Our first stop also happened to be the one I had been most looking forward to, the library.
The initial sight was…disappointing. Where I expected to see Vatican archive-esque miles and miles of books, instead, I saw an expanse of the nearly endless marbled stone floor before us, broken by moving walkways leading into the far distance where dark shadow hid beneath the artificial sun above. Diamond supports arched above us, meeting in the center above the artificial sun. The space between them was painted black, embedded with shining jewels connected by silver paint in the shape of constellations. I could only make out the three closest, the ones directly above and on either side of the directions around us. Logically, this meant there were twelve subsections.
Nine walkways carved paths through the marble floor, and our guides stepped carefully onto the center strip as the Agarthian crowd from the train dispersed among them. Cove and I followed slowly behind, our necks craned and our footsteps faltering as we inspected the great hall around us.
Taking a gamble, I garnered Persephoenix’s attention in homes of some answers and asked, “Do each of the twelve sections have a train station?”
Persephonix’s green eyes showed a brief surprise before being shackled away behind a neutral gaze. “Yes. Each of the six tiers and six terraces of the inner Agartha are connected to the others in twelve equally spaced sections, akin to a manual clock. ”
Six tiers and six terraces, huh? There the number twelve was again. “Is there any particular meaning behind the setup?”
“Yes,” she answered, with the most amusement I’d seen on her since we’d met her. “It will be explained further when we reach the inner sections of the library,” she said, turning away once again.
Cove inched back until he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me and rolled his eyes after ensuring our guides weren’t paying attention. I gave him a tiny nod of agreement, and we stood in mutual understanding for minutes as we flew through the library, the distant stone walls never appearing to get any closer.
Finally, shadows I had assumed were walls that grew closer, enough for me to make out individual stone pillars. Some were short, perhaps half my height; others stood tall, stretching above even Ninelithe’s height. They separated into spirals on either side of us, each spiral beneath its own section.
“This is the main area of our library,” Persephoenix said, drawing Cove and I’s attention back to her. She leaned casually against the rails of the moving walkway as she spoke, her voice carrying far in the empty dome. “Those stones you see before you detail our history, as told from the beginning of the last Great Cycle, nearly 144,000 years ago.”
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If I’d been walking, I would have stumbled in shock. The oldest known form of writing, the Sumerian cuneiform, was around 5,000 years old. Even the oldest cave paintings dated to date were at most 40,000 years. Before our eyes lay 144,000 years of history….I wanted to know all of it.
She paused, letting the fact sink in. “As you might have guessed, there are twelve divisions, each represented by a constellation in the night sky. Each of the twelve divisions is half a Precession of the Equinox and contains the equivalent of around 12,000 years of our history, recorded in spirals connected in pairs to represent the Precessions.
“At the very center of our grand library is a theatre used for historical performances and reenactments. Unfortunately,” she didn’t sound as if she thought it unfortunate, “no such performance will be taking place today. Instead, we will briefly tour the first Procession.”
Any lingering disappointment from her first statement was wiped away by the second.
The stones grew closer still, highlighting a difference between the ones on our left and some of the others. On our left, the stones were weathered down by the elements and were cut from simple rock. As the records circled around the state, they grew more uniform in size, and the quality increased, peaking in the diamonds standing tall on our right.
The moving walkway ended in a huge walkway that surrounded the stadium, splitting off into each Procession. We took a left, using a path to cut through the closest spiral to another moving walkway that spiraled from the center without railings so people could move as they pleased.
Flickering spheres of light danced in the air, causing the pictures engraved on the stones to flicker and shift before our eyes like a movie projected by the light of the floating spheres.
We cut through the center, catching glimpses of the first 24,000 years of history. It was difficult to say how long we spent down there, absorbed in the unique method, message, and circumstances of the storytelling, all but completely forgetting our aches, exhaustion, and pain from the hike.
Whether it was by coincidence or, more likely, design, the pieces we glimpsed at didn’t contain details we hadn’t guessed for ourselves. We saw the tumultuous warfare between human tribes, their development, and recession as the earth slowly cooled, resulting in a glacial era of mass extinction in the African population near the end of the procession. I’d encountered mentions of this decline in population briefly, remembering it as a long glacial event they called ‘Marine Isotope Stage 6.’
Any mention of the Agarthians or other races was conspicuously absent from the areas we walked through, giving us no further insight on that end.