>>5267827>>5267794>>5267776>>5267538>>5267499>>5267493>>5267487>>5267446>>5267445>>5267408>>5267382>>5267381You consider carefully the words of this Little Sister, this would-be Serpent Priestess. Despite her obvious angling for personal gain and glory, it’s not as if she DOESN’T have a point. Formal tutelage would speed the process immensely, especially if you are to study a discipline outside of your inborn draconic aptitudes.
“Very well,” you say after a moment.
“Excellent!” she exclaims. “Then you will allow my SUPERIOR self to properly instruct you, oh Meatheaded One? You will not regret this, wisest of all your decisions! We will begin with—”
“Not quite,” you interrupt, and the Novice hisses in annoyance. “I will allow her to select what you think is right, but I will also take tomes which I believe to be best. That way, we can measure the results of both methods.”
“How… Scientific-minded of you…” the Novice complements through gnashing teeth and quiet fury.
“Not such a Meatheaded One, this Degenerateborn,” you say cheerfully. “Now, attend to me, and let us be on our way, oh Prodigal Prodigy.”
You continue to make sport of each other all the way there, toeing the line between banter and actual insults—as you always have, you suppose. Reptilians are without any silly sentimentality, without the frivolities of romance or even friendship, which are all mammalian fantasies without any bearing on reality. Camaraderie and courtship are just games of one-upmanship and brinksmanship, of obligation and alliance or dominance and defeat. You could even say that the experience is a bonding one.
You break it up when you enter the inner sanctum of the Library of the Clerics, which is after all a holy place given to silence and contemplation. This circular room, rising high up to into a mountain above, is a veritable silo of insight through the ages. It holds every scroll which could be recovered from the fallen empires of old, or half-remembered transcriptions of those where the original has rumbled to dust or been lost to ravening hordes of lesser, younger races. Schematics, blueprints, sketches and artworks abound. There are bound books of the enemy, too, and their own scrolls before that, seized in infiltration or those rare, dangerous acts of direct war between the Reptilian Races and those mammalian peoples which even their kin have forgotten.
Among all of these, the most coveted are, of course the spellbooks, magic manuals, and single-spell scrolls.
