Serenity said the first thing that came to mind. “Why is a Hand of the Order allowed in here when the Head Librarian isn’t?”
It almost certainly wasn’t the right question, but it was the first thing he thought of and he didn’t seem to be on a particularly limited schedule at the moment.
There was a pause; when the unseen voice replied, it sounded sad. “If you do not know that, more has been lost than I thought possible. How long have I been sealed?”
Serenity shook his head and walked over towards a well-passed armchair. It looked like it was about the right height and depth to be comfortable. “I don’t know. I don’t think I can even answer that question; I don’t know enough about the past.”
Vengeance never really cared about the past and even if the Final Reaper had cared, it wasn’t like there were many ways to find out. He had raided some libraries for something to do, but even when the books were in good enough shape to read, they didn’t tend to give a good overview of anything.
They were probably at least half fictional anyway. It could be hard to tell, but many of them read more like a fictional story than reality. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever looked through a library on Asihanya after he left Stallet, but he didn’t think he had.
On the other hand, there was another option. “Honoria might know; she’s the Head Librarian, after all. She ought to know the history of the Library.” Serenity paused. It would be easier if she could answer the entity’s questions, instead of relaying through Serenity. “Why isn’t she allowed in here?”
“The Library and the Broken Mirror of the Repository of Secrets are not the same thing,” the entity answered. “Access to the Broken Mirror of the Repository of Secrets is limited to members of the Order and those they have authorized.”
Serenity tried to hide his wince at the length of the entity’s name by taking a seat. The recliner was indeed still comfortable; there had to be a preservation enchantment of some sort on the room. “Do you have a shorter name?”
There was a short pause once again before the voice answered. “I was once called the Mirror.”
Serenity nodded. He could deal with calling this place Mirror, though it made him wonder if it was literally a duplicate of another site. He turned to check and saw Honoria still standing near the entrance; he could see out even though she clearly couldn’t see in. “Can I let Honoria in? She’s just outside the entrance.”
“Temporary entry authorization granted for Honoria.”
Serenity grinned when Honoria jumped. He’d wondered if he would need to tell her she could come in, but it was clear she could see something now. He’d give her a moment to figure it out before he went to get her.
She stepped close to the doorway and peered in. She must see the same lack of anything he had at first.
However much as he kind of wanted to see what she’d do, it really wasn’t a nice thing to do, so Serenity pushed himself out of the chair and headed towards the entrance. Before he got there, Honoria had pulled a ladder from somewhere; Serenity had to dodge out of the way as she poked it through the doorway, clearly trying to check for safety.
Come to think of it, he probably should have tried that too. Yes, he’d seen the wards, but sometimes a physical confirmation was a good idea.
Serenity reached the entrance before Honoria was done pulling the ladder back. He couldn’t resist the question, so he leaned through just far enough for his head to be visible (and hopefully audible) and asked, “Where did you get the ladder?”
Honoria jumped, smacked the ladder into Serenity’s back, then dropped it. “By all the gods, Serenity, don’t do that!”
Serenity shrugged and stepped through the doorway properly. “I got you access; it says it’s the Broken Mirror of the Repository of Secrets, Mirror for short. Where did you get the ladder?”
Honoria pulled the ladder out into the stairwell without picking it up farther than she had to to clear the stairs. It vanished from her hands moments after it exited the darkness blocking the way into the Mirror. “It’s a Library ladder; Librarians can have the Library store and retrieve some useful tools, ladders are one of the better ones. They’re far too awkward to move around otherwise.”
That sounded like a surprisingly useful shared storage space that only worked in the Library. Serenity would have to remember to ask Aki if she could do the same thing; while he could store stuff in his Rift, that didn’t give other people easy access to it. It might also be useful for particularly large or awkward things, depending on how it worked for Aki.
Serenity nodded at Honoria. “Come on in, he wants to talk about history. I thought you’d be interested.”
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Honoria followed Serenity through the door. When he plopped back down in the plush seat, she found one of the piles of cushions on the floor. Serenity didn’t think they were originally used by a human, but HOnoria seemed comfortable anyway.
The voice waited until they were both settled to speak again. “Do you know how long I have been sealed?”
Honoria shook her head. “I think those records are sealed in here, but I may be able to figure it out. What is the last thing you know of in the outside world?”
The Mirror’s answer was swift. “The Specters reached Ranar. The portion of the Order on Asihanya was mobilized to stop them; they could not leave a caretaker, so they sent me into stasis.”
Specter sounded Death or Undeath-related, but Serenity had never heard of whatever the Mirror was talking about. That seemed a little odd; while he didn’t know history, Vengeance had studied everything he could get his hands on that had to do with death, undeath, or returning to life. Even a spectral return would have been acceptable.
Honoria shook her head. “The Specters … that’s not familiar to me. I can’t think of anything that’s happened on Ranar that would have drawn people from this far since the Terror War, and that was thousands of years ago.” She bit her lip and thought for a moment. “Which might be accurate; we have fifteen hundred years of records in the Library, but they start with its discovery, not with it being passed down properly.”
The Mirror took a moment to absorb the time scale. “That much time. I feared it when I was shut down, but did not expect it.”
Serenity waited for the Mirror to speak again; that had to have been a shock and he knew he always needed a moment when he was surprised.
“Do you know what started the Terror War?” The Mirror sounded almost hopeful. “Perhaps it was a later incident?”
Honoria shook her head. “Too much was lost. All we know is that an artifact was found a very long way from here. Whatever it was, it left devastation in its path as it rampaged across many worlds; it’s believed it was heading somewhere but no one knows where. The few accounts we have talk about a horde of animals descending on Asihanya like a plague; they ate everything they encountered that couldn’t fly away and then vanished. It was called the Terror War because they had a terrifying aura that was even worse than their actual actions. No one is certain if that’s true or not; we know a lot of people and other creatures died in the time known as the Terror War, but there’s absolutely no evidence that anything was here, much less that it came from another world. The only reason I believe it is that other worlds have a similar legend that seems to be from about the same time period.”
Serenity had to ask. “When was it?”
“Roughly twenty-five hundred years ago, give or take a couple hundred; the records are really bad.” Honoria nodded at Serenity. “Did your planet suffer from it too?”
Serenity shook his head. Two thousand years ago was the time of the Roman Republic, wasn’t it? Or was it the Roman Empire by then? He thought it might have been the Empire by then, but that meant five hundred years earlier had to be during the Republic. There were definitely records in China and India that went back farther than that, even though he couldn’t remember how far back they went. “That was a time of growth on Earth. We have records of multiple civilizations from that time period.”
He wasn’t sure about either Tzintkra or Lyka; while he knew some of each of their histories, both were more recent than that. He wasn’t entirely certain when the war on Tzintkra happened; it might have been in that time frame, but it might also have been more recent. He doubted it was too much earlier, but he couldn’t completely discount the possibility.
As for Zon, it seemed unlikely, but by then large portions of the planet were already overrun by monsters. It was too long ago to have caused the abandonment of Mornmot, but that didn’t mean it was impossible. If the attacks were limited to areas already overrun by monsters, he wouldn’t know about it. If they also hit some human areas, they might well have been dismissed as more of the monster attacks that eventually drove the remaining human inhabitants into the area surrounding Zenith.
“The Specters were an illusion of terror,” the Mirror agreed. “Yet for all they were an illusion that left no signs behind, they killed and they ate their way across worlds. It sounds like they became known as the Terror War.” It sounded sad.
Serenity wondered if it had cared about any of the people who left to fight the Specters and didn’t return, but he didn’t know the Mirror well enough to ask.
Perhaps changing the topic would help? It might at least take the Mirror’s mind off whatever or whoever it lost. “Why are you called the Broken Mirror of the Repository of Secrets? Is there a Repository of Secrets somewhere?”
“There was,” the Mirror answered, but it seemed even sadder than before. “The Order’s Repository of Secrets was lost when the Grand Ritual of Opportunity was enacted. I do not know what happened; I only know the largest and most powerful planet that existed at that time was lost, sacrificed accidentally. The details on how it happened were sealed by the Council and even I cannot see it without the permission of a Councilor.”
“So the original Repository of Secrets was on that world and you were a copy?” Serenity looked around the room; it still didn’t look like there was that much information in the room, compared to a normal library, but if it were all secrets maybe that meant something. “Were your records complete?”
He hadn’t come here to learn about a lost world or an ancient war, after all. He’d come here to see if there was something here that could shed some light on what was happening now. A repository of secrets might be a reason for the attacks, perhaps someone had learned it existed and wanted to know something hidden in it, but it didn’t sound like it would shed much light on the attackers themselves. Serenity had to doubt whether or not it was even relevant at this point; it was simply too old.
Mirror laughed. “Not even close. Each Mirror site has limited information; none of us are as large as the Repository was. My records are mostly on the interactions of magic and creatures, though I do have some general information and some secrets that were considered too important to trust to only a single site. I do not know what they are; I believe they were fragmented in some way.”
Fragmented records? “Do you know where the other mirrors were, the other places that might hold the rest of those records?”