Chapter 18: Learning the old ways

I woke up to loud noises by my door. Stretching and grimacing, still with my eyes half-closed, I woke up from the bed and opened it.

“The Drak’oora have granted you access to the Compendium.” I blinked a few times until I processed the message that woman was telling me; my sleepy mind was still hazy. “I have brought you some pants-” I could see how her eyes examined my lower half and her eyebrow raised.

“S-Sorry!” I quickly said as soon as I realized what was happening. My rags were smelly, and they irritated my skin, so I had grown used to taking them off to sleep.

My hands moved in a flash, trying to cover my exposed private parts, but the harm was already done; I’m sure I was red from the embarrassment. I could barely look at her feet, too self-conscious to raise my sight, but her giggling still reached me. I saw her turning away, and I hurriedly closed the door, afraid someone else would see me. It was a weird feeling I had never felt before, the image of that woman’s breasts came to mind, and I felt my body burn.

I didn’t know what to do with those feelings; they were frightening, threatening to take the best of me. I concentrated on the cold on my feet’s sole and let it invade me, calming by agitated breathing. Somewhat more composed, I put on my old pair of pants and opened the door again, hastily pulling over the clothes she had brought me and closing right behind; everything was done in less than five seconds, yet I still feared she was spying on me from a corner.

I was about to put on a new pair of pants when I got enlightened; I have to wash first! After waiting for the bulge on my pants to subside, I took the trousers, and I followed Spare’s instructions to find the residence’s baths. They were a group of four pools placed in a vast squared room, steaming with hot water and filling the air with steam. There was nothing I desired more than diving in one of those, but something stopped me in my tracks. Everyone, no matter where I looked, was completely nude, man and woman alike.

They didn’t seem to care about their exposed skin; everyone minded their own business. Some of them even talked in reduced parties; standing at a distance I would definitely not be comfortable with. Sighing and knowing I didn’t have any other option, I walked towards the closest mass of water. My eyes were fixated on the floor, barely seeing a few steps in front of me. I still was wearing my burlap sack, and I didn’t intend to take it out until I was about to enter; hell, I would leave them on if I could.

I managed to secure a spot far away from everyone else, quickly sliding into the water, trusting the clouds of white steam coming off from its surface would be enough to hide me. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the hot water; it was a cleansing experience.

I was still in the middle of my relaxation session when I heard splashes of water near me. I opened one eye, and after a second of adapting to the light I saw a man struggling to make his way to me. He was moving his hands like he wanted to set aside the water in his path, breathing with great efforts as his steps barely managed to move him.

“You must be our newest member!” His cheerful voice didn’t match his appearance. He was one of those people you would say are permanently angry just by their faces’ look. His eyebrow seemed stuck in a permanent frown, and even his lips were usually pressed together.

I brought my index to my left shoulder, doing a partial greeting. I’d have bowed if it wouldn’t mean submerging my head in the water. “That’s right, I’m Tarar.” I put on my best smile, trying not to show I was bothered by the interruption.

“I knew it!” He exclaimed, splattering water all over as his punch raised to the air. “I knew you were under the judgment of light!”

“You knew it?” I asked, dumbfounded by his statement. I studied his face, trying to discern his age, estimating it to be anywhere from thirty to fifty years; his perpetual scowl created wrinkles that made him look old.

“When someone’s under trial, the towers’ highlights are different!” He exclaimed with excitement, too much enthusiasm for the place and time. “Tell me all about it! Tell me!” I squinted my eyes, unsure if it was some kind of joke. “Tell me! Come on!”

I was opening my mouth to answer him, actually intending to explain the judgment, but before a word could leave it, he spoke again. “Oh! I’m Makka! I was initiated a few months ago, so you’ll see me a lot in the Compendium. Have you gone there already?”

He sure loves talking! I thought, put off by his relentless speech. I tiredly smile before answering his questions. No, I haven’t. Terrifying. Of course, I didn’t actually say so; I put on an excellent show and responded as nicely as I could. He was constantly nodding and muttering uh-huh while I spoke. As a first impression, it was unquestionably overwhelming, although I was glad someone came to talk with me.

At last, when I finished, he got up to leave. He stood right next to me, which made me promptly look away, triggering a hearty laugh on him.

“Ha! We all have one of these! And Drak’ga aren’t shy about their sexua-” he made a meaningful pause and scanned me, “-you know what? You’ll discover it yourself!”

I knew what he was referring to, I might have been a kid at that time, but I took pride in being a well-versed kid. Still, having some knowledge about something doesn’t make the topic any more comforting. I tried to smile back, but I bet it didn’t look any better than a forced gesture. He waived, still laughing like a madman, and went out of my sight.

After all those experiences, I wasn’t sure I would be able to study anything at all. My mind was aimlessly wandering around those memories; anything that had to do with Ink was suddenly erased.

Spare, why do I have to learn? I asked, trying to find a way to avoid the inevitable. Don’t I already have all the knowledge inside? The question was honest, though; I had inherited the Drak’ga memories.

“Right now, you can barely remember things I point out, and I won’t be doing that forever,” Spare pointed out. I had to give it to him, that was true; I didn’t know how long it would take until I could remember them by myself. “And then, you must also take into account that you have one particular chain of knowledge; one made of only what my ancestors and I have learned. You have the duty to expand the chain, so...” He prolonged the duration of that final o, taking too much time to mean anything good, “get all those dirty ideas out of your mind and focus!”

I blasted some air through my mouth and made my way towards the Compendium. I had had enough time to retrieve those memories, and I knew it was some sort of school and books warehouse. You could take any volume from its shelves and, as long as you didn’t take it out from the building or damaged it, you could do virtually anything with it. It was also part school because there were several professors, experienced and older Drak’ga really, who you could ask doubts.

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The building’s exterior was nothing of the other world. It was bigger than all its neighboring houses, but other than that, it was plain, with no architectural feats nor shows of light. The interior, however, was something else. Ladders of varying heights were resting on ridiculously long racks, allowing the occasional reckless explorer to find hidden tomes where no one else had looked before.

Finding an unread book, as in a book that was unadulterated by someone else’s eyes, was impossible; someone would have taken it at one point or another. Of course, the chances that the reader was dead and his inheritance lost were also non-negligible. I couldn’t help but think how inefficient their system was, they didn’t know who knew what, and once it was lost, there was no way to pass it to someone else.

I walked around the shelves without a set target, mesmerized by the sheer amount of paper. Is there anything I should read? I asked Spare, trusting he would know what suited me best.

“I wouldn’t read anything about formations until you have finished Ink Formations; anything else would be fine.” And his answer was as helpless as telling someone to find a grain of sand in the desert.

I kept walking, occasionally staring at a few striking spines but ultimately discarding them. I wasn’t interested in political history, at least not yet. Neither did I particularly enjoy fantasy novels; I was there to learn valuable things. I had ignored my fifth book when something caught my sight. Right in the middle of the rack’s upper half, I saw a worn-out spine, not of usage, but clearly of old age. It wasn’t particularly thick; I estimated it would be around 200 pages at most.

Decidedly climbing, with the intention to keep it even if it wasn’t a book about dead languages, I went up a ladder and grabbed the book, eager to read its name. Its spine was adorned with three glyphs. The first read way, route, path, the second was knowledge, truth, insight, and finally, there was Ink. I couldn’t help but find the name unexpectedly similar to The way of the Ink.

A quick whip through the pages—the paper crushing under the pressure of my fingers, releasing dust in the process—settled it was entirely written in glyphs I mostly didn’t recognize. I would have to treat it with utmost care if I didn’t want to pulverize it in the process.

Spare helped me locate one manual to read those glyphs. There was a system behind those piles of books, one that would quicken your searches if you knew what you were doing. In time, it would naturally come to me. Apparently, Spare only knew that our current system evolved from that of the book. Neither he nor his ancestors were particularly interested in learning them, which was justified seeing the effort it took to make sense of the characters. They maintained the same essence, a root, and several declinations, but unlike their modern descendants, the strokes were always round, refined, and, dare I say, wild. My textbook said that they fell into disuse mainly because they were impractical; they required to concentrate on the stroke and usually distracted the Inker from the bigger picture.

I completely lost track of time, forgetting about eating and sleeping. I would lie if I said I didn’t try drawing them. It started as a mere curiosity; I wanted to know if the end result would be any different. It wasn’t, the drawings ended up with the same properties. Yet, the process felt completely different; I was again out of my body, using the Ink to guide my hand, feeling the fury in its curves, the agony when I briefly stopped, the excitement when it ended a derivation; it wasn’t the Ink transmitting them, it was both of us feeling them at the same time; we were one.

I tried to find more information on those glyphs, about their past usages and the decision to replace them, but I found none. Everything revolved around reading and drawing them. And absolutely always, they came with the same warning; our newer scripture was better in every way.

Spare didn’t recall having ever felt that way, which made me more confident about the theory I had quickly thrown together. Someone had purposely hidden the old way of writing. But, how does one hide information when everything is perpetuated across multiple lives? My answer was simple, you lie, spread false information, and if anyone ever finds out, you just have to kill him.

I set the idea aside in the corner of my mind; it was not something I could solve then. My efforts focused on parsing the new book, which I affectionately called The way to the old Ink, as a gimmick to the other book. Reading glyphs was a hard job by itself, not to say old ones.

[only, unique, few] [draw, hand, person] [feel, sense, thought] [true, sight, deep] [She, Ink, Her] [million]

Is it me, I said to Spare, or does it say that only one out of a million can feel the true Ink? There was a bit of interpretation and some pieces that I could not tie together, but there was no other way around it. Spare, sunk in thought, barely answered with a hum.

I was set on thoroughly reading the first chapter, but a familiar voice broke my concentration. “If it isn’t Spare!” I turned, quickly locating Makka running to my side. For a moment, I wondered if he was allowed to run here, but then I remembered his endless well of energy and desisted on worrying; even if it wasn’t, he would run.

“What are you do-” his eyes opened as oranges, “come!” his voice had become an urgent whisper, and his face demonstrated it could frown beyond its natural state.

I didn’t know what was going on, but I picked my books and followed him nonetheless. We deepened inside the building, passing through several reading areas and walking with feigned calm until stopping in a poorly lightened section.

“What are you doing with that!” He was pointing towards The way of the old Ink.

“I just found it on a shelf; it caught my attention,” I said, shrugging in the process. “Spare-I mean, my teacher, helped me find a book to translate it.” I waited for him to say something, but seeing that he was in shock, I gently pushed his side while I asked. “What is it!?”

“That,” he said after a few more seconds of trance, still pointing to the book, “should have never been outside.” I wanted to ask what exactly was outside, but I refrained, waiting for him to finish. “It’s forbidden knowledge; many have gone mad reading its contents. Has anybody else seen you with it?”

His heartfelt worry made me shiver, fearing for a moment someone had seen me. I shook my head without much conviction. “I don’t think so… but I would have been too focused to notice…”

“Hide it. Don’t ever talk about it to anyone. You, me, we have never seen it. Understood?” I nodded. “If they find out…” I didn’t need him to finish to know what would happen, “they would silence you.”

“Thank you, I owe you one,” I said with my eyes firmly locked on his.

“Wait a bit, don’t come out right after me.” He slowly closed his eyes, nodding once while sighing just before setting off.

I probably should have stored it away, forget about everything and live a peaceful life, but that wasn’t my style. Whenever something caught my eye, I wouldn’t let go of it so quickly. Bending Makka’s words, I did wait a while until coming out. Actually, my stomach roared, and my eyes felt tired by the time I decided I had read enough for the day. I made sure to hide the book behind two rows of copies, right in the unpopulated section Makka had brought me to. Tomorrow I would come again, and I was set on unearthing the truth behind it.

The day should have ended after I tidied myself up and ate, but I didn’t want to break my routine. I took Ink Formations out and resumed my training. I was about to place my finger above the next formation when I had the best idea yet. Why couldn’t I draw the formation using old glyphs and learn that?

And that’s just what I did; my next few hours were spent perfecting a perfect copy of the page save for the glyphs, which I antiquated. The moment came; I had to touch it. I knew it was nothing spectacular, the description clearly stated it was a formation to alter shapes, yet I felt as excited as the first time I had drawn.

My finger touched the Ink-everything went blank. I was transported to the same white room I had stood when trying to learn the formation to save Spare’s mind.

“Tarar!” The ethereal voice called, no longer a far whisper but rather a shout coming from the boundaries of the room. “Tarar!” It repeated as glyphs danced around me.

I looked around, but I failed to see anything other than words. Disappearing to the mental state I had already learned to heart, I could feel as the characters rearranged in front of me. My hand moved, grabbing them as the Ink saw fit. As soon as I touched the last of them, the torrent of knowledge flooded me, making my conscience return to my body,

There is more to Ink than they are telling me.