Honoria paused and frowned. “I’m not sure what to do with you next. Normally, I set new Librarians to cataloging, with periodic breaks to practice shelving. Cataloging is good practice, helps a new Librarian build the intent she’ll need to actually work with the Library, while shelving forces you to learn your way around and how to hear the Library. That’s not why you’re here, you’re here to defend. I do need some help with the Library’s own defenses, but that’s pretty advanced work…”
She seemed to be talking at least half to herself.
“Serenity said something about dungeon management Paths being especially useful for Librarians?” Raz interrupted Honoria. “Why?”
Honoria blinked twice, then shrugged gracefully. “I do not know; we haven’t had one at the library since I’ve been Head Librarian. I simply know that the recommendation of my predecessors is to always have one, but only if the Library agrees. I do not know why.”
Serenity chuckled to himself. He had a pretty good idea why dungeon management Paths might be both helpful and potentially offensive to the Library. Raz was unlikely to deliberately offend; after all, he’d grown up with Aki.
Raz grinned and showed all of his teeth. “I can guess. If I’m right, I’ll have to be careful, but that shouldn’t affect anyone else. Can you introduce me to the Library? I’d love to help with the defenses, maybe we can see if there’s something that used to be set up but was disabled for safety? I know Aki has some stuff like that, stuff she hasn’t wanted to create because-”
“We should get set up for the night. Learning to work with the Library is a task for tomorrow,” Blaze interrupted before Raz and Honoria got any deeper into the discussion. “If we don’t get started, we’ll still be here talking and not have a place to sleep. At least, Legion won’t. Honoria, I assume you have a space in mind?”
Honoria muttered “Individual aptitude tests,” under her breath before she replied to Blaze. “Follow me; once you’ve been there once, it shouldn’t be hard to get to the staff room again. Just go through any of the doors and you’ll arrive. Probably, at least; new Librarians can have issues. I’m not sure why.”
Honoria led out from the Library’s main Node, then up a pair of steps that Serenity hadn’t seen on the way in. He definitely had the feeling that something was playing with space, however, so perhaps this was indeed more of a dungeon than he’d thought. If that was the case, then the clever designer he’d complimented back on the first floor might well be the dungeon itself.
The room Honorial led them to was about twenty by thirty. There was a small sink set into one wall, a bookcase along the opposite wall, two small tables, and a collection of half a dozen mismatched chairs. There were no windows and no obvious place to store or prepare food.
It was significantly more room than Serenity needed for his tent, but nowhere near enough room for Legion, even if Legion slept in shifts. “We can also put some of you in the Librarians’ rooms, but there are only eight of those available. Fewer if you manage to convince any of my colleagues to come back, but I don’t think that’ll be possible until it’s safe, and at that point,” Honoria shrugged, “As far as I’m concerned, anyone who helps defend the Library can have priority over those who fled.”
Serenity smiled. He suspected the Library felt the same way Honoria did, though it was always possible that there were one or two people that the Library really valued. Aki would probably have put Raz first even if he didn’t help her, after all.
Of course, if Raz didn’t want to defend Aki, he wouldn’t be Raz.
“Can we ask the Library to make us more rooms?” Raz was already on his knees in front of the sink, looking under it at the pipes. “We can make do for tonight, but more sleeping rooms would mean that we don’t have to take over part of the public ground floor.”
“Make rooms?” Honoria sounded confused. “We might be able to convert a few of the work areas, but there really aren’t that many places available. The Library’s only set up for nine Librarians, counting the Head Librarian, and even then it can be tough when a Librarian has a family. There isn’t much room.”
Serenity knew that wasn’t what Raz meant; Raz was clearly thinking of the Library as a surface dungeon. Serenity had to admit that he was, too. That was how he knew what Raz had to be thinking. “Why don’t you and Raz go look into that while the rest of us set up for the night? It’ll take time even if it’s possible; I doubt it’ll be ready before we need the room.”
Now that they had a base, it was time to check out the area. Legion had already started spreading out across the city, while Raz and Honoria were busy talking to the Library again. Blaze was obviously going to look for where the injured were being helped; Ita planned to travel with him. Serenity wasn’t about to object to that. Ita could send a message if she needed to, after all, while Blaze didn’t have a similar ability. If Ita hadn’t already planned to travel with Blaze, Serenity would have suggested taking Legion along.
Kerr and Legion planned to spend a lot of the day looking through the Library’s books to see what was there; in fact, Kerr had already asked Honoria about that cataloging exercise. She was no mage, but she also didn’t want to be left behind. Not when she’d only recently reached Tier Four. Legion announced that he’d join in, as well; he wanted to know if it was really the ability to do magic that mattered or if it was simply something that was also common in mages.
That left only Rissa and Serenity. Serenity expected Rissa to announce that she was going to stay and practice with Kerr, but she didn’t. Instead, she tilted her head slightly and smiled at Serenity. “Want to go for a walk?”
That actually sounded really nice, even though “a walk” was exactly what they’d been doing most of the time for the past few months. During that time, it had rarely just been the two of them, after all. On the other hand, he really did need to check out Takinat and get the lay of the land; right now, it was a name and a walk filled with rubble, but Serenity doubted that was all there was to the city. “This isn’t an excuse to guide me somewhere you’ve seen in a vision, is it?”
Rissa laughed. “I’d ask if you thought I’d do that, but you’d answer yes and be right. No, not this time. I haven’t done any looking into the future here and I don’t have any premonitions yet. I don’t know enough. I guess this is partly to fix that? I want to know more about the area almost as much as I want to spend time with you.”
Serenity chuckled. Yeah, that was Rissa, mixing together fun and work. To be fair, he did the same thing. It was still a good way to spend time together. “I’d love to. Are you ready?”
At first, Takinat seemed to be simply the same rubble and ruined buildings they’d seen on the way from the portal to the Library, but the farther they got from the Library, the more that changed. It was enough to make Serenity wonder if there was a reason they’d seen so much rubble between the library and the portal; were those both sites that had been attacked specifically? If so, why was so much of the destruction in between?
It wasn’t that none of the rest of the city was damaged; it was. However, it was often only a single building that was flattened or even damaged. There were few signs of the fires Serenity would have expected; even a city that didn’t use thatch for roofs would burn, and this city did.
There had to be a reason the city didn’t burn; the Library was scorched, so it wasn’t because the attacks didn’t have fire. That was a question that would have to wait, but one Serenity was definitely interested in. It really didn’t look like anyone was out stopping the fires; instead, it looked like they just didn’t start in the first place.
When Serenity finally got a look at intact buildings, he was shocked. From Raz’s descriptions and his own memories of Stallet, Serenity was expecting a sort of a Middle Eastern desert vibe to the buildings, possibly even something out of the Arabian Nights tales; even the Library had that sort of construction, with the fancy dome that capped the building.
Takinat did not look Middle Eastern. Instead, it reminded Serenity of the American Southwest, at least what he’d seen in movies. Many of the buildings were adobe, with the spots where the beams emerged to support the roof clear on the outside. He couldn’t remember what that style of building was; something Spanish, maybe, or did it go back to the native Americans of the area? He wasn’t sure.
Unlike the American Southwest, however, the buildings did not even try to stay with earthy tones. Even the adobe itself was colored in crazy patterns and bright colors; perhaps it would be better to call Takinat’s architecture a psychedelic reinterpretation of the American Southwest?
They spent time wandering around the city, watching it change. There were people out and about, as if this were any other normal day; they didn’t even seem to notice the destruction. Serenity knew that was because they’d been living with it for long enough that it was normal; those who couldn’t cope had fled, but those who were left had to keep living. He’d seen it before and he was certain he’d see it again.
Eventually, some patterns in the buildings seemed to become clear.
Walls facing the south were always in yellows and oranges, though other colors could make an appearance. Those colors bled around to the east, but eastern walls tended to be in pastels, with dark lines found only at edges and to make the patterns work.
Northern walls were where those darker colors - deep red, forest green, royal purple, even black - found their home. Northern walls were also the most likely to simply be a single solid color. Western walls were what Serenity and Rissa had seen first on exiting the Library, and they were the most “normal” of them all, with patterns done primarily in the natural mud and stone the buildings were made from.
Roofs varied between a simple thatch (sometimes colored in all sorts of patterns from rainbow to speckled) to a more modern-looking tile. The tiles tended to be pale, but the tiled roofs were anything but plain. Many of them had names for either the building or the shop; quite a few even said what the shop sold in a way that reminded Serenity of hundred-year-old movies.
There were buildings that violated that rule of thumb; the Library itself was a great example. On most buildings, however, the pattern held.
They were on their loop back to the Library when Serenity saw a roof that called out “Spells, Wards, Enchantments, Runes, Spellcasting, Charms, Potions”. He stopped in the street to consider if it was worth the delay.
Rissa followed Serenity’s gaze and chuckled. “Found someone you want to talk to?”
Serenity nodded. “I want to ask about that symbol on the bottom of the plane. I’d swear it was a rune, a complicated one, but I can’t place it. I can’t even say why it looks like a rune. It wasn’t doing anything; I’m pretty sure it wasn’t charged. But you wouldn’t draw a rune unless you meant it to do something.”
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