Chapter 20
They left Vellhorn through the western gate as the afternoon sun hung low enough to make everything golden and slightly annoying.
Alsen had a general idea of the direction. West, then south by the river, through the forest, and to the library. Easy.
“You sure you know where we’re going?” Luna asked, walking beside him in her new leather shoes.
“We went there before.”
“Yeah, and it took you four days for a one-day trip.”
That was the first trip. This one was going to be normal. Then again, they didn’t have the greatest traveling track record.
He chose to not respond to that.
Luna hummed beside him. She started humming the moment they left Vellhorn. The tunes were her usual, positive and upbeat.
He didn’t comment on it.
They walked until the city disappeared behind them. The road ran by the river, through farmland, fields of wheat and barley rippling in the afternoon breeze. A couple of farmers paused their work to watch them pass, one raising a hand in greeting. Luna waved back.
When they approached the forest, he unfolded the map. He stared at the map for an uncomfortable amount of time, rotating it twice.
Luna let him struggle. Walking as if the direction didn’t matter. They walked north for about two hours before the night got dark enough.
They broke camp. Luna hunted a deer, which they cooked over the tree Alsen set on fire. The burnt meat with no spices or garnish reminded Alsen they forgot to buy supplies. Then again, the traveling would lose a part of its charm if they ate decent food.
The pattern repeated for the next few days. The library was supposed to be a day’s, perhaps two days’ walk from Vellhorn.
On day four, they finally found the Lass. Alsen almost cheered when he saw the woman-shaped tree.
The Lass stood in the same clearing as before, unchanged by the weeks that passed. The tree’s trunk curved in that unmistakable feminine shape, the bark smooth where it shouldn’t be, the whole form so suggestive that Alsen had to remind himself, again, that it was just a tree.
Luna barely glanced at it. “Need a moment with the Lass, or do we keep going?”
Alsen rolled his eyes.
“Don’t be shy. It’s a really well-curved tree. I’m sure you can chase the ants out with a spell.”
“You’re hilarious.”
She chuckled. They continued on the path, finally having a clear direction.
They reached the library by the afternoon.
Scaffolding wrapped around the library’s eastern wing like a wooden skeleton. Workers moved across the structure, hauling beams, hammering nails. The ancient oak at the building’s heart stood as it always had, massive and unperturbed, its branches spreading wide above the construction.
Half the roof of the reconstructed section was new timber already, the pale wood contrasting sharply with the aged darkness of the original structure. Tarps covered the sections still open to the sky. The smell of sawdust mixed with the forest air.
Scholars moved among the workers, most carrying stacks of books or armfuls of scrolls. A few supervised the construction with the nervous energy of people watching strangers handle their most precious possessions.
At the entrance, Mirella stood with her hands on her hips, directing a pair of workers who carried a bookshelf that looked as though it weighed more than both of them combined. She wore the same kind of practical robes as before, though these didn’t have scorch marks.
She spotted Alsen and Luna before they reached the door. Her expression shifted from tired supervision to genuine surprise. “Well. The mountain children return. This time without drakes.”
Alsen smiled. She couldn’t make it more obvious she didn’t believe their totally believable origin story. “Keeper Mirella.”
“You look different.” She measured Alsen with a verifying look. Afterward, she glanced at Luna. “Not you, though.”
She grinned. “Traveling with me takes a toll even on the sturdiest of men.”
“We’ve also been through a dungeon,” Alsen quickly added. “The past weeks have been eventful.”
“Haven’t they been for all of us.” Mirella gestured at the scaffolding. “The gold you left helped immensely. We managed to negotiate a better deal with the builders, and the drakes have their tribute prepared.”
“Good.”
She glanced between them. “What brings you back? More breathing exercises?”
“Research. I’m looking for something more specific this time.” He hesitated, choosing how to frame it. “Have you ever come across the term Pellicle?”
Mirella’s brow furrowed. Not recognition, exactly.
More like trying to place something half-remembered.
“Pellicle,” she repeated. “I’ve seen it in passing, in old texts about the foundation of magic.
In the kind of books that predate most of our collection…
” she trailed off, eyes narrowing. “Theological in nature, if I recall. The old mages wrote about it before the kingdoms codified magical study.”
“Do you know what it is?”
She shook her head. “It was always treated as unverified theories. Something the ancient texts assumed as obvious, but nobody ever bothered verifying its existence.” She studied his face. “Why do you ask?”
“I found references to it in some old texts in the dungeon we explored.” He didn’t elaborate that it was in an old temple. “The references suggested it was important, but I couldn’t find any explanation.”
Mirella’s expression softened into something that looked a lot like academic sympathy. “If you want to dig into the collection, it’s in the deep shelves.”
“If you’ll allow it.”
“Of course. Though I should warn you, the texts aren’t exactly easy to read.” She turned to Luna. “And you? Are you also here for the ancient theological terminology?”
“I’m mostly tagging along,” Luna said. “But if you’ve got any texts about the Thousand Faced God, I’d love to go through them.”
“Those were destroyed long ago.” Mirella almost smiled. “Come. I’ll show you what we have.”
She led them inside. The main hall looked much as Alsen remembered, though scaffolding crowded the eastern wall. The reading tables were occupied, scholars working on restoration rather than study, carefully unpeeling damp pages, cataloging damaged texts.
They descended the spiraling stairs to the lower chambers. The mistlamps still cast their eerie teal light through the root-threaded shelves. Down here, the reconstruction noise faded to a distant murmur. The air smelled of old paper and earth.
“The oldest texts are in the far alcove,” Mirella said, gesturing past several rows of shelves.
“Anything that references the Pellicle would be there, if we have it at all. Most of what survived the dragons’ purge are non-religious texts, treatises on magical theory, natural philosophy, some histories.
The explicitly religious materials were destroyed. ”
“This shouldn’t be religious,” Alsen said. “The Pellicle isn’t a deity.”
“You vastly overestimate the dragons’ need for contextual accuracy.” She stopped at the entrance to a narrow alcove lined with shelves. “I’ll leave you to it. Please be careful with anything that looks fragile. It is.”
Alsen nodded. Mirella departed, her footsteps fading up the stairs.
Luna dropped into a chair at the nearest reading table. She kicked her feet up. “Wake me when you find something.”
“You could help.”
“Sure. Tell me what to look for and in what language, and I’ll help.”
She had a point. The older texts were written in scripts he barely understood himself. Luna could read the common tongue of this world well enough, but ancient magical notation would be meaningless to her.
He started pulling books.
The alcove held perhaps sixty texts, most of them thick, leather-bound volumes with cracked spines and faded titles.
Some had no titles at all, just symbols pressed into the leather.
Alsen worked methodically, pulling each book, scanning the first pages for any mention of the Pellicle or related concepts, then either setting it aside for deeper reading or returning it to the shelf.
Most of the texts were exactly what Mirella described.
Natural philosophy, written in a style that blended empirical observation with metaphysical speculation.
Treatises on the nature of mana, the classification of elements, the theory of spiritual circulation.
He recognized some of the ideas from his old world’s own magical tradition, though framed differently.
The third book he examined used the word.
Not Pellicle, not directly, but a term that his limited understanding of the ancient script rendered as something close.
The Skin Between. The passage described it as a foundational boundary, a membrane of magical energy that separated and connected the spheres of existence.
He pulled the book to the reading table and sat down, noticing that Luna wasn’t there. Instead, she was rummaging through books in a different section.
So, she did find something she was interested in.
He opened the book, and read further, translating slowly. His grasp of the old script was functional but far from fluent. It described it as a thin membrane that existed between the spheres of existence. Not the Void itself, but the boundary between the spiritual place and the Void.
The spiritual realm was where spirits resided, and the Void was, in terms of magical spheres, the final layer.
The texts of magic he knew always assumed the Void to be the source of magic. Not something in between.
He ignored that. The book’s author, whoever they were, described the Pellicle as the foundation upon which all magical systems were built. All magic, in some sense, supposedly came from it.
What interested him was how the author wrote about the Pellicle. As if he had seen it.
It also could connect to the six-star phenomenon, as the separation or the destruction of the Pellicle would indeed lead to the end of magic in a given world. The spiritual realm was bound to a world, as far as he knew.
“I need to find out how to access it,” he muttered.
“Access what?” Luna asked from across the room.