"It's not as though we were give a time limit for our studies," she says mildly.

"Other than our own impatience."

"It's only been one day."

"And we've already found so many books!"

"If you'd rather this..."

"Well, the tournament might be its own kind of educational..."

"Sounds like a yes."

"Sure." To the Third House twins: "We'll be there."

"Happy to have you."

Phoe does a little fist pump. "This is gonna be so much fun."

"Seems likely." Off to find the Second next? (Then the Seventh and Eighth, at least for propriety's sake.)

That's the plan.

The Second is pretty straightforward, though the soldiers seem, uh, ill at ease in the First House overall. No regulations to tell them how to behave in this situation, is Phoe's diagnosis. For the Seventh, they find the necro watching the sunset on one of the balconies, and 'Call Me Dulcie' says she and Pro will try to make it.

...Maybe they can just shove a note under the Eighth's door instead of talking to them?

"...They might prefer that, honestly."

"A win-win strategy. Let's do it."

"Works for me."

Back in the library:

"You should get any sleep tonight if you're going to be fighting tomorrow."

...One drawback.

She makes a face down at the table. "We still haven't found any initial leads."

"Much as it pains me to think it, there might be more to this than the library. We might," theatrical shudder, "need to do some hands-on work."

She giggles. "We can ask the other Houses, too," she acknowledges. "They're probably not ahead of us - but some of them might've seen something important and not realized it."

"Something that might help tie this, uh, eclectic selection together," she gestures at the various tomes they've been investigating strewn around them.

" - Isn't Lady Pent the one who's always asking to see our original documents? She might have some ideas to at least put things in context..." The originals lyctors clearly lived here a while. After a pause: "And she might be unusually willing to read through probably irrelevant text in case there's anything in the margins - it'll be relevant to her research, even if it doesn't relate to attaining lyctorhood."

"Point. Mm."

"If the original lyctors lived here, where? This place is such an odd mishmash of ruin and preservation, but I can't imagine Teacher would have let their living quarters crumble, not with the way they acted about that old prayer."

"They could have cleared out personal effects when they left," she points out. "They would've missed some things - but the constructs have had a few thousand years to tidy up." Frown. "But even then, there'd be psychometric traces, wouldn't there?"

"Well. Yes. But." She holds up a finger. "I've been skimming. These books? None of them older than fifty. This?" She raps a knuckle on an exposed bit of table. "Five thousand, conservative estimate."

"...New copies of older books? Or... Some kind of preservation?"