Chapter 738 – The Archivist In Action
The world spirit is not a new creation, it is more common for a world with sentient life to possess a world-soul than it is to be caught lacking. Likewise, the level of power of this world spirit commonly fluctuates, although it depends on the local world. There are some who believe in grand poetic justice although that is the exception compared to the rule. A powerful world will generally produce a powerful soul, a weaker world will generally produce a weaker soul…
I would write, “there are exceptions”, but I cannot think of one. There are exceptions somewhere out there, but not anywhere close by. Or at least, not anywhere close by than save for our back garden. Arda is one such exception, and Arda bucks the trend to a ridiculous degree. Arda should have a soul, and Arda’s soul should be beyond powerful.
And not only that, it is not even a difficulty to think of what Arda’s soul would be like. The races of man: hu, elf, dwarf, beast and mer, all think beyond highly of themselves. If there if is anything that is universal on Arda, then it is arrogance. An arrogance in oneself first, then an arrogance in one’s immediate relations, then an arrogance in one’s tribe, and then an expansion of group after group after group until we get to their final arrogance: an arrogance in their own world. The Ardans differ greatly in their internal politics, there is a joke from Great War soldiers that the sun would burn out before they agreed on something.
Well the Ardans already agree on something and that is that they are better than us. And in this fashion, I am not even judging them, I am simply stating the facts of the matter. Likewise, we see that they have an innate ability in producing what they call Divines. Certain members of that artificial race are terrifying even for us. The level of power contained within a single is incredible.
Thus, we know that the Ardans have a talent in creating spirit creatures. We know that Ardans have a conception about Arda, in that it is the greatest, the dirtiest, the most honest, the most violent, the most just and the most fair and the most ‘real’ world of all. And we come across a problem.
A world that is perfect for creating a world-spirit. More than perfect in fact, for it is obvious that the Ardans are not living some complex of inferiority. When they look down at us, they legitimately look down at us. The only things we are worth in their eyes are disgust or pity. A world like that should produce a spirit, and that spirit, whether weak or strong, should be the sort that reveals itself to sneer at the rest of us.
Yet that spirit has not appeared. Arda is not a new world either. And so, we find the greatest contradiction on Arda:
A world where everything is a God or Goddess does not have a Divine for itself.
- Excerpt from “A World of Coexisting Opposites”, written by Archangel Chamuel. Composed at the end of the Arascan War.
Although fires and storms, hurricanes of winds most terribles and rains that would have caused apocalyptical flooding in any other area, beat around the landscape of Arcadia, the War College stood tall and proud. A class had left this week for Esberia. Ten students all, mere apprentices in Arcadia, although they were already post the level of graduates of other schools.
The pupils and the teachers walked through those storms without so much as a curious glance towards them. This was standard, the war would have to end for Arcadia to stop its battle regimen, or maybe the War College itself would have to be attacked. A boy and a girl sat in the shadow of a tree as they pretended to read from a text together, although neither were concentrated on the book, nor the pillar of fire that suddenly rose to the height of a city block from behind the nearby hill.
One of the teachers was on a walk, a thermos filled with coffee in one hand, a staff in the other. A pair of young boys were experimenting with swords. They had found ancient textbooks in the library that talked of metalslingers who would dance through the battlefield with a cloak of steel, and they wanted to see if it was reproducible. Arcadia, Grand, had a policy of levels to make sure the newest students could not kill themselves with the most powerful magic. Arcadia, War College, expected each student to produce at least one totally original weave after the first year, and every year after that, and the best way to get inspiration for that was to read the ancient texts.
The pair had sat down in the shadow of the library, then cast a shield of hardened air around themselves to make sure they could read in peace and not be accidently hit by the masses of rocks and stones crashing down throughout Arcadia’s meadows. But even as the world outside screamed and raged and tried to restart Worldbreaking seemingly as it fought to stop very thing from happening at the same, the world inside that massive building was deathly silent.
Elassa hummed to herself as she scoured the library of Arcadia for books on ancient curses. Arascus had really given her a task, didn’t he? A curse that was not a curse. An enchantment that was obviously one of execution, although no one could prove it without… Elassa blinked as her mind came across the most obvious proof.
It had to exist, surely. At least one person in history had to have been split by a sword from nowhere. She put down the book listing enchantments, that was text was getting her nowhere anyway. Magical lamps shone overhead, they hovered and moved along with the Goddess of Magic, not even by her command. Instead they followed and traced the Goddess of Magic like fireflies chasing a lamp.
Elassa was downright proud of herself at making a deduction like that. It was a historian’s answer, and she was a historian after all. These sorts of things needed a specialized, trained, set of hands and eyes, didn’t they? No fool could just be tasked with finding something that seemingly everyone had but no one could prove. She walked in between bookshelves taller than her several times over. There were no ladders here to reach the top shelves, either one knew how to fly, knew how to find what they were looking or knew how to speak to the shelves themselves else they would not be able to reach a solid third of the books here.
And Elassa knew what she wanted in the first place. She held out her hand, whispered the name and the author and channelled her power to the shelves. They caught her sound, they listened to her requests, and they threw. The copy of Unfortunate Deaths of Divinity and Royals landed in Elassa’s open hand. The tome was a collection of short, unexplained mysteries regarding the deaths of individuals throughout Arda’s history.
Royals that passed away in their sleep, even when they had a Cleric on duty at all times. Princesses who died of heartbreak, along with sections by Helenna which commented on how the disease was real and should be taken seriously. Mages who exploded, although Elassa wouldn’t have put those in. For one, those weren’t a mystery. Those who had violent combustions out of nowhere had merely grabbed too much magic from the air, then managed to stuff it inside them without finding a way to dissipate the magic. It was akin to sending a balloon to almost bursting, any minor change in pressure would make it pop.
And there were deaths of Divines. The most common death of a Divine that wasn’t battle was murder. It was only a step later that the mysteries actually began. Gorges in Erdely, where Divines had apparently gone in and disappeared. Mountain passes that held monsters and wraiths that apparently ate spirits. Or ancient monsters that were so famous they possessed their own name although those were the sort of monsters which had a doubtful existence in the first place.
And curses. Elassa was sure that the condition Arascus had described was an enchantment, but if Arascus himself called it a curse then that was what the majority of humans would call it too. She knew too much about enchanting books to know what Arascus had described had never been tried as a spell.
Elassa looked through the pages: Lady Ann Merlianne never woke up after pricking her finger on a rose. After extensive testing by the royal court of Allia and of Rancais, the assistance of a trained Cleric of Kavaa, and subsequent failure to achieve any positive change in Lady Ann’s condition, the cause of her collapse was changed from poison to curse. The curse was assumed to be supportive in some sense, or maybe it was supposed to punish her, for Lady Ann survived for twelve years in a coma under conditions that should have starved to death. Since the rose bush had been removed, there was no one else with Lady Ann’s curse, and it never appeared again.
Elassa pursed her lips as she finished that section. Worthless. Who cared? The woman had been hit by a push, it was probably an assassination on her. She read the next one. That was about a King who drank… skipped. Elassa turned the page. A boy born with three legs, inapplicable, skipped. A left-handed child, made worse by the fact he had glasses. Well that was obviously a reason to execute the boy. How could it get worse? Elassa flicked to the next page.
And nothing here either. She skimmed the entire book, or all the relevant sections rather. Most of the curses could be ignored after the first sentence. And she went onto the next book. This was one was put back onto one of the bookshelves. The massive piece of furniture swallowed it almost immediately, Elassa channelled some of her magic and said another name. That was the wrong call. She could go back to it, but now that she was thinking on it, the way Arascus had described the sword on a horse hair made him seem crazy.
“Unexplained Cases of Failure of the Mind, third edition.” Elassa said, not many knew this trick of asking the library for the book, although Elassa did not teach it. It was something that someone could work out for themselves, or they could suffer and never know.
Half an hour later, Elassa had skimmed through the leather-backed tome. It wasn’t that thick, and it was used as a teaching aid in classes. Those who thought themselves too smart to listen to tutors first got this book, then got pushed further. And if they weren’t scared enough to stop whilst being talented enough to keep advancing without being dissuaded, then Elassa would start seeing how she could intervene to help grow someone with the potential to be an archmage.
Of Magic stared down at the thick cover and the picture on the front and tried to think of another lead. What else? Arascus had proposed them to be from another world… That was no help whatsoever, every book written about other worlds focused on one of the two which had aided the White Pantheon in the Great War. She racked her mind deeper, trying to search…
Elassa blinked in surprise at her own realisation. Wait. A God that had started about otherworldly entities? She knew one like that. She had been friends with one like that even. She had fought on the same side as that God all the way back, and then he had decided to go insane on one of his trips.
Elassa stared around at her library, in shock. She didn’t have to come here in the first place. The answer had been right there, she just had to…
Well there was another issue actually. No one knew where Saranael was but at least then…
She had to show Arascus some of the God’s writings at the very least. She snapped her fingers and send the names that of the essays the God of Knowledge had written in the final decade of his sanity. And so that she could double check herself on whether Arascus was going down the same path or not.
That was the lead Arascus had wanted.