Isle of Sanctum | The Aya Thrasher Chronicles | Book 1 |[Editing]

Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

AYA

The train's doors opened in the center of town. It was surprisingly bustling for the size of it. Brennan tried to muffle his yawn, but I still heard it. I wasn't surprised that he was tired. We all were, but we also didn't know if Serina would prevent us from exploring later on. Come to think of it, it did seem a bit odd she was letting us wander around, but then again we were being watched remotely.

I glanced down at the map. The library was located off to the side, just outside downtown. I struggled to figure out where everything was. It took some getting used to.

"I'm so excited," Brennan said. "I can't believe I'm finally going to get to touch the Apocolypsis Lexicon. I've been dying to get a peek inside."

"If this book is so sacred, how come they keep in a library? I mean anyone could steal it," I pointed out. "Are you sure it's here?"

Brennan nodded as we continued up the large mountain of stairs. "It's not the original, but it's the only reprint ever made. The real original was destroyed in the war with Pravussens."

As we continued to climb the stairs, I stopped at the middle step to catch my breath. I wasn't in the best physical shape and the altitude was highlighting that.

"With all these stairs, I'm not sure this library gets that many visitors," I chuckled.

Brennan raced up the next couple of stairs cutting in front of me. He turned around and grinned playfully. "Come on, lazy pants," he teased.

As soon as I stepped into the library, I took in a deep breath, and let my lungs rest. The entrance was a neon green box with a single welcome desk. A lanky, elderly man wearing a pair of spectacles, was deeply engrossed with a newspaper. It must have been rather old, since newspapers hadn't been in existence for the last twenty years or so.

It wasn't until Brennan tapped on his desk, that the man looked up and wheezed out a cough. "Oh, hello. Welcome to the Royal Sciusian Library."

I looked around but didn't see any books. Bare walls overwhelmed the open space.

"We're looking for a book called, 'Apocolypsis Lexicon'," Brennan blurted out.

The man took a few seconds to get his lanky body out of the chair and his bones in his back cracked one by one, making me shudder. "So you're interested in classic Sciusian fiction?" He asked finally managing to get out of the chair.

"Fiction?" I asked.

The librarian motioned for us to follow him. "Yes, Silas Avendur was a great Sciusian philosopher and author, even though he was nuts." He adjusted his spectacles on the bridge on his nose. "We are in the process of doing some renovations on our front lobby, but we can get there through our special collections in the book vault."

It was a short walk from the librarian's desk to a red door. To my surprise, the door was actually an elevator. I wasn't sure if the library was an optical illusion, where everything looked bigger on the outside. I knew a single book vault wouldn't be big enough to contain a large number of books. After stepping out of the elevator, the librarian muttered a few foreign words that neither of us could understand. The heavily vaulted steel door in front of us flung open.

My mind was instantly changed as soon I took sight of the grand entrance we had stumbled upon. On the first floor, there were several rows of neatly organized bookshelves. We began our ascent up a magnificent gold encrusted staircase. The smell of decaying wood and cotton overwhelmed my nostrils, but I didn't mind the smell much. In some ways I found it comforting.