Back to Basics

[Arle Nadja]

Arle stood before an incredibly tall tower topped by bulbous purple domes and a floating ring broken up by rather jagged looking crystals up near the tallest spire. It took her breath away, and also raised about a dozen questions about what exactly she was looking at. The towers of Arle's world were far more humble for the most part, simple heavy stone towers that stretched a few floors at most. There were a handful of towers belonging to powerful wizards and lords that stretched higher, but they still retained their humble, almost medieval nature. Your ability to use magic to solve everyday problems was limited if you were a normal mage like Arle. Indefinitely suspending huge objects in the air was a miraculous feet that Arle didn't quite grasp the mechanics of in particular. This entire city was just one big mystery to her in that regard. Magic in her world was simply an entirely different beast, metabolized by individuals rather than pulled from the world around them. There was a pretty strict limit to how much magic an individual had at their disposal as a result and using it all up was an unpleasant experience. This understandably discouraged magicians from using magic that drained their mana over time by design and, even if they did have a theoretically massive supply of mana, lifting something this incredibly massive would be an incredible feet just by scale alone.

This was just one of many questions sitting idly in the back of Arle's mind as she entered the violet citadel and meandered her way to the grand library. The pearly white walls had given way to the inside of spire that seemed to stretch up into infinity, nearly every inch lined with books of various ages. Arle was mystified. How... did one retrieve the books? Most of them were too high for her, at least until she retrieved her ribbit boots--and a part of her suspected no one would appreciate her jumping around in a library. A librarian in a purple rope stopped what she was doing to briefly acknowledge Arle's presence, ever vigilent in her duty to make sure the library was treated with the respect it deserved. The mage also looked a bit lost in the endless sea of books, having a great deal of difficulty figuring out where to start. There weren't even categories! The more she thought about it, the more frustrated she got. Did they use magic to keep track of their books as well? How was she supposed to get in on that knowledge if she didn't  even know how to access it yet? Somewhat overwhelmed, Arle hesitantly approached one of the walls and began scanning it for a vaguely helpful looking book. She hadn't thought up any better ideas, unfortunately, and it showed in the lack of results her search was producing.