Order and library
Around the noon of the 2nd day of the new year I ran out of the church and ran towards the direction of the Central Square, around me people were busy taking down decorations of the festival and were chatting amongst themselves, seemingly looking forward to this year.
Around a 5 min run from the central square there was a large 2 story building, the library and the purpose of today’s trip. Entering the library what I saw were about 8 or 9 rows of bookshelves a couple of tables and chairs where people were reading and a stairway leading up stairs. As soon as I entered the library a light cough was heard from my left.
“Welcome, is this your first time in the library? Would you like an explanation?”
“No I don’t need it.”
“Well then, are you here to renew your card?”
“Yes, I would like to make a new one.”
“Would that be level 1 or level 2 access?”
“The 2nd level, please.”
“Perfect, that would be 1 gold.”
Handing the guy 8 shiny rectangular coins and 20 circular coins, I once again looked around the room while I waited for him to count the amount.
In this world books are expensive, not so much so that they are unobtainable to the average person but expensive enough that you would have to think at least twice about buying them, the library I am at has 2 floors the common books, such as travelling, food, history, etc. are on the ground floor and the books about magic, spirits etc. are on the second floor.
“Sorry for the wait, here is you’re card.”
With that he handed me a wooden rectangle the size of a credit card with a complex magic circle drawn on one side of it. Saying my thanks I took the card and went towards the stairs leading up. Near the stairs was a small device which was covering the hand rail, I tapped my card on it after which it changed color from a red to a green.
Going up the second floor I was recite with anticipation, I had waited almost half a year for this. ’If only the validity lasted an entire year and not from the 2nd day of the year to the next second.’ A gold coin is still a lot of money for me at this stage of my life. After all even with me going to the guild 2 times a week and doing multiple quests I only earned 19 silver plates 22 if you count the money I earned from healing Quinn; even that is a lot after all f ranked quest give about 1 silver coin each and then considering that an average f ranked adventure only does one quest a day, making my income about in the higher ranking of F ranks.
Reaching the 1st floor found out it to be much smaller than the ground floor, there were only about 4 shelves in total. Finding the shelf containing books on magic I picked up a few, sat down and started reading them.
3 hrs later
‘god damn it’ I had been going through the books but soon I realised that all the books here were based on magic theory, while I had no doubt that these would prove to be very useful for those that actually knew magic but for me that didn’t know a single spell and only learned the basics of runes at best (courtesy of ground floor) they would be of no help. But still thinking that there may be something that might help in some way I kept looking through the books.
‘At this rate I’ll have to hire a magician to teach me.’ There are predominantly 4 ways to learn magic in this world. 1 joining the tower, the magic tower or the tower as it is known, opens its doors for new recruits every year, I had also taken part in it but did not join due to some circumstances, 2 self-taught, 3 apprenticeship under another, 4 hiring a tutor for certain topics or time.
Hiring a decent magician or even the least qualified person for this job will cost at least 3 silver plates a day. Thinking about this I became a little depressed. Still I carried on with looking across until I came across a book with an interesting title [An analysis of ‘What is Magic?’ by Arthur Remus 8th circle magician] the book itself is an interruption of an written article by his teacher before his death. On the 1st page of book there was written this excerpt from the article.
Most of us call magic a study of Mana and its abilities, but I believe it to be wrong. The 1st of the magicians are have said to stolen the dance of the elves, the forge of the dwarves, instincts of the beastkin, the rituals of the devils and the words of dragons. By this very anecdote I have come to hypothesise the true nature of magic to be mimicry, i.e. mimicry that takes from the others and sublimates it into something else entirely.
Magic in its self not superior to other ways of gaining power but it can be said to the most versatile, take for example the case of ORDER; the ability to cause phenomena with the mere utterance of words is very much similar to the power of dragon words furthermore after consulting with my dragon-blooded colleagues we have come to an understanding that the way we use order changes vastly depends upon the presence of one key attribute dragon-blood; those of that poses it are able to influence the surrounding world to a far greater degree than those that don’t who mainly rely on it for influencing the soul or mind of others, i.e. their material-influence index is much higher than others while possessing a similar spiritual-influence index, even under use of similar amount and quality of magic power.
*While order itself is an ability and not a spell per se but its origin is magical in nature and thus we can further extrapolate the origin of magic with this example.
Therefore I would to stipulate that the core of magic is imitating the logic of the world and magic itself is a power that imitates the logic of the world.
The rest of the book was filled was filled with technical jargon and calculations that I could not understand, still finding myself curious I was flipping around the book to find anything I could find in order to understand order, even if just a little more. Finding nothing that would help I happened notice an interesting detail about the book ’1290 original print, 3700 reprint edition; huh, this thing is old.’
Putting down the book and looking at the window to rest my eyes a little noticed the sun going down,’ shoot gotta hurry.’ Rushing down the stairs I ran past the Liberian who seemed to be saying something.
As I was running home a thought was stuck in my head ‘magic imitates the logic of the world, so order is itself an imitation or at least similar to dragon words, if so can I use order?’ I pondered over the question as I entered the church and repeated my same old routine of playing with the kids, cleaning the statues (I had forgotten to do it this morning) and setting up the plates. As I was leaving for my room i had Mr Dolson stop and ask me if I wanted to learn more miracles or at least train up the one’s that I do know. Seeing me not replying and just staring at him seemed to give him the hint as he gave me an awkward smile and wished me a good night.
In my room I kept thinking about the relationship between order and dragon words, when I had an idea, I used the same grammar, pronunciation and intent that I used for dragon words when speaking in the common tongue, seeing nothing happen I thought’ of course it couldn’t that easy’. Changing the grammar to that of common and still trying to keep the nuances of dragon words I still tried again.
This try I felt a similar sensation to when I use dragon words, but still seeing no effect I knew that although I had made progress, the goal was still quite far. Still this bit of progress had made me very excited; carrying on with the change initial change in grammar I tried many variations of pronunciations over the course of the next 4 hours.
‘These 15 will be last tries; I am too tired to carry on to day.’
“liGHt"
“lIghT”
“LὶgHt”
Feeling tired from the last 4 hours of trial and error, I mispronounced what I was going to say, ”light” but to my surprise a tiny fleck of light suddenly appeared in the middle of my candle light room and disappeared as soon after.
‘I succeeded!! YES!! YES!! YES!! YES!!’ trembling in excitement I started pacing around my room as I as shadow boxed my way through.
“ALFRED! Stop making a ruckus and go to sleep.”(Dolson)
“Eep! Yes Mr Dolson”
Fin
