After entering the library to recuperate, a heavy exhaustion fell over the group. The dust motes danced in the fluorescent lights, illuminating the towering bookshelves that stretched to the ceiling. The air, still thick with the scent of old paper, beeswax, and a faint hint of cedar, felt like a comforting blanket. Bishie, ever the scholar, began his search. He dusted off a worn volume and began flipping through its pages, his focus unwavering. Nova and the others, still shaken from their recent ordeal, helped him search for a book written in the god of medicine's language, a cryptic tongue rumored to hold the secrets to life itself.
The library was a labyrinth of knowledge, a maze of forgotten stories and arcane texts. The group fanned out, their footsteps hushed against the thick, carpeted floor. Shelves of every conceivable size and shape loomed over them, a chaotic mosaic of faded titles. They were so absorbed in their task that they barely registered the return of Ourania and Gala, their faces flushed with triumph.
"We did it!~" Gala's voice echoed with exuberance. "We turned on all the lights!"
The air became warmer, more inviting, when the girls walked in, but the mages remained too focused on their hunt to notice. Bishie was muttering to himself, his fingers tracing indecipherable runes on a leather-bound cover. Sam was perched on a stepladder, meticulously scanning a row of medical journals, while Ian, being the shortest of them all, was on his hands and knees, searching the lowest shelves.
Seeing their efforts were unappreciated, Gala and Ourania exchanged a look and decided to join the search. The group of ten—Gala, Ruby, Ian, Maram, Sam, Nova, Ourania, Will, Bishie, and Wisdom—combed through the library, their earlier fatigue forgotten. They were once again a team, united in their purpose.
Suddenly, a cry of triumph pierced the studious quiet. "Found it!" Ourania's voice rang out from the back of the stacks. She was holding a large, unassuming book with a faded green cover, but no one paid attention to her.
"I found it!" Ian's voice, equally excited, came from the other side of the library. He was clutching a similar-looking tome, but this one was bound in black and silver, its spine faint with ink and dust. The group, drawn by the magical aura, gravitated toward him. The energy in the room shifted, a palpable hum of anticipation filling the air.
Bishie, his eyes wide with repudiation, took Ian's book. He opened it, his fingers trembling, and stared at the pages filled with intricate runes. The symbols, while beautiful, were a mess of poor translations, bad references, and low-quality images. It was like trying to read a manuscript through a layer of thick, muddy water. The group's excitement began to fade, replaced by groans of frustration.
It was then that Bishie's eyes drifted back to the small, unremarkable volume Ourania still held. He took it, his gaze lingering on the faded title. He had a strange feeling, a whisper of a forgotten memory, a feeling that this book, even though it was so easily dismissed, held the key. He realized the book of healing was, in fact, the book of medicine.
Must've been mistranslated over time, he thought.
A renewed sense of hope surged through him, a fire in the darkness of their situation.
He began to experiment, using a borrowed pencil and a few sheets of paper from Wisdom. He meticulously copied the runes, his hand steady and precise, each stroke a prayer for success. The others watched in a tense silence, a testament to their faith in him. He tested the runes on dead plants and animals from the biology room, a makeshift laboratory of hope and despair.
He failed repeatedly. His first attempt on a dead pig resulted in a grotesque abomination—only the head reanimated, its eyes glowing with a malevolent green light, its jaw snapping uselessly in the air. The creature's moans were a symphony of misery, a haunting echo of his failure. Another time, he revived a plant, only to watch it wither and die of accelerated aging, its leaves crumbling to dust in seconds. Rodents came back to life, but as helpless infants, their squeaks a heartbreaking reminder of their lost lives.
After many attempts, when a heavy cloak of disappointment had fallen over the group, he finally succeeded. A small, motionless frog, its body cold and stiff, twitched, then hopped. It was a small victory, but in that moment, it felt like the greatest triumph in the world. The exhausted mages collapsed, their bodies giving way to the relief and fatigue of the day, their minds finally at peace. They fell asleep on couches and piles of books, a scattered collection of dreamers in a library filled with forgotten tales.
"Wasn't it blue?" Ian asked.
"We're just tired. I can't even stop myself from drifting off half the time." Nova yawned.
"I'm taking my ass to bed." Will walked off to find a place to sleep. Seeing as Bishie had already succeeded, they did the same.
Nova lay his head down first and soon passed out.
He jolted awake, but the world around him was not the library. He was standing in a ruined landscape, the ground a mosaic of cracked earth and burnt rock. He passed piles of corpses, their twisted forms a macabre testament to a forgotten war. The sky was a deep, unsettling red, and the air was humid and smelled of decay, a scent that, strangely, didn't bother him.
He felt an unsettling sense of calm. "If I'm alone," he thought, a sense of liberation washing over him, "I don't have to pretend." He wasn't the leader here; he wasn't the anchor. He was just Nova.
He approached a throne of bone, a skeletal monument of power. Upon it sat a tall, slender woman, her form draped in a skimpy crimson dress covered in jewels that glittered like golden tears. Her skin was a breathtakingly pale shade of porcelain, yet she remained alluring, a vision of seductive horror. She was sipping from a seemingly bottomless glass of wine, its contents swirling like liquid rubies. She noticed Nova's arrival and, with a flick of her wrist, threw the glass at him.
"Nova," she drawled, her voice like gravel and honey, a sound that dragged his name through the mud.
Nova sidestepped the glass, which shattered against the hardened, coarse dirt floor, and kept walking, ignoring her. She conjured another glass from thin air, its form swirling into existence like a blood-red smoke.
"What are you doing here, boy?" she asked with shards of ice in her voice.
Nova continued to ignore her. His focus was a shield, a wall of pure will.
"I SAID, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?" she screeched, the sound piercing his focus, a needle of sound digging into his consciousness.
"Trying to leave," Nova responded, his voice calm and even. "Now, if you'll excuse me." He didn't look at her, a sign of defiance that seemed to infuriate her.
She thrust her hand forward, a wave of unseen force pushing Nova back. His shoes scraped against the ground, leaving long marks in the dust. He tried to resist, but it was like fighting against a river. He was being pushed back, his strength no match for her power.
"You know there's no getting past me," she teased, a cruel smile playing on her lips. She struck a provocative pose, her body a sinuous curve of temptation. "You just wanted to peek at me, didn't you? How old are you now? Eighteen? I know what boys your age are into." Her voice dropped to a seductive whisper, a dangerous lullaby.
"I know what you're trying to do, Harpy," Nova replied, his voice devoid of emotion. He had seen through her facade before she had even revealed it.
"I'M A SUCCUBUS!" she screamed, with a roar of pure rage. Her true form erupted from her, a terrifying spectacle of transformation. Wings sprouted from her back—gold in hue, with muscular webbed forelimbs and nearly transparent membranes. Her eyes went pure black, twin voids of nothingness, and her skin turned blood red, as if she were bleeding from the inside out. She flapped her new wings twice, lifting herself above the throne, then dove toward Nova, a living nightmare of teeth and claws. But an invisible force stopped her short, a shimmering barrier of protection. She was a storm of fury contained in bindings of light. She hissed,
"You coward, demonic protection!" she spat, her words laced with venom.
Nova frowned, "That's not demonic protection. It's standard in every contract for dwellers of the underworld."
As he turned to leave, she yelled, her voice a desperate plea of lies, "Come back here, coward!" She strained against the barrier, her muscles bulging with the effort, her eyes locked on his advance to the throne.
Nova didn't turn around. He simply retorted, "Bye, whore." He then sat on the throne, a statement of power. "Next time, don't reveal your true form to a surface walker!"
Nova jolted awake, the familiar, musty smell of the library filling his nostrils. The red sky and piles of corpses were gone, replaced by the soft glow of the library lights. Everyone was still asleep, scattered across the entire library in a state of utter exhaustion. "Crap," he muttered to himself. He needed to get them together. He looked for Wisdom and, finding her, Nova copied her telekinesis ability. He felt that familiar surge of power, converging energy at his fingertips.
With a newfound focus, he gently gathered everyone, moving Will from a high shelf, Gala from a bed of books, Ruby from a makeshift fort she had built... Somehow, and the rest from couches or tables. He pushed two tables together and seated them around it, as if they were gathering for a meal. When they began to stir from the movement, he banged the table, the sharp, sudden sound startling everyone awake. They looked at him, their eyes wide with confusion.
He quickly copied Maram's ability and produced the soul twine doll and Nikola's jar, the symbols of their mission. He told Maram, "Get the rest of himself," while telling Bishie, "Prepare to revive the resident scientist."