As the taxi he had arrived in sped away, Pellex looked up at the imposing edifice of the Fwydlei Library, one of the three great libraries in Zolnre. Built several hundred years ago by Jevert Fwydlei as a donation to the now-defunct Kaelestron University, it had focused on collecting esoteric texts, of all kinds, no matter whether they were unreadable by men, described ways to cause unspeakable horrors, or just simply weren’t true. The lax policy had made using the resources there quite challenging, until almost a century ago, when [Cataloger], a new specialization of [Librarian], had been discovered, and all the libraries in the entirety of the Peacejoined States were reorganized by users of that class. Now, the prevailing opinion in the city was that Fwydlei was only somewhat unreliable.

Passing through the doors of one of the great libraries was always awe-inspiring. As Pellex approached, the two stone behemoths swung open into a luxurious grand lobby, outdated interior design and subpar care irrelevant in the face of the sheer opulence. Seeing no line, Pellex walked up to the [Librarian] sitting at the desk, who started speaking as soon as she realized he was walking over.

“Hello! How can I help you?”

“I’m looking for books on divination theory, can you tell me where that section is?”

“Are you looking for divination theory as it relates to skill usage or thi-casting?”

Pellex hadn’t known they were categorized differently, but certainly wasn’t going to just off-handedly give away which type he was interested in.

“Both, actually. My paper is about the differences between the two types.”

“Ah. Well, for thi-casting divination just check the general thi-casting section, there aren’t many books, but it’s not exactly a well-studied field. For skill-based divination, though,” her eyes flashed as she used a skill, frowning after doing so, “that’s all the way in the back. I’ll have to take you.”

Getting up from her chair, her outline blurred with light as she seemed to stretch between the two positions. After a moment, the light was gone, leaving her standing behind the desk, and a flickering replica of her in the chair, fuzzing at the corners of Pellex’s vision.

“That’s always an annoyance. Follow me, please.”

The doors to the main floor opened as she approached, revealing hundreds of bookshelves spread out below them in the massive space, each testament to the ongoing battle between [Catalogers] reorganizing the books, the librarygoers putting things back where they didn’t belong, reshelving golems malfunctioning, and even just [Librarians] putting new ones in. Following her down the stairs, Pellex glanced up at the skylights, where the telltale flickering of spatial workings filtered the sun’s rays. The great libraries weren’t named so for the value of their books, or their age, or the expense of the building. A library was called great when the collection was so large that, without preventative measures, [Kenetet] would wriggle through from other planes to eat it.

Each great library had a different solution, from dimensional wards, or information concealment formations, to gigantic teleporting golems that would beat the intruders to death. Fwydlei, in occult and arcane fashion, was riddled with subdimensions, spatial warpings, portals, and all manner of space-defying magic, to the point that the official library maps were half-covered in blank areas labeled “topographically complex”. One step forward could quite literally be two steps back. Pellex followed close behind his guide, trying to remember the path. The first few sections of the route were easy to navigate, with portals clearly color-coded, and fourth-dimensional turns accompanied by explanatory signs.

As they got further away from the heart of the library, logic started to break down. Pellex had heard that the maze was designed by a processing golem, and certain choices definitely gave credence to that theory. A ladder that couldn’t be seen or felt, leading right through the ceiling, a nonsensical chant that made a specific wall intangible, a subsection where rubbing a book’s cover would send the traveler across semantic links to books in other areas of the subsection; Pellex had long since given up on trying to remember the route, and was becoming slightly worried by how deep they were going. He was fairly certain he had seen a book on mind magic right before falling sideways into the next layer. Pellex knew divination was rare, but was it really stored deeper in the library than high crimes?

In the end, it took nearly thirty minutes to cross the tangled geometry of Fwydlei to their destination. The last jump required pushing a hand into a specific spot on a pillar until it would randomly go through, and as Pellex looked around the newest location, he asked the [Librarian] what he had been wondering the entire trip.

“Why not just have normal portals?”

“[Kenetet] operate on information. They see reality through its connections, and if this building was linked in a safe and simple manner, they’d see all of our books as right next to each other. The paths are obtuse to conceptually break up each space.”

“I can see that. It really is hard to think of this all as one library.”

“Indeed, and please don’t try. It’s tempting, but we teeter on the edge here. Some of these books are hazards alone, and giving them company does not make it easier.”

“Got it. This is all skill-based divination, then?”

“Unfortunately, it is not. Skill-based divination is those two shelves in the corner. Oh, and, a general request from us staff, please check out all the books you want rather than making frequent visits to read them here. We have a limited number of [Librarian] employees, and we can’t always be available as guides.”

“Of course. Are you going to stay, or how do I get back?”

“I’m going to swap with my projection, so you can just ask when you’re done and I’ll bring you back.”

The [Librarian] gave Pellex a small jadeglass anchor before activating a skill and disappearing, replaced by the projection Pellex had seen her leave back at the desk. Tucking the anchor in his pocket, he walked over to the shelves and started looking through the books. Two shelves described a surprisingly small shelf space. Looking through the titles, Pellex found an alarming number of them to be vague treatises on divination in the absolute most general sense of information gathering, mentioning the various skills with some minor element of it to them, like [Inerrant Aim] or [Blade Guide]. Pellex wanted something that an [Oracle] would use, or even a book on the [Divination] tree itself.

In the end, he narrowed it down to 12 books. One of them wasn't even relevant; it was a reformatted series of editorials about why divination was so rare, a subject Pellex was now very curious about. The others were more useful, but not by much. Two of the authors actually appeared to have had [Divination] based classes, which was a relief, but the rest were general system research, and one was nothing more than a fiction story that had claimed extensive research on the part of the author. Pellex didn’t know how that book had ended up here, but he was somewhat desperate.

With a sigh and a last glance to make sure nothing wildly important caught his eye, he walked over to the [Librarian]’s projection. It took a while to get her to respond, but she focused on him after he waved his hand in front of her.

"Did you find everything okay?"

"Yeah, I have enough to start. I'll visit the thi-casting section on my way out."

"Sounds great. I'm paging the recall team right now; do you have your anchor on you?"

Pellex pulled it out of his pocket and held it up.

"Right here."

"Alright, transmission authorized!"

The world fuzzed.

A woman sat in the corner of the dimly lit room, cloaked in shadows by a shell of thi. She watched Pellex fade out of view, the [Librarian]’s projection disappearing a moment later. With no wasted movements and the practiced steps of a master, she slid over to the shelves, and took a closer look at the spaces left by the books he had picked out. Very, very interesting choices.

Pellex blinked in an attempt to clear his vision, revealing a much different environment than the one he left. A bored-looking man in long yellow robes leaned against the wall of a stark white room. When Pellex looked down, he saw an extremely-complicated ritual circle arrayed around his feet. It was his first time seeing once since he got back in the city, and he flashed [Runesight] just to try it out. In retrospect, the flash of light that seared his eyes was predictable, and when the man in yellow noticed what Pellex had done, he let out a bark of laughter before gesturing to the door.

True to his word, Pellex passed through the thi-casting section on his way out. He didn't spend nearly as much time here, in part because it was much better organized, and he found the few books he was looking for quite easily. He would undoubtedly at least glance over these books, but thi-casters were notoriously focused on thi pattern composition, cast arrangement quality, low-level soulshell interference, and a thousand other optimizations that categorically had nothing to do with the thing they were actually trying to do. If they even did it the same way as a skill would. Still, knowledge was knowledge, and Pellex left that library with a lot of it. Hailing a taxi, he gave the address for his home and sat back to read.