Chapter 195: Cursed Tome

I walk towards the book, the rug feeling soft underneath my feet. My cloak brushes against the carpet slightly, and Kuro hums. Avoiding the trapdoor, I step up to the desk, leaning over it.

The papers on it are mostly miscellaneous. A lot of them are tax-forms, ownership deeds, those kinds of things. Mundane. But despite that, I make sure to sift through all of them, never letting the tome leave the corner of my eyes. And eventually, I do find something useful.

Records of artefacts. It’s a list of things that the castle once held - magical items and how they function. I look at the sketches, dense images covering the sides of a few pages, runes magnified and scrawled down. All of which is committed to my magical memory.

And then, once I’ve sifted through all of them, I do something I’ve wanted to for a while - in a single, dramatic motion, I sweep the table, sending loose pages flying. They scatter through the air, then float to the ground with a satisfying woosh, and I smile at what’s left on the desk.

A tome. 

A proper, real, magical tome. It’s bound in an old, cracked cover, woven from pale green fabric, with metallically gleaming embroidery. Metal threads have been stitched into the surface, giving it gilded corners, and reinforcing it. In golden letters, there is something spelled out - but it’s no title. Even as I look, the words seem to shift and spiral.

The golden letters sprawl inwards, like a whirlpool, into the central mana-core. A large half-sphere that extends out from the cover by about a finger’s width. It’s a brilliant blue and hums with arcane energy, the inside of the crystal orb coated in a dense lattice of mana. There’s even a faint crackle as I reach out to it.

The golden threads extend to the side of the cover, where two large clasps hold the tome shut. They sound faintly strained, the metal creaking as if the thing wants to open. The gilded edges, despite being gold, show some signs of red rust, and the fabric near the central core is a little singed.

Inu leans over my shoulder. “That’s so cursed,” she says.

“Yeah, for sure,” I reply.

“Snow, please, I beg of you, wipe that smile of your face,” she says politely, and without any heat.

Carefully, I withdraw my hand from the book and bring it to my face, pressing a finger to trace my mouth. Indeed, it is curled upward. I look at the book. How scary. Then I turn to Inu, and open my mouth.

She interrupts me before I even get started, raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms. “You would simply not be corrupted by the cursed book, is that what you were gonna say?” she asks, wearing a small frown.

I press my lips into a thin, awkward expression. “Yeah,” I say. “Yep, that’s what I was gonna say.”

Inu rolls her eyes, then gestures at the study. “It’s a library, Snow. Surely you can at least read the books on the shelves first.”

“This one’s smut,” Opal provides helpfully.

“Not for me, pass it to Sylves,” I reply.

“Hey!” the fairy complains loudly. Despite that, she takes the book. 

Trey turns to Anna, asking in a quiet voice. “What’s smut?” 

The rogue girl just grimaces and tells him not to worry about it. Thatch smiles at their antics and browses some more of the shelves. I read a few of their spines, and most of the books seem to be mundane - but not all of them. There are definitely a few magical stories in there - and, behind the books, there are a few magical objects too.

Opal pulls out a particularly thick lexicon, then “ooh”s happily as they reach further into the shelf, drawing out a large ruby, swirling with power. It looks like there’s a fire captured inside it. But even when the rest of my party keeps picking apart the study, my eyes are drawn to the tome again.

My fingers trail the core, and I can feel it leeching my mana. 

I tilt my head. Inu stares. “Are you feeding it? You better not be feeding it, Snow,” she says.

Looking at the book, I don’t deign her words with a reply, and she sighs next to me, shaking her head. Then, she pulls her hair from her face. “Well, it’s fine,” she says. “If you mess up, we’ll simply cover for you.”

Having her seal of approval, I just smile a bit, and hold my finger over the core. It drinks a bit more of my mana, and then I pull away. The tome hums, like the beat of an insect’s wings. I tilt my head at it, watching the letters scrawl across its surface faster. Then, I shrug.

There’s one easy way to find out what it does.

With an easy, relaxed motion, I flick open the first of the two clasps. Instantly, the second one starts to strain, the metal humming in pain. I squish the book shut, then unlatch it. “Be patient, silly,” I chide the inanimate object. Isabelle looks at me as if I’ve gone insane, but, somewhat surprisingly, the book seems to listen.

It even waits for me to take my hand off before it slams open. The table shakes from the force of the impact, and the pages instantly lift, fluttering through the air. Faint images press into my mind. Images of… rain. And then I place a finger on the pages, stopping the scrawl.

“Stop beaming things into my head, you rascal,” I chide the book. Again, I get more looks as if I’m completely insane. But the images stop. Instead, what I see is a single page, ink-stained, the letters sprawling. They trail across the page in no coherent sense, going sideways, upwards, twisting in on themselves like labyrinthine whirlpools.

Interspersed between them are sketches. Nonsensical diagrams, drawings of waves, rocks, castles, towns, and much more. Lines that intersect, patterns- 

“I said to stop that.” A slight frown settles on my face, and I cast [Suppression]. Instantly, the whispers of the book silence, and it shrinks away.

Inu snickers quietly, looking at the pages. “Can you tell what they say?”

“Nope,” I shake my head. “But with the amount of essence it’s feeding me, I might soon.”

At that, the room quiets quite a bit. “Essence?” Inu asks.

“Oh, yep, definitely essence. I can feel it filter into my mantle.” Already, I can feel my archive growing. Each fluttering page being recorded. But the book wants to show me more, to be more.

“Your eyes are bleeding, Snow,” Inu notifies me.

I blink, and a drop of blood falls onto the page. Instantly, the book struggles harder, the droplet turning into ink, new words scrawling across the page. New letters forming, and I frown. “Stop that,” I say, and double down on [Suppression].

My blood stops creeping across the pages. Very slowly, I shake my head at it, then speak. “You’re a book. Let me read you, jeez.” And then, under Inu’s watchful eyes, I pick it up, flip to the first page, and hold it there. The cover struggles a little, wanting to be free, but despite that, I read. And, once I’m a few lines in, a notification appears.

[You have found a Treasure-Tome.]

[Uldeney the Librarian watches with interest.]

“Oh, hey, I got a notification calling it a Treasure-Tome,” I say to the others. “That means it can’t be that bad, right?” 

Sylves giggles loudly. “You’re so getting cursed, Snow. Will I get Kuro if you die?” 

“Clearly, I will,” Thatch says. “Snow thinks I’m the handsomest.”

I shrug, eyes still on the page. “He’s got a point.”

Gasping in outrage, Sylves spins through the air towards me. “Excuse you? I am the fairest fairy in all the lands!” 

“Also true,” I nod with a shrug. “Thatch’s more handsome though.”

“Well, I don’t want to be handsome!” 

“Then it seems you have both achieved your goals, congratulations.” At my comment, both of them roll their eyes, and I, pleased at how I wormed my way out of that social disaster, instead return to my reading. The treasure-tome, as it turns out, isn’t really alive. And it does contain essence, and the mind-thing is just the quickest way to get that to me.

It’s also not very satisfying. It feels like getting disjointed puzzle pieces. There is a… I hesitate to call it a skill, but a technique in the book. And I want it, but I don’t want to piece it together from whatever disjointed bits I’m fed automatically. No, I’ll make the cursed book let me study it. Page. By. Page.

The book almost seems to shiver in my hands. 

- - -

About half an hour later, I can feel the Ire tightening around us. In fact, it’s becoming cloying and tight. The monolith is clearly unhappy with us being a team of ten - especially for so long. It goes against its rules, and so, slowly, the punishment ramps up. 

By now, for example, the runes around the walls start failing. There’s a slim crack at first. Mana leaks in and out, and I can feel the banshees creeping in. Those aren’t a problem - but I really, really don’t want Delfine to find us in this cramped room.

So we speed up. Every book that sounds interesting? Bagged. We ransack the shelves behind the books, we find another secret compartment in the wall with a few items, and take all of them. Within five minutes, we’ve mostly cleaned out the room. Then, when the runes begin to fizzle out, I commit them to memory, and pull open the trapdoor. A portal awaits me beneath.

I jump down.

[You have found a hidden exit. Your next floor will be a special one.]

[Good luck, Ion.]

- - - - - -

Magic Breaker Book 1 is out on Amazon and Audible!

You all already know you enjoy the story if you've read this far, so I'll skip over why Snow is cool, and tell you a bit abt the release. the Audiobook is narrated by the wonderful Nicky Endres, who did, in my opinion, a really amazing job with the voices. Very fun to listen to. The cover art is the same as on SH - though expanded out so you can see the full wrap! It goes all the way around the back, showing a bit of the First Floor of the Tower, and the City in which Snow brough the ants to fight Philia. Very cool stuff, I think!

If you can support the release, please check it out on amazon. It's free to read with Kindle+, or you can grab the paperback for your shelf. If you can't afford to support, that's entirely fine of course - releases here on SH will continue as per the usual. Thank you all so much for reading, I'm so happy to get the story out there hehe!