Page 183 of Librarian

“Find the rest of them,” Mathias orders as he strides towards us, not one, butthreegrimoires orbiting him like he’s the sun. “Kill them all and retrieve my phylactery.”

My heart tumbles at the order, but my eyes don’t leave the spellbooks at his side.

For any other arcanist, building the bond to more than one grimoire would take decades. Too much time for too little reward. Spells cast from a spare would never be as efficient and therefore would always be weaker. Expanding their repertoire or learning to cast without incantations is a far better use of their time. But for a lich with hundreds of years at his disposal, perhaps the power difference would eventually become so negligible as to make it worthwhile.

The mist swirling between us adds to his foreboding aura, but it also gives me an idea.

“You’ll never fully control the Library while I live,” I taunt.

“What are you doing?” Leo asks under his breath.

“Improvising,” I hiss back. “Now, run.”

I conjure a wall of rock between us and the lich, then turn on my heel, shoe squeaking on the tile as I lead Dakari and Leo in sprinting towards Kinetic Hall.

Or rather, the doors beyond.

Rock rumbles as Mathias tears down my creation. His own magical rope lashes around my waist, snags, tugs. Leo casts something, and the strands fall apart, freeing me to keep running.

It seems Mathias is still aiming to capture me, not kill me. Somehow that only makes the icy fear gripping my stomach colder.

I burst through the great doors and into the fog.

A few centuries ago,I tried to walk as far as I could go into the empty vista that surrounds the Arcanaeum. I had nothing to lose and little to fear. I reasoned that I was unlikely to get lost, when at midnight, I’d be dragged back for my re-enactment anyway.

The Arcanaeum let me go as far as I pleased, not that it mattered.

I never found anything in my adventures. Just interminable swirling mist and a vague line delineating some ever-shifting horizon. After a few yards, one can barely even see the Arcanaeum behind us. It’s little more than a vague shadow that quickly disappears entirely.

It’s disorienting. It drives most insane.

Which makes it the perfect place to lose a lich.

As soon as we’re almost far enough to have lost sight of the building, I cast an invisibility scrap.

It’s patchy, fading in and out, and beyond basic, but I’m counting on the haze to obscure us more than anything. Neither will do much good against even the simplest divination spell.

Then I conjure a rope, tying the middle to my belt and passing Dakari and Leo one end each.

“Don’t let go,” I tell them both. “And try not to look at the fog. Focus on me or him.”

I may not be able to touch them, but I can’t let them get lost out here.

“You’re really becoming irksome, you know that?” Mathias growls, his voice echoing oddly as he follows us out of the Arcanaeum. “If I could, I would go back and sacrifice someone else, just to save myself the trouble. If you were still playing in the dirt with all the other dulls, the Arcanaeum would never have fallen to ruin.”

My teeth clench, but my focus is stolen as Dakari shoves all three of us down. A wave of fire passes over our heads, and I silently thank him even as my elbows and knees protest the jarring impact with the ground. I roll away the second I can breathe, refusing to pull more magic from him.

Our tumble has sent the fog swirling, giving away our rough location. More fire rains down everywhere as we scramble back to our feet.

It’s chaos. Smoke burns my nostrils. I’m not even sure where to run as we dodge blast after blast. A sizzle of pain erupts from my leg as fire splashes my woollen skirt, but I force myself to keep going.

My plan had been to lead the lich away from the Arcanaeum in the hopes of losing him, and then doubling back, but I don’t know which direction we’re running in anymore.

I can still feel my bonds to the others. That’s our only hope of finding the Library again after this.

Mathias’s brutal barrage of attacks has an unintended consequence.

The fog thickens, turning from a gentle mist over the ground to a freezing blanket that extends far above our heads.