Guard Rock herded us closer together, then shook his pencil and stamped it on the ground. His pencil was gripped in staff-ready position.
Constantine watched the byplay, strangely relaxed. “Your rock thinks he needs to stand guard with us now, when he didn't at a man-eating house. I feel concern.”
I eyed Guard Rock, whose gaze swept the room. “Let's stay optimistic,” I said, reaching out for the map displayed in the air.
“No one thinks that's a good idea.”
“I think it's a good idea.”
“You are full of bad ideas. Your vote doesn't count,” he said, still strangely, loosely relaxed, as if he recognized temporary safety and was ready to grab it with both hands. “Neither of your votes count.”
I very carefully sifted through the constellation points.
“This one.” I pulled the pieces into my palm and concentrated. Maps and worlds shifted through my mind, then settled. “The Broken Palace, created by Flavel Valeris, currently in Third Layer Golina—no, now in Olterre, now Flet.” I shook my head as the switches continued unabated. “And inside of it, The Library of Broken Books.”
“A myth,” Axer said, looking upward at the book tornado that was forming.
“Hidden,” I murmured. I looked around. “The Origin Book highlighted it as a place of safety.”
I pictured the book winging off while we were off on adventure. I looked down at Guard Rock, who looked solemnly back. Whatever the book had been doing, I had a feeling I would find out here. Paint swirled upward in my throat, but I grabbed the swirls of ultramarine and violet lingering in the air and swallowed it all back down—more easily this time than any other.
“That was almost controlled,” Constantine said, touching the back of my neck, grounding me with the residuals of the magic we’d called in Crelussa.
“I feel...” I frowned. “Not as bad.”
Both exhausted and wired, yes. And I had nearly lost everything. But now that I could explore it, it was like there was a buffer between my world ending capabilities and the world ending.
“Maybe it’s being here?” I looked around. “The palace? The library?”
I watched five books collect Ori’s remains. They huddled over it, then started slowly piecing pages together. Hope filled me.
Bloodthirsty Bonds and Chains landed, but stayed just out of reach, hawkish pages stiffly rippling.
A tattered, well-used copy of The Twelve Black Steps landed at its side. I stared at it. It rippled its pages—death, decay, and ancient promise in the gesture and proposition. A memory played across its cover—of Christian tossing footballs with me, then tackling me as I crossed an imaginary goal line. We were both splayed on the ground, limbs akimbo, laughing.
“Oh, that is not good,” I murmured faintly.
Death Magic landed next to it, examining me like one might a social curiosity.
Robberies Involving Mental Torture landed next to Bloodshed: One Hundred and One Ways. A scream of anguish screeched from its pages.
I shuddered. “Why are most of them, you know…?”
“Mad?” Constantine asked, poking the book with his toe so it shut before it could issue a second scream. “Did you think 'Broken Books' meant physically?”
“Why are they all so specific?” I clarified.
“Books are specifically created,” Axer said.
Bookspeller’s Last Moments—subtitled Now with 10 Accounts!—landed next to Ori, and the others made room for it. I grimaced. I really hoped those accounts had been given freely.
“Do all books of similar title talk?” I asked Axer, looking at The Twelve Black Steps.
“They are all born of the same tome. But they imbue their own memories once they are in the wild. You can determine the edition number with a spell.”
I remembered the shopkeeper’s words. “You give up a piece of your own soul for the kind of magic The Twelve promotes. And it doesn't work out how you think it's going to.”
I remembered the brittle cracking of his face, like someone breaking from within.
I remembered what the pristine version on the Fourth Floor looked like.
“Yeah… I think we’ve got a first edition here.”
The Twelve Black Steps bent its covers and pages to form a grisly smile.
Axer frowned. “The first edition went missing three weeks ago from the Royal Library in Ansolme.”
Comprehension took me all at once, making my breath catch. I looked at Guard Rock, still holding wary court, and I looked at the remains of Ori. I had to swallow the emotion that threatened to drown me.
“The book was freeing them,” I said. Saving its people, just like me.
Constantine swore and let his head hit the wall behind us. “No. Absolutely not. I only have the energy for one revolution.”
I looked at the way the books were trying to piece Ori together. I watched the strings of the book connecting to strings coming from the others.
I looked back at The Twelve. I looked at the hanging tethers that had kept some of the books in place in a library somewhere. The magic was chipped in spots, as if something had taken a bite out of them.
“Did Ori free you?” I asked softly.
The book straightened its spine imperiously.
I watched it for a moment, thinking through the monumental issues such a course of action would cause. At one time, I would have given anything to have access to this book. Given my soul.
Flipped pages in Bloodthirsty came to rest on a spread that showed death and destruction—dismemberment and pain.
I rubbed the back of my neck and looked at the Ori’s remains. “Plucked daisies and trapped innocents would be a lot easier to defend on the world stage.”
The Twelve Black Steps stomped its spine and leaned forward, pushing pages into my view.
“No, I get it,” I said softly. “You are rich with information and resource—a library is better for having you in it. And it only matters what you are used for,” I murmured. “Just like me. Dangerous in the wrong hands.”
“Like all of us,” Axer said.
I inclined my head. I’d always taken comfort in that assertion he’d made to me what felt like ages ago. “But if you are free, it’s what you choose...”
It regarded me steadily.
I looked at Guard Rock, and gathered his little body in my hands. He tilted his rock at me, pencil poised in question.
“We make things of magic, give them life, then refuse to set them free,” I murmured. “Even eighteen-year-olds are free from their parents where I'm from.”
I set Guard Rock gently down. He tapped his pencil lightly against my hand, then assumed his guarding position again.
I nodded at the book. How could I go about trying to free my people and not let the books do the same?
It relaxed a measure of its posture and backed away, as if satisfied.
“Ren, we aren't going to go around freeing books,” Constantine said.
“No.” I tilted my head toward Ori and watched as more books gathered and each page sparked a little more as the books worked. A smile worked its way across my mouth with an emotion that had been ripped from me in the Basement. Hope. “He's going to free them. And we aren't going to stop him.”