Stralia - Books in the Dark
#2 of Stralia
_ Stralia - Books in the Dark ~~SnowDragon
Hallo again! I present chapter two of Stralia , this time, Books in the Dark. This continues the story from the last chapter, The Night, the Heart, and resumes the story of Senia, the young falcon living in a world after a Collision of two. As much fun, if not more than the first one was as I explore some writing ability I didn't even know I had. It's quite refreshing to be able to write something that isn't entirely fixed nor centred around combat, and I like to think of it as being able to break away from my forum RP writing expirence that I'd gotten so stuck into. If it's an improvement for you souls or not I'm not sure, but I'm certainly a lot happier with writing this than I was with some of my earlier works. It's fleshed out, rolling together within my mind and all that's left is to put it to paper, and I look forward to seeing the results for possibly the first time in all my writing expierence.
Without further ado, I present Stralia - Books in the Dark. Enjoy!
Writing Time: (Started: 9:00pm 13/08/13. Finished 12:14am 14/08/13) Length: Digital Copy Only, 9.0 A4 pages Soundtrack: Long Slow Pain (EVA 3.0)
'If you see a Dwarven Steam Fortress, retreat at once.' ~3rd Rapid Response Battalion Training Material, Chapter 4, Page 122. ----_
Those emerald gemstones, though only alike to the stones in colour rather than shape or toughness she had for eyes in this form, shielded from the water by the inner eyelids she had in this form. Complete by herself, the perfect aquatic hunter, water breather, razor talons and after so long of realising she could take the form of the extinct majestic dragon in their sea serpent likeness, the ability to affect the currents and flow of the liquid that surrounded her. She suspected, at least from what she had read in the libraries about the subject in what little time the humans could study them and what little books they had obtained from the Erildisa people post collision war that the power went far beyond that, but it was a struggle to give herself a directional flow, let alone start a water tornado or sink vessels. But, it was merely a curiousity for the aquatic scaled creature, once falcon. She cared not for what the form could so, so long as she could continue to take it. The power had been with her for so long, but no matter how many books she read on the subject, or how much research she did towards it, she had never, ever found any reference of anyone being able to take the form of a dragon. Not even in books written by the Drake scientist Vaakazar she had read five years ago in rare access to the Nebiscarar Library during her family's trip into the city for sale of goods. The misery that welled up within her form when she realised that the library was destroyed during the collision was immense, so much knowledge about their world had been smashed into bits. Some of it had been replaced or the knowledge extended once the two races began sharing knowledge, about the laws of their world. But what was irreplaceable was the research on the origins of magic and how magic formed within certain souls and not all souls. The theory of the magic planes where all souls walked, no matter their allignment with the world, magical or no.
Never again would books like that be written, no matter the research that went back into them, and she feared, with the loss of that knowledge in all it's forms, with the exception of Vaakazar's understudy, whom she doubted ever tutored one, with it died any hope she would ever have of finding out the true nature of what she had become, or why she had these powers in the first place. The thirst for knowledge was more a desire, for beyond the power and the love she felt for her ability, she wished to know all there was about it, before she... accidentally willed herself out of existance or something. That would have been an embarassingly, likely painful to end her story. The lake was deep and the creature she had become wasted little time in sinking right to the bottom with wide powerful sweeps of that rudder for a tail, and the strokes of her winged forelimbs dragging that streamlined form through the water with terrifying speed. The deeper she went, the colder it got and the colder it got the darker it became. It was indeed such a deep lake that it's groundward size had been deceptive she noted, something she should have taken note when she dived in. Something was different about the water now that she noticed, softer to her form even at this depth, not offering as much resistance as she had once remembered. While the bright red glow at the bottom still ahd her attention, something had grown to disturb her mind, and she dared not ignore the logical part of that brain. And so she fanned out her wings and hindlimbs, fanning out to slow her descent into the watery depths. Something hadn't liked that at all. Not one bit. Reality crashed down in around her, blocks, for that was all they could be described as crunched into life all around her powerful form, growing closer, and closer and closer before the terror sheered her sleep in two and she shot bolt upright in an instant panting through her open beak, clutching white knuckled at the knife hidden beneath her pillow.
With no threat in sight, mentally ticking over the future, past and present the knife fell out of her hands into the blankets beneath as it rolled off the bed and fell onto the floor with a soft thud, a hand clutching at her heart like that was the source of her problems, beating so many times she lost count before the feathered creature had even begun. Leaping to those feet of hers, disabling alarm set given that it was still night outside, the star filled sky revealing worlds millions of years away. Slipping the rig over her shoulders and fitting the knife within it, she barely even had her jacket over her form as she slipped from the doorway and headed down the stairs, and had even managed to completely leave the house before taking a look at her timekeeper. Three A-M, probably something she could come to regret later with the little sleep she had gotten over night, but that was quickly becoming a recurring theme. Destroyed anicent library or not, she needed to start figuring all this out. Public libraries in the day were, thankfully, open most twenty-four hours, with perhaps a small fifteen minute exception for a caffinated drink or so. With a surge in her step from renewed requirement to find the answers to the questions she sought, she bounded to the right with plenty of time before her classe.... no, wait. Her early morning meeting with Chris, the government specalist. Yes, that. Had the crash in the school actually taken hold of her mind, she had wondered every single moment since that moment. Walking never took as long to her mind when busy thinking things to a fine point in this case she did not disappoint herself. The flight to get away from some of the... less intelligent school attendees, at least before she had been interrupted. The helicopter she had seen, hse had been following the new reports and doing some minor investigation of her own, looking into some of the higher level physics as to how the things worked. They were nothing like her own wings, but rather a cross between that of a plant she knew of and airflow over... something. Either way, apparently the laws of the world preventing them from flying unless they had a tailrotor, or the things would spin horribly out of control.
So, that explained in her case why the thing had crashed, the last flash of darkness had crushed the tailrotor, she could reconstruct the events in her mind as she walked. It reeked of magic, but... The Alpha Dynamics organsiation had been transporting something over their school when it had gone down, otherwise they would have never flown that way. It was the quickest route to the airport in order to transfer supplies and materials to heavier aircraft, but that left the question, what was so important to target the rotorcraft over a populated area, and to use magic to do so? The schoolyard had seen some very powerful figures in recent times, the National Transportation Safety Board, the FBI, the US Army's Magical Investigations Squad, operating subdivison of the Civil Pacification Unit... she had never seen so many military vehicles in her life, tanks, helicopters and emergency services vehicles. Well, whatever it was that they were carrying or the attackers were trying to get a hold of, they failed, for whatever it was had surely perished or been destroyed in the fire. But even she knew that those things were full of fuel and already on fire, the ignition and massive destruction that followed was almost a sure fire thing. So was it done intentionally or merely an accident from some sort of... botched plan? When a piece of technology crashes in such a spectatular fashion in this world, it seemed the humans, even those who had nothing to do with the event all demanded answers. Most of those from her world had mostly forgotten about the event if they weren't directly related, or knew someone who was, like her mother and herself for instance, but mankind had not stopped talking about it. They demanded answers, and blood for the fallen, even if they knew not who was on board. The AlpDynOrg group was staying quite quiet, but that was nothing new for them in recent memory. Even on her world, mercenaries didn't have the best reputation, it was a wonder they even existed at all. But someone had to do the dirty work for the major powers that be.
Either way, such thoughts were pushed aside when she finally hit the public library, the biggest one in town, thankfully within local walking distance. Only a few cars sat in the carpark, and she swiftly made her way up the towering stairs, three landings inbetween before one of the large double doors and let it shut behind that feathered form with a loud wooden crash. The sign of well oiled hinges, that was for sure. The massive structure towered above her. Some late 18th century human construction, an old castle of some Baron Van Heisman which had been repurposed into this monolithic repository of books. The main hall was some fifty metres square, the multiple stories were each wrapped around a huge gap in the middle that led fifteen stories up to dizzying heights. In truth, they needed the space, for at last count the falcon had heard, there were some twenty million books stored in this very place, including up here in the public section and the alarming number of basements available below where they kept archived one of a kind works, or those books which were now irreplaceable due to the Collision that had left so many people dead. In most cases, these works were that of her world, for Erildisa had never invented the mass production methods the humans had, which meant that their books were entirely hand written, making each copy a rarity and a unique copy at that, each tagged with the copyist's own style and their own method. The directory stood commandingly in the centre of the room, and as empty as the library was, short of the staff that wandered the halls, shelving books or doing research of their own, and the few university students up doing late night study, she was alone. What was she looking for? While the Nebiscarar library had long since been lost, the structure it had been built out of put this monolithic castle to shame, and somewhere, deep in her mind, she doubted very much so that the building had been destroyed. Torn beyond recognition perhaps with much of it's inventory destroyed but... it was her imagination, trying to keep the building she held with such desire and awe in her younger years in her good memories and good graces.
It was destroyed and it would be all she could do to hold it in her mind, remembering the most grand structure in her entire world held within the Capital Hall and it's surrounding greenlands. No, she would have to make do with what books this library in it's monolithic size had managed to gather, and what they had managed to copy to their special digital printouts from computers, turning ink and quill into paper and bindings. So, her eyes fell to the directory, and sighted at first what she wanted. "Erildisa History" Sixth floor up. Here eyes flicked from the board, first to the floor in question and then to the stairs, long and rounded around a pillar, difficult to climb, designed to slow those who might rush up it's surface, like herself. Then her eyes fell to the lobby, where no one was present in the many desks. Not fancying the climb, the feathered creature spread her wings and snapped them downwards, taking graceful flight upwards, only the loud whooshing of air caught beneath her wing's grasp echoing through the halls, like a giant flock of birds had somehow made it's way within the structure. There was plenty of space between floors to make room for the huge bookcases, even more room to land and slipping between the sixth and seventh floors was an easy task for her eyes and skill in the art of flight. Taking only a single moment to fold up those wings of hers before moving on, she stepped to the left, taking an out of left field guess at where the books she might seek would have been. She was looking for Erildisa books, hopefully any that hadn't seen the human technological transition yet. The copyists in her world left helpful notes, footnotes on occasion, to help the reader decipher what the author meant at times. While the human methods made some books much, much easier to read, these footnotes were often vapourised in the interest of neatness or inability to understand their purpose, meaning valulable information was lost. She had considered for a time to offer her services to help transcribe some of these more valuable works to computer for printing, but even she, with her love of knowledge wouldn't have been able to stand working in this place in that role for long.
It turned out her guess was right on the mark, for even not knowing what she was looking for, she somehow managed to find it. "Vance Tauimen's: History, Formations, Types of Magic, fourth edition." and beside it, "A written record of 496PS; Magical Theory Symposium." PS for Post Second, Erildisa's main timeline indicator. Two massive metorites had struck the planet within a thousand years of each other, called the First (And any time after that refered to as PF, for Post First) and the Second, after which became modern times. Anything before that was BF, Before First and was considered beyond anicent history and therefore mostly irrelevant. She knew the year not as 2016, but rather as 511PS, making the copy of the book she held in her hands a rare written transcript of the most recent high level magical discussion between some of the brightest minds on the entire planet before the Collision struck and left most of them dead. Some of her people had started using the time suffix PC, Post Collision, but that hadn't yet taken off or taken over, and until it became offical, people like herself stuck with PS. The only saving grace was that Humanity lost just as much as they did in the confusion which left both races struggling to pick up the pieces of such high level research that no one really understood anymore. With plenty of desks scattered about, she took both heavy thick books and shifted to one with the brightest light she could find. Setting them both down on the desk with a sigh of relief, they were not the lightest things she had ever read, possibly indeed the thickest, and without a doubt, soon to be the dryest thing in her living history. Starting with the copy of Magical Theory, and without a clue as to what she was looking for, she thumbed over the felt bookmark woven into the covers and started there, turning it open to whatever page it mght reveal.
What she opened it to was halfway through a detailed conversation between Sir Eisenhower, Great Knight of the Northen Regions, who was not a magician but a Heremtic, someone who had made it their life's goal to unlock the secrets the magical plane held, a scientist who was free to practice all sorts of insane expirements because they lacked the mana within their forms to blow themselves and the city surrounding them to pieces. And aside from him was apparently the feathered dragon Vaakazar, the drake most famous for realising during the PF era that spells could be cast with mere thought and sheer willpower, rather than by speaking words aloud as had been the general assumption at the time due to hundreds of young mages not being able to focus their spells without the words they spoke, thus incenerating themselves or unintentional targets. He devised a method of training for these creatures, allowing them to study their inner thoughts and thus control the flow of energy from their finger tips of eyes to their target, thus casting spells safely. Over time, this skill built up within the mages until it became genetic memory, simply known by creatures as they were born, and the spoken spell fell out of use, and soon those who could not focus the power through their minds through imagination lost the ability altogether. It seemed at the time, Vaakazar and Eisenhower were having an indepth discusion about the methods he had used to find that information all those years ago. In true to draconic nature, the feathered creature so far removed from herself spoke his answer in such a roundabout way, long enough to give even her mind, which struggled with the terms thrown about like so much candy to the youngones. She'd need to read the other book to get a full understanding of this one, but entranced, she continued to read, her mind doing a wonderful job of painting the setting all those years ago. She had seen the room it had taken place in, in that massive library, that round circular room with the stone chairs and cobble table, those powerful minds and deadly creatures all deeply emerged in such discussion, while authors like this soul tried to keep up in order to put it to paper for souls like herself a dozen years later could read it.
Vaakazar, in his usual fashion had described, at least in his mind, what was the beginnings of the magical plane and how their kind had come to learn it. His educated ramblings were dangerous close to off topic, but the intelligent creature somehow always found a way to loop it back into the main point, to stop the others from derailing him, and indeed lose this information to her forever. In awe she continued to read, understanding perhaps just enough to keep her own mind interested. Partway through his ramblings it was like the great dragon had slowed down just enough for other parties to add to his rolling thoughts, and here they were making history as they knew it, crafting theory as easily as she drew scribbles on a page. Eisenhower brought the point to the drake's words that while he considered magic one great, all powerful force that some creatures could bring to bear using their mind, if that were true, why could some races access it without fail, the dragons for instance, whereas those of the wolves like himself or the lizards, who were close descendants of the drakes could not. Vaakazar submitted that perhaps there was a birthmark, something Senia knew as genetics now in this Collided world thanks to the humans, a birthmark that predispotioned some to magical power while others simply did not have the mental fortitude to truely realise what they had the ability to use. The great wolf had replied with the question of, if that were true then surely those who understand the processes of magic, like myself would be able to cast. The dragon, as always had an answer, that of the response that it was not understanding as the races knew or understood it, but something deeper in their minds even he didn't understand. In her mind, she read it as a thinly veiled insult, but amoung such great minds, the discussion had it's own meaning and that was most certainly not how it was taken.
It didn't explain, Eisenhower has said, after a short pause in her mind as she turned the page, why some casters had the ability to create massive firestorms to destroy many a Field of land, as was the case with the madman Nerou, who raised and army to conquer the land of Dwarves and Elves in 400PS, was never able to cast even the smallest water based spell, or the spells that allowed him access to the mind, as proved to be his downfall. The dragon had then preposed to the collection of the greatest minds the world had ever seen that the fields of magic were to be organised into their primary elements, fire, water, electrical and the like, and the mages who used them would be refered to primarily by their element, rather than by the moniker of 'Mage', but 'Fire Mage' or 'Mind Mage', which made them easier to identify, but also brought about the other topics, such as if the races could be trained to use magic by mind instead of word as the great drake had done so many years ago, could a Fire Mage be trained in the same way to use, Light element based spells. Vaakazar submitted that, while entirely possible in that vein, any mage who tried to learn the element of light was doomed to a swift death, and warned those who might have thought of trying so should avoid doing so at whatever the cost might have been. She blinked, rubbing her eyes, noticing the sun had begun to rise from behind the treeline and skyline of the structures, looking up and remembering her mother and father had told her when she was much younger, and around the age where she would have started showing signs of magical disposition. She never did, but the warning they had given her. They had made her swear upon her honour, even for a child as young as herself that meant business. There were promises made to your parents made to be broken. Don't play late at night, don't wander into the woods past the thirteenth tree. Don't speak to that boy, he's a foul creature. But when your parents made you swear upon honour, that was something one did not even think about crossing lightly. The words rung within her mind, clear as glass. "Do not, ever. Never, try to change the light. Swear on your honour Senia, that you will never try."
She blinked, her eyes coming back into normal focus to notice an elderly lady sitting across from her, with her own book, but with a clipboard and pen resting on top of the table. She jumped, managing, barely to contain a squawrk of fright at the sight. Right scared out of her wits and nearly jumping out of her feathers, it was all she could do to adjust her headfeathers and try to look like it hadn't affected her at all. Not only did she fail at the former, she also made her situation that much worse, looking like a creature with it's hand stuck in the treat jar without any real cause nor reason, which only left the lady in librarian's uniform looking quite amused at the sitation she had created for herself, though surely not planned for her own amusement. After a few moments of those contained chuckles, she finally spoke up. "I didn't mean to scare you girl, but you were so engrosed in your book for so long I just had to ask. What are you reading, dear?"
She blinked, almost having forgotten herself, so engrossed in what she had read. She knew that mages were always, at least in living memory, able to control the spells with their mind, but what almost everyone had forgotten it seemed, including herself and everyone she knew, except for those that had read this dusty old tome and those who still studied what little of the high level magical research material that had survived contained. In hindsight, this massive book, when properly transcribed would more than likely be transfered into a research centre or muesum for all the information it contained of such a nature. But some of those words still rang within her mind, and it took a few moments to answer before she blinked out of thought again. "Oh! Er..." A quick peek at the cover before she rattled off the title quick-fire smart to the lady librarian who had her under a careful watch.
"Starting to display the Signs, are we girl?"
She nearly choked, she hadn't heard that from anyone in many a year, nearly a full decade soon, not since she had been eight, letting out a soft snicker herself before she answered with something the woman would never expect. But, as she thought about it once more, she could hardly remember herself why she had even started reading this elder tome, but she knew she needed to read more before it was shipped off, never to be seen again. "Not quite, Lady" While 'lady was considered to by most Humanity to be a veiled insult, Erildisan's considered Lady a praise to those older than themselves. "Just some... personal research. I'm... fascinated by all these magical things in the world,"
"Ah, studying to become a Hemetic, are you?" To her credit, she didn't blink an eyelid, meaning she had either understood her true meaning or ignored the insult as a simple misunderstanding upon her part. "You have other studies to worry about as well, don't you? More than knowledge drives you girl, which is refreshing. But, you wouldn't want to want to be late for your classes, would you?"
She smiled, knowing the time had so flowed out of her control while buried in the book with such huge amounts of knowledge within. "I suppose not, no?" She moved to stand, but looked so forlornly at the books right in front of her, so many more secrets to be unlocked into her mind, likely at any given moment to be catalogued and transferred offsight to where she would never find them again, and even if she did, never again have the chance to study them so throughly.
Leaning down, the lady whispered. "I'll let you borrow them, if you like,"
"I'd like that very much Lady. Thank you,"
It was when she left the library when she would have normally just been awakening that she turned down the street into the sunlight that she left with a bounce in her step and a firm grasp around what she intended to accomplish over the next few days. Kind enough to lend her a shoulder bag for the heavy books in order to keep them safe from general damage, the librarian had sent her on her way on the condition that she read them from cover to cover before returning them, something she intended to do without fail. Perhaps the only time she could have remembered making a promise on her honour at her own call rather than at the request of the other, one thing that she had managed to surprise the Lady with most completely. Traffic was already starting to build up, as was the workload for the governmental services as two Fire Engines, sirens and horns blaring into the air rushed past towards a massive stack of smoke rising into the air on the other side of the town, just before it merged into city.
The beginning of another day, another page to her life.