The Librarian stiffened. Where before its long wooden limbs hung and swayed from its body, it had now gone completely still. Lindle looked back at the adventurers, their eyes trained on the Librarian, but still not reacting to Nothing.
Anton?
Nothing repeated themself, and Lindle watched as the Librarian flinched, suddenly backing up until its back hit the closest bookshelf.
“What’s happening?” Lindle whispered to Nothing. “Why is it acting… afraid?”
Don’t know. Feels like Anton and has Anton’s Face, but Anton was not… this.
The Librarian, slowly as if presented with a predator it didn’t wish to startle, retreated against the length of the shelf, continuing until it could go around the corner, peeking its head around it as if the shelf could shield it from Nothing.
What happen to you Anton?
The adventurers watched with shock as the construct, a hulking source of fear and danger, now appeared to be cowering. “What is going on Lindle?” Rosato whispered to him.
“Nothing tried to talk to it, and it started acting like this. They’re calling it Anton.” Lindle responded before turning his attention back to Nothing. “Who is Anton?”
Anton was librarian, he was kind man, friend, not big wooden golem. Something happened to him.
“How…?” Lindle felt his head buzz with questions, Lindle looked up at the construct. He had said Anton out loud, but it didn’t have any further reaction. “Maybe it just has Anton's face carved to look like him?”
No. He has same Ethos, has changed, but is Anton’s Ethos.
Lindle furrowed his brow, before concentrating on his new sense. Around them, he felt five new sources of what he was calling ‘active’ Ethos, four of which being the adventurers, all intensely complex swirls of Ethos like Lindles, but far brighter and denser, and the fifth being the Librarian. The Librarian was an overwhelming bonfire of power and energy compared to the torch that were the adventurers and the spark that was Lindle. He winced and immediately shut off his Ethos sense.
Lindle couldn’t really tell anything from observing the Librarian’s Ethos that supported Nothing’s claim, but he supposed it didn’t disprove it, which was enough for now. “Nothing says that this thing is, or I suppose was a person named Anton.”
The adventurers exchanged looks, concern and confusion on their faces. “I… don’t even want to think about what that could mean, so I won’t,” Chip said.
“It doesn’t matter.” Theodore cut in. “We can get all our questions answered later, but right now this is an opportunity to escape. If it doesn’t like them,” he gestured to Nothing, “then we use that to get the beyond out of here.”
Rosato nodded. “Theodore’s right. Lindle, can you tell Nothing we’re going to try and leave and to them to keep that thing away?”
“Yeah… okay. Nothing, I’m confused too, but I think we need to leave. I’m sorry about your friend, we can come back in the future to try and figure out what happened to him.”
Nothing didn’t respond for a little while, before slowly they nodded.
…Okay. Anton, we come back for you.
The Librarian flinched again, slinking back. Everyone stood and watched it for another minute to see if it would do anything before they slowly stepped outside the door. Lindle kept his hand with Nothing aloft facing toward the golem as they walked across the library. Nobody made a noise as they made their way to the exit, stepping out into the hallway. They looked inside, but the Librarian didn’t appear.
Still feeling a mix of relief and unease, no one seemed to know what to say now they were out of harm’s way. Lindle looked down towards the hallway into the darkness. They had only explored a few rooms at what could generously be called the entrance of the dungeon. What else could be hidden down here?
With one last look, everyone turned around and went back the way they came. The group moved cautiously, their steps muffled by the thick layer of dust that covered the ground. Everyone seemed unsettled by what they witnessed. Lindle didn’t know much about dungeon monsters, but the way that the Librarian had acted had creeped Lindle out, and the idea that according to Nothing it had been a person…
Lindle noticed that the dungeon pressure seemed to lighten rapidly as they walked toward the exit. As if the dungeon was losing interest in them now that they had decided to no longer take part in its challenges. It had mostly faded into the background without Lindle realizing it after everything that happened, but he felt unburdened as it faded away.
They exited the academy doors with little fanfare and climbed back through the cavern to reach the surface. It had been awkward doing so while one hand was occupied with Nothing and keeping the spellfire alive, but with Rosato’s assistance they managed.
As they finally got back under the moonlight, the chill of the Reach wrapping around them, Lindle felt [Produce Flame] reach the end of its lifespan, the spell sputtering out. Nothing radiated emotions of sudden panic as the fire disappeared.
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“Oh crap.” Lindle started fumbling around in his potion bag for a Mana potion. His Mana pool had essentially been running on empty after he cast [Produce Flame]. Everyone else looked at Lindle with confusion as he took a swig and recast the spell. Nothing slumped in relief once the fire was back.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Dorothea said. “Why are you holding Nothing in an open fire?”
Lindle relayed the question, having forgotten to ask Nothing why it had asked for fire when they first met after everything else.
Fire keeps me… malleable. Give me energy while being unfinished.
“The kiln you were sleeping in didn’t have any fire?” Lindle questioned.
Was hibernating. When awake need fire or else I harden and complete without being ready.
Lindle noticed that Nothing seemed to be getting more verbose as they communicated more. Maybe they were learning the language, or their connection was deepening somehow. More questions for later.
“Well I won’t be able to keep [Produce Flame] active the entire trip back home. It’s several miles of hiking to get back to Glacerhine and I don’t have the MP or enough potions for the way back.”
Will sleep then when fire run out again.
After answering all of Dorothea’s questions Lindle led them all back to their camp and started packing everything up. Once everything was safely stowed away, Lindle opened one of the pouches in his pack for Nothing to sleep inside of. They hadn’t complained about the cold of the Reach so far but it couldn’t hurt to give them a warm place to sleep.
They got started on the return home. The uneasiness of the dungeon eventually going away as Lindle’s accomplishment really started sinking in. He finally did it; a class that would allow him to follow a path of his own without being tainted by his father’s blood. None of the giant classes Lindle had available had ever really felt like something he had earned for himself, even if he had been okay with living under a constant reminder. Now though, he had exactly what he wanted.
He had so many questions about what exactly Artificer was, and how it interacted with Ethos, but he could wait to do some more research and interrogate Nothing for what they knew once they were safely back in the grove. Lindle could tell he was distracted by his own thoughts, if they weren’t following the path they had taken already they probably would have gotten off track several times. In this case, the adventurer's relative clumsiness yesterday was actually handy, there were plenty of tracks to follow strewn throughout the wood.
He let himself go mostly on autopilot as the hours passed, only really tuning back in to make sure they safely passed through razorback territory. His mind was more occupied with experimenting with his new Ethos sense.
So far he could only perceive the Ethos in things a couple of feet away from him, but he could sense things without needing to face or look at them, which could be handy just in general. He was able to visualize what he was sensing a lot better if he was looking at or touching it at the same time though. He had interpreted Ethos as a flavor before… maybe if he tasted something while using it?
What he seemed to be able to tell when sensing something’s Ethos was information about it’s identity, at least that was the most clear when looking at mundane things. Trying to sense the snow around him, his Ethos sense reported back information that unequivocally told him that the Ethos in the snow was just being snow, or more accurately, it was focused on the idea of being snow. It didn’t move, it didn’t emit any kind of energy, it was just still and contently being snow.
Things got a bit different when he tried sensing his gear again, more specifically his alchemical products. The Ethos inside of them was more active, swirling ironically like a liquid in a container, though not in just the actual liquids like the potions, but also in the powders. Taking the time to observe how it acted, Lindle got an impression of containment, like it was full of energy ready to be activated, with a vague hint towards the various ingredients in each one, though he could only recognize that since he remembered picking them out for the potions himself. If he took the time to practice though, Lindle bet he could use that to puzzle out the ingredients in a potion he didn’t know the recipe of.
The hardest thing to parse out with his sense it seemed, was living things. They felt like living flames of endlessly varied colors and sensations. The only one he could completely understand without feeling any strain when he focused on it was his own, though Lindle couldn’t tell if that was because it was his, or if it was tiny. Over the trek, Lindle tried pushing his sense over each of the adventurers.
Rosato’s was tall and felt solid, it was a strange purple-pink wound up tightly and contained, only for that feeling of pressure to periodically let it shoot out a powerful jet of flame and heat into the air and lower that intense sensation, the cycle building again.
Dorothea’s was energetic and cool, but not chilly. It was a refreshing bright blue that constantly shook and darted around the space that was Dorothea’s presence. It was paradoxically hungry and content at the same time like it was eager to consume whatever it could, but also like it was happy as it was.
Chip’s was tied for the strangest seeming Ethos. It heavily resembled the golden holy flames that the cleric had summoned, warm, sheltering, and protective. It also, however, branched out beyond the boundaries of Chip’s own presence. Five tendrils of golden flame spread out, the two thinnest and weakest ones reached out in Lindle’s and Theodore’s direction, two far stronger ones formed a bridge between Chip and the two kitsunes, and the last one was a massive ethereal pillar of energy extending into the sky, quickly leaving Lindle’s ability to sense. Notably that tendril seemed to not entirely be made out of Chip’s own Ethos, but it was mixed with another, though it was very similar. Lindle felt confident in guessing that it was somehow representative of Chip’s connection with his goddess.
Theodore’s Ethos was strange in a different way, a shadowy, almost inverted flame. It blanketed light and heat instead of emitting it, seeming to shy away whenever the other adventurers got near, but not in a timid way. It smoothly avoided attention and interaction. It didn’t reject the tendril of connection coming from Chip, but it didn’t acknowledge or seem to interact with it either. Lindle couldn’t even perceive the tendril if he looked for it when starting the search with his attention on Theodore’s Ethos.
It was all very metaphorical and honestly hurt his head to wrap around what he was observing, needing constant breaks from looking at them all. It didn’t give him much information either compared to how much clearer looking at objects were, but information was information, and it was good practice.
Just like that, after a few hours and good luck, they were just a few minutes away from Glacerhine, stepping onto one of the snow trails back home. As he told everyone that they were nearly there, Rosato stepped up next to him and stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Before we get back, we’ve been talking and decided something.”