Having equipped herself with a bunch of hairpins for lock-picking, and mentally psyching herself up for a difficult break-in, Saffie was quite surprised to find that when she and Acorn arrived at St James’s Square, the London Library’s ornate oak entrance was sitting slightly ajar. She carefully pressed her hand to it and it opened with a creak, allowing them to slip in easily.
The entrance hall was an impressive space lit by hanging globe lamps, and was dotted with grand, white pillars, with bookshelves spanning from floor to ceiling, but there was no sign of the bonefiend. According to the internet search Saffie had made on the bus, the library held over a million books that were split across 3 connected buildings. She wondered if there was any way to zoom into her Overworld map to get a more precise location for the beast.
“Open map,” she whispered, hoping her voice wouldn’t scare the bonefiend away if it was close by. But as soon as the map folded out of mid-air in front of her, she felt a panic rise in her chest.
The bonefiend was gone.
“No no no no no!” she wailed.
Her eyes darted desperately over the surrounding boroughs of Mayfair, Belgravia, and Victoria, but it was nowhere to be seen. She couldn’t understand it. How could the creature have disappeared so suddenly? Though bonefiends were supposed to be fast, there was no way it could have fled so far away from the library that it was no longer on the map at all.
She shook her head to herself, completely bewildered, but stopped as she heard a sound. It was the sound of the entrance door she had just come through clicking shut behind her.
With her panic about the missing bonefiend quickly turning to fear, she slowly turned around to see a sliver of violet smoke swirl sinisterly in front of the door until it revealed the shape of a human being.
The girl in the purple robes.
Saffie’s eyes immediately went to the door handle, but with a casual flick of the girl’s wrist, a blue mesh wafted over the entire door. If Saffie’s memory of something Ashmi had taught her at the guild was correct, it was a Shocker Mesh, something that would effectively electrocute her if she tried to pass through it.
“There’s no escape for you now, Sapphire Sparkes.”
As the truth of the situation sank in, Saffie couldn’t believe how foolish she had been.
“This whole thing was a trap, wasn’t it?” she said. “You saw me tracking beasts on my map on the Tube that day. The bonefiend never existed. It was some kind of illusion that you put there to lure me to somewhere that you could lock me in.”
“And it worked a treat,” the girl said. She slowly pulled her hood back to reveal her face for the first time. She had an intense expression and was sporting cornrows that ran in a stylish swirl outwards from the leftmost point of her hairline. Saffie guessed she was using some in-game customisation to modify the colour of her irises, because just like her robes, they were deep purple.
“It’s time to tell me where he is,” she said.
Saffie shook her head and began taking steps backwards, desperately looking all around her, trying to determine in which direction she should run, but the girl was already advancing on her.
Even though the library was huge, Saffie knew that she most likely wasn’t going to be able to escape without a fight, but she would be useless against someone concealing their stats with an enchantment.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
As the word enchantment flashed through Saffie’s mind, she suddenly remembered something. During her time being grounded in her bedroom and blasting measly enemies from her window, she had gained access to one new spell, something she had dismissed at the time because it wasn’t the counterspell she was hoping for, but something that might just be able to help her in her current situation.
“Disenchant!” she snapped, pointing at the girl’s chest.
In mid-stride, the girl was knocked back slightly as what appeared to have been an invisible barrier around her suddenly shattered into tiny purple fragments.
Saffie couldn’t help but let out a little yelp of triumph, but she knew she couldn’t waste a moment longer celebrating.
“Scan!” she followed up, and this time the girl’s real stats appeared.
Cora Adebayo (Player)
Age: 15
Guild: None
Panion: Vesper
Resistant to magic types: Fire, Water, Ice
Immune to magic types: Earth, Time
Saffie was surprised to discover that this Cora girl was just one year older than herself. She also realised she had never noticed the girl’s panion. Where was it? She tried to locate it between the wisps of smoke that seemed to be persistently following Cora around, and then it dawned on her. The panion was the smoke.
“A scan isn’t going to help you,” Cora said.
But Saffie had to disagree. Now that she knew that Cora’s strengths and weaknesses were being modified (most probably from drinking a concoction of potions), she could pick and choose spells from categories that Cora had no resistance against.
“Pulse!” Saffie yelled, thrusting the base of her palm out. An invisible force wave pummelled into Cora, sending her flying backwards across the library’s rouge carpet, but instead of Cora landing on her back like Saffie expected, she transitioned gracefully into a backwards roll, coming to a stop in a low crouching fight stance, ready to retaliate.
“Arak Vaar,” Cora snarled, and flung something in Saffie’s direction. Saffie ducked and turned at the same time, following the strange energy ball as it connected with the bookshelves behind her, fizzling into the spines like popping candy.
Saffie had never seen anything like it. She couldn’t tell what elemental property it had, nor did she recognise its name. The vast majority of spells Saffie was aware of had recognisable names that were usually pretty self explanatory. This magic was in a whole different language, and a whole different league to her own.
Saffie’s gut churned. Even with the successful scan revealing Cora’s strengths and weaknesses, she knew she wouldn’t stand a chance in a straight up duel. She had to escape.
As Cora readied her arms to cast another spell, Saffie darted for a set of metal stairs to her right and leapt up them, taking two steps at a time as Acorn scurried up the bannister beside her. She emerged into what seemed like an endless maze of bookshelves, and stopped briefly to consider which aisle to enter, but she could hear Cora pouncing up the stairs behind her. She just had to run and hope to find a way out before she was caught.
For what seemed like hours, Saffie wound through the aisles as fast as her feet could carry her, taking sharp turns wherever and whenever she could, jumping over Cora’s projectiles and dodging blasts as they connected with the shelves around her, creating the illusion that there were books and loose pages flying in all directions. Amidst the chaos, Acorn ran across the shelves sideways, defying gravity with the sheer force of momentum being created by his speed as Cora’s smoke panion Vesper soared after him, snatching at his tail.
As Saffie fought to catch her breath, she skidded around another corner, hoping that there might be a window at the end of this aisle.
But there wasn’t.
And worse, there were no exits into its adjacent aisles.
She turned around to backtrack, but she was too late.
Cora was just six or so yards away, striding towards her menacingly.
Acorn leapt onto Saffie’s shoulder and buried his head into her neck as Vesper floated in front of them.
Saffie backed away, almost tripping on some of the loose digital books, then she connected with the brick wall that signalled the end of the aisle.
They were completely trapped.
“Tell me,” Cora said through gritted teeth, raising her arm. “Where. Is. He?”
Saffie squeezed her eyes closed, but if Cora thought she was going to rat Dax out, then she clearly knew nothing about her.
“You’ve already done enough damage to my uncle!” she screamed. “I’m NEVER going to tell you where he is!”
At these words, there was silence. Saffie opened one of her eyes to find Cora narrowing her own.
“Your uncle?” Cora said. “I’m not talking about your uncle.” She leaned in close to Saffie’s face. “I’m talking… about Liam.”