Tristan, Vokin, and I all arrived back at the roost meeting up with Aeolith. We ran into a bit of an issue trying to find a place for Tristan and Vokin to sit while the saddle was on, and eventually had to remove it so that we could sit between the ridges on her back without being too far back. There was a point where someone wouldn't have anything to hold onto and might fall off during the flight. We finally got arranged to where Vokin was in the back since he had greater Strength for holding on, Tristan was in the middle, and I was in front. Tristan could hold onto me if he felt insecure during the flight. Once we were settled, Aeolith took off with a few powerful beats of her wings. I could tell she struggled a little more than normal, but she was able to take off with just one attempt and once she got flying, she was able to smooth out the ride without much effort.

Many people in the town below were waving to us as Aeolith taking off and landing had become a sight that many people loved watching. I supposed it was a type of hope for them, that they were not alone in this world or left abandoned. That left me with mixed feelings. I was happy that we were able to help, but worried that we still were needing to put our very lives on the line to ensure that these people were kept safe. I tried to put that out of my mind for now. I needed to focus on the task at hand. We needed to get to the library to see if there was anything we could find that would help us fight the Shadow Beasts more efficiently.

I watched as the landscape rushed by below us. It was a thrill flying and I now knew why pilots loved doing it so much back on earth. The feeling of being free and soaring over others was exhilarating. Not to mention the time that it saved over land travel. We would be at the island in a few hours and nothing was in the way to slow us down like terrain. After a while longer in flight, we found ourselves out over the ocean. We were high enough in the air we could see out for miles. I looked out over Aeolith's side, and I could see several large creatures breach the surface of the water far in the distance. I used my enhanced vision to zoom in, so to speak, on what I was seeing in the distance and the creatures appeared to resemble whales, but I could see some tentacles on their bellies as they turned when they dove down into the waters. That was a bit terrifying to think about but fascinating to see the differences in animals in this world. Just one more wonder to think about and hopefully, learn about later. If we could find a way to end this threat and find some peace.

Finally, the island came into view. I was relieved to find that the illusion of the volcano was still in place. So it wasn't tied to Al'Doran and was something set up long ago. I remembered Al'Doran saying something about it being designed to run on ambient mana in the air, so hopefully, that would mean it would run forever. Or I guess until the ambient mana ran out. If that was even possible. There was still so much about this that I didn't understand and it was upsetting. I would have to really ramp up the learning time.

We flew in closer to the island and then through the mirage of the volcano and the town became visible. It was just how we had left it. Nothing seemed changed at all. I felt a pang of sadness knowing that Al'Doran was not going to be here when we landed. Knowing that now we were the last caretakers of the Isle of Cathar and all the secrets that it held. Aeolith landed in the same spot that Al'Doran normally did and we dismounted. She almost seemed to melt with relief. That must have been a hard trip as that was the most people she had carried. Not to mention that was not a short trip. I scratched her scales.

"Thank you for bringing us here. You have gotten so much stronger since we met. And it has been such a short time. You are truly impressive." I said to her.

She visibly inflated when I said this and seemed to puff up with pride.

"Well, of course, I am. I am a dragon after all."

I chuckled at her and I could feel her humor through the bond. We walked off the platform and moved to go to the dormitories to try to find the library. We entered through the normal entrance. Al'Doran had said that the Library was under the dormitories. So we moved around the main level until we found a staircase that led down. We followed it down about three stories until it ended in front of a set of huge doors with a book engraved in the wood. It was open with the pages fluffed up to exaggerate the magic of the book. I was still truly impressed by how large these buildings were. Even at her new larger size, Aeolith was able to fit inside the building, move down the stairs, which were extra wide, and up to this door. Which she was clearly going to be able to fit through as well. I went to push on the door and it appeared to be locked. Of course, a pull. Then I pulled on the door, but it still remained closed.

"What gives? Why is it locked? We should be able to go in. This is great. We find a way to possibly help and now we can't get in? I bet these stupid doors are enchanted too." I grumbled as I pushed and pulled on the door again for good measure, but with noticeably more force this time.

"Hey, Callan? What is this here?" Tristan said from off to the side where a stone was set that was different from the others.

I moved over to it and looked at it for a moment. As I bent down to look closer at it, an outline etched into the stone, that I hadn't seen before, began to glow. It looked like the symbol on my chest. I stood back up and took off my chest armor and moved my chest closer to it to compare the symbols and the symbol on my chest began to glow as well. As I got closer the glowing got brighter and brighter until I heard a click and then a groan from the doors. They began to swing open and we stepped back. The doors swung all the way open and stopped. I put my armor back on, just in case, and we looked at each other. I shrugged and moved forward to go in first, Aeolith bringing up the rear. As we walked inside the room was totally dark and I could barely see my hand in front of my face. But as we all moved into the first room I heard a ding, and then a light lit up in the corner of the room. It was just a glowing light, not a flame as I had expected. Some kind of magical light I assumed. Then more and more lights began to light up around the room and then further and further into the library.

Soon lights were lit up further back than we could see from the simple entry room we were standing in. It turned out the room we were in was some sort of reception room. There was a tall desk to the left that looked like someone would sit at it to help people who entered the library. It must have been where a librarian would be. They might have answered questions on where things were located or helped to check books in and out. Now it sat abandoned and cobwebs infested the corners of the desk. Thick layers of dust piled on its surfaces from centuries of lack of use or cleaning. To the right was a trolly of some kind and on it were a few stacks of books. These books too were covered in cobwebs and dust. I walked over to the trolly and picked up a book. I had to brush the layers of dust off just to read the title of the book. Of wolves and their hunting patterns. They really did have knowledge of all kinds here. We brushed off the other covers, but they were equally unimportant to our quest.

After looking at those few books we walked out into the library itself and we stood in awe and wonder. The library was huge. We were on the top floor and there appeared to be four or five more beneath us. The shelves were at least fifteen feet tall each with ladders on rollers at each shelf allowing access to the top. The length of each room looked to be at least two football fields long and it was at least one football field wide. This place was enormous. It was going to take forever to search for what we needed. Hopefully, we could find some form of a sorting system to figure out where things were located. We had only looked at a few books so far and I already felt overwhelmed. I shook myself and looked at the first shelf.

There was a plaque on the end of the shelf that was dusty but seemed not to have tarnished yet. Brushing it off I saw that it was some kind of brass with engraved writing on it. Beast Non-Fiction A-F was written on it. The next shelf was Beast Non-Fiction G-L. Looking around there were so many shelves I was trying to figure out how they might be sorted when Tristan called out.

"Hey, Callan."

I walked over to where he was standing at the end of the bookshelves. There was an archway that was set in the ceiling with a large plaque that read Animals.

"I think I found the section header. Look over there, and there, and there." Tristan said pointing at several other archways.

One read Agriculture, another read Art and another Ancient Artifacts.

"So the sections are the categories set up alphabetically. All we need to do is find the one that houses information on Dragonriders," I said. "Let's split up and see what we can find. Call out if you find something that you think would have information that would help. Vokin, go to the lowest level, Tristan, the second from the bottom, I'll go to the next level down, and Aeolith, stay up here and look at the first floor. Hopefully, we can find something to help."

We fanned out in different directions to see what other categories there were in the Library. There were so many shelves, so many sections. We had four floors of library to cover. Walking through the different areas I went down to the next level. Category after category I searched for one that might hold some promise of what we needed to find. None of them were standing out to me. Judging from what I was seeing on this floor the categories alphabetically were A-F on floor 1, G-L on Floor 2, M-R on Floor 3, and S-Z on Floor 4. There were so many different subjects my head was spinning. Games, Geography, Geology, Genealogy of Species, Governments, Healthcare, History, Horticulture, Human Studies, Indigenous Studies, Ideology, Integrated Sciences, Integrated Studies, Investigation, Jewel Crafting, Journalism, Justice Systems, and Judicial Process to name a few from the lettered sections I passed. I made it to nearly the end of the J section before stopping.

"Brutus, do you know anything about what subjects we might look under first?"

"I could probably give you some ideas, but there is no telling if they would be here in the library. I would try looking in C for Class, or D for Dragonrider, or maybe the Magical Studies or Spells categories. There really are a lot of possibilities now that I'm thinking about it. They wouldn't happen to have a filing system would they?"

"I didn't see one, but we could always go look."

I moved back to the top level where QAeolith was looking through a few rows of shelves. There was some dust flying through the air, as when she would get to a section she wanted to look at, she would have to blow on the shelves to get the dust off of the spines to be able to read the titles. I coughed as I passed by her most recent gust, and moved back to the entrance. I searched around the room, looking for a filing system of some kind that might be housed in drawers as I remembered seeing in libraries on earth in my childhood. We had used the Dewy Decimal system, which may not exist here, but it was in little filing cabinets that we could pull the drawers out by letter to search through categories and find items within them on specific books. Hopefully, they had something like that here. As I searched I became less and less confident they would have something like that. there appeared to be nothing for visitors at the entrance and nothing right inside the first floor. I went to the center of the room and looked down, thinking maybe it was in a more central location so everyone could go to the middle and then move out to find what they wanted. Nada.

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I decided to search the librarian's desk at the entrance and see if they had any information. I got to the desk and went around the back. There didn't appear to be much on the desk at the moment. I pulled out the chair and sat down to rest while I looked rather than bending down. On the desk were a stamp, an old dried-out ink pad, a stack of three books, none of which had anything to do with what we needed, a pair of reading glasses of some kind, a dead plant, and a writing pad with a quill and inkpot. I looked down at the front face of the desk and pulled out the drawers to search them. There were four drawers and two of them were empty. The biggest of the drawers appeared to hold a record of the books being checked in and out. The smaller drawer above that though was the one that really got my attention. It held a set of crystals on strings that appeared to be designed to be worn around someone's neck. I picked up the Crystal and looked it over.

"Brutus, any idea what these are for?"

"I know you are new here still, but why not Inspect it? In fact, you have really been neglecting the use of Inspect. While it's rude to do it to people you meet in towns and other places, you could use it to get information on monsters and other creatures you find before you fight them."

"You're right. I'm not used to having something that tells me what I need to know. I need to get in the habit of using that more often. Thank you, Brutus. I'm so lucky to have you with me."

Brutus looked slightly embarrassed but definitely seemed to enjoy the praise, as his tail was wagging away behind him. I picked up one of the crystals and used Inspect on it.

Item Found:

Dewy Decicrystal

The Dewy Decicrystal System was introduced to the great Dragonrider Library over a thousand years ago by the head librarian Andrew Horfacter who went by the nickname Dewy. He helped categorize the knowledge of the library into the system that is used today and created these crystals with the entirety of the library's catalog placed in a finding spell. A person can think about what subject they want to learn about and options will be found in order of relevance. The crystal will pull the user in the direction of the first book in the list of options.

I grabbed one for everyone and ran back into the Library. Just before I got through the entrance though I saw something I missed before. Over the entrance was a huge painting of an older woman dressed in elegant robes with crystal reading glasses. What made her stand out though was the fact that the position she had chosen to be painted in was with one finger up to her lips as though she was trying to shush anyone that entered the library.

"Well, that's creepy as hell," I said before I ran into the Library. "Hey, guys! I found something to help with the search."

I was suddenly struck with something. I felt different but couldn't tell what it was. I tried to say something as Aeolith came up from behind me, but I couldn't speak. I looked at my display and noticed something flashing under my HP bar. It was a symbol showing "Shhhhh..." with a countdown timer showing thirty seconds.

"What the heck is this?" I tried to communicate to Aeolith mentally, but even that wasn't going through.

"What's wrong, Callan?" Aeolith sent me.

I looked at her and waved my hands around moving my mouth, but no sounds were coming out. The timer was ticking down and once it reached zero, I could feel that sensation leave.

"Apparently I was silenced," I said. "But why would I be..."

I paused, remembering the picture of the woman over the entrance of the library.

"Well....that is inconvenient," I said.

Once everyone had made their way back up to the first floor I handed out the crystals to each of them and explained what they did.

"This will definitely help narrow the search. We are still likely to have to sort through hundreds of books, but it sure beats what appears to be millions." Tristan said, taking one of the crystals from me.

"Ack, thank ye lad, I thought I was gonna have to read forever!" Vokin said.

Aeolith took one of them and hung it around a finger.

"The only question is, how do we make sure we aren't all looking at the same list of books?" Tristan asked.

"I had been thinking about that and figured we should all take a different word we want to look for and think about those to find something. Things we specialize in I thought would be best so we know what we are looking for. Tristan take light spells since you specialize in magic, Vokin take fighting styles, Aeolith Dragons, and I will take the Dragonrider class. That should give us enough diversity to keep us out of each other's path for the most part. Does anyone have any better ideas? I want to be sure you all know that my ideas do not need to be the be-all end-all."

No one said anything.

"Right, one other thing I noticed, if you are too loud in here, apparently there is a spell that will silence you for a while. So be careful with how loud you get."

Everyone looked at me curiously. I rolled my eyes.

"AHHHHHHH!" I yelled, and once again I felt the strange feeling as I was silenced.

I then tried to communicate with them and nothing was coming out of my mouth. The others were immediately more interested and showed some more worried looks on their faces. I looked at the timer and this time it said one minute. Great, it gets longer each time as well apparently. Once the timer ran out I spoke to them again.

"Apparently, the timer gets longer with each silence as well. the first time was thirty seconds the second was one minute. So just be careful with how loud you get."

Everyone nodded and we held our crystals. I thought about what I wanted to find and I began to feel a tug in the direction pointing toward the C's. I moved with it and noticed the others moving as well in different directions. I walked with the pull and it brought me unerringly to a section titled Classes. I moved into the first shelf and down the rows. I could feel the pull shift to over my head and I went back to the beginning of the aisle and drug the ladder on its rail over to the section I felt the pull coming from. Climbing up a couple of rungs I saw the books were covered with dust just like the ones that Aeolith was blowing on. I began to rub the dust off of the spines to reveal the titles of the books. Many of the books had the word Dragonrider in the title. Brutus appeared next to me.

"This must be the only place in the world these books exist. Otherwise, I would have known about the knowledge in them to be able to help you," Brutus said.

"That is interesting, but not surprising really. Al'Doran said that they guarded this knowledge judiciously so that no one else would be able to find it and learn their secrets. After what we have found out about the Shadow Beasts and the danger they pose to the world I can see why they would want to guard the knowledge so closely. Imagine what could have happened if they had known what the Dragonrider skills were? That could have been disastrous for them."

Looking at the books it was hard to tell what was going to be useful to me. While there were far fewer of these books than the other classes, there were still more than I would have time to read even if I took a month to do nothing but read. I pulled a book off the shelf that looked like it might be interesting, Dragonriders and their Dragons, and flipped through some of the pages. It talked about the bonds that can be formed between riders and dragons. It showed some exercises for deepening the bond and what it means. I put the book in my bag of holding for now. It was an interesting read, and something that would be helpful, but not something to help with fighting the Shadow Beasts. I grabbed a few other books that looked interesting until I saw one book whose title really grabbed my attention. It was called "So You're a Dragonrider, now what?" I chuckled to myself thinking of the self-help books back on earth and grabbed that one too.

I grabbed the crystal around my neck again and thought of something else I wanted to learn about and began to feel the pull again. I followed the pull of the crystal down to the next level of the library and was directed toward the History section of the library. Down a few aisles and to one particular shelf. I located the section and began to wipe the dust from the books there as well. I found a few books about the history of the Dragonriders, in particular, some of the earliest riders, and pulled them from the shelves to put into my bag of holding. Time to check in with the others and see what they found. I mentally connected with Aeolith and asked her to reach out to the others. She was able to set up a connection that included all of us and I spoke to them, making sure not to mentally talk to loud, since apparently, it could silence my mental connections as well.

"How is the search going? Was anyone able to find any books that might be useful?"

"I found some books about skills that might be useful. Though a lot of them seemed to be skills that ye already know about. I grabbed them anyways just in case." Vokin said.

"There are some books on spells here that could prove useful. I also found a locked section that looks like it might contain actual spell books, but I'm not sure and I didn't want to try to break in just in case there was some kind of security measures in place that I didn't know about. The Dragonriders seem like the kind of people that would have something deadly to stop robbers." Tristan said.

"That's good thinking and a great find. We can go look at it after a while."

"I found some books on dragons that would be helpful for me. I don't know that it will be a lot of help for all of us in the fight to come, but even if we find things to help us individually we can be better." Aeolith said.

"Good thought. Let's meet in the middle of the library and bring the books we found, I can begin looking at the books and we can split up again."

We all met in the middle on the first floor so that Aeolith didn't need to come down and we set the books on a table that was set up for reading. There were a good number of books, which was both good and bad in that it meant we had a lot of information to go through, but that it was likely to take a while.

"Vokin, why don't you go look up some fighter information to see if there is anything that might benefit you personally, Tristan go look up light magic since we know that shadows are weak against it. Aeolith, go ahead and see if you can read through the books on dragons to find anything you can use."

Everyone agreed and Vokin and Tristan went off to find other books. I pulled out a chair and sat down to begin going through the piles of books we had. I picked up a book and began to read through the table of contents on what information was contained inside. Then I flipped through to see if anything could help. The information was really interesting, and frankly answered some questions that I had about being a Dragonrider, but it was almost all practical application or information that someone would want to know if they became a Dragonrider. Moving on I began to pick up other books one at a time and flipped through the pages. I learned more and more about things related to starting out as a Dragonrider, or what it meant to join the elite members, but book after book was more informative than it was at giving me some actual usable information or clues about what to look for next.

I pulled out the books on the History of the Dragonriders to see what they held. I found out that the riders formed a group they called the guild and every Dragonrider was automatically accepted into the guild by obtaining the class. There were many different famous riders that did things for the guild and made it what it was before it fell to the Shadow Beasts. I got up and went back to the librarian's desk at the entrance to see if they had anything to take notes with. There were a few pieces of parchment with a will and inkpot, but the inkpots were all dried out. I took them with me anyways and went back to the table with the books. I took out one of my waterskins and put a small amount of water into the inkpot to see if I could revive the ink. It seemed to work as I took the quill and mixed the water into the dried ink and watched it slowly come back to life.

I had to write a few trial words on the first piece of parchment to get the ink to the right consistency to write properly and then move to the next piece of parchment before the ink was working the way I felt it should. I also noticed that writing with a quill was not as easy as it seemed. Too much ink and it would drip on the page leaving drops over the words you were trying to write, too little ink and it wouldn't write more than a part of a letter. More experimenting with how to write it and I was finally getting the hang of using the new writing tool. What I wouldn't give to have a ballpoint pen right now. With that figured out I moved to the third piece of parchment and began to write down some of the names of the better-known Dragonriders so I could look up more info on what they accomplished to see if there was more information on how they did it. One rider stood out to me though even more than the others. He was a rider that had almost legendary feats tied to his name. His name was Andomir, and he was best known as the first Dragonrider on Hogarth. I circled his name to show I really wanted to look up more information on him. He seemed to have nearly legendary powers until the other Dragonriders were created. He began to drift out of legend when that happened until he was killed in a fight against an army of monsters late in his life.

A few other riders were of note as well such as Drogarth the Stout, who fought off an entire army of undead to allow his companions who were injured in the fight to escape. Another was Jim the Sneaky who was apparently some kind of rogue but was a giant of a man so no one really knew how he got his ability to not be seen. Brandon the Mage was a power spellcaster who helped to create many of the things we saw on Cathar that were still running to this day as well as was able to repel his enemies with powerful magic.

I wrote down a few more names, but these seemed like promising starts. I grabbed the crystal and thought about Andomir and felt the pull. I followed the direction the crystal pulled and moved to a shelf in a smaller section of Dragonrider history. There were several books here on the deeds and adventures of Andomir. I found a single larger volume that seemed to cover more of his life as a whole. After getting these books I moved back to the table, set the books down, and sat down to begin doing some heavier reading.