~Chapter Sixteen: Cultist~

The Scholar’s Cult.

Eola shivered despite her best efforts to keep still.

She knew about it from Instructor Clearance’s lectures. They lived in the library’s upper reaches, bands of students and professors carving out a niche with the monsters. How they survived the dungeon’s Mana and the lack of food and sunlight, no one knew. The dryad professor also didn’t have an answer when asked why the librarians didn’t simply get rid of the cult. All she’d say was ‘Don’t trade words with the Scholar’s Cult. Better to fight than to listen to them.’

There were plenty of rumors among the first-year students, each less plausible than the last. They were cannibals. They worshiped a dark demon from another world. They were dark demon cannibals from another world. Most likely, none of those rumors were true, but the second and third-year students didn’t help. If anything, they spread them even more than the first years. But no matter what, the Scholar’s Cult wasn’t to be taken lightly.

Running into one of them on the third floor wasn’t impossible, but the odds were low. Not low enough, though.

Obviously.

The cultist coughed, a wet sound in contrast to his dry, cracking voice. Something hit the tile floor loud enough that Eola heard it, and the man bent a little as the coughing fit wracked his body. But his sword didn’t move from First Guard, and the spell he’d started didn’t fade.

“What’s your name, girlie?” he asked between hacking coughs.

Eola hesitated. She glanced at the angry cat at her feet. “Tabby,” she muttered after a moment.

“Tabby? Liar. Y’aer-cursed liar.” The man’s voice almost sounded amused. He coughed once more—to clear his throat as much as because he had to. “Name’s Eddarn. You’re a first-year. It ent time for the Library Exam yet. What are you doing here?”

Eola didn’t miss the way Eddarn took a single step forward as he spoke, or the glimmer of purple in his eyes. She side-stepped to match his move—and moved further from the missing stairwell and open arch. Atta was still fluffed up and hissing by her feet, and her sword was up in First Guard now, but she hadn’t started drawing a spell of her own. This wasn’t a duel. It was a stand-off.

“Asked you a question, girlie. Can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

“Study materials,” Eola said.

“Ent much for talking, are you?” Another step. Eola moved with it, and Eddarn grinned. He was missing half his teeth, and the ones he had were rotten and disgusting. “Listen, girlie, I ent trying to hurt you. You need help getting out of here. Come with me, and I’ll take care of you.”

He was trying to sound friendly, but as he spoke, his free hand moved, finishing the half-completed rune behind him. Eola stared at the spell as it started to fill. Her eyes widened—she recognized the spell from her childhood and her own spellbook—and she threw herself to the side. Atta flung herself at the Scholar’s Cultist, hissing and spitting.

A dozen strands of thick jute exploded from the Binding Knot spell as it finished, lashing through the air and wrapping around the space Eola had just stood in. She hit the ground hard, then rolled twice before she recovered from the impact. The ropes tangled around each other, tying into knots before falling to the floor. Eddarn laughed, but didn’t make a move to strike—or to cast again.

As she pushed herself to her feet, Eola’s eyes narrowed. He was a rope mage—just like her father.

Unlike Eddarn, though, Toma Lemiene had used his magic in Greenarbor’s harbor. He could run a dozen cranes and tie three ships to their moorings all at the same time. He was a master of his attunement—a proper Truemage on the verge of reaching Archmage. And, as far as Eola knew, the only time he’d used his attunement against another person was when he’d sparred with her mother.

Eddarn’s grin widened. “Now look here, girlie, I’m trying to make this easy for us all. You just throw that sword down. Same with the wand. I take you in, teach you everything we know about the stairs ‘n stacks, and what’s beyond ‘em. I’ve got friends who’d be very interested in meeting you—no fresh blood yet this year.”

Was he talking about actual blood, or about new people joining the Scholar’s Cult? Either way, Eola wanted nothing to do with it. She stepped back to the left, toward the open gap in the shelves where a stairway had to show up eventually. He sword stayed in First Guard, just like Eddarn’s. He didn’t try to cast anything—didn’t even move. “Or you could go. Take your chances with the Srillas and demi-Srillas. No skin off my back.”

Eola braced herself for another attack. The cultist’s rune formed in front of him—another Binding Knot. Eola watched it fill in, all four sections around the central rune, over seven seconds. The thin, pale man was slowing down. “Not quick enough,” she muttered, and stepped to the side.

Eddarn’s blade followed it up this time, and while might’ve been thin, he was strong. The blow knocked Eola’s smallsword off-center, and the tip ripped into her cheek. She gasped in pain and backstepped, trying to buy time and distance. No good. Another thrust came in. This time she blocked it solidly. The rope mage only laughed as he pressed the attack. “Give it up, girlie. You ent my match—I’m an eighth-bar Truemage!”

“I’ve seen Truemages with your attunement, and you’re no Truemage,” Eola spat back. She launched a stop-thrust, but it wasn’t enough to break through the cultist’s Chromite Cloth. His riposte ripped across her sleeve, and her own metal clothing stopped the cut in its tracks. The impact drove her back toward the stairs leading up.

The stairs. It didn’t matter that they led up. Eola backpedaled as hard as she could. Eddarn followed, finger drawing another rune with a too-long, too-yellow nail. As he finished it, he whirled, shouting in pain. Blood erupted from his calf, just above his ragged leather boots, and Atta dashed between his legs.

As her feet hit the wooden stairs, Eola breathed a sigh of relief. She backed up the narrow stairs, smallsword at the ready and wand drawing a Safe Shield in front of her. But, to her surprise, Eddarn didn’t make a move to follow her. Instead, he sheathed his rusty sword. “Word of advice, Tabby. Watch the demi-Srillas. They’re fast, and they’re slippery, and they don’t give up. You’ll be hard-pressed to survive when they find you—and they’ll find you. Good luck, girlie!”

Then he turned and sauntered away into the E-shaped, floating room as Eola started to climb.

Eola was out of both breath and adrenaline by the time she scaled the long, curving stairwell, and blood dripped from the painful cut on her cheek. The whistle hung from her chest, thumping on her rib, but she ignored it. She stepped off the top of the stairs into an octagonal reading room—one, thank Y’aer, without corners.

“Are we safe here?” she asked, sucking in a lungful of air.

Atta’s yellow eyes locked onto hers. “I have no idea, stupid girl. I don’t even know where we are right now. Do something about that bleeding before you attract every monster on the whole floor.”

Eola touched the cut on her cheek, flinching and sucking in a loud breath. Then she flipped through the pages in her spellbook until she landed on a piece of Child’s Magic—Slight Scab—and drew the Old Alemic rune. It filled instantly, and the bleeding stopped, leaving a fresh scab that tugged at her cheek whenever she moved her jaw.

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Eddarn was probably doing something similar for his leg, if he had the bars of Mana left. How had the cat drawn that much blood? “How did you…your claws aren’t that long, Atta.”

“I caught his leg in a lucky spot, that’s all.”

“Ah. So what now?” she murmured, trying to keep the wound from opening.

“Well, you’re here, and you can’t go back. The stairs are gone. Not that you’d want to keep talking to that foul-smelling man, but if you did, it’s not an option. We shouldn’t keep climbing, either.” Atta licked her paw and ran it across her ears a few times. “You might as well try to learn something while we wait. Let’s look around.”

“Fine.” Eola sheathed her smallsword and walked to the first shelf, drawing a bloody finger across a dark, dust-covered chaise lounge and ignoring the glass-inlaid tables next to it. Her finger “The Curse and Legend of Y’aer. Magicbringer. The Gift of Magecraft. These are all mythologies.”

“You mean histories, right?” Atta yowled from where she’d curled up on the couch. “These are all histories. Good ones, too.”

“Sure. They’re the same thing.”

Atta’s eyes didn’t leave Eola as she took a minute to run her finger across the shelves, reading the titles. She wasn’t actually interested in Magick at the Dawn and Harbinger of Monsters, but her heart wouldn’t stop beating a thousand beats a minute. She pulled Magick at the Dawn off the shelf and tucked it into her pocket, then moved on to the next shelf.

Atta was right; most of the books weren’t stories of Y’aer. That was a relief. When she’d been a girl, Eola’s mom had used the Saint of Curses and Gifts as a bogeyman. “If you don’t keep your room clean, Y’aer will take you.” “Finish that plate. Y’aer is watching.” And Mom hadn’t been alone, either. Her teachers had talked about Y’aer the same way, and by the time she was ten, Eola herself was saying “Y’aer curse it” and “For Y’aer’s sake” just like her friends and classmates.

It wasn’t that the Saint of Curses and Gifts was a monster. It was just that, when they’d given the gift of magic to the world, they’d also unleashed the curse of monsters on it. For some people, that was a good trade.

But not for most.