The airship meandered in the sky above the ever-shifting dunes of the Azir desert, descending further and further as its destination drew ever closer. Professor Emira had been sceptical at first – the outrageous notion of a library, safe in the desert from the Great War, was unbelievable – though not to herself after having consumed far too much alcohol in a shoddy Aziri tavern. And yet, despite all the confusion, disbelief, and regret she had felt upon waking up in the back of an airship journey she’d paid for, upon seeing the spiral tower and its rusted bell, she felt somewhat hopeful – hopeful that the past three days would yield something worth learning.

The airship landed, cushioned by the sand. Professor Emira attached the strange, rubbery covers to the bottom of her boots and walked upon the sand towards the tower. “Locals avoid the place,” her guide mentioned. “Why? Is it cursed?” Emira responded. “Cursed? No. It’s just derelict, and the underground complex is dangerous. But a travelling scholar like you may have more luck uncovering its history, its lore.” Emira nodded, expressing her thanks. “I might be gone a while. Stop by every couple of days and bring food and water; you’ll be paid well for it. And thank you for taking me here.” Her guide nodded in appreciation, and soon, he was gone, leaving Emira with nothing but an old, abandoned complex, her thoughts, and an insatiable lust for adventure and learning.

It was dark and cold. Emira had a pre-War lamp that somehow never ran out of charge, but even with its luminosity turned to the maximum, the oppressive darkness pressed against Emira from all sides. The silence was deafening. Where the winds had loudly whipped through the air of the desert above, inside the tower… wasn’t silence. It wasn’t just the absence of sound – it felt like the absence of everything. Emira pressed on, her hand against the left wall. The spiralling stairs seemed to never end. The stone seemed to be completely unscathed by the Great War, which was to be expected – after all, why waste precious explosives on barren desert? Emira pressed on, deeper and deeper into the depths of the city.

A light illuminated the end of the tunnel. It wasn’t hers. Emira jumped out, ready for some sort of confrontation with whatever subterranean dwellers lurked in the ruins – it was a lamp. It intermittently flickered on and off, but not quickly. Rather, the light faded away, before slowly turning on again, and yet every time a new light shone, it was strangely different. Emira stepped down once more, but where she expected a cold stone step, she instead stepped on something carpeted. And then, she pressed on through a short corridor and was welcomed by a sky full of blinking stars.

The same blinking lamps adorned the high ceiling. The whole room was vast and imposing, with decorated pillars supporting the immense dome. The light was dim, but everything was still clear, like an eternal, artificial, unending, twilight. It was surreal. Emira stalled for a moment, merely basking in the moment, taking in her surroundings, and merely… being. The walls were made of a strange material – from a distance, they appeared just like any other, but upon closer inspection, they were like endless shelves, rows and rows of lines with things crammed among them. And then, Emira realised what the walls were.

An entire library, hidden beneath the sand. But it was so much more than a library – it was a veritable bastion of books, a castle of characters, a fortress of facts, and it was beautiful. Emira felt as if she could stay there forever, reading and reading and reading and reading and reading and- she felt the allure of the lore, tempting and powerful. She wanted to read until she was physically and mentally incapable of reading. But she refused. She had a goal to accomplish. Out of curiosity, however, she turned to face the wall and selected a book at random. Inside, she found a detailed history of the rise and fall of some ancient empire, which had lived and died long before the Great War. The… Ramen Empire? Roman Empire? The letters were unclear, having been handwritten in thick cursive. She opened another on the shelf above it. The… United Kingdom? Another – the… People’s Union of Greater Asia?There was so much knowledge available; Emira wanted to learn it all. To understand it herself. To share it with others. To use it to better the world. An entire hidden library city, with nigh-unlimited knowledge at her fingertips.

As Emira wandered through the city, pre-War lamp illuminating her surroundings, the deafening quiet slowly became disconcerting. It wasn’t the emptiness and liminality; rather, it was the absence. Of anything living. The creatures populating the desert, which should inevitably have found their way into the sanctum? Not a trace of them. Where one would expect damage to the books, be it by insects, the elements, or some sort of radioactive decay, there was simply… nothing. Emira was the only living thing in the entire city. No cobwebs. No dust. No wear and tear. No sign of the people that had previously lived there, if there had ever been any. It was a library frozen in time, frozen in space, and frozen in life. And strangely, over the days of wandering the labyrinthine city, marking her trail, Emira began to feel a similar timelessness, and returning to the surface every few days to collect supplies became less and less appealing. Moreover, her very need for sustenance had declined. The allure of the lore, of the library, was far more compelling than the world above. While she had initially wanted to explore it and immediately leave, she then justified her actions, supposedly wanting to fully explore the area. She then told herself she would gather a complete report first, before any of her competitors in the field could. Eventually, she gave herself one last justification, being that she wanted to learn and catalogue everything about the place. And ultimately, she gave up on justifying it to herself – she just wanted to stay in the library. To explore. To read. To learn. Forever.

She had stopped collecting food and water a long time ago, surviving for an unnatural two weeks on what little she had left. But it was all ending. She was dead to the world. The world above would not know where she went; it would move on and forget her. Her guide, probably presuming she was dead, had likely stopped leaving food at the base of the spiral tower. But she was dying. She was dying. Surrounded by all the lore and knowledge in the world, and she was dying. She swore not to die, for her will to learn everything was too strong, and it would not die. It refused to die so close to completion, when so much knowledge was at its fingertips. When it could learn everything. It refused. And so, Professor Emira Wan died there. Her body was never found. But it lived on.

Stories are told of it that knows everything ever written, in its eternal, unquenching, and undying thirst to learn everything there is and add it to its hidden library city hidden deep within the Azir desert. It never dies, for there is so much to learn and so much to see and so much to catalogue, and transcribe, and copy for the ultimate treasure – all the knowledge there was and would ever be, at the cost of never being able to share it. Professor Emira Wan and her journey were long forgotten, known only by it. And it would build the library up,forming a great repository of human knowledge, culture, and history, over and over and overas nations rose and fell and rediscovered nuclear weapons all over again and again and again. And it would be alone, and it would be content. It would be content to write its own story, to write its own lore, and to be alone in knowing its own timeless history, contained in its own timeless library city forever. And it would do it all over again, in every universe, for its pursuit of knowledge was a story, was lore in of itself.

“The Pursuit of Knowledge” – Library at The End of Time, Copy #4, Ref. Code GA)81Eb0N7F`M&%A8,poFD,B0/SB!7ATV?sBkCppEcZ/9ATVU”DJ*ZoCB