I carefully made my way back down to the middle floor. It was time to risk a look into the main room. Or what I assumed to be the main room. I stood before the double doors and listened attentively. The mumbling had stopped for the moment but I still heard scratching occasionally. The ork seemed to be writing something down, maybe he was doing some research?

[Sneak] activated and I sent out a tendril to touch the door. My silencing ability extended onto it and I pushed it open. Silently, inch by inch, the door swung to the side. From behind light fell into the hallway. It was a flickering yellow shine as if a fire was burning. Which was the case, as I very quickly spotted. Only, the fire was floating in the air and entirely magical. Powered by nothing I could discern. The light fell onto a lot of shelves with even more books on them. The middle of the room was opened down and up to create a three-storey library. Or rather a two-storey library with a workshop below it.

As I carefully approached the bannister, I saw a similar construction in the middle of the room as in the courtyard a few days ago. Or was it weeks? Pedestals surrounded four bent-inwards pillars with a cubic object covered in runes floating in the centre. It was currently not used. Instead, the thaumaturge was below my position, near the wall. There was another construction on the left wall of the bottom floor. Some sort of furnace with a few metal alembics stacked on top was connected to a pile of jars via a messy network of tubes and valves. A few mirrors sat within the mess making it look even more confusing.

The opposite wall was where his most priced possession floated. A node. And not just any node, this was a big one. Some sort of pyramid-like pedestal stood beneath it and created a milky barrier. I suspected it was preventing crystals from forming and gathering energy for something. The mana I sensed felt like metal, crystal, earth and order. Maybe I could gain another two primal aspects from this one? Then I would only be missing fire and water mana.

My floor and above were far less interesting, or more, depending on the contents of these books. I spotted a stairwell leading up and down on my right. If someone walked up there, he would look at the opposite wall of where I currently sat.

The upper floor had no door to the storage room, otherwise, I would have seen it earlier. This made it a good spot to begin my research. Or my attempts at deciphering the writing. I hoped it was all one language but it most likely was not. And the knowledge from my previous life did not extend to something like this. It would take a lot of work.

I took another careful look around after closing the door behind me. If there were magical traps anywhere I was unable to see them. I really hoped there were none. Otherwise, I might find a quick end here. The risk however was worth it, as long as I could learn some more magic.

I snuck around to get a better look at my involuntary host. The ork was built like most of the other orks. Big, burly and bald. He held himself far less like a warrior, however. Instead, he sat hunched over some coarse paper and was scratching tiny writing on it with a feather. His robes looked exactly like the last time I saw him. Grey and purple with a few golden patterns woven into the hems. This seemed to be standard clothing for thaumaturges. He also had a huge magical aura going for him. I was unsure where it came from but I suspected the two rings on his hands, one gold, one dark purple, had something to do with it.

He was busy wringing his head over some sort of problem so I left him be and went upstairs. There I found myself a few books and found a corner to hide and page through my stolen treasure.

The upper floor was the perfect spot for me. The thaumaturge had spent the night down below writing and grumbling. A few times he had gone to get a book from the second floor and once he had left to eat something but he never found me or any trace of my presence.

It was now early morning as the slightly lighter curtains showed and I had been going through several books for most of the night. I was exhausted and had gotten absolutely nothing. The writing was not very difficult, I found 25 letters similar to the Latin alphabet. But other than knowing it was some sort of phonetic writing I had figured out nothing distinct. It did not help that everything was handwritten and some of the letters looked to be a completely different language even though they were not. I had only figured that out about an hour ago. All those points in Intelligence and I felt not an ounce smarter.

The ork had left a few minutes ago and this time I had heard him walk down the hallway to the room next to this one. I carefully made my way down to the bottom floor on my wings and listened at the door. There was some more grumbling and a bit of rustling cloth. I made out something about sleep. Hopefully, I had a bit of time to check out these magical devices and maybe even the node. No, I would not touch the node yet. It would probably take all my focus and I wanted to learn more about the mage’s daily rhythm first. If he only slept for a few hours I could carefully try to drain some mana every night. Or every morning. But that was for later.

I looked around again. The magical altar in the middle and the furnace on the left had been untouched for the whole night. The node as well, though the thaumaturge had checked up on it twice, he never actually touched it, only made sure his device worked as intended. Right next to me was a large desk on each side of the door. The one on my right held some crystals and a few tools. On my left was where he wrote all night long. The papers had been put away somewhere but a large tome lay there, closed and untouched and very, very inviting.

I jumped up on the table. The book was obviously magical. It was also almost as large as me, probably forty centimetres tall and about 25 wide. It was bound in thick leather which had runes and patterns inscribed. A few lines of gold and green gave the ornaments colour and in the middle, a black spot sat. It was perfectly round and seemed to form a half ball about four centimetres across going both inside and outside the book at the same time.

I did not hesitate. A tendril of shadow gripped the thick leather and pulled the tome open. As my eyes fell onto the first page, I saw letters. That was perfectly normal, it was a book. These letters however looked entirely alien, different from what I had looked at the whole night. At the same time, I understood their meaning. And after blinking just once, the letters looked just like English. And then, after another blink, they looked like what I had seen upstairs in the other books. And I could still understand it. I made sure to remember them before I blinked again and had some weird squiggly lines in front of me. This was, Arabic? Another blink, back to English. Then Chinese. Some cuneiform script. Back to this world’s letters. I started blinking rapidly, just enjoying the letters changing form. And every time I understood them.

This book was amazing. I reigned in my enjoyment and paid actual attention to the text. And I was hesitant to read more after only the first line.

Those of weak mind, turn away. The secrets of this tome will turn you into babbling fools, for the secrets of magic are not kept secret out of a desire for power, but to protect the weak.

This was extremely ominous. And obviously, I had some issues with my mind lately. But I wanted to know, especially now, if it could be explained with magic. And so I read on.

This tome was given to me by my teacher, just as to him before by his teacher. It contains all the secrets we ripped out from behind the veil. Read with care, even if you were chosen to receive this knowledge.

So, read slowly? And when I would feel like I was going crazy, stop? I could do that!

First, I will tell you about this tome. It will absorb any knowledge you claim during your own research, as long as you write it down on separate sheets. That is, how I wrote you this message. Because now, I will tell you about warp. The most important thing to understand, before you delve into the secrets of the beyond.

This was ominous. Okay, the whole book was ominous, what with the clearly magical bullshittery going on with the letters, but apparently, you could add new pages just by writing about magic? Well, warp sounded important, so I would read at least about that. I could put it down right after. No problem.

Warp is the true danger of magic. Not flux, not exploding fireballs or toxic alchemical concoctions. Warp. It is the altering of your mind and soul to allow for knowledge your body can not handle. That, my teacher told me. I have found no proof for or against this theory, but I can confirm it alters your body. Mostly your mind. The deeper your knowledge about the world, the beyond, the more you will lose understanding of yourself. At first, you might only receive a bit of extra flux suddenly flowing into you. Later you might find spiders entirely made of your imaginations spring into existence around you. Do NOT ignore those spiders! They can hurt you and probably kill you as well!

Wow. Imaginary spiders that were actually real? What a world had I found myself in…

The most dangerous however are the guardians of this knowledge. At least we assume they are guardians. An all-encompassing fog announces their arrival and they will only attack the thaumaturge, whose warped mind has drawn their attention. If they kill their target, they disappear along with its body. Make sure to have strong defensive and offensive options ready to fend them off, before they start appearing.

So that was what happened in that town? The thaumaturge was hunted down by some eldritch guardian for knowing too much? Interesting.

For now, you will only have to deal with minor inconveniences, like magical diarrhoea or unnatural hunger. Work towards protecting yourself, before you delve into what truly draws your interest. That will increase your chances of survival severely. That is all, my protegé, I wish you well in your endeavours. My knowledge and that of my predecessors is kept safe behind simple understanding. If you find yourself unable to read an entry of this book, simply research its topic yourself and you will soon come to understand.

May your insight grow forevermore!

This was very interesting indeed. I had found a magical book of research and I could read its entries after understanding a little bit about it myself? Wonderful. But the warp stuff worried me. It was most likely not what lead to my split ideals and ideas. After all, I had not experienced any of the other effects. No diarrhoea or mind spiders. Hunger was there when I used too much magic, but that was probably just from exhaustion, right?

Anyways, I had been paying attention to the letters I was reading and soon realized I could make them appear how I wanted with a bit of mental effort. This meant I could learn this world's writing very easily. I was a little scared of the warp, but I decided to read on further. At least for a bit. This author had mentioned flux after all and I really wanted to know what it was. Or what the premiere scientists of this world thought it was.