6. Cress
The powercore was on level sixteen of thirty. I eyed the buttons on the elevator’s wall as I descended in relative silence alongside Aurora and Geo, my handbook now perched on my shoulder. Since Geo refused to leave his gargoyle form, we would exceed the weight limit with all of us in here, so the others would follow along shortly.
Moongrove Library had had fifty floors, with many levels specialized for the containment of specific kinds of creatures, unnaturals, and artifacts. I’d met dozens of librarians who’d worked there, often seeing more than one person working every day on the more labor-intensive floors. To think Cerris City Library only had three librarians left. Even with its smaller size, it would become unmanageable quickly.
Geo’s suggestion that we come here immediately was rock solid…pun not intended. He was my protective shadow as we followed Aurora through a foyer that looked like it could be any modern office’s reception area and passed a waiting area with a cluster of plush chairs.
“What’s your home library?” Aurora asked.
“Moongrove,” I answered.
“Ah, I went to college at NSU too. The powercore here is different, and so is the process of drawing from it,” she said.
I quirked a curious brow. “How so?”
“Moongrove’s powercore felt a lot like talking to a person, especially when I touched it. It felt ancient and mysterious. There’s no mystery here. The powercore in this library is a computer,” she told us, gesturing us into the next room.
“A computer can be a powercore?” I asked mostly to myself.
The handbook on my shoulder rustled its pages. “Yeah, almost every powercore across North America is powered by artificial intelligence. You’ve been spoiled by one that thinks like you do,” it said.
“It felt weird at first, but I’ve gotten used to it. It monitors the library just as well as Moongrove’s powercore,” Aurora said.
I bit my lip. She was so close to the truth. Moongrove Library’s powercore was a person, once, named Braza. After her death, her soul had become the beating heart of the library. She’d formed into a large, immobile sphere that rested on a ley line, siphoning raw magic from the earth to create a reservoir her librarians could tap. Through her awareness of the fifty underground floors of her domain, Braza guided her librarians to maintain order.
I’d only learned this much about her because of Phaeron, who’d known her in life. She’d healed me of some devastating injuries and sheltered me within her dome. I was disappointed I was about to let go of the magic she’d given me so I could attune with a computer-controlled powercore instead. It just wouldn’t be the same.
The powercore chamber came to light slowly as I approached the sphere at its center. It reminded me of an LED with its faint but growing light, marked a pure and crisp white. Like with Braza, the massive powercore rested in the cradle of a stone loop.
“The other change is that you can climb inside of it. There’s a seat and a terminal within to enter your information,” Aurora explained.
“That does seem weird,” I said. I took a couple steps up to the powercore before I touched its jelly-like surface. It wasn’t as dense as Braza, and I pushed my hand through to the pocket of air within it.
“Just step forward!” Aurora encouraged. She and Geo waited a few paces away. He’d crossed his arms, gazing up at me with a vague frown. With his stone form, even a small downturn of his lips was as intense as if he were about to rush over and snatch me away from danger.
I braced myself and took the suggested step. The powercore blinded me for a moment, but the sole of my foot found solid stone on the other side. Blinking away dazzled streaks from my eyes, I saw that the computer terminal and seat took up much of the space inside. I sat and put my fingertips on the keyboard extending out from under the monitor.
There was a jolt of static over my skin. “Beginning startup procedure,” a robotic voice said from the terminal.
The hair rose along my arms. There was some kind of magic analyzing me, and it felt reminiscent of the same magic that Braza wielded. My handbook giggled. “That tickles!” it squeaked.
After a minute of this, the sensation faded and the machine said, “Scan complete. Welcome, librarian witch. What would you like to do?”
The monitor flashed with a menu list of options. I used the arrow keys on the keyboard to highlight option three, which was to attune to this powercore, and hit enter.
“My sensors detect lingering magic from the powercore in Moongrove Library. Enter identifying information to begin the transfer process.”
The screen went dark before loading in what looked like a job application. I started typing in my name and date of birth with a sigh, hoping I wouldn’t leave my friends waiting for too long. There was a spinning wheel in the corner of the screen that kept distracting me as text flashed next to it. “Connecting to Moongrove Library…”
I was halfway through the application when apparently the connection went through and the screen froze. I muttered a curse and tapped the keys with more force than necessary, past annoyed with this cumbersome system.
A voice entered my head, sudden and loud. “Brightest of souls! Why are you trying to switch libraries?”
“Braza?” I whispered.
“What has happened? Did I not grant you sufficient power for your audience with the Crown Coven?” she demanded.
I had questions for her, too. Like how she’d managed to bring her presence across so many miles to raise her voice in my head. I could feel her lingering in the air with me, a presence of power and static.
“It comes with the job of needing others to do what I physically cannot,” she answered.She could also skim the thoughts off the top of my head, an ability that also extended all this way.
Instead of using my words, now that I knew she was in my thoughts, I projected my most recent memories to her. The interrupted audience, the fight and deaths, Myuna’s summoning. All the while, her magic thickened further in the air.
“Uhhh, Cressie-poo, maybe we should get out of this thing,” the handbook said nervously, taking off to flap circles around my head.
The small space filled with the humidity of a mounting storm, and I teared up as it reminded me of Phaeron. I could close my eyes and it would be him next to me, his magic on a short leash. But I knew that was a lie. Braza had a zip of electricity to her that he did not. It felt like potential I could reach out and take, to wield as well as I could.
“Step out of the powercore,” she instructed.
To hear it twice had me scrambling from the seat hastily and taking a leap out of the white powercore. The room shuddered as my feet landed. “W-what’s happening?” Aurora asked. She clutched the front of her chest and gasped as the tremors under our feet grew.
Geo grabbed me with one arm and her with the other, shading our heads with his heavy wings. I was pressed between his shield and the outside world, my eyes twice their size as the computerized powercore went dim. Aurora screamed and reached out for it as its jelly-like surface shrank and fell into the hole underneath its stone dais.
“The powercore!” she shrieked.
“Wait,” I shouted. Something else was flowing up from the hole, its soft form expanding once it’d cleared the stone and emitting a piercing purple-black glow.
I had no idea how, but it was Braza, and her presence expanded out rapidly through the room and likely the library as a whole. “Emergency protocol initiated: temporary placement of an ancient powercore. Reinforcing all existing spells…” Braza projected this outward, and Aurora’s mouth fell open.
Geo released us both as the shaking beneath our feet stopped. A door slammed, and in ran Ben, followed closely by Roe and the rest of our friends and coven. “Hey,” Aurora tried to shout, but she was breathless. “Only librarians and gargoyles this close to the powercore.”
I whispered Braza’s name, awe keeping my face slackened. How could I have thought the other powercore compared to the light and power she put off? Her magic flowed from her in waves, like a beating heart.
“It is quite all right. I have welcomed this young coven in my halls before. As I used to see you daily, small shimmer. Fret not, I have secured the creatures attempting to escape. Come attune with me so we can hold this library against…” Braza faltered for a moment. “Hold this library for as long as we can with the few resources that remain here.”
“I didn’t know you could switch places with another powercore like this,” I said. And my thoughts added, Aren’t you afraid Myuna will come for you?
“In my prince’s absence, you need me more than ever. We shall fight. Together,” she answered. No one else seemed to hear her reassurance or feel the way her power curled around me like an embrace.
“Together,” I murmured aloud in agreement.
“You will see how literal that is soon. For now, I must meet with the three librarians who remain here, and you need to claim a place to rest. Might I suggest the rooms on floor negative two?” She hummed, adding as an afterthought, “The living spaces set aside on floor negative one bear signs of occupation. I don’t think they have grounds to complain if you borrow their things. Clothes, especially.”
I looked down at myself and the wrinkled and torn formal robe and pants combination I was still wearing. She was definitely telling me to change into something else.
As I turned to go, motioning to my friends to come along, a woman who looked like she could be Steven’s grandmother stalked into the chamber. She had a similar brown skin tone and the first touches of gray through her dark hair. The cat shifter peered around her ankles as if he were a familiar taking shelter behind his witch.
She wore a sweater and jeans but carried an ornate silver sword in one hand and had a book flapping just over her shoulder obediently. Her brows drew in a surprised scowl. “Is it true? An ancient powercore just arrived?”
“That is correct,” Braza answered for us.
The older librarian seemed to pull a face, but her voice broke as she said, “Thank the Goddess. We were bound to be overrun without some kind of help.”
“Do I smell a round of firings once this is all over, boss?” asked the last librarian as he sauntered in. He could’ve been Lars Eriksson’s American twin, with sideswept blond hair and a leanly muscled build. His sword was sheathed at his side and his stance cocky. A low whistle escaped him as he eyed Braza’s glow.
The boss in question smacked her lips. “You’re not coming any closer to my job, Jonah, if that’s what you’re really asking.”
Roe cleared her throat, stepping forward with her hand extended. “Sorry to interrupt, ma’am. Since you’re in charge, I wanted to let you know who we are and why we’re here.”
“Yes, I was wondering what you all were doing this close to the powercore,” she commented, shaking Roe’s hand. “Leona Whiteside, head librarian.”
We gathered for a group introduction, and even Braza presented herself formally. Leona seemed like a strict woman who didn’t take much shit yet had seen too much of it lately. She still was visibly relieved that our group included another librarian and a gargoyle. She offered us rooms, same as Braza had, and accepted a partnership with Ashbough Protective Services through Roe.
“If the monster eating corpses on the nightly news is the reason our dimensional aberrations are suddenly gaining the power to wake from stasis, we will need any defenders you can spare. Preferably people who won’t hesitate to slay anything that tries to escape,” she said.
I only hesitated for a few moments before telling her that that monster was Myuna, the goddess of said aberrations. Jonah paled beside her, while her eyes flashed with defiance. They exchanged a glance before Leona said, “Then we must initiate a new protocol. Please, put me in contact with your leader. I believe we must do something quite desperate.”
She told us not to worry about it for now and practically chased us out of the room so we could claim places to rest for the evening. I, at least, would not be leaving the library once it was after dark, knowing a vampire was hunting me in Myuna’s name.
Braza reached out to me, whispering the idea that’d come to Leona. “She was not willing to tell you that the only way to keep Myuna from summoning the servants and magic waiting for her in this library is to destroy it all.”
I swallowed thickly, thinking that we locked the monsters away because they were dangerous, unknowable, or both. And the books and tools of occult use were kept here for careful study, considering they could never be replaced. To set all of that alight represented a huge loss of knowledge.
“I know, brightest of souls. But we must mitigate the threats we can.”
I trembled as I thought of how unprepared my friends were to fight the creatures that even a fully staffed library had preferred to keep in containment rooms. I couldn’t lose any of them, especially not after having to leave Phaeron with Myuna and an uncertain fate.