Chương 56: 56 Loop 2, Part 10

We went past the shaft slowly. There was no way we were going to be able to use it to get back up. There were bent rungs, missing rungs, and even one section of ladder that had been completely ripped away by the first red golem. Finn paddled through the air like he had no idea what he was doing—which I guess he didn't. I, on the other hand, had the hang of the spell, and I'd cast it on my chair. It was pretty fucking cool. I didn't even need golems.

"You're not moving," he said through clenched teeth.

"So? You're just jealous you don't have a chair." Below us, twenty golems stood scattered across the rubble where they had landed. Flag waved up at us with both arms. I had my chair gently rest above the rubble. Finn, on the other hand, tried to land.

"Okay," he said. He tested his feet on the ground, despite not needing to be standing.

"Let's find this Lost Library. No more dillydallying."

"No." I held up a hand.

"Before we go forward, we need to do some prep."

"Prep? What for? We have an army. We don't need prep."

"Sure, we have an army," I said.

"But that army is useless without weapons. Or defenses." I turned the chair to face them properly.

"Last loop, I came down here by myself and met the locals. They were a bit hostile."

"The Frollarts, I know. We floated over them up there. Why can't we do the same down here?"

"Finn, that was, like, five. We're going to be facing more than a hundred." His face dropped in shock.

"They'll come out of the walls. And they won't come alone. Just picture it. Dozens of bandaged hands, click-clacking against stone. Their tiny, swollen feet fluttering in the wind." I fake-vomited.

"They've been in the walls this entire time? How many have we passed?" He shuddered.

"And a hundred? There's only two of us, man. And I'm a healer. Neither of us fights, not really..."

"Finn, relax."

"Relax? How can I relax now?" He was pacing now, not realizing he was still floating off the ground.

"How many fit in a corridor? How do we fight them? God, we're gonna be overwhelmed."

"Finn, you're not thinking clearly. Probably because you need to sleep. Look around you." Finn paused and then his eyes widened as if he was seeing the army for the first time.

"Like I said, we have an army. And I have a plan." That got half a breath out of him, which was the point.

"You have a plan? You don't plan things. That's work." I laughed alongside him, and was about to say what my plan was when he held up a finger to me.

"Shh, Axe is talking." His hand was still up, listening in, then saw me and sighed.

"He wants to know the exact number of Frollarts we're gonna face."

"I didn't stop to count." He listened in again.

"He says you should have. Counting is the difference between a soldier and a corpse." This was going to be a problem. Every conversation now had Finn having to act like a middleman. And all because I couldn't hear Axe. Fortunately, I had solved that problem last year. I just wasn't too sure if it would work in this situation, but it was worth a shot. I pulled out my wand and cast [Subtitle]. There was no reason why it should've worked. But it did.

It turned out Axe had been making sounds as a golem, but since he didn't have a mouth… well, his "Speech" just wasn't able to be picked up by human ears. Text bloomed into the air by Axe. And immediately, I could tell what he was saying.

"Count next time. Count, count, count, count. There are never fewer enemies than you think there are." Well, that was a relief.

"Noted," I told the axe.

"Next time, I'll bring an abacus." Finn's head swiveled between me and the golem.

"Wait. You can... You're answering him?"

"Dude, you heard me cast [Subtitle]. Come on, you're normally quicker than this." Relief moved across Finn's face, and he smiled for what felt like the first time today.

"Oh, thank Therumia. Laz, you don't understand. He is nonstop. He's been asking questions since we left the workshop. He wanted to know the height of a fucking ceiling."

"That's because ceiling height matters. Ask any dead man who's hit his head on stone and lost a fight. Height, height, height."

"See, that one's actually reasonable," I said to Finn.

"Okay, Enough dillydallying." I said, mocking his tone from earlier. I turned my chair around to face our army. While we would be outmatched five to one by the Frollarts, we had something they never would. Magic.

"Here's the plan." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. - An hour later, the army was flying. All twenty of our golems, Axe and Flag included. Instead of crunching on rubble, their gold boots drifted behind us in a loose column, with Flag and Axe leading.

"I like this," Flag said.

"Can I always have an army?"

"You're a natural, buddy. Thank you for taking charge of them."

"And every chance I get, I'm gonna have one. This is the best team I've ever been on. Thank you, Lazlo."

"Isn't this the only team you've been on?"

"Yes, and it's the best one." Finn and I drifted at the front of the formation. Every few minutes, I checked the tether, worried at what it meant that I was feeling less vibration than I had on the previous loop. Kalin being arrested hadn't changed things that much. Right? Halfway down the corridor, the first gap in the library wall appeared. It was like it had developed fingers. Pale blue appendages that were bandaged together started testing the wall." [Slick]," I cast.

The floor under that first Frollart went glass-smooth before it had even left the wall. The Frollart went down with a thud, its knuckles skating uselessly while the entire army drifted by. The scout was still sliding when the rest came out of the walls. Stone scraped on stone somewhere behind the rough-cut corridor. The horde had almost assembled.

"Laz," Finn said quietly, a note of panic in his voice.

"They're following us, dude."

"I know."

"You know, and we're just..." He gestured vaguely at our army.

"They can't reach us up here, Finn. It's literally not a problem at all." Axe started speaking.

"I've counted seventeen so far. Forty more are coming from farther away. But they won't attack us yet. They understand they need to prepare a defensive stratagem first. More, more, more. I hadn't yet understood the golem's cadence. He seemed to have a bigger vocabulary than I would have thought. But he also repeated random words like a child. Did every nonhuman soul have some weird-ass quirk?

"Don't compliment the enemy, Axe," Finn protested.

"A warrior respects his enemy. Underestimate them at your own peril. Peril, peril, peril." The scraping sounds continued following us the rest of the way to the library. And then more kept coming. The noise behind the wall got louder and louder. The numbers crawling through continued; and the sounds of knuckles overlapped until there was no space for my own thoughts anymore. But it was just like I had planned. And soon, it wouldn't be an issue at all. We finally made it to the first clearing of the Lost Library.

Ghostly shelves went out and up until the dark overtook them. The stone was carved in ridges which extended the shelves beyond the ghostly visages. Drifting between the shelves were pale and translucent books that glowed—some carried by similarly pale and translucent creatures, others floating on their own. A large book the size of a dining table sailed past at head height, its pages turning themselves for a reader who didn't exist. Or at least, one I couldn't see. I slowed my drift and moved to the side.

I wanted an unobstructed view of Finn's face as he realized where we were. He was distracted staring at one of the creatures when a ghost book passed through his chest.

"That was... that was..." Finn started hyperventilating.

"Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. No, this can't be real. This can't be real. This can't be real." He shut his eyes and tried to cower behind Axe.

"Laz, what's going on? Where are we? Oh, God. Oh, God." I didn't know what to say. I had never seen him act like this before. Was he actually that scared of ghosts? One of the librarians chose that moment to walk between the stacks to our left. It was roughly humanoid, but its arms were too long, and its head was bent at an angle no neck should allow for. Its blocky face was pressed into a phantom volume. It had a stack beneath the book that it was shelving from as it read. It walked directly through Finn.

He made a sound I had never heard from a person before.

"Very interesting," Axe said.

"An enemy that can walk through stone. Hmm. Stone, stone, stone."

"They're shelving books, Axe. They're non-combatants."

"That is exactly what the enemy would have you believe," he responded.

"Everything that moves in a constant formation has some sort of leader. Enemy, enemy, enemy."

"Stop." Finn's voice cracked.

"No. No more. This can't be happening." I just stood there, watching Finn have a nervous breakdown. Maybe everything was finally catching up to him, and he just couldn't handle it anymore. Honestly, I didn't get how ghosts were the things that broke him, and not the fact that I had time traveled. I drifted closer to him, trying to figure out which version of comfort would require the least effort, but help him the most. When Finn went rigid as a stone. Then, a notification pulsed at the edge of my vision.

[Quest Update! Step One Complete: The Lost Library — Located] [Step Two: Enter the Dungeon] I dismissed it on reflex. It was the same as the last loop, so I didn't really need to give it much thought. But for Finn, it was a revelation. He looked at the prompt, and then at me—eyes wide, jaw slacked. He read it top to bottom, and then looked at me. And then read it top to bottom again.

"This, you... it... you... it. Step One, Complete. It says we've located the library, Laz. This is the Lost Library."

"Yeah? I told you we'd find it. I also told you we were in a time loop. You still don't believe me?"

"You told me a lot of things, man. How am I supposed to know what to believe?"

"And how many of those things were wrong today? Let's count." I held up my fingers.

"Ghost library, real, check. Monsters in the wall. Check. My uncle in a coma. Check. Time loops. Check. Flag, check. Axe with the soul in it. Check. I don't know what else you want from me, man. Just believe me."

"Believing you and seeing it for myself are different things." He waved his arm through a passing book.

"That was a ghost, Laz. How can a book be a fucking ghost? None of this makes sense."

"Yeah, well, now you know how I've felt for the past week." He paused.

"Week? Are you telling me you're in a time loop, and you've only been through a week?"

"Well, yeah. You think I'd try to figure this thing out without you?" That gave him pause. He opened his mouth, and then closed it.

"Okay." The shock left his face. And then he smiled, as if finally making peace with the ghosts and the library and my time travel.

"Okay. Alright. Nothing is real."

"Finn..."

"No, it's fine. Really. Nothing is real. Time loops exist. The ghost library. Books can be ghosts. Reality isn't real, man. None of it is real, so none of it can hurt me."

"That's not quite..."

"Nothing. Is. Real." He nodded to himself slowly, like it was a reasonable thing.

"Dude, you're taking all the fun out of this. I wanted to mock you for not accepting reality, but now you literally aren't accepting it." Finn opened his mouth to answer. But I didn't hear what he said. The tether connecting my uncle and me snapped taut. It pulsed once, twice. And then a third time. And then it shattered.