Originally, the center of the room had been rowed off by the eight tables, with two lamps and four chairs to each, but now four of the tables were broken, along with possibly a dozen chairs, and even more lamps. A quarter of the lamps had likely broken when the tables had slammed into each other during the fight. His gaze narrowed on the broken tables, before he glanced towards the shelves, catching a hint of something that was going to be a great pain in the ass.
While it was true that none of the physical damage had touched the bookcases, there was one other issue. Noble approached the nearest, very broken table, running a finger over the corner that was slanted up in the air.
Frowning at the soot that now coated his finger, he stared for another moment before holding it out to show Red as he said, “You know, at first, I thought there wasn’t much fire damage, but…”
The cat winced. “Yeah, that can’t be magicked away either. And it’s going to take time to clean it up. Though the main issue for that would be the books. They’ll need to be wiped down, and…possibly fumigated, though I'm not sure if that is the right word for it.”
Noble once again glanced around the large open-plan room, with walls full of books, and let out an exasperated sigh as he thought of all the work that would be needed. But as a familiar voice called out, he glanced back toward the main door.
“Hello?! Ollie? Red?!” Jahla’s voice could be heard clearly from somewhere else in the library, the woman’s words growing louder as she obviously drew nearer. “You know, I really hoped you all were lying about the fire damage, but the smell tells me you weren’t. And with it being strong enough for me to follow it straight to you, I can tell you now that the air filtration system needs to be turned—” Jahla trailed off as she appeared in the doorway.
Hip-length locs gathered into a ponytail, Jahla’s eyes grew wide behind her rounded black-framed glasses as she stared, while her light sienna-brown skin seemed to pale slightly as her gaze traveled over the destruction in the room. “What the hell happened?! Are those claw marks in the floor?!”
He glanced to Red, while the cat winced and said, “We’ll fix it…eventually.”
Jahla frowned. “Okay, and Ollie is where exactly?”
Noble grimaced, meeting Red’s equally pinched expression, before turning back to face Jahla and hesitating.
“What?! What is it?” she pressed.
Jahla stood there,struggling to stop her tears from breaking free as she stared at them. With dark bags under his eyes, the age lines on Noble’s face appeared deeper that morning, and Red was squinting, as if he was having trouble keeping his eyes open, but none of that mattered because her best friend was likely hurt and scared, and…
She took a calming breath, and after taking another moment to digest the information, she asked, “Is he okay?”
It was a stupid question. Duh, of course, Ollie wasn’t okay!? Her friend had been beaten and almost strangled to death, followed by his cat almost dying, and now he would have to deal with the emotions that came with almost killing someone through immolation. Those emotions would likely be devastating, as Ollie was a soft little bean of a person, who usually couldn’t hurt a bug without getting sad about it.
“He’s sleeping right now,” Red explained. “The arcane feats he performed would have consumed most of his energy.”
Thankfully, Noble cut in, as Red wasn’t really answering what she wanted to know. “Physically, he’s bruised and has some cuts and scrapes, which should heal in a few days, or possibly longer due to what Red mentioned. Mentally…it may take longer. He was in a bad place when he woke up for the first time last night.”
Sniffling, Jahla rubbed her face before eyeing the room again. She ran a finger over the doorframe, her nose wrinkling at the soot. “With just the three of us, or even four if we include Ollie, this is going to take more than three days to clean up. And I’m just talking about the books. The rest of it…” She trailed off with a groan.
If Ollie hadn’t realized the clean-up situation already, he was going to freak out once he did.
Ollie’s eyes fluttered open,his mind coming awake with the pain. In addition to the side of his face hurting, his throat felt sore, and there were just these random ass aches and pains throughout his body. Not to mention, his stomach was also cramping from hunger, and he felt a bit dizzy even while lying down.
A whimper slipped past his lips the moment he realized Noble was no longer there holding him. And he couldn’t help but flinch as his mind drifted back to what happened, to the echoes of Mikael’s screams as Ollie literally felt like he was part of thesurge of fire surrounding the man. Laying there unmoving, Ollie did his best to shove the memories away.
After a moment of struggling to do that, and only partly succeeding, he realized he wasn’t alone as he had first thought, and that Red was in fact cuddled against his chest. Sliding his hand over his cat’s fur, he glanced down and found the familiar’s yellow eyes open and staring up at him.
“Noble and the others are downstairs cleaning. Your librarians showed up despite the notice I sent out.”
Cleaning?Ollie frowned, his brow pinching, before his mind screeched to a halt, as the one thing that could pull him from the gloom of almost killing someone did just that.
“Oh, my God! Fire! My books!” Ollie said with a horror-filled, hoarse cry as he jumped from the bed, snatching his glasses up as he went.
His aches had aches, but he didn’t give a damn. Ollie just shoved his specs onto his face as he sprinted out of his bedroom and down the hall in his pajamas, even as his vision briefly flickered black, while Red yelled out, “Wait! Ollie!”
Ollie didn’t wait, he just kept running, ignoring the way he swayed a bit and how weak he began to feel with each step. The darkness encroached further along the edges of his vision as he began to breathe heavily.
Luckily, the doors to his home unlocked, and he ran until he reached the circular center of the third floor, where he almost slammed right into Winnie Love as he started around the corner. Squeaking, Ollie slid to a stop on his bare feet, and almost toppled over.
With her dark-green hair in a ponytail, the woman’s brown eyes grew wide above the heavy-duty respirator she was wearing, as she reached out to steady him at the last second, while gasping in horror. “Oh, my God, Ollie, your face!?”
Ollie wasn’t sure what he had intended to say to that, as when he began to answer, everything started spinning before his vision turned fully black. As he blinked and shook his head, breathing heavily through his mouth in an attempt to stop himself from passing out, he suddenly found himself sitting on the floor. Noble was crouched in front of him, as all seven of his librarians gathered around, looking down at him with concern. Everyone, including Noble, had a respirator on.
“My books…” Ollie rasped weakly, as if it explained anything at all.
