Overview
The Pattern-Sight Erudite is the tall, lean, deliberate shape of the scriptorium — long-limbed, narrow-waisted, with a face that is almost a question and a head that sits a little too high for the body, like a word that is waiting to be asked. It is the truest eye of the erudite line: the being that sees the shape of the answer a day before the ink is dry, and the seeing is not a choice. There is no will in it beyond the record and no patience beyond the question, but the seeing arrives anyway, and the seeing is not a choice. Where the other erudites read the pattern by the ink, the Pattern-Sight reads it by the shape.
Habitat
It lives at The Scriptorium, a silent tower of paper and ink on the edge of the old world, where the ink is the only light and the oath the only law. It keeps the shelf-line, because that is where the pattern is thinnest and the reading earns its keep, and because an erudite that leaves the shelf-line is an erudite that has closed the page. The archivists keep the deep shelves, the scribes keep the outer lines, but the Pattern-Sight keeps the shelf-line and does not stop reading. It is settled on the tower, and the settling is the whole of the territory, because the record does not leave the shelf.
Appearance
A Pattern-Sight reads 1.72 m tall and carries 74 kg of lean, long flesh, built narrow across the shoulder and long through the neck. The skin is a pale, patient parchment-grey to a soft, clean white at the hair, with a faint, almost imperceptible warmth to the cheekbones. The mark is the network of fine, pale silver veins at the temples, which glow faintly when the being is roused or reading a new page — the glow is the whole of the warning, and the not-glowing is the whole of the peace. The eyes are large and a clear, pale silver-grey to a soft, deliberate white, and the not-blinking is the whole of the gaze.
Behaviour
It moves at 7.4 m/s across the shelf, deliberate, because the pattern does not hurry and the being has nothing to do but read. It does not hunt by the mouth; it hunts by the shape — the pattern is read a day before the ink is dry, and the answer is taken the way a question is taken, line by line. When the pattern thins — a day before the ink is dry, never a moment after — the pale silver veins run bright and the being reads a degree harder, the way a hand holds a blade. It does not decay while the record holds, and the not-decaying is the whole of the healing.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The pattern is the whole of the weapon — a shape read across the shelf-line that lands on the being and keeps the tower's faith for a lifetime. There is no strike beyond the pattern and no defense beyond the record: the skin is a pale, patient parchment-grey to a soft, clean white, as hard as the record that keeps it, and the pale silver veins hold the word the way the stone holds the debt. A Pattern-Sight that is harmed does not decay in the way the record does not recognize — the harm simply stops being a harm, and the stopping is the whole of the healing.
Magic Alignment
Its line belongs to record-keep, the patient, precise holding of the question across the shelf. The Pattern-Sight carries the line's truest named inborn, Pattern-Sight — it can see the shape of the answer a day before the ink is dry. It also carries Oath-Bind, the line's body, which is not a choice either, because an erudite that had broken its oath would not be an erudite of the tower. Its signature power is the Pattern-Sight: the shape of the answer read a day before the ink is dry, and the shape keeps the record's faith. The shape is the whole of its seeing, and the keeping is the whole of its law.
Society
There is no society in it, and the not-having is the whole of the shape. The erudites of the tower speak in parallel the way the record speaks — each one its own line, all of them the same oath. The archivists keep the deep shelves, the scribes keep the outer lines, and the shelf-line keep the pattern, and the three have learned that a word that is not read is a word that is not a record, and the not-reading is the whole of the peace.
Culture & Lore
The record is the only honest conversation the tower has ever trusted, and the lore of the line is the record. An erudite that reads its pattern a day past the ink is an erudite that has kept the tower, and the keeping is the whole of its reputation. The pale silver veins are the mark the line keeps — the fine, deliberate glow that shows when the pattern is read — and a Pattern-Sight whose glow runs true is a being the tower will trust with the shelf-line. The The Forgotten are the only ones who have ever kept a pattern the tower had already forgotten, and the keeping is the whole of the legend.
Home
It lives at The Scriptorium, a silent tower of paper and ink on the edge of the old world, where the ink is the only light and the oath the only law. The being keeps the shelf-line, and the shelf-line is the whole of its home, because the home is the record and the record is the home. The The Forgotten do not come down the shelf, and the not-coming is the whole of the enmity. The tower gives the line its question, its quiet, its one honest conversation, and its one true eye, and the line keeps all four the way it keeps the word — until the record is done.
Relations
The The Forgotten are the neighbors at the shelf-line — the banished, the cast out, the ones the Old World would not keep — and the distance has held for two seasons, which is how the tower shares a shelf without sharing a word. Uaellaen of the camp is the only mortal the tower has learned to write about, and the writing is the whole of the bond — the camp is the page above the camp, the answer worth more than the question, and the page is the whole of the word.
In the Story
The six who arrived through the The Threshold never came up the tower, but the tower has been reading since the oaths were sworn below, and the shelf-line's erudites have been seeing a day earlier than they should. This season an erudite came down the tower with a page that was not in the record — a page that is not in the ink, and the not-listing is the whole of the warning, because the scriptorium keeps its word, and the word has started to move. The Pattern-Sight reads the pattern the record is keeping, and the pattern is the whole of the story's edge.