Another month passed before things finally began to settle.

There weren’t any attacks after the first, and for good reason. Before, Everie had mostly known the guardsmen as merely kindhearted soldiers who wouldn’t hesitate to show off a few tricks in front of the young mistress. But in the face of active crisis, they had changed. Now, there was seldom a smile present amongst the garrison.

She had been half-tempted to complain about being cloistered in the house for so long... at least at first. But when she saw Haswalth’s grim countenance, and Briar’s grim expression, Everie hadn’t dared even open her mouth in defiance.

Just like in her previous life, Everie had responsibilities, whether she liked them or not. She was twenty-one years old mentally - she could handle some stifling treatment.

It wasn’t like she was unused to the feeling of being trapped.

Weeks flashed by. Everie spent most of that time as she always had: with Daphne, in the library, reading. Vernas was off leading a diplomatic troupe to the capital, taking Haswalth’s place for the first time in years, so Everie hadn’t had the chance to train her Breaker capabilities. She’d considered practicing on her lonesome, but Daphne had exhorted her not to.

“Training by oneself is dangerous, miss,” she’d whispered to her, expression grave. “Magic isn’t something you can usually grow with just trial and error. I understand that you want to learn, but I think you should wait for Lord Vernas to come back before you try anything. He is by far your superior in experience..”

That left Everie nothing else to do except to read and listen.

The Great Medean Library saw much use in those thirty days of still-time that had been forced upon Everie. So much so, in fact, that - after four years of nonstop reading under the willful tutelage of Daphne - Everie had finally finished reading one bookshelf’s worth of books!

That left only ninety-eight - and a prospective thousand books per bookshelf to read.

...At least she wouldn’t run out of things to do for the foreseeable future.

Everie started on the history section. She had read lots of encyclopedic almanacs when she had been physically even younger than she was now out of necessity. Now, though, she was looking for more than volume of understanding; now, Everie sought nuance.

She had been reluctant, at first. In her past life, her passion for reading had been seldom explored. Her environment, after all, had not been very conducive to academic pursuits. A few volumes of fiction - fairy-tales and legends, mostly, of her world prior to its ruination - had been all she’d had access to.

Most of her time spent reading in this life thus far had been due to her acknowledgement of the importance of knowledge. A good Sister, Everie had known, is one that is always in the know.

And a good Sister is an alive Sister.

...And yes, she’d also been frustrated at how little she knew, as well.

But now, she had enough of an understanding of things to really start delving deep. The history in this world was like the fiction of her old life - though with the revelation of her previous world’s history, those fairy-tales might have very well been actual records of real events instead of the made-up parables she’d originally considered them as.

Take, for example, the Legend of the Ugsome Keep - an old-wives-tale sort of story from her past life. It went something like so:

In an ancient valley lies a door to Hell, and therein stands a lonesome figure. The statue, known as the Ugsome Keep, stands before the door, preventing the miseries and horrors of the beyond from entering the peaceable world before it.

But once upon a time, the Ugsome Keep turned, and saw, with horror, the world that it had sworn to guard, and the naturally occurring rapacity and vice that plagued it... despite the fact that it had sworn to protect it from such things. It wondered, at first, if it had failed - but nay. It turned out that in the absence of demons, humans had simply created their own.

So great was its revulsion that, in a fit of shock, it let slip a horde of the demons mankind had so long been shielded from; by the time it recovered, the Ugsome Keep watched, helpless, as its sworn was devoured from within - their desires and sins amplified, and the worst sides brought to light.

The world of now was the result. And one day, the Ugsome Keep would crumble, and mankind would suffer fully for what it had done to itself.

Or at least, that was the version Everie had heard, on a covert mission in the slums of one of the Brass Cities. It was the sort of pessimistic story that neither the cult nor the church liked airing, so it had mostly circulated throughout the peasantry.

But what she thought had been mere legend in her past world was in truth reality in this one - and Everie loved it. She devoured it with a vigor that she herself found surprising. Even Daphne, who had long since grown accustomed to Everie’s uncharacteristic drive and various eccentricities, had almost sighed in exasperation when she saw Everie curled up atop a single plush cushion - despite her being large for her age, she was still a glorified toddler - with a book over half the size of her body crushing her from above. Only her relatively enhanced strength had saved her from injury.

“At least read safely, ma’am!” Daphne had grumbled, pulling Everie upright. “Ack-! Honestly, how in the nine Hells did you even lift this? What's the Guard-Captain been feeding you in those sessions of yours?”

The maid gave up on physical locomotion about two seconds later and flicked Everie upright with a burst of magic. Nonetheless, Everie had continued reading throughout, completely undeterred.

She read once more about the Hundred Heroes - even the more obscure ones. She memorized their various titles: names ranging from majestic, like The Necronomicon, The Judiciary, The Ember Witch and The Eldritch, to those more arcane and mystical, like The Eden, The Forge, The Taming Force and The Misery.

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Some had legends associated with them. Others didn’t - their records too faded away to learn of, or having never been written. But many did.

And that was enough to captivate her.

The Legend of The Necronomicon regaled her with stories of an ancient lich-emperor, who once spread depravity across the continent of Kallisto. Supposedly, there was a place known as the Bone Bouvelard in the Kingdom of Doza Nausia to the Northeast; an ancient demesne the size of a lesser nation that ran below the Kingdom - the Bones of the Previous Empire that once lay beneath. There were even whispers of a phylactery, that if allowed, would resurrect the Dead King into the world once more, bringing once again an age of nightmare sunder.

The Judiciary was less vile. It spoke of a set of scales in a hidden city at the end of the world. Supposedly, the scale was alive, and would judge every person before releasing it to the Realm of Soul by measuring their will, or heart, against the various forms of miasma that infected man. Legend said the device held the ultimate ability to see into one’s soul and measure its karmic worth within - and that it was no mundane device, possessing artificial sentience of the sort which Daphne had so excitedly told her about in the past.

The Forge, however, was the great blacksmith that had supposedly made The Judiciary, the blade wielded by The First True Hero, as well as many other fine creations. The Legend described him as a stout, ordinary man, but with fists that, when wielding the various levers of his forge, cracked moons and stars in twain to access the resources beneath. He - in a past world wherein monsters much stronger than even the elder beings of now reigned - had created weapons and automatons that had made indelible marks on their world, even today.

And... there was the legend of the Death Princess. This one Everie found she didn't like nearly as much as the others, for the reason none other than how the story seemed to match her old circumstances too close for comfort. The supposed Greatest Assassin in History was an obscure figure; she was worshiped by assassin-cults and syndicates, but little known elsewhere.

That was all there was. The rest of the scroll had been burnt clean away, leaving nothing but the remnants of ancient ash and dust in the bookshelf Everie had found it sitting upon.

She frowned. I’ll have to remember this one, she thought to herself.

What was certain now to her was that this world was massive, and equally as ancient. There had been ruins in her previous world - the Graveyard being one of the few Everie even knew intimately - but the history of her home had been mostly a mystery to her, from her birth to her death. This world was still very much alive, despite having been harmed so utterly during the Fragmentation.

And Everie had just begun to scratch the surface of it - the knowledge almost called to her, like a physical presence in her core.

Of course, the Final Legend was the most famous. The Legendary Battle of the Heavens, or of The Firmament. The war against the great Interlopers, or what Everie now knew to be the Sereph.

The day her great ‘Ancestor’ had supposedly saved the world.

No. Not just Medea. The Hundred Hero - titled ‘the Aerith’ - was the one that had led the charge, and had ultimately perished to save the world.

It was a being known to be perfect. There was very little description of it as far as Everie could find. Its existence had never been recorded outside of the duration of the Fragmentation itself, but what little did fall under active documentation regaled the being as some sort of black-winged angel. Seeing that even her Great Ancestor had deferred to this Aerith, Everie had expected the most extensive description in the scroll to have been dedicated to it... but she was left disappointed.

The records only talked about a Final Battle - the site of which could be seen in the Godsfall, located on the faraway continent of Oseron. Not one discussed the actual events of the battle, or about the enemy that was repelled, or the great Hero that perpetrated the rebellion.

There was speculation, of course. But they were just that: speculation. And this was coming from the Great Medean Library - known for having some of the most comprehensive texts on the past in the world! Daphne had told her time and time again that many a scholar would remove their front teeth to have permission from the Duke to come here for even a short timespan, and here Everie was, bemoaning her lack of information!

Everie groaned. That conversation between her and the Crying Demon, during her soul’s psychedelic trip through the halls of Truehell, still resounded quite firmly in her memory. And so did the depths of the other mysteries that surrounded her. As heiress of House Medea, she knew more about her handmaiden-Ancestor and the being that had been her liege than most would be privy to. But even despite that, there was scarcely a mention about her esteemed predecessor’s past in the entirety of this library! Not a legend - not a single written account.

It was almost as if they’d been stricken out. But who, in the House of Medea, of all places, would do such a thing?

She sighed. And now I’m back to speculation.

She felt her head throb with exertion. At least it’s not as bad as when I'm learning magic, she thought to herself, grumbling. Honestly, I can't make heads or tails of what Daphne's trying to teach me.

The concepts of Actualization and Literalization, these two grand-sounding words that each represented an entire approach - a philosophy, even - to magic still eluded her.

Everie understood factually what they were, of course. Actualization was the skill Chanters - people such as Daphne - honed to create magic. The process usually relied upon parsing magic into logic, which could then be enforced, or actualized, upon the world. For this reason, magicians had created hundreds of languages across recorded history, each offering a slightly different algorithmic approach to actualization. In fact, the magic circle Daphne had used on her bassinet shortly after Everie had been born - leading to the debacle that had almost gotten her sacked - had been an instance of active actualization; as Chanters grew more skilled in their craft, most could do away with the calculatory aspect entirely. That was why Chanters divided their ranks into circles - each representing a different Layer of understanding on Existence.

Literalization was the art that warriors such as Vernas and Haswalth ascribed to, and was among soldiers and mercenaries much more common. But for the... rougher of the two paths, the practice was also surprisingly academic. Literalization was the art of ‘stabilizing’ ether, granting it semi-permanence. Literalizing the body granted one a permanent increase in strength, transforming an individual from the mortal to the superhuman, called the Literal State; but literalization was an art that also applied to the practices of enchanting or artisanry, which instead infused objects with magical characteristics.

Everie understood both. She’d read practically hundreds of texts at this point, detailing how to achieve either Path. She’d searched for that how for years. She’d grown determined. She’d grown disheartened.

But she had yet to receive an answer. Insight, the books had snarkily called it. Revelation. Understanding.

Asking Daphne or Briar for help hadn’t yielded very much benefit, either; for as intelligent as the two women were, they knew little more than theory of the respective arts - the former more so than the latter, who was really a mage in name only. Everie was aiming to gain strength - they had knowledge. The two were very obviously two different things, irrespective of the correlation ‘Insight’ apparently had with one’s strength.

…Everie still couldn’t understand that, no matter how much she read or researched. For how was following some arbitrary philosophy supposed to grant you power? It didn’t make any sense to her.

She suspired. Well, whatever. There was still much to do. She had to train her body consistently, even if she didn’t have Vernas here to teach her how. She had to learn etiquette from Briar. She had to learn mathematics, languages, as well as what little of magic she could glean from Daphne, who would no doubt be eager to teach her for hours on end.

Perhaps this bout of respite was a blessing.