Neural Cortex”? It turned out most of these items were taken from the Cities of the Plains during the time of the Fall of the Cities, when a very young Bethor sacked the Cities. He looked about and understood. The museum was popular and well funded because it celebrated conquest, not knowledge.
The next day he located the Library which was on the southern side of the Delta, just by the riverbank. The path there meant he passed by both spectacular opulence and heartbreaking squalor. He had never seen either before, it was depressing, the contrast between the two enhancing the emotions. He noted it but postponed judgement, he would write about it later after he had time to evaluate what he had seen.
The Library was a stone building less well executed than the Museum. It was also located in a fairly run down side street, grass grew between the stone slabs that made the entrance, the sign was faded. The area seemed almost deserted, there were few people in the streets, adding to an impression that the Library was forgotten and dejected, soon to become derelict. Entry was free. There were books in Bethorese, a dialect of the common tongue, which like all dialects was based on Ancient. The books seemed to mostly be about heroic adventures and deeds. There were some very basic books from the Center. There were also some old crumbling texts in open boxes with lids. He presumed at night the boxes were closed. Their titles were strange but he could understand them. Some of them were definitely unknown to the Center. In Lind these books would be priceless, here they weren't even worth the effort to lock up. He looked at the case plaque to see if there were more details. There was no translation because no one knew the language, yet he could read it and one of the loose pages that was pinned right beside it. So close. He looked at the bored official who was sitting nearby leaning against a column, as if sitting wasn't relaxing enough, listlessly picking lint off his mock-military uniform.
“Is there a translation of this?” He asked in good Bethorese. He remembered the accent from childhood.
“No.” The guard said, but in a way that also said, “and I don’t care.”
Mikel decided to persist. “I’ve heard that the Wizards at the Center can translate this. We would then be able to read it.”
He sneered. “Wizards! Hah! No, we won't take any notice of that scum."
He stood up, excited, glad to share this one idea in his humdrum life, shaking his finger at Mikel.
"You watch, one day Bethor will take them down a notch. We'll burn their Center and string them all up. Watch them twist in the wind. Maybe the two of us will be there to hold the ropes.” He laughed. Then sat down chuckling to himself.
Mikel gave a nervous smile and excused himself. Outside he stood in the sun, he had never experienced such raw, irrational hatred towards an entire people. His people. It was scary and somehow familiar.
Now as he walked through Bethor it didn’t seem so interesting or colorful. He started to see the unusual numbers of armed soldiers; dressed in their red uniforms with black trim they looked impressive, but there were so many of them. The colorful banners he first admired, he now saw had highly stylized phrases written along their sides; proclaiming the superiority of Bethor. “Retake the Cities”. “Bethor, Born to Rule”. This city was a very bad place for someone like him to be in, it was just waiting to explode. It was drunk on pride and arrogance, he knew those were the reasons, but not why he knew. He now could guess why the agents had died. When they came here the signs would probably have been much less obvious and the agents would have triggered too many alarms with their questions, now it was clear that Bethor was intent on war. Bethor wanted to rule all of Neti, and probably kill all they didn’t like. Their navy, if it could be called that, was pitiful but they didn’t have to take Lind. All they had to do
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