Jeb began work on the Ritual the next morning. By the end of his conversation with the Dean, the two of them had agreed that Jeb should see how far he could get before asking for help. Flipping to the page with the step notation, Jeb let out a sigh.
Dean Aquam had mentioned that each Ritual Marker used a different notation, even if they tended to follow similar patterns. Unfortunately for Jeb, it seemed like whoever had written this tome had chosen a notation that was almost completely different than the notation style that the Dean had taught him. He flipped through the pages, hoping that there might be a key to the movements somewhere later in the book. When he got to the end of the section with notated dances, that small hope died.
What else could I try? Jeb thought, not wanting to admit defeat so early. Some of the Rituals the author had notated sounded familiar, and Jeb felt like he had seen them in a different tome. Hoping that his memory was correct, Jeb ran to the Stacks and found Margaret. After he explained what he was looking for, she nodded and set off.
Jeb went to his desk in the Stacks and copied the Bound Calling notation onto a sheet of paper. By the time that he had finished, Margaret had returned with a pile of books. She set them on Jeb’s desk and vanished back into the Stacks. Jeb looked at the stack of books.
It was at least fifteen tomes of different shapes and sizes. Most were rectangular and covered in uncolored leather, but a few had ornate decorations on their spines. One was octagonal, for some reason, and another was nearly unbound, simply a pile of papers loosely tied together. Hoping that Margaret had arranged the books in some sort of an order, Jeb took the first book from the pile and started paging through it.
At first glance, it appeared to notate Rituals the same way that Dean Aquam had, which was a relief. Flipping through the book, however, Jeb could not find any Rituals which overlapped with the ones notated in his other tome. Setting it aside, he picked up the next book.
The second tome seemed to resist being opened. Jeb struggled with the cover for a few moments before laying his palm on the cover. Some instinct told him to flare a small amount of Mana, and he listened to it. The book seemed to release the tension that it had, and Jeb was able to open the cover.
He immediately closed the book. There was no chance that he was going to risk reading “Rituals of Domination and Power”, especially when it had been so difficult to open. As he set it aside, a part of Jeb had to wonder why Margaret had thought that book was a good idea. By the time he had finished reading through the third book, however, it had disappeared.
That probably isn’t a good sign, Jeb thought, noting its absence from the table. After confirming that it hadn’t slipped beneath one of the other books or fallen onto the floor, Jeb shrugged. If that book wanted to leave, Jeb certainly wasn’t going to try to stop it. With a frown, Jeb realized that he could not remember what the third tome had contained. He knew that he had taken notes, but the notes seemed to have disappeared as well.
He reached over to pick the tome up again, only to find that it too had vanished. Someone’s playing a joke on me, Jeb realized. Without knowing who or why, though, he could not think of a response other than to keep reading the books in front of him. Jeb shrugged and grabbed the next tome.
Quickly skimming through the titles of the Rituals within it, this tome appeared to be a complete copy of the first book Jeb had read. When he looked at the notation, however, he was completely lost. A small voice in Jeb’s head started saying that he was going to be in for a lot of translating work. He set the book aside and moved to the next.
Jeb had fallen into a rhythm while working. His stomach’s loud growl broke his focus, and he made his way over to the cafeteria. Looking around the room, Jeb realized that he had no idea what time it was. Whatever bells had tolled while he worked in the Stacks hadn’t been loud enough for him to notice them.
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The food selection was sometimes a clue, so Jeb made a quick circuit around the room. There were foods available that he associated with any time of day in the Academy’s cafeteria, which was more than a little strange. Looking at the tables, he did not see anyone he recognized, so Jeb shrugged, grabbed a bowl of food he considered lunch-like, and sat at an empty space. When his stomach stopped complaining, he drank some water and moved back to the Stacks to continue researching.
The pile of books had grown when he returned. Whether that was because the books had multiplied, or whether Margaret had brought more tomes that might be useful, Jeb was unsure. The new books seemed to be entirely below the first set, which lent credence to the idea that Margaret had brought them. In either case, though, Jeb cared more about translating the Ritual notation than figuring out who was giving him books.
The next book on the stack didn’t have any rituals notated at all, and so Jeb set it aside to be reshelved. Even after the break, his eyes were still struggling to focus on the pages. With an effort of will, he forced himself to read the next book on the pile. It was notated the way that the Dean had taught him, which was nice.
One of the Rituals had a familiar name, but Jeb could not place it. Paging through the other books, he found it in fourth tome. Apparently it isn’t a perfect copy of the first, he thought.
Moving to another, he found that it had its own unique notation for Rituals. At that point, his mind was foggy enough that he could not focus at all, so he went to his room to sleep. The next day, he resumed his searching, and Jeb fell into a routine: wake, read, eat, read, sleep. By the end of the stack, he was able to find a connection from the Ritual notation that the Dean used to the Ritual notation that the Bound Calling Ritual book used. It went through a dozen different notations, and Jeb was somewhat worried about the different information that each would keep or discard as irrelevant.
Looking at the books spread out on the desk, Jeb nodded and started taking notes again. He debated between starting with the notation that the Bound Object Ritual used or the notation he was familiar with, and ultimately decided to start with what he knew. At worst, he would be able to tell if his translation was completely unreasonable with what he knew about Rituals.
The first translation was easy enough. He wrote the Ritual down in both the Dean’s notation and the notation in the different tome. To Jeb’s relief, the two systems both found the same information relevant, though Jeb did note that there were extra marks in the new language. Playing through the Ritual in his head, Jeb was fairly certain that the extra marks represented breathing in and out.
With a page to transfer the notation to what he was familiar with, Jeb turned to the next notation style. The Ritual which transferred the two of them did not require any notation that he didn’t already know, so Jeb transferred them both to the Dean’s notation. The steps in the third Ritual seemed reasonable enough, though Jeb knew that he would not be able to test it himself. If he interpreted the notation correctly, the Ritual required seven dancers, which was a number he had not seen in any of the Rituals he had learned up to that point. Exactly what the number of dancers did to a Ritual, Jeb still did not know.
By the time that Jeb got to the fifth different notation style, he was having to translate from each notation to the next, rather than just going directly to what the Dean notated. When he finished translating the sixth, Jeb realized that his own style had diverged from the Dean’s somewhat substantially. As much as possible, Jeb had maintained all of the information that the other notation styles had. His style kept the breathing from the second format, and Jeb began to understand why each of the books seemed to have a completely different format. If he had diverged this much after just a few days, Jeb could not even imagine what his style would look like after years of work.
Jeb did his best to explicitly note the differences between the Dean’s style and his own. As he finished it, he realized that the Dean would probably be somewhat familiar with the different notation styles that different Ritual Makers used. He started to write down his own assumptions and best attempts at translating between each pair of notation styles. Along the way, he caught more than a few errors that he had propagated between the systems, and Jeb started revising his own translations.
Ignoring the rumbling in his stomach, he finally finished his draft of the translation guide. The Bound Object Ritual had such little information that Jeb knew he would not be able to reproduce it from the writing alone, at least given what he was able to translate. The one pertinent piece of information he was able to glean was that the Ritual required the dancer to put their Bound object in the center of the dance before teleporting for the first time. The book was frustratingly vague on what someone Bound to multiple things needed to do in order to teleport. After a quick meal and nap, Jeb brought his pile of papers to Dean Aquam’s office.