Chương 77: 76 - Spotted

The floor was cold through her robes, and her head was ringing. For a moment she had no idea what had happened. She blinked. Once. Twice. Two books on the floor in front of her. And Willow looking at her wide-eyed. Shit, the book. For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Willow's eyes dropped to the books. Alexandra watched her take in Clarity of Mind, the pale green cover, and arrive at the obvious conclusion. She looked at Willow's book. She didn't recognize the title. They looked at each other.

"You—" Willow started.

"You—" Alexandra said. Willow snapped her mouth shut. Her eyes went to the corridor behind Alexandra, then the one behind her. Empty, both of them. She grabbed both books off the floor and shoved them at Alexandra.

"Come with me," she said.

"Now."

"Those are—""I know what they are." She was already walking.

"Come. Now." Alexandra followed. Willow walked fast. Alexandra kept up, not asking where they were going. The corridors were quiet. Willow checked corners before turning them. She stopped at a door a few turns away, unlocked it, and held it open without looking back. Alexandra went in. Willow's room was the same as hers. Same layout, more clutter. Notebooks on every surface, notes pinned above the desk in overlapping layers. Willow took both books from Alexandra and set them on the desk.

She stood with her back to Alexandra for a moment. Then she turned around.

"So."

"So," Alexandra said. Willow crossed her arms. Uncrossed them. Sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the books. Alexandra stayed near the door. The silence stretched. Neither of them had anything clean to say. Alexandra was aware that she was waiting for Willow to go first and that Willow was doing the same.

"I'm not going to report you," Willow said finally.

"I wasn't going to report you either."

"Right." Willow looked at her hands.

"Good." She turned to Alexandra.

"I might as well explain." Alexandra tried to tell her not to, but Willow spoke too fast.

"I'm a follower of Tash, like most students here. However, my people have a different read on her teachings than the Keepers."

"And that brings you to steal books?"

"No!" Willow passed a hand through her hair. Light brown, thin.

"Well, yes." Alexandra tilted her head.

"I hail from Goodpeak, a small city deep in the Kushtar range," Willow said.

"We believe that knowledge should be spread around Laika. Not held captive in this tower."

"Sounds reasonable."

"The Keepers don't see it this way. Most of them, anyway."

"And what does Tash think about this?" Alexandra asked. Willow smiled.

"That's the issue, isn't it? We believe we're following her will. So do the Keepers. Of course, if you ask me, Tash wants knowledge to reach everyone. Others would argue she only cares for its accumulation."

"So you just take books out and what, send them home?"

"We make a copy. Then we return them to the library." Willow glanced at Clarity of Mind on the desk.

"Not the enchanted ones, though."

"And you'd have me believe that nobody has noticed you and your friends?" Willow hesitated. Alexandra looked at her.

"Someone knows."

"Not everyone shares the same view on the matter," Willow said carefully.

"Keepers are helping you," Alexandra said, then she shook her head.

"Even then, Raymond would know." Willow frowned.

"Raymond?"

"The Magus." Willow froze. She opened her mouth.

"You… think so?" She stood up and grabbed Alexandra's hand.

"Tell me you're joking."

"Look." She tried pulling her hand away, but Willow's attributes were higher.

"I suspect he knows. But I could be wrong. If he does, he hasn't done anything to stop you." Willow's grip tightened for a fraction of a second, her fingers digging into Alexandra's wrist before she abruptly let go. She sank back onto the edge of the bed, the sudden drain of color from her face matching the pale green of the stolen book.

"If he knows," Willow whispered, "then we're already dead. Or worse. The Keepers don't just expel people for breaking the laws of the Iron Library, Alexandra." The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"Then why are you still here?" Alexandra asked, keeping her voice low.

"If Raymond wanted you gone, you'd be gone. He's letting you do it." Willow's frown deepened, her mind visibly racing through the implications.

"A trap. He's letting us map out the whole network."

"It's hard to know why he's doing that," Alexandra said, backing up a step to put distance between them.

"I could ask him next time I see him." Willow blinked. The tension in her shoulders vanished. Then she scoffed.

"Yeah, right. You're going to talk to the Magus." Alexandra opened her mouth. She doesn't know. Willow looked from Alexandra to the two books on the desk.

"So what's your reason?"

"My reason."

"For the book. I told you mine." Alexandra looked at her for a moment. Fair enough. She summoned her journal. Take a book outside the Iron Library (1/1) -> Quest Completed: +10 exp, +1 DEX. Daily Quest Streak: 21 -> 22"So," she said, wondering how much she should reveal.

"I have a pretty unique class. I get a quest every day. I do it. I get stronger."

"And today it told you to steal a book from the Iron Library."

"Yes."

"And you just… did it?" Alexandra shrugged.

"I have a streak." Willow looked at her for a long moment.

"How does that explain anything?"

"If I miss a daily, my streak resets. I can't have that."

"Right," Willow said.

"Right."

"By the way, are there trackers on those?" Alexandra asked.

"I'd say no, but you seem convinced the Magus knows everything," Willow answered.

"So maybe." Silence. Alexandra shifted on her feet and looked at the two books on the desk.

"For what it's worth, I don't disagree with you. About the knowledge. But…"

"But?"

"But I just got here. I'm not looking for trouble." Willow nodded slowly.

"She says, after robbing the Iron Library." Alexandra coughed.

"Just don't mention it to anyone, and I'll do the same," Willow said.

"Of course."

"And lend me that enchanted book someday. I need to inspect that enchantment. Do you know how hard it is to enchant on paper? Those books are pure displays of enchanting talent."

"Sure," Alexandra said.

"How do I use it?" Willow stood up. Opened the book. Alexandra immediately felt her thoughts gather. She closed it.

"Just keep it open next to you," Willow said.

"You picked one of the best on the first floor." Alexandra winced.

"It said the effects were minor." Willow smiled.

"You should go. Before someone sees you leaving my room with a stolen book."

"Right." Alexandra moved to the door.

"Thanks. For not reporting me."

"Likewise." Willow was already back at her desk, pulling out a notebook.

"See you at dinner. Don't weasel out!" Alexandra reached her room, closed the door behind her, leaned against it, and exhaled. The book was still under her robes. She set it on the desk next to the pastries she'd left there, one remaining, slightly stale, and sat on the edge of the bed. She looked at the book. Her stomach gurgled. Right. Now that she was done with that, she should start working on her curse. She opened the book and felt the enchantment take effect.

Her thoughts gathered in a single stream, no stray. She closed her eyes and sensed her mana core. It looked completely normal. Which was the problem. She'd never really looked at her core without at least a sickness of empathy. She focused. With malediction of infinite hunger, it should be different. She found nothing. Threads of mana flowed out of her core as they always did. She pulled them in, hiding her presence. Nothing special. She needed to watch it in action. She reached over for the last pastry.

Took a bite. Her mana moved immediately. Not a lot, but enough for her to see. A thread reached into her stomach, thickened ever so slightly, and pulled back. She finished the pastry and watched a moment longer. That was it. She was almost certain. Part of it, at least. Not the part she needed. She frowned. What she observed was the effect of the curse, not the pattern that activated it. She went looking for the source. The thread she'd followed led back into the core's main current and dissolved there.

She traced it again. Same result. Whatever was generating the effect was deeper, smaller, or both. She tried a different approach. Pulled her attention back and looked at the whole flow at once. Patterns usually had edges. A foreign element had to start somewhere. Nothing. The flow looked clean. She sat with it for ten minutes before admitting it wasn't working. Fine. The sickness then. The sickness of empathy was older, less sticky, as Tristan said. She turned her attention to it.

Where the malediction had been invisible, the sickness was almost obvious once she knew what to look for. A cluster near the top of her core, slightly off rhythm with the rest of the flow. She reached for it. It didn't move. She pushed. It moved but returned to its original form in seconds. She opened her eyes. She had Curse Unraveling. It was on her skill list. She summoned her journal, found it. Curse Unraveling: This skill provides a framework to reverse engineer curses.

Each level increases your ability to decipher curses. A framework. She wasn't seeing it. She closed the journal. Starting with a malediction or a sickness was perhaps too ambitious. Thankfully, she had other methods. She closed her eyes, locked onto her core, and pointed at herself. Inflict Weakness. With the book's enchantment running, she barely noticed the dip in her strength. The weakness spread from the cast point outward, thin filaments reaching into the mana flow. It was precise.

Each filament found a specific thread and directed it toward her core. She followed one thread in particular. It bent, looped in on itself. Then it reached for her muscles and connected to them. She studied the attachment point. The pattern was almost simple once she could see the whole of it. A loop. She followed it to where it was attached. Two points. The foreign thread had knotted itself around hers at each one, tight and specific, the way a stitch holds fabric together.

She looked at the first knot through Curse Unraveling. The skill didn't move anything. It just showed her the structure, the direction the foreign thread had come from, and the angle of the fold, which way it would need to go to come undone. She pulled one of her own threads from her core and worked it toward the attachment point. Slowly. Too fast, and she'd push the knot tighter instead of loosening it. The thread reached the fold. She eased it in. The foreign thread resisted. Not strongly.

Inflict Weakness was a simple curse. She'd cast it herself. But it pushed back, like ambient mana had flooded the gap back when she was practicing with Sera. She held steady and kept the pressure even. The fold shifted. She worked the thread further in, following the angle Curse Unraveling had shown her, and felt the knot begin to loosen. The first attachment point came undone. The loop went slack on one side.

The foreign thread was still there, still borrowing from her flow at the second point, but it was losing shape. She moved to the second knot before it could compensate. It came apart faster. The loop was already losing cohesion, starved at one end. It dissolved. The curse, too. She summoned her journal. Curse Unraveling 1 -> 2 Someone knocked on her door. Her eyes snapped open. She looked at her desk. The book.