Abaddon's Call

Chapter Twenty-Four

Selifer wandered the archives, humming a happy little tune.

"Did you just slide down a bookshelf riding a ladder with an outstretched arm?" Naena asked, causing Selifer to squeak and nearly fall from his ladder.

"Uhm... could we say no?" he asked.

Naena eyed him suspiciously for a second. She nodded slightly and shrugged.

"Sure," she said.

He moved down the ladder.

He had finally gained access to the archives.

The lower levels of the library contained all the graduating projects. An entire history of magic at his fingertips, almost entirely uncensored because the Seven didn't bother pulling projects until three hundred years previous.

Selifer had allowed the archives to get the best of him. Admittedly, he had no idea how long he had been in the archives or when he had seen Naena last.

"What are you doing down here?" she asked.

"Research, obviously," Selifer responded.

He prayed she didn't ask after his project. She seemed the sort to avoid the counter question that would naturally follow such inquiries.

"I don't recall seeing you around recently," she said.

"A lot of research," Selifer said, feeling quite pleased with his answer.

Her attitude implied his absence was noted but not concerning. Selifer knew he'd need to leave the archives and return to school life for a few weeks at least, but he could stay until they closed.

"Mister talkative doesn't come around after I helped Graydon Pan open an arch mage room for his proofing?"

He had been there, hiding around the corner, as it were. As the door of the room opened, Selifer realized he had seen a door like that before. The archives were hidden behind just such a door, opened and closed by the librarians during office hours, sealing it outside of those hours.

A librarian hadn't let Selifer into the archives. No one knew he had been there except Naena.

But he couldn't tell her that.

"Hm? Oh, I left early," he said. "Didn't hear any of that."

"None of it?"

"Nope."

"Screaming alarms across the lands, and you didn't hear about it?"

Selfier realized he was in too deep. His face burned as he shook his head and went all in.

"No."

"Damn, I want to live where you live," she said. "And the thing with Trathor?"

He had no idea what had happened to Trathor. The dean was a nuisance, but Selifer had read the dean's project. It was a sloppy duplicate of a magi spell rumoured to be spread across the lands. Trathor was lucky it worked.

Selifer was no longer concerned with the dean.

"I arrived late," Selifer said quickly. "Have you ever been here before?"

Distracting the woman with books was likely a man's only reprieve. Her eyes drifted from Selifer and began darting over the books. He saw it all begin to overwhelm her with endless possibilities.

Naena dragged her eyes from the books back to Selifer.

"No, have you?"

"Only since school started up," he said. "The archives are closed during the summer months for maintenance and to make the books for the next year. The whole process is automated. Some arch mage got pissed about people misquoting older texts or mistranslating them, so he made it so the new students' research would be committed to magical books and could never be mistranslated. Except he was one of the early ones and didn't know what he was doing, so instead of not being mistranslated, the books always appear in the reader's native tongue. Wonder if it'd do pictographs?"