NOVEL WEB Chapter 12: The Library
The knowledge of spellforms was spread but was quickly followed by the Avatar's arrival and the Flood. After the settlement of Basin, the art spread wildly through the wizarding communities. It was also at this time that wizards learned that Basin was not a safe place for dragon blooded sorcerers.
-Tallen Elmheart, On Mages
—
The Academy of Illunia had many, many, many, libraries, but when one spoke of the library, they always referred to a particular one.
The Dahn—tower in Torcish—stood in the center of the campus, and housed the largest collection of magical texts on Kaltis—well, the largest collection of magical texts not drowned by the Flood, but those aren’t exactly accessible.
The library in the Dahn took up four floors of the building, and the same magic of the tower that allowed doors to open to far-flung areas of the building, also made the area much, much, much, bigger on the inside than out.
When Kole left Amara, he went straight back to the building in which he’d taken his entrance exam. He fought the urge to run but then gave up any semblance of propriety and broke into a jog.
The Dahn. I’m here! He thought as he smiled wide in anticipation.
The distance wasn’t far, but neither was Kole the fittest specimen, and he was breathing heavily and beginning to sweat when he reached the foyer. There was still a line of students streaming through to enroll, but the line no longer snaked across the campus. This time upon entering, he turned right and walked through the great double doors into the library.
The door was open, and he paused in the doorway to take it in. The massive crystal shard that hung down into the foyer ran the height of the magical building, and a section stood before him now. While the building lacked stairs—save for the staircase that led nowhere—the center of the tower was open, and one could make out which “floor” one was on by looking over the edge.
He walked through the door and continued to the railing to see the door he’d just walked through down below.
“Wow.”
Bookshelves stood all around the perimeter of the central chamber, with gaps between them leading deeper into the magically expanded library. Looking up, he saw the shard continue hundreds of feet up into the ceiling far above.
After he got over the wonder of the sight, he remembered the true majesty of the place—the books. Desks sat on either side of the entryway he stood in, manned by half a dozen library attendants each. He walked to the nearest one and gestured to the lower wooden gate that barred his path.
“Can I go in?” he asked nervous excitement in his voice.
“Are you a student or library card holder?” the bored attended asked, looking up from his own studies.
“I just enrolled... like an hour ago.”
The student worker sighed and pulled out a familiar device from under the desk. He placed the glass orb on the desk in front of him, and Kole placed his hand on it.
“Are you an enrolled student in good standing with the library with no outstanding fines?”
“Yes!” Kole said, a little too enthusiastically.
“Great, you can go in,” the attendant said in the same bored monotone. “Make sure to get your student library pass. You’ll need it to enter after the commencement.”
“Thanks!” Kole said, already walking through the gate.
The great circular chamber had a large well opening in the middle, and around it sat the bookshelves. Tables and private booths filled the space between, and the place was only lightly populated at this time of the year. Kole made his way through the study area, going directly to one of the information desks that dotted the library.
While the attendants at the entry had been bored students, the librarian at this desk was diligently at work inspecting a stack of books for damage before placing them on a nearby cart.
As Kole approached her at a brisk pace, she looked up to him with a warm smile, “Welcome! If that's not the gait of an enthusiastic new student, I don’t know what it is. What can I help you find?”
The librarian was a middle-aged woman with chestnut hair tied into a bun and small glasses that—if the slight iridescent sheen meant anything—were enchanted in some manner,
“I’m looking for the spellbooks,” Kole said
“Oh good, an easy one. The first-tier spellbooks can be found between layers one and two, five o’clock. Do you need directions?”
“No, thanks!” Kole said as he took off to the region.
The library was broken up into layers and arcs denoted using the hours of a clock. The door he’d entered from had been at nine o’clock, and he made his way around the circle until he reached his destination. Doors to the other floors of the library sat at three, six, nine, and twelve o’clock, and he passed the door to the second floor on his way. Beyond the door stood another admittance area manned by older and slightly more attentive students.
Once in the correct region, Kole went through a gap in the stacks and stopped, eyes wide. Before him stood shelves packed to the ceiling for as far as he could see down the curved shelved aisle. Emblazoned on the end of each shelf read ’spellbooks.’
He ran to the nearest one pulled the first book he saw and began flipping through its pages. He recognized the first spell he opened as the first-tier Firebolt spell, and he flipped the next... another first-tier Firebolt spell. He flipped to the next and found another first-tier Firebolt spell.
“What the flood?” he asked himself, as he turned the book over.
The spine read Firebolt Tier 1, 775-800AF.
He looked next at the shelves around them and saw that each book was clearly labeled in such a fashion, with spell names and dates. Looking back at the book before him, he finally understood.
Each spellform was labeled with a number, creator, and brief description of how it differed from the standard. Each of these spellbooks were not spellbooks in the traditional sense, a book in which a wizard kept all his spells. Instead, they were compilations of all the developed versions of a singular spell over the years. He’d heard of such a thing but had never seen them.
Back home, all the spellbooks he’d ever had access to had been those made for the training of new wizards, or the personal ones left behind by wizards of the past. To find a specific version of a spell, he’d have to browse the index, find the spellbooks that had them, and hope the spellforms hadn’t decayed beyond his ability to restore.
Spellbooks were extremely expensive. The materials required to store intent imbued Will while also keeping out the influence of ambient Will were very expensive. The cost of reorganizing spellforms into books like this when one could simply catalog them seemed an enormous waste.
Except...
Kole recalled the test he had just taken. Each spellform that had appeared, had done so instantly, with intent imbued into it.
They must have developed a means of copying spellforms! Why is this not widely known? Or is it?
Kole, admittedly, was not very up to date on the latest comings and goings of the advancement in wizardry. His particular abilities—and disabilities—had forced him to delve into the past to find answers. This method could have been in use back in Illandrios and he wouldn’t have known.
He vowed to look into this, but first, he had a lot of spells to look through.
***
Two hours later, a frustrated Kole sat at a table surrounded by piles of spellbooks. Back home, he’d settled into a method of searching for and learning spells. He’d find a spell, learn it, and then move on to an older version. Once he’d discovered that old spells seemed to work slightly better for him, he’d immediately gone for the oldest spellbooks he could find but had found the spells within them deteriorated beyond his then ability to repair. He could piece a spell back together by just the Will devoid spellform patterns, but only if he had other spellforms to copy the patterns from. Since spells were improved with only small modifications with each version, he was able to work his way back through time, tracing modern spells to their simpler origins. Eventually, he’d reached the oldest spells in Illandrios, and still been short of finding spells he could cast easily.
From the first spellbook in the Dahn, Kole had found the spellforms to be recognizably modern, and he’d flipped through the pages to the oldest in the very back before casting them aside in frustration. The oldest spells here were all far too new for his needs. He browsed the shelves, pulling any book with a date prior to 775, but the oldest he found was 760. Still, he kept at it, until he was surrounded by unshelved books.
“Can I help you find something?”
Kole looked up from his fortress of failure to see the librarian from before placing a stack of books on the table next to his and staring at the pile around him.
“Are these the all spellbooks with first-tier magic you have?”
The librarian let out a laugh.
“Illunia no, these are just the compendiums of the most recent versions. The original spellbooks are in the older sections.”
Kole lit up at the mention of “older sections.”
“Where can I find the oldest spellbooks?!”
The librarian pulled a small stone sphere covered in runes with a tiny gem set in it from her pocket and handed it to Kole.
“You need to go to layer fourteen,” she told him.
“Will this guide me there?” Kole asked, examining the orb.
The librarian laughed once more, “No, that's a light. You’ll find that the shelves back there lack the runic lighting of the newer sections. That will hover over your shoulder and glow, lest you be tempted to create a light of your own in a less than sanctioned manner.”
Kole thanked the librarian again and apologized for the mess before heading into the depths of the library. After eight layers, the light runes that had been on the tops of the shelves stopped, and the darkness grew with each step. He imbued the orb with Will, and it hovered above his shoulder, lighting up the area around him. Deeper and deeper he traveled, reading the signs on the shelves as he went. There were multiple shelves dedicated to the various versions of Lidians Oakcrest and other books that would have been discarded had they not resided in a magical library that could create space as needed.
Finally, the path he’d been walking down ended, and he reached the outermost layer of the floor. He traveled along the perimeter until he saw a shelf labeled, ’Spellbooks, unrestricted’
The books on this shelf were much more in line with what he’d expected. The compendiums had all been uniformly bound books of the same size, only differing in the color of their binding, the colors of which were selected to signify the Font from which the spell was drawn. These books, however, were all entirely unique. Tomes both small, large, ancient, and seemingly new, filled the shelves, and not a single one bore a title or any label on its spine.
“Beautiful,” he whispered to himself.
He got right to work, pulling spellbooks off the shelf and working his way through them. After an hour of searching, it occurred to him to search for a catalog or index of spells, and he found one at the end of a row. Focusing on the spell Magic Missile, he pulled ten books off the shelf that were listed to contain it. The spellforms on these books were degraded, but judging by the age of the books, they were in far better condition than books of similar vintage would have been back home. Of those ten, only four were new enough that he knew all the components and could repair them. The remaining six were beyond him, but that was why he was here.
He immediately got to work. He emptied his mental vault of all the spell constructs he’d been working on back home and began learning the spells, copying the damaged components from his own spellbook, or others nearby when needed. He worked right on the floor in front of the shelf, and it wasn’t until his stomach let out a loud cry of protest that he began to wonder how much time had passed.
Judging by the amount of Will he had remaining, he estimated it to be nearly eight at night. He didn’t think the library closed, but he wasn’t really willing to risk not being allowed back in if it did. He ate the remains of the food Meech had packed him, which was just scraps by then, and continued working until the last dregs of his Will had been consumed. Out of instinct, he reached for his bag to take a clarity potion, but he stopped himself.
No, you can’t afford to waste those.
Money would be tight this year, and clarity potions should be saved for when time was of the essence. Today was only his first day, and he could afford to end early.
Well, less late... He corrected himself.
It must have been past midnight by then. He stood up to stretch as he prepared to go find a place to sleep in town, and the thought of spending his little coin on a bed made him grumpy.
I ought to just sleep on the green. It wouldn’t be the worst place I’d slept. I’d fallen asleep in the library back home plenty of times...
He looked around again at the seemingly forgotten section of the library It had been hours, and he hadn’t seen a soul since he’d gone past the fourth layer. It didn’t take him long to decide, and he lay down on the stone floor, using his bag as a pillow to get comfortable.
As he drifted off to sleep, he told himself a weak lie. Just for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll get a room.
Kole had found what he was looking for, and he had no intention of wasting a minute.