Day 182 - Illuminators Story

Illuminators Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

“The world comes to study at Alexandria and Alexandria is the world – the knowledge, the secrets, the culture, and the history of the ages.”

It had been a bold proclamation, but was mostly true. And still the Library at Alexandria had burned. Many times. Again and again and again and again. No one knows for sure just what secrets were lost.

As long as the Stacks had existed, there had been the Librarians to oversee the books and the Illuminators to transcribe new editions. The books contained a power that could make the written word into reality. Very little was known about the process. The creators of the Stacks did little to explain themselves or to share their purpose or their powers. Perhaps there had been a spell and the Stacks were enchanted. There were those that believed that paper had power. Others believed it was in the ink. Some suspected it was the very act of writing something down that gave the words their strength.

Whether or not this was true, the Illuminators made a career for themselves by promoting these ideas. 

The Illuminators believed that their work must be done by hand and only using fine calligraphy and intricate detailed art to begin each chapter in each book. They were craftsmen and artists and labored tirelessly over each volume created. They combined the theories and proclaimed they required specialized parchments, quills and inks. The Illuminators carried themselves with pomp and bombast. They acted as though they were as divine as the books they transcribed. And quite often they were treated as such. Their books had special powers; their books determined fates and could shake the very fabrics of reality. One who was able to create such a thing probably deserved the special status they received.

The Librarians rarely commented on such things, but it was suspected that part of their perpetual silence came from the fact that they were ever embittered over their roles being so greatly downplayed in comparison to the Illuminators. But to an outside observer, they that would create the books were ever more important than those that kept them in order.

Then of course there were those that would destroy whatever the Illuminators set out to create. Almost as long as the Stacks had existed, there had been the Arsonists. The Arsonists believed that man was not meant to possess such power over the fates and their futures, and took it upon themselves to destroy the Stacks. The Arsonists believed that the books stole sacred energies and trapped it inside the papers. In burning the books, they were freeing the power and returning it to its rightful place in the cosmos.

So a battle repeated itself over and over. The libraries were created. Some were public, some were hidden. And then the Arsonists set out to find and destroy them. And the Illuminators set out to transfer the knowledge somewhere else. Creation, destruction, transference. Over and over and over. Knowledge came and went and a little was lost each time, but the process continued.

The Librarians split into two factions. There were those that believed it was simply their job to maintain their collections. And then there were those that took a more proactive approach and decided it was their job to protect their collections. They fancied themselves the Guardians, and they set out to kill the Arsonists.

A bloody war resulted and as the violence and destruction escalated, the ranks of each group were thinned to the point of near extinction. Entire branches of the Stacks were left unmanned, forgotten, hidden, until enough time passed that they were only referenced in rumor, legend and conspiratorial whisper.

The sands of time mostly forgot about the libraries and the books they contained. Time moved on, until the very idea of what had been seemed like a dream. And in that dream, a spark of truth, which created a reality. The truth was there, waiting to be rediscovered. Waiting to be protected. Waiting to live and breathe again and to create something new. The Stacks were there, with their knowledge, and secrets, and the history of the world, and yet for all that power, they too would simply burn. Again and again and again. And the cycle would continue. Always.