Chapter 1110: The Library That Refused to Behave

—Click.

The door of Private Room Four shut behind him.

Lucavion took three steps before deciding that whatever had happened inside that room belonged to a category of problems best approached with maturity, patience, and a healthy amount of distance.

His right hand slipped into his pocket.

’Later.’

There.

Problem solved.

He continued down the corridor.

The Western Library was quieter at this hour, though quiet meant something rather different inside a building that apparently considered ordinary architecture beneath its dignity. Warm lights floated beneath the vaulted ceiling without chains or fixtures. Books moved between distant shelves in slow arcs of pale mana, sometimes accompanied by translucent creatures that Lucavion assumed were spirits because calling them librarians with wings felt disrespectful to both professions.

A silver-blue thing fluttered past his shoulder.

—Fwish.

Lucavion’s eyes followed it.

The creature passed straight through a bookshelf, emerged from the other side with a book tucked beneath one glowing wing, then drifted toward an upper gallery.

He stared.

"Pure show."

The spirit ignored him.

’Rude.’

He walked on.

He had seen little of the library while entering. Elowyn’s instructions had been annoyingly specific about that.

Come alone.

Avoid attention.

Wait until the corridor is clear.

Apparently meeting her for a theory lesson required roughly the same precautions as assassinating minor nobility.

Still, he had listened.

Mostly because the idea of being discovered sneaking into a private room with Elowyn would inconvenience her far more than him, and Lucavion was a considerate man.

Occasionally.

His steps made almost nothing against the polished floor.

—Tap.

Then silence again.

Old habits helped. He knew how to place his weight, where loose boards complained, how much sound cloth made when it brushed against stone. None of it required mana. The battlefield had provided remarkably thorough lessons in the benefits of remaining unnoticed.

That proved useful now.

A pair of older students passed him near the gallery stairs. One glanced over, slowed for half a moment, then continued.

The other barely looked.

Lucavion resisted the urge to appear offended.

’My fame is suffering.’

The freshmen would have recognized him.

They had watched the trials, the banquet, the examinations, and enough of his arguments with people bearing expensive surnames to develop opinions about him whether he wanted them or not.

The seniors appeared considerably less informed.

A tragedy.

He could survive it.

Lucavion reached the railing.

Then his pace slowed.

The library opened beneath him.

Several floors curved around an enormous central atrium, connected by bridges, suspended stairways, and galleries layered one above another. Pale lines wandered through the dark stonework, sometimes visible beneath the railings, sometimes disappearing into columns before resurfacing several spans away. Hundreds of floating crystals hung overhead in loose constellations, turning almost imperceptibly as students moved between the tables below.

—Tink.

One shifted.

Light followed.

A reading desk that had fallen beneath the shadow of a passing student brightened almost immediately.

Lucavion narrowed his eyes.

"Show-offs."

He leaned against the railing.

A book rose from somewhere below.

—Whumm.

It entered one circle of glowing symbols, vanished, then appeared halfway across the atrium inside another.

Lucavion watched it land neatly upon a waiting desk.

His mouth twisted.

’Walking was apparently too difficult.’

Another book followed.

Then three.

He stayed there slightly longer than necessary.

The Academy had built an entire building where books travelled by themselves, lamps seemed to know when people needed them, silence could apparently be placed around a table like a wall, and half the structures did whatever they did so smoothly that nobody bothered looking up anymore.

Ridiculous.

Absolutely unnecessary.

He wanted to know how all of it worked.

Lucavion pushed away from the railing before that thought could become embarrassing.

The staircase curved downward.

Thin patterns had been carved along its edges, small enough that he would have missed them if Elowyn had not spent the last several hours ruining his ability to look at a rune without wondering what miserable academic had decided to give it a name.

He studied one while descending.

Then another.

He understood none of them.

Well.

That wasn’t entirely true.

Something happened when his boot settled on the next step.

The stone gave slightly.

Barely enough to feel.

Then became firm again.

Lucavion paused.

He shifted his weight deliberately.

—Hmmm.

A faint pulse travelled beneath the stair.

His eyebrows rose.

’Interesting.’

Perhaps reinforcement.

Perhaps something that spread the weight.

Perhaps the staircase was simply offended by him personally.

All seemed equally plausible given his present magical education.

He continued downward.

A few students occupied the second gallery. Most were older, buried beneath towers of texts or staring into projected diagrams with the haunted expressions of people who had voluntarily chosen scholarship and were now discovering the consequences.

Lucavion sympathized.

At one table, two students were visibly arguing.

One pointed sharply at a floating formation.

The other slapped both palms against the desk.

Their mouths moved.

Lucavion heard nothing.

He took another step.

—Fffwp.

"—THAT ISN’T WHAT I SAID!"

Sound struck him from the side.

Lucavion stopped.

The girl at the table froze.

Her companion slowly covered his face.

Lucavion looked from them to the faint shimmer surrounding the table.

Then back.

"I liked it better before."

The girl went crimson.

He continued walking before she could decide whether murder was permitted in the Western Library.

A smile tugged at his mouth.

Much better.

His thoughts had behaved themselves for almost five minutes.

That was progress.

Then his fingers shifted inside his pocket.

Just once.

A small involuntary curl.

The smile thinned.

For an instant, the library receded.

Elowyn’s fingers around his hand.

The strange pull beneath his skin.

His own hand moving before he had told it to.

Lucavion’s gaze settled on a floating lamp ahead.

’Later.’

He kept walking.

The lamp drifted several inches aside as someone approached beneath it.

Lucavion watched that instead.

Much safer.

The ground floor spread before him soon after, filled with shelves, spirits, moving books, soft light, and so much casual magic that the whole place felt faintly absurd.

Lucavion slowed near the final staircase.

He had seen magic tear open battlefields.

Watched cultivators reduce stone to molten glass.

Seen enough flames, blades, monsters, and terrible ideas given mana to last several lifetimes.

Yet somehow a library where nobody needed to carry their own books managed to offend him more.

His eyes travelled once across the towering galleries.

The floating lights.

The silent tables.

The spirits weaving between shelves.

The seamless little impossibilities people here had become too accustomed to notice.

Lucavion scoffed.

"Pure show."

And continued toward the exit with the deeply inconvenient awareness that he meant almost none of it.

—Fwoosh.

The library doors parted.

Cool air reached him before the night did, slipping beneath his collar and carrying the smell of damp earth, clipped grass, and something faintly floral from the gardens stretching beyond the western path.

Lucavion stepped outside.

The doors eased shut behind him.

—Thumm.

He walked down three steps.

His smile vanished somewhere between the second and the third.

The lazy curve of his shoulders eased with it. His gaze lost the amused half-lidded look that had accompanied him through the library, and the hand inside his pocket pressed more firmly against his thigh as the warmth behind him gave way to open night.

A breeze moved through his hair.

Lucavion stopped.

For a few seconds, he watched one of the mana lamps along the path sway inside its glass housing. Pale light passed across the flagstones beneath it while branches whispered overhead.

Then his chest rose.

"Haaaaah..."

The breath left him slowly enough to empty something deeper than his lungs.

Lucavion rubbed the back of his neck.

’What a pain.’

He turned his head toward the library steps first.

The entrance remained empty.

His gaze travelled across the western garden, followed the path toward the distant dormitory lanes, then lingered on two students walking beyond the next courtyard. Their conversation faded with distance, and neither looked toward him. A third figure crossed between buildings farther uphill before disappearing behind a hedge.

Lucavion waited another moment.

Satisfied, he moved beneath one of the larger trees beside the path.

His right hand emerged from his pocket.

He studied it.

The fingers opened easily beneath the silvered light.

Lucavion curled them once, stretched them again, then rolled his wrist until the joint gave a quiet complaint.

—Crk.

"Behaving now?"

His hand offered the expected level of cooperation.

Lucavion pressed his thumb against the side of his index finger.

The motion felt ordinary because he had chosen it.

Earlier, choice had arrived afterward.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

Auxiliary sequences had caused the first twitch. Something about the term had pulled at his fingers, yet the sensation had disappeared before it could become an image. Later, the altered diagrams had made his hand considerably more opinionated; his wrist had anticipated lines while his mind remained several steps behind, as though some buried instructor had elected to continue the lesson without consulting him.

Then Elowyn had changed the formation.

His fingers had tried to correct it.

Lucavion slowly flexed them.

’Before I knew what was wrong.’

That interested him.

It also irritated him, although interest had usually been perfectly capable of surviving irritation.

The stronger reaction belonged elsewhere.

Elowyn had taken his hand.

The recollection arrived with uncomfortable clarity: her fingers shifting his, the pressure against his wrist, the careful correction of his posture.

His own fingers trembled faintly at the memory.

Lucavion’s expression changed.

He closed his hand.

The movement calmed immediately.

’What is this feeling?’

He stared at his fist while the question settled.

Something about the room had reached beneath conscious memory. The magical diagrams explained part of it; older habits could survive after names and lessons faded. Even his hand remembering the shape of a quill seemed strange rather than impossible.

Her touch was harder to place.

Lucavion searched for the nearest connection and found several fragments that refused to become a line.

Elara.

Old lessons.

The former Lucavion.

A hand being corrected.

A command to remain still.

His brow furrowed.

The pieces shared proximity and little else.

Perhaps the reaction belonged to some forgotten tutor. Perhaps the posture mattered more than the person. Perhaps Elara’s presence had brushed against another memory simply because she belonged to the same period of his life.

Each explanation could stand.

None felt right.

That bothered him.

Lucavion opened his hand again and watched the fingers settle beneath the moonlight. He could identify anger before it reached his face, recognize fear in the change of his breathing, and distinguish killing intent from ordinary hostility quickly enough to stay alive.

This sensation refused every convenient name he offered it.

His thumb moved once across the side of his finger.

A quill that wasn’t there.

A lesson he couldn’t remember.

Elara’s fingers closing around his hand.

Something inside him pulling away.

Lucavion lowered his arm.

The wind stirred the branches above him.

—Shhhhh.

He stood beneath them for another moment, gaze fixed somewhere beyond the path, while the irritation beneath his ribs sharpened into a question he could no longer postpone entirely.

Detailed answers could wait until he reached his room.

One question followed him anyway.

’Why did I react to Elara like that?’