The Universal Library - VLD
Keith didn't know what this place was, but it was certainly different. For one, it bore no marks of the Galra occupation. It carried a sort of old-world charm he couldn't quite define, as if this building was more ancient than any other around it could even fathom. It seemed to be a library of some sort, walls upon walls lined with bookshelves filled to the brim, lecterns and long tables in great halls and comfortable wing-back chairs secreted in nooks and crannies. There was, however, also technology, artfully hidden behind wooden casing, masterful enamel work and probably the delicate stucco as well. Curiosity winning over caution, he walked along one line of bookshelves, studying the titles - or rather, trying to. But the script was not one he was familiar with. Too blocky for any incarnation of Arabic he'd ever seen, but too much a cursive to be Hebrew. Was this what Aramaic looked like? As he raised his glance from the books' spines, he saw a sign at the top of the shelf where a path intersected. For a moment, all he saw was the same letters(?) as on the spines, then they seemed to change form, rearrange until they settled on the Latin alphabet he'd grown up with, reading Theology, Aramaic. So it really was Aramaic then. Absent-mindedly, Keith wondered whether there was anyone else in the building, a librarian maybe, as he made his way deeper into the structure. He passed sections dedicated to all kinds of topics and in all manners of languages and writing systems. Arabic, Cyrillic, Hieroglyphics, even Ogham and runic script. From theology to medicine to historiography to poetry and even novels.
"Tráthnóna maith, Keith Kogane, Ridire Fáin Dearg de Voltron" a soft voice said from behind him. He turned around.
A woman stood before him, probably somewhere in her late twenties, going by her appearance, dark hair piled on her head in an elaborate labyrinth of braids, trailing down her back almost to her waist still. Her clear eyes were of a startling gold, her skin appeared to be finest alabaster. Around her neck lay a rope of pearls and lapis lazuli. Her slender form was clothed in a medieval dress and surcoat, wide open sleeves trailing almost to her knees from where her hands were folded in front of her. She was smiling kindly.
"Good evening", he returned the greeting - his knowledge of Gaelic was limited and mostly related to swords and the making thereof but he could manage a simple greeting well enough - "are you the librarian?"
The woman laughed softly. "Indeed I am. My name is Valeya Kaer Nadar. It has been a long time since someone visited the Library."
"What exactly is this place?"
"This is the Universal Library, a place where the entire knowledge of the Universe, everything that is, everything that ever was and quite a bit that will yet be, is collected and preserved. You entered from the Earth Branch. It has been closed to the general public since the building housing it burned in 48 BC of your calendar."
Something clicked in Keith's mind at that. A fire in 48 BC… "This is the Library of Alexandria"
"That is how it was known to humans, yes. We had, for a short time, a second branch in Baghdad, much more carefully curated than the Alexandria one ever was, but it, too, was destroyed in 1258. No third attempt to incorporate Earth was made." Valeya sighed. "If you are looking for the section on blades, take that corridor" she pointed down the corridor to his left "until you reach the books on Greek philosophy of the 5th century BC, then take a right until you reach the doors, third door on the left, then straight on past the tables, up the stairs to the second floor - by European counting, that is - immediately turn left, then it starts at the third intersection and goes on from there." The Librarian smiled at Keith. "If you require translations, the lecterns with the red ribbons can provide those. And if you need help, I will know"
"How?" Keith couldn't quite wrap his mind around the last part. If she was not even close - it did sound rather far away - how would she know if he needed help? On that matter, how did she know he was interested in blades? Or what his name was?
"I am the Librarian. I am connected to the Library in a way that transcends mortal coils." The Librarian explained. "I will leave you now to explore"
And with those words, she went - no, glided, soundlessly - to the room of doors he had first entered, where a reception counter sat in the center, with a clear view of the doors.
Still mildly confused by the Library and its Librarian, Keith made his way to the books about blades. He did have a thing for everything that was sharp and shiny.
Valeya kept an eye on the young Paladin as he perused the extensive section on blades of all kinds. He was almost a child still, especially by the standards of his mother's people. And yet, a seasoned commander, a warrior blooded and tried. It was a travesty, truly, but war rarely cared for morals. He reminded her of another half-Gala that had come to the Library quite by accident. It had been so long ago, long before the Earth branch had ever opened its doors. A young prince that had barely outgrown puppy-paws, yet already so scarred and haunted. She had seen that young man grow and mature, been witness to the heights and depth of his life. And she knew, of course, of his end. The fall of this once bright and brilliant man that had survived so many hardships.
If there was one thing Valeya regretted in her long, long life as the Librarian, it was her inability to avert Emperor Lotor's grim fate.
It was true that Lotor's actions had been questionable at best and less than that at the end but that made his fate no less a tragedy. Valeya knew him better than most other beings in the universe, knew him longer than most, too.
Lotor had been a child of sacrifice, of war. His father might have been alive but he'd still been fatherless - or would have been better off thus. His mother didn't even bear mention, Valeya had known Haggar when she had been Honerva still and had found her cold and too singularly focused then and her opinion of the Altean hadn't improved.
Lotor had known the harsh reality of politics and war well enough to know that sometimes you only had bad choices, sometimes you had to be opportunistic and sometimes you had to do the wrong thing for the right reasons because it's all you could do to avoid an even bigger loss. War (and Galra society and politics with it) was very much a zero-sum game, except there was no winning and the best you could hope for was to break-even. Growing up as he did, a half-Gala in a society where that coincidence of birth was a virtually indelible mark of inferiority, of shame had taught him those lessons earlier in life than any child should have to. (In her opinion no child should ever have to learn that lesson at all, no matter the age, but unless Utopia suddenly magiced into existence that was a dream best left for the naive and the foolish)
But Lotor had wanted more than breaking-even. He didn't just want to win the game, he'd wanted to break it. To end the war. A war that had been going on for as long as most species could remember. There was today no-one left alive who even remembered a time without it, if you discounted the brief period of time when Voltron was first active, which Valeya usually did, considering Voltron's peace was a fragile armistice at best and a smoke screen if you looked too closely.
And Lotor had known that his goal was an up-hill battle (in mud. During a thunderstorm. At night. In winter) so he had been willing to do a lot, compromise his own morals for that ideal he wanted to achieve. (However naive that ideal may have been.)
Then had come Voltron's re-entrance to the war and political scene. By then, Lotor had worked nine thousand years towards his ideal.
He had sacrificed his morals and integrity more than once to get closer to his ever elusive goal.
With the entrance of Voltron the tide had seemed to finally turn against his father and his window of opportunity had come up. His goals might have actually seemed reachable for once. He had thrown himself into the central conflict and gauged Voltron's actual capabilities and then his father woke up and his window began closing. Rapidly. So he got an in with Voltron and used it to yank that window of opportunity wide open - and he became Emperor for it. But he still couldn't just declare the war over, his military elite - that he so desperately needed to keep his throne - would have rebelled and Lotor had known that as well.
So he'd kept working on his quintessential plan, gotten close to the queen apparent of Altea to find Oriande. Valeya doubted he had planned to fall for her, was reasonably sure it had been an accident actually, though one he probably hadn't quite minded.
But then the Colony's existence had been revealed (and promptly misunderstood) and the Quintessence poisoning and his general's final betrayal had exacerbated the already underlying troubles plaguing Lotor's mind and everything must have seemed to crumble around him. His window of opportunity not just closing, but walled up. Ten thousand years of planning and work and blood and sacrifice had suddenly been for nothing.
Was it truly so surprising that he hadn't wanted to accept that, hadn't been able to accept that? So his mind had tried to make it make sense, tried to find a solution. But with his mind addled by the quintessence poisoning and probably chronic lack of sleep (Lotor had never been good with that, Valeya recalled, insomnia had been a staple of his life), his hurt feelings had probably caused some kind of hormonal (brain chemical? Valeya wasn't sure, she had never had much of an interest in biology) backlash. And the solution his usually so brilliant mind had come to was to do away with Voltron and More Quintessence. Which had only made everything worse, of course.
And in the end, Lotor was stranded half dead in a sea of mind-addling poison that at the same time was likely going to keep him alive indefinitely. After all, quintessence was basically the life force of everything and Lotor probably better at processing it and taking it in than just about anyone else in the universe due to prenatal exposure to it.
A terrible end for a man that had been so promising, so brilliant. He could have been the greatest ruler in history, could have been named in one breath with Brogar, conqueror of Feyev, with Alande Forlura, the great semi-mythical queen of Altea's early first age, with Alexander I of Macedonia and Akbar. But maybe it was not to be. Predictions, no matter how probable, where still no guaranties.
Valeya sighed and wondered if she ought to reach out to Slav. An update on his accounts might be overdue in light of recent events.
A twinge in the back of her mind informed her of being needed. With a thought she was close to the section on blades and approached the young paladin.
"Dia duit arís." She greeted him.
"Do you have any detailed books on History?"
She chuckled. "We have extensive genealogies on every ruler of the Galra empire since before they became space faring. If it happened, we have it, if it didn't happen, odds are we have it anyways."
"Where would I find those books? Specifically Galra history. And society. And maybe diplomacy." There was an all too familiar light in Keith's eyes. Valeya smiled.
"Along the gallery until the door and then the third intersection on the left. But I think, there is something that will interest you more right now."
"What do you mean?"
"You try to understand what went wrong, don't you? How it came to the Sincline Battle and its ultimate catastrophe. You want to understand what happened with Lotor, whether he was truly that good an actor or whether there were other forces at play. Whether there was something you could have done differently. The books on Galra history and society and on diplomacy would help you, yes, but only to a point. But we have something that will tell you exactly what you need to know. Come, I'll take you there" Valeya explained.
A short journey later they came to a rather sizable rotunda, a crest inlaid in the ornate wooden doors. Valeya let them in and Keith was almost spellbound by the sheer mass of books - or, no. They weren't books, not in the classic sense at least. They seemed to be some sort of record medium, shaped to resemble a book. Either that or they were magic (admittedly not something he could completely discount, after everything he'd seen), for the glowed softly in the dimly lit room.
"These are personal records spanning 10 000 years of history. They are - were submitted by Lotor annually and are the greatest collection of their kind. You will find all you need here." Valeya's voice was gentle, as if not to disturb the books (?) around them. "Don't worry about the mass" she held out a small device to him that almost resembled an old-fashioned magnifying glass used by art dealers, jewelers and bookbinders, "This is a special processing device that will filter the information as needed to answer your question, provide cross-references, give any necessary additional information."
Keith took the device from her.
"Thanks. By the way, how did you fit all this into that small a building?"
Valeya laughed. "We didn't. The building you entered housed a portal, a doorway so to speak, to this place. To be both precise and simple about it, this could probably most aptly be called a pocket dimension not fully in the universe in that it has no real fixed physical presence but not removed from it either. We have branches housing portals - or carefully curated collections in case of non space-faring species, let alone those unaware of life outside their home world - on many different planets. There was one on Daibazal but it had been only sparsely visited since the expansion war picked up heat - excluding the military sections, that is. If you'd like a Library Card, that can be easily arranged before you leave, by the way." With another smile and a nod, the Librarian left him to his research.
He definitely had to take Hunk, Pidge and Allura here at some point. Maybe even Lance.