Kicking at the loose pile of golem fragments, I shook my head in irritation at the loss of being unable to revive one of the hardy constructs to fight for our side. Sadly, my Undeath spell would only work on once-living creatures, which an emerald golem certainly did not fall into. Bending low, I reached out to inspect one of the thousands of two-inch cubes littering the ground when a sharp stab of pain raced into me. Pulling back my hand reflexively, for a split second I feared the construct had somehow managed to lash out at me. Nothing stirred as I stood back up defensively while cradling an aching hand. How in the hell had the thing hurt me?
“What happened?” Stella queried after hearing my surprised cry of pain. Both Tallos and Ripley flinched at my gasp, the latter reaching for the broad sword strapped across her hip.
“Damn it, that hurt,” I remarked as a steady stream of blood dripped down my hand. At first, I was unable to explain what had injured me. It felt as if someone jammed a 30-gauge needle into my finger.
With Stella’s help and my keen eyes, we quickly discovered a translucent shard of glass protruding from the tip of my right index finger. With it being nearly invisible to the naked eye, it took some careful effort to remove the sliver without breaking off a piece inside me. Holding it aloft before my eyes, surprisingly, we found the needle was hollow which was why the wound bled so profusely. I was suddenly thankful none of the golems had any special attacks where they could shout out a stream of emerald fragments at their enemies. This single sliver alone sent searing pain where I had been punctured, though I doubted any such special attack of that type wouldn’t have been able to bypass my Aegis. If it struck Tallos or Lowki, however, the effect could have easily become life-threatening. We would need to be especially careful if we decided to pick up any more of the splintered remains of the once-mighty golems.
A swift Lesser Regen stopped the bleeding, and, with a disgruntled eye, I examined my fingerless Vicar’s Convalescence gloves. “Well, you will be entirely useless in this endeavor,” I said indignantly to myself.
Retrieving a different pair of gloves from my inventory, these made of stiff leather, I lifted the same crystalized cube from earlier and carefully inspected it. Thankfully, there was no jolt of pain as I held the glassy object close to my eyes, but sadly, my efforts were in vain, as the System only described the sliver as a shattered piece of an emerald archive guardian.
“Well, that’s entirely unhelpful,” I commented dryly. Stella sat on the cool floor, poking a different square prism without any ill effects. She couldn’t be harmed by something so mundane as far as any of us knew. Smiling at her antics, she seemed an innocent child at play as she batted her cube back and forth between two paws. I asked, “Do you think they have any value? Should we take time to take some of these with us?”
Stella stopped fooling around and swiped a paw in the air like she was pulling up one of her invisible Accelerator screens. Only a second later though, she let out a defeated sigh before looking up at me. “Sorry, I can’t say for certain. I can’t see anything beyond what the description already told us. I say we collect at least some of them though, just in case. I doubt we want to spend even more time in this room, so let’s collect at least a good chunk from this one.”
Flicking my gaze onto Ripley, I held my original thought to ask her to help me. She was mostly immune to piercing damage, and I seriously doubted any shard of glass would be able to draw blood from her exposed bones, but I quickly thought better of enlisting her aid. Our intense and time consuming struggle with the guardians had been tumultuous and, while nothing had shown up yet, it didn’t mean something wouldn’t while we collected the rewards from our victory.
Ripley must have seen the initial expression to have her join me, cross my face, and move as if to join me, but I waved her back. “It’s okay, Ripley. Can you instead stand guard next to the doorway? We’re not going to stay in here much longer. We’ve spent enough time already and need to get moving.”
Thoughts of Cicero have plenty of time to create dozens more of other dangerous guardians as a result of our slow progress flittered through my mind, prompting me to work faster. Still, I wasn’t about to let at least some of the potential rewards from the intense struggle go uncollected. Tallos had long since made his way down from his makeshift perch high atop one of the northern bookcases, but instead of helping, sat down on a nearby bench. Behind him lay a disordered mountain of spilled books spreading far across the emerald floor.
“Are you alright?” I asked inquisitively as the ranger unslung his elemental quiver before holding it in his lap. After a few seconds, an arrow tinged with a red haze materialized within the magical device.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied, unbothered, as he continued to create more of his enchanted arrows. Apparently, other than the mad scramble over a half dozen stacked bookcases, as well as the need to summon more arrows mid-fight, the whole ordeal had been relatively easy for the ranger. I, of course, didn’t share the sentiment.
“Thankfully, Lowki was able to draw off the one trying to knock me loose of my perch,” he continued. “The bastard was keen on destroying every single bookcase and he might have succeeded given enough time.”
Lowki, hearing his name, drew near the ranger and pressed his body against Tallos’ leg. Eliciting a chuckle from the warden, Tallos obliged the great cat with a healthy amount of good-natured pats across Lowki’s flank in genuine appreciation.
“Are you good with that?” Tallos asked with a tilt of his chin in my direction, indicating my endeavor to collect a basket full of golem pieces. I responded with a silent shake of my head before he continued, “Alright. I’ll need just a couple of minutes to refill my quiver.”
“Sounds good,” I responded in between scooping handfuls of the razor-sharp glass cubes into the mouth of my bag of holding. “I don’t think I have an extra pair of gloves anyway.”
The elven ranger nodded his ascent before refocusing on the tedious, though not overly difficult, task of refilling his quiver with more empowered arrows. The wondrous quiver was quite the magical item, spectacularly so, as it barely took any time and mana to create one of the four elementally charged arrows it could fashion. Those arrows would remain within the quiver indefinitely as long as they remained inside the enchanted leather and would only disappear into the ether soon after striking an opponent. The quiver could automatically summon regular mundane arrows, too, at a rate of one every ten seconds, but if this last battle were any indication, Tallos would need as many of the empowered versions as possible when we got back underway.
“It’s too bad we can’t find you another one of those,” I lamented which Tallos wholeheartedly agreed between summonings. Sadly, at the time, the merchant in Quarris we bought it from only had one.
Tallos didn’t look overly concerned with only having one of the beloved quivers. He was certainly more than happy he no longer needed to slave for hours to whittle and create even one mundane arrow. “I’m sure we can find another when we get back,” he replied offhandedly. “Or maybe we’ll find one in a different elven city within the High Thicket. There are many more than the one we visited. It’s too bad we probably won’t have the time to visit any other thought with Duke hot on our trail.”
I was about halfway done with scooping up at least half of the golem’s crumbled corpse, and after waving away a System message informing me of the relatively low amount of experience points gained from our recent battle, when a twinge of discomfort in my chest had me looking around in a near panic. Were we under attack? Nothing out of the ordinary presented itself as I glanced about the room. That was until I noticed my health bar crossing below the fifty percent mark.
“What the hell?” I wondered aloud in surprise. At first, at a loss for what was causing my health points to fade away, I feared some unseen debuff was tearing away at my vitality. No, it wasn’t that. Only several self-cast buffs were displayed near my name in my party menu. Fearing the bleeding in my hand may have started up again unnoticed, I whipped my leather glove off, but only to find pristine flesh.
Stella gave me an exaggerated eye roll. “You forgot to turn off your Lich spell. It’s draining your help. You have full mana already so just switch it off.” Her tone bespoke of a mentor instructing a yearling in something that should be plainly obvious.
Feeling like an idiot, I mentally toggled the ability off with a simple thought. Instantly, my health bar stabilized before slowly refilling due to my natural regeneration. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?” I responded accusingly, as if it was Stella’s responsibility to see to the care of my self-only buffs. Receiving only raised eyebrows from my petite friend in response had me rethinking my futile attempt to shift the blame upon her. Looking sheepishly at her, I flinched away from her glare. Her expression threated I would be hearing about this for days if I continued down this path. She had been hovering near one of the bookshelves, running a toe down one of the leather-bound books.
Seeing her non-verbal reproach had the desired effect upon me, Stella floated away towards a nearby bookshelf before running a toe down one of the many leather-bound books. “Of course, Xaz, I’d be more than happy to remind you… next time,” she murmured sarcastically. To my keen ears, I heard her unspoken statement that I should be able to do it without her handholding. She was right, of course, so I kept the retort that this was a brand new spell for me tucked behind closed lips.
Whispering a Lesser Regen upon myself to speed along my recovery, I made a mental note to recast the spell if it didn’t quite top my health pool off with the lone casting. Feeling we now had more than enough of the shattered emerald remains, I sat back on my haunches before slowly letting out a deep breath. Even though the majority of my resource pools were full, I nonetheless felt surprisingly fatigued from our prolonged struggle against the library’s guardians. The intense back and forth, along with the absolute focus necessary to ensure I wasn’t smashed by giant longswords, took a lot out of me. For me, there had been no pause or reprieve during the nearly hour-long confrontation, and it took its toll on the weariness I was now experiencing.
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My gaze found Ripley standing attentively near the doorway, her formidable shield and sword held at the ready, and lingered upon her for several moments. A part of me envied her seemingly tireless stamina and steadfast vigilance. She could continue that way for days, if not longer, without the slightest dip in concentration. She was the perfect guardian, and I was grateful she was able to mostly stand on her own against one of the emerald golems.
Rocking forward to my feet, I headed toward the center bookshelf after recalling seeing several glowing, and therefore magical, books from when we first entered the library. Reaching out to one had been the trigger that set the guardians in motion to protect Cicero’s study. “Let’s get ready to move out,” I called out to my friends. “Before we do, Tallos, can you help me collect the glowing tomes… we saw…”
I couldn’t finish the statement as my eyes grew wider with each passing second. A flutter of wind from my side heralded Stella’s swift approach. Frantically searching every nearby shelf, a heavy pit formed in my stomach. “Ah… Stella!? Where did they go?” I cried out, fear creeping into my tone as panic roiled inside me.
“Where did what go?” Stella asked, clearly not catching onto the horror unraveling before me. She turned to see what I was looking at, awareness dawning upon her a moment later. “Oh, now that’s odd. They’re gone.”
“There were dozens of books with a glow about them,” I went on, frantically taking books by the handful down, quickly inspecting them before tossing them aside. The System was entirely unhelpful in this instance, in my opinion, patently refusing to give me any details about any of the books I pulled down on whether they were magical or not.
“I’m guessing this is some sort of defense mechanism built into the library itself when you triggered the golems to attack,” Stella offered, but it fell on deaf ears. “I’m sure it will come back at some point, but there’s no way of knowing how long that will take.”
“Wait!” I blurted out, recalling the first tome that caught my attention when we first entered the room. It had been a black leather-bound book with bold yellow lettering across its spine. I was sure I could find it. Stella watched my antics with some amusement as I tried to retrace my steps to determine exactly where it was. “Gotcha!” I bellowed in success.
While the System still refused to give me any details or properties of the book in my hand, I was sure this one had been glowing before. “We’ll have to check it later, but this one is definitely coming with us,” I celebrated as I tucked the tome away in my bag of holding.
Stella saw as my eyes roamed the room once more in the vain hope of identifying other spell tomes. “We can always come back,” she offered diplomatically.
There were likely more than a thousand books spread out across the entire study. Sadly, until whatever was withholding the magical emanation, there was no way we could spend the days, weeks possibly, to collect them all. Plus, I doubted I’d be able to put that many in my bag of holding anyway. I wasn’t about to leave mostly empty-handed just yet. Striding over to the pile of books scattered across where Tallos made his daring escape, I shoveled two to three books at a time into my extradimensional storage.
“At least some of them had to be magical, right?” I couldn’t help but hope.
A throat cleared behind me. It took me a moment to recognize how it was with my laser determination to collect at least the shifting mountain of books before me. This time a nudge against the back of my shoulder pulled me out of my roaring desire. Letting out what felt like the tenth frustrated sigh, I turned around to see Stella resting atop Tallos’ shoulder. His quiver sat brimming full of arrows across his back, most glowed slightly with either red, blue, green, or white. I was out of time. My friends were right. It was time to go.
“Alright, alright,” I relented. “We can come back.”
“Let’s get going,” I added, but not before stealthily reaching behind my back to snatch up one last book. A smile stole across my face in victory as my mind screamed this last one simply had to be enchanted, right? Stella knew what I had done, even if she didn’t witness it herself. She knew every time something was pulled or stored inside my bag of holding. She only harrumphed and didn’t deign to look back at me.
Purposefully not looking behind me, we walked out of the once-pristine, now ruined, archive. Dropping into stealth we pressed onward and continued the climb up Cicero’s crystalline tower. With each step, more of the countryside was visible to our right, albeit through tinted green glass. The stained-glass windows continued to be a jumble of geometric shapes, filtering in different hues across our bodies as we trekked past. The spire continued to taper inward as we ascended with the next room’s impenetrable door visible in short order. I was curious if, at some point, we would find a sentry or two or some twisted abomination, but so far, the only thing occupying the tower were the ruined golems left in our wake below.
Silently pressing an ear to the door like the others, I wasn’t surprised when no obvious sounds came from within. I doubted anyone was in there, as they certainly would have heard the booming crashes from the room just beneath this one. I took an extra second and, after holding my breath for certainly, believed I detected some unusual sounds coming from within. It was something akin to the steady bubbling of liquid if I had to guess, but it was very faint. Holding a finger to my friends for patience, another sound, this one a soft hiss like pressure being released, reached my ears.
“Be ready,” I mouthed after taking a step back. As slowly as I could manage, I swung the verdant door silently inward.
The moment there was a gap between the door and the emerald wall, the once barely perceptible gurgling grew to a soft chorus as if we were walking into a sinister laboratory of sorts. Through the small gap, multiple emerald pipes could be arching high overhead, with some twisting around in loops before plunging back down. Opening the door further, still without any indication someone within spotted the subtle moment, we followed those tubes as they connected with clear tanks of varying shapes and sizes, each one seeming to be filled with a mixture of different colored liquids. The nearest, pressed against the wall to our right, was nearly full to the brim with an amber liquid that seemed to have tiny flakes of gold swirling within. Swinging the door open completely, it was plainly obvious what we were walking into. Cicero’s fifth sanctum was an alchemy lab and a grand one at that.
The workshop was about fifty feet across and absolutely littered with alchemy equipment. Long benches were tucked safely beneath dozens of elegant wooden tables, the closest of which was stained with a smattering of odd colors as if decades of spilled elixirs and potions had left a permanent mark upon the stained wood. Atop the tables were more devices than I knew the names for. Based on the descriptions from the System, there were dozens of different alembics, retorts, crucibles, several massive cauldrons, flasks and vials, and everything in between. It created such a disorderly and chaotic scene that I was willing to bet only someone who had spent several long years in the place would have any hope of finding something specific in any reasonable amount of time.
Thankfully, not a soul resided within and a hasty glance around proved no emerald columns like the room below. Feeling relatively safe, we continued to examine the room as we stepped inside. Countless experiments, transmutations, and possible potion crafting were well underway. Thankfully, none of the likely noxious and dangerous fumes from the many concoctions were allowed to stagnate in the room thanks to the updraft created by an odd-looking fume hood far over our heads. Without it, I doubted we’d be able to remain in the alchemy lab for any length of time. As it was, the multitude of scents and odors were nearly overpowering. Everything from sharp sulfuric tangs to delectably fruity scents, burning incense, and pungent chemical reactions had me pondering if I should be wearing a mask.
Asking Ripley to cover the doorway once more, we continued our thorough investigation for anything with potential value. Like the many books contained within the archive under our feet, there were simply too many things to grab in any reasonable amount of time. The first item I appropriated, and by appropriate, I mean snatch away into my bag of holding, was a rune-laden cauldron that looked exactly like one you could imagine a wicked witch laboring over.
One of every type of alchemic equipment not bolted down soon found its way inside my inventory. While I had never attempted alchemy in either of my lives, I knew the profession could prove to be a powerful ally if I could work out how to create something like full healing potions or even elixirs that might provide beneficial buffs to the imbibers.
“One day,” I promised to myself after storing the rune-covered cauldron, an alembic, a marble mortar and pestle, a small metal crucible, and a long neck retort. Everything went greedily into my incredible bag of holding.
With that done, I found a table absolutely covered in varying sizes of scrolls and heavy parchments. Each contained a diagram of sorts, a profile of hundreds of unknown creatures. One looking to have been penned recently caught my attention, displaying human-like spiders exactly like the ones we fought while traveling south through the High Thicket. Scribblings of some unknown language covered most of the available space, so it was easy to deduce this table was dedicated to cradling some haphazard monster codex. With Tallos’ aid, we collected the hundred or so sheets into a pile and stored them in my inventory just in case some could prove useful down the road. Perhaps some could give a clue or a sign of weakness against the many diverse creatures Cicero had spliced together.
One particularly large ornate sheet of parchment, edged in golden filigree, more than twice the size of nearly everything, had me pause before tucking away in like all the others. It was a black-and-white profile image of a huge bipedal creature with a far smaller humanoid figure standing next to the side. The orc, if the jutting tusks were to be believed, only came up to about the knees of the titanic monster. The beast reminded me of a dinosaur, slightly comparable to a mature T-Rex, though it was completely absent a tail you would expect to see stretching out behind it. The unintelligible script dotting nearly every square inch of the parchment was written with meticulous care. Whatever this creation was, its designer, Cicero no doubt, had a lot to say about it.
A call from the western side of the room pulled my focus. It was Stella, and it wasn’t the concern blanketing her voice that had me rapidly moving to join her. Her tone was buzzing with excitement.
“Xaz, you’ve got to see this!” she called to me with a frantically waving paw.
Previously hidden from view, thanks to the plethora of tables and workbenches plastered all across the room, stood a waist-high glass cabinet nestled against a far wall. Behind the crystal-clear glass door were dozens upon dozens of filled potions, vials, and multi-faceted crystal bottles. Of the half dozen shelves contained within, at least three were easily identifiable as they contained ruby red, sapphire blue, and emerald green hues, signifying them as health, mana, and stamina potions, respectfully. The remaining shelves contained a veritable rainbow of other concoctions and brews I could only guess what their properties could be.
“Jackpot!”
We were definitely going to raid Cicero’s entire stash of ill-gotten gains, starting with these.
