Chapter 225

Morrigan was practically skipping with excitement as we headed to the Great Library of Sorsette together. It was the last day before the raid and we didn't have anything pressing to work on, so Morrigan really wanted to get her own membership to the Libraries of Sorsette finalized. Since we were going there anyway, we decided to bring the others who hadn't been with us last time to get their memberships as well. We headed there in a group made up of the twins, Lorriene, Raya, Sibyl, Mimi, Silva, and Cecilia. Bella was continuing to meditate and practice nature magic with Neali so she declined to come with us this time. Despite being so effective at learning from the nature magic book, she preferred hands-on training and Neali seemed happy, maybe even eager, to help her learn. So, since that was what Bella wanted, I left her to it.

When we approached the library we could see that there were still a lot of guards patrolling the borders of the large tower that cut into the skyline. They weren't standing guard in front of the entrance like they were during the last riot, but there was plenty there to make a statement. I have a suspicion they didn't always patrol the library the way they are now, but with the increased tension in the city, it's probably a wise precaution.

"You seem just a little excited Morrigan," I teased.

She turned to me with a bright smile. "I've always dreamed of having a membership to the Great Library, but I never thought I'd be able to get one! I'm even more excited than the last time I was here!"

"What's the difference? We were here with Lilith not that long ago," Torien asked as we walked up the steps.

"But this time it'll be my membership!" she said enthusiastically.

Torien laughed but left it at that.

The library was much more busy than it was the last time we were here. There were a lot of people sitting on benches and at tables carefully making their way through the books they were reading. Most of the people were showing the books great reverence, which felt quite different from how casually I remember people treating books where I came from. It wasn't too surprising considering their value here.

As we approached the desk Sophia waved us over to an empty line. "Welcome back Lilith and friends. I take it that you're here to register everyone who wasn't able to visit last time?" She asked while looking over our group with a smile.

Morrigan froze as she looked at Sophia. "Are you...?"

Sophia smiled and put a finger up to her lips. "Shh, it's a secret," she said winking at her.

"Right..." Morrigan hesitantly nodded in reply.

"Great! Place your hand here!" Sophia gestured to the round stone tablet on the desk. I could tell a few people in the normal line were looking over at our group, interested in the head librarian personally registering my friends.

Morrigan placed her hand on the tablet and a moment later Sophia pulled out a silver card and placed it on the desk in front of her. She picked it up and ran her thumb over the embossed letters. "It has my name on it..."

"Of course, dear, it is your membership card. I welcome you to the Great Library of Sorsette," she said gently to Morrigan.

Torien took her place at the counter when I pulled the enthralled Morrigan away from the desk. "I made sure to come early enough for you to spend most of the day reading. Why don't you get started on that while the rest of us register?"

She flicked her eyes up at me, she had a beaming smile and tears in the corner of her eyes. "Alright! I'll go look for some of the books I didn't get to read last time."

"If you want to have something copied bring it to me and we can see what we can do. I'm not planning on having any copies made before we leave the city so if there's something you would like, we can pool our pages."

She hugged me. "Thank you, Lilith."

I patted her on the shoulder. "No problem. Go have fun, I'm going to do some reading of my own once we're done here."

"If you would like, I can arrange to have a private meeting room set aside for your group today. I have some available on the third floor right now," Sophia said, cutting into our conversation.

I looked at Morrigan and she nodded back to me.

"That would be great, thank you very much Head Librarian," I said with a respectful nod.

"Of course, Miss Baphomet. Happy to help." Sophia went back to registering the others so I sent Morrigan off to go find some of the books she was interested in while we wait.

Sophia paused when she reached Sibyl. "Ah, Miss Sibyl. I wanted to ask if you are still using your surname."

Sibyl frowned. "I think it would be better if I didn't. It would lead to some questions that I'm not really equipped to answer..."

"Of course, my apologies. Please place your hand here."

Sibyl's eyebrows rose and she looked up at Sophia who had a small smile on her face. "It's gone..." Sibyl whispered.

Sophia nodded. "Sometimes things like titles and surnames can cause issues in the system. They are something that is quickly rectified once discovered, however." Sophia then lowered her voice. "I made sure to update the Adventurer's guild as well, don't worry about a mismatch."

Sibyl slowly nodded her head as Sophia finished up with the rest of the group.

Once she was done with that, Sophia took the round stone away and brought out a key with a wooden tag that had 308 burned into it. "This is the key to the meeting room. I've registered it under your name Miss Baphomet. Please return the key before you leave the library."

I smiled at her. "Thank you again for all your help, Head Librarian."

She returned my smile and gave a short bow. "Always happy to help, Lilith."

"Oh, and I wanted to thank you again for that book. It's been very useful to me," I added.

"Of course, it was something that I thought would prove to be quite useful for your research. I've heard that you have already developed new ritual magic in the fields of construction and cartography. I'm pleased it has already been helpful to you in the short time you've had it."

"It has been. I'm excited to see what else I can create with it."

She smiled. "I look forward to seeing what else you come up with. Unfortunately, I don't have any more time I can spare you and your friends today. I'm very busy and I have some other work to take care of. If you need anything else, please ask one of my librarians. I would have asked Theo to come visit with you, but he's already been sent out to handle another task outside the capital."

"He's not in the capital anymore?" I asked.

She shook her head and chuckled. "No, I'm afraid not. He was hoping to get some time to relax but it wasn't meant to be." Sophia walked out from behind the desk. "I hope to see you again soon, but I know that may not be possible. So I'll wish you well instead. Have a safe trip."

I smiled. "I'll do my best."

She nodded and walked away as our group headed for the bookshelves.

"I guess everyone should grab a book or two and meet me up in room 308 on the third floor. Will someone go tell Morrigan what room we're in?" I asked.

"I'll tell her. I have a good idea of what section she's in," Torien offered.

"Thank you, sounds good."

I decided to do a little research of my own while I was here. I need to do some research on the gods. I only know of the ones that have come up so far but I've never gotten a comprehensive list of who the major and minor gods are and what domains they have. Even if it's not as immediately relevant to what we're doing tomorrow, it's critical that I know more about them, and a library is the best place for me to look something like this up.

As I was searching for the theology section, I happened across a section of books written in Elvish. It then occurred to me that one of the requirements for [Sightspeak], the passive skill that allows me to read any language I can speak, required me to identify the language before I could understand it. While I'm here I should also look at as many written languages as I can find so that I can translate them in the future. The library is a place where I can take down samples of different languages so that I can identify them when I come across them later.

Since there's a sign saying the language of the books in this section is written in Elvish, I already know what language these are in without having to identify them, but if I came across these in the future I wouldn't necessarily be able to figure them out at a glance. My eyes trailed across the spines and found one of the books was about the gods. Nice, two birds with one stone. I picked up the book and flipped through it. The book was handwritten, or looked to be, and it had a good amount of information on each god and goddess, especially the ones the Elven people dealt with the most. I also grabbed a book on grammar just to see if I could get a full alphabet or syllabary from it. It was still unclear to me what writing system the different languages used but this was a good way to find out.

A thought occurred to me though. What would be even more useful to me would be something like a rosetta stone. Maybe a book already existed that had samples of many different languages already collected together. I walked around for a little while looking for something like that before running into a librarian. The older man wearing purple robes was carefully rearranging books on the shelf to make room for some on the small cart he was dragging around.

"Excuse me, sir, do you know where I might find a book that has samples of many different languages and properly identifies which language each sample is written in?"

His brow furrowed and he looked away in thought. "Hm. I'm not personally aware of any book like that. Let me ask a few of my collogues and I can return to tell you if a book like that is available. Will you be here for a while?"

I nodded. "I should be here most of the day, I'll probably be in room 308 on the third floor with my friends."

"Excellent. Yes, let me ask a few of my co-workers and I'll see if I can find something for you. Out of curiosity, is this for a skill?" I was caught off guard to hear him ask that so directly. In response to my reaction he quickly added, "Oh, if you do not wish to share, that's no bother. I was just curious because a few of my colleagues have an ability called [Sightspeak] and that is usually earned by translating a rare or dead language. I was hoping that if you needed such a book for that reason, you might be able to share a sample of the language you translated with us."

I was surprised but it made sense that I wouldn't be the only one with a skill like that... "Yes, I stumbled on that skill for translating a language called English, but I don't have any written samples of it on me. I could probably reproduce some of it if I had some time but I'm leaving the capital tomorrow morning."

"Hm... that's a shame. Would you perhaps be interested in transcribing a book into English for us? I would be able to gift you a copy of a book and the Library can remunerate you when you finish the final copy. Dropping it off at any Library of Sorsette would do."

I kind of liked the idea of having this as a side project. "I'm not sure which book I would want to transcribe but I think I would be happy to do something like that. What kind of payment are we talking about?" I asked.

His face lit up. "That would be great! You can have a copy of any book that's not in the restricted section and this won't count against your scribe pages if you have any. The payment would be somewhere between one and five gold depending on the particular work you would be copying. The more common, verbose, and popular the title the better, because that would make it easier to create further translations in the future."

"I'll consider it then. I'll have to talk with my friends and see if there's anything they would be interested in for a project like this."

"Of course, take your time. I'll talk with some of my fellows and see if I have a book that would be useful for someone with [Sightspeak] or a similar skill."

I slid the Elven grammar book back on the shelf where I found it and continued perusing the shelves.