It wasn’t enough. He needed more. So much was left unexplained. The walls and their engravings were the one thing that he had wanted to learn most about. He stared ahead, while the students in the auditorium waited for him to ask any questions that he might have.

Kanrel couldn’t help but let out a long sigh. He prepared himself for the awaiting disappointment; he knew that his questions would not receive the answers that he most wished for. If the books were unable to tell him what he wanted to know, then the students and even Gar were unlikely to know any further information.

Yet he asked anyway: “Tell me of the language that is written on the walls. What is it? Does anyone know how to read it?” He stared ahead at the seated Atheians, who listened to Y’Kraun’s translation of Kanrel’s question.

Silence was what was born out of it. The students would look at each other, some whispering to the person next to them, perhaps asking if they knew the answer. After a few minutes, as if at least one of them had reached the conclusion that Kanrel already knew, one brave Atheian got up from their seat and answered, “We don’t know... And I don’t think anyone knows. Perhaps not even those who wrote them in the first place…”

The Atheian remained on their feet for a few moments and observed Kanrel’s reaction; they only sat down when they saw Kanrel nod to himself. Another long sigh left Kanrel’s lips.

“Well, then I suppose this will remain a mystery none can answer.” He muttered words that were left untranslated by Y’Kraun, who seemed apologetic and patted Kanrel on the back.

“Then, what about the staircase or the Sharan that trapped you beneath the ground? Are there somewhere descriptions or anything akin to it, so that I might know what they looked like?” He then asked.

Quite quickly, an Atheian on the left got up from their seat and said, “I am certain that you could find engravings and other artwork littered around the city if you’d just look; you can probably pick a larger tower at random and enter it, then explore its walls, and somewhere there you’d find some sort of visualization of what these things might’ve looked like.”

"But... one can hardly claim these engravings to be accurate by any standard. Most of them were produced long after our arrival here. And besides, to our knowledge, you spend plenty of time in the City of Creation and the famous Spire. There you probably already saw such engravings.” The Atheian explained and promptly sat down when they were finished.

Kanrel nodded along; it was better than nothing, at least. He was about to ask his next question when Gar decided to speak. “Some of this information you’d be more likely to find among the records available at the Sanctuary... But the Universal Truth as an organization is unlikely to let just anyone browse through them, no matter how curious the individual might be.” He had a slight smile on his lips as he spoke, one that barely reached his eyes.

"But let us give our audience a chance to ask questions in return, shall we?” Gar suggested the moment he noticed a question that had found itself in Kanrel’s eyes.

He still had one more question that needed an answer... The “old relics,” what were they? How’d he gain entrance to the Sanctuary and the right to read through their records? He gritted his teeth and prepared to answer yet another barrage of questions.

An Atheian in the front got up and asked their question: “The reports mention that you, a priest in your respected organization, are like a mixture of a scholar, a magician, and, as the name suggests, a priest. Why is that? How do these fields that deal with such different things have become so interconnected?”

Kanrel produced a smile. “Before the founding of the Priesthood, it is difficult to say if these fields weren’t or were so connected as they are today. We didn’t know of magic back then... Or we did, but what we considered magic then is quite different from that which we know today.”

“But I would like to argue against the Atheian notion of segregation when it comes to these fields... Is there a reason why, in your mind, a priest can’t be a magician, a magician can’t be a scholar, and a scholar a priest?”

“Are you so enthralled by your own organization, your own faction, that it is difficult to accept that all of these three fields are in fact nothing more than fields of education? Is this confusion born out of dogma and this strange schism in education itself? Why can a branch of knowledge be claimed by an organization when it should be for all to study and observe as they will?”

“And besides, isn’t a magician a scholar of magic; a priest a scholar of his or her religion; and isn’t a scholar just someone who has great knowledge in their specific field of study? And can’t a priest be at the same time someone who has considerable knowledge of history, or perhaps language?” Kanrel asked; he stared directly at the Atheian, who had asked him this question. His eyes challenged this young student to argue back.

The young Atheian raised their hairless brows, perhaps surprised by the outburst of questions; even then they replied, “It is easy to observe a system from the outside and see its most obvious faults, but then one fails to see its advantages, as well as the underlying issues that are the cause of the issues that are so easy to see.”

“In a perfect world, I wouldn’t disagree with you and your observations, nor the questions that you’ve asked in turn. But you’ve failed to answer the first question that I had asked: ‘Why is that?’ Why has your organization become the de facto voice of the scholarly circles, as well as religion and magic?”

“Besides, you cannot claim that your Priesthood isn’t an usurper in the same regard as are the organizations and factions that are down here.” The young Atheian didn’t seem offended, yet his words were sharp, and each word made Kanrel then realize that he had tried to vent his own frustration onto someone, who he didn’t even know that he did so, and who didn’t even know the information that he so wanted to learn.

Kanrel took a deep breath. “I apologize; that was rather unfair of me.”

“I suppose one of the reasons they became the voice of the scholarly circles, as you put it, is because of necessity. Before the founding of the Priesthood, there was no large unified country for all humans; instead, there were multiple city-states and petty kingdoms that then found unity only when all of humanity faced potential extinction.”

Stolen story; please report.

“And to further unify these lands under the banner of the Kingdom of Lo’Gran, it was decided that this could be done well if most if not all information could be agreed upon. History collected by the priests then became something where we’d find unity. Morality, often taught through religion, would substitute previously worshipped gods as well as change what people thought of as right and wrong—good and evil. And magic, well, that probably was just a way to enforce it.” Kanrel suggested, “I am not certain, which is why I am throwing guesses more than anything else. But this could be one of the ways to look at it.”

The Atheian accepted Kanrel’s apology as well as his explanation; they then sat back down with a satisfied expression on their face.

Gar listened silently to the words of the two; his smile had finally reached his ocean-blue eyes. Another silence ruled the auditorium, one that was only broken by Gar: “We are done for today; you are all dismissed. We shall continue tomorrow at the same time as we did today.”

“Wait.” Kanrel stopped him in turn as the students began to get up from their seats. All motion stopped in the auditorium, and Gar looked at Kanrel with a surprised expression, “Yes?” He asked.

“There was a mention of ‘old relics.' I’d like to know what they are and from where they came from." Kanrel then asked.

Gar let out a long sigh. “I will answer this one: they are magical devices that were built long before the fall of the Empire, long before we were doomed beneath the ground. One could call them lost technology... They aren’t commonly found anymore, not here at least... And, if you would want to see some, you’d probably, again, have to somehow gain entrance into the Sanctuary.” He explained, “May my students leave now?” He asked and glanced at the Atheians, who had all stood up, and now stared at the Darshi, who had stopped them.

Kanrel just nodded, his mind already racing, an old memory returning. Above, they had found them as well but did not understand how to use them, what their purpose was, or what they even were. Yirn… He remembered Yirn and the eldritch monstrosity that he had become in his final moments.

They left the Grand Library for today, and Kanrel returned to his apartment after they had yet another meal at Y’Kraun’s new favorite restaurant. His only friend made steady progress in what seemed like a very slow and careful courtship. However, the target of this courtship might not even realize what Y’Kraun was trying to do. And Kanrel couldn’t help but wonder if this attempt, when it came to that pivotal moment, where Y’Kraun confessed his feelings for her, would U'Ran'Ui find it wanted in any way, or if it were just another bother, yet another customer that had fallen for her, a lowly waitress at a restaurant.

Kanrel wrote more notes at his apartment, connecting information that he had learned before to the new information that made some things clearer for him, but most questions for which he sought answers became more complicated, more veiled beneath layers of mystery that he didn’t seem to know how to pierce or unveil. He had thought that the Grand Library would be the place where he’d find all the answers to every question that he had, but then he was instead slowly directed to another place... The Sanctuary. Another center of education, this one solely dedicated to the arcane, to magic and its study. But would they allow entrance to a human, whose magic might be very different from their own? Would they risk allowing the eyes of an outsider to grace their most secret records? He wondered this as he went to bed. There was so much that he needed to learn; so much had been left unexplained.

The next few days they continued with matters related to the “descent” of the Atheians as well as the building of the City of Last Light. But no further information relating to the things he wanted to know was provided. But now he could say which parts of the city were built first, or when the Forum became the center of all Atheian power. And when the Council became known as the Council of Many Faces... all interesting information in their own way, but not what the most wanted to learn. Either way, he didn’t complain, and he made sure that he would not end up venting his frustration at the Atheian students, who really weren’t to blame for not knowing something that most didn’t seem to know.

They kept asking their questions about him and the world above. And in a way, they provided him the means to reflect on the great loss that it would be for him to remain trapped beneath the ground. It also made him realize how great of a loss it had been for the Atheians before him, those who had found themselves below, beneath the false sun and its cold, blue light... Just how devastated they had been to lose something so beautiful. The despair they had gone through; the unfair “justice” that the Sharan had forced upon them... But at the same time, the hope they had found and the fact that they had refused to give up—they had refused to let the Shadows past the walls swallow them and at last extinguish the final flames of the Atheian culture that now chose to prosper despite the follies and tragedies of their long history.

This too was beautiful, even if there were many things that he saw as unjust within the Atheian culture.

There was another thought that had entered his mind, this one in the form of a question: What does knowledge mean to the Atheians? And what does it mean to the Sharan or the humans?

In a way, the answer seemed quite obvious: they all saw knowledge as the same thing, i.e., information that had or had no value to a person given his or her interests. Knowledge was many things; among those things was power. And this notion seemed to be more prevalent within the Atheian culture in contrast to the Sharan and human cultures.

Kanrel saw knowledge and information in general to be more restricted within the Atheian culture. One had to be a part of a certain group of people to gain the knowledge they most desired. The Grand Library had a monopoly on certain categories of information, and the Universal Truth had its own monopoly on another category of information. In this case, the Grand Library had much of the scholarly information within their grasp, and they could deny and grant it to others as they saw fit, and the Universal Truth, indeed, held the category of magic in their own monopoly of knowledge. It seemed unfair for most, as well as unproductive for the development of their society. Locking and restricting information solely because it gave power over others would in the stifles advancement in certain fields. Of course, some fields of study would grow and advance either way, but how quickly things moved on could be severely slowed down just because someone decided to hold the knowledge that could push its advancement centuries forward all to themselves.

But, as was pointed out by one of the Atheian students, the Priesthood had a similar monopoly on information, it seemed. Of course, in the Kingdom of Lo’Gran, there were other places of education, academies, and universities, and not just the Academy of the Heavenly. But even then, there was so much information that you were not allowed access to unless you had taken the Ritual.

Should it change? He wondered. It did work, after all. Even this Atheian system, which he saw to be rigid and overtly hierarchical, worked. Was the human system of governance as well as how knowledge was distributed something that could be considered tyrannical? For if it weren’t, and it simply remained as “unfair,” then did it matter that it would remain as it were?

Of course, a tyrannical system that sought to oppress its people no matter what should fall. And even if the restriction of knowledge and information was a form of tyranny, most of such information wasn’t something that most would need. And even then they had the option of joining the Priesthood, like he had, to access the information they most desired.

All knowledge has a price, and one could gain all that knowledge with a simple payment of most if not all emotions that made life worth living.

What a foolish trade he had accepted. But one he now had to live with, until he’d find a way to return above and find an angel who could take this curse away; that would return him, which he now most wished for, what he most sought.