Serenity frowned. “There were three planes the day we arrived, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t take us two hours to walk from the portal to the Library.” He checked the timestamps on Aide’s recording; they confirmed his guess. “No, only a little over an hour between the first attack and the second; the third was fairly soon afterwards, at least. We could have missed one before we arrived, but there definitely wasn’t two hours in between.”
“Huh. Maybe they are faster sometimes or maybe they send more planes some days? We can ask Honoria.” Legion frowned for a moment, then relayed Honoria’s answer to Serenity. “She says that she was so busy repairing things that she didn’t keep track of time, but there were at least four attacks that day before we arrived.”
Some variability was probably to be expected. “We’ll have to keep timing them, then; that means that either they send out more planes or their base is closer. An hour really isn’t that far, not at the speed those planes travel.”
Aide had estimated the speed they were traveling in their attack runs at about sixty miles per hour, but they’d accelerated once they attacked. An accurate estimate of how fast they could go wasn’t possible, but it was clear that their targeting wasn’t very good at high speed. That was good to know.
Serenity hoped it wouldn’t matter.
“Where’s Rissa?” If she were anywhere in the Library, Legion would know.
“She’s out with Blaze and Ita; I think she said she’d keep Ita company while Blaze spent time at one of the triage units; from what he said, there are a lot of people getting hurt in the rubble and not anywhere near enough people with the ability to heal anything serious.”
Serenity nodded. He remembered Blaze mentioning that a couple days ago; from what he said, no one was going to die, but without better help some could easily be crippled. “I take it Ita was bored?”
Legion nodded. “She said she’s spent the last couple of days trying to talk to Asihanya’s World Core, but it’s not like Lyka’s; it’s not unhappy and isn’t interested in talking.”
“She must have spent more time talking to Lyka’s core than I realized.” Serenity shook his head. “It’ll do her good to be in a place where everyone doesn’t just dismiss her as a pet.”
That was more hope than expectation, unfortunately. Ita didn’t usually put herself forward; Serenity thought that was left over from her time as a slave. It meant that even when she was around people who knew she was smart, they tended to leave her alone. It seemed odd to call a connection mage standoffish or shy, but both seemed to be true in Ita’s case.
“They’ll be back for dinner,” Legion offered. “Ita will make sure of it, she doesn’t like it when Blaze skips a meal.”
Serenity chuckled. “Sometimes I think Ita is the one Blaze should date, not Ekari.” He knew Blaze and Ekari weren’t yet dating, but even he knew that Blaze was interested.
“Ita isn’t going to say anything and Blaze isn’t paying attention.” Legion responded as if Serenity’s comment wasn’t a joke.
Serenity blinked a few times. “Wait, Ita’s actually looking at Blaze that way?” It hadn’t actually occurred to him that that was even possible.
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Honoria met Serenity in the cataloging area. She had both Kerr and Raz busy figuring out how to properly register some “practice books” with the Library; apparently, they were both still having issues, even though Blaze somehow completed the exercise a few minutes after she explained it to them.
Serenity couldn’t try; from what Honoria said, that wasn’t something that was within the permissions of a Hand. He really wasn’t all that interested, either; working in a library had never been one of his deep desires. He was fairly confident that Kerr saw it as practice, rather than an avocation, and Raz thought of it as working with a different sort of dungeon.
Serenity really would have to see if there were any librarians that wanted to leave Earth after this was all over. Honoria wanted help and he wasn’t confident any of his friends wanted to stay.
“Please follow me.” Honoria led Serenity down a set of stairs that looked an awful lot like the ones they’d taken to get to the Library Core, but this set started in a different part of the cataloging ring.
It also led them far deeper, as if there were several basements beneath the Library Core. That seemed odd to Serenity; dungeon cores were normally located in a relatively inconvenient location. Aki’s was unusual, since it was sited on the surface, but Serenity knew that Aki was depending on her allies to defend her if necessary, rather than trying to create monsters or traps for protection.
Her main protection was misdirection; she had a ‘tower’ area and a ‘dungeon’ area; she was trying to make them seem like they were separate. Was the Library doing the same thing?
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
The long, dangerous stairwell ended abruptly, with a short landing that led to a heavy-looking stone door. It didn’t resemble anything else Serenity had seen in the Library; in fact, it looked more like a slab of stone shoved into a rectangular hole than the artful building above it. There wasn’t any handle as far as Serenity could tell; the only reason he knew it had to be a door was the visible line running around the edge of the door. “What’s this?”
“The Locked Archive.” Honoria glanced at the door, then Serenity, before she settled her gaze back on the door. “It probably has a better name than that, but no one knows what it is; we just know we can’t get it. We don’t even know for sure that it’s an archive.”
She bit her lip, then continued. “There are a lot of things that might be in here, but the only one that’s worth trying to get in is to see if something in there has a connection to the attacks. We still don’t know what they want; it doesn’t seem to be territory but they also don’t seem to have actually achieved anything. There has to be a reason, so maybe they want something specific.”
That seemed like a pretty frail hope, but Serenity had to admit he’d seen less likely things happen. Of course, living for thousands of years gave a lot of time for even rare possibilities. “So how do you think we’re going to get in?”
“We aren’t.” Honoria shook her head. “Kerr thought you might be able to, though, and she made a good point. You don’t need to look up anything about the Library Spiders.”
Library Spiders? Serenity wasn’t sure he even wanted to know what she was talking about. If the spiders left him alone, he’d leave them alone; if they didn’t, he’d have to remember not to use fire. Fire was a bad idea in a library. So was water. Maybe electricity would work?
No, electricity might still scorch or liquefy anything it got too close to. He’d probably want to go directly for Death. It was the least likely to accidentally damage anything that wasn’t alive.
As for entering a locked area no one else could get into … that seemed possible. He could do odd things like that in dungeons; his Ghost in the System title seemed to be the reason, though there had to be a reason behind having the title. As far as he could tell, he’d gotten it for going back in time; maybe it was related to what the Voice had done to hide his future-that-never-happened?
The Voice’s method of hiding didn’t seem to be entirely effective, but Serenity knew that if it wasn’t hidden, he’d have seen far more than he had. The only direct interference he’d seen was from the Voice with a quest that led to Tzintkra and from that Arbiter in the Timestream.
Serenity still had no idea what was up with her, but Time-based abilities were frequently nonsensical.
“I can try.” Serenity walked up to the door and set his hand against it.
The stone slab vanished, leaving an open doorway that led into darkness. As far as he could tell, there wasn’t anything there at all, which meant that either it was a serious trap or it was hidden in some way. It might also be a dungeon portal of some sort, but it didn’t feel like that, even though Serenity didn’t know why he felt that way.
Serenity shrugged and looked back at Honoria. “Are you coming?”
She shook her head. “It’s not open for me. I can see that it’s glowing a little, but that’s all.”
Serenity frowned. He didn’t see the glow. On the other hand, he wasn’t going to let a little bit of missing light stop him.
Serenity took a good look at the door. If there were truly nothing there, there wouldn’t be air and that would be noticeable. If there were something stopping the air, there would have to be a spell or something maintaining it; he didn’t see a spell.
Serenity pushed on his magesight. He wasn’t about to step through the doorway without a little better idea of what it was, no matter how he felt about it.
Fortunately for Serenity’s peace of mind, the ancient wards that protected the Locked Archive were visible. They were intricate and well protected, preventing anyone from gaining information of any sort about the Archive when they were outside, but there was clearly nothing dangerous about them. More than that, he could tell that they’d recognized him and would allow him to pass safely.
He wasn’t sure if he could get Honoria past without fooling the wards. That was probably possible but it would take a lot of study in order to fully understand this particular ward setup well enough.
Serenity nodded to himself then stepped through the open doorway. Once he was fully inside the Archive, he could see that it looked more like a study than a true archive; it was the size of the ground floor of the Library, but while shelves lined the walls, they didn’t cover the entire floor area.
Instead, there was a collection of various places to read or study, everything from tables surrounded by chairs to individual seats or piles of cushions. Some seemed designed for humans or other humanoids, especially ones with tails, but a great number of them weren’t; Serenity didn’t think he’d ever seen this wide a variety of possible seating.
Even stranger, there were a large number of crystals scattered around the room. They seemed to come in a wide variety of colors, shapes, and sizes, but they were all more or less translucent; many were actually clear. They were generally on tables and chairs or near other forms of seating, but that could simply have been coincidence; there were few areas in the room that weren’t near some form of seating.
Serenity didn’t know where to begin; there wasn’t an obvious catalog.
“Welcome to the Broken Mirror of the Repository of Secrets, Hand of the Order Serenity,” a voice spoke from a few feet in front of Serenity. “What do you seek?”
There was no one there; there wasn’t even a spell construct to make the sound. It was almost like the dungeon itself was speaking.
Maybe it was. Aki could do things like that; Serenity seemed to remember he’d done something similar in the A Rest from Death Dungeon, as well.
Even more interesting, it seemed like he hadn’t needed his Ghost in the System title at all; being recognized as a Hand of the Order was enough.