Hidden Past, Guarded Future

The discovery was an accident, honestly. 

The Library of Al-Keta was hailed to be the greatest source of knowledge on the continent of Caltoura, if not the world. The building itself was nearly a mile long and half that wide, six stories of nothing but scrolls, tomes, even the smallest scraps of parchment recovered from the ashes of towns that had been razed. The uncounted shelves were set in an orderly fashion like so many soldiers, a neat labyrinth that one could simultaneously easily navigate through yet get lost in for hours, if not days.

The library always sought out new knowledge to add to its extensive archives. Teams of librarians traveled the continent, some stationing themselves at ports to greet newly-arriving ships to see if they had anything new to share, some searching the most remote villages to see if any scraps had been overlooked. They were voracious in their search, to the point that the library was widely considered as infallible. The statement that became commonplace was “If Al-Keta does not possess it, then it does not exist.”

The grand source of knowledge was why many adventures made it a common practice to stop by those archives before leaving on an adventure. The foreknowledge of the beasties they were likely to face, topography, known threats of both a magical and mundane nature, all was searched for in the library’s halls, leading to the next most common phrase among adventurers:

“A day spent is a life spared.”

Azreal was one such adventurer, his party of five stopping at Al-Keta to research a particularly dangerous destination known as the Kalrean Maze, a mixture of jagged spires of stone sprouting out of rapids that turned, without warning, into waterfalls that could drop the unprepared a quarter of a mile. Yet, somewhere in the center of that death trap was rumored to be one of the greatest of the lost cities of the ancient world. The party that found it would surely be set for a lifetime. Several lifetimes, if they were lucky.

Such an adventure needed careful preparation and planning, and so the party agreed to spend as much time as necessary in the halls of the library before departing.

Hence Azreal’s mistake. Too much time and too much curiosity can prove fatal, after all. 

It was three days into their time in Al-Keta and he had lost interest in dusty tomes that told him little, if anything, about the Kalrean Maze, so he had taken to wandering at random, picking tomes off the shelves just to flip through a few pages and put it back.

It was during this aimless wandering that he spotted a library attendant with a loaded tray. She was heading deeper into the library and had, well, an ‘well-fitting’ uniform. Attention drawn away from the books and to the woman, Azreal used all the talents at his disposal to follow her. He succeeded for a few minutes, catching a few more glimpses of her ample hindquarters, yet somehow she was able to give him the slip in a seemingly abandoned corner of the library. He searched for another hour for where she had gone quite fruitlessly and soon grew frustrated. There was no open area with tables and benches, nor a secluded area in which staff of the library could eat their lunch undisturbed. Adjusting his gear in irritation as the library’s hours drew to a close, he made his way out of the library to where the rest of his party was waiting, ignoring their curious looks. Usually he was the first one out of the building, yet this night he was the last.

The next day the hours passed agonizingly slow as he waited in that far corner to see if the woman would show herself again. He had almost given up when he spotted the attendant again, following the same course as she had the previous day. Again, he tracked her, keeping her in sight for a few dozen paces longer than he had before, yet again she dropped from his gaze and disappeared. 

It was going to drive him mad, not knowing where she had disappeared to. He moved quickly, peering down the aisles of books, trying fruitlessly for a half an hour to track the woman down. Returning to the area he had lost track of her in, he suspiciously began inspecting the shelves, pulling books down one at a time to see if there was a hidden latch or trigger leading to a hidden room.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he got tapped on the shoulder, turning to see one of the guards, a mace hanging on the big man’s belt.

“The library is closing, Sir.” The guard said sternly. “May I help you find what you’re looking for to expedite your search?”

‘Even their guards sound like pompous windbags.’ Azreal thought, glancing at the bookshelves. He certainly couldn’t tell the guard what he had ACTUALLY been searching for, and he had clearly been seen. Still, his talents weren’t just limited to tracking and hiding. His silver tongue had gotten him out of (and into) more troublesome situations than he could count.

“There was some book on ancient medallion craftsmanship that I put back earlier this afternoon and can’t find again. I thought it may have been in this section.” He lied. Thankfully, his story was plausible enough to fool the man, though suspicion didn’t fade completely from the guard’s eyes.

“That’s the next story up, Sir. I’m afraid you’ll have to look for it tomorrow.”

“That must be it.” Azreal agreed, snapping his fingers in faux disappointment. “Well, tomorrow it is. Thank you.”

As he left, he turned a corner and used the chance to subtly glance back. The guard was watching him like a hawk, confirming Azreal’s belief that there was something in that section, something they didn’t want him to see. 

When he met his party at the exit, they all stared at him like he had grown a second head.

“The hell took you so long?” Uria, their archer, asked him.

“Found a book on statues. Ones in…compromising positions.” He said. It was the most believable answer, and one accepted almost instantly if the disgust on Uria’s and their healer’s faces showed disgust, while the other two men of the party simply shrugged to each other in acceptance. 

“Well, we have all that we need.” The party leader, a massive warrior named Callum, said. “We can depart tomorrow morning.”

“We can’t!” Azreal protested with more energy than he expected, drawing more gazes.

“Why not?” Uria asked, confused. “Weren’t you the one who wanted to get the hell out of here in the first place?”

“Yea, but-” He frantically tried to find an excuse while the rest of the party studied him with varying degrees of suspicion. 

“But what?” Callum asked, annoyed. 

“We’ve only spent four days here.” He blurted, the annoyance of the party turning right back to confusion. 

“So?”

“So, remember the saying? ‘A day spent is a life spared.’ If we don’t spend another day here, one of us won’t come back!” He argued, praying to whoever may be listening that they believed him. He wasn’t about to let the mystery of where the attendant went go unanswered. It’d drive him to insanity.

“Are you shitting me?! What kinda half-baked-!” Uria started until Callum put a hand on her shoulder.

“No matter the beliefs, they must be respected.” He corrected her sternly.

“That superstition-”

“You kiss your arrows before you go to bed so they don’t lose their ‘kiss of death.’” Their healer, a small thing by the name of Elisa, pointed out, making Uria grow red with embarrassment. 

“You little IMP! You promised you wouldn’t tell another living soul!”

“I lied.” Elisa beamed, Callum and their other warrior, Toral, bursting out with laughter. Even Azreal snickered, Uria glaring daggers at Elisa. Still, it was impossible to stay angry at the small healer, and her anger soon faded.

“Fine. We’ll spend another day here for that BULLSHIT superstition.” Uria snapped, turning on her heel and heading for the inn. Azreal relaxed, following the angry archer. He had another day to solve the mystery, one he hoped not to waste. 

Unlike the previous day, the final day at the library flew by too quickly. Azreal made it to the section only to find several guards on constant patrol, his certainty of a hidden secret in the section driven to ‘beyond the shadow of a doubt’ by their presence. So intent was he on studying the patrol that he was once again scared out of his skin by a tap on his shoulder. 

Turning, he saw Elisa looking at him expectantly. 

“Where are you trying to sneak into now?” She whispered.

“I don’t know.” He whispered back, relieved that she wasn’t going to blow the metaphorical whistle on him. Then again, they had spent enough time in the same adventuring party that she knew and accepted his style of doing things. 

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t know! An attendant keeps disappearing, and now they’ve got guards here. SOMETHING has to be here!”

“Maybe their archives. They would take an intrusion rather seriously.” 

“...How serious?”

“Seriously enough to flay an intruder alive.” She whispered in warning.

“Look, I don’t want to steal from them. I just want to figure out where she went.”

“...She?”

He turned to see her judgmental gaze. “Wait, Elisa. It’s not what you think!”

“You were following another woman with perverted intentions, weren’t you?!” She hissed.

“No! I was just trying to look-”

She glared.

“...At her…”

The glare continued.

“...Hind…end…”

The glare intensified.

“Alright, yes. Yes I was. Happy?”

The glare grew deadly.

“Look, they might have completely confidential knowledge there! You wanna see it?”

The glare lessened as Elisa sighed in resignation. “Fine.”

Azreal slumped in relief. “Thank you. Now, can you help me out here? Maybe use some of that sneaky magic?”

“It’s not sneaky magic! It’s redirecting attention and the light taken in by a target’s retinas so we appear invisible-”

He groaned, the noise drawing the attention of a guard that had gotten close while he was distracted. As the footsteps approached, he looked to Elisa in a panic. She glared at him before beginning an incantation under her breath. His heart shot to his throat as the guard came into full view, only for his gaze to pass over the pair and continue on. He slumped in relief for the second time in as many minutes as Elisa’s magic took effect, the guard continuing on.

“Come on.” The healer muttered, leading him into the guarded section. The time he had spent trying to find an entrance were completely eclipsed as Elisa waved a hand through the air, small sparks settling on a distant bookshelf, denoting magic at work. She led him to it, waving her hand again before smiling to herself, simply walking into it. He stared at the spot she disappeared into before a hand reached out, grabbing him and pulling him in.

He found himself at the top of a staircase, the healer creating a light out of thin air and leading him down it.

“Illusion magic.” She said proudly. “It usually requires a pass key to enter, so you’re lucky I was here or you never would have found it.”

“Yea, yea. I owe you one, kid.”

“KID?!”

He clasped a hand over her mouth in response to the yell. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry!”

She smacked him before slipping out of his grip and continuing down the stairs. “Watch yourself, thief.”

“I’m not a thief! I’m a scouter and purveyor of-”

“A perverted thief.”

His response faded when they reached the bottom of the long flight of stairs, a perfectly cut room spreading out before them. Torches seemed embedded behind glass in long strips, giving dim illumination to the room. The floor, ceiling, and walls were perfectly straight, and on table after table were strange devices and tomes that had been chained.

“What…is all of this?” Elisa whispered as she began walking along. There were strange fat arrows, too large to fit on a bow and the head too blunted to do any damage. Metal tubes ran into large boxes, too large for someone to carry. The walls were covered in blue papers with white diagrams on them, depicting strange objects. Some looked as if they were ships, though they were far different than any ship he had seen. Some looked like birds, others seemed to be maps of towns. Metal balls with small extensions, hand crossbows without the arms, even sets of armor that stood by themselves, towering over Azreal with no clear way to get into them.

“Azreal.” Elisa whispered, waving him over to a door. There was a sheet of glass in the middle of it, and he peered out to see a cavern. To say it was large was a massive understatement, the giant space, lit with row after row of encased lanterns, easily able to fit four of the libraries in it. There were massive metal behemoths lined up of all shapes and sizes, several humanoid figures spotted among them that were utterly dwarfed by the constructs.

The lights brightened, both turning to see an elderly man standing by a door that had previously gone unnoticed by the pair.

“You shouldn’t be here.” He said, his eyes tired, clothes tattered. 

“What is this?” Azreal demanded, dagger coming free from his belt as Elisa hid behind him. “What is this library hiding?!”

“The past, son.” The man said. “The past.”

He waved them after him, Elisa tugging on Azreal’s arm to stop and leave, but he was committed to finding out the truth of the matter. The man led the pair into another room, brightly lit and several times larger than the last. It, too, was absolutely chocked full of strange devices, but this one had metal cabinets and desks, the open containers absolutely stuffed with parchments.

“Not many have found their way in here.” The man said as he led them through the rows, past the tables and desks. “My compliments. You’re two of only a dozen in the last two hundred years.”

“Where IS here?!” Elisa demanded.

“The Archives.” He answered, another door opening automatically and causing Alzreal to draw up short. Once again, against his better judgment, he continued on, to what appeared to be an observation deck overlooking the cavern. “This is where all our past is stored, at least, all we can find.”

“There is NOTHING here from our past.” Azreal stated, dagger still ready to strike. “It all looks…foreign.”

“That’s because every mention of it has been erased.” The old man replied, looking at the pair. “Or did you think the Library simply sought out knowledge for knowledge’s sake?”

Suspicion welled up in Azreal as the man continued, moving to a table and pressing a small button. The top of the table lit up, displaying a map far different than the world Azreal was used to. The pair drew forward as the picture changed, becoming more detailed, the lines on the map changing.

“A thousand years ago, magic returned to this world.” The man began, the pictures going through what seemed to be reports, headlines of something claiming to be a newspaper, providing a visual to the story the old man began telling. “Many feared it to be a weapon more deadly than anything the world had, but what it really did was make the devices of the time irrelevant. Lights could be sustained, food grown in deserts, life-threatening diseases cured. Yet, for all magic’s use, the weapons of the time were far deadlier.”

A slideshow showing horrors that made Azreal sick to his stomach began playing. He heard Elisa began to retch behind him as massacres, torture, destruction of unimaginable scale showed. 

“The world was capable of destroying itself several times over in the blink of an eye. The most powerful spell to date can wipe out a city, right? The weapons of the age, delivered in giant flying metal beasts called aircraft, could destroy a country and make the area unlivable for millenia. The controlling powers of the world turned to magic as the new weapon of mass destruction, pushed in that direction intentionally. Quietly, technology was replaced, stolen, hidden away. Brave souls worked in the shadows to lock these terrible things away, permanently. Magic can be deadly, but it can’t destroy the world. What is stored here, what was slowly erased from history, can. I have spent lifetimes here, protecting this storehouse. Once I helped shield the world from the existence of magic, now I shield it from its past, its own capabilities. I said goodbye to my old life, stepped away from history, like all who roam these archives.”

He looked up at the pair. “This is where it’s all stored, where we keep it safe. Every decade or so, adventures seeking knowledge wander in here, and they’re given a choice. Have their minds erased, return to their old lives not knowing any of this exists, or they can join the library, ensuring mankind never again has to worry about extinction. You two have a choice to make.”

“A choice?!” Azreal sputtered as Elisa picked herself up off the floor shakily, wiping her mouth. “Are you kidding me?! We don’t even know who you are!”

The man smiled. “Ah, my apologies. I tend to always skip that part.”

He extended a hand. “Greetings. My name is Arthur Pendragon, formerly of Camelot. How do you do?”