Not a bit had happened in the last seasons. While Marissa was surprised, and outraged, by my ascension to a four-star spellcaster, she was far from depressed by it. The fire inside her burned even hotter, and in a matter of weeks (more like a month), she was able to also spellcast a four-star spell. Aero Wall, for the interested. A simple air defensive spell in the shape of well… a wall.
Beyond that, the classes were bland. Thanks to my time in the library, I was far more advanced than what they taught us in fifth year. If one ignored that I already had an unfair advantage. I was disenchanted with my education, but I didn’t want to abandon Marissa. She may be energetic, but she isn’t exactly sociable. Neither she nor I had made any friends at school.
When Scorch had begun, I felt liberated. Homework wasn’t suffocating me; it was the fact that I had now more free time. More time to meditate, more time to read, and of course, more time to practice magic.
As I told myself some months ago during mid-Frost, I was before the Open Archives of Ferilyn. Contrary to what the name may imply, the Open Archives weren’t of public access. It was more of the ‘open to whoever pays’ kind of library.
The Open Archives were located in the Shal’mar district, a neighboring district of Thal’mer. The Archives themselves were moderately close to the Thal’mer border.
Father had come the day before and subscribed me to the monthly pass for the library. I didn’t know what type of capitalistic shenanigans they had over here, but there even was a VIP pass to access limited content. But the Ferilyn Meritocracy also served to its name as it allowed free access to soldiers, veterans, and any mage beyond the seventh star.
Why the seventh though? I asked my father. He responded “While every ellari has a minimum of magical training, not a lot of people make the step toward the seventh tier.” So basically, they were limiting access to education for the poor and uncultured people. A part of me cringed at this.
And although seven stars didn’t seem as far-fetched as I already reached the four-star milestone, one had to remember that my own father wasn’t even at that point. He didn’t need it for his profession, but I feared this decision was more influenced by ellari culture and common sense.
The building which composed the Open Archives was enormous, the biggest one I have seen without counting the High Arcanist’s tower at the center of the city. The façade shared the common ellari decoration style, blooming with colored vines and tapestry. The windows were also colored, giving the archives a friendly and lifeful aesthetic.
Without any more delay, I entered the Open Archives of Ferilyn. Once I crossed the doorway, I felt I had entered another dimension as the building seemed even larger from the inside.
“Hello, little one. Can I see your identification?” A woman at the reception desk told me.
“Here.” I handed her the library pass.
“Edrie Nightfallen, is it?” I nodded at her question. “Everything is in order, Master Nightfallen. You are free to access the library's contents.” She pointed with her hand wide open to the endless reservoir of knowledge before me.
You could see five stories through the open hall at the center of the library, though I knew there were more than that. As expected from a semi-private library, the place was well-maintained and overly decorated, following ellari tradition.
There were uncountable rows of shelves, let alone books. Hundreds of tables and thousands of lamps to help the reader’s experience. Even with the plentiful signs, I felt I could get lost at any moment.
But what really caught my eye was the aforementioned center of the hall. Sunlight pierced the place as it came from the skylight dome at the top. They weren’t satisfied with common glass though. The colors of the rainbow decorated the place as the stained glass lent the sunlight its color. Instead of boring rectangular shelves, the nexus was also populated by round ones, making it a maelstrom of books.
When you are as long-lived as the ellari, you get a certain appreciation for art and architecture. And they wanted to show it every instant it was physically possible, and beyond.
While I could stand here bathing in the architecture and display of the beauty of the place, my endless thirst for knowledge got me back to my senses. I came here to read, so I would do so.
I didn’t even try searching for grimoires containing five-star spells, as I was unable to even spellcast high four-star ones at the moment. But it would be still interesting to search for magical guides and help books, nonetheless.
A normal library would have a shelf or a corridor, perhaps even a wing, for a concrete subject, this one had a whole story dedicated to magical guidance. Only to magical guidance, not counting other properties of magic or spellbook collections.
Every person that I found was either elderly or adult students that had bags under their eyes. Something felt familiar about them. While there were people that could be considered children I was, without a doubt, the youngest ellari in the place. I pushed my hands against my cheeks to check something. Yes, definitely the youngest one. I was the only one who had a spherical head instead of an ovaloid one.
I grabbed a book that looked suited for my needs which was titled “Basic Spell Frameworks”. I sat at the nearest table, and I started my reading session. The book was relatively short at about a hundred pages. Something you could read in one noon clearly meant to be used as introductory material.
Time passed slowly as I had to concentrate to be able to understand the adult ellari language. I still didn’t know why there were two writing systems for children and adults. The contents of the book weren’t particularly challenging, but the vocabulary grinded my gears. I started to think I was studying Language and not magical theory.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
There was a sizable amount of people, yet the number of books dwarfed them. From time to time, I was hypnotized by the bystanders who had a clear destiny and didn’t even bother to look at the mystical sight.
Not a lot of time was needed to finish the book, so I left it where I found it, and pick another called “About the Complexity Classification of Spellcasting – The Starry Tier”. One, the title was needlessly long. And two, the book was as long as the title. Probably around the five-hundred-page mark. I didn’t even care about the position of the sun and started reading.
****
The second day of the first week of Scorch, or the two-hundredth second day of the year. Yesterday I arrived home at nighttime. While my parents were pissed, they weren’t even phased by it. It seemed they expected this to happen.
They scolded me saying that I could spend all day in the library, but I should be home before sunset. It was completely understandable as for them I was still a child. I wished I was older so I could truly be there all-day reading.
The moment I woke up I was already eating breakfast and after it, I went to the Open Archives of Ferilyn. I was surprised to find people this early in the morning, but then I discovered that the library never closed its doors. Which was more of a worrying prospect as there were people that literally stood there all night.
Books are good and everything, but sleep is still better. Change my mind.
Well, knowledge is better. There’s nothing sexier than unadulterated knowledge. It just so happens books are a convoluted way to find this knowledge, dressed in heavy and austere Frost clothing.
I hadn’t finished the book of the absurdly long name which title I didn’t remember, but as I could recall the place it was a matter of time before I found it and could continue reading. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on the case, I wasn’t able to bring books home. It wasn’t because I was a child, or my parents had forbidden it, but because it was an exclusive feature of the premium pass. I could hold my sigh at this finding.
The book numbered all the reasons why the Starry Tier worked how it did. I was surprised to actually find a lot of well-documented reasons for why it was this way. The most thoughtful tiers were the three first ones, as they were the foundation levels, and the three last, but that’s because they were predominately theoretical.
The first star was the well-known unstructured magic, and the twelfth the so-called ‘divine magic’, only achievable to godly beings. This was the first time I heard someone referring to the twelfth star that way, it was normally described as ‘I will never spellcast or see anyone do it’.
It was also brow-raising how the book commented most High Arcanists reached the twelfth star in their rule, but at least to my knowledge, the ellari didn’t worship them as gods.
Maybe it was more like a ‘you are like a god’ scenario than ‘you are a god’.
I was more interested in the fourth and fifth stars and what changes there were between them. The framework of spells got their difficulty raised tenfold by each tier, and I was intrigued why that happened.
Short answer (the one that doesn’t require twenty pages of explanation) is the addition of glyphs to the spell. Glyphs are a magical type of scripture that works like a calculator, managing simple tasks in spellcasting. The thing about them is that you have to set them on first.
More advanced spells that require stronger supervision due to their intrinsic complexity or their instability use more glyphs. And more glyphs mean more difficulty to the conjurer, which is what is valued in the Starry Tier.
After some hours of study, I found myself hungry, so I went to the open-air restroom at the library to eat the sandwich my mother had prepared for me.
Restroom was a wrong word, the place was a floral garden overflowed with parterres, vines, and flower hanging pots. A fountain of a very suggestive ellari woman could be found at the side, embedded in a wall, available for anyone who was thirsty.
The sight was breathtaking, enough so that I spent a few minutes admiring the place (the garden, not the sculpture, you weirdo) before unwrapping my sandwich. Weirdly, the place was devoid of insects or any kind of fauna. Kind of ominous being surrounded by such an amount of flora and not listening to the whispers of the critters like in Thal’mer park.
The sandwich was composed of strawberry jam and cucumbers. It tastes good, I swear. I finished my food as soon as I had opened my lunch box, yet I remained still as the eerie silence of the garden soothed me, I could feel myself growing roots at the bench I was sitting on.
How strange that I lived in a world of magic, myself being reincarnated into a fantastical race like elves, and yet this may be the most mystical moment I had for over a decade. Well, that time Marissa learned to spellcast Slow Fall was kind of magical.
I could sense my heartbeat slowing down as I bathed in the sunlight, warm rays caressing my skin. I had to watch out to not fell asleep while I sat. As I couldn’t control my multitasker spirit, I took advantage of the moment and meditated until I felt like moving again.
The books I had been reading were too complicated to do pseudo-meditation as I had done with the ones at the school library. So, I was compensating for the meditation time lost.
“Ah, this could become a routine.” Even my voice was so tranquil that I couldn’t almost hear it.
“What could become a routine?” A voice said at my side.
I jumped so hard out of the bench that I had enough airtime to spellcast Slow Fall before I got anywhere close to the ground.
“Wow, that’s a good jump. Have you been practicing, Edrie?” I sighed as the man talked to me.
“No, professor Accord. But you have accelerated my heartbeat fivefold.”
“Sorry about that. I felt like giving you a surprise.” He explained. “Also, no need of calling me professor here. I am just another soul ready to dive into the reservoir of knowledge that is this place.”
“Same here.” I said as my heartbeat returned to normal levels.
“But I am surprised of seeing you here. It’s a small world, huh.” Accord didn’t look at me, he took pleasure in the garden’s sight. I did the same. “I have come for decades to this library, and you may be the youngest person I saw that wasn’t forced by their parents, and also my first student, at that.”
“That’s funny,” I told him, “I had to beg my father to buy me a pass for the library.”
“Ah, it can be expensive for some people, but I find this library mandatory for any seeker of knowledge.” He couldn’t be more right. “Still, isn’t your home a bit too far from here? I am surprised your parents even let you come alone.”
“That was actually most of the begging.” I explained to him. “I was too bored with the simple and childish books from the school’s library.”
“I understand your struggle. I have presented multiple times requests to improve the quality of our library, but they have been denied every single time. Maybe if you wrote a complaint, you could convince the headmaster to at least put a new coat of paint.”
“Hmm. Maybe I could.” A problem was unresolved though. “But why do you want to do it when not a lot of children go there?”
“That’s the point the headmaster issued against all the time.” Accord sighed. “And every time I tell him that’s the main issue. If we had a better library, more children would come to read. Not even new books are needed, it would be nice, but a redecoration is mandatory.”
I was surprised Algor wanted to talk about something of this magnitude with a child, but then again, I haven’t done anything childlike for a long time. I only tried to not overstep my boundaries and attract unwanted attention.
The conversation died out as I had nothing more to comment on. We decided to talk about this further when school restarted at the beginning of the Decay season.
“Well, it was a pleasure meeting you here, Edrie Nightfallen.” He offered his hand.
“The pleasure was mine, Algor Accord.” I shook his hand as we went on different paths.