Chương 24: 24 Loop 1 Part 4

The faculty stairwell door opened. A figure crossed the main reading room with a kind of deliberate, measured stride that wouldn't belong to a student or a professor. He was tall, straight-backed, and had a grey suit and a grey expression. Theodore Vex. Walking with the confidence of a man who still had a head and planned to keep it. I honestly thought he hadn't shown up to explore the library until after midnight, but here he was. The first time around, my uncle and I had been at dinner.

It was safer to snoop the restricted levels when Corwen was otherwise occupied. I watched him through [Wideview] as he crossed the reading room without acknowledging anyone. Grimm was at the front desk, hands clasped behind his back, watching Vex with the same flat, unconvinced stare he gave everything. Vex didn't stop. He walked past the desk, past the shelves, toward the back of the stacks where the iron door marked the boundary to the restricted levels. He had his own key.

This one was smaller, newer-looking, and had a ministerial seal on the end. Last time, Grimm had the only other copy, and Vex had died before anyone found out he'd made one. Creed's office was thorough. He unlocked the iron door, stepped through. I moved immediately. There was no way I was going to let Vex explore there unanswered. It also helped that the gold thread led down the stairs. The second the door was about to click shut, I cast my spell." [Stop]."

[Stop — Enchantment] Cost: Varies with size and momentum of object. Freezes a targeted object. 8 mana Duration: until dispelled. The enchantment caught the door before it clicked. I saw Grimm narrow his eyes, but he didn't question it. At least, he didn't get up. I didn't have a lot of time. I was sure that Grimm would investigate the unlatched door, so I needed to distract him. His [Teleport] spell made him omnipresent in the building, and the iron door was in his line of sight from a dozen positions.

I needed him elsewhere, and I needed him occupied. I scanned for the easiest target. Three students in the east nooks, and then one by himself in the west. I didn't even know who it was, but he'd be an easy, far-away distraction. I pointed my wand at a shelf behind him and at the student's chair, then double cast " [Move]." The shelf was oak, old, and packed with about forty volumes of thick texts. I stood up and walked toward the reference section.

Behind me, the shelf slid forward and the student's chair scraped backward into it, making it look like the guy had knocked the whole thing over himself. The oak screamed against stone. The whole thing tipped forward, and went over with the slow inevitability of a tree that had just been chopped. The top shelf hit the neighboring shelf on the way down, which also fell—and then another fell, and then another, like dominoes. Text upon text upon text fell to the floor, and I felt a sharp pang of guilt as Grimm swore.

He immediately teleported. I cancelled my enchantment. And with him distracted, I casually walked toward the iron door. I slipped through sideways and eased the door shut behind me until the latch caught with a soft click. The restricted levels opened below me. The stairs and the air were the same. I'd done this part already. I could hear Vex's faint footsteps below me, though he was already too far for [Wideview] to pick up. Steady as ever, unhurried. I pointed my wand at my shoes." [Silence]."

My footsteps disappeared, and I descended. I passed Level 2. The heavy wooden shelves were packed with redacted texts I'd scoured through yesterday—or tomorrow, however that worked. I smiled in the direction of the book that had finally helped me fix mana exhaustion. But I kept going. Level 3, with its iron frames and chained volumes and enchanted books. Including the pulsing book under glass I still had no interest in touching. That seemed like it would take too much work to deal with.

Some things had a way of telling you not to expend effort on them. I'd gotten the message the first time. Between Levels 3 and 4, things got strange. The stairwell widened into a grand staircase. Carved steps gave way to polished wood. The walls turned elegant and palace-like, and the architecture stopped pretending to be a library and started being something else. Whatever that "something" was, I didn't want to know. Which meant I was probably going to find out, knowing my luck.

Four corridors stretched ahead, disappearing to distances that didn't make architectural sense. The ceiling was vaulted with carved stone, giving way to dark wood beams twice as thick as they needed to be. The pale blue crystals from the stairwell had been replaced by something warmer down here. There was strange lighting in glass sconces, their flames still burning after what had to have been decades of neglect. Old enchantments that outlasted the people who'd cast them.

That was the best part, they just kept going because nobody told them to stop. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Dust clung to the walls in thin ridges. They piled along vertical surfaces in little dunes that defied everything I knew about how gravity was supposed to work. Dust did not form neat little shelves on the side of a door frame. But down here it did.

And I added that to the growing list of things about this place that I was choosing to avoid thinking about. Me and my lists. One day I'd have to go through them. But you know what they say about effort. Vex's footsteps turned left at the grand hall. I followed from a far enough distance that I was never in danger of being seen, my silenced shoes making no sound on the polished wood. Doors lined both sides of this first corridor. Some dusty, some spotless from recent use—probably by my uncle.

Vex stopped at the first clean door on the left. He tried the handle. Locked. He produced the iron key again, and the lock clicked. He swung the door open and stepped inside. I pressed myself into an alcove and waited. I could see him moving in the room, walking past lots of shelves. He'd go into a room, ruffle papers, skim through shelves, open drawers, but he never stayed long. We went through this process multiple times, until the fifth room gave me pause.

When he stepped inside and began his search, he used the same routine as the other rooms. Checking everything once, pulling out books, pulling open drawers, leaving them open. The nearest shelf to him held six books when he entered. Three with green spines, two with blue, and one that sat between the two colors. But when he turned the corner of the nearest shelf, it only had five books. Three green, two blue—evenly spaced, as if there had never been a sixth to begin with.

I counted the books on that shelf three more times. Vex didn't notice. He was too busy checking for hidden panels on a desk that had none. On top of the desk were a bunch of newish-looking papers on it. He rifled through them without any particular care. But it was clear he found nothing. He left the room and moved on to the sixth. And I glanced back at the fifth door as it swung shut. Through the narrowing gap, I counted six books on the shelf. Three green, two blue, and one that wasn't quite either.

It was like the book didn't want to be found at all. The door closed. What the fuck was going on here? By the eighth door, his composure had properly frayed. For all his grey demeanor, he was not a patient man. Even I could have searched more rooms if it meant needing less work later. His movements were sharp now. He opened each door and slammed it closed hard enough that the sound echoed down the corridor. He opened each drawer, pulled them out, threw them down hard enough that the sound echoed. I flinched.

He didn't. He stood in the doorway of the tenth room and didn't go in. Just waited there, one hand on the frame, staring at empty shelves. Whatever he had expected to find down here, it wasn't this. I curled up in an alcove and waited. It was nice to spend a few hours doing nothing other than people-watching. I wished the person I was watching wasn't Vex, but, you know. Beggars couldn't be choosers. Eventually, it got to be the time my uncle was supposed to encounter Vex. And then he didn't show.

The gold thread still pulsed from my chest, leading deeper into the corridors behind me, and not up the stairwell where he should have come from. My uncle was somewhere down here. He just wasn't coming to this meeting. Vex waited. He was standing in the corridor with his arms folded, checking a pocket watch twice in five minutes. Despite his earlier impatience, the grey composure was back, but I could tell how brittle it was.

He was waiting for someone who wasn't going to arrive, and he was starting to figure that out. Vex eventually gave up and left. I flattened into an alcove as he passed. His footsteps were louder now. Not careful anymore. He was just a man. The sound faded as he reached the grand hall and took the stairwell up. I waited until the footsteps were gone. And then I waited longer, because patience was free, and honestly, moving now would be more work. The gold thread was still there.

It had been there all day, trailing from my chest, but I'd been ignoring it. Down here in the silence, with nobody left to distract me and nothing else to do but wait, it was harder to pretend I didn't know what it was. [Soul Tether]. My mana, connected to his soul. The thread led deeper into the corridors, past the tenth door, past the dust and the strange gravity, into whatever this place eventually became.

The only problem with waiting was that there were a lot of thoughts in my head and nothing to distract myself from them. My uncle was somewhere past those corridors. The thread made that obvious enough. But Corwen hadn't shown up to meet Vex, and if there was one thing I'd learned about my uncle, it was that he didn't skip meetings by accident. He had a reason for being down here instead of up there. And I had a reason for not asking what it was. But as I got up to leave an hour later, something was different.

I couldn't say what—the corridor looked the same. But the dust on the tenth door, the one Vex had slammed, had settled into a new pattern. The little dunes and ridges that had clung sideways to the wood were gone. In their place, the dust was flat, as if gravity had remembered its job for exactly this room and forgotten it everywhere else. I looked at the other doors. Sideways dust, all of them. It was as if the universe was giving me a sign. I should explore that room. Yeah. I retraced my steps.

Up the grand staircase, left at the branch, right, left, two more rights. Back up the short flight of stairs where the ceiling dropped low. The polished wood gave way to stone, and I was in the stairwell between Levels 3 and 4. Except the stairwell was gone.