"Are you certain about this?" said Ven'thur as he adjusted his monocle, looking through it with sunken in, hollow, skeletal eyes on a crowded desk in his laboratory. His skeletal fingers were wrapped around a rotating, crystalline knob at the table's center, and as he turned it a little bit clockwise, then anti-clockwise, a faint, gurgling sound like flowing water echoed throughout the cavern.

"Did you not mention it before? When I set out to do something, I do it," said Li in his own true form now that they were in the privacy of Ven'thur laboratory. Although it had been torched the last time Li had encountered the lich, it had been restored with some help by Alexei.

"And I am confident this will succeed."

To a more minimal degree, of course, now that Ven'thur was no longer researching how to create more high undead using live subjects. In fact, most of it was now like a workshop, dedicated for the Lich to show his expert craftsmanship in creating magic weapons like Azhar's bow and, more importantly, to further his research into dimensional magic.

Of course, the lich had not given up on making more high undead, it was just that he felt his services and knowledge were needed elsewhere and, with an eternity of undeath to spend, he had plenty of time to continue his undead research another day.

"I do not mean your confidence in this experiment," said Ven'thur. "The girl. Is it right to bring her? Kel'thor Citadel is not a welcoming place for little girls."

Li looked to Tia, his skeletal head and socketed eyes glowing green as he gazed at her sleeping form on his shoulder. She was leaning on him, more comfortably than she would in his human form because he was a fair bit bigger, and she looked just as at peace with Li's more sinister figure as she was with his human visage.

Tia knew, of course, of Li's true form, and did not consider it a foreign concept. After all, she herself was not using her true form most of the time.

"Trust me, Ven'thur, Tia can handle more than her form would lead you to believe," said Li.

Ven'thur laughed. "Oh, I do not mean there will be danger. The citadel has long been dead, and so, I fear it may be far too dreary an environment for a curious young mind.

Though, I suppose you are right that she can handle far more than meets the eye. Considering she does possess some highborn draconic blood." Ven'thur kept fidgeting with the purple crystal knob. It was meant as a stabilizer for his dimensional magic, sort of like a means to punch in coordinates to accurately zone in his teleportation, though even then, he could teleport only to extremely familiar locations.

"I am actually rather surprised no dragon from Torr Valeris has come curiously sniffing about for her. As obsessed with bloodlines those scaled lot are."

"I imagine they know she is under the guardianship of a being far beyond them," said Li.

"Believe me, that has not stopped the unfathomable arrogance of dragons before," said Ven'thur. The crystal knob clicked. "Ah, the calibrations are complete. To Kel'thor, we shall go, the grand citadel that was once my dearest home and space of study."

Ven'thur kept his hand on the knob, and then raised his other hand in front of him. His lavender suit had been replaced with his magical purple robes, and they began to warp and billow around his figure like living fire. "[Gateway]"

A dark purple fissure in space tore open in front of Ven'thur, slowly growing larger until it could envelop everyone present.

"Then, shall we?" said Ven'thur as he waved to Li, and Li nodded once, following the lich into the portal.

==========================

The moment they stepped into the portal, they were out of it, and it fizzled shut behind them in an instant as Ven'thur wished to save as much mana as he could.

"So this," said Li as he looked around. "Is Kel'thor Citadel."

All around him, spanning into the distance, were massive bookshelves of stone. So tall and numerous were they that their combined structure looked almost like some kind of maze. Many of the stone bookshelves were ornately decorated with carved figures of knights, dragons, undead, flowers, and many, many more objects and beings.

Li realized they were essentially labels for the shelves, indicating what type of books would have been atop the shelves.

However, there were no books. Not a single one lay atop the massive complex of shelves, making them look utterly hollow, like a bare skeleton stripped of its flesh and blood. A heavy silence hung low in the library, mixing with clouds of ashen dust to create a somber, dead mood.

Tia shivered, and she lazily opened one eye. "Cold," she said, and Li wrapped a large, branched hand around her, wreathing her in warm leaves. Her eye moved from side to side, and she said, "Where we?"

"At Kel'thor Citadel, oh sleepy dragon!" said Ven'thur, his excited voice ringing out in dead echoes throughout the massive length of the library. "Or, more specifically, merely a part of it. The part most familiar to me: the Grand Archives, once manned specifically by yours truly."

"There is not much left of it," noted Li solemnly.

Ven'thur sighed, the sudden excitement at returning home dimming down rapidly. "Yes, that is true.

When the citadel was burned down two hundred years ago, nearly nothing was spared from the flames. A thousand years of history all written and bound in tomes meant to last an eternity – all gone. I should say the only comparable well of knowledge left now are the tablets of the Serpi, but those, they are unwilling to share with outsiders."

Ven'thur paused, red points of light shining in his eye sockets. "Perhaps, it would have been better for us to be just as reclusive with the knowledge. Sharing it with mortals bred fear in their minds, and their irrational little heads lashed out against us."

"Your distrust of mortal minds is becoming that much more understandable to me," said Li.

Ven'thur laughed. "Ah, do not take my words too seriously, good seer, for they would taste sour to you when you yourself are trying so hard to make the mortals better than what they are."

"You have no faith in them?" said Li, knowing that Ven'thur was with Li not to share his goal of an eternal garden, but for the mere pleasure of working with a higher existence and learning from it.

"Faith? Hm, faith? Such a strange word. So irrational, is it not? Have faith, the mortals say when they cannot understand the world around them. Have faith, they say as they urge each other to slaughter the other in droves or burn down knowledge." Ven'thur began to float forwards, between the towering bookcases, and Li followed.

"But humans good," said Tia. "Papa says so."

"I did not say they were evil, my dear," said Ven'thur. "Merely gullible, their wits dimmed and clouded with superstition as the years pass by them. They have no ideation of what is good or what is evil or what those concepts even truly mean, for it may be that one demagogue arises that convinces them that wrong is right and right is wrong, and they will lap it up so very easily.

Oh, dear me, I am rambling. What I should say is that mortals are blank slates, easily influenced, colored by the higher forces around them. To that end, I should say your dear father is quite the artist, shaping and coloring them in a way that turns them away from their wanton self-destructiveness."

"Confused," said Tia, not grasping what Ven'thur was saying. "Bone man words too big."

"He's saying that humans can get easily tempted," said Li. "And I agree, Ven'thur. I know very well how destructively short-sighted mortal lifespans can become."

He distinctively remembered his past world. At how narrow minds and greedy wills had exploited and doomed the entire world into a soulless husk not worth living in. "But their malleability is also why I believe I can turn them against their worse tendencies."

"And to that goal, I raise the highest of toasts," said Ven'thur, raising his skeletal hand in a mock cheer. "There is no sarcasm in my words, good seer, I do assure you, if you are ever worried. It is simply the way my words flow sometimes. I do find your goals truly admirable, and I am quite the eager spectator to see whether it all comes into fruition."

"Spectator? You, by now, are an active participant. Even now, that you are helping me is sign of that."

"I am no nihilist, despite the tendency for long lived bookworms to resort to such philosophy," said Ven'thur.

"You should know that by spending time within your heart, resurrecting myself through your energies, that I have some concept of what you are. Of where you hail from, of visions of a world choked with smoke and bereft of life. Preventing that, too, would be quite favorable for me."

"Then you know I am part of the alien forces that you abhor, do you not?" said Li. "The same as the heroes and the elven machines."

"It would be hypocritical of me to abhor you for that, for after all, my existence, too, is of foreign origin to this world," said Ven'thur. "I merely am of ill opinion against the heroes and elves for their appearance has only furthered the chaos in this world.

You, good seer, however, look to be a beacon of order."

"Order," repeated Li, knowing the word was so very familiar to him. "Yes, that is what I seek to become."

"And order is a scholar's favorite dish," said Ven'thur. "For the delicate process of study is impossible in a time of chaos.

Now come, good seer and majestic little dragon, follow me to the heart of Kel'thor, for there, I may yet present to you a largely untarnished shade of its magnificence where I may attune you to the infinity of the cosmos."