“Well?” Leona barked impatiently.
Jularra jerked her head back in Leona's direction.
“I’m sorry,” Jularra said quickly. “I've just never seen so many Credellions.”
The rest of the group mumbled in agreement. Leona looked around, as if trying to view her Credellions with a fresh set of eyes, but looked back to Jularra and said nothing. Detecting Leona’s decreasing patience, Jularra whispered to the group, “Come on.”
Jularra stepped down into the lengthy hallway towards Leona, the others at the rear. Leona took a deep breath and sighed forcefully through her nose as though disappointed that they hadn't turned back.
They moved slowly, but Leona didn’t seem to care so long as they kept moving. Jularra and the others swiveled their heads back and forth, up and down, peering at the covered walls. Jularra recognized many of the types of Credellions, their related magic and degree, but most were foreign to her. She wasn’t aware of any type of catalog that explained all of the possible Credellions, but she imagined that if there were such a thing, it would look like Leona’s hallway.
As they progressed, Jularra felt her jaw drop further. Step after step revealed an unfathomable number of Credellions, dozens and dozens of them, each devoted to a single magical discipline.
Fire. Water. Dirt. Wind. Implement enchantments. Weapon augmentations. Armor enchantments. Construction. Architecture. Farming. Alchemy. Metallurgy. Wards of protection, of defense, of offense. Beast control. Farming. Botany. Music. Zoology. On and on. Every few feet was a new discipline. Each discipline had almost as many Credellions attributed to it than all that Jularra had in total.
Jularra couldn’t continue. She had to stop. She had to know.
“Leona?”
Leona stopped with her back to the group, then finally turned. Her eyes flashed in annoyance at being forced to halt yet again.
“How?” Jularra asked. “I’m sorry, but how is this possible?”
Leona continued to stare at Jularra without blinking, and Jularra felt as if Leona was looking through her, or looking at nothing.
Leona walked slowly towards Jularra. She could have been about to burst into tears, or lash out in violence.
“How?” Jularra repeated, this time in a shaky whisper.
Leona lowered her head and burned a stare into Jularra as she answered.
“By not taking it for granted.”
Leona tilted her head slowly, still staring. As Jularra strained to keep her composure, she wondered if Leona was trying to root around in her mind for something. But with a snap, Leona turned and resumed leading them down the hall.
After another forty paces, well into the house, two extremely wide doors met them at the end of the hallway. As they approached, the light from Leona’s candlestick revealed the extent and filigree of the doors, which struck Jularra as odd. The doors were as tall as the moderate hallway, which to Jularra’s eyes couldn’t have been much taller than ten feet. But though their height was modest, their width and detail were not.
Each door was roughly twelve feet wide and formed of numerous carved panels, each approximately ten inches square, that depicted a variety of scenes. Before Jularra could make them out, Leona spoke up.
“There’s a lot of information about the history of magic in these doors.” As she spoke, she inserted three keys into a substantial lock of wrought iron which ran along the length of the seam between the doors.
“What are all these about?” Abranni asked. Her fingers slid along the panels as she examined them, awed by the intricate engravings. “Where did all this information come from?”
Instead of answering, Leona turned the third and final key. After it clicked, she heaved into the doors, swinging them open into the room.
The sight ahead delivered a punch of humility that dwarfed what they had experienced upon seeing Leona’s Credellions.
Behind the doors was a cavernous space. It was the shape of a broad oval, with the huge doors forming one of the narrow points. In the center—the highlight of a glass-covered atrium—was a large, pristine garden, complete with a dozen trees of various species as well as shrubbery, ferns, flowers, and herbs.
And along the sweeping walls of the expansive oval, with seemingly no room to spare, were bookshelves.
From the peculiar cobblestone floor to the wooden slats and rafters, stacked and cramped bookshelves lined the entire circumference of the oval walls, seamless and appearing infinite. The group fanned aimlessly out into Leona’s library, silent and shocked.
Leona, however, wasn’t interested in their shock. From the moment she opened the doors, she marched briskly into her massive library. She pointed at some sections as she walked and paused briefly at others, as if looking for something in particular. Her voice suddenly reverberated through the huge room, startling her visitors.
“Jularra!” she announced. “Over here.”
Somewhat dazed, Jularra began the trek across the room. Leona was already flipping through pages.
“I recall reading something about one of your ancestors,” Leona started. She slapped the book shut and slid it back into place before grabbing the one next to it.
“Specifically, it was Ayluven—the granddaughter of Detsepera, I believe. She commented in her journal about some of her contemporaries expressing alarm that their Voidwardens and Gracewardens were being destroyed. Ah, yes, here it is.”
Leona flipped ahead another few pages and turned around. She glanced up at Jularra before she began reading from Ayluven’s journal entry.
"I am finally rid
