Grub stepped quietly out of the Great Library and let the heavy wooden doors swing shut behind him and exhaled slowly.
Those lessons were getting really interesting.
For a moment, he considered abandoning his little side mission entirely and simply returning to the table. Teacher Orobas's explanations were some of the most valuable information Grub had received since falling into this world, and every second spent away from that table was a second he was not learning. Pulling himself away from knowledge physically bothered him.
He glanced down at his notebook and his frown deepened. The pages were nearly gone. A few more lessons and he'd have nothing left to write on.
Grub ran his fingers over the cramped handwriting, the hastily drawn diagrams, and the observations he had meticulously recorded since the day he had fallen from the sky. This notebook contained nearly everything he knew about this world. It was more than paper and ink at this point.
He sighed again and shook his head.
Focus. You're not here to mope about paper.
Grub walked over to a bench across the path from the library and sat down. Just a boy resting on a bench. Nothing suspicious about that. He leaned back and let his eyes move across the building slowly, carefully, like he was simply admiring the architecture.
He needed to get back inside without Luthiel or Orobas knowing he had returned. If there was a way to get beneath the library, it would be accessible from the inside. But he couldn't walk through the front door. Nora would greet him, Orobas might hear, and the whole distraction would be wasted.
He needed a different way in.
His eyes traced the building again. The tall windows. The chimney. The vents near the base of the wall. The narrow alley along the left side where the shadows pooled.
The vents. They were his best option. Sure they were narrow, but he was small. They were also elevated enough that no one at ground level would see him enter. And they connected to the interior of the building, which meant they could drop him into a section of the library far from where Orobas and Luthiel were sitting.
Grub stood up from the bench and looked around. The street was empty. No one was watching.
He moved quickly to the side of the building and crouched beneath the wall. The vent he had spotted earlier sat quiet high up, set into the stone between two windows. Too high to reach by jumping. The wall was smooth stone with no obvious handholds.
He couldn't climb it barehanded. . Grub looked down at his hands. Then he pressed one palm against his chest.
The weight was there, however, it was faint and almost nothing. The small reserve of Death he had gathered from the creatures he killed on the road to the village had been sitting untouched for days now, barely enough to fill a thimble. But it was something.
He closed his eyes and focused.
The weight shifted. Cold and familiar, it moved from his chest and flowed down through his arms and into his fingers. A faint trace of black residue crawled across his knuckles, thin and wispy, nothing like the thick smoke it had been during the fights at the Ridge.
But it would have to do.
Grub drove his fingers into the wall. The stone gave way just enough under the enhanced grip, cracking slightly around his fingertips and forming a small hold. He pulled himself up, then drove his other hand in higher. Then again. And again. Each movement consumed a little more of the precious Death he had left.
He climbed the side of the building in quick, deliberate movements, punching new handholds into the stone each time, keeping himself pressed flat against the wall and out of sight from the front of the building. His arms burned beneath the bandages but he ignored it.
When he reached the vent, he shifted the remaining Death into one foot and kicked two grooves into the wall for his feet to stand on. Then he pulled the power back into his hands, gripped the vent cover, and ripped it free.
The metal came loose with a groan and he tossed it into the bushes below.
And just like that, the last of the Death left him.
His fingers went cold. His arms went weak. A wave of dizziness hit him hard enough that his vision blurred and his grip on the wall nearly slipped. He pressed his forehead against the stone and breathed through it.
The weight in his chest was gone. It was strange. Like a pocket that had always held something suddenly turned inside out. Grub shook his head and pulled himself into the vent before his body could betray him further.
The space inside was tight. His shoulders pressed against both sides and his coat scraped against the metal as he crawled forward. He was surprised he fit at all. But he was small and thin enough that with careful maneuvering he could move, slowly, one elbow at a time.
As he crawled, his thoughts drifted.
The notebook. He frowned in the dark. The lessons with Orobas had been incredible. Every session gave him more pieces of this world than the last. But the pages were almost gone and the idea of parting with the notebook sat uncomfortably in his chest. It had been with him since the beginning. It was just an object. He knew that. But it didn't feel like just an object.
His mind shifted to Luthiel. He still hadn't asked her about her shifts. He had wanted to for days now but he could never find the right time or the right words. Her golden eyes. Her crimson scowl. Her hidden stare behind those blue-streaked bangs. Three faces on one girl. Three voices, maybe? He didn't know. He should ask soon. It was starting to eat at his curiosity.
What is she?
Grub reached a vent cover and pressed his face against the grated opening. Through the slats he could see a section of the library he hadn't been in before. Tall shelves lined the walls and the aisle below was empty. No one was there.
He shifted his weight forward and began pressing against the cover. Without Death, he had no enhanced strength. Just his body weight and stubbornness. He shoved again. And again. The screws groaned. One popped loose and then another. Soon, the cover broke free.
Grub caught it with one hand before it clattered to the floor and gripped the vent opening with the other. He swung his legs out, landed on top of a tall bookshelf, and crouched there for a moment, listening.
Nothing.
He hopped down to the floor, placed the vent cover on top of the shelf above the open shaft so it looked like it had fallen naturally, and crouched low.
He was back inside. Now he needed to find the way down.
Grub moved through the aisles carefully, keeping his steps light and his posture low. He scanned every wall, every floor tile and every shelf. He was looking for anything that didn't belong. A seam or a hatch. Maybe a door disguised as something else. Anything that would suggest a passage leading beneath the building.
He found nothing.
No stairs. No trapdoors. No obvious entrances. The library looked exactly like what it was supposed to be. A building full of books and nothing more.
What was stranger was the absence of Guardians. If the Dundun Ile was really hidden underneath this building, Grub expected to see at least one of the white-robed figures patrolling the aisles. But there were none. Not a single one.
Then again, perhaps visible security would attract suspicion. Perhaps the best way to guard something was to hide the fact that it was being guarded at all.
He kept searching. Running his hands along the walls. Checking behind shelves. Pressing on floor tiles with his foot.
Until he heard voices.
Two people, talking quietly, moving toward his section of the library. Grub shifted immediately, sliding around the back of a shelf and pressing himself flat against it. As he did, his hand brushed something on the shelf that didn't feel like a book.
He paused and looked down.
A small, recessed notch sat at the back of the shelf, hidden behind a row of thick volumes. It was barely visible unless you were pressed against the shelf at exactly this angle. Grub reached out and pushed it..
A quiet click sounded beneath his feet. Then a section of the floor behind the shelf shifted, revealing a narrow latch set into the ground. It was small and easy to miss. Perhaps it was built that way.
Grub crouched down and examined it.
There was a handle, and above it a flat panel with a hand-shaped imprint. Words were engraved beside it.
CHECK IN — PERSONNEL.
So this was it. He had found the hidden entrance. He reached for the handle and pulled. It was locked.
The panel glowed faintly, waiting for a hand it recognized. Grub pressed his palm against it, but nothing happened. No response or click. The latch stayed sealed.
He pulled harder on the handle. It still didn't budge. Without Death he had no strength to force it, and even if he did, he doubted brute force would work here.
So Grub studied the handprint.
Some sort of identification system. Only authorized personnel could possibly enter.
Sitting back on his heels, Grub simply stared at it.
So that is the security. No guards patrolling the aisles. No visible soldiers. Just a hidden entrance with a lock that only recognizes specific hands. The Guardians didn't need to stand watch because the passage itself was the guard. Anyone who didn't belong couldn't get through. And anyone who didn't know where to look would never even find it.
Grub had to give credit, it was simple, elegant and effective.
Grub's mind started turning.
Would telling the Lacerts about this be enough?
He knew the weapon was beneath the Great Library. He knew there was a hidden passage, and that it was locked by a hand-recognition system that only Guardians could open. That was real useful information. But was it enough to satisfy Colonel Gavial?
Morrigan had talked about moving the weapon regularly. How often did they move it? When was the next move? How many of these underground bunkers existed across the village? And what exactly was the Dundun Ile that it needed this level of protection?
He had found what he was looking for. And it was completely out of his reach. Grub pressed the notch on the shelf again. The latch clicked shut and the floor sealed itself back into place as if nothing had ever been there. He stared at the spot for a long moment.
Would one location be enough for the Colonel? When its an item that changes location constantly?
He wasn't sure. The Lacerts might not know the weapon moved. In that case, a single confirmed location might satisfy them. But if they did know, or if they tried to act on it and found nothing, the next report may be his last.
He couldn't be sure either way. And uncertainty was not something Grub could afford right now. When the voices he had heard earlier faded into silence. Grub stood, stretched quietly, and began making his way back through the aisles toward the shelf he had jumped on to get down from the vent.
He wasn't sure if today was a success or a failure. He had found something interesting. A hidden passage underground. Something that he was sure confirmed that the Dundun Ile existed and was being protected beneath this very building.
But he couldn't open the hatch. He couldn't see the weapon. And he couldn't guarantee the information would be enough to keep him alive. A taste of disappointment sat on his lips as he walked.
Five days felt a little shorter than it had this morning.