18 Loop 0, Part 18

The Archives were as quiet as they were empty. I could only make out three other students up on a higher level. The rest of the world was burning down, and here, you couldn’t tell. I came through the main entrance. Should have cast [Stride], but [Stride] was a gliding spell. I didn’t have time for its top speed. So I limped as fast as I could. Grimm materialized at the front desk as soon as I approached. One moment, the desk was empty. The next, he was there, hands clasped behind his back.

He was wearing the same flat mouth and half-lidded eyes as every other time I had seen him. He was like that. Never changing, no matter who he was looking at or the state they were in.

“Mr. Yarrow, the Archives will be closing at midnight tonight. No exceptions, even for you.”

“I need to get into the restricted levels.”

He studied me. I must have looked worse than I thought I did, because his bored expression almost cracked for a second.

“The restricted levels require faculty authorization for all students. You know this.”

“My uncle is the faculty authorization, and is currently being held in the infirmary under arrest for the crime of saving two thousand people from a fucking dragon. So unless you’ve got another headmaster lying around, I’m going to need you to make an exception.”

“A dragon,” he said. His voice was flat. Somehow, he hadn’t heard. Or he had, and hadn’t cared. Either was plausible with Grimm. I sighed.

“Kalin Tuffet summoned a shadow dragon in the Crucible. It destroyed the arena and killed people. My uncle fought it and won, and now his mana channels are collapsing and he’s dying. My roommate jumped in front of a breath attack that had my name on it, because he had worse survival instincts than I do and mine are terrible when people are in trouble. I can’t fix that. But my uncle’s still breathing, and I’d like to keep at least one person I care about in that category tonight before I devolve into a hysterical mess. You have to move. I can’t let someone else die like this.”

His face was still expressionless, but he reacted to my plea.

“And you believe the restricted levels contain something that will help you?”

“I know they do. I found research on mana channel reinforcement Monday night, and the part I need is in the restricted section. It says redacted. There’s more research down there. I know it.”

Grimm held my eyes for a long moment. Too long, honestly. And then he crushed my dreams.

“No.”

But I wasn’t going to take that for an answer.

“Grimm, I swear to Therumia, if you don’t open that fucking door, I will enchant every Hessa-damned book in this library to switch places when you teleport. You’ll spend the rest of your career trying to find anything, and every time you blink to a new shelf, the whole system will reshuffle behind you. I will make this building personally hostile to you. I have the skill, and I definitely have the spite. Test me.”

He laughed. A single, quiet exhale through his nose.

He produced the key. From where, I had no idea. He didn’t have pockets.

“Try not to lose anything,” he said.

“I never lose anything.”

“My missing books say otherwise.”

What missing books?

The iron door opened, and I went down.

I didn’t exactly know where to go, but I knew how the library was structured. Monday night, I had followed my uncle down these stairs, watching through [Wideview] as he descended past Level 2 and Level 3. And then he murdered a man. And now here I was, trying to stop him from being the one killed.

The restricted levels were dark. Every shelf I needed to read required [Light], and every time I cast [Light], it cost 3 mana I didn’t have. I checked my pool. I really only had six casts in me, which was a problem, because [Enlarge] cost a little bit more. If I ran into a pre-war research paper, I’d have to use it, because they always believed that making things readable was a sign of intellectual weakness. I wish I was joking.

I started to cast my first [Light], then cut myself off before I could finish. Wait. An idea came to me. I cast [Marble], and then I cast the enchantment version of the spell [Light]: [Illuminate].

[Illuminate — Enchantment]