The Library - Part 1

Travelling through the winding halls she made it to the door to the library. She made a few wrong turns on the way, but she was always able to find a helpful maid or guard to assist her. At the door stood two guards, placed on either side of it, clearly there to stop any random person from entering.

So, she made her way to them.

"Halt, no one can enter the library without being granted access by the lord."

Figuring this would happen, Octavia took out the documents she had received only a short while ago and showed it to the guards. After a thorough reading of what it said, they stood to the side and let her in.

As she opened the large wooden door to the library, her eyesight was filled to the brim with books. While the room wasn't massive by any means, it still held what looked like several hundred books. The walls were plastered with them, the spines being an assortment of colours, making it look like a dull rainbow.

She also saw ladders dotted around, all to allow readers to locate and take books from higher shelves, of which the highest was about twice the height of a person from the ground. These were just freestanding ladders and not attached to the bookcases with wheels, but it looked like they would get the job done.

Assuming the ladder doesn't slip, and you fall to the ground.

"Hello, how may I help you?"

While she was distracted by the sight of the library, she didn't notice the woman walking toward her. Startled upon hearing her question, Octavia quickly turned in her direction. The woman was slightly taller than herself, with long dark hair and very dull coloured clothes, mainly greys and whites. Given the wrinkles on her face, it was clear to see she was quite an old lad, likely having worked in the library for years.

"Sorry, I was just looking at all the books, there are so many."

"Well of course. This collection has been centuries in the making, from scholars and writers all around the land."

Octavia could only feel awe at knowing it had taken centuries to build up this number of books. It was also amazing knowing that with the lacking technology, these were all handwritten books. Each one was unique, where even if they had been transcribed from another, there were probably differences between them. The time and effort that went into this place was staggering.

"Is there anything you are looking for in particular?"

She was brought out of her thoughts again, being lost in the wonder of it all and turned back to the librarian.

"Ah, yes. Do you know if there are any books on Lamia's?"

This though was met by a quizzical look on the woman's face.

"What's a Lamia?"

It would seem Octavia should have expected that.

"It's what I am."

"Oh. It's strange that I have never heard of a… Lamia, was it. I've read many of these books and I don't recall it being mentioned in any of them." She said once she gave Octavia a quick look up and down.

"That's a shame. Is there anything it could be in then, books on history, races that sort of thing? As far as I know, they would have lived in the Daria forest. Even just references to snakes may be helpful."

"Well, there are a few books that come to mind that may help, let me show you where they are."

The Librarian headed off into the room and Octavia quickly followed her. Thankfully, the distance between shelves was not narrow, so she had nothing to worry about as her tail slithered to allow her to move.

They walked a short distance, ending up at the back of the room, where the Librarian took the ladder and headed up. After a quick search, she grabbed a large brown book and handed it to Octavia, which she quickly placed on the nearby table before taking a red book from her as well.

The Librarian then headed two rows over and took another two books off the shelves, one of which was green and the other brown again.

"These are the only ones I can think of that come to mind. While there are many more books on History, referring to religion, wars, kings and the like, the first two I gave you should give you a good place to start. The first one is a Brief History Thalassia. As I said, I don't recall Lamia's being mentioned, but there might be something in there that you spot. The second book in the red cover is called The Daria Forest - Frightening Tales. There are not many books on the forest, most are on the types of trees and plants it contains, but this one may hold some answers."

Octavia quickly looked over at the books and read the titles. The 'Brief' History book was misleading given that it was the largest of the books she had been given.

"For the other two, these are on the races in Thalassia. The one in brown is called D'Oser's Beastiary, which may be of help. The Scholar was fascinated by animals and creatures around the land, so it talks about a lot of races, possibly even something about snakes. The green one is called Intelligence in Nature, which looks more at races such as elves and humans, so it may mention something about Lamia's. If there is nothing, there are plenty more books to go through, but I hope these give you a good starting point. Now I have to head back to the front of the library, come find me if you need some help."

With that, the Librarian, who Octavia had forgotten to ask her name, headed away, leaving her to her own devices. So, she got stuck in.

…

"I'm so bored."

*Ding, Dong*

"How has it only been one bell since I started."

Octavia was slumped over the table having managed to make her way through the book on the History of Thalassia, and what a dreary read it was. With no index or contents to help, she had to go through it page by page, deciphering the handwritten book, to find anything that mentioned Lamia.

Of which she found nothing. No mentions of her race at all, nothing related to snakes, or villages in the forest, nothing. It was a pointless waste of time.

That's not to say she learnt nothing. She did learn about the ups and downs in Thalassia over the years as she skimmed through the book. Many wars were fought, mostly over religion, power and land which did not surprise her. There was one that was quite strange, where a king wanted a lot of elven wives and so went to war with them to achieve his goal. Thankfully he died under mysterious circumstances and a truce was made, as it was only the king that wanted the war.

Putting that aside there were mentions of slavery of some races, a few high-profile marriages and a few other oddities that had occurred, but nothing that really helped her. So, she turned to the next book.

She only had a few more bells until it was lunch, but hopefully, she could make it through these by then.

Next was the book called The Daria Forest - Frightening Tales. As she read through it there were mentions of incidents that had happened in the forest. Most of them sounded like tales to scare children and didn't sound true. Tales of ghosts of wronged people coming back to kill people who had been bad was one such tale. Some did sound true though, bandit and monster attacks on royalty and nobles, people getting lost in the forest and never returning all had an air of truth to them and sounded plausible. But again, as she went through it, she couldn't find a reference to Lamia or snakes.

But all of a sudden, she stopped.

Just past halfway into the book, she found that one of the stories ended abruptly. It was much shorter than the rest of the stories, all being about five pages long, this one ended at three. The story did end properly, but as she looked at the words, it almost looked like the last few paragraphs on the next page was written by a different person.

It is very possible that someone helped with the book, but the fact that it only had one author on the front was strange. As she flicked between the pages of this tale, she finally realised what had happened.

Pages had been ripped out.

It was done very well, where if you weren't looking for something like it, you probably wouldn't have seen it. In the spine of the book, after the tale ended, you could barely see the torn page. It looked like someone had removed it, and then gone over it with a fine-tooth comb pulling out any remnants of the page at its spine, where only the smallest parts remained. They even went so far as to add a new page in order to finish the tale differently so as to not arouse suspicion.

It was a conspiracy.

It probably wasn't, but it was clear that if the pages did reference Lamia's, someone really didn't want anyone to know about them.

This meant that more digging was necessary.

She made her way to the books on the races. Annoyingly the Bestiary was no help. It only spoke of various animals in the world, from the humble cat to some truly horrible predators, but given that the Lamia is a sapient race, even if some pages were ripped out, which she couldn't see, they likely wouldn't have been in there in the first place.

The green book spoke only about intelligent species so if anything they had to be in there. Upon reading it, it turns out she was right.

Sort of.

The book was nice enough to go through the races in alphabetical order. Why the author did that she didn't know, but it was probably the best order they could come up with. Going through it she found dwarves and elves towards the start, followed by fox-kin. She did read through the section on fox-kin, to hopefully improve her understanding of Sylvia, but it wasn't much help. It spoke about the traits of fox-kin, such as the ears and tail and spoke about various shades of fur and skin colour the author has recorded, but other than that there wasn't much else.

As she continued into the book, she found humans, and then paused once she got to the letter K where she found Kitsune. As far as she could tell fox-kin were an offshoot of the kitsune, and they were likely extinct, where it stated it may have happened several decades ago from when the author made the book. The fact that this book held information on possible extinct races, which for Kitsune must have meant they never saw one, means it could talk about the Lamia.

But a few pages later and she found herself at Lizard-kin.

While it was a bust, she also found the same removal of pages from the book as she did the Daria Forest book.

"Well, surely the only other race between Kitsune and Lizard-kin is Lamia." She thought to herself. She couldn't think of another species that would be there, and if there was another one why would they have removed it. It must have been Lamia that was taken out of the book.

While she knew she was on the right track, how was she going to find out about her race, when someone had systematically removed all mentions of them from the books in the library.