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What a day. Once I had picked up my jaw from the floor, I gathered my belongings and strolled to the library as fast as a wildcat… in my head. I finally knew which books I would be reading for the semester.
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Life is simpler with a book. They offer guidance, knowledge, solace. Best of all, they are structured: beginning, middle, end; table of contents, chapters, index; rising action, climax, falling action. There's hardly a reason to break the mold and go rogue with the plot. But there's no denying, if you don't hold a lure with proper bait, the reader will give up. And then, the rest of the pages may as well be cinder.
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Also, what is a library if not a holy place? Cinderfall’s library was massive, so much so its dome rose above the Cinderfall slates. Always, after the courtyard, passing the fountain of crystal blue, there was a paved crossroad that led to any one of three magnificent structures. Left to right: library, chapel, solarium. No, I didn't know why we had a solarium.
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Two giant slabs of wood, as tall as trees, ushered me inside the hall of knowledge. Past the steel entrance, there was nothing available to the likes of a commoner, which I considered a bloody shame. A series of arches introduced any and every one of us to the magnificence of the towering shelves. A giant could probably walk in here. Too bad, giants are illiterate. The stained-glass windows, from every corner of the room, casted clashing tides of pale and warm prisms upon the stone. Column after column protected the walls of text: tomes, encyclopediae, folktales, fairy tales, fish tales and more. You could see many more if the shelves didn't rise so high. Such a wealth of information could feed insight to legions of readers around the world.
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Again, I had gotten lost in the splendor. I started toward the textbooks, found the book in question: Prima Arcanum. Though tempted to linger, it was too close to bedtime.
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What a hefty table of contents. After studying the index, I briefly flipped through the chapters. By candlelight, I spent the night sifting through a scholar's uber clean penmanship when I noticed something odd. If this was supposed to be a survey of elementary magic, why were there only defensive spells? Because we're novices? Tapping my chin, I thought about it. Teenagers are too uncertain, clumsy, pessimistic, and destructive… Speak for yourself, Lux. Could we not be entrusted with anything volatile? At least, that is probably how the faculty and the authors of the books saw it. We were a motley assortment of pent-up energy in Limbo, the youth of a nation. On the other side of Limbo's door, adulthood awaited. So, how did Maister Rourke earn his Maister status? Connections?
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Nay. If he was connected, I doubt he'd be in the low-tier classroom of a beginner's course. Then, I remembered his thinly veiled dart at the headmaster. He nearly seethed when he spoke about him. What was that? Sigh. No matter. Maybe, he learned spells from some super-secret recluse in the woods or something. It was probably a mysterious grandmaster of the arcane, or a grand arcane master, like in the Book of Riddick.
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A sliver of starlight dripped through the window, onto the bedsheets. Before I could give myself up to a night's rrest, that little seed of doubt took root. Was I doing all this for nothing? A startling amount of people are born with the power to wield the arcane, but a smallar fraction become maisters or anything of note. In the end, would my aptitude fail? If my past fortune was any hint, then maybe the gods would deliver me to a sheltered life. Hmmm. I suppose Priestess Serrina and Madame Winnego didn’t seem unhappy, which is the most I could say about the former.
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Sigh.
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The next morning was a quagmire in exposition about beasts. Dear dear Hunter Ludwig had this grave enthusiasm whenever monster names left his mouth. More so when he would grab one of the trophies decorating his classroom and demonstrate anatomy. There were paws, talons, skulls, and some ligaments that remained a complete mystery.
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Wouldn't you know, natural and supernatural creatures exist in the same places? There’s a difference. The things we consider unnatural are often native to Miura’s ecosystems. For example, crowichtens are possessed humans, females mostly, who accumulate a hide of fungal infections, dirt, and flora. They exist in the swamp, prey on the wildlife, and slowly grow in size. Left unchecked, they become monstrosities with sway over nature. In the worst cases, entire forests become desolate enough to attract more unsavory beasts. 'Tis how we ended up with the Rhime Grotto.
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What else is worth knowing?
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"Class, please turn to page 105 of thy treatise." Rugged, chipper, bushy-browed with a white smile almost unbecoming of middle age, Ludwig was a teacher whose love of the subject drove his whole routine. I liked him. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of things that go bump in the night... and the day. His one pitfall was that he could venture off-topic and clumsily stumble from lecture to performance.
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"And that is the origin of the phrase, 'Dirt deeds don the dragon.'"
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I raised my hand.
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"Yes, Pollux."
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"What does this have to do with the cure for rat plague?"
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"Aha, I was getting to that..."
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It was disconcerting to contemplate how certain tidbits of information might come into play in the future. On what sorrowful occasion would I encounter a werewolf? A crowichten? A lechermaw...
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Another hellhound?
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Thus, I just wrote things down… Were it that I could call myself a monster slayer and rid this world of things that haunt our sleep. And get paid a sum for my trouble... I should keep in close touch with Maister Calum.
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According to the Monster Field Guide, most beasts dwell outside urban centers. Several classifications exist, including geflügelte Tiere, Blutsauger, Gewichte, Wildes Fell, and so on... Those that dwell in the wilderness can be divided into s: Predator, scavenger, carrion beasts, Yeti; and the list goes on...
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Notes:
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Wyverns – Isolationist species that build their nests in secluded places.
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Ragubo – horned subspecies is an omnivore, feeds on lesser reptiles.
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Kinitari – A beaked subspecies that slithers on the ground and occasionally glides when it descends from the tree in pursuit of its prey.
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Spectris – A curious creature since scholars still speculate whether or not they still roam our plain of living. Avant-garde researchers 'proclaim'—in italics, better make sure... that spectral monsters, like the Bodgelam, flip between the afterlife and regular life. Something brings them back, so they must be sent to eternal slumber, either by exorcism, coercion, or closure.
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Sylvan – These creatures primarily roam in the forests. They make themselves known whenever the natural world has been violated. According to the field guide, the same beings are melded from physical and spiritual essence.
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Fiends – generally speaking, stay the hell away from them. No pun intended. Common traits include burliness, fur, horns, and horrifically large teeth. They are rancid, competitive maneaters. The small ones roam in packs. Ghoulons they're called. Then there's Falshwins, detestable even by fiend standards. They're rabid and like to hunt humans on the road. Also, Rapiertooth...they lie on the frontier. Out of sight, out of mind. The true menace to city folk, that would be vampires, succubi, incubi, and vermin.
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