This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/OriginalButtopia on 2024-12-03 00:37:36+00:00.
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I found the brothers already sitting with two giant plates of food in front of them. There was a third open seat for me, and what looked like a menu was sitting in front of it. I quickly sat down as my stomach made even more noise.
“Do they have eggs, by chance?” I asked, looking at the menu. They did, actually. Under breakfast options, it listed fried eggs and toast. Finally, I could make up for my lost breakfast.
“I think they just have everything. Somehow, our mom’s famous glorintaraj is on their menu, and it’s amazing,” Cecile answered.
“For once, he’s possibly underselling something. This really is great. It’s like a slice of home,” Elicec added as the waiter appeared at the table, and to be clear, I do mean literally appeared. They didn’t walk up and surprise me. One second, the space next to the brothers was empty; the next, a six-armed man was standing there holding drinks.
“Can I interest any of you in tonight's special? It’s a wine from the Caves of Terunda. We haven’t had any in quite some time,” he said.
“Yeah, I’ll try a glass. Could I also have some water, fried eggs, and toast, please? Over easy if you could,” I asked with a giant smile on my face. Finally, something I understood: breakfast.
“Of course.” My drink and food order appeared in front of me instantly. Apparently, cooking time wasn’t a thing here either. “Does everything look good?”
“Yes, perfect, thank you." The moment I finished speaking, I dipped my toast in a yolk. I don’t know if it was because of my day, but the food really was amazing. Somehow, the eggs tasted better than any other egg I’d had in my life.
“Dave, did you check your terminal and get your quest to form your core?” Elicec asked after taking a drink of the wine.
“Should I have gotten that quest? All I got was a quest to read a book. Also, the system keeps giving me an error when I try to check my level. Any idea what might cause that?” I asked between bites.
“Uh, as far as I know, everyone’s first quest is to form their core, I guess, unless they already have. Do you have a core already? Did you try socketing a mana core in it? As for the level thing, glitches do sometimes happen. It might resolve itself in a few days,” Elicec didn’t look confident in his answer, though.
“Don’t really see how I could, but I guess we can try socketing an orb in. How do you do that?” I asked as I pulled one of the orbs from my pocket. It was a dull green color.
“Hold it up to your chest, and just kind of picture it melding into your body,” Cecile explained.
“That’s it, just picture it?” I asked, a little surprised that was all it took.
“Yep, if you’ve got a core, it should go in,” Cecile answered.
So I tried, and nothing happened. It just stayed pressed against my chest. “Yeah, I think this proves I don’t have a core, guys.” So that left the question of why my quest was unique, not to mention why my levels keep reading as either negative or error. I decided that tomorrow, I would read that book, mostly because I was at a loss for anything else I could do at this point. While I was at it, I should have looked for some introductions for dummies' types of books.
We spent the rest of the night making small talk and trying random dishes from the menu. I told them stories from my home, and they told me stories about theirs. Apparently, the two-headedness was entirely normal there. Their people were called the twinoges, and they had spent several generations saving up to send a representative to the Spiral in hopes of winning their freedom from a particularly cruel faction of dwarves. In turn, I told them stories about my family and my life before this happened.
They seemed to particularly enjoy the story of how my ex-wife and I first met. Apparently, in their culture, the idea of embarrassment leading to romance was not a remotely common experience. We had met after she had watched me walk straight into a fountain on our college campus. I had been reading a book and walking at the same time, something I stopped doing after this incident. I didn’t see the signs warning me away, and by the time I realized what was happening, I was already falling face-first into the water.
After several more drinks and even more stories, I was well past, ready to climb into bed. I was glad the elevators here just brought you directly to your room, as the idea of stairs sounded like a nightmare. I set my cracked glasses on the nightstand by the bed and crawled under the covers. The stress of the day finally fully caught up to my mind, and I fell into an anxiety-induced drunken slumber.
The next morning, I woke up in a cold sweat. It turned out that nearly being killed by creatures you had no idea really existed after goodbye texts from your kids all in the same day could have a lasting effect on your psyche. Surprising right? Even more surprising was that the pair of glasses I had set on the nightstand the night before were gone, replaced with an unbroken pair. Did that help settle my brain? Not even remotely, but it would let me see things better, which, in turn, should make it easier to read the book my quest assigned.
I forced myself back into my routine, hoping maybe that would help settle me. Whatever had been holding me together yesterday, likely a combination of adrenaline and whatever that pill did, had faded the night before. Now, I was fighting a losing battle to push away my imagination’s ideas of what had already happened on Earth and what would still happen if I didn’t find a way to help.
The food was as good as the night before. There was no sign of the brothers so far today, so I dined alone. That added to my routine and helped center my sense of reality. By the time I finished my breakfast, I had some of the anxiety under control—at least so much that it wasn’t threatening to overwhelm me and cause a breakdown anymore. I assumed the brothers were either sleeping off the effects of last night or working on their own quests, so that meant it was time for me to try hunting down a book.
Reading, especially reading entirely new concepts to me, had always been something I could lose myself in. I had high hopes then that once I started to sink my teeth into practical information mana and cores, I could further shake off some of the fears that were plaguing my brain. At the moment, they did nothing but fuel anxiety, which would only slow down my mental processing. I needed to find a way to get that back to where it had been during college. I needed to devour this archive, which meant multiple books per day.
In my solitude back home after the divorce, I had let myself slow down on the knowledge consumption front, and that seemed to be proving to be a real issue for me finally. I couldn’t count on finding anything to deal with my aging issue, but that was another problem I had to try at least to solve in the archives. If I had to fight an army somehow, I needed a body that didn’t break at the first fall I took, and the existence of those healing pills gave me hope that it wasn’t a futile goal.
All of these thoughts raced through my head on the very short trip back to the reference desk. The same two librarians appeared to be working as the day before. I caught a glimpse of the nametag of the one that had greeted us yesterday. Her name was Elody. I wondered what kind of species her people were. Did the extra eyes increase their ability to ingest information? Was that why they seemed to be the only ones working the archives? These were questions I could look into later when I had more time.
“Hi, I’m trying to find a book. I’ve got a quest to read Karlinovo’s Guide to Core Creation. Any chance you could point me in the right direction?” I asked her. I assumed there was some sort of organizational structure to the shelving system, and that was something I added to my list of things to learn, but first, I wanted to get this quest under my belt to see what happened. Since the brothers considered core formation so important, I needed to understand why that wasn’t my first quest and how I could do it anyway.
“Oh, that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time, kind of archaic for a quest on core creation. Most of his theories have been abandoned for quite some time now. I believe the issue was the energy expenditure for his core model wasn’t feasible in the long run, but who am I to argue with a quest? Core creation should be in the seventh archive, the twelfth wing. From there, it’s alphabetical, based on the author's last name. If you decide to take the book with you back to your room, make sure you see us at the reference desk; otherwise, the elevator won’t let you in,” she answered, her smile never wavering.
“Thanks,” I said. I noticed that while her bottom set of eyes stayed focused on me, the top set seemed to roam over the archive behind me. Did they see in the same spectrum as me? I hadn’t considered that before. Human vision was surprisingly limited even on our own planet compared to some other animals. It was entirely likely many of the different species I had encountered could see things I could not. I filed that away as something else to look into, possibly a reference book on the different peoples of the spiral.
As I followed...
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