“Pursuit of any goal must be timbered - rigid, equable, esurient.”

.[].[].[].

The trek through the jungle to Martine was stressful, physically taxing, and dangerous, yes, but above all, it was swelteringly hot. Ernest had spent yesterday’s entire afternoon trying to fix that problem with the application of cooling enchantments - with success, true, but he didn’t yet possess the fruits of that labor.

The issue with Ernest’s magical specialties - filigree and latticework - was that, at lower levels, they only properly worked when applied on and with solid, thick materials. Cloth did not fulfill either of those requirements, and so his magic did not quite work on them; the solution to his plight was not so simple as ‘apply enchantments on the garments themselves.’ Ernest had theorized several workarounds, and the best was thus: he could form a bounded field with a cooling effect around himself. By inscribing bracelets, pendants, shoes, large buttons, thick rings, and things of that nature with portions of a larger array’s whole, and by making those portions come together in a sequence as the markers of a bounded field, it could be done - and at a much lower mana cost than several cooling enchantments spread out across his articles of clothing, all constantly activated.

But that was obvious, and he’d come up with it in the first five minutes of brainstorming. Implementation was much more difficult.

He'd needed to calculate the allowed margin of error for placement of the bounded field’s markers - a careful balancing act, because too much slack would drain the enchantment’s mana stores within a couple hours, and too little would result in a slight jostle destroying the entire thing, with extraneous, compensatory markers as fallbacks. He'd needed to determine the ideal methods and styles of engraving and enchanting for each marker. He'd needed to ascertain where every accessory should be placed - taking into account several variables, all conflicting and affecting each other, such as their proximity to each other against the best energy pathways - for maximum efficiency. Most notably, he'd needed to create the array himself, and then divide it into the markers, and then figure out how to make those portions holistically come together as the larger array while still optimally functioning, and then make a dozen edits and corrections to it all when loss of energy in transport was repeatedly made, and then scrap the whole thing and do it again after he’d realized that every accessory would have different accommodations for their differing materials, shapes, and sizes, and then again when he’d forgotten a negative in his arithmetic, and more, and more…

It had been a debacle, and the Ernest of last night, exhausted, fell asleep immediately after achieving near perfection without actually constructing the apparatus.

As he marched through the muggy, wet rainforest with the rising sun shining through gaps in the leaves, Ernest developed a newfound hatred for his past self.

.[].[].[].

If Ernest had not possessed ample experience in deciphering maps, he would have gotten terribly lost, suffering an ignoble death to some manner of monster or wildlife. There were numerous points of failure in the function of his boots and bracelet, after all - mostly in the likely scenario that a beast laid eyes upon him, as the two accessories only covered scent and sound. In fact, it was so probable that the mage planned to obtain - whether through request or by creating it himself - an invisibility relic for peace of mind. He knew that he would be gored and devoured if he encountered any sort of monster, shield-projecting glove and force wand or not.

But the mage had made it safe and sound, and that was all he could ask for in his current circumstances. Soaked in sweat, he exited the edges of the forest and beheld Martine.

The first thing he thought was that Escutcheon had deceived him.

Martine was not a settlement. Rather, it was a ramshackle slum, a cluster of rotting hovels, all breathing the same poisoned air and excreting the same filth that so dirtied the streets - Ernest knew because the fumes could be wafted from a mile away. The shantytown was not surrounded by forest; it was surrounded by an endless sea of tree stumps, reflecting the fact that Sunblotch’s rural citizenry could only properly finance themselves through logging. Cheap lumber was the viscounty’s main export by an insurmountable margin, and the ‘settlement’ of Martine was clearly a perfect example of this phenomenon. Frankly, Ernest was shocked that the place had even the fence around its perimeter as a bulwark against the wildlife, despite its necessity for survival.

Walking through the front gate of the sty - two misshapen trees, stripped of their branches, stuck on either side of the path leading in - only worsened Ernest’s opinion. The scent became genuinely revolting, beyond the point of overpowering, and with it came a heat of a different intensity, one compounded with the ever-present torridity of Sunblotch. He was beyond thankful for his teacher’s tall, waterproof boots, because the narrow roads of the slum were muddy, wet, sinking, and commonly mixed with muck and ordure from the one-story, jerry-built shacks. Ernest less so walked and more so slogged his way through the sludge. The people, displaying more bare, tanned skin than coarse cloth - undoubtedly due to the brutal mugginess of their environment - eyed him with restrained greed, curiosity, and, at times, desperation.

As a member of higher-ranked nobility, living near the capital of one of the kingdom’s most well-off lands, Ernest had never even imagined that people could live in such squalor. It was repugnant, demeaning, and ghastly - appalling, even. He almost pitied them.

Nonetheless, with hands on his valuables and caution in his eyes, Ernest eventually found his way to a blacksmith’s shop - a more primitive variety of metalworker, to be sure, who did his work outside and with crude tools, but there was metal. That fact wasn’t especially surprising to Ernest. The kingdom possessed a severe overabundance of such minerals, enough that every common guard - along with his horse - was outfitted with full plate armor, not to mention the thick iron suits of the nobles’ knights or the hulking monstrosities of platinum of the warriors of the Aureate Fist. Even a rural backwater like Martine would possess a bit of steel.

After, Ernest suspected, severely overpaying - the blacksmith’s eyes had shone with tears, desperation, and sheer joy when faced with a singular silver coin - because of his lack of copper coins, the young mage trudged his way through the streets of Martine, bucket of iron shavings and pack of chalk in hand.

Ernest hadn’t bothered to stay any longer. What he sought in Sunblotch, at least in the early stages, would not be found in Martine.

.[].[].[].

The next assignment came four days later, and, cooling bounded field in place and personally made invisibility necklace around his neck, Ernest happily made the journey. His targets were a pail filled with the ashes of charred garlic and a bouquet of lacquered thorns.

Escutcheon had said it would take around twelve hours of hiking to arrive, and so staying the night at one of the city’s inns would be necessary. The destination was genuinely significant, this time: it was the city-state of Thistleverve, renowned across the entire kingdom as a holy land of pilgrimage and independent from the Viscounty of Sunblotch. Thousands came and went every month - penitents, priests, and laymen from all corners of the kingdom, regardless of denomination. Such was the City of Briars’ significance among those of the Sacrosanct faith, and for good reason.

The city’s origin centered around a young peasant girl named Cabreena, with hair of spun gold, and it was a tale that every man, from the young to the old and infirm, intimately knew. Ernest’s father was the most devout man of Gravehill, to the point that he’d originally wanted a padre for a son - and with his teachings, Ernest knew the story like the back of his hand. He even enjoyed it.

Cabreena was born several centuries ago in what historians call the Argent Age - which comprised, roughly, the century after the kingdom’s establishment - in an unnamed backwater of a village, far south of the center of civilization. It would have been in exactly the center of Thistleverve. Her character formed the basis of a common archetype in future fables and narratives - kind, beautiful, humble, beloved among her community, and part of a cause for good. In her case, she’d been a nun of the Church of the Sacrosanct.

One morning, through random chance, she woke up and found her long, luscious curls feeling a bit prickly and stiff. Presumably, she hadn’t thought it to be anything of significance. The numerous literary renditions of the myth portrayed this decision to be the result of an optimistic rhetoric - why assume the worst, after all?

Because, in Ernest’s opinion, it prepared you for the worst, and Cabreena could have sorely used some of that.

Her world became agony two days later. Gradually and cruelly, her long, luscious locks had transformed into jagged thorns of a dull brown, perforating her scalp and digging like hooks into her back and shoulders. The thorns went deeper and deeper as time went on - but, through the work of the Divine, she stayed alive, continuously wailing and bleeding rivers of blood. The villagers, believing the girl’s plight to be a trial from the Divinities, attempted to assist her - and all who did so perished, scourged by sentient barbs and feeding the brambles. They continued to grow, penetrative and insidious, shooting through the girl’s entire body and leaving hardly any flesh behind.

They swallowed up the village and devoured its remaining inhabitants, expanding and flourishing quickly. They grew and thrived, eventually ending up as the City of Briars, Thistleverve, for they’d attracted worship and adoration from the rest of the newly-established kingdom. The former peasant girl and her forest of thorns became one of the most direct, overt, accessible Works of the Divinities - one still revered to this day, and one that Ernest was interested to witness in person.

He knew that his desire wouldn’t be particularly difficult to fulfill.

As the mage crested a treeless hill, the city became visible despite the fact that he was still an hour or so away. The surrounding valley was barren and lush, cleared for lumber, profit, and security, thereby displaying the massive metropolis in its full glory. Its stone wall, gray, coarse, and imposing, sprawled for miles and miles, with wooden ramparts at its summit and the apexes of multiple-storied buildings peeking over - but those were the second things one saw when beholding Thistleverve. What came first was not massive - it was gargantuan, being the Work of Nature’s Divinity that so many pilgrims traveled for months to behold. It stretched into the sky, above the clouds but not hidden by them in the slightest.

The Work was a statuesque woman made of dark, spiked wood, dull brown in coloration, almost appearing as a colossal, carved art piece. Her locks of hair were distinctly long strings of spiked thorns that tore through a tattered nun’s habit, piercing into her uncovered back and shoulders, dripping torrents of blood despite the body’s sylvan form. She wore a flowing, simple tunic, the same kind worn by every young nun of the kingdom - though this one’s sleeves dangled and pooled around her elbows, as her hands were clasped together in prayer to the sky. Her beautiful, ligneous face was opened in an eternal rictus of anguish, with every orifice pouring just as much blood as the perpetually suffering wounds on her back and shoulders. Ernest could see minute trembles in her form from his position.

Saintess Cabreena still lived, unknowingly watching over the city.

Ernest, personally, thought the display was magnificent. As imposing and gruesome as the sight was, it was practically representative of the beyond mortal Divinities. They could be cruel, they could be kind, and they could create grand Works - but no matter what, their motives were indecipherable.

Ernest marched forward, fully intent to reach the city before the hour’s end - but the closer he got, the more a low droning drew his attention. It increased in volume with every step, a permeant noise like the buzz of a horde of locusts.

Of course he knew what it was; he just hadn’t thought that their reach extended so far. If the Maiden’s Laments were so audible from miles away, then wouldn’t they be deafening within the city?

.[].[].[].

The answer to that question was a yes. Ernest had developed a headache when he’d been a mile away from the walls, and by the time he passed the entrance inspection to enter the city proper, it had evolved into a pounding migraine.

The Maiden’s Laments were saddening things. Her immense size amplified any noise she made, so every groan, whimper, whine, and breath she made in her agony produced vibrations in the air and earth - and their sheer volume made her anguish clearly discernible. Whenever the saintess produced a wracking sob, the very ground shook beneath Ernest’s feet, accompanied by the splintering of wood from shifts in her afflicted visage.

He despised it. His first order of business had been to enter a shop near the gates of the city and inquire about ear protection.

“Ear protection?” the old shopkeeper chuckled. “Boy, I wouldn’t waste my coin so lightly. A few days and ye will acclimate to Her Laments.”

“But you have something, yes?” Ernest insisted.

“Aye, but it won’t do much for ye. Eruditium earmuffs would be necessary to truly keep out the racket, and the best I’ve here is some nuggets of slime core that ye could stick in your ears. Might do something.”

“How much?”

“Four silver, but for ye, I’ll make it three.”

The slime core nuggets lessened the intensity of the city’s clamors by about half - and they did roughly the same for his migraine. The aches in his brain were still persistent and relentless in their torment, but at least he could go about his business without wincing every few seconds.

Then, as he stood in front of the Viticulture Inn, Ernest realized he’d need to take them out to speak to the innkeeper - as well as anyone else he’d encounter.

The shopkeeper’s words made more sense, at that moment. He may as well not wear them at all.

The young mage sighed, took out the ear protection, and entered the inn, pushing through its oaken doors. Nobody took particular note of his ingression beyond the innkeeper, a portly old man - a fact that wasn’t particularly surprising. His physical features - a taller, thicker frame, pale skin, exotic eyes, et cetera - were uncommon in these stretches of the kingdom, yes, but Thistleverve was not representative of the ordinary south. It received travelers from every land under humanity, after all. The tavern’s inhabitants reflected that, being everyone from bulky, blond northerners to thinner, short westerners.

The old innkeeper waved him over to where he was placing a bottle of rum - which, now that he looked, comprised a majority of the man’s liquor stores - on a shelf. Ernest obliged, not bothering with sitting down on one of the stools.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“‘Tis about the right time for a drink,” the man rumbled. Ernest supposed it was, being a few hours before sunset. “Is that what you’ve come for?”

“No,” Ernest curtly replied.

“Room and board, then?”

“Yes. One night, single bed, no need for accommodations beyond the room. How much?”

“Hmm,” the innkeeper stroked his chin. “Well, ‘tis the Month of Nature, and there are many travelers coming to our Thistleverve. The one night you stay might take the spot of a customer intending to stay for a week, so wouldn’t you say I have to make the one night worth it?” He looked back over to Ernest, locking eyes. “How much would you say?”

Ernest almost groaned at the man’s pointless games, instead settling for a frown. He didn’t have the time for this.

“Set a price and stop dawdling. I have business to attend to.”

“Ten silver, then. My daughter will show you to your room.”

The mage would have refused to go to his room at this time, but he possessed a few belongings he intended to drop off - it wasn’t as if he could lug them around everywhere he went. Following the man’s daughter, a sweetly smiling girl with brown hair and fair skin, gave him the impression that the inn was truly the most plain place imaginable. Everything was constructed of ordinary wood - the walls, the ceilings, the doors, the floors, everything - and not even quality wood, either. He wouldn’t stay for a second longer than necessary, with the innkeeper’s gregarious daughter only adding to that sentiment.

“So, where have you traveled from?”

“The central lands.”

“Ah, that is interesting. My family traveled from there as well, and now we have owned this place for a few generations. How come you are traveling on your own? We seem to be of similar ages, and I can’t even imagine traveling unaccompanied!”

“It is a rite among my family.”

“You’re much braver than I, then. I’ve never even left the city. How long have you been in Thistleverve?”

“Less than an hour.”

“Ah, so our inn is one of the first places you’ve visited? I hope we have given you a good impression of the city. The people here are quite nice, you know. What do you think of it all so far?”

“It is adequate.”

“That is a good thing to hear. Did you travel here for the Month of Nature?”

“No.”

And so on, and so forth.

It was all he could do not to heave a relieved sigh when they finally arrived at his room.

“Well, be sure to come to me if you ever need anything, good sir!” the girl smiled, curtsying. She gave him the key to his room right after. “I’ll always be available to you.”

“Of course. Your presence is… novel. I have never met anyone like you.”

And, despite the fact that he hadn’t meant it as a compliment in the least, the girl giggled as he turned his back and unlocked the door.

As Ernest slid out the key and went to open the door, though, the decayed instincts ingrained in him by his father so many years ago flared back into action, alerting him of an incoming threat. Ernest grabbed the wrist of the hand attacking him from behind, spinning around, solidifying his stance, and winding back his fist to crush a weak point in the neck…

And then he realized that the wide-eyed, startled girl had been intending to smack his buttocks. He scoffed, letting her go.

“Run along.”

She scampered away, and Ernest didn’t give her a second glance.

If merely reserving a room at an inn brought so many annoyances, then next time, he'd simply sleep on the streets.

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The acquisition of the garlic ashes had been a refreshing change of pace from his day in that it hadn’t been unusually troublesome. The task was simple, free of cost, and speedy. All he’d needed to do was visit a church of the Sacrosanct Order of the Horticulture, the denomination of the Sacrosanct faith dominant in the southern kingdom - an elementary task, given that Thistleverve was the sect’s holy land. A religious ritual of theirs involved smearing the ashes of garlic on the crown of their daughters’ heads as they slept, so as to showcase their faith and supplication to the Divinity of Nature, and the churches assisted in this by distributing the requisite material.

Ernest thought it was meaningless, and that the Divinity would not restrain itself from giving a child the same fate as Cabreena because of some overcooked vegetables, but he didn’t mind - it made his job easier.

Procuring the bouquet of thorns had been much more troublesome and expensive than the garlic. Saintess Cabreena’s thorns still flourished and attempted to encroach on their surroundings - but they were much more sluggish in doing so, and not particularly aggressive in any way. Thus came Thistleverve’s most profitable, abundant export: wood and thorns from the forest of brambles at the Maiden’s feet. It had originally been used exclusively for the construction of churches and such - the pious folk argued that such sacred materials being present in houses of vice was the ultimate sacrilege - but eventually, centuries later, the nobles had their way and managed to have it openly sold for exorbitant prices. That was extended to any who traveled to the city.

It took an hour to locate an official seller of the hallowed thistles - and in Ernest’s case, it was Cathedral of Thorns near the center of the city. The busybody priestess selling them was of the opinion that they shouldn’t be sold in the first place, and she would enforce that by requiring potential buyers to engage in rigorous tests of faith. In Ernest’s case, it was by theological debate.

After twenty minutes, Ernest, four gold coins lighter, walked out of the cathedral with a bouquet of thorns and two days to maneuver however he wished.

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Ernest had wracked his brains on what value he could extract from this opportunity before him. The goal of his apprenticeship, broadly, was forbidden magical knowledge - preferably knowledge of a specific nature and for a specific purpose, of course, but anything would help. He thought he knew the place to find it.

Large cities, especially pious ones like Thistleverve, were active in suppressing heretics and doing away with their blasphemies, but things like magical tomes were almost never well accounted for. The vast, vast majority of the population was illiterate - how would someone know that they were carrying a volume detailing taboo magics if they couldn’t read? This, compounded against the facts that proper, rigorous investigation was impractical amidst the chaos of purges and that mages generally did not design their magical tomes to be obvious contraband, left a fairly obvious endpoint for such volumes.

After all, it was only tradition for unwanted, unidentified, worthless books to be packed among the dusty shelves of scribes’ basement archives, never to be seen again.

How this crippling, obvious flaw in security had only been corrected in mage cities was unknown and baffling to Ernest. It was known to have facilitated the rise of two grim lords of legend, after all - and, of course, Ernest wasn’t against walking a well-trodden path.

The first step on it was to locate Thistleverve’s scriptorium.

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Despite the fact that scriptoriums were monastic communities dedicated to the preservation of knowledge, they weren’t nearly as faithful as the reverent churches or martial sanctums because of a simple fact:

Nobody wanted to be a scribe for their entire lives. Scribes’ days consisted of waking up at the crack of dawn, eating, copying ancient texts, eating, copying ancient texts, eating, and going to sleep, with leaving the scriptorium being heavily discouraged - usually outright forbidden for anyone other than those assigned chore duty. Thus, scribes were generally orphans press-ganged into the position at around the age of ten, if they hadn’t yet been adopted or joined some sort of gang. Not the best circumstances for the possession of outstanding piety, and Ernest doubted this would change even in a holy city like Thistleverve. He decided to observe the scriptorium for the scant hour or so before sundown.

The surveillance itself would be simple - there was nothing he needed to work around. The monastery was surrounded by a high wall of light gray stone intended to provide security and privacy, but the wrought iron gate of flowing patterns was a bit of an oversight in that vision. Ernest suspected it had been designed by either an incompetent or someone who’d desired a grander project than some irrelevant scriptorium, because they’d made the gate an ostentatious thing that occupied the entire middle third of the wall. It granted the peeping mage a full view of the courtyard, and of the scribes coming and going between it and the actual buildings. No particular trouble there. The question was how Ernest would engage in his reconnaissance without arousing suspicion.

The obvious choices were out. He couldn’t simply loiter at the gate for a lengthy period of time without being confronted, as the Thorned Cavaliers, Thistleverve’s military force, patrolled the streets ceaselessly and vigilantly; anything dubious would be sure to attract their attention. After observing the church in front of the scriptorium, though - this was the religious sector of the city - he noticed a shrine to the right of the door, constructed for a recently deceased member of the community.

Ernest made his choice. He walked over to the shrine, turned to the gate, sat on his knees, clasped his hands in prayer, and bowed his head, completely seeming as if he were enacting a worshipful ritual. No matter how uncomfortable the position was, it was the best - really, the only - method he could cook up without extensive preparation, something he simply didn’t have the time for. By tomorrow evening at the maximum, he’d need to be back at Escutcheon’s castle.

Ernest waited and observed, wracking his brain for the optimal path forward - but there was only so much control he had over the situation. The best he could do was construct a vague criteria for his target. They needed to be young and greedy, yes, but not so young that they weren’t even allowed into the archives - and judging physical appearances was the only thing he could do to that end.

He ambushed a scribe in the midevening.

“Ah, excuse me?” Ernest rapped on the gate with his gloved hand. “May I speak to you?”

The tanned young man, alone in the courtyard, looked surprised to see Ernest addressing him. He moved quickly over to the gate and gave a slight smile.

“Yes? How can I help you?” he asked.

“Well, you see, I have traveled to Thistleverve on the orders of my liege lord for the sake of attending to some boring business. But,” Ernest shrugged, “he also mandated me to procure some books for the personal library of a new estate of his - them originating in the City of Briars would heighten their prestige. I suspect he severely underestimated the prices in this city’s bookstores, however, because I do not have enough money to purchase even five tomes through those more official avenues. It was my hope that I could browse through your archives to fulfill my orders, and of course I will donate two silver coins to the scriptorium for every book, along with eight to you personally.” He smiled brightly. “Could you be of assistance?”

The young man shook his head. “I’m afraid I cannot be moved by coin. Forgive me.”

“...Ah.”

.[].[].[].

On his next attempt, Ernest chose a child younger by a few years.

“Hmm. Charles, do you happen to know why there are so few people out?” Ernest asked the red-haired young boy walking at his side, who was dressed in the simplest tunic he’d ever seen - a singular flowing, light gray robe. And every scribe of this scriptorium wore them.

Charles had accepted Ernest’s proposal after changing it around a bit - rather than ten silver coins to him and two to the scriptorium for every book, both the fixed rate of ten and the two for each sale went to the boy. Ernest hadn’t particularly cared either way - in fact, it was preferable like this, because then there wouldn’t be any real record of his presence. The young scribe held a thick lantern, glowing orange and lighting their way through the stone halls of the surprisingly large scriptorium.

“Well,” Charles scratched his cheek, “all the old fogeys of this place are more experienced in copying, so they get done with their quotas early, around an hour before the sun sets. Since they’re old, they go to sleep early, too. Everyone else is having a last meal in the cafeteria before going to sleep, and that’s on the other side of the scriptorium… I don’t know why anyone would go somewhere else.”

“Then why were you outside?” Ernest asked, eyes flicking down to the boy.

Charles shrugged. “The Divinity of Nature called.”

They walked for another minute, making a bit of small talk on the way, until eventually arriving at a large, oaken door - an unnecessarily sturdy one, which looked as if it could defend against a battering ram. Ernest wondered why, at least when there was no way to lock or bar the thing; anyone could simply open it and stride through. Doing so and descending the winding stone staircase led them, finally, to the archives.

The archives were expansive, wide enough to take half a minute to walk across and double that in length. In its base state, it would have been a barren rectangle of stone, without even a single alcove or embellishment. As it was, though, there were rows of shelves stacked along all the walls and six in the gap between - and nearly all were fully packed with dusty tomes.

“Why does this place look as if it has never been used?” Ernest asked, swiping his finger along the nearest wooden shelf and coming away with a whole mound of dust. While he was aware of the fact that the archives were rarely frequented and never cataloged, he didn’t know the reasons for it. Indulging personal curiosities was no sin. “Is this not where you get the books you copy down?”

“Not really,” Charles replied, sitting down on the floor with a stone wall at his back. He placed the lantern to his left, stretching out his legs. “What would be the purpose in assigning ourselves more work, especially with no benefit? The books we copy are requested - for us, mostly from the churches. I’ve copied down so many religious manuscripts from them that sometimes I dream about the debates and precepts of the Order of the Horticulture, and I’ve only been a scribe for five years. The old fogeys around here might know the religion better than the High Cardinal.”

Ernest nodded, tuning out the extraneous latter half of Charles’ explanation. He supposed it made sense. Since scribes were expected to copy down the manuscripts ten times each at the minimum - usually more, according to such requests - their workloads were already too full. Thus, the only reason to descend into the archives was to deposit more books, ones that no one would ever see again.

The young mage began to pick his way through the shelves of tomes, and Charles - fittingly, perhaps, given that he spent his days hunched over a desk doing something he did not care for - didn’t make a peep of complaint over the long waiting time. When Ernest glanced over in the boy’s direction, he was staring at the ground, eyes glazed over.

Most of the books were worthless. Ernest had no use for cooking recipes, or speculative - in other words, based upon incorrect guesswork - histories of pre-kingdom humankind, or manuscripts arguing some semantic debate in the Sacrosanct faith, like whether or not the Divinity of Light should be renamed as the Divinity of Illumination. There were occasionally things he might have enjoyed if he’d been browsing for leisure - for example, a hefty chronicle of the regional discrepancies between every demesne of the kingdom with the reasons for each - but the simple fact was that he wasn’t browsing for leisure. The only reason to take them would be to disguise the true items of interest among seeming fellows, but that would be pointless.

His first real find was a publication detailing the diffusion of mana and prana in the environment and air, along with how they reacted to their surroundings. Nothing forbidden, but it was valuable - any sort of applicable magical knowledge was. After that was a series of journals, all stacked on top of each other in the very back of a shelf, in the middle of a mound of books.

After flipping through them, Ernest concluded that they were indeed heinous things. They detailed a sequence of experiments with the goal of discovering all that could be discovered about the body, its energies, how they reacted to various magical stimuli, why those magical stimuli did what they could, how it could be replicated, what could be drawn from the results, and more. Ernest was an expert on biology, to the point that, rather than as people, he saw humans in terms of their bone structures, muscle groups, venous system, conflicting internal energies, and more, information he’d gathered for the sake of remedying his… condition - but, of course, he’d never managed to get his hands on anything forbidden.

These were the definition of forbidden. He carefully deposited them in his bag, along with the former publication, and continued trawling through the library.

Next came a book written by a mad sorcerer, addressed to his possibly hallucinated disciples, which detailed taboo uses of sorcery with how to apply them. Illicit, true, but useful? Not to Ernest. Sorcerers understood magic in a fundamentally different way than mages, after all. The former discipline required incredible mana reserves, willpower, visualization, control, and strength of personality - it was something of an intrinsic talent, one that most did not possess. Sorcery, in essence, was consuming one’s mana to bring about phenomena through sheer desire. In a way, it was ‘pure’ magic.

In contrast, magic, to mages, involved the invocation of phenomena through applied reason. It was done by controlling the flow of energy through arrays, lattices, and other frameworks of that nature, involving arithmetic, deep understanding of physics, and more. If ‘pure’ magic - sorcery - was to reach into the world and forcefully manifest a desired effect, then mages’ magic was to fabricate manufactured apparatuses of precision that did such ‘sorcery’ for them. There were no prerequisites beyond intelligence and drive.

Ernest left the book where it was. He’d have to carry all of these back to Escutcheon’s castle, after all, and there was no point in weighing himself down for a mere souvenir.

There were a few more juicy finds - for example, a tome drawn from the fruits of genuinely monstrous experiments on the spirit, which detailed the relationships between mana and the soul; a magical guidebook on the the discipline of flesh magic, or fleshcraft; an immense work on the inherent magical properties of parts of the body, which attempted to fully explore every avenue of research that could be drawn from such information - and a few lawful ones - such as a volume of techniques, spells, and more for the formation of autonomous constructs, or, less accurately, artificial minds - but it seemed that magical contraband was rarer than Ernest had thought. Either way, he’d spent enough time in the archive that Charles had fallen asleep, and his bag was full to bursting with items of importance. It wasn’t as if he could bring any more books with him.

His haul was hefty, and the mission had been fruitful - Ernest was finally making progress, and he was content with it. He walked over to Charles, smiling sincerely for the first time in a long while.

It was so rare for things to go his way in life - for things to go according to plan and expectation - that he’d forgotten the elation that came with such an event. At least in this case, things had gone well.

…Not that the notion would last for even ten hours.