Search for traps and treasure

[aestrix]

There is a library.

It is actually an excellent example of one: it has books on history and philosophy and astronomy and science and languages and even a little modest section for storybooks, tucked in a corner against the wall. These books are all easy to pick up off the shelves and read, like ordinary libraries.

The books on magic, on the other hand, are behind locked and spelled glass, with their position signatures scrambled and constantly shifting so they can't be teleported away, each one built to set off a silent alarm that'll alert the owner if touched, and to turn completely blank if opened without permission. And then burst into flames if someone tries to force it to show what it's hiding or tampered with in the wrong sort of way.

Just another day in Kystle. Stealing peeks from books in a mage's library is not recommended for the casual reader.

Comments

[aestrix]

She looks at him and smiles a bit, then looks at the copy of the book.

The book on the shelf is undisturbed. The copy being read -

Is an illusion. But it's being touched? Oh. It's an illusion and some kind of ultra-complicated construct-thing made out of a shield?

"... I think I'm missing something," she says, sounding disappointed. "Making a shield construct that holds an illusion exactly mirroring the internal structure of a book is outrageously expensive, are you doing something to make a blank book look like a shield construct...?"

[pythbox]

"It's not that expensive," says the boy who is neither talkative nor reading.

"I told you how to make it more efficient," says the talkative one. "You could be using half that much mana if you didn't insist on making every single page behave right even when they're flat together and nobody would notice."

"It would hardly qualify as a proper functioning copy of a book in that case," sniffs the quieter one.

"Snob," says the talkative one.

"Sloppy ingrate," says the quieter one, but there's a smile in his eyes.

The talkative one sticks his tongue out at his brother. "Nyeh."

Meanwhile, the third triplet peacefully reads his book and ignores them both. (Although the small smile suggests he's paying at least some attention.)

[aestrix]

"Not that expensive in comparison to what?" wonders the girl. "Even with the more efficient design where the pages don't behave right when they're flat together, if you keep the book around for ten minutes it's more expensive than bringing a blank book and copying everything over. And then you just have the book forever and can take it home."

[pythbox]

"Ten minutes? Try an hour," says the quieter one, smugly. "Which is plenty of time to read it in."

The talkative one snorts. "She's right that it would make more sense to copy it in a way we could actually take home, though."

[aestrix]

"An hour? How'd you -" Scrying occurs. "... Wait. You. You spelled the air? But how are you keeping it from - oh. Oh and then it's just keeping the air together, which the shield helps with, that's clever."

[pythbox]

The quieter one grins.

"Isn't it though?" the talkative one says happily.

[aestrix]

"Very!" agrees the girl who has completely forgotten that she should not be geeking out over magic with strange people that have broken into her home. "I bet you could use this for other things that don't need to be permanent but do need to stick around for long enough that you couldn't do it with a shield, a book really doesn't seem like the best thing for this, there's lots of little inconvenient places that you might want something in," she walks past the talkative one and to the spelled glass shelf. "There's a book in here about small shield usage in the body for use in surgery, I wonder if... Aha, there you are."

She goes to open the glass case, and stops before she actually touches the glass. "... You should probably still not be reading books in this library."

[pythbox]

"Why not?" says the talkative one. "And which book is it?" He peers at the shelf to try to figure out which one she was talking about.

[aestrix]

"Because I don't know you at all, and my only character reference is how you broke into my family's house to raid our library because you were bored." Pause. "And I'm not telling you, because the same sort of knowledge can be used to induce a heart attack in someone and that is not a thing that everyone should know how to do."

[pythbox]

The talkative one frowns. "I see what you're saying, but I don't think it works that way," he says. "I mean, about the heart attacks. The character reference part is admittedly fair."

He smiles wryly, then shakes his head and continues in a more serious tone.

"But the thing is, when you're thinking about what kinds of knowledge people should or shouldn't have, you can't just think about what you'd rather most people did or didn't know how to do and then stop there. You have to think about which kinds of knowledge would be easier or harder for someone to figure out on their own. Like, just from hearing the idea, I bet I could figure out how to induce a heart attack, and I might not get it perfect but it would still work well enough to kill somebody, so if I were the sort of person you didn't want knowing how to give people heart attacks, you'd have a hard time stopping me. But using small shields for surgery sounds really difficult and complicated, it'd be hard to figure that out by trial and error, and you could really hurt somebody if you got it wrong. Do you see what I mean?"

[aestrix]

"Yes, but that's entirely based on the assumption that I am actually talking about heart attacks in particular, and not something much much nastier that I'm covering with 'and you could induce a heart attack.' And there's a - if you started inducing heart attacks badly, someone would notice, realize it was you, and then go to stop you. Whereas if you already know exactly how, and how to get away with it, you would assumingly get away with it, and instead of just killing one person you kill dozens. And since I don't know you..."

[pythbox]

"Would people really consider ten-year-old boys as serious murder suspects?" asks the quieter one.

"Probably not, but for the purposes of the hypothetical it doesn't matter as much, I see what she meant," says the talkative one.

"Anyway—" the quieter one begins, with a thoughtful little frown, but the talkative one interrupts him.

"Please don't start guessing what the worse things in the book are, we are trying not to scare the nice girl with the cool library," he says. Then, turning back to the girl: "I still think I'm right about the principles, though. It's very hard to find out how to do things like surgery without hurting anyone if you don't have books about it, but if you already don't care about hurting people, finding out how to hurt them more effectively and in subtler ways just takes some experimentation."

[aestrix]

She doesn't say if it's in this library at all my parents have decided that it is okay for a nine year old girl and possible burglars to read, because that would imply that there is another library, and she is not going to imply that.

"That still doesn't mean I should just trust you? I am not implying that you at all lack intelligence or creativity, but as a hypothetical - okay, yeah, if you already didn't care about hurting people, you can get to the same end result through experimentation. But, that's assuming that learning about how to better kill people is the only thing that you could potentially learn. But maybe there is a way to hurt people that isn't killing them or even causing them pain, but - confusing them at the opportune time to take advantage, messing up their vision over decades, sterilizing them so they can't have kids - things that are more justifiable and usable by people who do care about hurting people?

"And I'm not even saying no you may never read this get out, I'm, I don't know you at all, you're some people that broke into the library and started reading books through clever workarounds. I am nervous about everything because you're strangers who are trying to weasel with my morality and principles so I will help you get books, these are not actions that reassure me!"

[pythbox]

"I am not trying to weasel with your principles so you'll help me get books," says the talkative one, sounding mildly insulted. "I want to talk to you because what you were saying sounds interesting and then I got distracted thinking about the logic of censorship!"

"Also, we observably don't need your help to get these books," says the quieter one.

[aestrix]

"Okay, but I don't know that you weren't, because I don't know you, and sometimes people do try to weasel with people's principles! And observably you don't, but I bet you'd use less mana if I told you where the good ones are."

[pythbox]

"We could just copy them all and leave," the quieter one suggests to his brothers.

"No, I wanna talk to her, she's cool," insists the talkative one.

"We," the quieter one indicates himself and the reader, "could copy them all and leave, and you could stay here and talk to the Larivias girl and get caught by her parents breaking into their library and bring shame on our family."

"...When you put it like that I want it less," says the talkative one. "But come on, we were having a really interesting conversation!"

[aestrix]

"How could the three of you copy all of the books and not be in mana deprivation, there's a lot of books, even with three of you, not to mention getting out of here and - how did you even get in?"

[pythbox]

"I'm not going to stand here and recite my bloodlines for you, the objective here is to avoid bringing shame on my family," says the talkative one, laughing a little, "but come on, copying a book can't be that hard, can it? I mean I can definitely see how it could be a beast but if you just..." He gestures inarticulately. "Think it through a little I'm sure it's not that bad."

[aestrix]

She is briefly distracted by trying to actually figure out how to copy the entire magical section of the library with her current mana reserves. Then she reminds herself to focus.

"It's possible there is a way, but I mean, you are already worried about my parents showing up and bringing shame on your family, could you figure out how to manage it fast enough?"

[pythbox]

"Is that a challenge?" the talkative one asks, grinning brightly.

[aestrix]

Yes, she doesn't say, because as entertaining as it would be to see and as fascinating as the result might be, that would be very irresponsible of her.

"No," she says instead, "it's weighing probability, do you think the time investment to copy the entire library right now is worth it when you could probably make trips if you don't... get caught, oh infinite planes I should stop talking."

[pythbox]

The talkative one giggles. The one still reading an illusionary copy of one of her family's books smiles into the pages. Even the quieter one, least expressive of the three, looks a little amused.

[aestrix]

The girl crosses her arms, and inspects the ceiling.

"Stop being tempting to talk to," she sniffs halfheartedly.

[pythbox]

"Why would I do that?" says the talkative one, with a friendlier and less intense grin. "Then you wouldn't talk to me and that would be no fun!"

[aestrix]

"Yes, but I am becoming intensely aware that I am kind of bad at not just - saying whatever comes to mind."