Chapter 9
“Are you sorting, or just lost in fantasies up there?” Algernon's voice, warm and slightly amused, floated up to Elara as she perched atop the ladder, her hands delicately placing an ancient scroll back in its proper place among the towering shelves.
She rolled her eyes. “Only dreaming of a better filing system, sir.”
Dust motes danced in the shafts of golden sunlight that poured through the archive's lofty arched windows, itching Elara's nose. The room was bathed in a soft, buttery light.
She shifted her weight on the groaning ladder, taking in the labyrinth of towering bookshelves that surrounded her.
“It really is a disaster up here,” she muttered to herself, pushing aside a bulky chest with a determined grunt.
She was making room for a new addition, Herbal Alchemy: The Potency of Nature's Elixir.
Algernon muttered something indecipherable, his attention firmly anchored back to the task of incessant scribbling, crafting the lines of his latest manuscript.
The air was heavy with the scent of parchment as she descended through the stacks that housed Latheria's illustrious history.
She passed through the ages of Osin, the rise and fall of the empires, and the detailed accounts of those who lived through the war.
She skimmed past the earliest historical accounts—the tales of the Mothers' intervention that led to the separation of the Fae and mortals.
Elara wrinkled her brow. “Are you sure you want it here?” It seemed like an odd spot for Herbal Alchemy, but then, Algernon’s way of organizing books lacked any discernible pattern or logic.
He peered over his glasses from behind the mountains of parchment that littered his ancient desk. With a gentle nod, he said, “Ah, yes, kindly set it there, right next to Ethnobotany of the Fae. It should feel quite at home.”
Elara’s gaze swept back over the mess of scrolls and tomes strewn before her.
Her eyes paused on titles that delved deep into the mysteries of the Fae: Fauna of Dusk and Starlight: A Comprehensive Study, The Great Divide: Historical Analysis of the Cataclysm That Sundered Realms, Tír na nóg: Scholarly Insights into the Fae Realm, and The Ether Exodus: Tracing the Fae's Theft and Humanity's Reclamation.
Elara had pored over those volumes, absorbing them voraciously at one time.
The Ether Exodus particularly held her interest. These texts explored the catastrophic period known as the Great Divide, when the Mothers split the realms apart to protect the distinct species from one another.
According to these scholars, it was then that the Fae stripped all ether from the land.
This act wasn't just theft; it was a devastation that marked the beginning of a slow decay across the world.
Initially, the changes were subtle shifts in weather patterns, but soon they escalated to widespread famine as the earth turned barren, the seas grew toxic, and even the gentlest creatures became savage, driven mad by hunger and despair.
Beside The Ether Exodus lay a thick, well-worn volume that Elara despised above all: Osin’s Sacred Journey: Beseeching the Goddesses for Ether.
Unlike the scholarly works that surrounded it, this book dripped with religious zeal.
It lacked citations, cross-references, or any semblance of rigorous research—it was purely the proclaimed word of one man, accepted as divine revelation.
And yet, everyone revered it. They wept over its pages, and gods, she'd bet some probably clung to it in their sleep.
Elara despised it most because she was mentioned in it, reducing her to an object within its narrative.
She was described as merely a vessel, a relic, glossed over as if she were nothing—a reflection, she realized bitterly, of how Osin truly viewed her.
It shouldn't have come as a shock, but sometimes, she admitted, she could be naive.
“Has something special caught your fancy?” Algernon called out, adjusting his position to get a better look at her.
"Not at all, nothing up here catches my interest,” Elara replied, pushing Osin’s Sacred Journey to the back of the shelf, out of sight. She quickly arranged the rest of the Herbal Alchemy volumes where the old Druid had instructed, then turned back to face him.
“Is there anything else you need, or can I leave now?” Elara asked, impatience coloring her voice.
Not that she had pressing plans—pathetically enough, her evening's highlight was to watch the equinox festival from the solitude of her tower.
She couldn't help but crave the sight of the celebrations, the distant laughter, and the spicy scent of the harvest that seemed to ride the wind straight to her each year.
Algernon flashed a quick smile. “Actually, if you could take a look at these calculations before you go…”
Elara’s eyes flicked to the stack of parchment he pointed to—star charts, half-finished graphs, and the unmistakable scrolls of divination scattered about his desk. She nearly sighed, biting it back as she glanced over the mess. “Fine,” she said with a tight smile. “Whatever you need.”
Elara climbed back down the ladder and looked over his work.
Algernon was focused on graphing star patterns—he’d mentioned it in passing a few days ago—but his enthusiasm for astromantic theory often led to careless mistakes in the numbers.
And that’s where she came in. Elara had always been quick with math, quicker than most, and her reputation had spread through the sanct.
From scribes to astromancers, they sought her out, handing over their half-done work, hoping for a second set of eyes.
She set the scrolls down on one of the reading tables, skimming the first set of numbers.
It didn’t take long for her to spot the error.
He had miscalculated the angle of the star’s declination in relation to the lunar cycle.
A simple mistake, but one that would throw off the entire chart.
Her mind worked quickly, automatically correcting the equations in her head.
“You’ve offset the meridian by three degrees,” she said, not bothering to hide the mild exasperation in her voice.
“If you plot the stars based on this, you’ll end up with an entirely different constellation. ”
Algernon blinked up at her. “Really? I could’ve sworn…”
Elara sighed. “If you’d double-check your base calculations, you wouldn’t need me to fix these for you every other week.”
But truthfully, she didn’t mind. There was something calming about numbers. Equations never lied, never twisted themselves into the unpredictable mess that people did.
She glanced back at Algernon, who had already begun adjusting the graphs. She turned to leave, but his voice stopped her.
“Oh, one more thing.” He flashed that charming smile again, the kind that made him seem a bit too innocent. “If you could sort out these scrolls before you go, I’d be most grateful.”
Elara’s eyes drifted to the mountain of parchment he had clearly pulled down in a fit of inspiration and promptly abandoned.
She forced a smile. “Of course,” she muttered, knowing she couldn’t exactly say no.
Her fingers flexed as she gathered the scrolls, already mapping out the fastest way to organize them in her head.
She climbed back up, scaling the towering shelves. Navigating the archives by ladder was the quickest way, and she hardly minded how mad she might appear, flying through the stacks like a bat out of hell.
With a thrust of her foot against the side of the sturdy shelf, Elara sent the rolling ladder hurtling down the row of towering bookcases.
The screech of metal wheels echoed through the vast archives, as stray curls, escapees from her hastily made braid, danced wildly around her face.
The sensation, that brief thrill of flight, stirred something deep within, and a small, irrepressible smirk curled her lips.
But the rush of wind against her face, that intoxicating rush, was abruptly soured by a familiar, cold sting of ether.
With barely any time to react, the ladder jerked to a sudden stop, sending a shock through her spine.
Elara's fingers tightened around the rung, a desperate grip to keep from tumbling. But as her body jerked, the divination scrolls she was carrying slipped from her grasp. She helplessly watched as Algernon’s meticulously arranged work scattered, his efforts undone in a heartbeat.
Elara took a deep breath to calm the trembling in her hands, the twinge of anger simmering in her gray eyes. She didn't need to turn around to know who was responsible.
“Branwen,” she hissed, spitting the name out like a curse. “Have your little predictions bored you so much that you've taken to playing god with my life?”
Branwen stepped out from behind the towering bookshelf, his smirk sharp and joyless. “Why would any god bother meddling in your affairs when you've turned self-destruction into an art form?”
Elara’s jaw tensed, his words striking a raw nerve.
Her hands clenched around the ladder's rungs, knuckles bleaching under the pressure, as she wrestled with the impulse to retaliate.
Instead, she drew in a deep, steadying breath, and began her descent, each step down the ladder a swallowed comeback, until her feet finally met the solid ground below.
“What exactly is your issue with me?”
His contempt seemed too deep to be random.
Could it be envy? His devotion to the Mothers bordered on the pathological, spending every day and night bound in ceaseless prayers, like a pendulum swinging to the same haunting rhythm.
The more she considered it, the more suspicion crept in.
It was a gamble, but she was never one to shy away from playing her hand when intuition called.