I hate the library.
As a librarian, it’s heresy, I know. But in my defence, it’s not like I always dreamt about being surrounded by shelves of books since I was kid or anything like that. Some have greatness thrust upon them - I was thrust unceremoniously into a remote library as a child and then abandoned by my parents.
“It’s a great honour to serve as caretaker,” they said. “Just like our ancestors before us,” they continued. And as soon as I was old enough to feed myself they walked out the door and never came back.
Fine, I don’t need you! I thought to myself after my hundredth escape attempt. Even sheltered as I was, I knew it wasn’t normal that the hallway leading in or out of the archives would bring me to the point of crippling nausea whenever I tried to go through it even as it allowed full access to literally anyone else.
Not that I got many visitors. I can count them on one hand, spread throughout the years, and they weren't generally the friendly sort. I guess desperation makes for a poor caretaker, and after my ranting about this being a prison, not a library fell upon wilfully deaf ears for the third time, I realized I wasn’t getting out of this.
So I tried to make the best of it. If I had to be a librarian, I was going to be the best damn librarian there ever was. I took up reading in a big way. I tried to play it cool when the next visitor appeared half a decade later - I helped him find the books he was looking for, recommended some supplemental reading, and wished him the best on the way out without mentioning my imprisonment even once. In the end, he left without a word of thanks, and so the experience of being the best librarian I could be, well…
...it filled me with murderous intent.
Just kidding. Ha ha. Totally kidding! But if it would get me out of this place, maybe not...? We have fun here.
Honestly though, I held a grudge. I felt life kind of owed me one after more than twenty years in the archives, and I’d never been able to shake the feeling that I was desperately missing something. Don’t get me wrong, I like reading. Knowledge is power, and all that. But these jerks have the nerve to walk the wrong way through the Hallway of Freedom just to bother me about some ancestral deed or ancient diagram of Cenotaph technology (though to be fair, those are actually pretty cool). Then, worst of all, they have the audacity to walk back out without so much as a thank you.
Still, solitude isn’t so great either. Years and years of eerie silence except for the noise I make in defiance has not been kind to my psyche. I might even describe it as ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. My visitors may largely be indifferent, if not rude, but without the occasional bout of human interaction I’d have probably gone mad by now. And it's thanks to them that I learned something interesting.
I can read people’s auras. Or see into their souls, or... something like that. Basically, if I stare at someone awkwardly enough I start to see colour. Most of the time I can barely make it out, but one time this lady shone a brilliant blue. She was pretty serious about the books. I started to think maybe the colours represented personality or background, and that it probably had something to do with some mysterious librarian caretaker powers I possessed that my parents had never bothered explaining to me. Then again, I’d certainly never found anything in the archives describing an ability like this, so for all I know it could be perfectly normal and my visitors had simply found it unworthy of mention.
Aside from that, I guess I’ve read some pretty cool stuff. I didn’t have a point of reference, but from the long journey some of our visitors had made, I was pretty confident our catalogue was full of pretty rare stuff. We had everything from decaying scrolls to a high-tech Cenotaph Interface (all the information you could ever want in only a few keystrokes!), so I’d amassed a decent amount of knowledge spanning historical royal bloodlines to aetheric magecraft to the ancient Cenotaph’s engineering. Frustratingly, I didn’t know if any of it was relevant anymore, isolated as I was. The few words I could get out of people seemed to suggest there’d been some kind of worldwide political tension of late, and-!
My latest internal monologue was suddenly interrupted as I heard a voice.
Someone’s actually here? I’m not ready! How’s my hair!?
Wait, there’s another voice... And another. I could see them now, wandering down the hall. There were three, four… no, eight of them! That was more people than I’d seen in my entire life combined. I had no idea what to do.
Anxiety took hold of me and I hid myself at a table behind a bookshelf, deciding to listen in. I could still see them from here but they’d have trouble spotting me unless they knew where to look. It seemed they were arguing about how to handle some kind of looming unrest in Arden, the continent in which we currently resided, and they seemed to be split in half by the issue. Hearing snippets of their debate helped me put names to their faces and I managed to pick up the gist of it while listening in.
From what I could tell, the priest Maxentius seemed to be the leader of the group who wanted to somehow prevent, or at least mitigate the upcoming conflict, along with Orchid, Alsatia, and Sai.
The cultist Maeve led the group who wanted to hunt down whoever was responsible for the growing unrest, ignoring the conflicts themselves. That included Wolfgang, Xenna, and Zyturak.
They were quite distracted by the argument, giving me ample opportunity to study the group, and time enough to read their auras...
Maeve, the cultist of Bedlam:
Maeve was a tall, pale, curvy woman in dark cultist's robes. Her unusual purple eyes were lined by kohl, her lips painted a deep black. She had a number of silver facial piercings, including a ring through either side of her bottom lip, studs above and below her left eyebrow, and a hoop through the right side of her nose. Long, raven black hair spilled out over her hood and down her back. Unlike the usual Bedlam cultist's robes, which had red trim and a blood drop insignia, hers were purple trimmed and featured a sorrowful eye instead. The cultists of Bedlam were unanimously considered psychopathic and violent, which made her calm appearance here among proper company quite unusual.
Maeve’s aura was simply fathomless darkness, which threatened to take me in like a singularity the moment I took notice of it. I had read another black aura before in a rather unscrupulous visitor who’d thought to abscond with the most valuable tomes until the Hallway of Freedom shocked the notion out of him. That thief’s aura was like a mote of dust compared to the heavy oblivion I sensed within her. She carried an extraordinary resolve to continue where others would have broken long ago, but that pain might just be festering, eating her from the inside out...
Xenna, the mage:
Xenna was a frail, scholarly looking woman with long blue hair, a fair complexion, and rectangular spectacles. Her mannerisms suggested it took all of her boldness just to participate in this heated discussion. She wore the typical Aldmoorian scholar’s garb, with some modifications for the road. She was the only person I’d ever seen bring her own tomes to the library. Given the ghost-white irises her glasses were framing, she was likely an aether mage.
I knew the basic principles of the mystical arts. Aether was potential energy that permeated Arden, found in an uneven, shifting distribution across the nations. Mages studied the bizarre principles that allowed them to tap into this invisible force and shape it. The easiest applications involved forming Aether into simple elements; ice, fire, and the like. This made well-studied mages popular in standing armies, but their spells could be refined even further, such that particularly brilliant mages could find especially unusual ways to shape aether - I’d read a study in which one mage got a Cenotaph artifact to run for a short time using an electricity-aspected aether orb. Given the exorbitant amount of energy required to power such artifacts, that could have been no small feat.
Xenna’s aura was a deep cerulean that reminded me of the dizzying heights of the sky and the mysterious depths of the ocean all at once. One of the visitors to the archives in years past had a similar soul colour, a studious young girl. She spent nearly a week in the archives, poring through book after book, and I don’t think I ever once saw her sleep. Thinking back on it, she’d had blue hair, white eyes...
Yes, I had definitely met Xenna a few years ago, though back then we hadn’t spoken at all - she was singularly focused on her work, and I was much too concerned about disturbing her focus to approach her. The difference between her aura then and now was staggering. It definitely represented passion, but tempered and distilled into flawlessly efficient application. Her aura was so pure, however, it also represented a lack of willingness to expand outside of her comfort zone.
Wolfgang, the primalist:
Wolfgang was a tanned giant of a man with kind green eyes, long blonde hair and a bushy beard. He was dressed in leathers and furs and seemed somewhat uncomfortable inside the relatively cramped archives. The crafted bone claws at his side suggested he might be a primalist from the Ptarmigan Wastes - no short distance from here.
Primalists formed a sacred bond with the land, promising to live and die by its bounties and dangers. Though close-minded scholars I read considered them ‘backwards’ or ‘savages’, there was something to be said for living in harmony with nature - but perhaps, as someone who had been trapped indoors my entire life, I was biased.
Primalists could reportedly speak with plants and beasts, accelerate natural systems such as growth or decay, and in rare reports even change shape into animals themselves. Despite this, they did not force their magic on the world the way mages did. They petitioned the land itself, not unlike how a Yreth priest might petition their god.
Wolfgang’s verdant aura was like the new dew on a sapling after the last frost had melted. There was the harshness of winter deep within him, always waiting to be unleashed, but the warmth of spring suited him better. I had never seen a soul like his, steeped in the natural world as he was, and it filled me with quiet reverence. I could tell he was caring, strong, even a little goofy, but when cornered he’d become as merciless as the blizzard.
Zyturak, the empath:
Zyturak was a tall, thin man with a dark complexion and heterochromatic blue and red eyes. He wore traditional ornate Zerinnese robes in purple and wore a simple necklace from which hung a beautiful prismatic crystal.
I honestly had no idea what Zyturak brought to the table, but there was something in the sureness of his gaze that gave the impression of effortless wisdom. I had read a few papers that suggested there was much more to the manipulation of aether than just magecraft. Perhaps Zyturak would prove as much in the fut- Wait, did he just look right at me? He smiled, putting a finger on his nose knowingly before turning back to the others as if nothing had happened. I shook off the interaction, trying to read his aura.
Zyturak’s soul was represented as an endless, impenetrable wall of calm energy. Though it was almost entirely opaque, I could just barely make something out on the other side… something not at all happy with being contained. It wasn’t exactly terrifying, but whatever it was definitely didn’t fit into the world that had been built around it. All I could take away from this was that Zyturak’s cool demeanor did not at all come easily to him.
Maxentius, the priest of Yreth:
A priest of Yreth, Maxentius’ dark skin was contrasted by short silver hair and his chin was adorned with a petite goatee. He wore an ornate inquisitor's hat which brimmed his golden eyes. His gaze was steadfast, his features chiseled, his confidence overwhelming. Even from this distance I noticed a hint of incense about him.
Far more than mere preachers, Yreth priests were responsible for a lot of what kept civilization running, from organized religion to banking to law enforcement. Maxentius looked pretty high up in the hierarchy given the heavy, engraved breastplate he wore.
Maxentius’ aura was a brilliant light that shone through from his very soul. I had read another white aura before in a kind, elderly lady. She had long been my favourite visitor, spending most of her time at the library trying to help me escape before I finally realized it was futile and had to ask her to give up, but even she seemed like a distant star when compared with this blazing sun. His light was as beautiful as it was blinding - at once I knew he was entirely selfless at his best, and stubbornly rigid at his worst.
Orchid, the mercenary:
Orchid was a freckled woman with intelligent blue eyes and bright red hair tied back in a messy ponytail, her hardened expression contrasting her soft features. She was dressed like a soldier yet bore no insignia. She wore a chain shirt, swashbuckler’s boots, and black leather pants. A longsword was sheathed at her side and a shield hung from her back. The long scars visible here and there across her face suggested no small amount of experience.
I heard her mention her men stationed outside to the others, so presumably she was a mercenary captain. I hadn’t heard of her, but then again given how old most of the archives were, I wasn’t exactly up on current events. Orchid must have been quite capable though, to be running with such a high-ranking Priest of Yreth.
Orchid’s aura was different from the ones I’d seen before. There was warm, soothing light, but also raging fire within her. The two seemed to battle for dominance, each approaching or shrinking from the other’s waxing or waning radiance in a deadly, graceful dance. I concluded she was extraordinarily passionate and kind, but these traits had somehow caused her great tragedy at some point in her life and left her unable to decide which part of herself was to blame.
Alsatia, the artificer:
A short, purple haired woman with light brown skin and a penchant for losing herself in thought between bouts of passionate debate. What looked like tinker’s goggles hung just above her twinkling hazel eyes and she effortlessly carried a complex brass contraption on her back, connected to a pair of tricked out brass gauntlets covered in dials and gauges. She was definitely an artificer, most likely from the nearby nation of Xindelle.
Artificing was a somewhat new profession due to the fact that Cenotaph artifacts were only found en masse under the sands of Xindelle within the last hundred years or so. As a result the nation had a massive influx of archaeologists, explorers, and scientists. Artificers were those who could take apart Cenotaph machinery and repurpose it - they almost never ran again as is, requiring a prohibitive amount of energy. Artificers thus prided themselves on their invented energy sources, and at a guess, Alsatia’s contraption ran primarily on steam - a novel solution, I thought, and one that was popular in the city-state of Genn, but to my knowledge never before seen in portable form like the device on her back.
Alsatia’s aura felt like inescapable heat, boiling the otherwise calm waves of her soul and raising a thick mist that crackled with potent electricity. I didn’t know what to make of it except that she likely had difficulty concentrating on any one particular thing for long, perpetually stricken by radical new ideas. Her methods clearly worked for her given the impressive devices she’d crafted, but I wondered if it might be difficult to slow down and enjoy the simple things in life when cursed with such relentless genius.
Sai, the ascetic:
Sai was a short, lithe man with observant brown eyes and skin like porcelain. He was extremely well toned, as though he’d never gone a day without training. A long braid protruded from the back of his otherwise short black hair. He wore only simple, flexible pants, though white wraps covered his hands and feet up to his forearms and calves.
Sai was an ascetic (the variations of which I was honestly not too familiar with) from the distant nation of Zerinn. For the most part ascetics lived disciplined lives, following strict rules and regimens that allowed them to better understand and appreciate the gift of life without indulgence to serve as a distraction. In rare instances the most devoted ascetics tapped into their overflowing life energy, channeling it through their bodies to achieve the impossible - some scholars I’d read had reported them punching through plate armor or surviving a lethal hit from a blade with only a scratch when forced to defend their monasteries. Such feats required an immense amount of this energy, and as ascetics lived in isolation from the outside world, they tended instead to channel it through the mind and soul, writing beautiful poetry or difficult philosophical texts on their quest for enlightenment. To see an ascetic outside of a monastery was practically unheard of, making him almost as out of place here as Maeve.
I attempted to read Sai’s aura, but try as I might I couldn’t see more than skin deep. After a confused moment I realized there was a pulsing energy interlaced almost perfectly with his body. It was made up of two distinct colours, alabaster and cerulean, which seemed to move in perfect tandem through him as he breathed, keeping him centered. I had not expected to see someone wield their soul outside their own body... The ascetics of Zerinn were clearly full of surprises.
Though Sai’s lifestyle was quite admirable, I could tell it left him self-assured to the point of arrogance, and he might not know how to appreciate the value of any lifestyle that strayed from his own.
Having focused on the group long enough to get a sense of who was who, I began to carefully listen in on their debate.
Maxentius: “I’m warning you for the last time, cultist. Leave us. Your insane babblings are grating against my last nerve.”
Maeve: “Listen priest. You can write us off all you like but somebody has to pursue the actual perpetrator here or things in Arden will get even worse.”
Orchid: “This is a tense political situation, not the work of some unseen terrorist. We want to keep the peace, but you want to run off to start a war yourselves.”
Xenna: “O-Orchid... This sudden tension is no accident... There is an aetheric disturbance the likes of which has never been recorded before-”
Alsatia: “And how can you be sure that it isn’t simply due to the war preparations? For all we know, the Aldmoor empire’s just invented a new kind of mystical war machine that guzzles down aether.”
Wolfgang: “But it’s more than that. The land cries out in agony - something is terribly wrong, something far beyond mere human conflict. We of Ptarmigan have known this for years.”
Sai: “No offense to you Wolfgang…or any of you. But even if there were some mastermind hiding in the shadows, our duty should be to the victims of war. If you jump at every shadow, you’re only going to end up sowing more fear and uncertainty.”
Zyturak: “Doubt Maeve’s warning all you want, Sai. But I have looked into her heart and mind, and she truly believes what she says. Is it so hard to accept that what she heard could be the truth…?”
The priest snapped, turning on Zyturak.
Maxentius: “It is when that ‘truth’ comes to her from those alien horrors the cults worship! And so what if she believes it? That only proves that she’s as crazy as they are!”
Zyturak just smiled sadly. The priest calmed down, sighing deeply.
Maxentius: “Look, I don’t think any of us want to fight. I was directed here through a divine vision. Maeve claims to have been as well. Fine. Let’s all agree to disagree, get what we came for, and go our separate ways. Fair enough?”
Maeve scoffed.
Maeve: “I honestly expected you to try to kill me by now, so I guess this is as good a compromise as we’re going to get. Fine by me.”
She turned away from the priest and pointedly looked around the condensed archives.
Maeve: “As for where to start, though…”
Well, I guess this is my cue. And my first real hope, and likely my last real chance. Trying to put on my most welcoming face, I turned the corner and came into full view...
