The stairway leading up was a stark contrast to the brooding glassy walls of the library. Shining a dim glow, they snaked up in a rising circle, illuminating the way as his boots clicked dully on its surface.

  To his right was a railing made from black onyx stone, thick to his touch and so unnaturally smooth it made him marvel at the ingenious piece of construction.

  ... Or maybe he just wanted to glide down on it with childlike glee.

  To his left was a wall; glassy, smooth and marred with intricate swirling patterns that stretched upwards and on every side of the wall. On the other side of the glass, thin streams of water flowed down from the top, similar to the atrium. Damien only had time to follow the lines with his eyes before he reached the first floor.

  Standing at the entrance to the corridor, Damien couldn't help but glance down, watching with widening eyes at how large the interior of the library was... far bigger than he'd previously comprehended.

  He made out the figure of Destrul, who was on a stool, leaning forward over the table and whispering furiously to the cat lady sitting opposite him.

  At some point they both paused and turned to look up at the stairway leading Damien had followed, seemingly searching for him.

  Destrul blanched and his eyes widened when they met Damien's. Swiftly, he jerked his head away, turning away like he hadn't just been staring at Damien with apprehension. Calestra, on the other hand, simply nodded with a thoughtful frown on her face, and then she, too, turned away.

  With a sigh, Damien turned around and stepped into the corridor to his left. Like the stairs, the floor was plain white and unnaturally smooth. The only difference was that this path was made from thick ivory stone instead of the jade-like material that the stairway was made from.

  Damien walked down the short corridor... Well, short by Spirit lord's standards. The line stretched for perhaps twenty meters, with two long rows of huge wooden shelves on each side, all of which were filled with thousands upon thousands of books.

  As he walked, Damien noticed that those books seemed to be plain and empty on their covers, all looking the same if not for the different colored hardbacks. His own books trailing behind him in the air, Damien took a book from one of the shelves. It had a black hardcover, smooth and unmarred, and was placed just beside an empty space on the shelf.

  Stopping, his fingers curled around the top half of the book, and when he tried to pull it out, he was shocked to see that the book refused to move, sticking to its abode like it'd been glued.

  Frowning, he added a little bit of strength, shock mounting when the book still refused to move. Damien was just about to try harder when a sharp pain tore up his hands, leaving him jerking it back with a loud yelp.

  With irritation, he glared at the book and the devious enchantments laced within the shelve. The lightning that had struck him wasn't all too powerful, just strong enough to gift him a mildly numbed forearm.

  With a sigh, he turned forward and continued. On his way, he witnessed multiple books disappear, vanishing into sprinkles of light to somewhere else. And shelves that were previously empty soon found themselves full again as more books soon appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

  Damien would have loved to try his luck with one of those appearing books, but his not-so-long experience swiftly stayed his hands.

  After a few more minutes of walking, Damien arrived at an intersection and, turning to the left, brought him to a large reading space.

  The walls here were dark, and he made out the similar patterns he'd seen on his way up. The ceiling, which was high enough that a two-storey building could be fitted comfortably inside, was dotted with many leisurely drifting tiny globes, which illuminated the room in a soft glow.

  It seemed this reading area was not a majorly favored one because, aside from the man sitting at one end of the room, pouring over an open book, the chairs were unoccupied.

  "Hello," Damien greeted as he made his way toward a black, wooden, high-backed chair in the corner opposite the other occupant.

  The man sharply raised his head, blinking slowly with a look of confusion, probably because he'd just realized he wasn't the only one in the room. "Hello."

  "You must be new," Damien said as he took his seat, controlling the floating books to rest on the dark brown table before him.

  The man blinked at him again, this time with less confusion and the beginning of what Damien deciphered as suspicion.

  To alleviate whatever worries his neighbor might have had, Damien simply pointed at the book in the man's hand. "You're reading a beginner's primer on Lese and the Fringe nations."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "Oh."

  "There's nothing to be worried about," he raised his book to show the cover, which also had a similar title. "I'm also new here. I'm Damien."

  The man stared at him for a few moments, his eyes intense, and when Damien began thinking he wasn't going to reciprocate, he nodded. "Galaris."

  Hiding his sigh of relief, Damien smiled brightly. "Forgive the intrusion, but where are you from? This is my first time traveling across worlds, so I don't really know much about other star nations. It'd be nice to hear from other travelers."

  The man, Galaris, stared at him with thickly raised dark eyebrows, which curved over two intense black eyes, on the corner of which were lines that told of either old age or a penchant for smiling. His black hair was slicked back, with some sort of reflective shine that glittered under the glow of the lights above. Overall, he looked middle-aged, somewhat between his late thirties and early forties.

  Galaris gave him a thin-lipped smile and then looked pointedly at the book in his hands and then toward Damien.

  "Right," Damien murmured with a cough, hiding his embarrassment. "Sorry about that."

  Given that the man had not answered his first question, Damien took that to mean he was in no mood to chat. And since he didn't want to push, he turned his attention down to the books before him.

  First off, he decided to start with the Primer on Lese and the fringe. That was the book he considered most important at the moment, seeing as he was already in Lese and knew next to nothing about it and its culture.

  He skipped past the content, glancing past the history of lese which stood at chapter one, and then opened to said chapter.

  Like so many of the Multi-specie civilizations, The Lese World Cities were founded when the three Ascendants— Duke Vilsus Duveyar, whose charisma could command armies. Lord Nessus Saulae, a strategist whose cunning rivaled the fiercest of mind, and Lady Attrevia Verrille, also known as the Desolate Duchess, whose sheer power was so great as to pause even the dreaded Aveanii—decided to settle down after millennials of wandering to create a place to call home.

  At the time, this portion of the Fringe was soaked in strife and struggle, already occupied by the ever-conquering Aveanii Dominion and their iron-fisted rule, the ferocious warrior tribes of the Chirameni people and their unnatural love for battle, the Elven Sun and moon courts, and various other smaller nations who were restricted to their isolated worlds and systems, trembling in the shadow of the great powers, with scant Ascendants to offer protection should the dreadful Aveanii desire more slaves, or the Chirameni to want for more worthy foes to test their blades.

  The arrival of the three powerful Ascendants, on par with the sovereigns of the Aveanii and the Chirameni, and also neutral to the status quo of the Fringe, served as a lighthouse for those fearful nations.

  It wasn't a surprise when the three founding houses were approached by those in hiding, with fearful pleas for an alliance. And gracious and benevolent protectors that they were, the three accepted. Thus, Lese came to be: A bastion for the weak and a lighthouse for those in the dark.

  Over the Millennials since its founding, Lese had grown from a modest alliance state of barely a dozen worlds to a titan whose reach spans over hundreds of worlds, standing firmly shoulder to shoulder with the Great powers of the fringe.

  To this day, it still serves as a lighthouse, calling to those too weak to protect themselves.

  Damien breathed in as he finished reading, face morphing slowly into one of confusion and terrible premonition. He couldn't help but trace a vague resemblance of the status quo of the fringe to that of the nations of Greensend, with the conquering Aveanii representing the Solarian Empire, and Lese standing for the alliance Damien had formed with the weaker nations of Greensend.

  With how things were being run; the Aveanii conquering and enslaving worlds, with Lese standing against them to stave off their hungry tide, he couldn't help but feel like the great war that had destroyed Greensend was going to be begin again, but this time on a planetary scale.

  Damien didn't know much about the Aveanii, but his latest experience with them had already given him some insight into how they were: Hegemonic and Xenophobic to other races. It wasn't that much of a surprise that they were Conquerors who turned their subjugated into slaves. What those slaves were used for though? Damien didn't know.

  As for the Chirameni, from what he could discern, they were somewhat like the Torinian Clans back on Greensend, who weren't as militaristic as Chirameni, but strong all the same. The Chirameni were a warrior caste, hungry for battle with no care whosoever they were fighting. For some reason, Damien became wary of those tribes. Only a fool would underestimate a tribe of battle maniacs.

  The World Cities of Lese were all ruled by Sovereign houses, each of them originating from the natives of those planets, who raised the strongest to serve as the protectors and caretakers of their worlds. Damien snorted when he got to the part where The Lese Houses were described as a powerful alliance founded on the principle of equality, with no house greater than the other, nor a sovereign subservient to another.

  The World Cities were led, overall, by a parliament that, with equal authority, made decisions for the betterment of the society.

  Damien couldn't help but chuckle as he finished reading. Equal authority? Hah! What a joke. He knew very well that as far as one group held greater powers than the other, there was never going to be anything equal in their exchange.

  Look at the alliance Solaria had forged with the Torinian and the hive. On paper, it was described as an alliance, but Damien knew clearly that the relationship those nations had with Solaria was a vassalitic one. Solaria called the shots and the two rushed to obey.

  Even the relationship he, himself had forged with Camlen and Gandor was more the same, except that Damien had left their rulers to the decision making and general planning of the war, only putting his inputs when it had to do with Solaris or his Pillars. It wasn't a secret that Fenor and Brunos were his vassals: he protected them from the 'evil' Solaria while they came at his call should he need it.

  Lese was no different, Damien knew. The houses were probably a power to behold, fielding Spirit lords in such numbers that would have shamed even the Great families or Solaris, and wielding constructs powerful enough to blow his previous planet to smitherings. In the end, they all served the three founding houses.

  The way the scions of those so called sovereign houses had deferred to Vanis during their escape was answer enough.

  With a sigh, he continued reading.