It wasn’t hard for Lorelei to find one of the diviners- though she wasn’t sure if this particular individual had anything to do with divination. Their group seemed to be more concerned about being librarians most of the time.

Lorelei looked over the library. It was rather impressive… but certainly not complete. If they hadn’t needed to deal with things like running a country and building roads, William and Lorelei would have spent more on expanding the library. Maybe when books were cheap. Lorelei looked forward to that time.

Upon seeing her walk up, the skinny light blue skinned gevai put on a smile, “Is there something I can do for you, My Queen?”

Lorelei appreciated the politeness, though she wasn’t sure it was anything more than that. They didn’t seem to provide much help with anything… but on the other hand at least they didn’t cause any problems. She held out the scroll, “We thought this might be of some interest.”

He unfurled the scroll and looked over it. “This is…” He looked up and raised an eyebrow, “Dwarven?”

Lorelei nodded, but also made a mental note of his reaction. “As it says at the bottom there. More specifically, it is a scroll constructed with ki containing… much of the modern dwarven language. It can be used by anyone who is capable of using other ki technique scrolls.”

The gevai looked down at the scroll again with wide eyes, “Fascinating. I don’t know if we had even considered the possibility…”

“We thought your… group… might find it interesting. The scroll is yours, but the Eternal King and I would like to request a copy of anything you have on the elven language.”

The gevai shook his head, “I have no authority to make any decisions of what information might leave the library… but I can make the request.”

Lorelei nodded, “We would appreciate it. Do you know how complete those records might be? Just so we don’t necessarily get our hopes up.”

“Ah… I couldn’t say,” the man shrugged, “We have quite an extensive collection, but I certainly don’t know everything in it.”

“Very well,” Lorelei nodded, “We hope you can find some use for the scroll, though maybe it will need some notes to explain what it is.”

“Ah, it certainly is… unique.” He looked over it again, “Assuming it does what you say. It appears new, I assume you already have another copy of this, or that this is the copy? It won’t be possible to retrieve this…”

“It is not unique. We will not need to ask for it back.” Lorelei smiled gently.

“Good.” The man nodded and smiled, “We love to gather information, but we also do not wish to steal it away. We are grateful for your contributions.”

Lorelei continued to smile as she said her goodbyes… then went to gather her thoughts on what he had said… and what he had not.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

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“You think they have a complete version of the elven language?” William asked over the phone.

Lorelei shrugged, though she couldn’t be seen. “Ah, not necessarily. However, there was certainly something they have… and he knew about it. He didn’t seem to want for that to be known, however.”

“Well… perhaps we will find out what it is. If everything goes well with the dwarves, we can just learn modern elven from them. The elves seem to be even further away, for the most part. None of the crew had visited any of the elven lands, but they knew generally where and how big they were. It seemed like the elves controlled a small continent. At least, compared to this one.”

“He did seem that he would ask. The diviners seem partial enough to you… but they’ve never really done anything but gather books and divine where the Eternal King would return. I suppose they must have figured out what Marek and I were up to… but they did assist us with that.”

“It’s hard to say. People can remain blissfully ignorant about things if they want to, even if they purport to love knowledge.” William laughed mirthlessly. “What about the scroll I gave?”

“They seemed interested. That was about it. He didn’t activate it, but he didn’t seem to cultivate ki either. Unless he was very good at hiding it but… he would have had to know what it was to avoid triggering it in that case. He seemed to be telling the truth about not knowing if anyone else had tried it.” Lorelei paused to think for a few moments, “I’d love to try it again with someone who could activate it and might know more, but I doubt they’d appreciate the poking and prodding.”

“Likely not. As long as they don’t cause trouble I’m content to leave them alone.”

“What if they are just waiting for a chance to get you killed? If they knew we were going around destroying fragments of the Demon King…”

William sighed, “It would depend on what their motives were. If they’re really interested in the preservation of knowledge, I could see why they wouldn’t want him around… he burned more than a few libraries in his time. I don’t have any plans to do that. If they have other motives that lead to them wanting to kill me… then I just need to be prepared to deal with it. It’s not much different from other unknown threats.”

“A fair point. For the record, I haven’t seen anything that indicated that they plan to work against you… and they never came to stay at castle while the Demon King lived there. Just don’t forget they might have figured out that you reincarnate.”

“That’s not a problem… as long as I’m the best at soul-related shenanigans. I’m fairly confident of that being the case among humans and gevai… and I haven’t stopped training.”

“Don’t forget you’re not allowed to get yourself regular-killed either. I am not going through another wedding ceremony… and I am quite fond of your current form.”

“Wait does this mean we’re breaking up if I die?”

Lorelei laughed, “I thought that was a very popular thing among humans? ‘Until death do us part’?”

“I’ll have you know my vows very specifically excluded any mention of things ending if I die.”

“Mine did not either… but keep yourself away from cannon fire, alright?”

“I promise to never let myself get hit by a cannon or anything similar. Including better guns.”

“Do the dwarves have better guns?”

“Not yet… but they sure aren’t sitting around doing nothing. I bet they will soon enough.”

“Such an admirable industrious spirit. Maybe if we hadn’t been so busy killing each other here, we would already have guns.”

“We surely would. I mean, if you go back far enough… the dwarves and elves used to live here.”

“A good point. Let’s hope none of them try to move back in too quickly…”