The Book Elf had come forward after that, bowed a bit, and then gestured to a hill nearby as she held up a tea pot and mimed having some tea. Now, the Elder Elf sat on a rock to the side of that hill, and Mark was having tea, he supposed.
Mark sat down on a large white cloth, across from Book Elf, and he didn’t break the cloth as he sat upon it, which was nice. A tea set rested between them, and Mark had no idea where it had come from, but the Book Elf had taken it out of some sort of extra-dimensional space near her, along with the cloth. This sent everyone on the Dreadnought to start wildly speculating if they had true extra-dimensional spaces, if those spaces were inside of the dreamlands like how the goblins had been, or if they were creating the materials whole-cloth, right as they wanted them. This speculation led to Andria to speak about how she put her mithril away into her soul… or maybe not. She didn’t know exactly what she was doing, but it was something all mages did; storing mana was pretty second-nature for most people, past a certain point, Mark excluded.
But Sally had been confirmed to be pushing and pulling into the dreamlands with her Size Manipulation and Titan’s Strength, so maybe mana and size weren’t really all that different. They didn’t truly know how the astral body worked, in that way.
Mark focused on the tea ceremony starting in front of him.
Book Elf’s porcelain tea set was near-translucent white, with a big tea pot and two cups on two saucers. It sat upon a carved wooden tray, on a short wooden table, and Mark and Book Elf were now on their knees, sitting opposite each other.
Book Elf said some soft words, while she also signed, ‘From-the-heart, it has been a long time since I have needed to sign for something, so please forgive any failures to communicate properly.’
Quark added some subtitles to Mark’s vision, and that ‘something’ the Book Elf said was the word ‘barbarians’.
Mark smirked a little, and signed, ‘From-the-heart, it has been never since I have talked to an elf, or known about your kind, so please forgive any failures of politeness.’
The Book Elf grinned a little, signing fast, ‘All is forgiven in politeness.’
Mark signed the same thing back to her, since it seemed appropriate.
The Book Elf let out a small breath of relief. Then she sat up a bit straighter, a bit more serene and austere. She signed as she spoke, ‘If there are no objections, I will now enter us into a Talk, where all words are made plain to all, and no lies can be uttered.’
Quark’s translation of her actual words read as, ‘Be there objections none, entering into Talk we be, wherein all lies be banished and all truth be stated without ornamentation.’
Mark said to Quark, “Tell me how to say this, Quark: If you would be open to the process, I can use my Power, Union, to enable true learning of the languages between our peoples.”
Book Elf eyed Mark, wondering what that was about.
Quark beep-booped, a little ‘composing message’ appearing in Mark’s vision. And then there were some syllables spelled phonetically, and Mark did his best to speak them properly. It went about as well as Mark thought it would go, which was ‘badly’.
Book Elf winced, her vector going back to worried.
Mark got halfway through the attempted speech… and he stopped there, signing, ‘From-the-heart, Sorry. We’re working on translating but it’s going poorly. I do have the Power to make an Understanding between peoples and languages, but it is best used in a calm situation, and I am loath to use Powers on people who I don’t know and who might take offense at it.’
Book Elf nodded, her vector returning to normal; hopeful, wary, and interested. She signed, ‘From-the-heart, I apologize. I should have been more clear. I will now enact a magic that will enable full communication between all parties involved in the talk, and for all listeners outside of the space. I have not done this in a very long time.’
Derek and a few people on the ship wondered openly about what ‘a very long time’ meant to an elf.
Mark signed back, ‘From the heart, okay, I accept your offer.’
And then the Book Elf gave a little half-bow, and the world went a little strange as she sat upright again. With a grin she couldn’t hold back, she said, in perfect English, “Hello, and welcome to our lands. My name is Myranial. I am a Listener, of the Library. Who might you be?”
Tartu spoke in Mark’s ears about how he couldn’t understand her.
Mark smiled a little, perfectly fine with showing off his natural reaction to smile, which made Myranial grin a little bit more, too. Mark kept his teeth hidden, though, as much as he realized he probably should do that, just in case. Mark said, “I’m Mark Careed, of Earth. It is a pleasure to be able to speak with you in a proper manner. I am a kaiju killer, a team leader, a participant in the Hero/Villain Program of Earth, and currently working for the Aluatha Empire of Daihoon, though I am not too sure how true that last one will be when we get back to Daihoon.”
Maybe he said more than she did, but that was fine. They were the invaders, after all.
Tartu complained about how the translation effect seemed to be only between Mark and ‘the elf’.
Mark added, “Thank you for talking with me, Myranial, of the Library.”
Tartu went on about how at least they knew her name.
Myranial politely nodded, though she was very excited. She started making tea. The tea pot had water in it from somewhere, and then she signed some fire magics into the pot, using a standard water heating cantrip. She pulled bright orange tea leaves out of the air, or maybe from somewhere else, and then she tossed them into the pot. She was careful and precise about all of it, moving slowly, making sure her soft hands were witnessed moving at gentle angles.
Soon, Mark had a steaming cup of tea in front of him.
He was hesitant to pick it up. He didn’t think it was poisoned, but…
Myranial took the first sip from her own cup, and she saw Mark’s hesitation. She set her tea down and asked, “Is there a worry?”
“I have been breaking a lot of things without meaning to ever since my incident with my Binding.”
Myranial nodded, and said, “It is okay to break the cup, but it is also good tea. I have chosen it specifically because it should provide full flavor even with your broken house.”
‘What the fuck is a ‘broken house?’
… Mark made a holder out of his fingers, instead of trying to pick up the cup itself, and that worked well enough to pick up the cup. Sipping it was a foreseen problem, though, so Mark carefully poured the tea into his mouth. His lips still touched the cup, and… and the cup was fine. Mark almost pushed his luck, sipping more than the smallest bit, because it really was truly good tea.
It was vibrant, and vaguely bitter. Sweet, too, but barely.
So Mark made a little straw out of adamantium, attaching it to the cup holder, and then Mark got to truly enjoy it. Myranial grinned a little bit at that. Soon, Mark had finished off most of the cup.
Mark put the cup down, and said, “It’s good tea.”
“The second steeping is better, but we will have to wait a little while for that to happen. Pray tell, why have you come here like you did? Why did you break the walls, and threaten the realm?”
… Mark got the sudden feeling that the elves had a very, very different experience of life from everyone else Mark had ever met. Which was, of course, a rather ‘Duh!’ moment. But it hit Mark hard, at that moment, because Myranial was acting like there was some other option to getting through how they had gotten through.
Mark paid very careful attention to how Myranial reacted as he began, “I needed to get prismatic mana to stabilize my Binding before the next time I slept, so I took a look at the offers out there, and instead of those possible-disasters, I went out into Endless Daihoon with my friends and got most of them prismatic Mana, too. It ended up being a big deal. Bigger than expected. And we ended up here, because this is where my scanner showed us needing to go for my prismatic mana. Honestly, we did not expect to find elves at all. To us, your people are little more than myth, though we did see signs of your people out there in the rest of Endless Daihoon. We did not expect to land here, at all. Breaking through to your realm was just a matter of course, since this was the way forward.”
Throughout all of that, Myranial betrayed no emotions beyond simple intrigue.
Myranial asked, “Were the normal ways closed to you?”
“… Were the normal ways closed to come here? To this place? Is that what you mean?”
“Yes, but among other ‘yeses’, the homemaker daemons, the Endless Court, the Joined, or Assistants? Did you not try them? Or even the dreamways?”
So that was a lot.
This was the second time Mark had heard ‘Endless Court’. The first time had been from Nobody Important, when he had asked about very old things, and spoken about the Endless Court as if it was ridiculous that they could have ever ended.
And that list she just spouted off was similar to the list that Elaria Valen had given Mark, when she spoke about how the Old System used to spit out error messages when it scanned people like Mark with ‘dangerously incomplete’ powers, telling them to ‘Consult your local
Mark said, “I’m not even sure where to start with all of that, so I will start with this: it seems, to me, that you are operating under an assumption about how the Two Worlds operate beyond this realm, and that those options you have listed, the homemaker daemons, the Endless Court, the Joined, and the Assistants, even still exist. The Endless Court hasn’t existed in the public eye since before most recorded history, and I only just heard about it in one of our previous stops. I have no idea who the Joined are, but I’m guessing it’s the big, scaly guys with wings? And the Assistants? Are those the gods? And this idea of ‘homemaker daemons’ — daemons, not demons? I’m sure the translation is compensating real hard there… might be the same, might not? Those guys are pretty much on everyone’s shit lists. So it seems, to me, that we’re coming at this from very, very different angles.” Mark added, “And I have no idea what ‘the dreamways’ even are, but if you mean the giant strings of worlds inside Endless Daihoon, the ones that don’t tumble and change as you walk through them, then we did come that way, though we left those and hit a hard vacuum of space and then we had to punch through to get into this hidden realm here.”
The elder to the side had been fake-relaxing on his rock, but he sat up straighter. Concern colored all of his features and vector. Steel Elf over in that other direction was openly aghast.
It appeared that the elves here were able to understand the conversation happening here on the blanket just fine. Sally and Isoko back behind Mark were only able to understand his side of the conversation, though, not to mention Tartu and the guys on the ship, who were practically buzzing in Mark’s ears with ‘what the fuck’s.
Myranial’s entire vector crashed as Mark spoke, but she held on to a flicker of hope.
First, she poured them another round of tea.
Mark sipped through his adamantium straw, and Myranial simply sipped, thinking deeply about a great deal far beyond this simple hill, outside of a simple elven village, under a not-simple blue sky gridded in hexagonal lines of prismatic light.
She finished her tea.
Mark finished his tea.
Myranial said, “That is concerning in a lot of ways… but it is understandable… I believe… There are some wrong avenues of approach happening at this moment...”
She went silent.
Mark waited.
Myranial looked at Mark, and asked, “How old do you think I am?”
“Anywhere from 40, to 40,000. I truly have no idea.”
Myranial blushed a bit, and then she said, “I’m 15,000, though I stopped counting a long while ago. Most of our culture… Most of us abandon the past every so often. It is the shedding of a snake’s skin, or the cocooning of a butterfly into a different butterfly. I am a Librarian. I ensure the Library of Old Lives is well-maintained. If someone should perish, then they would be reborn in the Library. People can come in and update their book of life if they wish, and most do, occasionally.
“Most file their books of lives with friends and cohorts that they travel with in their new lives. Most will shave themselves down to the barest self, and then grow and change, and then add that new self to their old books of life in the Library. If they need to, they can come out of their smaller lives and assume the full mantle of their old lives.
“The usual age at which a person usually renews themselves is 40, which is at the top end of juvenile. From there, they are raised by friends of a similar age and they raise those friends in turn. Lives usually last around 350 or sometimes 700 years. Sometimes people have children, but only if they manage to find true love with each other in their new lives. This is a very rare thing for children to happen, and we cherish every new child, but it is rare.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Some people have remained their Full Selves all their lives, but this is a separate, smaller culture from the one you are in right now. It is a very, very small culture, and we consider those people to be mostly… We tend to stay away from them, but only because it is hard to relate to them.
“Trauma builds up, you see, and it is only through shedding the trauma that we can be people, simply living, once again.
“There is a great deal of talk in the Library right now of our Full Selves being necessary, though, because of your interruption. I doubt it will happen. No one but the strange like being ten thousand people at the same time, except in times of absolute need, and this does not appear to be a time of absolute need, of which I am thankful for.
“This does cause issues, though.
“One of the greater issues of people never adopting their old lives, their Full Selves, is that a great deal of old knowledge is forgotten. Most of the time a person assumes that someone else knows something, and they go searching for those people. Thus, we enjoy each other’s company, and we live and grow. Or, they discover that some knowledge has been lost, so they try looking for it again, or remaking it. Perhaps, if they hit a dead end, they might go to the Library for old answers, but the old ways are not always the best, and so people search and live and love all of life.
“We have ten thousand ways of living, ten thousand different goals and possible lives and… And I assume you would have the same? Yes? You desire this or that or this other thing, and you work within a culture to get that. We have that, too. The cultures that happen… they happen.
“The past is discarded.
“That is what I think happened here.
“You have ‘come to the Library’ because the normal ways are closed to you for whatever reason.
“Otherwise the reason for you to be here would not exist. You should have been able to receive help out there. You should have been able to… to do what you needed to do without coming here. It is not a bad thing that you are here. We simply haven’t gotten visitors in a long…” Myranial said, “I assumed that we still had visitors from time to time, and that they were seen by a member of the Endless Court in the front. Not back here.
“You are currently in the back of the realm, in the Young Lands, where we hold tournaments of minimal strength and people try to find love and lifelong companions, and people often kill each other if they are of warrior leanings. If someone should manage to kill someone else, then those people will mostly revive with their friends, who hold onto their books of life for this life, engaging in a lifelong battle against each other… and this is worrying for you in a lot of ways. This was a lot.
“Would you like more tea?”
Mark said, “I would love more tea. Thank you.”
Myranial poured Mark tea, saying, “It is a pleasure to receive you.”
Mark picked up his tea, saying, “A lot to think about.” He asked, “Are there any ‘full self’ elders out there that I can speak to?”
“Oh no…” Myranial had started off strong, but she paused. “I will put out a memo at the Library, but if anyone wishes to read it or respond, then that is up to them. Elder Leeom over here—” Meaning the ranting elder guy by the rock, who was currently quiet and thinking. “—is perhaps the most forward-acting and older elder in the area. He updates his book of life frequently, but even he only recalls the last thousand years.”
Elder Leeom spoke some words that Mark didn’t understand. He was outside of the translation magic, of course.
Myranial corrected herself, “1,200 years. It is a bit rude to talk about, but it is necessary for this conversation… He is young, at 7,000 years old, but he is one of those with the oldest memories around here, and he enjoys keeping youngsters in line, so we call him ‘Elder’ at the moment. I’m only around 70 years old right now. I have a cohort of fellow Librarians and we are currently engaged in writing stories about grand adventures where we all take characters and write them into each other’s stories… It is quite enjoyable… But you seem like the martial type? Perhaps Kialo—” Meaning Steel Elf, on the other side of the area. “Might be more the kind of person you would wish to engage with.”
Mark took that in, and then asked, “To be clear… it sounds like when you speak of the Endless Court, you are talking about people who you don’t interact with?”
“Hardly anyone does… I guess not even you interact with them.”
Mark nodded a little, then asked, “And to be clear… Do you have a formal government? Someone in charge?”
“Oh everyone has been in charge one time or another. We didn’t really do that this Renewal— Ah. A ‘Renewal’ is a period of time where a great many of us choose to renew our lives, to live differently. This Renewal is about 300 years old. They generally last until… Well. Until they don’t. I imagine this Renewal will end rather suddenly, due to your arrival. But it could go much longer. We could enter a Waking time… though I hope not.”
Mark nodded, thinking he understood most of that, then asked, “Would it be possible to get a prismatic mana Second Awakening through the prismatic mana up there at that spire?”
“Oh sure,” Myranial said, “You’ll have to speak to the Enforcers on the mountain, but that shouldn’t be too much trouble. They will likely test your house, though.”
“… What do you mean by ‘house’?”
“… What do you mean, what do I mean?”
A moment passed—
Myranial suddenly gasped. “You will die permanently if you touch the spire without a house! You cannot touch the spire. You need to learn about your house, first!”
Something clicked for Mark, too.
Something he had heard a real long time ago, but it was only last year. Seemed like longer.
Archmage Blackthorn of Memphi had talked about houses when he first talked to Mark about magic, before Mark had any real lessons on magic at all, before Mark knew anything real. Later, Elaria Valen had spoken about Bindings, and so had everyone else, but Blackthorn had talked about ‘houses’. He had said something like…
‘Right now you have a house with 3 pieces of furniture in it; that’s your magic, Union, Healthy Body, Adamantiumkinesis. Your furniture is also your house, though. If you want to do more than those three things, then you gotta add more furniture.’
Mark asked, “You mean my Binding?”
Myranial’s face fell. “Oh my stars… Oh my…” She looked at Mark. “How? How… Something has gone horribly wrong in many different areas— Oh! Do you know of the Joined King? Surely you know of him!” Myranial chuckled nervously. “He’s your human king, yes? I had forgotten about him. Surely he’s still around… Ah…” As if she had realized something, she nodded. “He turned tyrant, then. I am guessing that he is holding back knowledge from everyone? The Endless Court should have stopped that and ensured normal actions, but… We will have to write some strongly worded letters, and you will likely have to recruit a few Full Self elders to walk with you into that imperial hall. Truly dangerous, that place. I can’t remember the last time I was there, and I am thankful for that.”
… A wild guess about what the fuck she was talking about edged into Mark’s mind.
Mark asked, “You mean the Dragon King? From about 4 or 7 thousand years ago?”
Myranial smiled. “Yes! You do know him! We call him the Joined King. He was very good about getting people to work together… Wait.” She paused. “The last time I saw him was maybe 5,500 years ago, but you should have knowledge of him from… from the present day. But you just…” Myranial had a dawning horror.
Mark confirmed her horror, saying, “We have stories about him. Mostly, he’s used as the punchline of a morality story about having too many people dependent on one thing that is capable of breaking. He’s been gone for something like 4 to 7 thousand years. The timeline is a bit wonky because very few records of the past survived.”
As though Myranial was putting off confronting a big fact in her idea of her own history, she offhandedly muttered, “Timelines do get a bit wonky sometimes.”
Myranial stared off into space for a little while.
Mark asked her, “Would you like more tea?”
“Oh yes, thank you,” Myranial said.
Mark used a brace of adamantium to hold the teapot as he poured for both of them. This was fine, he thought. Quark, Derek, Eliot, Tartu, David, Andria, and Lola, were currently blowing up the chat, needing to know more, because they only had half of the conversation happening right now. Some of their ideas were wrong, and Mark would have to correct them later, but for now he focused on the space in front of him.
Isoko and Sally stood back from the meeting, both of them wondering what was going to happen now, both of them shifting their sights from the readouts in their helms, of the endeavors of the team on the Dreadnought, to the meeting on the blanket.
Mark asked, “You said that the people are reborn— Ah, sorry. Renewed, and they take on Bindings… in their houses, I assume, and they do tournaments and war? That’s where the red craters are from?”
Myranial had a moment, and then she dismissed the weight of the previous information, saying, “Oh yes. It’s a whole world of war, for a lot of people. Personally I don’t go in for that sort of thing… or at least not this life. It’s enamoring in some ways, but the reality of it is quite harsh. Living in the forests, not knowing when your trip to town will get you killed and set back to childhood to be raised by your friends, getting way too emotional about the outcomes of fights—”
Kialo of the Plains called out something, though he was smiling as he did so.
Myranial rolled her eyes, and told Mark, “Apparently you disarmed one of Kialo’s cohort way too easily when you first appeared, and he wants a rematch to defend the honor of his cohort. I suggest you do not oblige, or else you’ll get sucked into that sort of life very quickly. They are almost hyperviolent against one another, each of them with too many short-lived memories among them. But it’s a fast-paced kind of life, and that is appealing to some.”
Elder Leeom spoke up about something else.
Myranial listened to Leeom, then she told Mark, “I believe he is correct.”
“… About what?”
Myranial paused. And then she went, “Ah. Right. Language… If you wish to do your Understanding Power in the village, I am sure many of us would like to learn a new language or seven, in exchange for teaching you our own. This is where this talk must end, though. It was great to meet you, Mark. I look forward to meeting everyone.”
Myranial bowed a little, where she sat.
Mark bowed back, saying, “Thank you for receiving us. I look forward to a fruitful future of elves mingling with humans and getting help with my ‘house’.”
“Oh I seriously doubt that is going to happen— Ah. Apologies. That was too flippant. Not the help with your house, but the mingling part… Plains warriors are one thing, but we don’t like living with short-lived races… but you might become immortal? You, we might enjoy the company of. Your friends are a byproduct.”
“… Okay, sure.”
“Ahh… But what am I saying? That was rude of me. When you get your house in order, you can probably carry them around with you and become a cohort of your own. You’ll need to solve the aging issue and likely discard memories a lot faster than elves, but you can still do it. It’s not fun, though.”
… Did that mean what Mark thought it meant? That he could make all of his friends immortal, right alongside him? He wasn’t fast enough about asking what that meant, though, because Myranial waved her hand and vanished the tea set, and something ephemeral popped in the air.
Myranial stood up and said something in ‘New Elvish’, that Mark did not understand but that Quark did. Quark translated her as, ‘I be willing to talk later after learned gains manifest in your vicinity.’
Mark stood up —the blanket vanished, leaving grass underfoot— and said, “It was a pleasure to speak with you.”
The elves understood that just fine, but if Mark wanted to learn their language, he was going to have to use Union. Which… Okay.
Elves were better than humans in a lot of ways. Check.
… And then the group broke up, the elves walking to the village, their vectors and words giving the distinct impression of ‘that went surprisingly well!’ and ‘I’m not sure I believe them about coming here in peace’ and ‘but they certainly believe themselves’.
… Mark walked toward Sally, Isoko, and Derek, saying, “Back to the ship; we’re hanging out up there for a while.”
Derek said, “I’ve found a few cohorts out there that are interested in talking to me. I’m gonna try and Union Good/Bad for language acquisition with them.” Another Derek added, “A lot of people are coming out of hiding now. We might get some guests up at the Dreadnought.”
“Sure,” Mark said, rolling with everything right now. He told Eliot on the comms, “Eliot? Make sure the place is nice and well made— Ah. Anyone praying right now?”
David spoke up, “Lola is praying, but Derek has been actively praying this whole time.”
Isoko asked, “So I guess Derek understood some of that, but I didn’t get shit, except for what you said.”
Sally strongly, yet quietly asked, “Did she talk about Resurrection Magics?”
“You know…” Mark put a rotor into the air above them and held out some handles that the girls gripped, as he said, “It completely slipped my mind to ask about that, specifically, because I think it just doesn’t matter for them. I’ll go over all of it up there. Quark understood all of it, right?”
Quark answered, “I understood the words, sir.”
“I hear that,” Mark muttered, as they ascended toward the Dreadnought.