The Library - Part 2

"Why go to so much trouble?" Octavia thought to herself. "Why would you need to remove every mention of a race from the history books."

Octavia just couldn't comprehend it. While she knew that the name Lamia was not known by all but one of the people she had met, it had only really hit her how strange this situation was. The fact that someone or more likely many people had gone through all the books referencing Lamia's and removed the pages about them. There was even the altering of the books and removing any trace of the torn page in order to make it seem like nothing had happened to the book.

What could have caused the need for that to happen?

Octavia pondered on that for some time. She had been thinking about it ever since she was told by Prisma that she was the last of her kind. From all that time thinking, she could only come up with a few reasons why this would have happened.

The first was that the Lamia's did something truly horrible. Something so bad that they had to be eradicated. That what they did or were going to do, would have caused pain and suffering to a lot of people, or something along those lines. When they learnt about this, the other races or even just one of the races, decided to deal with them, wiping them out. It is then possible that the horrible thing they did or planned to do was possible to achieve again. Because of that, they then removed all references to the race from books, so that no one would know of them, let alone learn of the terrible deed and possibly replicate it. The people involved were probably sworn to secrecy and are all dead by now, so no one was able to pass it on by word of mouth.

This possibility was something that Octavia really hoped was not the case, for obvious reasons. While she wholeheartedly hoped this was not the case there was no way she could rule it out for the moment.

The other possibility was that one or several of the other races at the time attacked the Lamia for some reason. What that reason was, Octavia had no idea, but it is possible that after the deed was done, the leaders involved wanted to remove all evidence that they had exterminated the Lamia. One big piece of evidence is an entire race going missing. In order to combat that, they again probably swore people to secrecy, and to keep it secret in the future, removed all references to the race from books. If no one knows the race did exist, then no one would look into them at all.

There were probably other possibilities for why it happened, but these were the only options she could come up with so far. Both possibilities were just terrible, but if she had to hope for one to be true, it would be the second.

No one would want to know they belonged to a race that did something so bad it got them wiped off the map.

Octavia could speculate and theorise all day on this, but what she really needed was hard proof of what actually happened. Even just some minor information talking about Lamia's would be of massive help to her.

But again, how do you do that if it's all been removed from books.

…

Octavia took a few more books off the shelves, ones that specifically looked at the different races in the world, but found the same information as she did from the first books she read.

In some, there was just no mention of Lamia's at all, and in others, she was able to find the location where it should have been, but all that remained was the minuscule remnants of the page left behind.

As she got to the fourth book that she started skimming through, something finally occurred to her.

"Why do some books have a section on Lamia's, although removed now, and others just don't have anything."

From the books she had read, it seemed like a fifty-fifty split on ones that had pages torn out to others that just had nothing. Between these books, the majority of the rest of the information was the same though, so why did it just differ in terms of the Lamia information.

"The date! Of course."

It all made sense now. Something so simple that it just slipped her mind. If someone had gone out of their way to remove all traces of the Lamia then all books after that time period wouldn't have anything in them to begin with.

Realising this, she now had dates before Lamia disappearance, and from some more investigation, she found the latest one. This gave her a good reference point, in order to use only books before this time.

But while she had this, she still couldn't get information when the pages were missing from all the books mentioning them.

…

As she pulled a few more books on races from the shelves, she couldn't help but wonder if that was entirely true. While all the books she had looked at so far showed this was the case, she had to wonder if every book that mentioned them had pages removed.

Putting herself in their shoes, she thought about how they would have done it. Not knowing what sort of manpower they had, but whether it was large or small, is it likely they would have gone through every book in every library. That would have taken a large amount of time and effort to do.

Granted there are some books that obviously wouldn't mention them anyway, but still, to check that many would have been a serious undertaking.

Surely the easier thing to do would be to go through the books you know reference the Lamia. While not as thorough, if they did go through all the books completely, they would probably have all died before they finished, either of old age or just boredom. But if that was the case, then only the obvious books would have been looked at, like books on races and history.

"But how do I find the right book now. If I can't use the obvious one, then that means the information 'might be' somewhere in the rest of this library. That's going to take ages to find." She thought as she put down the current one she was skimming. She realised that this would be a massive undertaking. The reason being that now she was looking for a random unassuming book that has nothing to do with what you would associate with other races, and yet still talks about them.

There had to be a way to narrow down the search.

She wondered if there was something that she already knew about the Lamia, given that she was one, that whoever it was that removed the pages, wouldn't have known about. While possible, it also had to be something that someone else might know in order to have written it down.

"It can't be anything about their villages, as surely that was known given that they ended up destroyed. The same goes for a Lamia's actual body. Symbols would have been in the village as well. Buildings, construction, crafts and the like are things that everyone generally knows something about, so information on Lamia's specialities was probably looked at and removed. They probably would have learnt about their culture, and places of signifi…cance…"

She all of a sudden froze in mid-thought as she brought up places of significance, as something quickly came to her.

The trial building in the Lamia village.

Surely that was something only the Lamia's knew about. But as she realised this, wouldn't that mean no one who could put it into a book would know about it either. There was a slim chance that they somehow found out, or leant something about it, which meant it may be in one of these books.

It was a very thin lead, but it was the only one she had. Now it was just a question of which book.

…

She looked through the shelves, looking through the categories the books had been sorted in, trying to find something that may connect to the Lamia's culture and that building. She passed many that just had no relevance, like topics on food, rivers, seas, boating and many more. Eventually, she thought she found what she was looking for.

A section on religion and rituals.

She didn't know what religion the Lamia's followed, but given the snake statue and the fact that the trail building is similar to that of a ritual which all of the Lamia's complete, this was as good a place as any to start.

Searching the shelves she scoured them for books with the right dates and was surprised to find only several books from the right timeline. Once she had them, she jumped in and started to skim.

It didn't take long for her to learn that her hunch was right, where the second book in gave her the first clear evidence, aside from herself, that the Lamia actually existed.

While great, it didn't help that the book she found this in was called Cannibalistic Creatures – Rituals and Magic.

…

As she read through the book, it was clear that the author hardly knew anything about them. For one, Octavia has never had the urge to each a human baby which is what the book says Lamia's do daily. It also says that they cannot communicate with anyone but their own race and that they always kill anyone else that they encounter.

"If that was the case, then how I met Sylvia would have been a lot different."

While the book was complete nonsense, it did mention Lamia's, although not in the best light, which was still a good start. What also helped was that there was mention of the 'invisible building' where the young are trained how to kill and eat humans. This had to be a reference to the trial building, unless there was some sort of slaughter house she missed at the village.

The author was not able to see the building, since they referenced it as invisible, but it was possible to see Lamia's moving and then just disappearing at the same spot, showing the invisible door to the place.

Things got more interesting as she read on, where it turns out the author visited a few Lamia villages, stating that they all performed the same rituals. But, it was the author's note on how these invisible buildings were orientated that piqued her interest.

It seemed that the author knew of three Lamia villages before they even visited one. Octavia had no idea if the locations were a secret, or just not common knowledge and the author managed to find out. But either way, they planned to visit each, and upon leaving one, they found that the invisible building's front door faced the location they had come from, stating it was as if it was there to greet them.

As far as Octavia could see, it seemed like each village pointed to another. Given the building doing the pointing, it was likely the direction led to the next trial building in the pilgrimage.

"Wow, how lucky was I that the first village I came to was the one with the first set of trials."

While it could have been luck, it was possible that the request from Prisma to be put in a relevant place, did just that, placing her at the start of her race's pilgrimage.

Other than this though, Octavia now had a good starting point for where to go. She tried to recall the direction it was facing, but to no avail and so decided that she would check when they returned from visiting Sylvia's mum's grave.

With a new step in her plans, she decided to start reading the other books, in case there was anything else that could be helpful when all of a sudden the bell for lunch rang.

"I can always come back for these later. But now I need to get something to eat and then head to the courtyard in order to learn how to fight."