“It's a very large room,” Ed commented as they prepared to make entry. Todd was at the door, with Lucas and Ed on either side of him. Grandmother was behind the three men in the archer or wizard position.

  “How large?” Grandmother asked.

  “It is two or three times the size of a three room suite,” Ed explained, “and two stories high.”

  “I’ll just crack the door and take a peek,” Todd declared. “Ready?” he called. Everyone responded ready. Todd depressed the push plate, disengaging the latch. He held pressure until the door opened about a foot, then stepped back into the hall. A scratching scrambling noise rose from within, but nothing made it out before the door closed.

  “Rats?” Todd asked.

  “Maybe badgers,” Grandmother responded. “What was in here where you found it?” she asked Ed.

  “Nothing,” Ed responded. “I was with a group of trainees. I remembered thinking it was the type of room I’ve seen people die in and we were lucky. That is why I warned you about the size.”

  “I think the sound came from above,” Lucas offered. He was on the hinge side of the door. When the door opened he should have been in the best position to see what was inside, but the interior was too dark to make much out. “The darkness was odd.”

  “Odd?” Grandmother asked. “How so?”

  “It flickered,” Lucas responded.

  “Hmm…” Grandmother said. “It might be bats.”

  “Bats?” Ed asked. It wasn’t an animal he recognized.

  “They are usually in greenspaces farther north. They like to hang from the tree tops. I don’t think they can get a grip on light panels so they usually don’t appear in rooms,” Grandmother explained. “Todd, I’ll take the entry position. Wedge the door and kill anything that gets past.”

  Todd stepped back. He took Lucas’ place, while Lucas stepped back to the rear support position. Grandmother leaned her staff against the wall next to the door. She shook out her hands.

  “Ready?” she asked. Everyone responded ready.

  The door flew open and Grandmother stepped inside. Ed expected the door to bounce and hit Grandmother. He saw it happen dozens of times when overeager trainees entered too quickly. The instant the door reached the wall Todd was there jamming a wedge under it. Todd stood with his back against the door and faced the room from the inside. Ed, on the opening side of the door, followed Todd’s lead and stepped into the room. He pressed his back against the wall beside the door.

  Grandmother cast. Lightning filled the sky. A horrendous screech arose from the dark mass above. Dozens of bodies dropped to the floor. Some fell straight down but others were diving in their direction. Ed raised his sword and prepared to cut down anything that got too near.

  Lighting filled the sky again. A diving mass of animals bounced when they hit a group shield that formed right in front of the door. Ed was sure Grandmother did not cast it. It must have been Todd, proving he was as much a wizard as a warrior. Flickers of fire flashed across the room. Ed thought at first that Todd was throwing fireballs, but the fire was coming from the beasts.

  Lucas was slicing the animals falling between the edge of the shield and the wall with ice sword. Even more were trying to get by the edge of the shield on Ed’s side. He stepped up his efforts.

  A frozen fog filled the entire room. The flickers of fire stopped and the animals slowed. The shield failed. Lightning filled the room. The moisture in the fog carried the electricity more effectively. It was an interesting trick. Ed could feel small shocks all over his body. He stiffened, afraid he was going to end up stunned and lose consciousness. The room stilled.

  “Everyone all right?” Grandmother asked. Ed could only grunt. His skin still tingled. Grandmother looked at him. She reached out and touched him. The pain spiked, strangely intense on the stubs of his missing fingers, then faded away. He realized with some concern that she healed him.

  “You told me no more heals,” he murmured.

  “Well,” she said, “no more blue heals. You can have a violet or green heal, those are fine.” Only now did Ed realize he experienced no pleasure from the heal. The pleasure from blue heals faded long ago, leaving him only the relief from the craving. Since he didn’t have a craving, this heal didn’t relieve him of it, but it didn’t start the timer in the back of his mind either. Instead he felt good, free from that spike of pain that came from all over his skin.

  Ed looked down at his leather armor. It was decorated with a fine tracing of black lines in a jagged pattern. He realized they were burn lines.

  “Ellen can repair that for you,” Grandmother offered when she saw him inspecting the damage. “She can repair almost anything, I think it is her perk.” The old woman walked into the room. She retrieved her staff from the hallway at some point and was using it to crush the skull of any animal that still twitched. Ed rested more of his weight against the wall behind him and breathed. He glanced over at Todd to find the younger warrior looked completely untouched. Lucas, being farther out into the hall, was also spared.

  “What spell was that?” Ed asked Todd.

  “Tier five chain lightning,” Todd responded, “mixed with a tier four freezing fog. With this shield I didn’t even feel it,” Todd said, flashing his glass shield, now a solid red. “Next time I’ll loan it to you.”

  “Why does my hand itch?” Ed asked.

  “I forgot the missing fingers,” Todd said. “I think Grandmother did too. That was a tier four heal, your fingers are going to grow back.”

  “Are you serious?” Lucas asked from where he was standing watch in the hallway.

  “Very,” Todd replied. He turned and looked at Grandmother. “You didn’t mention they breathe fire. You know Alex is going to call them dragons not bats.”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I’ve never seen them cast fire before,” Grandmother said back. “These must be a more advanced version from the ones in the greens. They are way too high tier for this area.” Grandmother danced around in a circle waving at the contents of the room. “Look at this room. It is a library!”

  “A what?” Ed asked. He looked over the room. He saw it before when he found it. The walls were covered in shelves. They were the built-in kind that came with shops and couldn’t be broken down or removed. The shelves were loaded with ruined notebooks. Ed looked at a few of the more intact ones and found the pages covered in a black and white smear that wasn’t anything but gave the impression of writing.

  There were ladders on the shelves of each wall. They were constructed of a central pole and steps that rotated flat on either side as weight was applied. They were obviously intended to give access to the upper shelves.

  The high ceiling overhead was arched and crossed by heavy wooden beams, bound in black iron. Looking at them now, Ed realized the bats must have hung from those wooden beams, blocking the light from the panels between them. That was a hint of how many animals were in the room. The center section was an array of broken component desks. The tops of several of them were intact and they were wood. Ed thought Grandmother would like them.

  “A room for the storage of books,” Todd explained.

  “Oh,” Lucas said from the doorway. “It's a unique room. I read about them in the User Manual. They often contain spell hints.”

  “Spell hints, hidden rooms, special tools or quest inscriptions,” Grandmother elaborated. “And sometimes nothing at all. Although in a nothing room I often wonder if I just missed it. It occurs to me that Companion’s coloring book may have come out of a room like this. We will need to check every book.” Grandmother turned to Ed. “What did you see in this room that you thought might help with our plant problem?” Ed pointed over to the nearest ladder.

  “The ladders move,” he said.

  They cleared the room across the hall. It was a typical room and didn’t have any animals in it. Lucas noticed that Grandmother checked the room over pretty closely, before they started dumping the bat/dragon carcasses in it. As Ed stood watch, Lucas and Todd moved the animals. Grandmother studied how the books were distributed on all the shelves, before declaring she didn’t see any pattern. She borrowed a gathering bag from Todd and started stuffing it with books, even those that were heavily damaged. She planned to check them all later.

  Lucas was horrified at how many animals were in the room. Ed’s comment about it being the type of room people died in was too accurate. He marked the room on his own map. He would issue a warning to keep away from it unless you had a very strong team. He wasn’t certain Londontown could produce a team strong enough for this room. As he hauled animals the last ten percent of his uncertainty about Grandmother’s intentions toward his king vanished.

  If Irene, the mad queen's youngest daughter wanted Londontown, she would already have it.

  When they finished with the bats, Grandmother stopped loading books long enough to look over the pattern of the desks in the center of the room.

  “It could be the desks,” she commented. “There are twelve of them, two rows of six. That is the number of symbols in a tier four or five spell. Take the desks apart one at a time and search for any hint of a structure symbol. If there is anything in or on the desks that you can’t identify, set it aside. It might be a new tool. Make sure you check any books or vellum. Actually set that aside as well.” Grandmother went back to stuffing books while Todd showed Lucas how to take the component desks apart. They set the intact components and damaged components in separate piles in the hallway.

  They didn’t find any structure symbols in the desks, although they did find a few odd items. They moved on to the chair remnants. Todd took the watch when Grandmother finished with the books and started helping with the chairs.

  Soon the room was nearly empty, the ladders were still in place. Grandmother climbed them to retrieve the books off the upper shelves. She inspected the ladders until she was satisfied that they didn’t contain any hints. She was planning on disassembling them separately and putting them in their own bag. She wanted to be able to reassemble them later. Grandmother leaned down and tapped out a spell on the floor tile. A wave of cleanliness swept across the floor and up the lower shelves. It didn’t reach the upper shelves. The high ceiling above was still festooned with dust that clung to the wooden beams. The clean floor was the same standard pattern found in the hallways.

  “What spell is that?” Lucas asked.

  “Restore,” Grandmother answered. “We used to call it clean, but we’ve recently decided it actually does minor repairs. It is tier one. I am still hoping I can find a higher tier version.” Grandmother laid down on the floor and looked up at the beams and light panels.

  Unable to stop himself, Lucas looked up at the ceiling himself. There were five large beams across the ceiling, with six sections of light panels between. The light panels were all on and the room was just as brightly lit as any other space. Lucas recalled his earlier thought that the bats bodies blocked the light. There were a lot of dead bats, but the space between the beams was large. It was impossible that it was their presence alone that blocked the light.

  “I don’t understand how the room was so dark before,” Lucas mused aloud. “Those bats are not large enough to block all the light.”

  “They aren’t,” Grandmother agreed with a tilt of her head. “Turning the lights off,” Grandmother called to Todd. The warrior on watch acknowledged the call. Grandmother began pulling the light out of the panels. The User Manual contained a section on lights. He bought the book from the furniture shop after Grandmother’s last restocking run. She brought in items like the glass mugs, that weren’t exactly furniture. Todd recommended to Lucas that he read the book. Lucas was still not completely recovered from the damage it did to his world view and he wasn’t all the way through it yet.

  Ed did not have the same warning. Lucas could see the older warrior trying very hard not to show any surprise at this development. In a lot of ways this simple act of turning the lights off and on was far more world shaking than killing a hundred bats with three or four casts. Everyone knew there were powerful spells out there. It was far more disturbing to find out you missed one of the most simple and basic ones.

  Grandmother stopped when she reached the third strip of light panels.

  “Todd, come look at this,” Grandmother called. “Can one of you take the watch?” she asked Ed and Lucas. Ed hurried over to the post by the door. Todd walked over and dropped down onto the floor. He laid on the floor next to Grandmother and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Does that look like a spell ribbon to you?” she asked, pointing up at one of the beams that was only lit indirectly by the light panels in the next section. Todd flicked his hand, casting some spell. He squinted his eyes and looked up where Grandmother was pointing.

  “Yes,” he responded. “It does.”

  “It is a tier four spell,” Grandmother announced, “from the light spell tree.”

  “What do light spells do besides turn the lights on?” Lucas asked.

  “Invisibility,” Grandmother answered, “but I already know a tier four light masking spell and this isn’t it. The fact that it was in a library is a hint. I think it is about revealing information instead of hiding it. My team's frequent visits to Londontown using masking spells may have triggered this spell hint getting spawned. It is aimed at someone who is tier four in your square that Control thinks should know we are here.”

  They were walking back to Londontown, dragging a hastily constructed cart behind them. The ladder wheels were larger than the mop bucket wheels, but they did not swivel. Luckily Grandmother figured out very quickly how to use the swivel component in ladder steps to convert them. Every bag Todd and Grandmother carried between them was packed. The bags that hung on Todd, churned unhappily. Lucas remembered the first time he saw his cousin pat a bag trying to calm it down. He suspected his cousin was touched. Now he wondered how his cousin could not end up touched with all the things he saw following Grandmother around. Lucas was glad his king was a homebody. Technically his king was a young boy, but the regent seldom left the square either.

  “How many people in the square are tier four?” Todd asked.

  “I don’t think anyone is,” Lucas replied.

  “Well that’s not true,” Grandmother replied. “Quite a few of the crafters we bought spells from were tier four.”

  “I’m not that familiar with the crafters,” Lucas admitted.

  “I guess that means it’s a crafter,” Todd observed.

  “Hmm…” Grandmother murmured. “We may need to come clean with the crafters. If whoever it is doesn’t find out we’re visiting, Control might come up with a Narrative so they can.” The User Manual talked about Narrative too. It was definitely something to avoid. “I’ll spread the word among my people that they should admit where they are from in Londontown. We're not really from Melbourne,” Grandmother told Lucas. “We are from a new square we just call Home.”