate. First, the elves blamed the then Emperor for what happened, saying he had angered the Creator. Then rebellions began in the north. Then the Orcs invaded. The barons began to squabble. The Imperial army could no longer cope with all the threats and respond quickly. Chieftains began to appear on the ground, solving problems without the help of Imperial legions. Individual provinces began to secede and were taken back by force. And then, suddenly, elves and dwarves separated from the United Empire, declaring that they no longer recognized the power of the Emperor over them and kept only inviolable treaties between the races.
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