Jer Patch
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Chapter 42: A Library of Knowledge
🕑 Added 2025-03-17 15:00:32 +0000 UTCUncertainty filled me as I examined the inventory crystal. Words from the librarian echoed in my head. ‘May you pass the final challenge and be free to take up your duty. Study hard, learn all that you can, and never forget your song.’
Not to mention, who the heck were the Forgers? They sounded like a group of blacksmiths, or people who collected plants from the forest.
Hopefully, some of the crystals would have answers to my questions.
Stored inside the inventory crystal on the table in the library was a padded chair and several stacks of dried jerky and dried berries. The descriptions didn’t give me more than that.
I pulled the chair out and set it next to the table. Next was a single piece of jerky.
[Dried jerky, Not tasty.]
Great.
I shoved it back in, not wanting to try it. The last time I’d eaten jerky, my body had rebelled. After sitting in the chair for a moment, I examined my inventory to see how much food remained. Not a ton, though I had that soup on the fire in the main area. Still, I might stretch it a few days at most. Unfortunately, I knew nothing about the final challenge.
My fingers tapped on the armrest before I leaped to my feet and examined the knowledge crystal shelves. The bookshelf on the lefthand wall had a sign above it.
[Our Stories.]
Then I glanced at some titles.
[Whispers of the Wild.]
[Tales from the Trees.]
[Echoes of the Ancestors.]
The shelf against the back wall had a different sign.
[Our Songs and Singers.]
These had to be related to the profession, Crystal Singing. I touched the first one.
[My Trials, Eilgwyn, Water Whisperer.]
Instead of a hologram, a soft-spoken and calm voice filled the air.
“This will be my last entry; I will not make the journey to the library. One of the elders will need to bring my songs to their final resting place. I will remain here with the waters, safe from those who hunt us.” The woman paused. “May the waters soothe your heart and soul.”
“Wait, how do I listen from the beginning?” I asked aloud. Nothing happened. Instead, I picked the crystal up and brought it over to the chair. As I sat down, I probed the crystal, trying to find an index or something. The soft voice from earlier reached out to me and I tried to ask for the beginning.
Then she spoke again. This time, the voice sounded brighter, younger somehow.
“Hopefully, this is worth putting in the library.” Her voice came out in a rush. “The village voted for me to learn the songs. It still doesn’t feel real. The singer in my village spoke to the trees, but I connected the most with water and healing.”
Spoke to the trees?
She paused, taking a scant breath.
“I discovered you can touch water and sing to sense if any crystals are nearby. You have to truly let your senses become one with the cool energies.” She giggled softly. “I started at the lake and sensed crystals up one of the rivers leading to it. It took all of my energy, though, and I needed to rest for several days before journeying to where the crystals were.”
The voice cut off before the young girl came back. This time, she was talking about how she discovered a way to increase the healing ability of a water crystal by singing to native water crystals of healing energy before creation. It took her a week, but it almost doubled the healing energy the final crystal contained.
“Interesting…” I set the crystal to the side and turned back to the shelves, looking for one that spoke about Fire Crystals.
[My Discoveries, Vanlyth, Fire Singer.]
The crystal felt heavy as I picked it up, and a rush of energy flowed up my arm. Instantly I knew this Singer had recorded everything he could.
A deep voice spoke as I moved back to the chair. “Fire burns bright, but can burn out quickly if you use it too often. Over my life, I’ve focused on how to increase the storage aspects of fire crystals, along with how to store crystals inside crystals.”
I paused, my eyes growing wide. Yet, the voice didn’t continue. I made myself comfortable and tried to find the beginning, to find out more about the inventory crystals.
I didn’t know how long I sat there listening to his voice, as he started working with fire crystals. He didn’t mention the war at all until toward the end, as he tested different methods to find ways to store crystals inside one another.
“I must accomplish my goal. The Forgers are growing bold. If we can hide weapons inside small inventory crystals, it will change everything.” That single sentence was the only time he mentioned it.
Eventually, he discovered a workaround. It wasn’t exactly what he set out to do, but it kind of worked, but only for those who could Sing.
Basically, you could store weapons in your inventory and gloop the crystal edge onto the outside of the inventory crystal. It took large amounts of energy, and it increased the size of the inventory crystal. You needed to remove the weapon by touching the inventory crystal, and then reform the crystal edge at the same time.
It sounded complex and situational.
My eyes felt gritty as I stood up to replace the crystal on the shelf. The scent of the soup drew me out of the library, and I went to sit in front of the fireplace.
“I can’t listen to them all,” I said with a sad whisper. All the knowledge here, and I didn’t have enough food or time to stay. I’d need to find my way back if possible, but for now, people were waiting on me.
Slowly, I finished the bowl of soup and made a list of things to look for: a history of the war with the Forgers; ways to connect with the energy and personalities within the crystals; and anything that’d make me a stronger singer.
The pot only had two more bowls inside it. I could make two more potfuls of the soup. Once all of that was gone, I needed to be on my way out. Measuring time using potfuls of soup was the best I had.
After rinsing my bowl I got to work focusing on the crystal singers.
Time passed quickly as I dove in, trying to find useful nuggets of information from the singers. Yet, by the time I finished the pot of soup, a trend quickly became apparent. No one got creative. Singers used the crystal that connected with them most and focused only on that crystal. No one was mixing crystal types like me, or trying to use them in combat beyond fire weapons and protective crystals.
It felt like such a waste.
I set my most recent crystal back on the shelf, shaking my head.
My next pot of soup cooked next to the fire, and I finally got to switch to the history bookshelf. My only concern was searching for something about this war. We hadn’t seen any concerns about an ongoing war since we’d been here, but that meant nothing. I was still trying to wrap my head around how little of this planet we had really seen, but I knew it wasn’t much.
Starting at the top shelf and working my way down, I read each story title looking for anything that would help. Several things called out to me, but I’d have to circle back once I got through all of them. None of them seemed quite right.
Then, toward the bottom of the shelf, I found it.
[The Songweaver’s Tale, our mistake with the Forgers.]
Taking it back to the chair, I opened the memory. A group of three jungle folk appeared sitting on a fallen log. They each wore long green robes, but looked very different. Then, the one on the right spoke. This was an older jungle folk, with white hair and dim eyes.
“It pains me to record this, but our people deserve to remember the truth, even as painful as it is,” she said with a shaky voice. “I am Kerm de Zumlem and I take responsibility for the conflict with the Forgers, though I did not know the first one as that.”
The younger man next to her patted her knee.
She smiled at him, but continued. “It started with a young man traveling to our world, a young man named Ikhavu. It was long before we built a portal. He arrived through a rift; young, lost, and thirsting for knowledge. Who he was doesn’t matter, what he did, does.” She closed her eyes before slowly opening them. “Ikhavu was easy to trust, with soft eyes and a voice that could sing the most pleasant music. Now I recognize it as a manipulation skill. He was bait. But then, well, I was young, and all I could hear was the trust in his voice.”
She swallowed and nodded at the younger man next to her. “I was his age, and eager to hear about the worlds beyond ours. Our warriors weren’t at a level yet to explore the cosmos, but it was there, waiting for us, and I didn’t want to wait.” She smirked but for a moment. “He told stories about wandering through rifts, hoping to find his way home to his people. Though he mentioned it was a rite of passage to go wander the stars before returning home, it seemed wonderful. He’d seen worlds with towering crystals jutting into the air, ones with floating rocks and oceans that stretched as far as the eye could see.”
“Sharing knowledge of our world was the obvious thing to do, along with the fact that we didn’t have a way to travel off the planet yet. That the rift he’d come through was the only way. We spent weeks with him trying to find it again before giving up. The weeks turned into months as he lived with us, learning about our world and our people… Most importantly, slowly learning about our magics.” She motioned to the man next to her.
“To understand the story, you must understand that each world has its own magics,” he started. “Each race is usually limited to learning the magic of their birth world. Very few people can learn others' magics.”
He bowed his head to her to continue.
“We didn’t know that then. We assumed everyone knew of the crystal songs. That every word just sang differently.” She paused and took a deep breath. “After a year, my brother went missing. His voice was one of our most precious; he sang most beautifully to the air crystals. It renewed the push to find the rift that Ikhavu had arrived through, but we could never seem to find it.”
She stopped talking, and the older man on the far side gave her a sad smile. He took up the story.
“It was already too late at that point, and we didn’t know it. From what we discovered later, the Forgers send a single charismatic individual to a new world, to learn its secrets, and if there is anything worth taking.” His voice came out very clinical. “Their species has the ability to mix with other species and evolve traits from them. That, thankfully, did not work with our crystals. Instead, they needed half-breeds with the singer profession to use our magics.”
“That’s such an ugly term,” whispered Kerm. “But those that came out of such a union were not like us. They were Forgers.”
“Yes,” the older man said, interrupting. “Though these Forgers, unfortunately, discovered how to sing to crystals, twisting the songs. They stole crystals from our world through the rift, along with any singer they could sneak away without notice.”
“I discovered the truth one night, by following Ikhavu after waking from a dark dream. He snuck through the forest to a hidden crack in a rock. It led to an enormous cavern, holding the hidden rift, and many other Forgers, plus many stolen crystals.” Kern shook her head. “I crept away to alert the elders, but by this point it had been years. Ikhavu was a trusted member of our clan. It took time to convince the elders what was going on. They didn’t want to believe, and I can’t really blame them. But, by the time I was able to sway them, the Forgers had used the rift as a staging point to invade our planet. The crack wasn’t the only entrance to the cavern system, and they had been sending Forger soldiers through for months.”
“It took ages before we pushed them back and closed the rift, but during that time our Singers became targets. And, worse, if the enemy couldn’t get a hold of one with the ability, they were to be assassinated.”
Kern nodded at the younger man, who took over the conversation. “After our warriors created the first portal off our planet, they discovered the truth. The Forgers had combined dark magic of their own with our songs to create slave collars. Many gave their lives to remove Singers from their control and target those with the singer abilities.” Then he smiled sadly. “But the Forgers don’t know where our world is, or how to get here. The main portal to our world is guarded, now, and the last of the Singers missing from our world are all at the reaches of their lifespan, even if they have reached Rank 3.”
“Most importantly, only half-breeds might learn singer abilities; they couldn’t pass it on to any offspring.” He nodded. “All who leave our world are instructed in how to destroy a slave collar, though it will result in the slave dying. Bit-by-bit, we can remove the abominations from the universe. Eventually, they will run out of crystal and be unable to teach the songs. This will end the conflict with the Forgers.”
The image flickered and went out.
Then another started.
The younger man who had been with the others appeared alone. He was older, now.
“Why do they still search for our people?” He looked tired. “Why couldn’t they let us be?”
