The Lost War (Hectic Series: Book One)

Chapter 5

They arrived at the Caves two days earlier than anticipated, which in Kim's eyes was a very good thing. It meant more time to research.
From her vantage point, which was in the sky as she hovered in the air, the Caves didn't even remotely resemble a library; it looked, in fact, just like the name implied. A massive tunnel in the face of the mountain.
As Leleh landed and they passed under the massive opening, however, Kim was reminded at how misleading the name truly was.
They stood in the main hall, which boasted an insanely high arched ceiling and seemed to go as far back as the mountain itself.
Shelves were carved into the side of the rock face, but they didn't hold any books. They appeared to be beds.
Lining the opposite wall of the cave was a bunch of thin hallways that led to nowhere, for all she could tell with the lack of light. She grabbed a torch off of the wall (lighting it with a match) by the beds to get a better look and could see, far down at the end of one hall, where the library began. All the hallways lead to different rooms.
"Oliver," she said, turning back to him, "we have a lot of searching to do."
Oliver had set his belongings on a rock shelf close to the floor and Kim's on the shelf above his. "Tomorrow. I'm tired."
Kim silently agreed with him. The moon shone outside and she was exhausted. She turned back to the hallways and held her torch up. There were words carved above the hallways. The books were categorized by room.
That would certainly make things easier. Now they could narrow down their search to a handful of rooms instead of wasting time sifting through hundreds of useless books.
Kim set the torch back in its bracket and climbed into her stone bunk, letting her legs dangle down.
Oliver was laying on his bunk and Leleh had flown up to rest near the ceiling.
"What exactly do you hope to find here?" Oliver asked.
Kim shrugged to herself. "Information on Marcus. The Lost War. Mortemsusiri. A giant hole in the sky. Anything we can use."
"Yeah, that's specific."
Kim swung her legs onto the bunk and propped her head up against her pack,
folding her wings around her like a blanket. "I don't know what we're supposed to specifically look for yet. I hope you brought your reading glasses."
"Don't need them. I have perfect vision."
Kim smiled to herself. "It's an expression, Oliver." She rolled over onto her side. "Goodnight."
"Goodnight."

She had drooled in her sleep and awoke to a sticky puddle of it coating her cheek.
Her wings fell open. Blinking sleep out of her eyes, Kim pushed her hair back and wiped a hand across her mouth.
The irony, she thought. Here she was, miss Prim and Proper, wiping spit off of her face with the back of her hand.
She briefly wondered if other Hectics drooled in their sleep. Or maybe she was just a bit strange like that.
Dropping down to the floor, Kim noticed Leleh was gone. Probably out hunting. Oliver was still sound asleep.
Smiling, Kim crouched down and very gently whispered, "Oliver, wake up," and when he didn't answer to her beck and call she poked him in the side.
He jerked upright with a snort.
"Morning," Kim said, and Oliver blinked groggily at her. "Come on! We've got work to do!"
And with that began their first day in the Caves.

The libraries were divided into categories such as "politics", "major history", "customs", "fauna and flora", "geography", and many others.
They quickly singled out the two rooms that would be of most value, "Major History" and "Nobility Hall", and got to work.
Kim set up shop in "Nobility Hall", where the lives of all the Empresses and Emperors and other important political figureheads were documented.
It didn't take her too long to find Kara Mason's book, as all she had to do was go back a couple thousand years (about a hundred or so books), and after time period they were arranged alphabetically.
Kim sat at a small table by a torch in the wall.
Kara's book, like all the others, was bound in black leather with silver lettering on the front. The binding was almost new, which Kim found rather odd considering the layers of dust the book had accumulated. She assumed that no one really read these books though, they were there more as a record keeper than anything else.
The book actually did provide some very useful information...except it was stuff she already knew; how she was captured by Marcus and held prisoner and escaped and trampled his sorry ass into the ground before going off to live her life like she deserved.
By the end of the night Kim's eyes burned like someone had poured acid in them.
She placed the book back on it's rightful shelf and went to walk out of the room, but stopped suddenly.
She found the book by torchlight, after a good solid hour of searching.
She met Oliver, who had nothing to show for his day of work, and Leleh came back with two dead rabbits. One she tore in half and swallowed down, the other she laid at Oliver's feet, who looked completely weirded out but he patted her anyway.
Kim roasted the rabbit and they discussed the book over dinner.
"So." Oliver sat cross-legged in front of her, eating a piece of rabbit. "What'd you find?"
"Marcus Slater's book," she said, holding it up for him to see. "Oliver, this is fantastic. Who knows what we could learn about him? About him contacting the Spirit world. This could be the answer!"
Oliver was nodding eagerly. "You study that tomorrow and I'll keep searching. If we keep having the luck we've had so far we should be able to figure this thing out."
Kim stared down at the book in her lap. "I hope so," she said quietly.

She dreamt again that night, another unpleasant dream that she feared had more basis in reality than fantasy.
Marcus and Kara weren't there, but the demons were. They shattered the Alliance and the people in it and she couldn't stop it. She was hopelessly desperate and desperately hopeful. She watched her world fall down around her, watched as she failed her people, failed her job, failed at who she was supposed to be because she wasn't good enough, and she broke.
She unleashed the black lightning upon everyone until they were all dead, reduced to ashes, and she was standing alone in a burnt, dead field, reduced to nothing more than a demon in angel's clothing.
Kim woke up in the middle of the night, her heart pounding, still not entirely sure that the dream wasn't real.
How far would she go to protect her people?
Even if it meant turning into a demon herself?