Chapter 178: The Things You Hear
Three months after he’d had the Tome of Bahgmorrda taken away from him, the librarian returned it. Apparently, that was because it was written in five different languages, and the crude cipher worked differently on each of them. Simon had barely noticed that fact, but the person that they’d had working on it since was having great difficulties with translating it.
‘We’ll be relying on you to make continued progress,’ read the note that the Head Librarian gave him with it.
Simon nodded and made all the gestures that he would do his best on it, but he wasn't really interested in it anymore. Truthfully, translating the whole thing, line by line, would take months, or maybe even a year, and his time would be better spent reading new books to pass on. He didn’t have a choice in the matter. So, instead, he got to work.
Even though he didn’t really get anything out of it, there was something very zen about sitting in a library filled with other men who could not speak, scribbling away in the quiet as he attempted to make his writing as beautiful and readable as possible.
Simon had terrible penmanship for most of his lives. It was only after reading so many barely legible scrawls or awkwardly crabbed writing and trying hard to puzzle out its meaning over his last few lives that he’d tried to improve that small but important aspect himself. He hadn’t even used cursive since he was a child, but with every page he transcribed, he did his best to improve. The result after a few hours was something close to a trance.
He could think much faster than his pen could move while he tried to create something clean and clear that bordered on calligraphy. As a result, he had more than enough time to consider how each line might be reworded. For a time, he used that extra time to think about how he might clarify or obscure the meaning of the words. After all, he wanted to preserve knowledge, but he didn’t necessarily want the white cloaks to have it. It was a conundrum, but in the end, eventually, he opted to write largely what was written while he used that extra time to ponder the nature of magic.
That was mostly all he did anymore. Even his initial fervor for spending his spare time in the fighting yards slowly faded, and those workouts became less and less frequent. It wasn’t because he didn’t want to be in better shape or anything; it was because the nature of what he reflected on consumed him.
Each night, after work but before dinner, he would go on walks around the walls to try to clear his mind. He tried to think about Elthena and his son or daughter, who was not yet born. Sometimes he even reflected on other things, like the dragon, and what the point of that strange level was. However, invariably, those were forgotten in favor of questions about the nature of magic more and more as time went on. Eventually, it bordered on obsession, as strange symbols and words would dance in front of his eyes later that night while he tried to sleep.
In time, only the occasional words and shouts of the white cloaks intruded on his peace. Mostly, he could tune these out because people rarely asked him questions about what he was working on directly. He’d succeeded in fading into the background.