Throne of Time - Chapter 78: The Sequences of the Library (Patreon)

Despite the unnerving encounter, Suria felt like they were getting closer to what she needed, because every shelf now contained books about esoteric magical subjects. How could she decide between the doors that lay scattered across this arcane warehouse? She was glad she had asked Orinyan about navigating the library, even if it sounded like there was no way to be certain.

Through the next door they faced what seemed to be a long hallway. Unusually wide for any hallway in the real world, but much narrower than any of the previous chambers. The sides contained a mixture of bookshelves, doors, and dark mirrors that reflected a distorted shadow of their group.

"Careful." After treating all the other dangers contemptuously, Adwyrma raised her blade in front of her as if she expected to be attacked at any moment.

Though she didn't see any obvious threats, Suria kept her defensive spells prepared and renewed her perception spell. Her sense of space had been going haywire ever since they entered, but now she felt something else unsettling, as if the air itself was distorted.

There was nothing to do but keep searching, however, so Suria forced herself to move as fast as caution would allow. The shelves around the doors were no longer labeled and many of the books had no titles on the spines, but when she flipped through them, she identified clear topics. One shelf seemed to be entirely dedicated to blood magic, for example: if a student was trying to break into the Sequential Library to learn illegal sacrifice spells, that door might offer them everything they desired.

She could hope that the long corridor contained a room dedicated to time magic, so she began searching door by door. Once when she passed between shelves Suria caught a glimpse of herself and thought she saw something on her face, yet when she looked again, she appeared normal.

Shivering, Suria moved on. She discovered a shelf on agricultural magic, which included time-related spells to hasten crops... was she getting closer or further away? For a second she considered taking some agricultural books, but she didn't want to burden herself with legal books she could acquire elsewhere.

Though Adwyrma looked more and more tense as they continued, some of the others began to spread out a little. Suria saw that the Endelythan trio had clustered around one of the shelves on the other side of the corridor, one she hadn't searched yet. It seemed they were finding some of what they wanted, which she hoped would motivate them to be honest with her if they discovered any books about time magic first.

Finally Suria got lucky: she opened a book and realized it was a biography of Hrakik the Irredeemable. Actually, it was one of the texts she had gotten Rije to check out for her in previous cycles. Finding this one was no great prize, but it meant that she was getting close. Except she had found it on a shelf that stood in the middle of two doors...

"Do the sides of the shelves matter?" Suria asked. Almost no one answered her, however: Wynchard was moving forward cautiously and Adwyrma lurked nearby, eyes flickering around.

"Just decide," she said tersely.

So Suria began examining the books on both sides of the shelf, trying to discern according to some arcane instinct. All the books were somehow related to time magic now, but she couldn't tell how they were sorted. Again, she reminded herself of what Orinyan had explained: she was navigating through a massive spell that sorted knowledge according to some obscure taxonomy.

There was nothing stopping them from retracing their steps if she made the wrong decision, but Suria still tried to comprehend the exact nature of the divide. Despite the general subject matter, none of the books actually taught time magic, and she hadn't seen so much as a single inscription. As she looked through more of the tomes, Suria tried to discern whether one of the sides was more about the history of time magic and the other was more about the theory... the distinctions were subtle enough that she could be imagining them.

"Oh shit, run!"

The call shattered the silence of the corridor and Suria's head whipped back to the source. She saw the Endelythan group standing beside one of the mirrors, except one was stabbing another and there were four of them. Then she understood and her blood ran cold.

One of the group was a shadowy figure wearing a triangular mask, and it had stabbed a sword through the Endelythan. Even in the moment that Suria watched, two more figures walked out of the nearby mirror, wearing the same triangular masks with no eye holes.

At that moment the Endelythans took their own advice, abandoning their injured ally and rushing in Suria's direction. More masked figures emerged from the mirrors, briefly gathering around the fallen Endelythan to stab him to death, then all of the masks turned to face Suria.

"Decide!" Wynchard growled at her. Suria told herself to stay focused, but the masked doppelgangers seized her attention with their silent advance.

When she tore her attention away, she instead looked over her shoulder at the opposite side of the corridor... she shouldn't have. Opposite the shelves she was searching, there was another mirror, and Suria saw herself wearing one of the masks. She immediately whipped her runebook up to cast and her reflection didn't: it drew a sword and stepped out of the mirror.

Adwyrma struck from the side, slicing through it with her gray sword. The reflection dissolved into shadows and the mask clattered to the floor, but the rest were still coming. Worse, in the mirror Suria saw a reflection of Adwyrma, currently facing away...

"Decide!" Wynchard insisted.

"This one!" Suria called, throwing open the door she thought was more theoretical. The Akrashic faction had been on the edge of panic and they rushed through even before she could.

Suria remained a while longer, hurling spells down the corridor to cover the Endelythans as they caught up. Some of her force spells pierced the figures, sending masks dropping to the floor, but others seemed to pass through. Worse, there were more masks emerging from the rest of the corridor...

"Advance now," Wynchard said, grabbing her shoulder and hauling her through the door. Suria hadn't realized she was the last one, but then they were in a new phase of the library and Wynchard slammed the door shut behind them.

"Can they follow us?" one member of the Akrashic faction demanded anxiously.

"Generally not," Wynchard said, though he didn't take his eyes off the door. "Some of us should guard it, just in case. Suria, start searching. You better have picked the right room, because going backward is a risk now."

She hoped the same, and as she looked around the mostly empty chamber, she feared that she had made the wrong choice. This room was a simple cube that seemed to contain nothing but a pile of metal scrap in the center. There were no books visible anywhere, not even shelves, and she saw only a single door on the opposite side of the room.

"What is this?" one of the Endelythans demanded. "We sacrificed for this... dead end?"

"Not likely." Adwyrma still had her blade out and she eyed the mass of metal. "This isn't a dead end. It's an antechamber."

Only a fool would ignore the pile of metal scrap, and an even greater fool would approach it recklessly. Suria wondered if there could be books within, but she wasn't about to get close so she extended her perception spell to the metal. It was dense and more connected than she had expected, with the magical weight of glyphs across it, and she realized what would happen as the change occurred.

Unholy flames came alive and the metal lurched into the air as the pile folded into a golem.

It was an ugly mass of metal: a spherical body supported by three heavy legs, with three bladed arms rising from the top. There was nothing like a head in the center, merely the bulky sphere that glowed with the flames.

"Ah, shit." One of the Akrashic loopers released a bolt of lightning, but it ran through the golem and seemed to cause no harm whatsoever.

An instant later it rushed at them, faster than anything so bulky had any right to be. It might have impaled one of the nearest loopers if Adwyrma hadn't struck in that moment: she flashed in, dodging the stabbing arms, and drove her sword between the plates of the central orb.

Briefly the golem twitched, but it wasn't slain so easily and all its limbs lashed out. Adwyrma had to abandon her sword and throw herself back, and when she hit the opposite wall, she was bleeding across one arm. She began to create another sword from her blood, but from the look in her eyes, this golem was going to be a problem for her.

Wynchard took his eyes off the door long enough to launch an enormous gout of flame, but the fires washed over the metal harmlessly. Even though his flames were intense and charged with mana, this golem had a heart made of fire, so clearly its metal wasn't going to be so vulnerable. He should have known better than to try and Suria wondered if he was just buying time.

Neither of them had had much effect, and the golem plowed through the other spells thrown at it, but Suria hadn't been idle. She turned her runebook to the ice glyph she'd prepared, reminding herself of the details, then took a deep breath and cast at one of the golem's joints.

Ice impacted the mechanisms, not dealing any immediate damage, but the raw cold froze the joint. The golem started limping, dragging one leg behind as it resolutely crawled to destroy them.

"Alright!" One of the Akrashic loopers cheered and cast an ice spell of his own, hitting another joint. A few of the other loopers joined in, but only a few had ice spells, and Suria was surprised that the others didn't seem to be trying to inscribe them. Shouldn't they at least be working on supportive spells, perhaps a combination with water?

The golem had slowed to a halt, but Suria knew that wouldn't be enough: the unholy fires still burned in the central core, and even when spells targeted them, they didn't penetrate the armored furnace. Worse, those flames were glowing hotter, melting the ice that bound the legs. They weren't going to take it down like this, and if it heated up its body enough, ice might become ineffective.

Instead of continuing to bombard the metal, Suria examined her ice glyph again. She'd used augments that increased its raw power, but that was the wrong tool for the job. If only she had augments that would lower the temperature... unfortunately, there had only been so much time for internalizing inscriptions and she'd had other priorities.

Abruptly realizing the correct path, Suria turned to a blank page of her runebook and began working anew. She quickly produced a full runic formation, then placed a heating spell in the center - not a combat fire spell, but a practical inscription that produced as much heat as possible.

Then, in two of the triangles surrounding it, Suria inscribed inverting augments. She used her remaining two for intensification augments, producing the coldest spell she could muster.

Even in that time, the battle had turned against them: the golem's body was hot now, melting off ice that struck it, and it was trying to pin down opponents. Several times it had almost gotten one of their number against a wall, only to be warded off by others. They had been thrown on the back foot, playing defense and rarely even attempting to take down the golem.

But they had bought Suria enough time: she gripped her runebook in both hands and cast the coldest spell she possibly could.