Ignite the Sun

"Since we're on the topic of the renovations in the castle, what the hell happened in that abandoned bathroom?" Calen questioned.

"It all started when a couple of recruits decided to settle a dispute with a fight – I think it was over who killed a beast during a hunt or something like that."

"That doesn't seem too weird, as far as I'm aware knights do that fairly often."

"Well if they gone through the proper channels and set up a sanctioned duel there wouldn't be a problem – unfortunately they decided to duke it out on their own... in an unused bathroom."

"Ah, so the removal of everything wasn't planned."

"By the time someone snitched on them the bathroom was in rubble. Annoyingly both recruits were rather talented but also very bad at holding back."

"Did they survive the duel?"

"Yes, one of them had a broken hand and the other had a large cut along his forearm, but that's it – although I reckon the punishment they got was much worse for them than the injuries."

Calen simply raised an eyebrow.

"We made them join the cleaning staff for a month, and do the dirtiest work." Nickolas chuckled at the memory. "Would you believe me if I told you they became much more docile after that experience?"

"I don't doubt it – what happened to them afterwards?"

"One of them is a part of the round table, while the other became the head instructor and has been holding that position for over two centuries." Nickolas drew a thick X on one of the rooms on the drawing. "You need to go here, I marked all the rooms you know to help you navigate."

"Thanks. Before we leave, do you need anything?"

"No thank you, I'm good. Since Leo can't come himself he appointed Greg to keep me company – now that he can communicate normally I'll try to convince him to impart some of his crafting knowledge on Thomas."

"Have fun with that then, we're going to check out that library of yours."

***

"Doesn't that library seem kinda... small on this map? I thought it was supposed to be grand." Elira squinted at the drawing as they walked.

"Maybe Nickolas just isn't very good at drawing things to scale?"

"Are you kidding? This looks like a professional plan made by an architect, there's no chance he just made it too small on accident."

"It could be a multi-level room then, and just the entrance is small."

"The room is directly above the mess hall and under the medical wing, I don't think there's space for that."

"We'll see when we get there, the door should be behind that corner."

They finally reached the library, or 'l bra y' as the sign above it proclaimed – apparently years of neglect didn't apply only to the inside.

"This doesn't bode well." Calen commented.

"Maybe it's nicer on the inside?" Elira tried to remain positive, but her voice was cracking a bit.

They pushed open the door and walked in – it certainly wasn't what they were expecting; the room was nearly empty, the only things inside were something that looked like a giant empty mirror frame carved directly into the wall and a stone pulpit on front of it.

"I don't understand, where are the books?" Elira frowned.

Calen however had a completely opposite reaction.

"Knowledge reservoir – I didn't think he meant it literally when he said that."

Elita looked at him with a questioning look, she clearly didn't understand what she was looking at.

"This thing here is called knowledge reservoir, it's basically magical library used by the exceptionally wealthy – I've only seen one before, when master took Isa and I to one of his friends." Calen ran his fingers along the stone pulpit in awe.

"So how does it work?"

"It compiles knowledge from all the books encrypted inside and allows to easily retrieve information on specific topics." He picked up the silver quill lying on the stone. "You just need to specify what you want to see."

He scribbled on the stone and white glowing letters appeared, spelling: Aurelian the Bright.

The writing shimmered for a few seconds before disappearing into the stone – at the same time hundreds of lines started appearing inside of the stone frame of the wall.

"That's everything they have on our beloved king – quite a lot, but that's probably because I wasn't too specific."

"That's fascinating." Elira walked up to the wall to read the tiny letters. "Is there a way to turn this into some other format?"

Calen nodded and tapped the pulpit with the quill three times.

The test on the wall flew off the stone, swirled around in the air and coalesced into a truly massive tome on the pulpit.

"It can just make books? That's some powerful tool."

"It can, but this is actually just a physical illusion of one, and would dissipate outside of this room – creating a real one of this size would probably take a few hours."

"What else can those things do? Can they read minds or something?"

"Actually, sort of...? If a knowledge reservoir is enchanted correctly it can take in any kind of information, including thoughts and memories – you need a special procedure to extract those of course, but it's possible nevertheless."

"I assume those capabilities are the reason they are so rare and expensive?"

"You assume correctly, to create one of those bad boys you need hundreds of hours of work from various specialists – I'd bet that fallen tower has a few of them though, at least they had before the invasion."

"The archmage council used them? But they were famous for the biggest library in the world!"

"And that's precisely why they had that library, for prestige. Everyone who respects their own time would use a knowledge reservoir – all of them had not only everything that was in the library, but also some training memories."

"That's kinda sad, but whatever." Elira took the quill from Calen. "Time to check what they have on our topic."

The pulpit lit up with the phrase:

History of the Fortress of Giants and its Lords.