Patreon commission for Shadowplay featuring @anailater 's FFXIV character Anna.

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Anna Takeo was not one for books. The Au Ra Warrior woman wasn’t dumb, mostly, really, just... not the most academically inclined. She preferred to learn things from people, or by doing things, was all. A woman of action was what she was, not a woman of sitting down and reading books about actions. She just left research and booklearning to people who were better suited for it and everyone was happier - she didn’t have to figure out how to parse a thousand page book of scientific and magical jargon and references and the scholars wouldn’t have an axe-wielding warrior stinking up their fancy libraries.

The Warrior was out of place in the depths of Noumenon, the scholar-nation of Sharlayan’s archives of knowledge from ages past. Anna didn’t look like she belonged there, nor did she feel like she belonged there, and given the option she’d frankly much rather be literally anywhere else than surrounded by musty books trying to follow a stubby little mechanical Mammet through the stacks.

"How much longer, mammet?” she demanded, getting a bit bored already and trying not to sneeze from the dust and must of the ancient stacks. They were in one of the deepest parts of the library, containing books from ancient Sharlayan history.

“It wiLL bE APProxiMately… fIVty TO SIXty mOre Minutes…” the mechanical being stammered out.

Anna groaned. Already she’d been in here for far too long. But there was still yet more to be done? She swore she would go mad. She began to reconsider the value of the knowledge she sought. Sure, the monster she was hunting down was big scary and dangerous, but so were a lot of things she’d killed before. Did she really need to go ahead and do research on it before hand? She’d learn how to kill it by seeing how it reacted to an axe in the legs.

Then she shook her head. Her scholarly friends had gone to all the trouble to get the Forum’s approval to allow her to search for the appropriate tomes, and she wasn’t going to waste their time! She’d buckle down and get reading, or at least finding a book to bring out to her friends.

That was the plan anyway. But only a few minutes later, the Mammet stopped in it’s tracks. “What’s the hold up?” she asked irritably.

“You canNOT coNtiNue thrOUgh HerE.” The mechanical assistant whirred.

“Why did we come here then?”

“YouR BOOKS are throuGh THis pasSaGE,” said the mammet.

“So we have to continue.” Anna said. She thought she was being quite patient with it. But the machine was testing it’s luck.

“We CANnot coNTiNUE.” The mammet repeated.

“Why can’t we continue?”

“BeCause thiS area is OFF LIMITs.”

This machine was fooling with her. It was playing with her, clearly. There was no other reason for it to be acting so foolishly. Even a child would know not to bring someone to some place only to tell them they cannot go there. “Don’t mess with me, robot. You’re supposed to be smarter than that.”

“I Am noT meSSing wiTh You. We CAnnot continue.”

Anger flared. Anna wasn’t entirely sure what happened in between but one moment she felt it starting to build and the next the mammet was embedded in a nearby shelf and her foot hurt a little.

“Are you going to stop fooling around and continue to guide me?” she asked the robot. In response, it sparked. “…Fine then. Be like that. I’ll continue on my own.” Anna huffed, continuing down the hall in a huff. She was too pissed off to pay all that much attention, not even to the glowing blue-green magical runes that flared briefly on the ground as she stepped over them.

It was not very long at all before Anna wondered if she really should have done that. Sure the machine had pissed her off, but now she had no idea where she was going - there were so many shelves, what use could any nation have for this many books? She’d come down here with a name of a professor or something to find books from, and she had found his section. Unfortunately, just his section was a full hallway of tomes of knowledge and research notes.

How did one person write so much? Whatever, she was here. If there was one thing Anna was pretty sure she was good at, it was being stubborn - even if it took her hours, she could find her way to whatever book she needed.

She knew she was there to read about a monster. She knew this Sharlayan researcher had had a variety of topics they liked, and while an organized person they worked on their own system. Were she a patient woman she might glance over some books and try and puzzle out what that organization, but she was at the moment a frustrated Au Ra, so she decided instead to just pick up the nearest book and read.

She skimmed, mostly, but it didn’t occur to her to just find the topic and see if it was right then move on. No, she was the kind of person who finished what she started! So she would read the whole thing, and besides, “Notes on Anger and Adrenaline” seemed like a relevant topic to her at least!

If there had been an observer they might have noticed the soft blue glow emanating from Anna - faint enough she herself definitely wouldn’t be seeing it, but a clear sign something was going on.

At first it wouldn’t have been clear, but as Anna made it through the first research compilation the change was beginning to tell even through her clothes. Her muscles didn’t seem to bulge on her arms and legs so much, the hard trained strength of a Warrior and adventurer fading with each passing moment. Her abdominals were smoothing out and so were her limbs. By the time she got through “Aether in Physical Techniques”, a treatise on how even martial fighters used magic to augment their capabilities, she would have struggled to lift the axe she’d checked in at the entrance, let alone swing it around.

Though for once, swinging the axe around wasn’t what was on her mind. Anna was a dutiful and practical person and, unless she was in the middle of hanging out with her friends or some similarly calming activity, her work as an adventurer and her training took up a lot of her thoughts. But now, she was finding herself genuinely interested in what she was reading! Sure, it helped that it was training-adjacent - maybe she could keep some of this stuff in mind when she next practiced - but honestly even the parts not about fighting were kinda neat. The writing was dry and stiff but it got the point across. She skimmed a bit less this time, absorbed more.

But she had come here for a reason - and this book was not it. She put the tome down, and went to the next. And then to the next. There was no conveniently labeled monster manual or whatever the man might have considered calling it, but what she did have was time and stubbornness. There wasn’t a strict time limit on how long she could be down here - she’d asked - and she had some food with her, so she could go for hours if she had to. Her very first lengthy study session - honestly, something about her found the thought of that appealing. It was such a mundane thing that it was kind of nice compared to her usual business.

By the fourth tome she was nearly completely lacking muscle, only having just enough to lift the thing onto a nearby table to read. She squinted at it in the dim light, rubbing at her eyes, before finding she could suddenly see clearly again - not noticing the glasses that had formed on her face while she started to read the next book, “On the Mechanics of Aetheric Expulsion”. It was tangentially related to the monster, which had magical breath attacks, but it was such a tangential connection to such a specific thing it did that it would most certainly not show up - but Anna found she didn’t much care, more interested in continuing to read.

The next books were more journals than they were research notes, but Anna read them anyway. They talked about the researcher who’s works she was reading - a respected scholar from Sharlayan’s most ancient days, he had been more dedicated than nearly anyone to the creation and preservation of knowledge, which explained how he had made so very many books. He was a multi-talented academic, with contributions to nearly every field of Sharlayan research.

It was enough to make Anna wonder why she hadn’t heard of him before. Why were all his books in the forbidden sections of Noumenon instead of in the upper levels free for any visitor to see, or at least any Sharlayan resident or Archon? Usually when research was condemned to these levels it was because it was something dangerous and most of what Anna had seen thus far didn’t seem dangerous at all.

She tugged a little at her collar - the environment was magically tuned for the preservation of books, but it wasn’t comfortable by any stretch. Perhaps if she’d been less engrossed in her book she’d have noticed that her usual clothes had changed. Tough leather and metal armor, appropriately fearsome for one of her profession, brightened considerably from it’s usual black as it softened in material. It grew softed and the plates and furs fused until it was a single garment, which began to flow down.

There was an itch in Anna’s head. She thought it was curiosity about this nameless scholar expunged from Sharlayan history. But she would think that - you couldn’t well notice a missing memory like the reason she’d first come here, or the way she’d learned to swing an axe in her own style. It was even harder to remember that when it was replaced with new, kinder memories, of coming for the sake of learning and being taught in the Studium.

The next journal talked about the scholar’s disagreements with his peers - he wanted to preserve knowledge, but he was far more zealous than they about keeping it out of the hands of those who would use it for the wrong reasons. He had developed intimidating wards - they wouldn’t keep a person out physically, but they would ensure that nobody who would misuse the knowledge so protected could remain the kind of person who would do so. It would mold them, change them into perfect scholars who understood the power and danger of knowledge.

Anna squirmed on her seat. Something felt weird. Was she supposed to be reading this? It seemed so aggressive… so against Sharlayan’s pacifistic policies and general morality. Sure, they had to protect knowledge, but to go so far?

He had been rejected by his peers for this, for violating Sharlayan’s sanction on mind and memory altering magic. They had no way of knowing what books would carry that effect, so they had decided to seal away all his writings and forbade him from penning another research paper.

Annabelle shook her head. She was very intrigued by this - they’d never taught her about this in school! Even if the man had gone a bit nutty by the end they were worth learning about, weren’t they? She wondered how the wards would effect natural-born Sharlayans like herself?

She’d read the bulk of the section and committed it to heart, but it must already be morning! Annabelle hurriedly stood up, patting down her scholarly white robes and fixing up her similarly white hair. She had classes to get to! She might have to stop by the Last Stand for a drink after that long night of study, they had this wonderful beverage that perked one right up.

As Annabelle exited the section, she noticed the guide Mammet seemed to be damaged! “Oh, dear, what violent brute did this to you?” She asked as she picked it up. She’d just carry it back to the entrance! Maybe as a thanks she’d be allowed to come back to the forbidden stacks to read again soon?