Chapter 221: Library of Alexandria
21st March 2012, Avalon
(Rose Potter POV)
There seemed to be a lot of complications to make sure that the ecosystem is stable, and there are a lot of factors and projections whenever she adds in a new species from Earth.
As they walked through the keep, the thing that took her breath away, wasn’t the absurdly powerful artifacts, or the priceless pieces of art, or even the precious stones that were used to decorate pretty much everything in the castle. It was a single room, the grandest room.
Rose gaped at the entrance of the room in question. Unable to contain her curiosity, she pushed the door open and gasped in amazement. The room was as large as a small city. The power of the spacial extension charms must be absurd.
As Rose stood in disbelief at the sight before her, Jasmine chuckled behind the young witch, “I see you’ve found the library.”
It was strange, in a way, to call this room a library. It was without a doubt a library, the endless books and shelves were proof of this. But the word was too small, too modest for such a structure.
It was by far the largest room she has seen in the keep. It was a circular one, with the walls being the shelves for the books. You could fit a small city inside, but the most impressive thing was the height of the room. It seemed like the majority of the keep was hollowed out to make room for the library. Rose looked up and couldn’t even see the roof, just an endless amount of bookshelves.
Rose could do nothing but gape at the scene in front of her, “How?”
Jasmine snorted, “Another one of my achievements. This is what I call the Library of Alexandria, the biggest library the world has ever seen. Truthfully, I barely need a fraction of the books in the library, I mainly use it to monitor the current magical development in the world.”
Rose was confused, “How does a library help you do that?”
“It’s not really a library, well, not just a library. It started a couple thousand years ago, when the real Library of Alexandria was burnt by the invading Romans. The library was mainly a magical one, containing centuries of magical theories developed through countless research. I had a copy of the library because I couldn’t be bothered to sneak in there, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to register myself as a researcher every century or so. So I just created a scanning spell that created an exact copy of every text in the library. It was beautiful, the wand wasn’t a popular magic tool back then, and people still researched magic the proper way. Unfortunately, the fire happened, taking most of the masters with it, and the knowledge was lost to all but me. And with the rise of wand magic, or wizardry as you call it, no one cared. I thought nothing of it, everything has an ending, it’s what gives life meaning after all. I started to notice the problems a few decades after.”
“What happened?”
Jasmine gave her sister a bitter laugh, “Some apprentices in the former library had some incomplete texts and accidentally summoned a demon lord called Dormammu. Let’s just say that they almost got the planet destroyed, and it took a lot out of me to repel him. I confiscated the texts, of course, but a pattern started forming. People who had learnt tales of ancient magics tried to use incomplete texts as basis for their research, which more often than not ended with catastrophic results. It was becoming too much of a hassle for me to keep tracking them down whenever they did something stupid, so, instead, I devised a plan to scan every single text written by anyone with magic in their blood. I added some red flags whenever something dangerous is being researched and I went there, removed their memories, and destroyed their research. This way, I could track them down properly, and make sure that I stop idiots from experimenting with things too dangerous for them to understand without getting themselves and the people around them killed.”
“So, you’re telling me that every single book written by any wizard in the last two thousand years, is in this library.”
Jasmine nodded, “Yes. Every wizard has a book which is then split into the content of everything they wrote. I created an enchanted artifact in the middle of the library that allows you to search for certain topics, authors, and so on. I rarely ever come here if I was honest. I only come when a red flag is raised, which has been getting more uncommon as more knowledge is lost to the sands of time.”
“But isn’t that a breach of privacy? You have access to diaries, journals, love letters and so much more.”
“Yes, I guess it is. Truthfully, people aren’t that interesting. And like I said I only come here when the library detects someone experimenting with something truly dangerous. It isn’t a perfect system; people can still use the magic if they don’t write it down, and certain anti scrying wards can stop the detection spells, that’s not mentioning that someone could use a normal ritual and change it to something truly horrible and it wouldn’t be detected. It’s not a fool proof system, but it’s the best one I could come up with, and it did help me save countless lives.”
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Rose had to admit that her sister had a point with this. The younger witch couldn’t imagine her sister caring about what some teenager wrote in her diary. And in the end, a little breach of privacy is a lot better than the number of people that would die if things really got out of hand.
Jasmine continued, “I have also added my own books, texts and scrolls from before the burning from all around the world, ancient books with powerful magics that I confiscated because they were misused. This, right here, is the biggest repository of magical history, of magical knowledge, of civilizations that died out before even being found by the rest of the world. I even added a few pairs of enchanted glasses, so that you could read the books that are written in dead languages and so on.”
Rose didn’t know what to say. This was too much, even for her. It was too much power, too much trust, too much responsibility, just too much of everything. She was overwhelmed with the sight in front of her. Jasmine obviously noticed her distress, “Don’t worry, Rose. I know that this is a lot, but like I said, this is me introducing you to your future duties. It’ll take years for you to even learn how to use the library properly. How about we go check out my treasury.”
Wait, what? Treasury? Why would she need a treasury at all; the floor was made of gold for fuck’s sake. A square meter of the current floor alone would be worth a fortune on Earth.
Rose just followed her sister in curiosity and took another flight of stairs. They ended up in front of a large room, with a weird steel door. Jasmine pressed her palm and the door started to move away into an arch. It reminded her of the entrance to Diagon Alley a bit.
The room itself was large, and magic immediately assaulted her senses. There was no sea of gold, no precious jewels, just some sort of exhibit with artifacts left and right, in transparent boxes with small plaques beneath the displays that had the descriptions for each artifact.
“What is this place?” Rose questioned.
“This is the vault, the treasury. This the place where I put all dangerous magical artifacts, or just precious ones really. Things like the Staff of Solomon, the Chains of Gilgamesh, Achilles’ shield, Harpe and Siegfried’s Balmung. And I’m not just talking about weapons, but also certain grimoires, cursed items and so on. I keep them here to protect them from the world, but I also protect the world from them. This is where I put the troublesome artifacts that would cause more harm than good if they were found.”
Rose chuckled in response. Jasmine gave her a questioning look, “what’s so funny?”
“It’s just that you’re acting like the entire magical world is made up of a bunch of children and you’re the only adult around. You’ve even confiscated the dangerous toys, to make sure that they don’t hurt themselves in their curiosity. You’re like the magical world’s super mum”
Jasmine burst into laughter, “In a way, that’s true. Even if they try to deny it, mortals are always children at heart. In a way, that’s beautiful. They’re constantly curious, trying to play with anything around them to see what happens. They’re always fighting and throwing tantrums at the slightest provocation. You have a point in the fact that I make sure that they don’t constantly hurt themselves, but that’s not me being their mother, that’s me being their Queen, even if they don’t know it themselves. That will also be the role you will take when you take up the mantle of Queen of Avalon. This entire kingdom might be your domain, but you’ll rarely have issues in here. Your people will be the entirety of the magical population. Your main goal is to make sure that they’re safe, and that as a race, they will live on. Anything else will be your choice. You could remove the library, spread out the artifacts in this room, it’ll be your choice. But that also means that dealing with the consequences will be your responsibility. You don’t have to be like me; you’re not me and you’ll never be. Be yourself, make your own choices, and live with them. But that’s far in the future. You’re still learning, and you’ll make mistakes. That’s the point of this trial period I’m considering. This way, I could still help you out when you make mistakes.”
Rose looked thoughtful at her answer. The role offered to her is still intimidating. But it’s good to know that Jasmine isn’t just going to push her down the rabbit hole. But there was something that’s been bugging her, “Why now?”
Jasmine gave her a questioning hum, and Rose clarified her question, “Why did you bring me here now? I know you’re not as well as you pretend to be. I can see you wincing every now and then, especially near magical creatures and items, and yet, you’re bringing me here, right before you perform the ritual that’s supposed to help you further. It’s not like you to do something without a specific reason. So, tell me, why are you showing me this now?”
The elder witch smiled sadly at her sister, “You are a very perceptive witch, Rose. The answer is complicated, in a way. The ritual that I will perform in the next few days might save my life, it might stop me from being overwhelmed by Death’s taint on my soul, on my magic, but it will change me in a very fundamental way. I will become different, more, and I don’t know what might happen to my magic. The truth is, that I’m terrified of losing the little humanity I have left. No one has ever attempted something like this before, and I’m not sure about the possible side effects, or even the main effects of the ritual. It’s why I agreed to meet your parents, it's why I’m showing you, my sister, the world I have created, the beauty I created in this chapter of my life. You’re right, I’ve been downplaying my pain, my fear. It’s agonizing watching everything around me and only seeing how to burn it to the ground. I see this beautiful realm, and all I can see, is how to collapse it into nothing, taking everything with it. It’s horrible, but I have been pushing myself, because these are the last days I could have as a human and I do not want to waste them.”
Before Rose could respond, something emerged from the shadows. It was a bird that reminded her eerily of Fawkes the phoenix, but instead of the heartwarming light that the phoenix emanated, this one had a distinct feeling of cold darkness. It was the complete opposite of the immortal bird that had mysteriously vanished alongside Dumbledore.
Jasmine, though, seemed to recognize the bird, “It’s been a while old friend.”