Lilith: Origin of Succubi

I was poking through the stack of books that Morrigan had brought over after I put down the book on gods I had been reading. Most of the books she gathered looked like they were on niche magical topics. I wasn't sure exactly what she was looking for based on her pile, since they seemed to cover a wide variety of subjects. The only thing they had in common was that none of them seemed approachable to me. Just as I was putting down one of the books I heard a gentle knock at the door.

Standing up, I walked over and opened it. The librarian I had asked for help from earlier was standing outside of the door and smiling. "Hello again, Miss Baphomet. After talking with my colleagues they pointed to the perfect book for you. Before I came up here, the head librarian stopped me and asked me to have a personal copy made for you, free of charge. I'm not sure who exactly you are, but you must have pleased the Goddess greatly to receive such favor from the head librarian," he finished with an awkward chuckle before holding out a relatively thin leather-bound book. I opened it up and skimmed a few of the pages. This would be perfect!

"My colleagues also told me that the head librarian offers employment to anyone with [Sightspeak], if that is something you are interested in."

"Please, come in for a moment." I led him into the meeting room and he glanced over at Raya and Mimi in the corner before focusing back on me. I gestured at one of the chairs before sitting down across from him. Giving him a weak smile, I shook my head. "Sorry, but my circumstances are too complicated to stop and work here. Besides, I have my own avenues of research that I'm working on. Thank you for the offer though."

He dipped his head. "Think nothing of it. The offer for translating a book into the language that earned you [Sightspeak] is still open. Did you find a book that you would find suitable?"

"Actually, I'm waiting for a friend who—"

Just then Morrigan opened up the door and smiled when she saw the librarian there. "Lilith, I think I found something that would be good."

The librarian looked up at Morrigan as she brought over the book she had found for us. I opened it up and thumbed through it a little before going back to the beginning and looking at the title. Elemental Magic Theory: A Primer. The book was mostly a theory guide but it had a few spells embedded into the pages here and there as examples. It covered a few things I already knew about magic but expanded on most of them in greater detail. Even though it's a theory book it looks like it would be helpful for learning specific spells in the future and guiding the system into giving you what you want.

"This looks great Morrigan." I closed the book and handed it to the librarian. "Would this work for you?"

He flipped open the cover and skimmed it before smiling brightly. "This would do well yes. This book is very popular and has been translated into quite a few languages already. This would be a great starting point for getting a proper record of your rare language. I'll go have a copy made of this right away. It seems that poor Seagrim will have to work more than usual today," he said with a chuckle. "Would you like your copy of this book in Sorsettian or another language?"

I frowned and looked at Morrigan who laughed at my expression. "Sorsettian is the official name for common. Since Sorsette's libraries are so widespread, the language spread quickly and became a trading language across many different countries. Most people refer to the language as common though since nearly everyone who interacts with foreigners knows it and not everyone is happy about its connection with the Goddess Sorsette. It also happens to be the first language of most people here in Torlimal."

The librarian raised a discerning eyebrow at Morrigan's explanation and gave me a curious look. "Correct, I apologize for being unclear." I got the impression that Morrigan just explained something very well-known, everyone should know the language they're speaking... unless they're a [World Traveler] like I am.

"Sorsettian will be fine. Unless there would be a more appropriate language?" I asked.

Morrigan shook her head. "No, Sorsettian will likely be the best to translate from. It's among the most diverse languages and has many words taken from other languages that would be hard to translate to others. Something like Elvish is more restrictive and might lead you to strange word choices. Besides, I checked and this book was originally written in Sorsettian anyway. It would be best to translate it from its original version to avoid drifting from the original meanings."

The librarian nodded. "It's as she says. Translating from Sorsettian would be preferable for the library as well."

"Alright then, I'm happy with that. Please bring me a copy of the book in Sorsettian and I'll translate it to English for the library."

The librarian smiled and stood up. "I will be back shortly then. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to bring a new language into our records."

As he was leaving he passed Torien at the door. "Who was that?" she asked.

"Lilith is going to be translating her original language into common for the library and they're giving us a book and some money in exchange. Oh! What do you have there?" Morrigan asked her sister.

Torien held up a book with an embossed boat on the cover. "It's a book about sailing. Sailors use a lot of knots for different purposes so I thought it would be interesting to learn a few while we have the time."

I nodded. "Things like that can be pretty useful. Are you interested in sailing Torien?"

She smiled and shrugged. "I never thought it would be something I would have the chance to do. I think it would be fun to see the sea and maybe ride on a boat if we get the opportunity."

"I'll put it on the bucket list then," I said with a laugh. The twins looked at each other in confusion which only made me chuckle more. "Don't worry about it, I'm just saying that we should go out of our way to ride on a boat eventually. I'm not sure how long they'll tie us down in Traehall but it would be nice to visit Arala after hearing about it so much."

"I heard Arala is nice! I've always wanted to visit!" Raya piped up from the corner.

"Hopefully we can go with everyone." I looked around the room. "Where are the others? It's been a while and they haven't joined us. Are they still looking through the books?"

"I saw Cecilia in the Elvish fiction section. I didn't see Aunt Lori or Sibyl but the library is a big place," Torien said.

"Have you had much time to talk with your aunt lately?" I asked.

The two of them frowned and Torien sat down across from me. She sighed and shook her head. "Unfortunately, we haven't had much time to spend with her yet. She's been busy with her last-minute preparations for tomorrow. Assuming everything goes as planned, we should have plenty of time to spend with her once we're on our way to Goldenhearth."

"Is she planning on going all the way to Traehall with us?" I asked.

Torien nodded. "When I asked, she said that she didn't want to be away from us any more than she has to be. She intends to follow us wherever we go and help us out after the raid. I'm not sure if she wants to join us as a full-time party member or not but she isn't a member of the adventurer's guild."

"She told me that now that she freed the Pantharians, she feels less reason to work with the Order of Lilith," Morrigan added. "She didn't say that she was going to retire from it completely, but I got the sense that she was a lot less invested in being their assassin now."

I scratched the base of my horn awkwardly. "Does it... bother you that she's an assassin?"

The twins looked at each other with odd expressions on their faces. Eventually, Torien shook her head. "She's followed in the footsteps of our ancestors and the way she's talked about her targets don't make me feel like she's just doing it for the money... I might feel differently about it if that were the case."

"What about Silva then?"

Torien grimaced. After a pause, she sighed. "I suppose I feel the same. I think... what bothers me more is that she was hiding things from me. I'm not very... open with other people except for my sister normally, so when I found out that she was hiding so much from me after I tried so hard to be honest with her... I don't know..."

"It's okay, I get it," I told her while patting her arm.

"You know," Morrigan said. "If Aunt Lori can use Shadowleap, that means we might also have access to rare bloodline shadow magic too. I wouldn't be able to do anything with it since I don't have much personal mana, but you might be able to learn it Torien."

"Do you think she would be willing to teach me? I don't really want to be an assassin but shadow magic would be useful to me as a scout and archer..."

"I'm sure she would!" Morrigan said with excitement. "You might need to start allocating some points to your magic stats but Aunt Lori has always been kind to us, I'm sure she would teach you if you asked."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that..." Torien said while awkwardly scratching the back of her head.

"No reason not to ask though, is there?" I asked.

Torien just shrugged in reply.

Morrigan patted her on the shoulder. "We can talk about this some more later. For now, why don't you spend some of your time on that book you brought, I'm excited to have a chance to dig into some of these books too."

Torien chuckled. "Yeah, that's a good idea. It's not like our time is unlimited here. We're leaving town tomorrow."

I stood up and walked away from the twins and decided to check up on Mimi and Raya. To my surprise, Mimi looked rather frustrated, an expression I hadn't seen on her before.

"Is something wrong?" I asked the two of them.

"Well... It looks like reading isn't coming naturally to my little sister here." Raya said while looking at Mimi.

"I don't understand why it's so hard. It's just recognizing symbols, but there are so many combinations! How does everyone remember all of the combinations!" Mimi grumbled.

"Uh... You don't need to remember all of the combinations, you just need to recognize the meaning of the words."

"How am I supposed to remember the meanings if I don't remember the combinations? There's so many!" Mimi said exasperated.

I scratched my head. There was obviously some kind of misunderstanding going on here. I already knew that Mimi's mind worked a little bit differently from most people but I was having trouble understanding what she was asking for right now. Combinations?

"What do you mean by combinations Mimi?" I asked.

Mimi frowned and pulled out a chalkboard from her pocket dimension. She then wrote out several words, a few of them were gibberish but I was already sensing a pattern in what I was seeing.

"Mimi, not every combination of letters means something. You need to focus on the words that do have meanings, not try to fill out a table of every possible string of letters that make a combination. If you don't understand a specific word you can look up its meaning, but you shouldn't try to go at this from the opposite direction, most combinations of letters are meaningless."

Mimi looked aghast. "What? But that's so inefficient! Why did people bother to make so many letters if so many of their combinations are meaningless?" she asked.

Raya laughed. "Is that what you were trying to do? I was so confused by your questions."

"Mimi, written languages usually come after spoken language. These symbols are just what people haphazardly kludged together to try to describe the sounds people were making. Try to memorize the words you want to use instead of just random letters."

Mimi rubbed her face in frustration before writing on the chalkboard again and showing it to me. It read: "Is this all there is to reading and writing then?"

I laughed. "Congratulations Mimi, you were overthinking it. You already know how to read and write. Reading and writing is a skill, it's not something you can just do or not do for the most part. You learn more words and learn new and better ways to express yourself over time."

"There is still a bit more she could learn about grammar and vocabulary, but she's got most of it down now," Raya agreed.

"Should we get her a dictionary?" I asked.

"Do you think that's wise after what she just told us?" Raya asked. "She would just memorize the entire dictionary and then use strange words that no one knows constantly. I think it's better for her to learn things naturally over time rather than brute forcing it like she's obviously capable of."

I patted Mimi on the head. "You're such a cute and smart Mimic."

Mimi rubbed her head. "You're teasing me... but it's fine if you pet my head some more..."

I laughed and the three of us relaxed with Mimi for a while. We spent the rest of the day at the library studying and looking at different subjects. I was a bit tired of stuffing my brain after a while and instead started drawing while everyone worked on their own stuff. Eventually, the rest of our group joined us and I received the copy of the book I had promised to copy for the library.

It was a bit of a challenge dragging Morrigan out of the library when it was time to go, but we managed.