Chapter 50 #2
Mathias doesn’t know about Anthea. With Pierce direly wounded, and the dagger nowhere to be seen, he’ll likely believe his phylactery is safe, even if it’s out of his sight. What he won’t abide is me escaping him a third time. His arrogance makes him predictable.
Which makes me the perfect distraction.
My grimoire flicks open, already searching for foundation level spells that will work.
“Hiding? How low the mighty Librarian has fallen,” Mathias taunts.
He’s getting closer. Even with the magic magnifying his every word, I’m surprised I can hear him over the pounding of my blood in my ears. I can feel him now, his grimoire a familiar, nauseating presence to my right.
I turn to face the threat.
Every step across the cracked tiles of the Rotunda echoes until I’m standing looking southward along Botanical Hall with Dakari and Leo at my side.
“I’m not hiding,” I announce, meeting the dead gaze of the lich at the far end with every ounce of courage I possess.
My breath freezes in my lungs.
Somehow, his presence makes the already dilapidated hall seem more oppressive. Or maybe that’s the small horde of undead shambling along behind him, already spreading out, heading deeper into the Arcanaeum.
“Find the rest of them,” Mathias orders as he strides towards us, not one, but three grimoires orbiting him like he’s the sun. “Kill them all and retrieve my phylactery.”
My heart tumbles at the order, but my eyes don’t leave the spellbooks at his side.
For any other arcanist, building the bond to more than one grimoire would take decades.
Too much time for too little reward. Spells cast from a spare would never be as efficient and therefore would always be weaker.
Expanding their repertoire or learning to cast without incantations is a far better use of their time.
But for a lich with hundreds of years at his disposal, perhaps the power difference would eventually become so negligible as to make it worthwhile.
The mist swirling between us adds to his foreboding aura, but it also gives me an idea.
“You’ll never fully control the Library while I live,” I taunt.
“What are you doing?” Leo asks under his breath.
“Improvising,” I hiss back. “Now, run.”
I conjure a wall of rock between us and the lich, then turn on my heel, shoe squeaking on the tile as I lead Dakari and Leo in sprinting towards Kinetic Hall.
Or rather, the doors beyond.
Rock rumbles as Mathias tears down my creation. His own magical rope lashes around my waist, snags, tugs. Leo casts something, and the strands fall apart, freeing me to keep running.
It seems Mathias is still aiming to capture me, not kill me. Somehow that only makes the icy fear gripping my stomach colder.
I burst through the great doors and into the fog.
A few centuries ago, I tried to walk as far as I could go into the empty vista that surrounds the Arcanaeum. I had nothing to lose and little to fear. I reasoned that I was unlikely to get lost, when at midnight, I’d be dragged back for my re-enactment anyway.
The Arcanaeum let me go as far as I pleased, not that it mattered.
I never found anything in my adventures. Just interminable swirling mist and a vague line delineating some ever-shifting horizon. After a few yards, one can barely even see the Arcanaeum behind us. It’s little more than a vague shadow that quickly disappears entirely.
It’s disorienting. It drives most insane.
Which makes it the perfect place to lose a lich.
As soon as we’re almost far enough to have lost sight of the building, I cast an invisibility scrap.
It’s patchy, fading in and out, and beyond basic, but I’m counting on the haze to obscure us more than anything. Neither will do much good against even the simplest divination spell.
Then I conjure a rope, tying the middle to my belt and passing Dakari and Leo one end each.
“Don’t let go,” I tell them both. “And try not to look at the fog. Focus on me or him.”
I may not be able to touch them, but I can’t let them get lost out here.
“You’re really becoming irksome, you know that?
” Mathias growls, his voice echoing oddly as he follows us out of the Arcanaeum.
“If I could, I would go back and sacrifice someone else, just to save myself the trouble. If you were still playing in the dirt with all the other dulls, the Arcanaeum would never have fallen to ruin.”
My teeth clench, but my focus is stolen as Dakari shoves all three of us down. A wave of fire passes over our heads, and I silently thank him even as my elbows and knees protest the jarring impact with the ground. I roll away the second I can breathe, refusing to pull more magic from him.
Our tumble has sent the fog swirling, giving away our rough location. More fire rains down everywhere as we scramble back to our feet.
It’s chaos. Smoke burns my nostrils. I’m not even sure where to run as we dodge blast after blast. A sizzle of pain erupts from my leg as fire splashes my woollen skirt, but I force myself to keep going.
My plan had been to lead the lich away from the Arcanaeum in the hopes of losing him, and then doubling back, but I don’t know which direction we’re running in anymore.
I can still feel my bonds to the others. That’s our only hope of finding the Library again after this.
Mathias’s brutal barrage of attacks has an unintended consequence.
The fog thickens, turning from a gentle mist over the ground to a freezing blanket that extends far above our heads.
Like it’s feeding on the magic or perhaps reacting to protect itself.
Is that even possible?
I can’t come up with any other explanation. If it were simple mist, it would’ve evaporated by now.
I keep running, dragging Dakari and Leo with me. They cast, I direct, until eventually it all…stops.
“Did we lose him?” I gasp.
“Think so.” Leo bends double, bracing his hands on his knees while Dakari watches us both struggle to breathe.
He’s barely winded. Ugh. Maybe I should have let Lambert talk me into trying that treadmill….
I look down at my screaming calf muscle, now visible through the scorched hole in my skirt, and wince. The wound is red and angry. Not lethal, but debilitating.
I’ll live, but I likely won’t heal until I’m reconnected to the Arcanaeum. Touching one of them might fix the damage, but neither of them has enough power for me to risk it.
We’re running on fumes, and Mathias is out there with three grimoires and an intact phylactery.
“We have to double back. With any luck, the others have finished in the Alchemy labs.” I double check that they’re both still holding the rope. “If not, we need to hurry things along.”
I have a horrible feeling that Mathias won’t stay lost out here forever. That would be too easy.
“What exactly are they doing with the bombs?” Leo asks. “And why is Lambert the one you trusted with that?”
I roll my eyes at him. “While you were obsessing over your curse, Lambert was perfecting just about every lethal alchemical formula mentioned in his magiball magazines. If Mathias finds his way back to the Arcanaeum, we can assume he’ll enter from the foyer, which makes Botanical Hall…”
“The perfect place for an ambush.” Dakari’s grin is wicked.
I swallow back my nerves as the silhouette of the building comes into view. “Yes. As long as Anthea manages to do her part.”
We can chuck all the bombs and magic in the world at him and it won’t finish him off if his soul vessel is intact.
As if my thoughts are the trigger, the bonds I’m following back to the Library snap taut. The drain that was weakening me trebles in intensity, stealing what little air remains in my lungs.
Pain. So much pain.
Then it’s gone.
Replaced with a horrifyingly familiar numbness.
The rope drops to the ground.
I can’t feel the fog, or the cold, or the pain in my leg. I meet Leo’s widening eyes.
Then I’m gone. Floating. My thoughts scrambled.