Chương 26: 26 Loop 1, Part 6

The Frollarts came out of the walls. Organization was apparently too much to ask of them as they appeared from everywhere, but not all at once. Instead, it was like they were being produced on a timer. Two would appear, then a pause. Three would appear, then a pause. Then one. The first two squeezed out from beneath a shelf to my right, shoulder to shoulder, They wedged their fat, pale blue bodies through a gap that shouldn't have been able to fit one of them, let alone two.

They popped free with a sound like a cork leaving a bottle and stumbled over each other's knuckles. They immediately began waddling toward me with a focused determination. Three more came from behind a statue I hadn't noticed. It was like it had just appeared magically. The statue was of a robed woman holding a book. The Frollarts emerged from behind her feet like the worst honor guard in recorded history. One dropped from above and landed on my head. I flung it off in a panic. I don't know how it happened.

The ceiling here was vaulted stone with no visible gaps, but it fell out of it anyway. It bounced off my head and got up with an expression that suggested it had meant to do that. Another one crawled out of what appeared to be a book return slot. An actual book return slot, built into the wall, sized for folios. God, this place was weird. The Frollart was wider than the slot by a meaningful margin, and the stone around the opening cracked as it forced itself through.

Debris fell off the wall, and the Frollart climbed over before joining the growing crowd. There were ten, maybe eleven. I lost count because they were all climbing on top of each other. They filled the corridor ahead of me, and they moved over each other without any interest in stopping. They bumped into the shelves, knocking off books. They tripped over each other. They moved very slow, but they kept coming, ugly and unhurried about it. They didn't need to be fast because they had absolutely nowhere else to be.

And I had to find a way around. The first Frollart, the one still pinwheeling on my [Slick] patch, had finally rolled itself off the frictionless stone. It was getting upright with the triumphant energy of something that had just conquered its greatest challenge. It waddled toward me, dragging those filthy bandages across the stone. The tether pulled me left, right through the middle of the horde. I went left anyway, because the alternative was wandering around in a loop for hours.

And God, if that wasn't a waste of effort. I cast [Slick]. Another 10 mana. If I wasn't careful, I was going to run out before I managed to get myself free. The stone in front of the group went frictionless, and the lead Frollart's knuckles skidded sideways on the stone. Its arms splayed like it was doing the splits. It hit the ground chin-first and slid into the two behind it. All three went down in a jumble of pale blue limbs and flailing hands.

The ones behind them tried to walk over the pile and immediately regretted it. Good. Bought me some time. Unfortunately, [Slick] managed to fill the entire corridor. So it was unlikely I'd be able to get through without sliding myself. Thankfully, there was an easy solution to this. I cast [Stride]. My shoes hummed, and I lifted three inches off the floor and glided forward. Silently, smoothly, and faster than anything with knuckle-based locomotion could match. I moved through the gap and kept following the tether.

I made it past the first horde, only to be stopped by another six. Even on [Stride], I didn't think I'd be able to glide through them. I couldn't keep doing this. Every [Slick] was 10 mana, and [Slick] didn't permanently stop the Frollarts. It just delayed them. I needed something louder than me. The shelves gave me an idea. They lined both walls here, packed three deep with books that nobody had touched in decades. Caked with dust.

Frollarts, as a species, had demonstrated exactly one consistent behavior throughout all of mankind's interactions with them. They went toward noise. I pointed my wand at the nearest shelf and cast [Topple]. [Topple — Enchantment] Cost: Variable. Spent: 12 Displaces all unsecured objects from a targeted surface. Area scales with mana investment. Every book on the shelf launched itself into the corridor behind me. Not gently. I had barely had to ask the books to leave, and they launched.

They hit the floor, the walls, and each other in a cascading avalanche of dust and pages.. The noise was tremendous. It sounded like a bomb going off. Every pale blue head in the corridor pointed away from me, toward the noise. Every knuckle pivoted to the chaos of a hundred books settling into a pile on the stone. A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation. I finished gliding over the [Slick] and continued following the tether.

The pulse was faster now than it had been five minutes ago, and I didn't want to think about what that meant for my uncle. So I thought about mana instead. I was spending too much. Too much mana, too much effort. I had spent 41 mana on dungeon pests. 41 mana I couldn't get back without sitting still for an hour or two or three. And sitting still was not going to be an option anytime soon. The Frollarts had inspected the pile of books, found it inedible, and were turning back in my direction.

The sound of knuckles resumed behind me. The tether curved left through the wall, and I took the nearest doorway that pointed roughly in the same direction. Behind me, the Frollarts regrouped. There was no coordination behind it. They just kept showing up in the same direction I was trying to go. The tether pulsed again. Faster. Wrong. I didn't know what it meant, but it didn't seem like a good thing. I was losing time I didn't have on creatures I shouldn't have been dealing with.

I kept moving, urging [Stride] to carry me faster. I almost wanted to cancel it, but recasting it later would waste even more mana. Every time I turned a corner, Frollarts were still popping out of the walls. They were slow, and it wasn't like they were gaining on me. But there were just so many. This was the real problem with Frollarts. When a horde got going, there was nothing that could stop them. Except giving them food, and it wasn't like I had succeeded in making a food spell yet.

I glided past a Frollart that had parked itself in the middle of the passage. Something about it made me pause. It was just sitting there like it was waiting for a carriage, and then it snapped at the air. It wasn't aiming for me—or for anything I could see. Its wide mouth opened, and its jaw lunged sideways, biting at a point in the empty space about three feet to my left. The exact point where the gold tether ran. The Frollart couldn't see the thread. Right? But it was reacting to something.

Its nostrils—flat, barely visible slits above that wide mouth—flared a couple of times. Its head tracked slowly through the air along the tether's line, nose-first, searching. Another one, coming up behind me, did the same thing. It stopped chasing me entirely, and turned its head toward the wall. It pressed its face where the tether passed through stone, and bit the wall. A third, farther back, had changed direction altogether. It wasn't following me anymore.

It was following the tether's path down the corridor, waddling along the gold line I could see. It snapped at the air every few steps like it was trying to eat something it couldn't find. I was not sure how. But whatever the tether was, they could smell it. Or taste it. Or sense it in whatever way magical creatures could. I floated very still and watched three Frollarts bite at the invisible thread. They couldn't sever it. Probably. I didn't actually know. I didn't know what happened to a soul tether if it broke.

The books I had read didn't cover this. The one pressed against the wall bit down again, harder, and something in my chest flickered. More of a stutter than pain—the pulse skipped, the thread went slack in my chest for one beat, and then it came back. But I didn't like the way it felt. I raised my wand at the nearest Frollart with a feeling that was not panic, because I didn't panic. Panicking required being emotionally honest, and I was not currently accepting applications.

"Get away from that," I said. It bit the air again. I glided forward. Unfortunately, there were now fourteen Frollarts in front of me because I had wasted time pausing to watch the show. They'd filled the passage ahead of me completely. A pale blue blockade packed wall to wall, knuckle to knuckle. They had no interest in moving and every interest in snapping at the air where the gold tether ran between us. I cast [Slick] at the floor between them. Another 10 mana down.

Like dominoes, the horde slipped and fell over each other. But behind me, the ones that had been trailing caught up. Their knuckles scraped the stone. More and more Frollarts were coming out of the walls. Doubling the number in front of me. And even though they were slipping and sliding, eventually, they'd just be able to walk right over each other. The tether pulled forward, but I couldn't go that direction. To my right, a corridor branched off. It was narrow, heading away from Corwen.

I swear it hadn't been there before I stopped. So either the Library had just created it, or I'd missed it while not panicking. Just a temporary detour. Get the tether out of their way. Find a way around and keep moving, I told myself. I ducked into the corridor. [Stride] carried me around the first bend before the nearest Frollart had finished turning its head. Behind me, the Frollarts started to follow, still trying to snap at the tether. The corridor curved and curved again.

Then straightened into a passage that should've taken me back to the hall with the Frollarts. But it didn't, because the Lost Library was funneling me somewhere. And it wasn't backwards. The only good thing about all of this was [Stride] was saving my legs. But I almost wanted to cancel it, because I was still only moving at walking pace. I'd invented the spell to avoid effort, not to go fast. And right now, that felt like what my professors had been warning me about.

If I survived this, I was going to figure out a faster version. Sprint speed, at a minimum. Maybe I'd call it [Rush]. Or [Why Didn't You Think of This the First Time, You Idiot]. The passage narrowed again. The ceiling started to droop, and I was worried it would come to a dead end. But just as that worry reached its peak, the stone changed. The rough-cut blocks gave way to polished wood underfoot, and the pale light of my [Marble] became unnecessary.

Glass sconces lined the walls, their flames still burning on enchantments older than the school. I knew this architecture. I'd seen it once before, following my uncle down past Level 3, where the shelving ended and the architecture turned palatial. I was back on the fourth floor, or whatever was left of it down here. The corridor ended at a door. A door that didn't make sense. I knew this door. It was the room with the disappearing book.