“Long, long ago, the Faulk lands were covered in ice and snow.” The young Astrid floated lazily overhead, laying her head in her hands and kicking her feet to swim slowly on her back. “We wove our stories in wool and wood so they could last beyond our limited lifespans. After the collapse, our lands changed. To preserve everything we’d made, the first shamans made this place. They founded a refuge that would not decay, fade, nor burn. In a place where no script can be read, but limitless stories can be found. The Illiterate Library.”

Rael’s jaw dropped in awe. There must have been tapestries that extended beyond the history of the oldest kingdoms in the world. They reached to touch one of the closer ones and the world started to change around them, the walls melting away and the figures on the tapestries casting long shadows that become more and more real. Rael quickly pulled their hand away. They’d almost been pulled into another memory.

“But…how?” The Dragonward only just noticed there were doors leading into other rooms. “This doesn’t make sense.”

“Every shaman who learns the [Dreamweave] spell maintains it.”

Astrid cranked her hand and the room shifted around the two, pushing the walls down at a blinding speed until they reached an area with grayed embroideries, frayed and fluttering in an imaginary breeze. A few scenes were familiar to Rael. One of the reoccurring figures was a man molted with imperfections. He appeared most frequently on a tapestry that grew larger as it hung past them, starting at an image where he held up a swaddled child with horns. Ruen. Rael craned their neck down, following the tattered remains of the story grow into a massive embroidery of a women with long, violet hair and horns, her eyes sparking with arcane might. In her hands was a map of the Faulkie Jarldoms, sewn together with a thread.

“Every now and then, a disaster would prevent them from doing their duties.” Astrid’s frizzy red hair drooped and grayed as her tone fell. “We had no way of knowing how much was lost. Until you came along.”

The Norn ran her fingers through Rael’s hair and slowly pulled down to their glabella. When she pulled her hand away, a midnight blue thread was entwined around her hands. She twisted her hands around to make a cat’s cradle, then a spiderweb, and finally a quilt. The motions caused Astrid to brighten up again, her hair springing up into a poofy mess once more. Rael watched on, enraptured, as the redhead spun her fingers around and around, the quilt growing larger and more elaborate until the scene of Ruen, Fenris, Jarl Andras, and King Peter unfolded before them. The tapestry flapped from Astrid’s arms and melded into the others.

“I think it’s poetic.” Astrid hummed as she looked over the new artwork. “This is one of the only accounts we have of the people the north-eastern mountain range is named after. And it’s about them destroying a piece of history.”

“Is that why you wanted me to learn [Dreamwalk]?” Rael grunted and crossed their arms.

“Pft! No, silly!” Astrid giggled as she flipped upside down to meet Rael’s glare. “That was just a small bonus.” She tapped Rael sending them flying back into the chair. “The dreamscape is special because as of now, only five people can access it. Three of whom are mute.”

‘Me. Astrid. Her three assistants. Doesn’t that make this place ideal for secrets?’ Rael narrowed their eyes and stood up. The chair moved to follow them. Rael pushed it backwards with a leg, but it just hopped after them like an eager puppy.

“You have something you want to keep quiet about.” Rael ignored the chair, even as Astrid watched on amusedly.

“The Illiterate Library is already a secret to most. Being here is a great privilege. Teaching someone how to navigate it, even more so.” Norn Astrid shrugged and swiveled right side up again. “But you’re partly right. Though it is not my secrets we are here to discuss.”

Rael straightened, freezing in place. She knew.

Astrid’s blue eyes bore into Rael’s, as if she peeled away the layers of their soul to find the part of themselves Rael hid so deep they had thought it gone. They thought they could build a new life elsewhere, away from the stigma and abuse. One where they may have once been a slave, but they were still normal. Where they were more than just a resource for the powerful. The Norn’s knowing gaze threatened to tear that life away from them.

Rael was all too aware of the depths of her power. She was the oldest, most experienced shaman in the Jarldoms, who could manage a complex, city-sized spell for nothing more than a game. To try and fight would be hopeless.

‘Deny it.’

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Rael gritted their teeth and turned away.

“Trying to find someone’s history in the dreamscape normally takes a lot of work. To parse through their dreams and the shared knowledge of the fae is difficult and time-consuming. But you and Azmond…it is as if you are open books.”

“I don’t want to talk about this.” The Dragonward slammed their foot on the ground, scaring the yipping chair away.

“Rael. Look at me.” Astrid said softly. “I’m not here to threaten you or use this against you. I want to help you.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“Shut. Up.”

“You are not less a person for being what you are.”

“SHUT UP!” Rael screamed, tears in their eyes. They stomped about the room, careful to avoid getting too close to any of the tapestries. They tried to summon their tome, but it refused to appear. Rael ran to the walls, punching them wildly in the hope that the pain would wake them. They even considered marching right up to Astrid and shaking her, but the little sense they had kept them from acting.

“How do I wake up?!” Rael pleaded. “Let me out!”

Rael moved through the room like a cornered animal, desperately looking away from Astrid. Their stomping faded into panicked jogging, then a full-on run. They ran from room to room, passing by innumerable tapestries reaching high into the heavens. Yet at each turn, Astrid was there. Sorrowful and quiet. Rael ran. It felt like it could have been days. Or weeks. Or years. Until Rael collapsed on the ground, arms and legs splayed out. Despite all the running, their lungs did not burn, their muscles never grew sore, and they did not hunger or thirst. The dream had become a prison.

Astrid stood over Rael. She looked into the youth’s teary eyes and kneeled by their side. Rael averted their gaze, turning over stubbornly.

“We can talk about it later if you would like.” Astrid ran her hands through Rael’s hair again, gently and carefully, much like how Rael ran their own hands through Az’s hair. “You cannot run from who you are forever.”

Rael kept quiet.

“How about this.” Norn Astrid leaned back. “It’s unfair that I know your secrets and you know none of mine. Not even the ones everyone else pretends to be ignorant of. I’ll give you three secrets. Then, I’ll tell you how to get out. You’re welcome to come back afterwards.”

“Don’t count on it.” Rael grumbled, keeping their back to Astrid.

“We will see.” Astrid cleared her throat, more a reflex than anything else, and began. “My first secret is one that everyone knows, but nobody speaks about. It should shed some light on the Norns for you.” She twisted her hand and the room shifted until a lone tapestry hung above them. “This is the story of Aljeia’s death.”

Depicted in cloth was a redheaded woman surrounded by people taking up a bowl of water to her lips. Rael found themselves pulled into the tapestry. Or did the textile simply come closer until it swallowed them like an ocean? It was difficult to tell, but either way, Rael found themselves laying at the feet of a frizzy redhead.

They were in a cave surrounded by roots, brightly lit despite no source of light being visible. A few streaks of gray ran in her hair, freckles not yet completely faded. The crow’s feet on her face hid the deep pain she felt as she looked forwards. Flanking her was a skinny man with deep black hair entwined around twigs and flowers.

‘Bak? And Astrid, obviously. But where’s Aljeia?’

“Shaman Aljeia, please.” Bak pulled at Astrid’s arm. “You don’t need to do this.”

“But I do.” Astrid, or Aljeia apparently, pulled her arm away.

“What of your daughter?”

“The village will provide.” Aljeia said softly. Yet her arms trembled and her breath hitched. “There are things that a Norn must maintain. It is my duty to take up the mantle.”

Aljeia walked forwards, straining not to look back. She reached a stone pulpit, upon which an embalmed body held a bowl of water. Every few seconds, a drop of shining white liquid would leak from the tip of the stalactite above, landing in the bowl without a sound. When the shaman looked at the corpse, she winced at the sight of the man’s face.

Aljeia looked into the bowl and took a few deep breaths. She took it into her hands and brough it to her lips. Aljeia shut her eyes tightly and chugged down the liquid, every swallow sickeningly sweet. She placed the empty bowl down on the corpse, watching impassively as the corpse crumbled to dust.

“Norn Belfrost, voice of the wilds, the fae, the shaman, is no more. Shaman Aljeia has drunk the Lethian waters to join him.” She turned around and met Bak’s trembling gaze with the demeanor of a stranger. “I am Norn Astrid.”

“Is it true, then?” Bak sobbed. “You feel…”

“Nothing.” Norn Astrid nodded. “All the emotions Aljeia felt towards you, her apprentice. Towards her daughter. Towards all the people she’s ever met, ever known…they are gone.”

Bak wiped tears and snot from his face, a morose smile stretching across his lips.

“I suppose it’s nice to meet you, Norn Astrid. I believe you will do great things.” He held out his hand.

Astrid returned his smile and shook his hand.

“Nice to meet you too, Shaman Bak.”

The scene faded away, leaving Rael sitting on the floor. Norn Astrid hummed from behind them, sitting in the chair as it merrily walked in circles. Rael didn’t know what to say.

“Do all the Norns have to—”

“Yes.” Astrid said immediately. “To leave the Norns with emotional bonds would make us vulnerable and biased.”

Rael couldn’t wrap their head around it. They tried to think what it would be like to have all their memories stripped of their emotional weight. Would they be the same person if they weren’t grateful to Felt? Angry at their family? Afraid of their identity? ‘It’d be like having all the knowledge my life has given me, but not of the beliefs, passions, and desires. I’d be a living shadow.’ And a small, traitorous voice spoke up in the back of their mind. ‘Wouldn’t it be easier?’ Rael trembled at the thought, pushing it away. They couldn’t go down that path, no matter how tempting it was to just wash away their fears and traumas. How would Azmond feel?

“But you and Bak have such a good relationship.” Rael whispered pleadingly.

“We are allowed to form new bonds. Even then, building them takes time and are laden with pitfalls.” Astrid explained. “Though it is taboo to keep a relationship with your blood. Which leads me to my next secret.”

Norn Astrid clapped her hands, and another roll of cloth appeared from nowhere, wrapping around them wildly until a disoriented Rael found themselves watching an older Astrid embalming a woman’s body. Whereas in the last vision she couldn’t be more than forty, she must have been well into her sixties now. Much closer to what the present Astrid looked like, save for a single sprig of red hair in a sea of gray. A beam of light followed her head around the inside of the hut, illuminating scores of unlit candles surrounding the body every time the Norn looked around for one of her tools. The light passed over the corpse. Rael sucked in a cold breath. ‘Is that…?’ The corpse looked like a younger version of Astrid, covered in gaping wounds. The dream Astrid stitched together the woman’s flesh and cleaned the mortal injuries without creasing an eyebrow.

“Do you know who she is?” Rael recognized the smooth voice.

“Captain Feldon.” Astrid didn’t look up from her duties, choosing instead to place silver coins on the eyes of the corpse. “Is there a reason you insisted I perform the rites?”

The beam of light angled up to reveal a young Feldon, his widow’s peak beginning to recede, but his eyes as stern as ever. He led a young girl by the hand into the room, a long scarf wrapped around her neck. Rael got to their feet to look over the strange girl. She seemed a bit younger than Azmond. She was a bit off. A normal child would be looking around curiously or fidgeting nervously. But the girl was ambivalent to her surroundings, as if not completely aware of what was happening, content to be puled along by Feldon.

“This is Lily.” Feldon angled his head towards the girl, who blinked away from the light intensifying on her face. “She’s the daughter of my first mate, Selene Clearsight. And the only witness to her murder.”

“Selene…” Astrid focused on the body. “No wonder she seemed familiar.”

Silence dominated the room. Astrid held a hand to the corpse’s face, tracing her features. As if she was trying to capture a long-gone spark, she caressed the woman’s cheeks almost robotically. She sighed and sat up.

“I know you, Feldon.” The light focused on the captain’s stoic figure. “You are not the wild kin-killer some fools claim you are. You aren’t the type to try to appeal to the emotions of the dead. What do you want?”

Feldon unwrapped the scarf, revealing a jagged pink scar trailing from beneath Lily’s jaw all the way to her clavicle. Rael and Astrid balked at the scar. Nobody should have been able to survive that.

“She was lucky. Very lucky. A travelling Spellmaster saved her.” Feldon grunted and covered her scar back up. “But she’s catatonic. She won’t be able to identify the murderer.”

“Unless I help.” Astrid sighed heavily. “Does she have any family?”

The captain shook his head. Astrid kneeled to meet the girl’s similar blue eyes. They almost sparked with a trace of something, but Lily’s gaze remained dull and lifeless as her mother’s.

“Very well.”

The surroundings turned gray and faded to dust, blown away in a ghostly wind. The real Astrid, or the younger version she presented herself as, appeared in front of Rael. Her hair moved about as if she was underwater and her body was tinted blue. She puffed out her cheeks and silver bubbles streamed from her mouth and nose, gathering and coalescing until both of them with in a silver bubble together.

“I was expecting something with more…impact.” Rael bit their lip.

“It was for me.” Astrid’s wry smile spoke volumes. The bubble shrunk around them until it lapped around Rael’s ankles.

A torrent of emotions crawled up their legs. A pit of someone else’s loss dug itself into their bones, a stranger’s tears running down their cheeks. Astrid’s emotions poured into Rael. The helplessness. The shame. The melancholy. The shadow of mourning something she could never feel, but knew she should, twisted their insides in a corkscrew. To feel as if there needs to be someone feel such sadness…as if a piece of your soul was missing and you never knew until you ran your awareness over the wound. It reminded Rael of stories of warriors who’d lost their limbs. The pain would never leave them, only fade into the background. Until it would crop up vibrantly when they tried to use a hand that wasn’t there.

“These emotions…I fear that I could be the only Norn who feels them.” Astrid’s features aged rapidly, even further than her real age. The withered old crone stood before Rael, patches of hair on paper-thin scalp, eyes once clear, now faded gray, and tall frame beaten into a hunch by the rigors of time. “Such a small fear in the grand scheme of things.”

The bubble around them popped. The pair stood in a dark void, a ball of blue and green hovering right below their feet. Astrid rejuvenated most of her body, yet her eyes were still gray and murky. It grew larger and larger, until Rael could recognize the shapes. Most of the sphere was still obscured in shadow. What Rael could see clearly was all Galladia.

Skirting around the southern Edge was Marnesia, resembling a bit like a bird’s wing. Rael recognized Gulass from the Velos Sea near the western tip, and the deserts that dusted the underside of the ‘wing’. North, across numerous archipelagos, was the larger continent shared by the Faulkie Jarldoms and the Bergin Empire, the titanic Serpent’s Sea splitting the Beihar mountains in the north from the vibrant green lands in the south. The Dragonward had seen maps before, but something about witnessing Galladia from so high up made it all seem so…delicate.

“I have told you a secret everyone knows. A secret about my doubts and fears. And now I will tell you a secret that will affect how you see the world.”

Astrid leaned closer to Rael, nearly whispering in their ear.

“It is about the essence of alchemy, the truth behind the fae, and a hint to the depths of the dragons’ power.”

The youth couldn’t help but lean closer to the woman, their curiosity pulling their attention away from their fading fears. Astrid took a deep breath. Looked from side-to-side. And she whispered:

“Fae beliefs shape their magic. It’s mostly bullshit.”

Rael blinked.

“What?”