Eternal Beasts

The Master Library

Despite that, the tall Lord of Griffons found himself sitting in one of the palace's many waiting rooms nearly an hour later, Samantha cuddled up beside him. Nikeera had vanished, supposedly being led to the city's Master Library, a complex hidden deep beneath the palace, by a member of Aaron's court. She hoped to find the city's copy of the Final Binding, which is what they named the triggering ritual for restoration of the flights, somewhere on its thousands of dusty bookshelves.

Aaron, too, had disappeared. For an entirely different reason, however. He was preparing to travel to Tammen Gall as the representative of the Tuatha Fáil. How he was going to manage to travel across thousands of leagues of territory to the far northeastern reaches of Corlest, where the corrupt volcanic capital of the Harbingers sat on the banks of the River Synn in less than twenty four hours was a mystery. Without any homegrown wizards available, he couldn't get one of them to port him there. So, unless he had portal stones hiding somewhere that he knew how to charge, and they were tuned to take him to the Arch, he was fucked.

Which, in a strange twist of fate, so was Jared with Samantha still wearing her nysim form. No griffon, no flying. And, in twenty three hours or less, the primal forces would rip him apart for failing to answer the summons.

- At first, I was so very happy that I was still in my nysim form after we crossed over, - Samantha said morosely over the bond. - It meant we could still cuddle, still kiss, still be together as two nysim. But now the summons has sounded an impossible second time and I need to fly you to the Arch. And I can't. - She heaved a big sigh.

- I just wish we were back in your bed on Earth, mating, - Samantha finished miserably.

- I kinda wish we were too, sweetheart, - Jared said, lending down to kiss her forehead. If only because that kind of fucking with the beautiful griffon in her amazon form would at least feel amazing. Instead of the horror-filled shit show that it was here, bending him over and doing him dirty. 'I just hope you're having more luck than us, Niki!' he darkly thought.

Letting a long, frustrated sigh hiss free of her nostrils, Nikeera stared at what appeared to be a simple corridor at the bottom of what felt like a thousand flights of stairs. A corridor that ended in a heavy double door of dark wood, the space lit fitfully by spell globes that felt like they hadn't been charged since the princess had gone into the Shrine of Forgotten Futures five thousand years ago..

"And you're sure this is the door, Councillor Japheth?" she asked, looking over at the lean elvish lord that Aaron had commissioned to lead her to the Master Library. A nervous looking fellow, Japheth nodded.

"My family was tasked with keeping the map to the library safe a millennia ago," he revealed in a reedy voice. "I make the pilgrimage to the door once a year to make sure it hasn't been disturbed."

That made the princess purse her lips in disappointment. What had happened to her people in the long years of her sleep?? Once they would sacrifice everything for knowledge and learning, their lore having grown powerful and mighty.

She looked back over at Japheth, so proud that he was able to keep the map to knowledge safe, instead of being proud of the gathered knowledge itself. Then she looked at the door itself, which, after all this time, looked as if it were freshly oiled. And abruptly her eyes narrowed. Freshly oiled after a thousand years of neglect? That was a preservation spell?

"Do you have a key to that door, Japheth?" she asked without looking at him.

"I beg your forgiveness, your Highness, but I do not. Just the map to it," the lean nobleman confessed.

Nikeera sucked in a quick breath then let it out into the dusty air. Then, with a resolute nod, she stepped forward. If there was a preservation spell holding that door together, then there was a locking spell holding the door closed. And she knew how to bust through locking spells.