“This is the second biggest library I’ve ever seen in a private residence!” Addy says in awe. The cavernous room takes up the entire second and third floor of the West wing of the manor: The collection is large enough to be organized into various sections based on their content, at least of what Addy can tell.
“What is the biggest?” Dahlia asks, returning to the very same book she was reading before Kem’s surprising introduction.
“I’m not actually allowed to legally say!” Addy says with a smile, walking over to grab one of the books off the shelf beside Dahlia.
“Neat,” Dahlia says with a toothy grin.
The two turn their attention to the texts, spending the next few minutes flipping through book after book. Actually reading them in detail would be impossible, but a quick glance through the pages gives a good indication of what the book is about. To go through as much of this room as possible in a timely manner, merely looking for patterns or some kind of annotations is the best solution.
Not one to stay quiet for very long, Addy finally decides to speak up after the two finish an entire shelf, which seemed to be entirely dedicated to geography across the different continents of Vale. She looks over at Dahlia and asks, “Do you still think you’ll find some kind of new flora on this continent?”
Dahlia frowns, placing the books the two have already gone through in a pile off to the side for ease of organization. “I don’t know,” she admits. “But I want to see what makes this place prevent rot and decay. So I still want to go on the expedition.”
“Didn’t your parents send you to find stuff, though? Won’t they be mad?” Addy asks.
“No,” Dahlia answers, simply.
“Well, we still don’t know what kind of secrets this continent holds. We did bring along a botanist and a biologist for the expedition, initially,” Addy says as she moves to the next shelf, idly starting to go through the books.
Dahlia follows suit, taking a book off the lower shelf that she can reach. “Those were the people that died, right?” She asks.
“Yeah,” Addy says, her usually cheery demeanor darkening. “They were my colleagues. My friends. Good people who just wanted to learn about this new land.”
Dahlia reaches over and gently puts her hand on Addy’s back, patting her. “I am sorry. Death is natural, but loss still hurts,” she says, reassuringly.
Addy smiles a little at Dahlia and says, “Thank you. Have you ever lost a friend?”
“I have never had a friend. Except my parents,” Dahlia explains.
“Wha–never had a friend?!” Addy stammers, aghast at the notion.
“Our farm is located in a very unpopulated area of the Mushroom Coast. It is unsafe for most people. There were few other people, apart from those who came seeking ingredients. So I did not know anyone to be friends with,” Dahlia explains flatly.
“I thought it was common for Goblins to have large families. Do you not have any brothers or sisters?” Addy asks, curious.
“My birth was difficult,” Dahlia explains. “So I was the first and last.”
Addy places a gentle hand on Dahlia’s shoulder and smiles, saying, “Well, you know that I’m your friend, right?”
Dahlia responds by giving Addy a perplexed look and asks, “You are? But we have only just met.”
“That doesn’t matter. There’s no hard rule on how long it takes to become someone’s friend!” Addy says excitedly.
“I thought there would be a process,” Dahlia says, still confused.
“Do you like being around me?” Addy asks
“It is enjoyable,” Dahlia answers.
“Do you trust me?” Addy asks.
“You have not given me a reason to distrust you,” Dahlia says.
“Well, I like being around you and I trust you. All it takes to be someone’s friend is to be their friend!” Addy surmises.
“You are certain you want to be my friend?” Dahlia asks, unaccustomed to this kind of interaction.
“Mmhm. I think you’re really neat! And I’m sure everyone else considers you a friend, too!” Addy says with a smile. She is absolutely the type of person who has never met someone that isn’t immediately a friend, until proven otherwise. Dahlia is no exception.
While she still does not fully understand, Dahlia cannot help but feel happy at Addy’s words. “Thank you, friend Addy,” Dahlia says, returning her smile.
“See! That’s all it takes,” Addy says and lifts Dahlia off her feet into a big hug.
Dahlia stiffly allows Addy to hug her. “Do friends often engage in embraces such as this?”
“It is called a hug and yes they do. Did your parents hug you?” Addy asks, still hugging.
“Yes. But I did not know that it was acceptable for friends to do, how would I have known this?” Dahlia answers, frowning. Despite her demeanor, she returns Addy’s hug.
“There! Now we’re friends!” Addy says cheerfully; she gently sits Dahlia back down before returning to the nearby shelf of books, beaming at the notion of having another friend.
Dahlia follows along, grabbing a book off the shelf before asking, “What are your parents like?”
Addy blinks, caught off guard by the question. “Huh? Why do you want to know?” She asks.
“We are friends. Friends share stories about themselves with one another, yes?” Dahlia asks, uncertain.
“Oh! Yeah, they do. Er, we do! I just haven’t been asked about my parents in a long time,” Addy says, still a bit caught off guard.
“Why not?” Dahlia asks.
“Oh, because they were kind of famous at the university. They were both professors for a very long time and didn’t have me until later in life. I’m an only child, too,” Addy explains, tossing another book into the pile absently.
“‘Were?’” Dahlia asks.
“They both passed away some time ago. Mom went first, then Dad, about… fifty-three years ago? I think?” Addy says, staring up into space as she does mental math.
Dahlia stares in awe, mouth slightly open. “I forgot how long it is that your kind lives,” she says. “Still. I am sorry about your parents, friend Addy.”
“Thanks, but they had long lives. They were happy. Like you’ve talked about, death is just a natural part of life,” Addy says softly.
“What were they like?” Dahlia asks, still curious.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“Ah, Mom was a historian! She was quiet but had a really calm presence to her. A lot of her students would call her mom–it made me feel like I had siblings after all!” Addy recounts, smiling at the memories. “People say that I remind them of Dad a lot, he liked to make bad jokes and was always smiling. He taught linguistics, which is how he and Mom met in the first place. They would often go to each other for information. Mom said he got on her nerves initially because he talked so much, but I guess she warmed up to it eventually.”
Dahlia listens contently, still flipping through the books as Addy goes on about her parents and her upbringing. It is nice to be able to listen to someone else instead of just listening to her own thoughts, for once.
“What about your parents?” Addy asks.
Dahlia pauses, staring at the same page and not saying anything for a few moments. Finally, she tepidly says, “Friend Addy?”
“Yeah?” Addy answers, confused.
“Would it make me a bad friend if I did not want to talk about my parents?” Dahlia asks quietly.
“Of course not! If it’s a hard thing to talk about, you don’t have to. Communicating that boundary politely makes you a good friend,” Addy explains.
“I am not used to being away from home. I miss them,” Dahlia says sadly.
“That’s okay,” Addy says comfortingly. “Maybe after all this is over, I can come with you to visit them and you can tell them you’ve made a bunch of friends on your travels!”
“I think they would like that. Thank you, friend Addy,” Dahlia says, this time initiating a hug as she wraps her arms around the much taller Elf’s waist.
Addy chuckles a little and leans down, hugging the little Goblin back. “Of course, that’s if we ever get out of this library. Have you noticed any kind of pattern or anything yet?” She asks.
Dahlia lets go of the hug and shakes her head, frowning. “I have not. There are a lot of different topics, but they are not strange topics,” she says.
“No, they’re not. Everything so far has been, well, just about what you would expect from a library like this. Lots of history and stuff about the war, but we’ve gone through everything from food recipes around the world to nursery rhymes,” Addy muses, deep in thought.
“It is hard to find a pattern going book by book. Perhaps if we could see the entire library at once and see the different sections,” Dahlia suggests.
“Wait, that’s a great idea!” Addy exclaims.
“I am aware, that is why I said it,” Dahlia says. “But how do we accomplish that?”
“I have an idea,” Addy says excitedly. She digs around in her shoulder bag, once again pulling out the strangely-made, sleek gloves that she used back in the bathroom downstairs.
“What are those?” Dahlia asks curiously.
“They’re gloves made by the Monteith, very advanced technology! I was going to explain it to Cashew and Kaz but they make weird faces when I talk for too long so i stopped but anyway the Monteith developed a type of microscopic robot called a nanite which could perform all kinds of different tasks including taking apart matter and repurposing it–”
“Recycling,” Dahlia interrupts, understanding.
“Yeah!” Addy says excitedly. “These gloves control the nanites, which use harvested minerals as building blocks and the remaining matter as fuel to create constructs, made up of the harvested minerals and the nanites themselves, which I can control using the gloves!”
Dahlia wrinkles her nose. “Technology? Like the machines in the capital city that we would see when we would have to make deliveries of ingredients? They make the land sick and people lazy,” she mutters.
“Kind of, but the technology of the Monteith was way more advanced!” Addy exclaims.
Dahlia merely grumbles at this prospect, but says nothing to avoid upsetting her friend.
Addy moves her hands and fingers oddly as the gloves crackle with a blue energy. Dahlia watches in uncertain awe as bits of material coalesce from the nearby floor, shelves, books, and anything else inanimate. The swirling mass shimmer and contorts, forming into a shimmering, spherical construct. An eye-like lens appears on the front of it and glows a bright blue; the thing beeps and whirs, floating into the air as if by magic.
Dahlia wonders what the thing tastes like.
“This is UNA-01! Universal Navigation Assistant. Number One!” Addy exclaims. She reaches into her bag for her visor but realizes that she deconstructed it by accident; after she removes her glasses, a wave of her hands sees it once again appear, already covering the top part of her face.
“What does the ball do?” Dahlia asks warily.
“I can see what UNA sees, thanks to these neat glasses,” Addy explains. UNA chirps and floats up toward the ceiling, its eye rotating down to look at the library from above. “This way we’ll get a birds-eye view of all the books, to see if there is a pattern.”
Dahlia believes she would have preferred to have an actual bird for this, but remembers that there are no birds on this strange land. Somehow, that makes her even more upset.
“What do you see?” She finally asks, trusting in her friend despite disliking every “machine” she has come into contact with in her life.
“Let’s see…” Abby murmurs, seemingly staring off into space. Though, Dahlia can’t see her eyes due to the visor, which is a bit unsettling. “Okay, I can make out some sections. Folklore, some physical sciences, oh! A pretty big section on herbalism, you might like that, Dahlia! Some cultural books, alchemy books, a–huh,” she mutters, going quiet.
“What is it?” Dahlia asks, a little worried.
“On the third floor, there are a couple bookcases against the wall that have books with titles that are just gibberish. Strange…” Addy mumbles, leaning in slightly as if trying to get a better look. “It looks like there’s something behind the shelves. A doorway? Or maybe just a little alcove.”
“I’m on it,” Dahlia says, already climbing up one of the nearby ladders to the third floor landing.
“UNA, keep an eye out,” Addy orders. The floating orb beeps and whistles, hovering over to stay a few feet from Dahlia, protectively scanning the area.
“Which shelves are they?” Dahlia calls out.
“Northwest corner, second and third from the wall!” Addy calls back.
Dahlia nods and makes her way over to the shelves, carefully approaching them. Sure enough, none of the books on either of the two cases have coherent titles in any language, just a series of odd symbols. Barely visible from directly in front of the shelves, there seems to be a space behind the two, hidden from all but the most intense scrutiny.
Cautiously, Dahlia reaches out and touches one of the books. She goes to pull it off the shelf but realizes that she can’t–the book seems to be stuck, part of the shelf somehow. She can, however, push it in slightly, though it just pops back out.
“They’re not even real books, are they?” Addy calls out from below. “Can you move the bookcases?”
Dahlia pushes on one, but it doesn’t budge in the least. “No,” she says loudly. “They’re heavy. I think they’re weighted down or maybe secured to the floor.”
“Oh! Maybe it’s some kind of puzzle!” Addy yells out excitedly. “I bet the symbols in the books are some kind of code! Maybe if we deciphered it, there would be some pattern of books that we could push in and make the shelves move! UNA, get closer to the books so we can–”
Ignoring Addy’s excited postulating, Dahlia simply reaches out and puts a small hand on each book case. She mutters something, a bit of magical recitation taught to her by her parents, and her little clawed hands glow with a sickly green light. Addy goes quiet on the floor below, watching through UNA as the shelves begin to react to Dahlia’s touch. At first the wood blanches as if the very color is decaying from it, before it begins to rot at a rapid pace. The solid matter grows soft, warping slightly before it begins to dry out and harden once again, calcifying and flaking off, turning to dust. This wave of rapid decay spreads out from Dahlia’s touch, causing both bookshelves to crumble and dissolve into ashen piles in a matter of moments.
Addy realizes with amazement, not horror, just what Dahlia’s hug could have meant for her if Dahlia had wished ill of her. “That’s so cool!” She shouts, even more excited to have the little Goblin as a friend.
Dahlia smiles a little to herself but says nothing as she steps forward, ash crumbling beneath her feet as she inspects the little alcove that the bookcases were hiding: It is a small arched depression into the wall, perhaps originally meant to be a depression where a little reading nook might be placed. Instead, it just has a few wooden shelves built into the depression, upon which a couple dozen books sit.
“Secret books!” Dahlia calls out. A second later, she can hear Addy ascending the ladder excitedly. Dahlia takes a couple of the books that are written in Common or Erynese, though most of them are written in languages she doesn’t recognize.
“Secret books are my favorite!” Addy says as she steps up beside Dahlia, her visor lifted up and resting atop her head. “Oh, there are a bunch, too.”
“What languages are the others in?” Dahlia asks.
“Let’s see, there are a few in Loxian, some in Indiric–there’s even a couple in Zhevni. Most of them are in Phyleran, though,” Addy answers, flipping through them all. Her brow furrows as she reads through the different titles and pages.
“What do you think it means? About Tarn?” Dahlia asks, her expression the same as Addy’s.
“I’m not sure. But I feel like we need to get back to the others and tell them, before they stumble upon something bad,” Addy says.
Dahlia nods in agreement and starts down the ladder. Addy follows after her, instructing UNA to follow along just in case. They leave the couple dozen books where they found them in the secret alcove, each one full of information about a very specific topic:
Magical curses and diseases.