Chương 10: 10 Loop 0, Part 10

Footsteps, coming from the direction of the faculty stairwell. Who would be entering from there at one in the morning? [Wideview] gave me the picture. A single figure crossing the main reading room, moving with the kind of purpose that didn't belong to a late-night stroll. Tall, straight-backed, familiar. My uncle. He was alone, which was odd. There was no reason I could think of for the Headmaster of MIRKS to be in the Archives at one in the morning by himself. Surely he had better things to attend to.

He crossed through the room without slowing, past my alcove, heading toward the back of the stacks. There, a heavy iron door marked the boundary between Level 1 and the restricted floors below. Corwen produced a key, an actual physical key, the old and heavy kind that predated enchantment locks. He walked out of range within seconds. [Wideview] couldn't see through floors of solid stone, and he was already below me, moving deeper. I yawned. My uncle. What the fuck was he doing here at this hour?

This was so not my problem. Whatever Corwen was doing in the restricted levels alone in the middle of the night… Well, that was squarely the kind of thing that didn't concern me. Most definitely, it would only cause a headache if I cared. No, it was time I went to bed. I needed to leave, mind my own business, and catch up on the sleep that I Finn wasn't going to let me have tomorrow. I had 107 mana. Following my uncle into restricted levels I wasn't supposed to access. In the middle of the night.

While burning through the last of my reserves. This was objectively a terrible idea. I cast [Subtitle]. 47 mana gone. The spell settled into the edges of my vision, ready to translate whatever I heard into words I could read. I pointed my wand at my shoes." [Silence]." I pushed extra mana into it, extending the duration to thirty minutes. 28 mana left. I was now personally demonstrating the exact problem I'd been trying to solve all night. The irony was not lost on me.

I left my notes on the desk, crossed the darkened reading room, and walked through the iron door. I was technically not allowed past this point. Students needed faculty authorization to access the restricted levels, and I was fairly certain "my uncle left the door open" didn't count as a formal approval process. But rules, like locks, were only meaningful if someone was around to enforce them, and Grimm had already gone home. ——— The restricted levels were nothing like the Archives above.

Where Level 1 was all rustic charm, dim lighting, and leather comfort, everything below was raw, ancient stone. The stairwell was carved directly into rock, a tight spiral of steps worn smooth by decades, maybe centuries, of feet. The only light came from pale blue crystals embedded in the walls at seemingly random intervals, casting just enough glow to keep you from falling, but nowhere near enough to read by. I descended carefully, my silenced shoes making no sound on the stone.

I was grateful for [Wideview] letting me see the stairwell ahead and behind me, but the passage was narrow and the crystals dim. I could hear my uncle's footsteps below me, steady and unhurried, easy to keep pace with. Level 2 was vastly different from Level 1. Through the open door, I got a glimpse of heavy wooden shelves packed with texts that looked far older than anything upstairs. Level 1 had texts that were thirty or forty years old at most. These looked ancient.

Some of the texts had preservation enchantments so old they'd developed a visible shimmer, the kind of sustained magic that predated modern technique. Whatever was on those shelves, people had wanted it kept intact badly enough to enchant it twice. But Corwen didn't stop, so I had no time to gander. The air changed past Level 2. Cooler and drier, as if the humidity couldn't reach this far down. The crystals grew sparser.

By the time I reached Level 3, the gaps between them were long enough that I passed through stretches of near-total darkness. The door to Level 3 had been left open, same as Level 2. The shelves beyond it were iron instead of wood, and some of the volumes were chained to the frames. One shelf held a single book under a glass case that pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. I didn't look at it long.

Some things had a way of telling you not to touch them, and I had always been an excellent listener when the thing doing the talking could probably kill me. I was lazy, not incompetent. Between Levels 3 and 4, things got strange. The stairwell widened from a tight spiral into a grand staircase that felt like it belonged to a different building entirely. The carved steps gave way to the finest wood I had ever seen, magically preserved in pristine condition.

The walls turned elegant, polished, as if fit for a palace instead of a library beneath a school. A notification pulsed at the edge of my vision. I blinked at it. What? [Quest Alert! Dungeon nearby! Step One: Locate The Lost Library] Quest alert? A dungeon here? Beneath the school? I stopped on the stairs. In my two years with access to the system, ever since my mana channels unlocked at seventeen, I had never seen a quest. Never heard of anyone getting one. Quests weren't a thing. Right?

Nobody knew where the system came from, just that it tracked spells, your mana, and your levels. It wasn't something that gave us errands or to-do lists, or told us how to find dungeons. But there it was, blinking at me like it expected me to care or something. Not only did I not have time to care, I didn't want to. What did I need a quest for? Somewhere below me, Corwen's footsteps were getting fainter, and if I lost him in whatever hell the lower levels were, I didn't think I'd find him again.

I dismissed the notification and kept moving. Everyone said the Lost Library had never been found. Most people assumed she had built her archives on top of it to hide the real entrance. But down here, where the architecture stopped pretending to be a library and started looking like a palace, the line between the Archives and whatever lay beneath them felt very thin. This wasn't the Lost Library, but whoever had built these levels had wanted it to be. Love what you're reading?

Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. The staircase leveled out into a grand hall with four corridors stretching ahead farther than I could see. I could just barely make out my uncle's footfalls down the corridor straight ahead. I followed. Doors lined both sides, some open, some closed. Several had dust caked across their surfaces in little dunes and ridges, clinging to the wood at angles that shouldn't have been possible. Dust doesn't pile sideways.

It doesn't form dunes on vertical surfaces unless something down here had decided gravity was more of a suggestion than a rule. I filed that under "not my problem" and kept walking. Others were spotless, the dust on the stone around them worn away by recent traffic. Someone had been using these rooms. Regularly. The corridor branched left, and I could hear my uncle's footsteps taking it. I followed quickly, afraid I would lose him. Then right. Then left. Two more rights.

Then down a short flight of steps into a passage where the ceiling dropped low. I had to duck. As suddenly as it had begun, the polished wood gave way to stone and moss and a strange green-blue glow that made everything look like I was underwater. The passage opened into a smaller chamber, intimate, more study than library. Shelves lined the walls floor to ceiling, but these weren't the towering stacks of the levels above.

This was a private collection, carefully arranged, the kind of room where someone came to work, not browse. Then, [Subtitle] activated. But it wasn't my uncle who was speaking.

"You're late." The voice was flat and precise, without any hint of accent. Not my uncle's. [Subtitle] rendered the words in sharp, clean text at the edge of my vision. Someone had been waiting down here for him.

"I'm the Headmaster of this school, Vex. I arrive when I choose to." Corwen's voice was controlled. Professional.

"Say what you came to say."

"Very well. This is not a request, Corwen. Minister Creed is not a patient man, and his already thin patience has run out."

"His patience?" My uncle laughed.

"Fallon Creed hasn't set foot in this school in fifteen years. He sends his grandson to posture and now you, his errand boy, to threaten. He wouldn't know patience, Vex, if it slapped him upside the head." Vex. So the grey man had a name.

"Color it what you like. The result is the same." He paused, wrestling a paper from the bag at his side.

"The Tuffet boy summoned shadow constructs in the commons. Four of them. Students were injured. Some could have been killed. Property was destroyed, property that has been here since before Therumia. Your response was to enter him in a tournament." If I didn't know better, I'd have thought Vex was incredulous.

"My response was proportional to the provocation," Corwen said, "which you witnessed firsthand, given that you've been lurking on my campus all day."

"The provocation is irrelevant, Corwen. The response is what matters, and that response has been found lacking. Minister Creed sees a headmaster who allows foreign students to cast combat magic with no consequences."

"He's facing consequences."

"A tournament entry is not a consequence. It is a reward. That boy should have been expelled, his scholarship revoked, and his visa sent back to whatever failed state issued it. Instead, you've made him a participant in the most visible event of the year. On Exhibition week. With dignitaries from those same failed states attending."

"I'm aware of the timing."

"Are you? Because from where Minister Creed sits, it looks like you've lost control of your institution. Standards have slipped. If things don't turn around, Headmaster, I assure you there will be consequences. The Minister feels you are entertaining foreign elements and protecting problem students at the expense of Restralian interests."

"Restralian interests," Corwen repeated, like he was tasting something rotten.

"Is that what we're calling it now?"

"That is what the Minister calls it, yes, and the Minister's word carries more weight than yours in Parliament. If things don't change, you will be gone by dinner tomorrow, Corwen. This isn't a threat." There was a long silence, the kind of pause that makes you think the conversation is over. But I could tell through [Wideview] that they were still standing on the other side of the wall.

"You're going to choose Creed over me?" Corwen said. His tone had changed. Something had dropped out of it. He was no longer professional. He was personal.

"I vouched for you when you turned your coat at Blackhollow. I know you switched sides when you saw which way the wind was blowing, but if it hadn't been for me, well, let's just say turncoats are only useful as long as they're needed. Don't stand in my school and lecture me about standards, Vex. You don't have the moral currency."

"Moral currency doesn't keep your seat. Political currency does, and yours is spent."

"Then leave. Deliver your message to the Minister. Tell him I received it, and we'll see what the Board says."

"I'm not finished. The student is the least of your worries." Vex's voice dropped.

"The Minister has eyes in this school, Corwen. You know that. And what they've seen concerns him far more than your discipline record." I pressed closer to the wall.

"Careful," Corwen said.

"You've been preparing for something. The Minister's people have noticed. Whatever you're building down here, whatever you think you've found, the Minister wants in, or he wants you to step down and stop. Either way, he'll be satisfied."

"You have no idea what you're talking about," my uncle said, and for the first time, his voice wasn't calm.

"I know enough. I know you've been spending your nights searching for the entrance to the Lost Library. It's why I requested we meet down here, after all. Four levels of Restricted Archives at your fingertips, the largest collection of magical knowledge in the country, and it's still not enough for you." He paused.

"The Minister is prepared to be generous, Corwen. Give him the entrance and he's willing to forget the discipline failures, the foreign students, all of it. A clean slate. All he wants is access."

"And when he finds what's down there? What then?"

"That's above my station. I deliver messages. I don't interpret them."

"Get out."

"I didn't want to have to do this, Corwen, but you've given me no choice. If you don't resign, there will be consequences for your nephew." The air in the corridor changed.

"The boy is talented, no doubt. Everyone can see it. But does he really belong here? There are other schools in Restralia that would take a student of his particular nature. Schools not as prestigious as MIRKS." Vex paused.

"Or, if you'd prefer, the Kratosian government has been talking about repatriation of—" I didn't see the spell. I don't think Vex did, either. One moment, they were standing side by side. Vex mid-sentence, one hand raised in a gesture. Then, I heard the thump. I focused in closer on the shapes through [Wideview], and I realized what I was looking at: a body without a head, still upright, still holding the gesture.

Then, gravity remembered it had a job to do, and the grey man in the grey suit collapsed onto the stone. His head rolled to the base of a shelf a few feet away. The spell had been so clean, so fast, that if I hadn't seen my uncle's wand, I'd have sworn he'd done it with a blade. Adrenaline is a funny thing. My brain decided this was the perfect time to become observant.

It was cataloging every detail with a focus I'd never given a single lecture, while the rest of me was already calculating the fastest route to the exit. And in the ever-present war between my body and my brain, my body—as always—won. I ran. I don't remember the route back. Left, right, stairs, stone, wood, stone again. My silenced shoes were the only reason Corwen didn't hear me, and even then I wasn't sure. I wasn't thinking about being stealthy.

I couldn't stop thinking about the way his body stayed standing for half a second after his head was gone. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I couldn't get the image out of my head. Uncle, what did you do? I sprinted past the iron door. Past the Archives. I stopped just long enough to grab my notes from the alcove and didn't bother putting them back in their proper place. Out through the library, across the grounds, the night air hitting me like a wall of cold I barely registered.

STATUS: LAZLO YARROW] Second Year, MIRKS Mana: 28/320 Mana Regen: 20% per hour (while sleeping) Enchantment --- Level 49 Alteration --- Level 49 Soul Magic --- Level 24 Manifestation --- Level 24 Prestiges: 2 [Efficiency I] -5% mana cost on spells and enchantments. [Mana Pool I] +20 mana Family trait: [Soul Sense] Subconscious Soul awareness; allows user to interact with and detect Souls.