fandomhigh | Bettering Your Community & Yourself, period 3

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Bettering Your Community & Yourself, period 3

Jon nodded as people filed into the classroom, fidgeting a bit. He was in his standard first-day-of-class appearance, which meant he wasn't as strung out as he sometimes got, and his clothes were neat and professional, albeit his hair was a bit rumpled from his nervously running his fingers through it.

When it was time to start and he judged everyone had made it in, he cleared his throat and stood up straight. "Welcome. I'm Jonathan Sims, and I'll be teaching this course. Although I suppose it's less teaching and more a sort of guiding." He frowned. "I don't know we're likely to learn new things, so much as experience them. Though I could be wrong."

Look, he'd just told the moose he wanted to do something, anything, where he could teach on his own. He'd given up trying to turn in actual outlines.

"Anyway. This class is meant to involve bettering the community and ourselves, and in order to do that, we have to know what needs bettering. And we've got at least a few people here I haven't taught before. So, let's introduce ourselves, and along with your name, give me one thing about the community and one thing about yourself that you would like to better."

He cleared his throat. "As I said, my name is Jonathan Sims. You may call me Mr. Sims or Jon. I am from London in modern Earth. I would like to see if there's a way to make the steps less slippery when it rains, and I suppose I could get better at relaxing."

He nodded stiffly to the students. "Now you."

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He's here!

Lucky for Jon, there was a Liliana ~~lurking~~ waiting ~~to ambush him~~ after class.

"Hello, Jon, darling," she purred. "How lovely to run into you."

Said the woman, taking and teaching no classes and therefore having no reason to be in the school at all.

"Er...yes." Jon eyed her warily.

Look, he liked Liliana, but that didn't mean he had lost all sense.

"Completely by chance, naturally."

Smart man.

"Funny how such things work out, isn't it?" she asked. "Now then, darling, you don't happen to be busy, do you? I had a tiny little project I was hoping to get your assistance with."

"I'm guessing it has something to do with the book you couldn't read?"

He listened to radio, too.

And okay, look - he was already curious about it. Call it his fatal weakness.

"It just so happens that it does!" Liliana said, full of faux-surprise. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the book, very thick and covered in a strange, almost runic writing. "It's from an empire that fell something like...ten thousand years ago. We don't have any idea about when it was founded, either. Our earliest extant work was perhaps two hundred years before it fell, but we know that it must have been founded centuries, if not millennia before that. Anything that this book contains is priceless knowledge lost to time and warfare."

She held it out to him. "I don't suppose you'd be interested in reading it for me?"

Jon's fingers were itching for that book. He was already reaching out for it. But he stopped himself.

"Are...I'm wondering if you've checked that it's safe to read. Not...not cursed, or...or something."

Look, if some ancient empire had someone like Jurgen Leitner, it would be just his luck to run into one of their books.

Jon, she didn't have Detect Magic. She was (technically) from a different Hasbro property!

Which was why she was raising an eyebrow. "Who puts curses in books?" she asked. "Anyway, any magic that might have been involved in it wouldn't have lasted the last ten thousand years. That's not how our magic works, darling."

Unlike yours, Jon, which was terrible.

All the magic in Jon's world was terrible, it's true.

"I...well, there were a lot of...bad books in my world. They tended to kill or...or eat people."

But that was as likely as he was to be reassured, so he was tentatively taking the book now. And first he was running his hands over it, to feel the texture and just experience it. Even with his poor experiences, he did still love books.

"Well, our books don't do that, unless they've been infused with mana first," Liliana said. "And if I was going to spend mana to kill you, darling, I'd just do it, I wouldn't pussyfoot around with a book."

Not as a self-respecting necromancer, thank you.

The book itself was bound with thick leather; some kind of animal, and not of anu particular quality, though the book itself seemed to be in excellent condition. More like this book hadn't been especially important when it was published; the equivalent of a regular hardcover today, perhaps.

The title was Caves of the Damned - A Eugenicist's Examination of the Untouchables With A Particular Look At Phthisis and was written by someone named Dernian.

Jon nodded. He fully expected that if Liliana wanted to kill him, she'd do it directly. He was just worried about the book's provenance.

He read the title to her, stumbling over "phthisis", and frowned. "Eugenics is a particularly nasty thing, unless he's talking about animals, maybe."

The Thran used the word differently - at least some of them did, Yawgmoth - but Liliana didn't know about that.

She just shrugged and looked at him. "I haven't any idea what any of those words mean, at least not together like that."

"Well, er. If it were from Earth, it would be someone dedicated to believing their race is superior and others should die, looking into the lowest caste of people, especially ph...oh. That's a lung disease." Thank you, Beholding. It was a terrible thing, so of course it told him about it.

"And given what eugenicists are like, they'd probably either be infecting them, or pointing out how much more susceptible to disease they are. Or at best, examining them without attempting to help."

He grimaced. "And if it were my Earth, this would probably be documentation of a place infested by The Corruption."

Upon further reading, it would turn out that this phthisis was not, in fact, the archaic name for tuberculosis, but something else, though part of the book was, in fact, charting the disease and its symptoms.

"I remain repeatedly grateful that Dominaria isn't Earth, and, most particularly, not your Earth," Liliana said crisply. "Which isn't to say that that isn't what the book will end up being about, but there's no guarantee that it will. So little is known about the Thran, other than the great artifacts that they left behind. Theirs was the first Phyrexian War."

Jon nodded. "Hopefully this won't be as bad. I...um. Do...I wonder if I should take it home and read it and take notes, or if you want me to read it to you."

"As much as I would love to know every word, it is very thick and I expect that such a reading with take hours," Liliana said. Regretfully. "Perhaps notes for now and we can figure out how I can get a deeper understanding of the text another time?"

She wasn't sulking about this. Not at all.

Jon nodded. "I can do that. I can maybe do a translation of a chapter at a time, too, but all of it at once would be too much."

Even typing, he'd get hand cramps.

"That would be wonderful," Liliana said, grinning. "Thank you, darling, I truly mean that. You're holding knowledge that no one has known for over ten thousand years."

Jon gave her something of a half-smile, half-grimace. "Well, secret knowledge is rather my 'thing'."

He frowned at the book. "I can tell you it says something about people living in the Caves of the Damned - sounds pleasant - and someone named...Yawgmoth? I'm not sure of that pronunciation."

Her grin fell off and her jaw dropped, eyes wide. "Did you say Yawgmoth?" she demanded. "Who? What? Are you certain? He's a person?"

"Er...yes, I think so. Some sort of healer. I...hope that's not a bad thing," he said, eyeing her nervously.

"That's impossible," she whispered, staring into middle distance.

"W-well, maybe it'll make sense once I read it," Jon offered.

The look Liliana gave him was supremely skeptical. "I would be shocked and amazed if it does, but I hope so," she said. And then, more to herself, "Yawgmoth."

Jon took a moment to reword his question as a statement. "If there's something I ought to know about them, you could let me know."

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