Chương 32: 32 loop 1, part 12

I had thought, for a moment, my uncle was going to be dead. But he was breathing. I put my hand down on his back to be sure, because I didn't trust my own eyes with how tired I was. But his back rose under my palm. His breathing was shallow and slow, but it was there. That was the only examination I knew how to do. Finn had spells for this. He could touch someone's wrist and read them like a menu. He'd know the heart rate, he'd know mana flow.

He'd know if any bones were broken or if there was an illness or anything wrong with the person. I was kicking myself. Again. One more time where putting in the effort earlier would have made my life easier now. I was forgetting the cardinal rule. Put in effort if needed to prevent more effort later. Not that I had any mana either way. I hugged my uncle even though I knew he couldn't feel it.

"You're alive, you're alive, you're alive," I said to myself. I just sat there for probably too long, thanking Therumia that I had found him alive. And then, of course, somewhere off in the stacks, something knocked. Small, wet knuckles rapped on stone. And then another set, and another set, and another set. The Frollarts had noticed that there was still food in the room.

"Right. We're going. Quickly." The big hand was still floating in front of me, half open. The spell only lasted five minutes, and I had spent most of those minutes killing something. I did the math instantly and against my will, which was how all my math got done. The hand had seconds left. It was useless to me. I needed another idea. The knocking in the stacks was closer. Two more sets had joined in. I looked at my uncle. He was a grown-ass man, and a lot of dead weight. I was not strong.

So carrying my uncle with my third arm was a fantasy. And dragging him would get us nowhere. But there was a spell for this. There was always one more spell if I was willing to pay the cost. [Move — Enchantment] Cost: Variable. Scales with the size of the target. 60 mana Enchants a solid object to follow the caster at a set distance. Duration: until dispelled. The funny thing about this spell was that it had been made for moving injured patients. But I had never used it that way.

I always used it to move things I didn't want to pick up. I pointed my wand at his robes and cast. The mana went out of me like someone had pulled a plug. Moving Flag had cost me 20. A full-grown headmaster and everything he was wearing cost 60. My mana pool indicator dropped and settled into a deep, impatient, barely visible red. I didn't need to look at my HUD to know: If I cast anything else, I was fucked. I looked at the 2 mana left in my mana pool, and it was like an out-of-body experience.

Without the 4 mana [Feedback Loop] had handed back earlier, I couldn't have cast this at all. The passive had officially saved my life by the thinnest margin possible. Corwen rose into the air like a marionette on a puppeteer's strings. His head lolled to one side. But I adjusted him, and mentally pictured hands carrying him under his shoulders, under his spine, and the back of his knees. I told the robes to keep him steady, and about a foot away. I kept staring at my blinking mana pool.

Thankfully, [Float] was still active on my robes. I pushed off the floor and started walking on air. Slowly at first. Corwen came after me, suspended, silent, just a few paces of golden leash between us. We made it past the first two rows of destroyed shelves before the leading Frollart jumped at us. It leapt through the air and attacked the tether. The tether blinked.

"No, no, no. Leave us alone." But they didn't leave us alone. Suddenly, dozens of Frollarts were trying to jump from the tallest shelves they could at us. So we went as fast as I could push it. Which tonight was a problem. The spell was willing, my body was not. Still, Corwen followed, and I did my best to keep us away from the Frollarts. Behind us, they were dropping off shelves and hitting the floor running. I had no spells left to throw at them.

With my massive pool of 2 mana, I could maybe light a candle, if I had one. Another one leapt. It came off a shelf to my left, all knuckles and tiny feet. It aimed at the golden line between me and Corwen, and chomped through it. The tether blinked again, like an old lighting enchantment on its last legs. Somewhere behind my ribs, a small spike of pain flared. And I realized what had happened. The Frollart had eaten a mana. Just a single one, but I felt it leave through the tether.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Had they been doing that the entire time? I couldn't tell, but I wasn't missing any extra mana. Or was it only hurting Corwen before for some reason?

"New rule!" I shouted.

"Nobody touches the leash!" I pulled Corwen closer so that he was practically touching me. I had him drift along just behind my shoulder like a very odd kite. The next Frollart that jumped sailed through empty air and hit a shelf on the other side. We passed the corpse of the Froll. It lay where it had folded, in a spill of broken shelving and strange blue blood. I tried not to look at it, but with [Wideview], I saw everything. I gagged.

And then one Frollart broke off from the pack, scrambled up to the corpse, and started chomping down against the torn shoulder. Two more, and then five more followed. Suddenly, they were all bathed in blood from the ripping and tearing. What the fuck? The dead Froll bought us maybe thirty seconds of space, and I intended to use them. We passed into the ghostly aisles—the stretches where the phantom librarians worked and the translucent books drifted through the air. The Frollarts wouldn't follow us in.

It became obvious after the second ghostly aisle, because [Wideview] doesn't let anything stay subtle. They went the long way around each phantom shelf every single time they got to it. Doing their best to keep pace with us, but never once crossing into any of the ghost pathways. I didn't know what it meant. Maybe the cold bothered them. Maybe the Frollarts knew something about the ghostly librarians I didn't. Which was an uncomfortable thought. I added it to the list of questions for Lazlo who'd slept.

Future Lazlo was going to wake up to so much work. I almost felt bad for him. One of the librarians paused near us. A woman carrying an armful of books. Her head turned, and for a second, I thought she was going to look at me. But her gaze went straight through me to a shelf that wasn't there anymore. She got to it, put her books down, and moved on. Wonderful. Even the dead had work to do, and they were still doing it. This whole library was an insult to my way of life. This day just kept getting worse.

Corwen's heel clipped a shelf corner, and the Frollarts at the edges started moving faster. I raised him another inch so he was practically level with my head and kept going. I kicked off a shelf for a boost of speed, knocked a fallen book backward without breaking stride, and heard three Frollarts converge on it. Which gave me an idea. So at the next junction, I tipped a returns cart over. I'm not going to pretend it was real strategy. I was a tired man knocking things over. But it bought a bit of distance.

"I'm not using you as bait," I told my uncle, who had no comment.

"It would be wrong. And you're floating too close behind me, so the logistics don't even work." I wasn't making any sense. I really needed to sleep. We reached the ladder. It was right where I'd left it. All sixty-something rungs of it, going straight up toward the way out. It felt like I had climbed down this thing a lifetime ago, and even then, mostly fresh, I had hated it. Now I was at the bottom and looked up. [Float] was still pulling its weight—or rather, removing most of mine. But it couldn't climb for me.

There was no spell for this part, and I didn't have the mana for one anyway. So I put my hands on the rung and started pulling myself up. I had nothing left, but I made them close anyway. If I could just get to the room, I'd be able to sleep. And once I woke up, no matter what, the rest of the day was going to be nothing but laziness. Lazing about, maybe a book. Ignoring the fact that there was going to be a dragon at the tournament. One rung, and then another. My arms shook like a man three times my age.

The spell did most of the work. Behind me, Corwen rose through the open air without any effort. Somehow, the man in a coma was having an easier night.

"You're welcome," I said to him somewhere around rung thirty, my voice broken and raw.

"When you wake up, I'm telling you about all of this in detail. Excruciating detail." The tether pulsed against my ribs. I had decided to interpret that as listening.

"This is the most effort I've ever put into anything in my entire life, and I deserve an award for it." I kept talking because silence reminded me of the ever-growing horde beneath me. Multiple Frollarts had started climbing the ladder.

"Nephew of the year. And you're going to present it to me. There's going to be a ceremony and everything." My hands stopped being hands somewhere around rung fifty. They became feelingless hooks. Equipment I used to grab and pull from a distance. And then, finally, one of the hooks grabbed the lip of the entrance to Therumia's secret lab, and I pulled myself up. Without even trying, Corwen easily floated through. I slammed the lid shut. But I still wasn't done.

The first Frollart hit the top of the ladder and banged. And pretty soon, it was nothing but banging. I didn't even have time to catch my breath. But I didn't run. I want to be honest. I tried to run. But the speed [Float] gave me was exactly what I had left to give, which was at best a fast stagger through the air. Corwen sailing behind me. Corridor after corridor, with Frollarts somehow gaining on me. Whether they'd come through the hatch or crawled out of the walls fresh, I didn't know and didn't care.

I took turn after turn without slowing. But it seemed like the Keeper wasn't awake to help me, because nothing was slamming shut behind me. And then, finally, I saw the study door. I crossed the threshold with the grace of a thrown coat. But the horde of Frollarts didn't. They hit the air where the doorway started and died. Frollart after Frollart came apart, each death collapsing into dust before the next one landed.

Before they finally realized what was happening, the corridor behind me had filled with what had to be over a hundred of the little guys. I floated there, breathing heavily, and promptly collapsed, unconscious.