Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«Oh shut up,» Kirithishli grouched, taking a half-hearted swipe at him that he dodged. «It’s an ideal to be followed, not an unbreakable law. There is only so much space in the library, no matter how big it appears. And besides, most of these books are duplicates of ones we already have. Stop being a wiseass and get to work.»

Zorian threw himself to the task, unpacking box after box. Kirithishli gave him a huge book that contained list after list of the most common books they received in these sort of deliveries and told him to use it to separate the obvious duplicates from the rest. Using the book manually to find the matches would be a total nightmare of course, especially since the letters were in a really tiny print in order to cram as many words as possible on every page, but Zorian knew it was designed with something else in mind. One of the spells he learned from Ibery in the previous restarts involved making a list of terms you wanted to search for and then connecting the list via divination spell to a target book you wanted to search. It sounded a little pointless to him back then, but now he realized it was made with precisely this sort of thing in mind. And the huge, densely-packed reference book was probably made with the spell in mind, in turn.

Nearly 2 hours and 20 hastily scribbled lists later he had separated the duplicates from the rest of the books and was in the process of leafing through one of the spellbooks he had found in the boxes when Kirithishli finally returned from wherever she had disappeared after giving him his assignment. His rapid progress surprised her, seeing how she had no idea he was so well-versed in library magic, and she apparently also found it a little disappointing.

«You’re no fun,» she sighed dramatically. «I wanted to show you that trick when I came back, after you spent 2 hours painstakingly searching for matches in that monster of a book. The expression on your face would have been priceless.»

Zorian simply raised an eyebrow at her, but otherwise stayed silent. Kirithishli showed her maturity by sticking her tongue at him like a 5-year-old, before eyeing the book he was leafing through.

«Found something interesting?» she asked.

«Not really,» Zorian said, snapping the book shut. There was nothing particularly interesting in it anyway. «I sort of hoped I would find a book on powerful ancient magic and the like, but no such luck.»

Kirithishli snorted. «Even if you did find something like that, it would do you little good. Contrary to what various adventure novels may have led you to believe, ancient magic is almost always inferior to what we have available now. Those spells that are lost are usually lost for a good reason — generally for being too impractical, requiring ingredients or conditions that no longer exist, or because they would be considered massively unethical in the modern age. For example, you’d be hard pressed to find participants for orgy ritual magic these days, and Heruan volcanic spells relied on conditions present in one particular volcano that hasn’t been active for more than 200 years.»

Zorian blinked. «Oh. Well that’s disappointing.»

«Quite,» Kirithishli agreed. «And even when those spells can be cast without issue, they tend to be infuriatingly inflexible and long to cast. Mages of old didn’t have the sort of shaping skills modern mages have, so they compensated by making their spells long and hyperspecialized. There were hundreds of color-changing spells, for instance, but most of them differed only in which color the spell changed the affected objects into. It has been a persistent trend in modern times to generalize spells, since better training methods allow modern mages to make up for the spells’ lack of precision with the sheer control they have over their magic.»

«Making a lot of old spells obsolete to a properly trained mage,» finished Zorian. He had always known that most history books presented a heavily idealized image of their ancestors — their portrayal of the desertification of northern Miasina (he refused to call it ‘Cataclysm’, as if it was some natural occurrence beyond Ikosian control) and subsequent exodus to Altazia was proof enough that they were given a sugar-coated version of history — but he hadn’t realized Ikosians were also crappy mages in addition to being shortsighted assholes. «And you have to be one if you plan to get certified. You know, I’ve always wondered why so many really easy spells are classified as first circle ones. I thought it might be a deliberate policy by the Guild to encourage certification, but I guess a lot of those were not nearly as trivial when they were first rated.»