Chapter 008 - The House You're Living In

  The space between the three of them felt charged with unspoken words. It was Valerie who broke the silence, her professional calm acting as a buffer.

  “Tori,” she said with a simple nod.

  “Valerie. Mark,” Tori replied, her voice steady but lacking its previous warmth. Her gaze flickered to Mark, then quickly away, focusing on a point somewhere over his shoulder.

  Mark knew they couldn’t move forward with this tension hanging in the air. He had spent enough years with difficult personalities in miserable cramped office spaces to know would only fester if not dealt with. He took a shallow breath, the cool mountain air doing little to soothe the dull ache in his ribs.

  “Look,” he started, his voice coming out more blunt than he intended. “I’m probably never going to like you. I personally find what you tried to do deeply invasive and abusive. But I’ll give you the respect for who and what you are.” He met her gaze directly, forcing her to look at him. “I’d like to assume you did what you thought was right. It’s over. I’m past it.”

  The declaration hung in the air, stark and unambiguous, he meant every word. Tori seemed taken aback for a moment, shocked by his resolve, the directness. The dread in her expression hardened slightly into the professional mask he recognized, he was unsure but what looked like relief or maybe hope flashed over her for a moment.

  “I… appreciate that,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry for being excessive.” She paused, her grip tightening on the bagged book. “My priority was, and will always be, the safety of my people. I won’t be sorry for protecting them.”

  It wasn’t a full apology, but it was more than he’d expected, and he didn’t hope how things worked here, was that normal? It was an acknowledgment, a drawing of lines. He could live with that, providing she kept it as genuine as she was trying to be.

  “A mutual understanding, then,” Valerie interjected, stepping forward slightly. Her relief was palpable, a subtle easing of the tension in her shoulders. “Now, we're drawing some attention, so let's head inside.”

  Tori pushed the elegant wooden door open, holding it for them. Mark stepped across the threshold and into a silence that felt ancient and profound.

  The interior of the library was even more magnificent than its exterior suggested. Endless rows of wooden shelves stretched upwards, packed with thousands of books of all shapes and sizes. The air smelled of old paper, leather, and polished wood. Sunlight streamed through the large glass panes, refracting through strategically placed crystals in the ceiling to illuminate every corner of the room in a soft, perfect light that left no glare on the polished floors or the glass of the numerous display cases scattered throughout the main floor.

  A grand, sweeping staircase led up to a mezzanine level that overlooked the main floor, lined with even more books. Another set of stairs seemed to lead down, presumably to a records hall or some restricted section below.

  From behind a large, ornate circulation desk towards the center of the room, an older woman with kind eyes and mostly grey hair sat. She offered them a warm, gentle smile as they approached.

  “Valerie, Tori. It’s good to see you,” she said, her voice soft but clear. She then turned her gaze to Mark, her smile never wavering. “And you, I don’t think we have met. Welcome to this Sanctuary of Knowledge.”

  As she spoke, she placed her hand flat on the desk in a gesture of welcome. On the back of her hand, a delicate, intricate tattoo of soft, silver light pulsed gently into view. It was not the solid, colorful light of the healers with him, but something more ethereal, she caught his gaze, “Ah, This is the Mark of Knowledge, a gift from the Oracle herself.”

  “You may call me Jenny,” she continued, the silver light fading as she lifted her hand. “What services can our humble library provide this day?”

  Valerie stepped forward, resting her hands on the polished wood of the desk. “Thank you, Jenny. We’d like to start with a simple query, if odd. We need to know if he exists in the records.”

  Jenny’s kind eyes shifted to Mark, her expression one of gentle curiosity. “Of course. That is the easiest place to begin.” She reached under the counter and retrieved a thin, rectangular slab of polished, milky-white crystal. It was framed in ornate brass, with delicate etchings along the edges. “May I have your full name, please?”

  “Mark Shilling,” he said, his voice feeling small in the vast, quiet space.

  Jenny nodded, her fingers tracing unseen patterns on the crystal's smooth surface. She held it up, aiming it at Mark as if it were a strange, oversized camera. For a few long moments, nothing happened. Mark just stood there, feeling exposed under the librarian’s patient gaze. Then, a faint, silvery light began to swirl within the crystal, and lines of glowing text, readable only from her side, began to form.

  She studied the results for a moment, her brow furrowed in concentration. Finally, she lowered the crystal slab and looked at Mark with an expression of polite, professional certainty.

  “No,” she said simply. “This ‘Mark Shilling’ is not in the records. He does not exist at any point in the history of the Titan Collective.”

  Jenny seemed to sense his distress. “The surname ‘Shilling’ is quite rare,” she added, her tone softening. “There are a few entries for living residents in the city of Titan itself, but any information beyond that, of course, is private. I cannot share it.”

  Mark took an involuntary step back, the weight of her words pressing down on him. He ran a hand over his face, the rough stubble on his jaw a strange, grounding sensation. “I… need a moment,” he said, his voice quiet. He looked up from the floor, his gaze sweeping over the endless shelves of books. “Where… where is your history section?”

  Jenny’s warm smile returned. She nodded with simple understanding and pointed a finger towards the grand staircase leading to the mezzanine. “The primary history archives for the Collective are on the upper floor, to the left. Section seven.” She then paused, her eyes gaining a distant, respectful quality as if listening to a voice only she could hear.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  “However,” she continued, her focus returning to Mark, “My Mistress recommends you begin elsewhere. Not to question your intelligence, you understand, but as the best starting point for the context you seek.” Her gaze was kind, but firm. “She suggests the children’s section. The foundational stories and simplified histories may be a quicker way to understand your situation.”

  My Mistress? The question flickered through Mark's mind. Jenny had spoken as if someone were standing right beside her, but there was no one else there, was she at the age of hearing voices, was that even a thing here. Another piece of a puzzle that didn't fit, but he was too distracted by the potential of some of the answers, even if they were not about himself. The recommendation, strange as it was, had a certain logic to it.

  He gave Jenny a grateful nod and turned away from the desk, leaving Valerie and Tori to their own quiet conversation. The children’s section was a small, bright alcove on the main floor, furnished with smaller tables and a few comfortable-looking armchairs upholstered in a soft, durable-looking green fabric. He sank into one of the chairs, the comfort and silence of the library a welcoming moment after the previous day.

  The shelves here were filled with colorful books, their spines illustrated with cartoonish drawings of mountain creatures, smiling automatons, and brave adventurers. He reached out and pulled a random, slim volume from the shelf, its cover depicting a group of children building a miniature steam engine. He flipped through the thick, hardy pages, the illustrations simple but effective. It was all so normal.

  He placed the book back on the shelf, his gaze drifting aimlessly over the other titles. Then, his eyes snagged on one in particular, pulled with a focus that felt less like his own and more like a gentle, insistent nudge. Removing it from the other books in the line felt almost automatic, it still felt like his choice, but a little unsettling upon realisation it was maybe what he was looking for.

  The book was larger than the others, its cover a beautiful, detailed illustration of an imposing-looking woman in rugged mountaineering gear, standing proudly on a sharp mountain peak overlooking an imposing caldera. The title, embossed in shining copper letters, read: The Titan and the Foundations of the Collective.

  It was heavy, the pages thick and glossy, very obviously designed for the young to read. He settled into the armchair and opened it, finding it was more of a picture book than a textbook, large beautifully rendered illustrations taking up most of each page, accompanied by short simple, clear paragraphs of text. It was designed to capture a child's imagination, and right now, that was what was needed.

  He skimmed through the first few pages, which detailed the "Second Exodus" from a city called First Landing, there was very little there outside of the initial movement, not the why. The story quickly focused on the leader of the expedition, a powerful leader named Gwen Morgan. The book described her as The Jade Pioneer, possessing a "Heart of the Mountain" and a "Heart of the Forge," the picture of a complex circular tattoo on her arm.

  Something clicked, not around him, but in his own mind. He had seen similar tattoos on Tori and Valerie, on the backs of their hands, though Tori’s was through a glove and in a dreamworld if that counted, but Jenny had one. Were they these Hearts?

  The illustrations depicted her as a formidable figure, leading her people into the forbidding, dark grey peaks of the Iron-Tooth Mountains. Further ones depicted the tattoo with a glow and brief explanations of the level of her skills, shaping magic to manipulate the mountain itself or enchant the forges of the expedition to create wonders.

  According to the text, it took her and her initial team two full years to reach the summit of the great mountain where the capital now stood, carving a path as they went. The final page of that section showed her reaching the peak, exhausted but triumphant. There, a strange, smiling man was waiting for her. The book called this man Istos, and the illustration showed him greeting Gwen with a celebratory flask, and the text said he bestowed upon her the title, "The Trespasser of Forgotten Stone."

  Mark flipped the page. The next section detailed the founding of the city itself. A simple paragraph explained that she named the new city 'Olympus', noting there was further historic context behind her choice from her own histories, but not what that was. Then finally, there was the first council, prior to the formation of the guilds. To honor Gewn they chose to disregard the name she had chosen, and forged the city with the name ‘Titan’, with future settlements following the titan naming systems.

  A short, sharp laugh escaped Mark's lips, startlingly loud in the quiet library. It was validation, a genuine, solid piece of information that made a bizarre kind of sense. He was right, at least in this. He felt a ridiculous wave of relief, followed by a dark, humorous thought. If not for a supposed clerical mistake, he might have been surrounded by settlements named after Greek gods. He shuddered to think what kind of themed clothing they might have insisted on had the city been named for Zeus. The leather was bad enough.

  He stifled his laugh, turning it into a cough as he glanced over at the main desk. Valerie and Tori were still in quiet, serious discussion with Jenny, their heads bowed over the glowing crystal slab. He turned his attention back to the book, a genuine smile on his face for the first time since he’d arrived.

  “She was a difficult one, that Gwen,” a new voice said, startlingly close. “Stubborn as the mountain she climbed.”

  Mark looked up from his chair, for a moment almost falling from it. Standing beside him was a young woman, perhaps in her mid twenties, dressed in simple but impeccably tailored trousers and a tunic that seemed more fashionable than functional. Her presence was so completely normal, so devoid of the ruggedness of the other inhabitants or the professional demeanor of the healers, that it was, in its own way, the strangest thing he’d seen all day. She looked like she could be browsing any bookshop in central London and not be out of place, and admittedly a bit creepy how she had walked behind him silently.

  “I’m sorry?” Mark asked, confused, and attempting to ignore his slip at her appearance. “Who are you?”

  The woman offered a small, enigmatic smile, completely ignoring his question. “She refused to listen to anyone. Not her council, not her engineers, and certainly not the landlord.” Her gaze drifted to the shelf next to Mark’s armchair, her smile widening slightly. “But then, Istos always did have a soft spot for those who forged their own rules.”

  She took the book from his hands, drifting through the pages, “She never forgave them in the end.” There was almost an echo in her voice, something not quite normal, “She gave them everything, a future, and they even took her name from her before she left.”

  She motioned with a delicate hand toward two other books, placed prominently on the shelf as if they had been set there just for him, he didn’t recall them being there before. Their covers were just as vibrant and illustrated as the one she had taken from him. One was titled The Ark of Dying Stars, its cover depicting a small asteroid or moon drifting through a sea of swirling nebulae. The other, Istos: The Lonely Collector, showed the same smiling man from the illustration on the mountain peak, this time standing in a vast, hall of crystal filled with bizarre and impossible-looking objects.

  “Take a quick look at those two,” the woman said, her voice soft but carrying an odd weight of command. “It’s always best to know a little about the house you’re living in. I’ll be back in a while.”

  Mark, intrigued despite his confusion, reached out and took the two books from the shelf. They were heavy, just like the first one, their covers cool to the touch. The Ark of Dying Stars. Istos: The Lonely Collector. The names meant nothing to him, yet he felt an inexplicable pull toward them, a strange sense of knowing that they held more answers, ones he wanted.

  “What do you mean by ‘house’?” he asked, turning his head to look back at her.

  But she was gone, as silently as she had walked over to him, she had walked away or vanished, another question.