Throne of Time - Chapter 78-3: The Sequences of the Library (Patreon)

"Please..." At first she tried to grip the glass tube, but she was losing her strength. As the blood drained from her, she wasn't growing paler, her veins were darkening, as if filled with something else...

Herriot cast a force spell directly through her head, killing her in an instant, and that might have been a mercy. Wynchard unleashed an enormous stream of flame at the worm, but the flames slid off the bloody glass and it leapt down to the floor. Suria had a force spell ready and no idea if it would do any good.

Adwyrma dropped from above, piercing her sword directly through the worm's body and then twisting. Blood scattered across the floor as the glass creature slumped, but no one was happy about it.

"Shit, we lost Gannet," Herriot said.

"Because you killed her!" Jesper shouted.

"Are you telling me that wasn't a mercy?"

"We've been here too long," one of the Endelythans argued. "It's time to go."

Were they really going to force her to retreat before she had enough time? Suria desperately tried to search even faster, hoping they wouldn't drag her out. Fortunately, Wynchard walked to the group and bought her some time with a reasonable argument.

"We need to decide how we're getting back," he pointed out. "Do we keep going east and risk unknown dangers?"

"I don't want to go back to the hallway," Adwyrma said tersely. "Those things might be gone, but they could just as easily be waiting."

"What if we return to the hallway, but then push further west?"

"Into unknown territory?"

While they argued, Suria tossed aside book after book. At last she found one called The Greatest of Time Mages that promised grand temporal spells - there hadn't been time to read it thoroughly, but that would have to be enough. She hesitated, then grabbed Seizing the Cycle as well. Three books stuffed into her satchel wasn't too many and she had a meaningful chance of learning something... if she could get them out.

"Alright, I'm ready," Suria said before anyone could get angry at her. "Which way are we going?"

It seemed that they had decided to head back to the mirrored hallway for the western route, despite objections, and none of them seemed hesitant. No more glass worms had appeared, but the sand in the room was definitely flowing more rapidly now and Suria didn't want to stay a second longer.

First they headed back into the empty chamber with the golem, resolving to risk a sprint through if there was a second golem. Fortunately, it remained a frozen wreck of metal... though that boded ill for the threats they would face in the hallway chamber.

Wynchard slammed open the door, ready with flames in case masked figures charged them. The hallway looked empty at first, but when they stepped in, Suria saw that there were masked figures at the ends. They had apparently been standing silently and now they all turned in silent synchronization to begin moving toward them.

"Across!" Wynchard shouted. Their group raced southwest to the nearest door and tore it open as the masked reflections closed on them from both sides.

Through the door they entered another narrow room, this one lined by bookshelves that seemed to rise forever to an invisible ceiling. There were no apparent dangers, so it seemed like they were safe... until a shadowy blade pierced through the door behind them.

"South!" one of the Endelythans shouted, but he was caught by Wynchard before he went three steps.

"We don't run until we have no choice," he insisted. "Advance cautiously and stay alert."

They still hastened to get away from the door, which now had several more blades stuck in it. The hallway of bookshelves appeared to be harmless and there was a door at the far southern end, so it seemed promising. Suria wondered whether the rooms with unusual shapes actually took up different amounts of space or whether they were each a cube within the Sequential Library's meta-structure. If the shapes she had seen had been real, they would have overlapped one another, so the layout couldn't exist in normal space.

As they walked, Suria poured more mana into her perception spell, trying to discern beyond the bookshelves. She couldn't sense anything about the hallway just to the east, even though it was theoretically parallel to the shelves. When she pressed her senses further upward, however...

Suria looked up and saw that the ceiling was no longer lost in the distance. The highest bookshelves she could see seemed to be undulating, then she realized that they were actually folding in on themselves. Both sides of the hallway were rolling up like a scroll and where the walls were gone, she saw only churning chaos.

"Now we run?" Suria suggested, pointing upward. When the others saw what she'd seen, they started running too.

They sprinted as hard as they could and reached the southern door before the ceiling rolled away, though it would have been close if Suria hadn't noticed. When they rushed through, the small part of Suria that was curious what would happen when the effect reached the floor was too muted to object. She closed the door firmly behind them.

The next room was another cube with three floors, so apparently civilized and similar to the opening room of the library that Suria was convinced it had to hold some great horror. Instead it seemed to be perfectly safe and the only complication was that it had no doors opening to the east, so they were still too far west relative to the entrance.

Next they entered a large flat room that was less crowded, with only a few bookshelves scattered across it. The majority was filled with work tables, and there were books scattered across both tables and floor instead of neatly shelved. Since they seemed to be getting closer to the safe and organized rooms near the entrance, some of the others began investigating.

Grynore of the Endelythan group actually paused beside a table with alchemical equipment, investigating the stacks of books nearby. Suria was trying to decide whether or not to object when she suddenly saw one of the books sprout legs: the pages folded up into geometric spikes that scrabbled for purchase and flipped it upright.

"Look out!" Even as she called, Suria cast a force spell, gripping him and moving him out of the way. The paper spider launched itself toward where he had been a second later, just missing him.

Something about the creature unnerved Suria, so she kept casting: she closed a hand of force around the spider as powerfully as she could. It proved to be excessive, as the paper spider crumpled as easily as real paper would have.

A few more of the books on the table were folding themselves up into more spiders. One of the other Endelythans made a noise of disgust and cast a swath of flame across the table, immediately burning all the spiders alive.

That was a mistake: all across the room, books began folding themselves into more spiders.

"No more fire!" Wynchard called, having quenched his own flames. "Just go south!"

They raced toward the next door, but the horde of spiders was closing in from all sides. As the safe lane narrowed, they began casting all around them. There was no coordination, Suria just hurled force spells at the nearest spiders, sending them tumbling into their brethren - there were always more coming. One managed to leap onto her back and Maut-mai's amulet spluttered weakly, barely defending Suria long enough for her to hurl the spider away.

It didn't seem like they could possibly make it and Suria desperately racked her mind for solutions. Before she could come up with anything, she noticed that Wynchard was falling behind the group, which didn't make sense because he was one of their strongest.

When she made eye contact, Wynchard mouthed the words "Next loop"... and then he exploded in flame.

Fire arced past the group, searing a path for them, then cascaded in all directions from Wynchard. The swarm of spiders shifted to focus on him, running headlong into the blaze. Not wasting his distraction, Suria forced the last of her strength into her legs to rush south.

When they reached the door, she couldn't help but look back. Many of the spiders had run directly into the flames to their own destruction, but now the waves had smothered the fire and swarmed Wynchard. He wasn't trying to escape, just incinerating as many as he could and keeping them all drawn to him.

Then they were through and the door slammed behind them. Suria looked over the group and realized that they had lost another one of the Endelythans as well somehow.

The next room they had entered was another cube of three floors, though the bookshelves seemed to be made of metal here. Suria didn't care about that and she wasn't about to explore any of them: she saw that there was an eastern door. They didn't need to discuss it at all; the group simultaneously moved eastward together and pushed through.

From there, they finally entered the political section and Suria sighed in relief. They were back in the controlled section of the library. Exhausted and in some cases wounded, their group moved slowly back toward the entrance. Somehow they had survived the Sequential Library and Suria was carrying three books about time magic.

After so much tension, part of her was convinced that everything would be ruined by some final twist: the professors or librarians waiting outside to imprison all of them or worse. But when they left by the main entrance, they emerged onto the darkened campus with no one around. Despite everything they had been through, it was just a normal night of studying or drinking for everyone else.

"Never again," Grynore said, staring at the book in his hands. "Not worth it."

He walked away, presumably to leave campus entirely, and meanwhile the others closed on Suria. She held up her hefty satchel and gave them all a curtsy.

"Thank you all," she said. "I truly mean that, and if I can learn anything about this loop, I'll share it."

"Just fulfill your promise," Herriot told her grimly. "We'll be in touch."

They didn't push further than that, since everyone was exhausted and wanted to sleep. Only Adwyrma remained, and just when Suria began to fear she was planning some sort of betrayal, the other woman gave her a grim smile.

"Now you know why we don't just run into the Sequential Library on a whim," she said. "Remember this."

Suria nodded, but that wasn't the lesson she had taken from the ordeal. She had thought that the Sequential Guard was self-important and puffed up, but she had entirely misunderstood their purpose: they didn't exist to keep students out of the library; they existed to protect the students from what lurked within.

-

That concludes our week of daily chapters! I hope that everyone has enjoyed them. ^-^ This isn't quite the end of the first book, but it is very close. And as promised previously, unlike with TWC chapters, Throne of Time will roll directly between books without any break.