Welcome to Gaia! ::

Blarney walked as quietly as he could through the halls of the room labelled Archive. It was like the biggest, most intense library he'd ever been in - or more than that. It was the biggest, most intense library he'd ever heard of anyone being in. Not for the first time, Blarney felt a deep sense of pity for those regular mortal intellectuals who would probably kill or die to be in a room like this; for them, it would be a culmination of their life's highest dreams. For him, it was Tuesday.

(A really cool Tuesday, but a Tuesday nevertheless.)

This room had answers. He wasn't entirely sure what the questions were, but this room had answers - he could feel it. He was hesitant to touch anything, but he got as close as he could without doing so, trying to divine what each piece of ancient pre-history meant, what sort of people it came from. Why their strange host - whom Blarney hadn't even really met personally yet - had kept it.

It was strange, knowing that you weren't smart enough to comprehend almost anything you were taking in. He knew he had a lot to learn, but before he stepped into this room, he hadn't known how much he had to learn. He hadn't realized that he might not actually be able to learn it all - enough - in his lifetime, even if he survived college and beyond into Knighthood.

There was knowing the planet you'd lived your entire life on was nothing more than a galactic dust-speck, and there was knowing it. Blarney had just stopped to take a deep breath - his head was spinning - when he spotted something that was familiar, amid a sea of strangeness.

A starcharm. Someone must have dropped it. It was pink and glittery, which made it stand out, but there was nobody else in the room, so Blarney picked it up and tucked it in his bag for safekeeping. If anyone mentioned missing it, he'd return it immediately. If not...

Blarney shrugged to himself and kept wandering down the length of the room, peering up at the tapestries as he went. The further in he traveled, the more ominous and spooky the tapestries seemed to be - was he moving forward in time, or backward? Was this a hopeful progression, or a doomed one?

Blarney had no idea, and he was a little bit frightened to ever find out. But he also couldn't look away: for however much he wanted to interrogate The Code, or find out about the old magical school, or learn how to help Pages and converts from Chaos, or how to unite Order under a common banner, or any of those things - more than any of that, what this room impressed upon him, aside from the oppressive march of time, was how small his worldview was. There were stories here; stories of anguish and grief and hope and love and bravery and cowardice. Monsters and heroes.

There was a heavy, evil-looking crown, near a heavy, evil-looking tapestry. Just being near it made Blarney faintly nauseated; he didn't dare get too close, and touching anything was out of the question. But the fact that the crown - and the broken weapons, too - did seem to imply that whoever - or whatever - had worn this crown...was no longer in the picture. That was a good thing, right? That meant that the good guys - whoever they were, in this context - were fighting back. Had fought back. Could continue to fight back?

Blarney stared at the crown, arrested by its gravity.

For the life of him, Blarney couldn't tell who it was that was winning, and that scared him most of all.

If Blarney had been Mason, he would have yelped and swung a punch at the source of the voice that appeared directly behind him. He would have, perhaps, made a very undignified noise and maybe even fallen on his tushy. However, he was Blarney and not Mason at the moment - so he just jumped slightly and his aura activated, limning him in faint golden light that protected him from a sneak attack, and whirled around to see--oh.

Oh.

Blarney gave him (him? them? this guy had a tail, which probably meant he was an alien, but did that mean he had an alien pronoun? Blarney actually had no idea) a sheepish smile and let his aura drop.

"Not--exactly," he answered, with a slight shake of his head. "It--it fascinates me, I guess, but I would rather chop off my head than wear that thing." Blarney gave a shudder that was only slightly over the top, then extended his hand.

"I'm Blarney, by the way. Squire of Earth. Thanks for inviting me - it's a pretty cool place you've got here." It was also deeply strange and very curious, but they could get to that later. "It's nice to meet you."

Blarney shook his hand, straightened up a little bit, because it felt very formal - very proper. Like he had to be on his best behavior. He caught the expression - the darkness as Almadel's attention shifted briefly to the helmet and back again. It gave Blarney the heebie jeebies, if he was being honest.

"You'll be able to tell if it starts talking to me, 'cause I'll be yelling at the top of my lungs," Blarney chuckled and shook his head. "It is a very interesting collection," Blarney agreed, eyes scanning the rest of the room - the displays all called to him, his curiosity reaching out like an octopus, every direction at once.

"Where did you find all this stuff? Do you know what--all of this...means?" Blarney gestured vaguely at the tapestry, and everything else, too.