With my class selection done, I didn’t have many papers left, so I figured I may as well look at them before I headed back to the administrative hall to turn in my classes. There were a couple of coupons for local bars, taverns, and restaurants that catered to incoming freshman, some for various tailoring and cleaning services around the city, and some people hiring for part time or full time jobs.

I discarded most of them, though I kept a few restaurant coupons, and…

I almost tossed away one of them from a shop called Charm and Fable, thinking it was another part time job offer. That was still there, but there was also a coupon attached, stating that it would give students a ten percent discount for the first material purchased for the construction of a wand, staff, or amulet.

I didn’t know much about wands, staffs, or amulets, but the fact that it was specifically for that made me keep it. I’d check out the shop, at least, and maybe see if I could pick out some components for my spells. Now that we were here, Yushin and I could sell some of the stuff I’d picked up as Alastor, and I’d see if I could get my hands on diamond dust for the enshroud spell.

I bit my lip. Was there any way that I could replace that? A hundred and fifty silver a day was going to add up incredibly quickly. I should check it out, and also look at the library.

I finished shuffling the papers aside, then picked up the map of the school, and immediately felt my eyebrows shoot up.

There were the brass towers, where I was now – it had dorms, it was where many classes were held, work rooms could be rented, and all that good stuff, but I’d clearly been right when I’d thought someone had carved a chunk of the landscape out and plopped it on the cloud. There might even have been some space warping magic at play, because the things listed on the map were seemingly impossible, like the crystalline caverns – a full set of caves just shouldn’t be possible on a floating cloud.

And it wasn’t just that. There was the mirror chamber, spidershade forest, healing pools, snapping gardens, pixie ballroom, seer’s bonfire, and more. There was a spot in the brass towers marked as a student market – open weekends only, a cabinet that was ominously labeled ‘that one cabinet’, vault of wonders, and the grand observatory.

Even as I watched the map, a few things changed. I couldn’t quite figure out what, but it was almost like minor bits of the cloud were shifting slowly, too slow for my eyes to make out.

With such a strange map it took me a while, but I did eventually find the library, and I frowned as I read the seemingly nonsensical directions.

It started normal enough, directing me out of the brass towers and to the central hall where administration and the dining room were, then…

“What does ‘step headfirst into the left side of the doorframe while on only your right foot’ even mean?” I muttered to myself.

I shifted over to look at the rules for the dining room. It was similar, but going through the dining room apparently required going through the right side on your right left foot.

I blinked. Maybe they meant there was a door to the left and right? I didn’t remember it, but it was definitely possible.

I shrugged, tucked the map away with my slate, and then headed to the hall. After turning in the sheet to an attendant, I asked him for directions to the library. He grinned at me.

“First year, huh? You guys will get used to it in time, but… Let’s just say this entire citadel is riddled with spatial warping dating all the way back to the age of wilds. The door to this hall is accessed by going through it. Follow the directions on your sheet, and you might end up where you want to go. Just be careful, and don’t stay in one place too long, okay?”

He winked, which I might have interpreted as flirtatious, if not for the fact he was four times my age, with a massive white beard.

“Alright…”

He paused and flicked his eyes over the papers I’d turned in, then had me wait while he retrieved a copy of my schedule and passed it over to me. I flicked my eyes over it. Monday would have my core class – mathematics, history, language, all that stuff – as well as my ethics class. Tuesday was completely empty, as was Thursday. Wednesday had Fundamental Magecraft and Applied Mage Combat, while Friday had Rudimentary Transmutation and Conjuration One.

At the top of the paper there was a large note, stating that two days from now, anyone who hadn’t summoned their grimoire would need to meet in the dining hall for the ritual, while others could visit the flytespear stadium for the normal intro. I felt a pulse of excitement at that, and again I thought of how useful water or wind manipulation could be.

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I thanked the man, then asked one more time if he was serious about how to enter the library. When he assured me that he was, I walked to the door. Feeling a bit silly, I held up my leg, turned, and fell into the doorframe.

There was a flicker of magic around me, the flows of ether so strange, so potent, so… wild… that I didn’t even know how to describe it.

Then I stumbled into the library.

A pair of dark, hollow, empty shelves stood on either side of me, like the maw of a dragon. I slowly stepped forwards, my footsteps echoing strangely through the space. It was far vaster than it had any right to be, just these two shelves. It was watching me. And I knew it.

At the edge of my hearing, almost just out of range, I could hear something moving, a clicking almost like the endless feet of a millipede resonating against a steel drum.

I shivered as I passed through the pair of empty shelves and to the library itself.

An old, battered wooden table sat in the center, with a dim, flickering weirlight overhead the only source of light. The table was empty, but I could see long, thin gouges in the wood, and splatters of ink and blood stained the old grain.

All around me, I could feel the shelves moving, but all I could see was thirteen shelves creating passages.

I was suddenly overcome with the feeling that I was in the maw of some vast being, something far bigger, older, wiser, and more dangerous than even the eldest of dragons.

I took a deep breath, scenting the air as best I could. It smelled of musk and paper and dust, yes, but there was a sour note, buried deep down beneath the scent of books.

Necrosis.

Meat that was beginning to rot, but was still a part of something vast, and alive.

The faint chittering of a vast swarm of beetles hummed in the distance and then was gone.

At this point, I spun and turned to leave, but the shelves that I had entered through was gone entirely. Instead, there was a small, warmly lit sitting room, with a crackling fire and a couple of people milling about in academy uniforms – most embossed with yellow thread and green accented symbols. One of them, an older dwarf student, had a green symbol and blue accents though. That marked her as a fourth circle mage who could stretch to cast a fifth circle spell or two.

I was immediately on edge. A cheerful, well lit room in the middle of a creepy, vast, empty expanse? That screamed that the students were demons or doppelgangers or something.

The fire didn’t smell like fire, which made it worse.

But the people inside did smell normal. Gross, slightly sweaty, with a hint of fire and metal around the dwarf, and an all-too-strong herbal scent around an elf.

That made me pause. Most illusions didn’t match scents, or if they did, they missed fine details.

As I was contemplating, one of the students glanced up and called out.

“First time?” she asked, her voice echoing strangely.

I shifted my weight slightly and nodded, and she hopped out of her chair, through the reading room, and out into the dark library. I spun my ether pool into an arcane missile spell, prepared to rapidly chant the words of power and flick my fingers if she made any sort of wrong motion.

“Good instincts,” she said, then held out her hand. “I’m Anna of Endless Fields.”

I shook her hand.

“Emrys of White Sands,” I said. She gave me a questioning look, but nodded.

“Nice to meet you. You’re right to be wary in the library. It’s…”

She trailed off, then shrugged.

“Well, as far as I know, even the Erudite isn’t sure about the true nature of the library.”

I glanced around at her words. The shelves had changed again, and the book on the old, battered table was opened to its first page.

I frowned.

I was certain there hadn’t been a book on the table a moment ago. Anna’s eyes went wide and she frantically gestured to me.

“Grab it!”

I moved without thinking, snatching the volume off the table and clutching it to my chest before spinning to look back at Anna. She let out a sigh of relief.

“What was that?!” I demanded.

“The library gave you a book. For free! You don’t ignore that kind of offer,” Anna informed me. “Normally, you have to work for a spell guide or spellbook, but the library tends to go easy on first years, especially in the first week. Still, we shouldn’t linger, let’s head back to the reading room.”

I hesitated and Anna smiled reassuringly.

“Trust me. The reading room is about the only safe place in the library.”

Though the tone of her words indicated they were meant to put me at ease, the content had the opposite effect.

Without waiting for him, Anna turned and began to hurry over to the reading room, which was the only part of the library that hadn’t seemed to have moved at all, apart from covering the entrance that I’d come in from, of course.

I weighed the pros and cons of following her for a long, long moment, then hastened to follow. If this was a trap, I couldn’t figure out what or why – there had to be other ways to trap me than an elaborate spatial warp.

When I stepped into the reading room, the sounds faded slightly. They were still there, at the very edge of my hearing, but they were less frequent, less important, and sunk into my brain less.

Anna let out a soft breath and smiled at me.

“What’d you get?” she asked.

It took me a moment to realize that she was talking about the book, and I looked down at it. The guide was written in Hua-Long, and it was called ‘A practical spell guide to the blood price spell’.

“Ah, curses,” Anna said. “Are you going to need a translator? Sometimes they’ll come in a language you only sort of know, but don’t speak or read.”

“No, I can read Hua-Long,” I said, then looked up at her. “It’s a spell guide to the blood price spell. What…?”

Her eyebrows shot up, and she whistled.

“Oh, that’s a good one. You might be able to trade it, if you can get the spell down before the return is due and find someone else fluent in Hua-Long.”

“What do you mean trade it? What is going on with this place? It’s… Creepy.”

“Alright, let’s back up a little bit,” Anna said. “What do you know about the library already? Sorry, I haven’t helped many firsties with the library – I’m only a second year myself.”

“I know nothing at all,” I said.

Anna laughed, and nodded, then glanced around and pointed to a pair of reading chairs that hadn’t been claimed by people studying.

“Take a seat,” Anna began. “And we’ll take it entirely from the top.”