The Great Hall of the Tower of Seekers remained structurally the same… but that was all that remained the same. As before, it went as far as the eye could see, capable of holding thousands.
And unlike the dark atmosphere illuminated by glowing runes and orbs on the day of the Appraisal Ceremony, today, the Great Hall was awash in white light, brightly illuminating the bustling Seekers moving about.
Scattered across the vast expanse of the Great Hall was a colossal of men and women, boys and girls all varying in age from Alaric’s fifteen to past their prime.
These were dressed in the uniform Alaric had scattered across the grounds of the Tower of Seekers. Hurdled into small groups, they gathered around round tables piled with books and various odd pieces of equipment, most of which Alaric had never seen before.
He saw contraptions come to life under the meticulous supervision of the young artisans. He saw bubbling solutions trapped in glass containers and strange glowing rune circles designed spherically in the air.
“Inventors?” Alaric asked.
As he’d just said that, he saw another group gathered around a large runic circle drawn on a large sheet of paper covering their round table. A boy placed his hands on the table and closed his eyes…
For a brief moment, the circle of runes lit up in a wave, spreading across the entire tapestry before stopping at a certain rune and sparking into a spontaneous bonfire that roasted the whole tapestry.
Alaric was about to help when he noticed another one of the artisans retrieve a wand from under his sleeve and draw a quick rune in the air. The black smoke and flames swirled around in a spiral and shot for the wand. With the sound of a sucking vacuum, the catastrophe that could have been drained into the gluttonous wand within a few seconds only for the group to proceed as though nothing had just happened.
‘Cool.’
Garin shook his head, “Not inventors… Scholars. They study the nature of magic and the laws of the world around us. It’s one of the requirements for becoming a Second-Tier Seeker. Only Second-Tier Seekers can be allowed the privilege of absorbing the knowledge kept within the Tower. Third-tier Seekers are the ones we call Elders.”
Alaric looked on in awe, his eyes scanning the various machinations that were coming to life in this very room. He saw a unique combination of paper, metal and aether crystals shaped like a falcon fly high into the air only to crash into the sea of orbs hanging high up above the studying scholars.
The owners of this invention paused in their applause at the sudden crash. One of them was holding a weird box with two sticks coming out of it. He moved these sticks around a lot while he focused on the flying falcon.
The falcon dove away from the orbs only to flap back up and slam itself into the sea of orbs again. Another scholar yanked the device Alaric had devised to be a controller away from his friend and had a go at the controls.
Following his actions, the falcon slammed itself faster and repeatedly against the wall of Awakening Orbs… With an audible crunch, the mechanical falcon’s right wing broke in half and the shuddering automaton came hurtling towards the ground.
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Alaric covered the chuckle that threatened to escape him.
“Would you mind staying here as I go find Elder Gregory?” Garin asked.
“I can wait,” Alaric responded.
“Good… Take a seat there by the entrance. You should be fine there. Don’t wander and try not to look into any paintings. I don’t want to have to pull you out of an enchanted one,” Garin responded with a sigh.
“Understood. I’ll stay in one place. I wouldn’t know where to go otherwise,” Alaric responded.
With a nod, the stingray rider was gone, meshing into the mess of scholars without a second thought, ‘Who can find anything in that mess?’
[Perhaps he just knows his way around that well] Alia tried.
Alaric nodded then turned to take a seat at the entrance. To his surprise, the seats themselves were made with rich soft leather and allowed him to sink into their embrace so easily that he wondered whether their maker mistook the order of chairs for beds.
‘How could anything be this comfortable?’ he mused.
After revelling in the soft opulent material of the chair for a few minutes, Alaric turned his eyes to the scholars. He realised there was some sort of hierarchy within the Tower. Every society had some sort of hierarchy. Even at the orphanage, the older kids were respected and obeyed more than the younger ones. These were just unspoken rules.
Being a First-Tier Seeker, perhaps, was like being at the bottom of the barrel of Seekers in the Tower. Perhaps that was why all of these scholars were trying so hard to achieve something.
[ Or maybe there is more than one way to attain new knowledge and these Seekers are trying one of those ways ] Alia tried.
[ I’m not sure I follow. ]
[ The Tower is a hub for information. If every seeker was meant to go through something like this, then Finn and Darla would have been stuck here as well. Instead, they didn’t have to… which means there is more than one way to advance from a First-Tier Seeker. And one of those means is the Creation of Knowledge. Discovering something through countless experimentation rather than hunting for that information. ] the guardian explained.
Alaric hummed in agreement. Who knew if these two were the only ways of gathering information either? Alaric reckoned that if there was a way to gather information, then the Tower would permit it for as long as it didn’t cause trouble.
Discarding these speculative thoughts, Alaric resorted to enjoying the sights before him. It was like a free carnival and he wasn’t about to waste this opportunity. Might as well learn something before he was added to the ranks of people going through this arduous work.
Alaric saw several things being worked on, each one more intriguing than the last. A few were as boring as people staring through liquids in odd transparent glass containers as they changed colour while others were so exciting and spontaneous that they literally went BOOM with each failure.
It wasn’t hard to notice Alaric was more interested in the more chaotic experiments. The one thing all the tables had in common was books. Every table had books either arranged neatly in stacks or strewn around haphazardly.
‘Wish I could read those kinds of books,’ he wondered.
[Why don’t you ask Elder Gregory?] Alia offered.
[Oh yeah, I could…]
[ Aren’t you asking too much of the old man? If I didn’t know any better I’d think you’ve started growing arrogant] Alia laughed at his response.
[ But you’re the one who just said… ]
“Are you the boy with S-class guardian?” a voice interrupted Alaric’s conversation with his guardian.
Getting lost in the fantasies of learning what could be obtained from within the pages of the books around the Tower had barred Alaric from seeing the gathering of eyes that slowly started noticing his presence.
This was sort of a change for once considering people normally recognized his presence at the moment of his arrival… even though the reason for that evaded him most of the time.
Looking around, he noticed a blonde boy standing in front of a group of five Scholars. The group looked Alaric up and down with sneers and derisive grins.
“What’s it to you?” Alaric asked.
“A new test subject. We would like to know how much aether she can use and how much Spiritual damage she can take. Take it from me, guardians aren’t fragile,” the boy explained.
Alaric sighed the silly explanation, “Neither are humans…”