“What do you mean, ‘it has a flame’?” Foster asked with a confused expression, “Like, the kind you see in people?”

“Right, it’s like… something that all living things have, sort of. Even plants have something similar… Maybe the word ‘flame’ is a bit too strong… for the snake, it’s just a sort of weird glow, but it’s definitely there! And it disappeared when it bit its tail just now.” Kyla explained, and Foster looked at the snake that had turned back into nothing but a bracelet, “So what you’re saying is that when it stops biting its tail, it’s gonna be able to hear me, huh?”

“Huh? Well, that’s not really what I mean, but-” Before Kyla was able to finish talking, Foster ripped the snake off his arm one more time, grasping it tightly in his fist, “Stop wiggling and listen to me.” He said, and immediately, the snake stopped trying to get out of his grasp.. Annoyed, he looked it into its lightly glowing eyes, while Kyla stood there, perplexed that it actually worked, “You fucking with me? All I had to do was take you off? Urgh… alright, then now, let’s try this again. Do you have a way for me to find more books that Thiodrus wrote?”

The snake kept staring into his eyes, as if it was thinking for a while. Foster was getting a bit impatient. Rather, the embarrassment of his emotional outbreak just now was catching up to him, and he just wanted to move on as quickly as he could. But before that, since the snake didn’t seem to be doing anything yet, Foster looked at Kyla, “So, erm… sorry about just now… This whole situation is just really frustrating to me, you know? And I really appreciate you sort of… coming around on the whole situation.”

“…Well, I get it. I might have overreacted a bit?” Kyla said with an awkward expression, before thinking for a moment, “Yeah, no, I think I reacted totally right in the moment. But nevertheless, knowing you a little better now, you really don’t seem to be a bad person, so I’m just trusting that for now. It’s still kind of hard to accept, though.”

“No, no, I get it. I mean, if I had known he was a calamity, I probably would have thought a bit longer about accepting it.” Foster replied, before him and Kyla looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. They had spent some more time together lately, but only now was it really starting to feel like the two of them were really getting along as friends, weirdly enough. A library felt like a unique place to bond to Foster, especially considering that he had been inside one maybe half a dozen times, tops.

However, before the two of them could continue their conversation further, the metal snake in Foster’s hand suddenly started forcing its way out of his grip. It slithered up his arm and down his back, until it reached the ground through his leg. At a surprising speed, the snake started slithering through the library. Foster rushed after it, hoping that nobody saw it. But well, even if, he could just say that it was some sort of pet. Having a metallic snake as a pet didn’t seem much more unlikely than having a tiny mask spirit as a familiar, at least from Foster’s perspective.

However, it didn’t take long until the snake came to a stop again, moving through another open door. And the moment Foster stepped through, he wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking at. The rest of the library was clean and neat, but this room? It was cluttered and dirty, not to mention, too dark to even properly see anything.

Moreover, Foster’s head was starting to hurt a lot, and he was feeling somewhat dizzy. But then, the snake stopped moving, and Foster could see its lightly glowing eyes hanging off one of the shelves. As he walked over there, he picked it up and watched as it turned back into a bracelet.

“Foster?” Kyla asked, after finally catching up to him. It seemed like she had told Lynol and Octer that something was going on, since they were right behind her.

“Yeah, over here. You guys got any idea what this place is?” Foster asked, rubbing the bridge of his nose to try and cope with these intense migranes. Lynol looked at a sign outside the door, barely visible since a decorative plant had been placed right in front of it, as if nobody ever went in here anyway, “It’s the… ‘storage room for excess tomes’. But looking at them, these are only rundown, single volumes. So it does not seem to be a place to store duplicates, but instead, where they keep the ones that… are excessively useless.” Lynol suggested, stepping into the room to follow after the others, “And the… snake led you here?” He asked, and Foster slowly nodded his head.

He turned toward the shelf that the snake had hung from, and looked at the books. However, he immediately froze up, not even caring for his headache anymore. He pulled one of the books out, looking at the symbol painted on the cover. It was similar to the one on his cover, simple hidden in random patterns as if someone was trying to make sure that only someone that knew what they were looking for would be able to see it in there. Immediately, Foster looked at the name on the book, but was surprised to see that the writing wasn’t the same one as he had been seeing all over the place. As if it was another language.

“Old Argian? You don’t really see that around anymore… How bothersome.” Kyla pointed out, and Foster turned his head, “…can you not read it?” He asked, and Kyla shook her head, “Hah, no. The only ones that still know how to speak it are people that lived, what, three hundred years ago? Actually, Zhaine might know it. It sounded like he is really, really old like that.” She pointed out, and Foster raised his head to look at the others, before clearing his throat.

“Actually… I can read it.” He said. If it was ‘Old Argian’, then it made some sense that he could read it. As long as the system didn’t draw a clear distinction between Old Argian and New Argian, then the message that told him that Thiodrus had transfered his knowledge of the Argian language to him might include more than just one form of it. Kyla looked up at Foster surprised, “Seriously? But- You’re in your 20’s right..? Are you really a human?”

“Yeah, I am. I just… learned Argian from someone that was apparently really, really old like that.” Foster said, slowly looking at the cover. The biggest distinction he could draw from the top of his mind between old and new argian was the writing. But even so, each of the symbols corresponded to a letter of the current argian alphabet. Otherwise, he might not have spotted what was weird about the name of the author, “Haimous Ragnrodt.” He said, “That’s the name of whoever wrote this.”

“Hm… sounds like a sorta old dwarven name.” Octer pointed out, “If the book is here, then Zhaine might really be able to tell us something about this. He might-“

“No, he wouldn’t. It’s an anagram. It’s spelled in a way that can be rearranged to say Thiodrus Argomna. The symbol is in there, so is the name, and looking inside…” Foster started, finishing with a grin on his face, “The sketches are all of humans, from what I can tell. If it was made by a dwarf, then wouldn’t the sketches show, well, a dwarf?”

“…So you’re saying-“

“That this was made by him. Thiodrus made this book.” Foster said with a broad grin on his face.