[Wright Memorial Library] Dreams and Memories (Solo)

[Satevis]

51st Day of Spring, 512 AV In the end, it was the dream that woke him. He had been walking up and down the shelves of the Wright Memorial Library. Pacing, he realized, although he had the vague sense that he was also searching for something. It was late at night, and the lights on the wall had already begun to burn low. The library was different, but in the dream, he did not realize this. In the dream, everything looked exactly as it was supposed to be. He walked, his eyes moving over the shelves on either side of him. They moved purposefully, he realized, carefully scanning each spine, each careworn magical tome. The statues of Eyris, Qalaya, and other gods looked on from their alcoves as he walked, an annoyed frown on his face. He had been searching for a while, without result, and he felt a familiar sense of frustration bubbling up inside of him. He was about ready to quit. If he didn't find the book he needed, he would head home and call it a night. Those were the thoughts going through his mind as his eyes ghosted over the shelf, lingering on a familiar book with a red spine. He reached forward with small, slender hands, drawing the book from the shelf and turning it over in his hand. He turned the book over to glance down at the cover. And his world was suddenly filled with the heat and color of fire. Satevis's eyes snapped open and he took in a sharp breath, pushing himself up and off of the book he had fallen asleep on. The candle next to him had burned out in his sleep, hot wax dripping down onto the back of his hand as the stub continued faintly flickering. It had been the sensation of the wax that had brought the image of flames to mind. He shook out his hand, the motion causing the candle to suddenly die and plunge the room into darkness. The Ethaefal braced his hands on the table, breathing slowly to calm his racing heart as he looked around him. He was sitting at a table in a secluded corner of the library, several sheets of paper with glyphs drawn on them spread out in front of him. His quill had long since fallen from his hands, and it had rolled across the table, stopping as it struck a stack of books on various cultures in Mizahar. A small statue of Qalaya stared down at him from an alcove above the table, silently watching his work. He rubbed at his eyes. He had been tired and a little stressed lately, but clearly it had been worse than he thought. He didn't even remember falling asleep. Satevis groped around in the dark for the fresh candle he had brought with him. He held it upright, extending a single strand of gaseous Res towards it like a match. He ignited the strand, and a small tongue of flame burst into life on the candle, illuminating the area around him. He replaced the candle on the candle holder, attempting to put his stray pieces of paper and books into some semblance of order. Now that he could see, he thought back to his dream. The details were fast slipping away from him, but he tried to hold on to as many as he possibly could. At night, it was difficult for him to tell dreams from memory. This particular dream had felt very real. It was entirely possible that it was another stolen fragment of memory. The Reimancer's memory. Satevis closed his eyes, rubbing his temples with his fingers as he tried to think. The setting had almost certainly been the same university library he was sitting in now. He recognized the statues that stood over the tables, and the detail in the architecture. If it was a memory, and not simply a dream brought on by too much stress and not enough sleep, then that meant that the Reimancer had been here before. He had been here before. It didn't surprise him. What he knew about the Reimancer told him that he was a great wizard. It was entirely possible that the Reimancer had been like him once--a student at the University of Zeltiva. It was also equally possible that the Reimancer had been a teacher here, for all Satevis knew. It would have been hundreds of years ago, in any case. No living soul would have remembered him. It hit him as he opened his eyes, leaning back in his chair and staring at the ceiling. No person would remember him, but the library would. After all, the layout of the library didn't seem to have changed much in the centuries that had passed between then and now. Satevis got to his feet, picking up the candle holder. He thought back to the image in the dream, trying to recall every detail and remember the path he walked. His eyes moved over the library from where he stood, trying to find anything that stood out, anything that looked familiar. The statues... he realized. He had looked at the statues in his dream. The library was dotted with statues, each dedicated to various gods. Eyris, Qalaya, and Gnora were common, of course, but the statues also depicted figures such as Laviku, or Zulrav, or other deities. In the dream, he had passed by three statues--Eyris, Laviku, and Qalaya. He was sure that he had been further back into the library. All he would need to do was walk, and find the shelves that came after those three statues. Then he would be able to trace his past life's steps. That idea in mind, Satevis moved, taking his pack but leaving the books and papers behind as he went further into the library.

[Satevis]

It was slow, frustrating work at first. Although he knew which general area the shelf had been in, the library was huge, and he hadn't exactly been able to narrow it down to specifics. Once or twice, he saw a combination of statues where two out of three matched what he was looking for, only for the third to be completely different. All the while, the candle continued to burn away on its stand, the silence broken only by his footsteps and the occasional sound of a student furiously revising in some corner. Revising was what he needed to be doing, but there would always be time to take exams. There might not be another time for him to trace these memories. He scowled as he passed another set of statues--Eyris, Zulrav, and Qalaya this time, beginning to feel frustrated. It was a familiar sense of frustration, and he realized as he thought back to the dream that he was literally walking in his past life's footsteps--wandering in the library looking for something and getting frustrated while doing it. At last, when the candle had burned down until about half was left, he found it. A set of three statues that overlooked three different tables--one of Eyris, one of Laviku, and one of Qalaya, with a shelf tucked away in the corner past the third statue. Satevis walked over to that shelf, feeling his heart pound in his chest as he looked at it. The image in front of him matched the one in his dream perfectly. There was no doubt about it. This was it. Satevis set his candle stand on the table behind him, careful to keep it away from any of the books, and he began to search, thinking back to the thick tome with the red spine that he had seen in his dream. He had no idea what he hoped to achieve by doing this. The book probably had no significance, but he continued to search for it anyway, perhaps on the hope that finding it would trigger another memory. The triggers were so random and so far apart that it was hard to tell what caused them, but as far as he could understand, the memories seemed to be brought on by learning or doing something he had done in a past life. Even then it was chancy, so besides Taras, he really didn't know a lot. And that inherently bothered Satevis, because he had always wanted to know. He scanned the shelf from top to bottom, his Ethaefal form's height making it easy for him to see the higher shelves. There was no sign of the book with the red spine. There were books here, true, and many of them looked old enough to be from that time period. Some of them were colored, and some of them were even red, but the particular book that he had seen in his dream was gone. Satevis frowned as he reached the last row, standing up and doing it again. He went over the shelf twice, checking behind other books to make sure that it hadn't slipped behind a book somewhere, but there was no sign of it. He leaned against the table and stared at the shelf, considering his options. It had been over three hundred years, he realized. The book might have gotten destroyed, or moved since then. Or perhaps, the book had held some sort of significance to him in the past. Perhaps he had walked off with it, when he was in the library three hundred years ago. He looked around him, a frown on his face as he drummed his fingers impatiently on the tabletop. He had been here. Not in this form, maybe, but his soul embodied in another form had walked up and down this hallways, had moved with purpose and with an agenda, had looked at the very same things that he was now looking at. He had been here. Not someone else. Him. And he couldn't remember why. For a scholar, a seeker of knowledge, to not know one's own motives for doing something, to not remember the very things that one did...well, it was almost maddening. His eyes moved towards the statue of Eyris that hung over this particular table and he sighed. "If it's not too much to ask, wise lady," he said in a low voice laced with frustration. "I wouldn't mind some sort of sign..." He stared at the bookshelf for a full minute more before deciding that enough was enough. He could feel self-pity any other time. For now, he needed to get to work. Despite the library's size and the amount of material placed in it, it had been put in some sort of order. Journal articles about sailing did not often find themselves in sections devoted to books on the arcane, a Reimancy text was not often discovered in a section devoted to astronomy and navigation. If the book was placed on this particular shelf, it must have had some sort of relation to the other books on the shelf with it. Assuming that the entire bookshelf hadn't been rearranged in the past three hundred years--which was a possibility, he might be able to infer the subject of the mysterious book by looking at what else was on the shelf. Unfortunately, it seemed like he had found himself in front of the 'miscellaneous magic' section. There were books and journal articles on magic in front of him, and some of them were interesting, but they were scattered widely across disciplines. He caught a book on Reimancy, another on Flux, and a third on Malediction. Assuming this was even the same shelf, there was no telling what his past life was doing here, except for the fact that it involved magic somehow. Given that he already knew his past life was a powerful wizard, this was horribly imprecise. Satevis scowled, muttering in Shiber underneath his breath as he slumped back against the table, defeated. He glanced at the slowly burning candle. Well, this was a complete waste of time. He could have at least done something useful with it, like tested whether or not his own Res-generated flame burned through a candle faster or slower than regular fire. The unique effects of Res-generated elements was a boring topic, but anything would have been more exciting than wandering through a library for nothing. Then it hit him. Effects. His eyes widened and he looked back at the shelf, suddenly seeing the common thread that bound the books. He snatched one off the shelf, flipping through it and lightly skimming the pages before replacing it and grabbing another, random book. The effects of magic. The shelf wasn't dedicated to the use or theory of magic, but to the effects of it on human populations and the environment, and in the occasional book, the ethics of using certain spells within close proximity to others. Why was his past life in this section...if he was even here at all? He frowned. The memories were no longer coming, and although he would have liked to comb this section thoroughly, to do any more was a waste of time. Still...he couldn't let it go completely. He pulled one thin book off the shelf, a small write-up about the potential differences between normal elements and elements generated by Reimancy. If this brought no other memories to mind, it might at the very least be useful information to know. He wondered if the library might have records of the books on this shelf and decided that they must have, but it was night and he doubted the librarian was still on duty. He would ask tomorrow, he decided. It had been a thick book bound in red leather, and it had been on this shelf at least three hundred years ago. He knew that much, even though he didn't know much else. He doubted that the library would still have records of who borrowed it, but they might have records of the book itself, and if they did, then maybe it would trigger something else. For now, he knew a little more than he had before, all because of a memory brought on by a dream. He nodded once in respect to Eyris's statue and left the library, checking out the book at the desk on the way out. He was still thinking on the mystery by the time he finally arrived in his dormitory. He didn't sleep well that night, and when he did sleep, no memories came.

[Arcane]

Rewards and Treasure! Experience Points +2 Investigation +1 Observation Lores Past Life: Fire Reimancer in Wright Memorial Library University of Zeltiva: Wright Memorial Library Miscellaneous None. Comments Excellent thread! I love the way Satevis tried to retrace the steps of his reimancer past life, which was why you get the investigation XP. The first lore was for the dream, while the second was for his exploration of the library.