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The Greater Continent is generally divided into four major regions: North of the High Mountains, Agras, Narano, and the Southern Reaches; these being the areas principally inhabited in modern times and to which much of this book concerns. Modia, part of the continent, will be covered in another volume. The other, less inhabited regions, such as The Interior, The Eastern Tracks, Macaron, an Erum, will be touched upon in as much detail as time permits. This book does not concern the surrounding land masses.
-History of the Greater Continent
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Chapter 12:
I don’t Understand
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#12.1 – Monday, the 16th day of the 9th month…
With her messenger bag slung over her shoulder, Scarlet towards the front of her house and heard a strange knock. Curious, she opened the door to see a hooded, bandage-wrapped mummy* waiting for her. Its face was completely blank, just beige linens. No hands, only wrapped paw-like protrusions. It held a small glass jar which it offered to her, and Scarlet took. The minion turned and scurried away, carefully staying off the grass. On the sidewalk, it climbed aboard a small motor-scooter and drove off, leaving Scarlet blinking in the early-morning sun.
She retreated back into the house, examining the hand-written instructions on the jar, and then began to pry at the velcro straps on her wrist-brace. Another knock shook her out of her thoughts, and opened the door yet again. Above her, a large man towered, dressed in a black cloak with silver threads, and holding a sickle.
“Oh,” Scarlet looked up at him. “Hi, Mr. Koldatha! How are the hedges today? Do you need a babysitter?”
“Scarlet, hello,” Mr. Koldatha leaned down and gave her an enormous smile. “I just spotted a messenger-mummy at your house—was a package for me delivered here by mistake?”
Scarlet held up the little jar. “No, its some salve for my wrist, I hurt it on Saturday.”
Mr. Koldatha leaned down and squinted at the jar, mumbling as he read, then nodded knowingly. “That’s a good lass, will do you much better than that junk from the druggist. All right, little Scarlet, best be on your way to school—and watch out when crossing the street!”
“Yes, sir,” Scarlet nodded. She waited for her neighbor to leave, then locked the front door and headed out, rubbing in the salve as she walked. It felt slimy on her skin, but by the time she reached school the pain was gone and she didn’t even need the brace. This would save Scarlet from not an inconsiderable amount of teasing, a fact for which she was grateful.
Moving in long strides, Scarlet headed to school. Classes wouldn’t start for a while yet, so plenty of kids were hanging around just outside the fence where the apathetic teachers and supervisors would leave them alone.
This added campus time gave her a chance to get some work done.
While Scarlet did not like Dr. Flowers as a person, a professional, or really on any level hitherto for described by philosophy, she still had to do ‘homework’ from the therapist every week. This week’s assignment: try to connect with one of her classmates.
Like all homework, Scarlet decided to half-ass this. She chose her old acquaintance Jeremy Bates. And the topic at hand was The Dragons of Darkmoss, a fantasy novel he attempted to read while Scarlet tried to talk to him.
“I don’t understand.”
“Well it, just, it wouldn’t work.”
Scarlet felt flustered with herself.
Jeremy pointed to the illustration on the cover of his novel, showing an armored knight seated atop a dragon. “It’s a standard rule: you want to make something awesome, you add dragons. Cavalry charges are already awesome. How do you make them better?”
“Dragons, I get it, but people—humans—can’t ride dragons,” Scarlet explained.
“So nobody’s ever tried?”
“Oh, the Marcons got pretty close,” Scarlet said. “They even had a ‘regiment’ of sorts. I don’t think they ever had more than twenty troopers, though.”
“Then it is possible,” Jeremy stated categorically. “There you go.”
“Its not that simple,” Scarlet forced a smile. She put a finger on the book and flipped it around, tracing the lines of the dragon on the cover. “Relative to the size of a typical human, he would only just be a red dragon. One that small couldn’t leave the eerie, let alone fly any great distance or carry the weight of a man. A dragon big enough to hold an armored knight would be so large any melee weapon wouldn’t have the reach to be practical. The guy is just ballast at that point while the dragon does all the fighting.
“Then there’s the g-load. They don’t actually know how many Gs a dragon can hit while pulling out of a dive, but its well past five hundred. That’s like hitting a wall at fifty miles an hour. It doesn’t matter how tight you’re tied to the dragon at that point, you’d be beaten to death by the force of your own brain hitting your skull.”
“I didn’t count, but I’m pretty sure you just used a hundred and forty-three words to say my favorite book is dumb,” Jeremy retrieved his novel and shoved it in a bag just as the bell rang. “Only sold, like, a billion copies or something. Plus the movies. But no, Scarlet knows better.”
Scarlet shrank into her shoulders and quickly gathered her belongings. The encounter with Chet and Andy had her more rattled than she’d care to admit. Jeremy only lived one street over, and Scarlet wanted to ask him to walk her home. After that conversation, she didn’t suspect Jeremy would be interested in doing her many favors.
“So much for making a connection,” Scarlet mumbled as she headed for her first class, realized she was heading for the wrong class, and had to sprint in the opposite direction across campus. “Stupid rotating schedule!”
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* #12.2 (Monday, 16/9) *
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Having survived another treacherous school day, Scarlet settled into the peace and sanctity of her bedroom, where she cracked open the gently blood-stained History of the Greater Continent, First Edition. Jayce joined her of his own free will. Scarlet picked up Friar and put him down on the desk so they could all look at the book together.
“The dragons gave me quite a clue,” Scarlet said. “Jason Bur’I* was closely associated with Hunter and the sword. Somehow, despite living on Aren for fifty years, he never left much of a mark, aside from this.” Scarlet flipped the page over to a printing of a faded and worn photograph showing words carved on an outcropping of marble. “Carved in six-nine-hundred-sixty, the so-called ‘Eulogy to the Dragon of the Setting Sun’† is the best-known artifact of the Death of Hope.”
Friar leaned down and appeared to squint at the image.
“Fun fact: this is not a picture of the original,” Scarlet said. “This is a picture of a tourist attraction carved during the Age of the New Day+. Nobody even knows where the original is.”
Jayce rolled onto his back and placed the top of his head on the picture, then offered his belly up for inspection.
“Even with Jason as a starting point, finding the sword is not going to be easy,” Scarlet said to her cat, who was quite happy to listen to her drone on about history. “There are thousands of potential locations, many completely lost. There’s also countless… shoot, what’s the word I’m looking for? Is it conflicting?”
Jayce looked up at her and rolled onto his side.
“Whatever, all the different accounts just don’t line up,” Scarlet used her free hand to rub the cat’s belly. “There were four different Jusenkyous involved, though. Too bad we can’t find the equally lost Blood SteleP, huh?”
Friar jerked his head to the side a few times, indicating the small statue of a mage tower# on Scarlet’s desk.
“Oh, I get it,” Scarlet nodded. “You think Naomi** would know; she would, wouldn’t she? Of course, somebody probably thought to ask her that already…”
Scarlet closed the book again and looked at the cover. In her absence, Jayce apparently used the cover to sharpen his claws, leaving it pock-marked with holes. The once nearly-pristine tome looked a shadow of its former self. But that gave her an idea. If Scarlet could make it look weathered enough, she thought there might be a good chance she could convince her mother it came from that used bookstore. The one Scarlet was no longer allowed to patronize. She grabbed a pen from her school bag and scratched out First Edition, then hastily scrawled Scarlet Edition in its place.
“It’s ruined now, anyway,” Scarlet shrugged, and began to make notes in the margins. Friar crossed the desk and lowered his head to peck at the page, his blunt bill making wrinkles and small tears in the thin paper.
“Hey! HEY! That’s not corn! THAT’S NOT CORN!!!!” Scarlet snatched the bird off the table and plopped him unceremoniously onto the carpet. The duck acknowledged the movement with an annoyed honk and waddled off, head bobbing in a decidedly antagonistic manner.
“Some people have no appreciation for history!” Scarlet shouted after him, face flushed red. She stuck out her tongue at the doorway where the duck disappeared. Almost as soon as Friar left, Scarlet’s mother appeared beside a slightly plump woman wearing a very old-fashioned high-collared dress and a ridiculous purple hat. Wide brim, lots of feathers, even a cartoonish bird made out of silk. Were the feathers mentioned? There looked to be the better part of an entire peacock on that thing.
Scarlet still had her tongue out.
She felt her face flush even redder as she slowly closed her mouth and worked her jaw a few times. “Hi?”
“Scarlet, this is Mrs. Nessmen,” Ann explained. “She’s from the New Stormwind Antiquarian Society.”
“Hullo,” Nessmen said, extending a shaking hand. Scarlet reached out and grasped it, but felt somewhat awkward as it did not move up and down. Nessmen looked to be approximately one hundred years old and didn’t appear to have much left in the way of range of motion.
“I’m honored to meet you,” Scarlet squeaked. “I’ve been a junior member since I could write my own name!”
“Yes, yes,” Nessmen nodded. “Membership is what I am here to dis… cus…” the little old woman trailed off as her eyes darted around the room, taking in shelf after shelf, and opening them a bit wider when he realized so many of them were double-deep.
She was still holding Scarlet’s hand, as she moved her mouth several times trying to speak. “I’m. I’m. Supposed to tell you that the Assistant Membership deeded to you by Dr. Thompson cannot go to one of your age—” Nessmen let go of Scarlet’s hand suddenly and crossed to the closest book case, her withered finger settling on a volume.
“Is this a first edition?!” she asked incredulously.
“No, it’s a seventh,” Scarlet pouted. “Mom said if I wanted a first edition I’d have to save my allowance for the next hundred Ages. But the seven kinda looks like a one. Its just for show anyway, they made so many changes after the third that it’s no good as a reference.”
Nessmen’s already sunken and hallowed eyes seemed to drop even further in amazement. “Have… you… read… all of these?”
“A lot of them are just reference materials,” Scarlet said sheepishly. “I keep them for fact-checking. I’ve read… those ones, those ones, and… most of that case. That bit between the window and the corner is just my dictionary. But aside from a few that just look pretty, I’ve been in and out of the rest a few hundred times.”
Nessmen turned away from Scarlet towards one of the shelves Scarlet had indicated, and extended her feeble arms towards a higher level as though reaching for a long sought-after treasure. Her eyes glazed over and tears began to form as she ran a hand over the titles one by one.
“How… many…?” she managed.
“Seventeen,” Scarlet replied automatically. “The earliest copies are the hardest to find, even in re-prints. I’m missing about ten from the first century N.D., the rest are from minor Slayer Dragons that weren’t real interesting.”
“Is she looking at the honor-roll, honor…?” Scarlet’s mother whispered to her.
“Honorariums,” Scarlet corrected. “You know, those books I get so excited about whenever we find one?”
“Scarlet, honey, you’ll have to narrow that way down,” Ann patted Scarlet on the head.
Nessmen’s shaking hands settled over one volume close to the edge. Her fingers landed on either side of it, as if she had too much reverence even to touch the book directly. Her eyes closed, and Scarlet heard her deliver a solemn prayer under her breath.
“Is this real?” Nessmen asked.
“It’s… a… real good fake?” Scarlet forced a big, nervous smile.
Nessmen looked at her questioningly while her mother got suspicious.
“Ok, fine, I kind of, sort have, *may* have stolen it from an estate sale,” Scarlet admitted. “But IN MY DEFENSE, the dead guy’s booger-head son had no clue what it was! And besides, it’s in terrible shape! And dude was loaded, he ain’t gonna miss it…”
“What IS it?” Ann demanded.
“One moment, did your daughter pronounce an asterisk just now?” Nessmen asked.
“Her father does the same thing, its weird,” Ann rolled her eyes. “Scarlet, what is the book?”
“A… first-edition Conri Jusenkyou Honorarium,” Scarlet said meekly.
Ann looked sharply at Nessmen. “Is that valuable?”
“I-I-It’s historical worth is priceless,” Nessmen coughed. “But if you need to know about its monetary value… I would not insure it for any less than… perhaps a hundred and fifty thousand.”
“YOU STOLE A HUNDRED AND FIFTY THOUSAND WING-BEAT BOOK?!” Ann screamed at Scarlet.
“With current interest in Conri, and the skyrocketing value of first editions, it could go for several times that at auction,” Nessmen admitted.
“You STOLE a book worth more than our house,” Ann glowered at Scarlet.
“I have a receipt!” Scarlet snapped. “Sort of!”
Ann pinched the bridge of her nose. “This had better be good.”
“I kind of hid the book in the bottom of a box and covered it with a bunch of old magazines and worthless books,” Scarlet admitted, averting her mother’s gaze. “Then I bought the whole thing for a hundred wing-beats. They didn’t really bother checking every item, just glanced at a few of the things and set a price. I got a receipt.”
“And WHERE, young lady, did you get a hundred wing-beats?!” Ann scowled.
“I stole it from your purse,” Scarlet snapped. “You NEVER buy me books at estate sales! And that’s the BEST place to get rare ones!” Scarlet turned nervously back to Nessmen. “Is this going to get me kicked out of the Antiquarian Society?”
“Oh, noooo,” Nessmen waved dismissively. “Such tactics are quite common ways of acquiring texts. Of course we lose priceless volumes ourselves just as often. Why, one of my good colleagues once misplaced an utterly irreplaceable tenth edition Hunter Jusenkyou Honorarium by leaving it on a bus.”
Scarlet’s eyes flicked nervously across the room, and when Nessmen followed her gaze, she spotted the volume on another shelf.
“Clever girl,” Nessmen breathed.
“I found it on the bus!” Scarlet squealed as Nessmen reverently took the volume from the shelf.
Nessmen handled the book with even greater respect, not even daring to open it but merely passing her hand over the cover. “There… are… fifteen surviving copies… In the entirety of the Known Worlds… Most are very late editions, poor quality. This tenth edition is the third-oldest ever found. An… original… would be without equal…”
“It was on a bus,” Scarlet repeated.
Nessmen left the tenth edition Hunter Jusenkyou Honorarium†† on Scarlet’s bed and moved to another book case, this one crammed full of three ring binders. Each had a few newspaper articles in the front and the rest crammed with photo-copied papers.
Nessmen pulled one out and eyed it for a moment, then opened it and gaped. “These are expedition notes from the Hamlet Dig! This is—I recognize Arthur’s handwriting, here! And his assistant!”
“Well, yeah, ya have to go back to the original notes,” Scarlet shrugged. “I mean, I read his paper, but every journal has a different take. I think his notes show that he’s stumbled on something a lot bigger.”
Nessmen nodded. “The new findings are set to be released next year. Where did you…?”
“The Society has an archives annex at the Library,” Scarlet said. “It’s open to the public if you know its there. It has copies of all the expedition logs. They won’t let you check them out, but there’s photocopiers in there.”
Scarlet’s mother eyed the sagging case. “At two talons a copy that’s an awful lot of your allowance up there.”
Scarlet again looked guilty.
“Scarlet?” Ann pressed.
“I found the code in an old librarian’s biography,” Scarlet said. “Turns out they haven’t changed it in three hundred years.”
“You little runt!” Ann scolded. “What ELSE have you been stealing?!”
“Can’t you just be happy I don’t have a drug habit?!” Scarlet protested.
“THIS IS ALMOST WORSE!”
Nessmen, meanwhile, stared out Scarlet’s window. Not up at the mountain, but out into the yard. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“You mean the giant free-form sculpture of a book?” Ann rolled her eyes. “Yes, my daughter’s interests are very linear.”
“It’s written in Scoriography++,” Scarlet confirmed. “The dragons lent it to me. You’re supposed to read with your tongue, but I really wouldn’t recommend trying.”
Nessmen steadied herself against the window sill. “I… have… only ever read of such things. Books of the dragons, written in their own tongue… literally… we knew they wrote on cavern walls but the existence of the books themselves is mere legend!”
“That one’s not much to write home about,” Scarlet said. “It’s the dragon-equivalent of one of those rhyming picture books you give to kindergarteners. This one’s about a hatchling eating a cow. Espy swore it was a classic and that it has layers, but I don’t know.”
Nessmen blinked. “You’ve read it?”
“Translated is more accurate,” Scarlet said. “Scoriography is pretty easy; the problem is part of it’s supposed to be read by taste. See, the scratch marks in the stone are the consonants, then they burn and melt it for the vowels. The dragons lick the page, and can read like that.”
“You tasted the rocks?” Nessmen questioned.
“Gross, no! It’s covered in baby dragon spit!” Scarlet stuck out her tongue and rubbed it with her hands. “Some of them you can tell just by looking, others I learned by smell. After a while I got the hang of it; their alphabet isn’t very big.”
“Their books certainly are,” Ann scowled.
Nessmen pushed herself away from the window and wiped her brow with a handkerchief. “E-excuse me,” she muttered as she left the room. “I n-need to go and make a call. May I use your telephone?” She was already out of the room before either Scarlet or her mother could respond.
Ann glared at Scarlet. “You are in so much trouble, young lady.”
Scarlet only stood, unable to meet her mother’s gaze.
From across the house, they heard Nessmen’s harried voice.
“Yes… no… yes, I saw it for myself. …yes. What?! Oh. No.”
The conversation went on that way for an uncomfortably long time before, without even waiting to hear from them, Nessmen opened the front door and left.
“But, mom!”
“But, mom what?!” Ann snapped.
“I dunno, I didn’t really think that sentence through,” Scarlet mumbled.
Ann threw her arms up. “I don’t even know how to punish you for this! How many YEARS of grounding is appropriate for stealing a priceless historic relic?!”
“I FOUND IT ON THE BUS!” Scarlet screamed. “SORT OF!”
“I’m calling your father,” Ann stormed out of the room.
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End:
Chapter Twelve
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