Chapter 34: It Could Be Done

Instead of explaining to Scarlet why they had no time to sit there talking theory the Historian simply stood up and once more wandered off with the expectation she would follow him. Of course, he was correct. What was Scarlet going to do? Let herself be left behind? It just irked her that he didn’t show even a modicum of courtesy.

Where are we going?” Scarlet asked. Scarlet’s gaze followed him as he crossed the office to an inconspicuous door that almost blended in with the walls. “Your real office?” She asked? Lips twitching up at the corner.

The Historian glanced back over his shoulder and Scarlet could sense the hints of amusement radiating off him. “Someday, perhaps.” He shrugged. “Now come along, little human,” he said, as the door in front of him slid open. “We are going to the library.”

Scarlet rose carefully, suppressing a wince as her body reminded her of the abuse she’d been putting it through for the last day and a half. She had a fleeting thought that her VIT was about to shoot up.

She collected her cane, slipped the puzzle back into her pocket, and followed the fast-moving fox person.

“So, it is possible, then? This saturation. Is it possible for me?” she asked as she caught up.

“That’s what we will need to find out,” he said.

He led her out of the office and into a glass lined hallway that gave her a clear view of the atrium. The tower was extraordinary. The shifting stone, the mineral light, the quiet fox-people moving through their vertical city. That was not to mention the beautiful natural aesthetics of the architecture. Scarlet wanted a moment to take it all in.

The Historian did not give her one.

Instead, he led her to a wall lifts, all tucked unobtrusively behind a carved arch of dark stone and pale crystal. They looked, absurdly, like something from the nineteenth century. A narrow metal cage, ornamental bars and polished panels. Delicate enough at first glance that Scarlet did not immediately trust it would hold her full weight.

She could feel the fluctuations of mana emanating from the metal cage. It hummed through the frame with a smooth, contained steadiness.

The door slid open without either of them touching it.

Scarlet eyed it. There were none of the modern door sensors she was familiar with, and Scarlet could not detect the mechanism that was used to detect them. It was a mystery. Scarlet liked solving those.

“How does the magic sensor work?” She asked as she stepped inside. The Historian just gave her a look; one she was quite familiar with despite it coming from a vulpine face. Scarlet didn’t back down. Eventually he sighed.

“You answered the question yourself. Magic. That word is translating as mystical acts and energy. I can see how mana might be considered ‘mystical’ coming from a world bereft.” The Historian nodded to himself, apparently having satisfied himself with his vague answer, and not much caring how Scarlet felt about it.

The Historian stepped into the lift and the doors closed.

The lift began to move with such smoothness that she could not tell whether they were going up, down, or sideways. There was no lurch, no pressure shift, no terrible stretching sensation of teleportation. That alone put the device leagues ahead of travel via teleportation. By the time the door opened again, Scarlet couldn’t even tell which direction they moved in. She was only even certain they had moved because the scenery had changed.

The library beyond made the atrium seem almost restrained.

It was not larger, exactly. Or perhaps it was? but Scarlet was becoming increasingly suspicious of the tower’s geometry and did not feel equipped to make definitive claims. The room curved outwards from the tower in a manner Scarlet was positive she would have noticed when looking at it from the outside.

Tall windows sent muted light across dark floors veined with copper and green stone, while shelves rose in sweeping arcs along the walls and disappeared into shadowed upper tiers. Tables of polished mineral and dark wood filled the open spaces, each surrounded by chairs clearly designed for creatures with tails.

Scarlet slowed despite herself.

Books, scrolls, stone tablets, crystal-bound codices, and things that looked like books only if one were being generous filled the shelves. Some glowed faintly. Some pulsed with mana. Others were sealed behind glass or suspended inside lattices of carved metal. The air smelled of paper, dust, resin, and something loamy, like rich earth after rainfall. She wanted to bottle the experience of walking into this library.

There it was. A library inside the United Vulpian Wizard Tower, almost certainly holding more relevant information than she could have realistically hoped to find anywhere else in the portal world. Wasn’t this place exactly what she needed for the quest? Learn the history of the Vulpian Empire? Of course she’d ask the Historian as well, but even if he gave her a perfect and unbiased accounting, she’d still have to confirm what he said. He didn’t have a reason to lie to her, but he also didn’t have a reason not to.

Under any other circumstances, she would have stopped immediately and started cataloguing. Right now, she was more interested in this spontaneous leveling and why it was so important. She’d return later.

Contrary to her expectation, there did not appear to be a dramatic keeper of the library standing watch over the shelves as was customary for such settings. Instead, a few other fox-people were present, moving quietly between tables or reading in one of the plush little nooks Scarlet just knew Maus would love.

Five days, she reminded herself.

The Historian did not pause. He moved through the library at a brisk pace, and Scarlet followed. No one seemed inclined to question either of their presence as she and the Historian swept through the room.

He led her toward the rear of the library, where there were no tall windows letting in ‘natural’ light. The shelves here were darker, older. At the end of one row, a narrow staircase curved upward behind a stone arch. On the front center of the arch was a marking of some sort. Scarlet wasn’t sure what it was or what it meant, but it radiated power. The feeling wasn’t overwhelming, just potent.

The Historian pressed one clawed hand against the arch, and a thin lattice of mana shimmered into being. Scarlet felt it scan him, then briefly brush against her before withdrawing.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The Historian glanced back. “Private section.” He stated. “I do not recommend offending the archive.”

“Does the archive offend easily?” Scarlet asked. His responding shrug was not reassuring.

The stairs were narrow with only enough space for two people to brush past if one turned to the side. Scarlet eased her way up with deliberate care, letting the cane take enough of her weight to spare her side and leg. The medication and poultice were doing their jobs, but her body still had a great many opinions about being dragged up a staircase right now.

The private section they ended up in was smaller and warmer than the library below. It looked less like a place where books were stored and more like a place where knowledge was studied and answers pursued.

The shelves here were lower, some of them tilted at an incline. The lighting was softer, and the tables larger, each one carved with inset channels of mineral and metal that Scarlet suspected served some function beyond decoration. The books here looked older as well. Heavier, and more dangerous.

The moment they were all the way inside, the Historian immediately pulled a tome from a shelf, a notebook from his robes and whirled on her. “Tell me about your stat distribution,” he said. Scarlet looked at him.

“Excuse me?”

“Your stats, what are we working with?” He began flipping through the thick tome on the table in front of them and began muttering to himself about soul reinforcement, or something.

Scarlet took a seat beside him, as he slid the tome to the side. Scarlet watched in supressed astonishment as another book simply zipped from a shelf and placed itself on the table in front of the fox.

He had used magic. She had felt as he had used magic to recall the book.

She looked down at the book he was flipping through, her mind silent as the gravity of this new reality began to dawn on her.

Magic. Real objects floating through empty air, ‘invisible hand’ type magic. The emotions she’d only been somewhat throttling before she now chocked off ruthlessly. She couldn’t afford this right now. She had too much to do. The Historian’s voice cut off her musing.

“Well?” he demanded.

“My stats?”

“Yes,” he said, pulling forward a notepad and prompting Scarlet to bring out her own, which she made look like she’d pulled from her jacket pocket.

“Let me be clear,” he continued. “I do not know that saturation is possible for you. The only reason I’m even considering something so absurd is because you’re from a newly integrated world. I just can’t believe you have enough or will have enough FS to allow for full saturation without extraordinary conditions.

“Now, we can create some extraordinary conditions. I just need to know how extraordinary they need to be.” He clarified.

She studied him in silence for while, expression blank.