Chapter 98 To Make A Party

"Lys, this might be a few too many," Ash said.

The stack of books pitched forward as she took one step too long over a small dip in the floor. The whole tower wobbled, but Ash had been correcting for the wobble before it had ever happened, and the stack stayed. Which was good. Ash did not want to know what Lysanthia would have said if she had dropped them.

"I mean, how can anyone possibly read all of these in two days?"

"I never said I would read them in two days." Lysanthia's voice came from somewhere past the tower. "It will only take a few hours." Her voice trailed off as she rounded a corner.

Ash followed on instinct. Her instincts had always been sharp. Honed across years of training, and then five more as the Hero. She had just never imagined this was what they would end up being used for.

There was the scrape of something across the floor. "Come, Hero. Put these down here."

Ash followed the sound until her hip found the edge of a table. Slowly, carefully, she set the tower down. It tipped one last time, as though it had been waiting for the exact moment her guard dropped. Ash's hand darted up and lifted the top half clean off the rest before it could go, and she set the four books down beside their fellows in a second, shorter tower. It only took a second, but it felt longer than one.

Lysanthia was already sitting. And she had pulled out another chair.

It was a small gesture. Barely anything at all. Ash sat down beside her and tried to keep the smile off her face. If Lysanthia saw it, Ash might have to explain herself, and she had absolutely no idea how she was supposed to do that.

In front of them sat eight books, each of them thicker than Ash's arm. Ash looked from them to Lysanthia. Then she looked back at the books. Ash had faced many beasts. She had stood before monsters other men fled from, and she had done it with her back straight. Right now, she wanted to run.

"You do not have to look like that," Lysanthia said. She reached for one of the tomes and opened it. "I planned to read all of these myself. If you wish to assist me in that endeavor, you may. But it is not required, Ash. I know you do not like this."

"Then why am I here?" Ash asked. "If you don't need my help?" She only realized what the question sounded like after she had said it, and by then it was far too late to take it back.

"I prefer you by my side," Lysanthia said. She said it as if it were simple. As if hearing it did not send all the color climbing up Ash's collar the way it was climbing now.

"I- I see," Ash said slowly. She reached for the smallest of the tomes, which still weighed enough to serve as a weapon in a pinch. "I'll try to help anyway. Even if you don't need it."

"You were a Hero, after all," Lysanthia said absently. Her eyes were already on the page. Ash watched them move in the dim light, left to right, left to right, so fast that she might have found it hard to believe Lysanthia was reading anything at all. Except that she knew she was. A moment later, Lysanthia turned the page, and her eyes began their tracing again.

Ash opened her own tome.

They were here for a simple reason: to learn about this Great Hunt they had been claimed for. Ren, Edda, and even Alisa had explained what they could, but they had explained it the way one recounts stories heard as a child. Ash wanted to know what the thing actually was. Lysanthia had agreed. Now they were here.

Solara had been left with Alisa and Ren. It was fortunate that the bird seemed to mind their company far less now, after her weeks of waiting with them. Ash suspected Sol might burn the Beast Hall down entirely if anyone tried to return her to it. And while Ash had every faith in Sol, all it would take was one sneeze to set half this place on fire. That's why the two of them were here alone.

Before them lay accounts and tales. Tales of the men and women who had gone on the Great Hunt. What they had seen. What they had slain. What they had carried out of the Blighted Lands to lay before the Divine. There was a Great Hunt every five years, even as the festival celebrating them came every one. This land's entire calendar began from the first Hunt -from the slaying of the dragon Azael- which the people of this age called 0 N.D. Year zero of the New Dawn. They stood now in the year 905. This year's Hunt would be the one hundred and eighty-second.

Ash read. She read for a long time. There were seven Blighted Lands today, but it had not always been so. At the beginning, there had been only one. A name Ash knew, and knew well. She set the book down, and lightly touched Lysanthia's shoulder.

The half-demon looked up, and read where Ash pointed. Something crossed her face. It was small. No more than a pursing of the lips. The slightest tremor along them. Ash almost wished she had not shown her at all but better this than Lysanthia finding it alone.

The first of the Blighted Lands, the very first, was Ashia.

"Perhaps it is my fault after all, then," Lysanthia murmured. "If the first was Ashia, and it spread from there, then-"

Ash shook her head. "We can't know that," she said. "There's an almost eighty-year gap, remember? And I don't remember Ashia being like these accounts describe. Even after what you did."

Ash had walked the land of Ashia exactly once. It had been a dark place. A place where the sun never rose and nothing ever changed, near empty of life save for the most hardened of survivors. The earliest of these accounts described something else entirely. Every party that returned called it a horrifying place, but not in the way Ash remembered.

"I don't think you did this," Ash insisted.

Lysanthia met her gaze and held it. "Perhaps not," she said at last. Ash could not tell whether she believed it. But the half-demon went back to her reading, and so Ash returned to hers.

The first of the Blighted Lands was Ashia. From there, it had spread. To Cascia, Abeyar, and Ceden within the first century. A hundred years later, to Peranid. In the centuries after that, to the kingdoms of Meria and Cargar. It had not spread since. Ash knew some of these names. She knew Ashia, of course. She knew Cascia too. She recognized none of these other Kingdoms.

It had never once been pushed back, either. Every five years, there was the Great Hunt. The parties moved to the lands most recently fallen to the Blight. They killed monsters, and brought back a trophy to lay before the Divine. That was the Great Hunt.

And these oldest accounts from Ashia, the ones that Ash was reading right now, were…strange. They sounded more like the stories mothers used to frighten children than accounts from warriors. One of the earliest accounts was only a few lines long.

We were four when we crossed into Ashia. I alone came back. But some part of me remains in that dark. It will remain there until my days are done.

Another, from a later Hunt, was shorter still.

I did not believe in the Divine when I set out on the Hunt. I still do not know if I do. But I believe in hell, and Ashia is that hell.

The accounts changed as the years did. The Blight spread from Ashia, and the accounts grew more and more understandable. By the time the Blight spread to Meria and Cargar, the accounts looked like what Ash had expected. Horrifying and vicious accounts, but at least the men who went tried to actually describe them.

And in her reading Ash learned something else. The Great Hunt wasn't strictly something that took place in the Covenant. The lands of Meria and Cargar both bordered parts of the Mandate, and so the Mandate had their own ritual. One where a great many men went, and few returned. They called it The Cleansing. There were only a handful of mentions, and no proper accounts at all. Still, it was good to know.

Ash read, and read. At some point she found herself pressed against Lysanthia's side, warmth leaking from one of them into the other until Ash could no longer say whose was whose. Had she moved her chair closer? No. Ash was sure she hadn't. At least, she hoped she hadn't. For while Ash had read more in the last half hour than she had in years, she had done that once before. With a book she had tried very, very hard to keep from Lysanthia's gaze, and had, by some miracle, succeeded. So far.

Ash sighed, and kept reading. And the more she read, the more she saw something she had noticed almost from the first page she'd read, and had hoped was only coincidence. If it was only that then it was the greatest coincidence in the world.

I did not wish it to be this way, but it has to be so.

Ash had heard those words on the night of the festival. She had heard similar words before, nine hundred and eighty four years ago. Similar words, but not the same.

"You see it too, don't you," Lysanthia murmured beside her.

Ash froze. She turned, slowly, and found Lysanthia already looking at her. Perhaps she had been looking for some time, and Ash simply hadn't noticed. "What?" Ash asked, though even she did not know why she asked it.

"You need a party of four. Four companions." Lysanthia said the word slowly. "And there is a structure here. A wisdom about what this party of four should be. Wisdom handed down for so long that it might as well be law."

Ash's heart was beating very fast, and the silent and massive Athenaeum had become both too loud and too small at the same time. Lysanthia's hand reached out and closed around her wrist.

"Ash, I have read many of these accounts. Many of them. The advice and all of the stories all suggest the same kind of party. One where you have a single member out in front, to take the blows the rest cannot. Where you have another to follow behind, to cut what the first distracts. A third, to rain down attacks from a great distance and shore up weaknesses where they see them. A fourth, to heal any injuries. A party of four that fights like that…" She shook her head. "I have not read everything yet, but I think I have read enough. It's what the stories all cheer for. I even read an account where this Divine herself said that all such parties are blessed with holy light."

Lysanthia's gaze never left Ash's own. And the gaze was kind. That was the only reason Ash did not look away. The only reason she found the strength to answer at all.

"A Warrior," Ash whispered. "A Sage. A Saint. And… a Hero." The last word was nothing more than a whisper. "It's not exactly the same, but-"

"It is not so different, either," Lysanthia murmured.

They were silent for a time. Ash had suspected it the instant this party of four had been mentioned, and every little thing she read reinforced it. It was not the same. None of the four Classes were ever mentioned, but they were described well enough. And then there was the timing of this Great Hunt. Once every five years. Ash's journey had been five years long. It was a small coincidence, but it had weight when you added it to all the others. What this all meant, Ash did not know. But she had a suspicion, as mad as it was.

There were many places these roads could be leading. One of them frightened her more than all the rest together. "This Divine," Ash murmured. "Do you think she is…?" She did not say the name. She could not say it.

Red eyes stared into her own. "I do not know. But it is a suspicion now, yes," Lysanthia said at last. "And yet it is strange. If this Divine is- humans do not live so long, Ash. No matter which Gods bless them. No matter what Class they hold, or what treasure they carry. A human does not live nine hundred years."

Ash nodded slowly. She knew as much herself. Even the Goddess of Time could not stretch a mortal lifespan so far. So the Divine could not possibly be who Ash feared she was. At least, not through any method Ash had ever heard of.

"This world has too many questions," Ash said eventually.

"Indeed it does," Lysanthia grumbled. "I came here for answers, and it seems I will leave carrying more questions than I walked in with."

Ash smiled, and it was a small smile. Lysanthia leaned in, and Ash's breath hitched for she had leaned too far, with how close their chairs already were. "Are you okay, Ash?"

Ash opened her mouth to answer. Then she closed it, because what she had been about to say was a lie, and Ash did not want to lie. Not to her. "I don't know," she said instead.

Lysanthia nodded slowly, and closed the last of the distance between them with the scrape of her chair. And Lysanthia's hand reached out, and took Ash's own. The gesture was awkward. Lysanthia held Ash's grip too tightly. It didn't matter. Ash would never say so, for fear that Lysanthia might pull back and not try again. Besides, Ash felt better already. A little better, at least.

They read for another hour. Maybe two. It was quiet, save for the occasional exchange that lasted no more than a second or two. For once, she actually thought she understood some of why Lysanthia liked this kind of thing.

And it was quiet. Ash still wasn't used to that. The grinding pain that always followed Lysanthia was gone. In its place was a pulsing hum, or maybe it was closer to a buzz? Ash had no doubt at all that it was still painful. But it was less painful than it had been, and for now, that was enough. For now.

Eventually, they rose to leave. Ash gathered four of the books against her chest and yawned into the top of the stack. Three were accounts of the Great Hunt. The fourth was a book on Tenets, still unread. One of the books Ash herself had picked. That- she didn't want to think about that one right now.

A pair of students on a lower balcony stopped to stare as the staircase carried them down, detaching from one floor and swinging out to find the next. One of the two pointed.

"I have seen you less tired after hauling wood for an hour," Lysanthia said. The voice had teasing in it. There was almost always teasing in it now.

"Well… it's hard to get tired when you're using your hands," Ash said.

"Most would not agree."

Madam Oris sat behind her desk near the entrance. Lysanthia strode up to the desk, took the books from Ash's arms, and set them down in front of the woman with a small thud. The librarian looked up at her.

"We are taking these," Lysanthia said. "And I do not know when we will return them. If you have any objections, then know that-"

"Take them," Madam Oris said, with a shrug.

Lysanthia paused. "…Pardon?"

Madam Oris looked at Lysanthia, then she spared a glance at Ash, then past Ash. There was no-one else there. "The Archon told me you might come. He told me you can take what you want, within reason. So I'll allow it, this once." She slid the stack back across the desk. "Treat them well."

Ash bit down on a giggle. Lysanthia had been preparing herself for a fight the entire walk down, and now she found her enemy had surrendered before it could even start.

Lysanthia sighed and gathered up the books. "Very well. Then give the Archon my…thanks."

"And mine as well," Ash said. The man had told them it was best they did not meet again. It seemed he meant to go on helping them all the same, in whatever small capacity he could.

She took the books from Lysanthia and turned for the doors, and made it a single step.

"I have a question," Lysanthia said.

Ash paused, and looked back. Lysanthia was still facing the desk.

"I had meant to ask it before," she said. "There may not be another chance. So I will ask it now." Madam Oris looked up from her ledger. "You bear a Sovereign mark, do you not? A Crest at that. I know enough of marks now to know that yours would be quite valued anywhere."

Ash looked at the woman's arm. On the woman's forearm sat the black book. Ink in the same color as Ash's own. How strange, that Ash's Sever was the power to cut, and this power was…something that had to do with books.

"Why," Lysanthia said, "does a woman with a Sovereign Crest spend her life… in this place?"

Madam Oris did not so much as blink. Her gaze dropped once, to the branching black and white on Lysanthia's own arms, and came back up.

"The Athenaeum gave me this mark," she said. "It does not work anywhere else. So where else would I be?" She looked back down at her ledger. "Now. If there's nothing else."

That was perhaps the single biggest curiosity they had found all day. Lysanthia stared at the woman for a moment longer. Then she came to join Ash, and together they walked toward the doors.

"Ash," Lysanthia said.

"Hmm?"

"I believe we are leaving with yet another question."

"I think we should get used to it, Lys."

Lysanthia paused. Ash took one more step before she noticed, and turned back.

"But so long as we are together?" Lysanthia said.

Ash felt all the color seep into her cheeks. Right now, here in front of- Well, there wasn't anyone close enough to hear the words, but still! Ash had said these words to Lysanthia herself. She hadn't expected to hear them back.

Ash took a deep breath, and smiled. Something inside of her still stung, but it stung just a little less.

"So long as we're together."