Chapter 66 — The History Left Behind

Chapter 66: Chapter 66 — The History Left Behind

Chapter 66 — The History Left Behind

Edwin spent the morning teaching apprentices to divide their attention between a flame and moving chalk markers, and after class Master Vey showed him three offers for teaching-assistant work. Edwin chose the alchemical laboratory because it offered the most to learn.

The damaged book waited inside his faculty room. He locked the door before opening it.

Pale light gathered above the pages, and the tower spirit appeared in its small winged form.

"Relay received," it said.

"Report."

"Northern extraction remains within assigned limits. Twenty-three low-grade crystals recovered since prior report. One middle-grade fragment recovered. No further Crystalback activity detected."

"Repairs?"

"Second Iron unit restored. Residential water conduit restored to eastern lower wing. Archive approach cleared. Library outer door operational."

Edwin sat straighter. "Operational or open?"

"Operational. Authorization needed at tower."

The difference mattered. Maintenance golems had spent weeks clearing the entrance, repairing the locks and restoring power, but the final seal required Edwin’s authority.

"Did anyone enter?"

"Captain Taron maintained restriction."

"Good."

Edwin’s attention crossed to the wall separating his room from the apartment corridor. His mother would expect him for supper, and his sister wanted help with a geography lesson; leaving that evening would create questions.

"Tell Taron I will arrive in three days."

"Stored for relay."

The projection began fading.

"Anything else?" Edwin asked.

"Archive atmosphere unstable. Mold detected in non-preserved sections. Several shelves collapsed. Active preservation remains in central stacks."

Not a perfect ancient library, then. He was almost relieved.

"Open nothing further until I arrive."

The spirit disappeared.

At supper, Edwin helped his sister with an outdated map, its borders covering older kingdoms, towers and battlefields whose names had vanished.

Three days later, he left Alvion with a hired mule and two cases of ordinary survey tools. His permit described the journey as continued work on western road foundations, and Master Vey signed it without enthusiasm.

"Bring back something less common than basalt," Vey said.

"I will try to find unusual basalt."

The journey took two days, and Edwin met Nessa at an abandoned toll marker on the second.

"Taron sent one escort," she said. "He thought seven people meeting you on the road might appear suspicious."

"He was right."

They reached the concealed station after dark. The outer stones remained broken and overgrown, and nothing visible suggested that an inner transfer door worked beneath them.

Nessa checked the road twice before sealing the entrance.

Inside the secret realm, sorted rubble lined the tower courtyard. Two Iron golems guarded the gate while a maintenance unit carried a replacement pipe across the yard.

Captain Taron met Edwin beneath the lower arch and reported steady mining, minor injuries and no strangers near the station.

They inspected the mine reports before approaching the library. Four crystals powered defenses, six supported repairs, and the rest remained in reserve; the middle-grade fragment stayed unused.

The spirit wanted the middle-grade crystal placed in the control lattice, but an eighty-seven-percent chance of removing it safely failed to convince Edwin, so it remained in storage.

The repaired library door stood in the tower’s western wing, fifteen feet high and made from dark wood reinforced with bands of dull metal. Fresh stone filled cracks around the frame where maintenance golems had rebuilt the wall, and two mercenaries guarded the corridor.

"Nobody crossed the line," Taron said.

Edwin placed his hand on the center plate. The spirit appeared above the book. "Controller recognized."

Locks moved inside the door, the sound deep and uneven for several breaths, like a machine beneath the floor reluctantly returning to motion. The doors opened, and cold air left the archive.

The first hall was wider than the academy’s Old Library. Shelves rose through three levels; some had fallen, while others remained inside faint preservation fields. Glass lamps brightened one after another along the central path, though only one in four worked.

Edwin stopped at the threshold. The archive smelled of dust, old leather and damp stone, its knowledge having survived centuries of neglect.

Taron remained behind the line.

"You can enter," Edwin said.

"Can I read any of it?"

"Probably not."

"Then I will guard the door and let the mage become lost properly."

Nessa entered with Edwin, carrying a lamp and watching the upper galleries rather than the books. The spirit guided them toward the catalogue chamber, its projection flickering as damaged conduits limited its reach.

The catalogue chamber contained no convenient list of every secret. Stone tablets lined one wall, and rotating metal frames held thousands of thin marked plates; half the frames would not move.

"Search historical departure," Edwin said.

The spirit remained still. "Catalogue vocabulary does not contain modern phrase."

"Plane injury. Final war. Evacuation. Dragon Knights."

Several plates clicked inside the frames, and one rotated forward. The inscription named a series of military histories, command reports and evacuation records, most stored deeper in the preserved central stacks.

Edwin reached for the plate.

"Do not remove," the spirit said. "Catalogue link fragile."

He lowered his hand. He would have to locate records, compare dates and learn the older terms.

The first accessible aisle held advanced spell manuals, military supply records, studies of planar weather and records of unfamiliar creatures.

Near sunset, Nessa called him to a reading table, where a preserved map lay beneath cloudy glass. It showed the continent without modern borders, symbols marking dragons across mountain ranges and coastlines, and other symbols identifying temples, mage cities and places labeled with warnings.

Three different hands had corrected the map over time. The oldest marks described dragon territories. The second recorded allied advances by mages and divine armies. The third crossed out both.

Edwin stared at the layers. Modern histories began much later; in their telling, powerful people had simply grown tired of the plane and vanished. This map suggested that everyone had fought everyone before that ending.

"Can this be copied?" he asked.

"Copying room inactive," the spirit replied.

Edwin took out ordinary paper and began drawing by hand. He copied the western half before Taron appeared and told him that he had missed two meals.

Edwin covered the ink. Taron placed bread and cold meat on the table and studied the map while Edwin ate.

"Worth the weeks of repair?"

"Yes."

"Worth missing meals beside it?"

"Apparently not."

The captain pointed to the crossed-out borders. "My grandfather said maps lie because the man paying for the ink decides where the border belongs."

"Your grandfather was sensible."

"He was a smuggler."

"Those are not opposites."

Taron laughed and returned to the corridor.

Edwin ordered the preservation fields protected while maintenance golems secured damaged shelves. Nessa marked weak floors and sealed two aisles filled with grey spores, and since the copying device was broken, Edwin would copy every useful record by hand.

That night, he entered the first modern inventory in the catalogue: one accessible aisle, one preserved map and thousands of records still beyond reach.

Edwin returned to the library after breakfast with three notebooks, charcoal, ink and enough food to prevent Taron from dragging him out before nightfall.

Nessa inspected the upper gallery first. No creatures had entered during the centuries of abandonment, but sections of floor had weakened, so she marked unsafe boards with red chalk and tied rope across a collapsed stair.

Edwin began with the catalogue. The tower spirit recognized ancient military terms more easily than his questions, so he stopped asking for the truth of the last war and searched for dates, campaign names and evacuation orders instead.

The first record came from a preserved command shelf. It described a coalition between Mage city-states and divine temples against the dragon territories. The writer called the dragons tyrants who controlled mountains, rivers and mineral lands through strength alone, while a second report complained that divine armies refused to advance unless mages supplied transport formations.

Neither sounded like a legend. They sounded like allies already blaming one another.

Edwin copied the dates. The war lasted far longer than modern histories suggested. Dragons died, temples fell, and Mage cities vanished beneath burned land or broken mountains before the coalition eventually won, though no single record explained how.

The next shelf contained documents written generations later, by which time the alliance had ended. Mages accused the gods of claiming conquered dragon territories and demanding worship from mortal cities. Divine records were absent from the tower, but Mage reports described temple taxes, forced offerings and punishments against cities that rejected divine authority.

Edwin wrote a note beside the passage.

Mage account. No opposing record.

Nessa read it over his shoulder. "You don’t believe your own library?"

"I believe the people who wrote this wanted later readers to agree with them."

"Everyone does."

That was the problem.

The Dragon Knight records appeared under a term the spirit translated as Mortal Lances. They had not begun as an independent order; Mage laboratories combined selected Knight bloodlines, dragon remains, contracts and methods taken from earlier wars. The stated purpose was clear enough: mortals needed weapons capable of standing before gods without kneeling.

The earliest reports treated the riders like military projects. Compatibility percentages filled entire pages, and failed awakenings were counted beside broken weapons and consumed materials. Some candidates died. Others survived without forming contracts. Successful riders received names only after several reports had already reduced them to numbers.

Edwin stopped reading.

"Did the riders agree?" Nessa asked.

He searched the page. "It says they volunteered."

"Does it say what they were told?"

The record gave no answer.

One later record came from a healer assigned to a rider cohort. Unlike the laboratory reports, it used names. The healer described young Knights waking from bloodline procedures unable to control their strength, dragons refusing candidates selected by Mage councils, and riders suffering when contracts formed badly.

Successful bonds shared warnings, direction and emotion across battlefields, and dragon magic let Knights break defenses built against ordinary Aura. The bond also changed both sides: dragons became attached to mortal families, while riders grew proud, territorial and unwilling to accept commands from people they considered weak. Mage officers called this corruption. The healer called it the predictable result of joining two souls and pretending one remained a tool.

Edwin copied the passage.

"You like that one," Nessa said.

"It admits the project could not be controlled neatly."

"Most people dislike weapons that begin having opinions."

"Most weapons do not remember being treated like people only after becoming dangerous."

Later records praised Dragon Knights as heroes who broke divine fortresses, killed lesser gods and protected mortal armies from pressure that would otherwise force them to the ground. Mage towers provided transport, barriers and weapons, and Dragon Knights struck whatever survived those defenses.

Together, they won. The victory did not end the fighting.

Reports near the end became damaged and bitter. Dragon Knights accused Mage councils of tearing open the plane for energy and continuing experiments after the gods had fallen, while Mage commanders accused riders of seizing arsenals and murdering researchers. Entire sections had been removed from the archive.

One surviving field report described the north. The land had already suffered repeated dragon battles and divine attacks when Mage war towers opened formations large enough to draw energy from beyond the plane, and Dragon Knights assaulted those towers while the formations were active.

The result was called the Great Wound. Cold spread outward from the damaged region, Mana currents broke, and resources stopped forming at their former rate; stable passages to other realms collapsed or became unreliable.

Edwin read the same paragraph three times.

"The Frozen Wastes," he said.

Nessa leaned over the map. "North of the four kingdoms?"

"It has to be."

The tower spirit hovered above the table. "Location match probability: ninety-two percent."

Other reports tried to measure the wound. They recorded failing realm passages, disrupted Mana currents and spreading cold around the northern battlefield, but the calculations disagreed over the wound’s exact depth, and the final survey was missing.

Edwin copied the surviving measurements. They explained why the Mage councils had treated the damage as a crisis, but they did not tell him what the north looked like now.

The wounded plane blocked new mages from reaching Rank Six. Resources declined, realm roads failed and old enemies closed in, and the Mage councils began planning their evacuation.

Not every mage left. Many could not. Some refused. Others were abandoned when transport capacity failed.

The war tower Edwin controlled had been assigned to depart with the third western group, but its realm engine never activated properly, and a damaged order instructed its commander to preserve personnel and await another passage.

No later passage came.

The spirit’s projection flickered.

"Do you remember the commander?" Edwin asked.

"Personal memory segment unavailable."

"The failed departure?"

"Event index exists. Event contents corrupted."

The light around it dimmed. Edwin let it go; whether the reaction came from emotion, damaged power or an old copied response did not matter enough to be cruel about it.

"Where are the personnel records?" Edwin asked.

"Restricted command archive," the spirit answered.

"Accessible?"

"Route damaged. Repair estimate unavailable."

Edwin closed the report. The history answered one question and created twenty more.

The Ancient Mages had helped defeat dragons, fought gods, created Dragon Knights and then fought their own creations, and any one of those events could fill a lifetime of study. Modern history reduced the ending to a sentence: the great mages departed for realms unknown.

"Why hide it?" Nessa asked.

"Perhaps the people who remained did not know. Perhaps rulers found the simpler story useful."

"Or maybe every side burned the records that made it look guilty."

Edwin considered the missing sections.

"That too."

They carried no original record out of the library. Edwin copied dates, titles and selected passages into his notebooks, using a private substitution for the tower’s location, and he never wrote the route from Alvion.

Taron joined them near midday and listened while Edwin summarized the broad history.

"So the histories taught in Alvion leave out all of this?" he asked.

"Almost all of it."

Taron surveyed the shelves. "Then people would kill to own this room."

Edwin studied the copied dates covering his notebook. The discovery was greater than finding another spell or a chest of crystals, for these records changed the beginning of the Dragon Knights, the Mage departure and the wound that still shaped the north.

"They would kill to bury parts of it too," Edwin said.

"Then we keep repairing the walls," Taron said. "And we guard the library behind them."

Edwin closed the notebook carefully. For once, the leaking roofs and ancient records felt like parts of the same task rather than rivals for his attention.

That afternoon, Edwin inspected the repaired residence and mine. Water reached six rooms, a brick stove warmed the kitchen, and Iron golems guarded the working crystal vein, while the deeper tunnel stayed sealed as the miners installed supports.

That evening, Edwin ate with Taron’s company in the outer court. For a few minutes, the war tower felt less like an ancient weapon and more like a badly maintained home.

Edwin left the lamp burning while Taron’s people settled into their watches.

Before returning to Alvion, Edwin ordered repairs focused on safe rooms, water, the library route and entrance defenses. The library would remain guarded, and its records would stay inside the tower. The tower spirit recorded everything.

On the return journey, Edwin kept the copied notebook inside his storage pouch. If stopped, he carried survey measurements, academy permits and one unremarkable change of clothing outside it, the secret history hidden beneath common manuals.

He reached the academy after sunset. His sister had fallen asleep over a reading slate, and his mother sat beside the lamp mending a sleeve.

"More unusual basalt?" she asked.

"A ruined library," Edwin said.

That much was true.

"Anything useful?"

Edwin thought of dragons, gods, manufactured riders and a wound cold enough to shape nations centuries later.

"Mostly old military records."

His mother returned to the sleeve. "Then wash before supper. Old military records seem to collect a great deal of dirt."

After eating, Edwin checked his sister’s geography. She had drawn the western river on the wrong side of a border and argued that rivers should not be expected to understand politics.

Later, alone in his faculty room, Edwin hid the copied notebook beneath his clothes. The Ancient Mages had learned in ordinary rooms before gathering enough power to fight dragons and gods, and their records gave him history even as they warned him what power could destroy.

The next morning, Master Vey found him asleep over a stack of ordinary laboratory inventories.

"Military records exhausted you?"

Edwin lifted his head. "Bottle counts."

Vey examined the page. "Then war may be kinder."

He assigned Edwin another tray of damaged formation tools and made him identify which could still be used. Edwin spent the morning testing cracked compasses and warped rulers — small, current and necessary work.

That contrast settled him. The tower could show him how the world had broken. The academy still taught him how to measure a circle without lying to himself about the line.