Chapter 78 - No Smoking in the Library

Time returned, and Darza’s blade fell, only to meet the outstretched palm of Lady Arkelai, fully in the flesh in our world. She towered over the Mayazian brute by a head and a half—larger than she’d seemed. Her horns shined almost painfully white under the light of the dragon fresco. Rather than cutting her, the sword stopped cold with a ring of steel on stone. He jumped back, trying to wrench it from her hand, but she tightened her fingers and held firm. A red glare spread from her grip along the blade, and the top third warped and bent as though melted in a furnace. She let the blade go, and Darza pulled back the ruined magic sword, staring at the end which had been twisted back to point at the cross guard.

“Who the blood-gutted hell are you?” he asked.

“Darcent, who is that?” said Annalisa. “Her horns are so shiny! How did she get them so shiny?”

Arkelai turned. “Ah yes, the partner.”

“Your horns are soooo pretty!” said Annalisa.

Arkelai smiled at Anna and swept her hair away to expose more of the white-gold horns. “Thank you,” then to me, “Take good care of that one. She reminds me of my youngest sister.”

“So… what happens now?” I asked.

Rather than answering, Lady Arkelai opened her palm that had held the sword. A spark danced across her skin, violent and vibrating with barely contained energy. Her eyes flashed, and I got that sense of having my depths pierced again. “It’s been charming, child. But greed will only get you so far. It’s about time you employed that scroll beneath your shirt, don’t you think?” The spark began to shift in hue from a deep orange to a white-hot sunburst that hurt to look at. And then Lady Arkelai turned her hand over and let it fall. As quick as she had appeared—before her spark even hit the floor—the dragon heiress was gone again.

Rather than snuffing itself out on the stones, it flared up and beams of heat speared out in every direction with a shur-whush sound. I don’t know how else to describe it. One of them blasted Darza back off his feet. He shouted, more in anger than in pain, I think. That coat of his really was something else. I ducked another beam that passed within inches of my cheek. It felt like pressing my face to a searing bank of coals. Where those beams landed, raging fires spread through the library, taking root in the old, dry books and piles of dusty scrolls. The witch, Maza, looked frantically between the flames and her own efforts to quell the comparatively meager blaze Annalisa and I had started. Hopeless. She quickly reached the same conclusion I did. The witch stopped trying to fight the flames and began grabbing books off the shelves at random.

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“Time to go!” I shouted. The library was getting hotter by the minute. Annalisa stared at the destruction, eyes wide and jaw hanging slack. I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close as I slipped the scroll from my jerkin and pressed my thumb to the rune. A power began to pull at me. “Hold on!” I shouted over the roaring flame. Annalisa wrapped muscled arms around my midsection, squeezing so tight I thought she might break me right in half. A flash of motion on the left caught my eye amid the flames. The animated knife had worked its way free, and it shot toward me. I held out my hand and it slapped into my palm, eye once again closing as whatever creature possessed it returned to its slumber.

Across the hall, the Mayazians were in full retreat. Maza channeled everything she had into a shield spell that held the worst of the flames off, while Darza had actually doffed his coat and used it to shield the smaller mage, even as the burned and blistered shark trundled them both back toward the ocean tunnel. The big crustie rampaged, on fire and out of control, until its eyes fixed on us. It was smart enough to assign blame, apparently, because I swear, those lidless eyes still somehow narrowed, and it made a beeline for us with claws raised, shattering bookshelves and heedless of the spreading conflagration.

He got close enough for me to smell the surprisingly appetizing scent of cooking crab meat before the translocation spell took hold, and Annalisa and I found ourselves jerked upward so fast it pulled me straight out of my shoes. Rather than colliding with the ceiling, we flashed through a startled nest of trolls, then up again to a pitch-black chamber that smelled like low tide at Oildown. Then through luminescent halls built by dwarves, then through a crowded scullery of surprised-looking washwomen, then a bed chamber with a handful of startled people in gold-colored masks and nothing else, and finally, to a rooftop overlooking the western half of the middle city.

My head swam with the after-effects of the rapid teleportation scroll. Celithia and Volian had probably paid upwards of forty to fifty cunnings for that piece of parchment. And now it sad dull and useless in my hands. I let it fall to the rooftop.

“Woah! I guess we ran out of up. I feel like I drank a gallon of bad lager,” said Annalisa, hand on her forehead. Her tail swam drunkenly through the air. She pointed down. “Darcent, look!”

fire smoke was billowing out of sewer accesses across the street. I looked further. More was coming out of a cracked row of cobbles, and yet more wisps were starting to drift up from a street on our other side. I guess it had found its way out of the library. Gods, all that knowledge, all those books. Gone. I shrugged out of my pack and unclasped it, looking at the few volumes I’d managed to spirit out of the Soul Seeker wing. I had to hope the answers I sought were these tomes. And I had to figure out how to turn them to my advantage in the days to come.

I grinned, closing the bag and fingering the broach, the amulet, and the blade possessed. All things considered, our trip to the undercity had been more successful than I could have dreamed. We’d had to dig through shit, true. But we’d found magic items. We’d outsmarted professional delvers, and we’d spit in the eye of our Hollowdown neighbors for a third time. When Mother Mayaz’ goons came knocking again, they’d find us more prepared than ever before.

When I was through with her empire, it would make the Soul Seeker library look like a campfire.

End of Arc 5