Dear Dairy, I miss organisation and even the alphabet.

I put another scroll away. This one is more of a work of fiction that talks about the different gods and compares the Egyptian ones to the Greek gods. It is interesting, but it had me wondering if people would be okay with it if they knew it was here. It kind of felt like heresy that people in this day and age still very much believed that the goods were real and something to be feared.

“Found anything fun?” I ask Kuro, who has been studying a scroll beside me.

“Hieroglyphs are weird.” He says. “Pictures with meaning leave so much open to interpretation.”

I grab the scroll and look at it. What he is saying is true. The text is readable, an account of King Khufu holding court. But it is weird, like the pictures themselves, their meaning is changed by their context instead of by adding letters to the end, as the English language does. I wonder if this is similar to some of the Asian languages or if that is built on a totally different system as well. Still, it is a lot better than not knowing what is going on. This translation power is a lot better than I give it credit for.

“That is strange,” I finally say.

“How about you?” Kuro asks, looking at my pile of scrolls.

“Some god stuff, some cultural customs, some historical stuff. Interesting, but not all that useful, especially since I am not sure how accurate any of those records were,” I say with a sigh as I look at the ceiling of this place.

“Well, I am bored. Are we going to be sure? We don't want to give the guards the slip and get out of here,” Kuro says while pointing at the guards who are sitting at a table next to us playing some game. I guess as long as I am sitting still studying, there is not much of an issue.

“I don’t think that it would be wise to do that. We would have to get out of the city, and there is no guarantee that the attacking forces would treat us any better than the ones in here.” I say, scanning the shelves for anything interesting. For some reason, organisations have not been invented yet, so it is kind of a mess.

“We could also use the abacus to get out of here”, Kuro says, giving me big kitty eyes.

“Sure, but the thing is not even charged. We will have to wait about two more days,” I say with a frown as I pet the cat.

“What if you had this,” Kuro says while dropping some contraption out of his shadow.

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“What is it?” I ask a bit confused.

“On the alliance ship, this was connected to the abacus of the other traveller to keep it charged.” He says.

“Keep it charged. I think I heard that before, but why would anyone bother doing something like that?” I ask, confused.

“There are many stories, and I don’t know which one is true. Some say that a fully charged abacus is like a shield stopping anyone from being able to teleport in the vicinity. Others suggest that an abacus slowly loses its power when not in contact with a Traveller.”

“I see that at least makes some amount of sense, I guess. But one part I am still a bit vague on is why nobody just used the abacus to become a Traveller themself?” I say more about just wondering out loud than actually asking a question.

“You don’t know only Travellers can use the abacus.” Kuro says, “Did they teach you nothing when you were trained.”

“As I said before, I was not trained. Someone just gave it to me and told me to protect it”

“Then what about all your superhuman feats?” Kuro asks, narrowing his eyes.

“I don’t know. I noticed my memory was better since I got the plate, and so was my strength and stamina, but besides that, I mostly learned magic after I already got it.”

“That is interesting, so it is less training but something else that allows the travellers to interact with it.”

I frowned, and I started to think about it. “What if the amulet is intelligent?” I finally say.

“What do you mean,” Kuro asks, confused.

“Well, the man told me to protect it. And since then, the amulet has given me both the strength to do so but also the intelligence to learn and improve on my strength.”

“That explains your powers but not why you can use it.”

“No, it does; when I was about to be captured, I used it, and the plate took me not only to a safe place but a place where I could grow stronger. First weapon creation, then survival skills, magic, and now this library, all to make me stronger so that I could better protect it.”

“Then what about the spaceship?” Kuro asks.

“I am not sure maybe what they thought had some merits, and my plate reacted to the other one. Or maybe it knew somehow beforehand that you would come with me if I was sent there. Either way, I did gain some stuff there,” I say, giving the cat a significant look.

“I guess that makes sense, but I don’t see how this library is of any use,” Kuro says

“That I am not sure about either. Maybe it is its way of telling us to prepare. We are back on earth now. Maybe our next location is home,” I say with some hope.

“I guess that makes just as much sense as your theory of it being intelligent,” Kuro says with a frown.

“It is a start, I guess,” I say with a sigh as I pick up the metal contraption that Kuro had dropped.

“Will you use it?” Kuro asks, curious.

“Can’t hurt to try, right,” I say with a shrug.

I take the plate out of my shirt and align it with the port on the machine. As soon as I plug it in, it releases a whirling noise as fans start to spin, and the entire device starts to glow blue. Then it suddenly turns green, and the noise coming from it only grows louder.

Then it turns red, and it explodes, creating a fireball on the table, and metal shrapnel goes everywhere. I quickly take control of the flames and smother them before they can do serious damage.

“So it can hurt to try”, Kuro says as he comes closer again.

I examined my amulet, but it was completely fine, with not a single scratch on it. “I guess so. Got to be more careful next time.”

I take another look at the amulet. It is not even charged, so all that builds up for nothing. And as some of the guards break out of their stupor, they look to us for an explanation. This is going to take a while.