"Libraries are full of ghosts, books being the most haunted things of all." ― Maya Panika

Nearly as soon as the librarian had departed my domain, I'd returned my focus to my core room. Even before she'd left the second floor, I'd sent one of the cavalry skeletons to transport my new devices to my core room. Juggling control of the skeleton with operating the secret door was a bit of a challenge, but not too bad. I'd had the skeleton keep an eye out in case Hakdrilda was exploring, but she'd scouted the place once and then pretty much stuck to her assigned space. I hadn't required it, but I suppose all the stuff she was really interested in was there.

I was basically pleased with my library/core room, and the addition of what amounted to the start of a librarian's work station fit the aesthetic fairly well. I contemplated adding some other homey touches – ranging from a station for tea to a comfortable padded chair for reading in but given that I couldn't actually use them and hadn't given anyone else access, it kind of rubbed against a sensitive spot on my incorporeal soul. I'd probably get around to it; I was hoping to eventually have people I trusted, after all, but it could definitely wait.

I did want to register my backlog of already transcribed works with the central archive, though, and obtain the book the Goddess had pointed me at. Ignoring divine suggestions seemed like a foolish choice, after all. I could have the cavalry skeleton do it for me, but I recalled that I had an obvious choice for this particular task. I sent the skeleton back to its original location and spawned in my first dedicated Tier 3 creature, a spectral librarian. (I say it that way, because the air elemental I'd created and subsequently released in the Gnomish cathedral was technically the first, though it no longer belonged to me and I didn't have to support it directly with my mana).

The mana expenditure was a bit of a strain, but I had the distinct feeling that I could likely maintain at least one more creature at this level before it began to really be an issue. Between moving my core and building the Redcrest village on the third level, my available mana had grown significantly.

In any event, the spectral librarian wasn't exactly what I'd pictured, as a fan of the Ghostbuster movies. In the visible spectrum, there was literally nothing to see. In my mana sight, the librarian was visible and vaguely humanoid, but more of a brightly glowing, ragged silhouette. It was going to be functional for the role I envisioned for it, as it possessed telekinesis with quite fine control within about a 10-meter range. I could also tell that it had a mildly eldritch aura that would deter most creatures from tier 2 and lower from approaching. I'd say that it would prevent vermin from damaging the books, but frankly nothing living in the dungeon escaped my notice and dispatching lesser vermin was nearly automatic. It also lowered the ambient temperature in its immediate vicinity. In terms of defending the library, mostly it was reliant on its telekinesis and a simple life drain spell, but it also possessed a variety of low-level mental attacks.

The spectral librarian wasn't a fully sapient being, though it was capable of following fairly detailed directions more or less autonomously. With a bit of training, that meant that it would not only be able to operate the transcription device and the reader for me, but that it could do simple tasks like cleaning and shelving books without my attention.

For now, I imprinted knowledge of which books were from my old world, and trained it to pass them through the transcription device. It was simple enough that I only needed to amplify its instructions a couple of times before it had gone through the 30 or so books I'd apparently added to the Central Archives wish list. The bulk of those were AD&D related, so I wasn't really sure what they'd make of them; I sort of assumed they'd have more interest in the non-fiction works, and I'd probably try to crank some of those out over the next few weeks.

Once that simple task was complete, I taught the librarian how to manipulate the reader I'd been given. We spent a few minutes playing with the basic user interface, but it wasn't too far off the e-readers I had once used, frankly. I played a bit with the search function, but it didn't appear to have a category search function, meaning I'd need to find an exact match with at least one specific keyword in it. I think I could look to see how it had been cataloged and use that to find similar texts, but I'd have to figure out exactly how to do that later. For the moment, with a sizable credit to my account, I searched up the book the Goddess had recommended I read – Observations From the Pass of Storms.

I doubt I'd have ever encountered it naturally, though it was possible. As near as I could tell from looking at the first chapter, the title was entirely literal. Some distance to the west, well beyond the Orclands we were rapidly approaching, there lay another mountain chain (rather newer and taller than the Dragonspires the Redcrests had departed) called the Lion's Jaw for both their jagged terrain and the mouth like shape of their southern end. Just above that "mouth" lay a high pass known as the Pass of Storms (which presumably said something about the prevailing weather conditions). The author, by his name and tone, I was guessing an elf of some sort, had spent nearly 100 years largely isolated in a tower overlooking the pass, and this work was very nearly a day-by-day journal of what he'd observed. Many days essentially nothing happened, and those days were redacted at least, but the book was still nearly 500 pages long in a tightly crabbed difficult handwritten style.

There was no index, but fortuitously the reader had a search function, and it was a relatively simple process to locate references to the sky island. According to the author's notes, the sky island didn't come through the area every year, but every 20 years or so the Tel Dorinth sky island moved through the pass itself – which admittedly was quite broad.

This was where it became of interest to me and presumably why the Goddess had pointed me in this direction – the sky island's elevation wasn't stable but was gradually decreasing. It wasn't entirely clear if the author had really registered the distinction, but his painstakingly didactic writing indicated that in its first passage the bottom of the sky island was only slightly above the taller of the two flanking peaks. By the most recent passage, about 100 years later and probably 20 years or so ago, the bottom of the sky island was low enough that it was slightly lower than the taller of the two peaks – a drop of maybe 5-10 meters.

Extrapolating from that observation and the fact that the Goddess suggested I read the work, I was guessing that drop in elevation was likely the cause driving my divine quest. From the interval observed, I was guessing that the sky island had last gone through the pass about 2 years ago, which gave me a bit of space hopefully (assuming this was the highest elevation the island transited). But that elevation loss was going to be a problem in a less than geological timespan. I might have less than 15 years before the island crashed into a mountain, with presumably negative effects on the sky island (and also the mountain, of course). Without a more detailed orbital path and an assessment of the elevational decay of the island, I couldn't make a good prediction, but I'd assume the island wouldn't survive more than another 50-75 years and it might be as few as 15, if something didn't change. For that matter, there was no guarantee it was a smooth decay, and the elevation drop could even be speeding up.

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I heaved a mental sigh – partly in response to the defined threat, and partly in relief that I'd likely identified my basic goal. Assuming the elevation issue had to do with issues with the mana gathering arrays seemed like a logical starting point, so I'd make that my immediate goal. Ideally, I'd have the issue taken care of well in advance of the 15-year mark; there was really no percentage in waiting until the last minute, after all. I still had no idea why my patron had decided to make me figure this out on my own. Perhaps she was envisioning me being slower to work in this direction and didn't want to pressure me? Maybe there were some rules I was unaware of at play? I could see that falling afoul of strictures against direct intervention – presumably why she couldn't simply fix the problem herself more directly?

Quest Completed: Extenuating Circumstances; Reward – Fungalmancy , Local Lore

New Quest: Stabilize the Sky Island's Altitude; Reward – Continued existence, T4 Creature Blueprint, and Magic Tool Blueprint

Oh, well, there it was. I was apparently on the right track, though of course there was nothing that said there was only one reason to fix the island's mana arrays; that said, I had the distinct suspicion that a potential collision with a mountain at least explained the timing of the quest and my presence on the sky island.

The reward for advancing my divine quest was, to be honest, entirely baffling. As one might guess from the name, it was magic involving fungi – I suppose a sort of underground equivalent of plant magic in a druidic sense. I could only imagine it was supposed to be useful (or even necessary) in advancing my basic divine mission, but I had no idea how. All I could come up with was that, the original creators of the sky island being dwarven, perhaps fungal magic had some role to play in whatever end goal I was pursuing.

This seemed like information I should probably share with Mayphesselth and potentially my residents. The dragon and the Redcrests might have some insight on how to locate the mana gathering arrays, and Hakdrilda might have some potential insight into how they'd work. I left it for the moment, though. It was heading into the evening now and given the lack of a pressing need, it didn't seem like the right time to raise it with the Redcrests, and it could certainly wait until the next time I worked with Hakdrilda.

The dragon, though, I probably shouldn't wait. She didn't seem like the type to appreciate me holding back any important information, even for a short period.

**Mayphesselth! May I have a moment of your time to share some news?**

The response was immediate, and not particularly grumpy this time around.

**You have news, Vay? Is this from that beastkin that left a while ago?** She seemed amused about the librarian for some unfathomable reason. **You're not planning to transplant her to the island, are you?**

I acknowledged the slightly sarcastic jibe with a mental shrug. **I mean, she seemed to be in a hurry to leave, so no. And it's not from her, directly at least, but I have secured some information I thought you'd want to know. It's possible you were already aware, but I'd have expected you to mention it. I've just acquired a book that suggests the sky island is gradually losing altitude. I don't have any detailed projections, at least not yet, but I expect the sky island to impact one of the mountains by the Pass of Storms, possibly as soon as 15 years from now and likely in no more than 80 years.**

The dragon took that with laudable equanimity. **You are correct that I hadn't noticed it, but then I wouldn't if it was as gradual as I suspect. I take it your divine quest may have something to do with avoiding some catastrophic failure of the island then?**

**I'm beginning to assume so. My current guess is that I'm supposed to find and potentially repair the mana gathering arrays that power the island's flight systems. That's going to take some time, obviously, and will likely require me to pick up runic magic and potentially consult with a number of external scholars. Step 1 is just to find the arrays in the first place. You wouldn't happen to know where they are or even how many of them there are, would you?**

She gave a mental shrug and a general sense of apathy towards the whole project. **Eh, I can tell you that they aren't visible on the surface, anywhere. There are some general nodes in the web of mana flows that support the island, though they're pretty variable to how they feel in my mana sight. Some are stronger, some weaker, they don't even all feel like the same kind of magic. I suspect you're in for a trickier challenge than you might even be expecting. Those nodes are distributed fairly broadly with four distributed in a parallel and perpendicular pattern not far below surface level around the perimeter of the island; three others are vertically distributed through the center – one high up, one low down, and one smack at the core. That one's the biggest. Don't know which, if any, of them would be a mana gathering array, though. They're probably all important, anyways.**

**Thanks for the information, May. That's a big help, particularly if you could point me in the direction of the closest one to my domain. I'll skip the one near the top of the mountain, and I'll check with you if it ever looks like I need to get access to it.**

She gave a somewhat bored sounding mental yawn. **Expand about 300 meters south and 25 meters down and you'll find the closest one, I'd say. Anything else?**

**No, I think that's probably it for now. Though...**

**Spit it out, Vay. I'm not actually as easy to offend as I pretend to be.**

Fair enough. **Well, I was just noticing that you don't actually seem to care very much.**

**Ah, that. Difference in perspective, I guess. On the one hand, it's still a good ways off and you're working industriously to fix it. Mostly all that's needed from me is to stay out of the way. It's not my divine quest, after all. And on the other hand, it's not really going to affect me all that much. Worst case scenario, I have to pick up and move; I've done it before and I'll eventually do it again.**

** I see. I suppose that's fair. Thanks again for the information. It's likely to be tremendously helpful.**

She cut off the connection without further comment, clearly going back to whatever inscrutable things she kept busy with up in her lair.

Somewhat distractedly, I transcribed the book from my reader into a hardcover format and left it for the librarian to shelve. I also took a few minutes to offer the Goddess of Knowledge another of my favorite works, since she'd made the request. I wasn't sure, of course, what she enjoyed on a personal level, so I simply offered up some more fiction by another author whom I enjoyed and who had a significant body of work – in this case, Tigana by Guy Gavriel Kay. (Author's Note: If I mention a book title and author from "the other world", you can assume that they're real books and generally as described.) Maybe not my absolute favorite of his, but certainly one of them and the first one I'd found. It whisked away as soon as I placed it on the altar, and I made a copy for myself, but I assumed she'd put that one in the archive herself. **Eh, the archives can always contact me if she didn't give them a copy herself. Doesn't seem like it would count as an offering if I got paid for it.**

Feeling the need for further distraction, I turned my attention back to the tunnels in the depths of the island. From what May had said, it wasn't likely that I was going to find the mana gathering arrays in this direction, but locating the settlements of the original inhabitants remained an important goal, and potentially important in the understanding and maintenance of the mana gathering arrays when I did find them. I decided that expanding to the south from my main domain could wait for tomorrow, in any event. For the moment, I wanted to just identify the creature or creatures that were present near my deepest explorations.

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