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Page 3974

That sight gave her significant pause, and even though she wanted to say something about it, no words were coming to mind. How much had changed here while she was out? And wait. He’d said an entire month had passed, hadn’t he?

“That’s better,” said Ibai. “Thank you for listening. Maybe I’ll whip up something nice for you later. Just don’t expect too much, alright? I’ve got a lot of things to take care of, right now.”

The Library made no further sounds, as far as Emiliana could tell.

“Anyway,” Ibai went on, “here, take a look at this.” He approached her and opened the book he was holding for her to read.

She didn’t know what he was getting at. The page seemed to have been rather quickly and haphazardly chosen, so how could anything be--?

The text was peculiar. The script being used--the alphabet--was one she recognized but did not have much basis for understanding. It was Ancient Ghisian script, and as far as she knew, almost all of the languages that used it were now dead.

Before falling into her meditation, she’d been trying to expand her comprehension of old scripts and languages like this one, but with so many out there, she still had quite the long academic journey ahead of her.

This one, though...

She couldn’t help grabbing the book with her own hands in order to bring it closer.

Despite the fact that even the symbols themselves were barely better than incomprehensible scribbles to her, she still felt like she could understand what the text was saying. Like the words were speaking directly to her.

This random page. It was talking about a conflict. A battlefield report, perhaps.

“You see it, don’t you?” said Ibai. “Pretty sweet, eh?”

She found it hard to peel her eyes away, even as the text merely described the mundanities of troop movements over multiple months of fighting. “How is this...? What is this?”

“It’s what they call an ‘elevated text,’” said Ibai. “Something that can be read by anyone--even the illiterate, supposedly.”

“How is that possible?”

Ibai smiled and gave a big shrug. “That’s the mystery, isn’t it?! I’ve been reading lots of theories about books like this, though!”

Chergoa intervened again. ‘You don’t really need to go into that, right now, do you? We’ll be here for hours, if so.’

“What, you got somewhere to be?”

Page 3973

‘Don’t smother her,’ came another familiar voice, which Emiliana needed a few more moments to fully register as Chergoa. ‘Let her breathe.’

“Right, right, sorry.” The smiler took a few steps back, allowing Emiliana to recognize that it was Ibai Blackburn. Of course it was. “I have a lot to apologize for, apparently. Dang.”

Emiliana inhaled deeply as those words took their time registering. She focused. Suppress the pain. Put in the background. First, figure out what was happening. “What do you mean by that?” she asked, slowly rolling her neck, closing her eyes, then opening them again.

“Well. Um. Hmm. Where to begin? Okay, so I was tryin’ to help you out. Y’know. Of your little meditation coma. But, uh. I think I might’ve just prolonged it. But to be fair, it’s not entirely my fault! I just happened to learn a few things that made me change course a bit.”

‘He got distracted.’

“No! No. I specifically did not get distracted, this time! I tried real, real hard to avoid that. And I did! But as new information came to light, I had to make different decisions! Which made things take longer, unfortunately.”

‘Uh-huh.’

As she listened, Emiliana’s gaze moved around the room, absorbing more of their surroundings. Having been living in the Library of Erudition for so many months now, she’d gotten to know most of the building, but this particular chamber was looking... unfamiliar. The bookshelves on the walls seemed similar enough, but then she noticed several smaller, free-standing glass cases, as well.

They also had books in them, but only one each; and abruptly, this room started to feel more like that of a museum than a library.

“Where are we?” she had to ask.

“Oh, we’re in one of the secret special chambers,” said Ibai. “Neat, huh? I finally convinced the Library to let us in. There’s all sorts of cool books here!” He sauntered over to the nearest case and opened it.

Immediately, the room began to rumble, and the all-too-familiar sound of rustling papers and shuffling books began to arise. The sentient Library was about to launch an attack on Ibai, as Emiliana had seen it do so many times before when he so brazenly grabbed one of its books off its shelves.

“Oh, pipe down, already!” said Ibai, sounding genuinely annoyed for a change. “You know I’m not gonna hurt it! Just relax! This is important stuff I’m trying to tell her about!”

And to Emilaian’s amazement, the trembling actually slowed, then subsided entirely.