“That’s enough from the both of you,” Lucien said. “Come.”
I knew Lucien was there to help us search, as his wealth of knowledge was indisposable, but part of me wondered if he was coming along merely to keep the peace between Arthur and I. We walked through the portal, and I found myself in some sort of alleyway. Lucien had conjured us there for secrecy. I left the alley, and the others ventured behind me as I walked into the area of the main campus.
The buildings were a mixture of marble structures with Corinthian columns and neo-Gothic Victorian structures. The monuments were old, most likely constructed in the late 1800s, and all the main buildings looked inwards on the large quadrangles lining the campus. It was a beautiful space, filled with tall trees and broad lawns students could enjoy. The streetlamps lining the sidewalks provided the only light.
It wasn’t quite like Arcanea University, but all colleges had the same comforting feeling of academia. We’d dressed casually— to most onlookers, we were nothing more than a group of college students walking around campus at night. Lucien was the only one who’d draw attention, but as he had been a professor, he could play the part of a teacher well. Anyone who noticed us wandering around would assume we all belonged there.
“The scroll will be somewhere within the library, locked up in the archives,” Lucien said. “There are thousands of documents to sift through, so we might not find it tonight.”
“We must,” I insisted. “The more we return, the more suspicious it seems. We find the scroll tonight and be done with it.”
“Patience,” Lucien told me. “We have only one mission now, and so, we can devote everything to it.”
I had no patience. My country had been destroyed. I longed to salvage what was left of it.
Lucien led the way to a long building at the edge of campus. The spiraling towers of the brown brick library loomed formidably overhead. It was a massive structure. There were potentially millions of books inside.
The main doors were barred, so Lucien used his magic to unlock them. An alarm went off as we entered, but Kiara cast a spell to disable them, and the space went quiet. Our shoes made echoing sounds across the marble floor, and we summoned balls of illusion magic to our hands to illuminate the space. The light shone across the massive shelves circling the library, hovering all the way up to the high ceiling.
I don’t think I’d ever seen so many books in my life. Not even the library at Arcanea University could compare.
“We start at the back,” Lucien said. “The college keeps all its most treasured files in a private archival room accessible only to professors.”
He strode forward. Arthur turned on the spot, jaw dropping open at the amount of information that was provided here.
“Come on, Arthur. We’re not here for a field trip.” Kiara grabbed his arm and dragged him along, though he kept glancing over his shoulder at the giant shelves.
The archives were contained on the other side of a glass wall at the end of the building. Lucien got that door open as well. This room was nearly as large as the first one we’d entered, but this time, the shelves were lined with stacks of hand-written books from the Middle Ages, as well as scrolls and parchment that dated even earlier. I handed out rubber gloves, so none of us would leave any fingerprints behind.
We began shuffling through pages. I rifled through old accounts of marriages to nobles and ledgers of merchants who’d sold things like silk from China several hundred years back. I scanned books and scrolls, and set them aside quickly the moment I didn’t find what I was looking for.
I gave a sigh as I watched everyone sift through the archives. My heart fell as I looked around at the massive shelves of the private archives. Each row contained hundreds, if not thousands of tomes. How would we locate what we were looking for in this?
“Isn’t there a spell we can use to make this go faster?” I complained.
“I’m trying,” Kiara insisted, and I watched her attempt to cast a spell. Gold sparks flicked from her fingers, but nothing happened.
She shook her head. “What we’re looking for has to be protected by a ward. Otherwise, it would’ve come to me by now.”
“Someone probably cast a concealment spell on it before the humans obtained it, to ensure it remained hidden,” Lucien stated.
My jaw tightened. This was infuriating.
Arthur was delicately handling each scroll like it was an infant. Impatience swelled within me. “Arthur, pick up the pace. There’s no time for you to dawdle.”
“We need to be gentle. Some of these books are over a thousand years old. We shouldn’t ruin any of them,” Arthur said sharply.
“We’ll be gentleandquick,” Kiara insisted. Alexei was putting away each book she’d finished skimming, so she could research without wasting any time on re-organizing.
The sound of papers fluttering and turning filled the room. I felt like we were moving through these rows at a snail’s pace. Wasn’t there a better way to do this?
“These books have to be organized by subject,” I insisted. “Can’t we narrow it down?”
“The instructions for the ceremony are elusive. A human wouldn’t understand what it meant,” Arthur insisted, a twinge of irritation in his voice. “Perhaps it’d be with the articles on witchcraft, but—”
“Then let’s start there,” I insisted, already looking for the section— wherever in this godsforsaken library it was.
Arthur grabbed my arm. “We can’t afford to not be thorough.”
