The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 493 - Libraries, Likeability, & Love
The library occupied the entire third floor of the main residence. Though calling it that felt generous... given that most of the shelves still stood empty. Each visitation had brought a few more volumes into it, her disciples leaving some, her mother leaving some... but Dima had still been startled when she first explored it weeks ago. That she’d found a whole shelf filled with copies of many of the best books on the continent.
New copies, freshly made and barely handled. Some were technical manuals on current sigil theory, others were agricultural treatises and geographic scouting diaries. There were even a few simple poetry and romance novels that had somehow felt extremely out of place. If only because they reminded her strongly of the personal servant.
And she would be right to feel that way, considering they were works that El had peered through in that very woman’s collection. Curious what sort of slop Klaytei had been consuming to think that Dima was a good partner to pair with. A few of them she actually liked, so she memorized them. Or it might be more accurate to say that she stored the memory of staring at the pages into a fragment. Along with every other ’new’ book there now.
"As a scholar, even if much of your job was to go work with people in other Guilds, you should be pretty comfortable in a place like this. No?"
"I’ve never been more uncomfortable in a library in my life, actually."
"Yes... it is quite empty and distressing, isn’t it..."
The brunette pretended not to know what the other woman was talking about while turning and approaching the central table of polished marble. Sitting down on the hard bench, a hand waved Dima to join her and a cleared throat assured that she meant on the same seat - not across. If what she wanted to teach and show was possible that way, the heiress surely would have preferred it.
"I was thinking of taking a few days break. So I figured I would let you work for me, as it were."
"Work. What do you mean?"
A peculiar device suddenly dropped down from the roof. A spiritual construct holding onto something that looked like an absolute mess of Crystal components - with a headache inducing amount of in-plane sigils stacked on top of one another in each of them - and some sort of paper feeding basket. An essence conduction handle seemed ready to hold on to... and power *something*.
Yet, it was the headpiece, a thin curve band held up by smiling mint eyes that scared the branch manager the most. Enough for her hands to shoot up and ’prevent’ it from being placed on her by the ancient cultivator.
"I’m going to show you how to use this."
"Would it kill you to simply tell me what it is first? Before trying to put that on me?"
"What kind of question is that? Of course, if I had any sort of worry of that nature, I would be forcing it on you immediately rather than taking the risk."
Shaking her head and ending the little game, the heiress put it on herself and held the handle. Tilting her head left and right - less to check the fit and more to try and decide which example to use - she finally picked out what passed for a primer in one certain Spiritualist Guild. It held some concepts that were a bit more advanced than the continent, but not much. Not like the much more advanced pressure of spirit that looped around the device, adhered to temples and running across her forehead.
Gripping the handle, the device began to hum and light up with energy. A slip of paper was fed to the center as the essence collected on one particular gem point. Only seconds later, that precisely modulated energy was released in an even more accurate pattern. Searing the top side of paper with the exact impression of the first page of the book that rested within a reincarnator’s memory.
"How does this even work?"
"Memory impression. You do your best to recall the page. The band here converts the text as it was seen through your eyes into relative spatial coordinates and passes the targeting information to-"
The lecture went on for a little while. Even as pages moved out of the way, new blanks slid down, and a whole stack was made to be bound together. Every detail was perfect as far as the other woman could tell... from the size of the letters to the placement of diagrams. Elua set the printed pages aside and looked at the mildly dumbstruck woman with a smug expression.
’She got so used to me being so easy to read, she still has a lot to learn if I can threaten her with a *little* false but well-constructed bloodlust.’
"I don’t understand why you are teaching me how to use this. You don’t even like me."
"Not particularly. But others do."
Mint eyes ticked away, realizing she was getting a little close to being ’involved’ in this. While she had fully meant to set the woman up in the first place, when it ended up the way it had with Klaytei... she had pretty much washed her hands of it. Sometimes schemes were hatched, enacted, and abandoned. But it was rarely a good idea to just hop right back into a changed situation without any thought - though the whimsical cultivator too often did just that.
"I’m willing to admit it is possible I am wrong about people. But that doesn’t mean we have to be friends. Or enemies. We can just not think about each other until necessary."
"You’ve made it pretty necessary! I’m stuck here until you let me leave..."
"And I explained it would be a waste of energy to send you back alone. Besides, sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder. And sometimes... I’d like to inflict that on someone instead of just enduring it all on my own."
Narrowing her eyes, the woman’s lips parted and closed. She couldn’t bring herself to ask what *that* had meant. While she’d moved past being dense these weeks, she’d stalled into a state of uncertain confusion in regard to her own feelings. Talking with Madrigil and studying the visible sigil work throughout the Exclave had been a strong distraction to keep herself from true Clarity on the subject.
"You have a whole second power-"
"Books decay, but properly constructed memory fragments don’t." 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂
Quickly interrupting the valid point that the woman was about to make, El hopped up on the table and sat on a different bench. Pulling the finished pages along in the wake of her essence field without touching them. Gently, she pat the sides while getting reseated. That much proximity to a person she had some remaining distaste for had been plenty!
"Not for millennia, if properly maintained. That’s more than enough time to keep them shuffled and fresh. Generally."
"This is still nowhere close to an answer. Why are you teaching me this method, Elua? What is in it for you?"
She’d seen so many things since coming here that the pages sliding ’on their own’ didn’t even rattle her. Madrigil in particular had taken to spinning a Metal coin that he would occasionally just let *stop* in his essence field. The Adhesion technique was used so liberally by both sigilists that by the first week, the former liaison was already convinced she was the real weird one for not being able to do it yet.
"Hm. I did say that you would be working for me. Do you not see that as a fair trade?"
"You’re not being clear on the work. It makes me feel like I’m agreeing to something more permanent."
"Perceptive and cautious. I definitely would choose to keep you involved in ongoing matters within the continent. You’ve proven competent. It’s also still very fun that you react to my imaginary intent."
Poking at the headband on the table, an object that the sigilist had no intention of putting on any time soon, Dima kept up her potentially ’bold’ behavior. She’d not talked so much privately with the heiress since before the Descent. Both of them had been through a lot in these years.
"...Is it imaginary - or are you using real memories? Like with the book you just made."
The brunette teenager giggled and stopped using Illusions privately. Through the conversation, she’d been roaming around the room and experimenting with the potential looks of leather binding she could add to the primer. Ultimately she settled on the simplest kind. It was being given to this woman to take with her, after all - it didn’t need to be that special!
"You think there is a difference? All imagination is a composite of sensory memory and experience. Even the hatred someone actively feels for another is the same."
"And what about love, then?"
Remaining unstartled that the voice came from the *wrong* place, because there had already been something ’wrong’ feeling about Elua er Goltbred just sitting there quietly on the bench, the branch manager asked the first thing that came to mind. But the brunette herself was a little startled. Not because the Clarity wielder had successfully pierced the weak illusion she’d set up - that had been a small test. Instead, she was struck by the surprise of girl’s talk with someone that she had just admitted she did not like!
"That... well that is special. Sometimes it is a feeling too hard to imagine, even if you’ve known it. Sometimes it is impossible to notice, even with it right in front of you. You can think it is real, when it is not. Then at times it blazes with the most certainty of anything in the cosmos. So much that everything else is what feels false."
Mint eyes glowing softly, her Astralism still stronger than her Element, even though the gap was closing. She had been sucking in essence quickly as of late - because of course she wasn’t going to let her *father* get too far past herself. Not when he still described his essence field as the ’whoompf’ around him. However, right now her thoughts were on the people at home on the continent.
"Whether real or imaginary, it is worth remembering. Love. Every part of it. Even the bad. So practice for me how to create constructs of spiritual energy, form fragments that can store your memory. What you do with it after that is up to you, but I recommend you use it for as much emotional nonsense as you do for any work and study."
’Some things are meant to be remembered. Whether she chooses to admit her *capture* by a mortal... or not.’
