The Other Books

Actually, the next book they looked at did look like it had a chance of actually proving useful to figuring out the magic on Heron.

The book's cover had neither the title nor the author on it, but the cover page did. The handwriting of this book was harsher than the last one. Firm shirt strokes as opposed to the more gliding letters.

The book's title was "On Curses." Again the author did not write his full name, but merely initialed it. L.Z.S.

There was something unfortunate though. Not all of it was written in the common tongue. Huge chunks of it was written in that other language. The introduction was written in common though.

"They say its good when grieving to get your mind off of it and not dwell on it constantly. So I decided to write a book. As I am well versed on the subject of curses, myself being under a familial one, this was the subject I chose.

Curses come in many forms. Some, like mine own, are triggered by certain circumstances. Others are immediate.

My own curse wasn't made to be too bad, well it is nowadays, but it was never meant to actually have itself impossible to keep away. But others are absolutely terrible. Most though are really just mild annoyances.

It's the lingering ones that are truly terrifying. And then there is one in which it is utterly impossible to survive. This book will discuss my knowledges on curses, and how to cure them. For most curses do have ways to lift them.

So if you ever find yourself under a curse don't despair! There are many known ways to lift curses!"

Heron was frustrated by the fact that the book's shifting in between languages made it difficult to actually get any information from it. There were a few curses and remedies written entirely in common, and he read those. But there were also whole pages written in that runic language.

It was terribly frustrating.

As he had been reading this, Kur had been reading one of the other books, which wasn't bound like the others. It looked like it had been hastily bound with only string.

When Heron looked up, to ask if it was at all readable. He was startled to see that Kur was grinning as if he'd found something amazing.

"What is that one?" Heron asked curiously.

"It's a book on how to translate those runes." Kur said excitedly. "This is an amazing find! According to the author only a handful of people even know how to translate it! And that some things just aren't as easy to convey in common and that the language has more a lingo for certain magical processes."

"Oh. That could be useful. I think this book might have what we are looking for in it, but half of it's written in runic."

As Kur continued perusing the book on runes, Heron pulled the last book towards him. It was written by S.A.S, just like the history book. But like the one on curses it was on magic. He wasn't sure how useful it would be. The name looked like it would just be an overview.

The title was "The Divine, Arcane, and Primal Magics." Probably a book on comparisons between the three. The book actually started with an apology though.

"I must apologize to whoever reads this. Due to the nature of this book, I will have to delve into using the ancient runes. Some of the concepts within it would just take too long to explain with the common tongue of the time. So I will use the language of my forefathers to explain many of the knowledge within. As long as I can explain something well without getting too convoluted, I will use the merchant tongue. Please bear with it."

This apology explained how it would suddenly use a single runic word every so often, and also had paragraphs written almost entirely with the runes. But quite a bit of it was illegible even so.

Enough to get a general gist of what it was about. Quite a bit of it was magic theory. Also discussing the different ways of casting spells. There were two sections that caught Heron's eye. One of which was a discussion on miss casted spells. Unfortunately it was one of the sections that did dissolve into runes. The other also did, and Heron just wanted to read it more cause it sounded interesting. It was on the forgotten art of dragon riding.

Heron had to admit. Riding a dragon sounded cool. Dangerous but cool. And from what he could understand on that chapter there were ways to do it with very low risk.

Anyway, it finally looked like they were getting somewhere in regards to this problem he had!