Library of the Lost

For the normal ways of wandering and slaying I am most familiar with, I am mostly at peace. The grasslands are succumbing to snow early this season, and the scent of wood smoke hovers on the air. This is my favorite time to steal across the countryside, from castle moat to fallow field and on into distance forests and unknown lands.

Yet I am away, at least for the moment, within a lost library of a nearby village. Few enter here; most cannot read. I've discovered some assurance in looking at maps and scrolls of a new region I wish to travel to. So I sit, poring over tomes that are at once familiar but are also within the realm of the grasp of my intellect. I wonder sometimes if these books are here to reveal and formalize the things I already know but have clouded over in my own mind like the haze of smoke that caresses the villages along future paths.

For a while, then, I shall read. A break from righteousness, to heed a different calling. Perhaps salvation can be found in learning as well.