She walked in a whisper.

Little fey. Little feet. Little steps.

Little hands found books. More books. Devoured them with greedy fingers flipping pages to feed a voracious appetite for knowledge. Obscene how such things could be ubiquitous and evasive all at once - like smoke, like vapor.

She was not of this city, though she had been visiting it since she first arrived. Books, more books. Like the library in the Triumvir. Like the library in Winya. Like the library in the tower that crumbled into remnants of ruin and fictitious memory writ by a hundred hands in a hundred minds.

The residents of Tarkuul had only begun to get used to her presence again. It had been a long time. Years. All of the faces were new except one, and she couldn't even recall his name.

And everyone had their suspicions as to why.

And no one really paid it much thought.

She was a figure of obscurity to them, though the bard that still lived and breathed beneath the flimsy veneer of a mage, wished to perform. So she told them stories. Some were true and some were made up as always because, as her husband had once said to her "You are impossible to know." He never could tell when she was lying. No one else really could either because there was so much of truth mixed in there and sometimes she believed herself because the story comforted her when the truth was too ugly to breath.

"I have no soul. And if I did, it would be damned already." The words reverberated off of unseen walls in her mind. Did she mean it? Oh who could be bothered with religion and souls. There was knowledge to be obtained, and she dug through it in the same manner she did when she went to digsites and stuck hungry hands into hard, dry dirt. She delved into it with her whole person, not a thought to anything else around her as she submerged herself in the strings of words and exhumed the dead relics of language from worn pages.

She hummed a quirky little diddily diddy she'd heard somewhere

Soul Soul, bless your soul
Momma said the void is just a great big hole
Best be careful or you're gonna fall
Kelemvor will get ya, stick ya in the wall

Something that could really stick in your head, something that little girls could jump rope to.

My mother and your mother were hanging up clothes
My mother punched your mother in the nose
What color was her blood.

"What a stupid stupid thing to ask. Red of course. Good gods." She found herself chastising her ten year old self as silly little rhymes crept in.

Body body Willow
Sitting in the shade
Catch you on a pillow
Drinking lemonade

"That one doesn't make any sense at all." She thought to herself. Nonsensical nonsense. But she smiled to herself just the same, and it occurred to her she'd been reading the same page over and over again. It was something on Netherese culture. She was trying to find a connection between the magic used by Karsus and the Fey magic that was rumored to be the ancestor of elven magic, but there was nothing there.

Pausing, she looked through a row of books, then another, and then another, until she found that she'd spent a good eight hours trying to find something -- anything on where the scrolls came from.

_________________
There is no limit to what you can achieve when you ignore the advice of mediocre people.

Though eight hours would not be nearly enough time to do an exhaustive search of the dimly-lit library, it would become curiously obvious that not even a single reference had been found in regards to the Scrolls thusfar. While an outright treatise focusing on them entirely was not something one would likely expect to find, vague references or passing mention of the Scrolls should be fairly safe to assume to be present... and yet there is nothing.

Her eight hours had lead her through perhaps a portion of a shelf.

She was easily distracted, so a task that took most an hour would take her two or three. The fey had no concept of time, for to her, a tick was a tock and a tock was three ticks and three ticks was five tocks on her inner fey clock that ran on its own swish swish of an unseen pendulum. There was nothing to explain it other than she was not as others.

"How very odd... as though all remnants have been removed." She spoke to no one but herself, and she spoke in sylvan.

The lilting language left lips in syllabic itterance that few in Tarkuul understood. She was focused now even more intently on her task, the usual voyages of her mind giving way to intense concentration, so much so that she lost another four hours, then another four, and still she found only blank emptiness. But the void spoke its own information, for where there was nothing, there was often a reason for it.

She ached still, ached from the wrenching draw of magic from within her, so after a time she concluded her search.

"So it is to the desert we go then."

But she did not go to the desert, for she found that her limbs had little energy left. She was weak, as though something had been syphoned off of her - others would see it as just a bad case of the flu, the general malaise clinging to her like an oily residue.

She went to an inn, sat down on the couch and fell to a deep reverie, one that left her breathing quite shallow and running a fever.

_________________
There is no limit to what you can achieve when you ignore the advice of mediocre people.

Finally - a book.
The shadow man gifted it. "The Nether Scrolls."

"Bah, generalities and vague allusions."

The literature merited but a few perfect underlines and scrawled notes at the margins done in the black ink of her favorite quill - the one she kept from when she wrote stories and songs: tripsing trapsing lyrics fell from mind to paper in Rorschachian splats for others to interpret. Every word that rode breath from her throat was that way, but especially the songs and poetry.

Yet now instead of fulsome plump prose and poems, there were only skeletal remains picked clean by vultures of logic that circled in predictable spirals. And these skeleton words made sounds like plink plink plink. They were scrawny relics now making their way across the page on spindly legs and bird feet. Plink plink plink. Another logical conjecture in the notebook.

Goooooooooooodsssss does this tedium have no end?

But she didn't say it because there were those around her in the library, and she was behaving herself now. Behave behave behave. She would repeat to herself as she stood in the dead silence of the living city.

Too much antithesis in this place She thought to herself. Welcome to Tarkuul, the floating paradox.

"You're acting like a common harlot again."

He'd said it the same way they all said it. Kohlingen, Tarkuul, Cordor. They all held their gavels in white-knuckled grip, anticipating their chance to slam it to the table. "Order in the court! The judgement has been passed. We have deemed this feytouched to be a pest and a nuisance and a spy and a whore!"

Because somewhere along the way. Somewhere when growing up ended and grown up began, they forgot it. That you're never just one age. You're all of them wrapped into one. And sometimes, just sometimes, she was still a child sitting on her Nena's lap, pointing at the frost on the window that feathered out like crystal ferns. And sometimes she was a hundred and eighty again, but she didn't remember the divide between them because to her, they all felt the same. She couldn't remember waking up and feeling the world move just a little bit further. She never felt it inch along, and to her it was never incremental anyhow... a fluid piece of thread like the silk from a silkworm. A completeness without beginning or end like Nena's pretty skin that shone pale. Was the moon. Was the snow. Was the frost on the window that stretched its fern arms on cold mornings.

"Tell me Nena, will I be pretty like you?" Her child voice echoed in her head as phantom arms of memory wrapped about her. Safe.
"Ahhh, little one. You will be pretty like a little doll." And Nena looked worried because she knew what it meant.
But the little one didn't, and since sometimes she still was that child underneath it all; she didn't know always what it meant even though she did most days.

Behave yourself behave your self behave yourself. She thought as the insults flew from his tongue.

But Fel had told her to keep to herself and not provoke the guard.

So every clever quip and comment stayed choked in her pale throat, swallowed and digested whole. Because there was work to do, and Lucius had answers. She needed answers. She couldn't afford to get kicked out. And perhaps they would be wise not to, for she could be the one. The weak one.

The ritual the ritual. What was it she drank? Blood? Their blood? Dragon blood?

"Oh yes Ely, let's drink the blood so we can stay and sate your curiosity." She muttered to herself. And the lich thing said enough that she was afraid. And she wasn't afraid often.

Drink the blood, drink the wine,
On your ignorance we'll dine
Strike the candle, light the match
In our strangling web we'll catch.

But she wasn't going to accept it. Not even the chance of it, so she struck out searching again in the library, leaving the Netherese to wallow in their folly a little longer without her attentions so that she could find some mention of liches and rituals.

She passed over shelf after shelf, looking at titles and trying to find a book that might tell her something.

Lucius, you're supposed to know these things! She thought to herself, but the lich had been cryptic, and even the leader of the arcanum did not yet have answers -- but soon. And so she had agreed to be his research assistant. Mutually beneficial, yes? Perhaps. Or perhaps she had taken her little fey-feet too far this time to step back from the precipice, for a strong ill wind had blown.

And she was tipping.

_________________
There is no limit to what you can achieve when you ignore the advice of mediocre people.