It was a time of prosperity and looking forward. Winter had ended, summer would come. Life continued onwards.
But for Alphonse and her fellow students at Moxous, the School of Magics, spring was not a symbol of hope. No. It was a symbol of stress. When all the blooms had blossomed, and all the fields were sown, the students at the School of Magics tested their knowledge and woe befell the student who did not do her teachers proud.
While Dailion, the capital city of Ingola and prized jewel of the continent, reveled in Spring, Moxous wallowed in it. Students whispered everywhere they went to avoid disturbing fellow scholars who might be avidly studying in the halls and alcoves. Young men and women alike would walk about hunch-backed and bleary-eyed from carrying too many scrolls of notes, too many volumes of text. Sleep deprivation was an artform within Moxous, and to some, a point of pride.
How many days could one go without sleeping, while still functioning and memorizing?
For Alphonse, the answer was two days. After two days, she would become flustered and confused, little use to anyone, let alone herself. And she had been at that limit the night before, her amber eyes bloodshot, her hair mussed and escaping the veil that should have hidden it.
The words scribbled in her usually tidy hand had been blurring before her eyes, her head pounding and her thoughts cloudy. So even though her roommate, Coralie, was wide awake and reading frantically, Alphonse had blown out her lamp and gone to sleep.
She was all the better for it now, her thoughts coherent and sensible as she walked down the stairs in the massive library toward the older vaults, the catacombs as the students affectionately referred to them. This part of the library held all things forgotten and was precisely the place a fellow student would go to get a leg up on competitors.
Her friend, Etienne, would want such a leg up because he was one of the very few vying for the coveted position of High Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Every three years, Moxous would accept presentations of research by their brightest students. Only three would be selected to join the Masters to continue their learning and eventually become High Sorcerers themselves, which took great dedication to achieve.
It was this dedication and curiosity that led him to be so very ahead of his peers.
Alphonse listened to the soft scuffing sounds her plain leather slippers made on the worn stones, carefully balancing a steaming cup of energizing tea in one hand and a roll stuffed with egg and cheese in the other.
One more flight of stairs and she’d be able to begin her search for Etienne.
Despite the catacombs being so far beneath the stacks, the wide-open nature of the library tower afforded a light and airy atrium that shone down to even the unremembered vaults. It had never felt dank, dark, or disturbing to Alphonse, though many students said as much. To the observant visitor, the catacombs held an abundance of delicate sensations. Dust motes swirled in the light filtering down from the higher reaches of the tower, tomes of every color and description lined shelves of scrolling woodwork in a feast for the eyes, and pages whispered in their quiet, shushing language whenever there were studious fingers to prod them.
No. She found the space to be serene and peaceful. Devout almost.
Aside from all the stairs, one had to climb up and down to reach the catacombs. Those she could have done without.
Finally, reaching the bottom level, Alphonse paused, listening. Sometimes she could make out the scratching of his quill, or a faint humming as he read to himself. That was only true if Etienne was near the stairway. If he was further in…
Alphonse couldn’t hear anything, and so she turned to take the row of shelves that would lead to the tableshe had found him at last time. It was always best to check his previous location, just in case he hadn’t exhausted it yet.
✶
Etienne stooped over an enormous tome, its yellowed pages but a few inches from his pale eyes. He had an elbow propped on the table and his forehead resting in the palm of his hand, long fingers clenching and unclenching his hair as he read. He was only distantly aware of tension in his chest, the quickening of his heartbeat.
He was close. He had to be.
High Sorcerer Jean Seyrès was blithering on about the ingenious methods he had devised regarding the research of the old world in a tiny, cramped script—Etienne swore to every god he knew that he would never flatter himself so when he became High Sorcerer—but between the narcissism and self-magnifying hyperbole, there were hints of the book Seyrès had uncovered. Etienne sketched out some approximation of its contents in disjointed phrases, diamonds in the rock of the dead man’s prose: “tales of the Old World,” “accurate depictions of the Old Gods,” and most importantly, “keys to understanding the end of the Old Gods and the birth of the new.” This was what he was looking for, a book he had only seen the barest of allusions to in other research. He fidgeted restlessly, tension keeping his shoulders high and tight. He’d long ago ceased to feel the ache in his cramped muscles.
Then, disappointment. Seyrès reached the end of his self-important ramble without ever mentioning the gods-damned title. Etienne thumped the book closed and flung it angrily to the end of the laden table before him.
Still, there was a thread to pursue. Seyrès had briefly mentioned an assistant, a man Etienne knew by the name of Marcel Léger. Though Léger had never amounted to much as a scholar (perhaps thanks to his blathering idiot of a mentor), he had recorded much of his work with Seyrès in several small volumes still held by the library, some of which should be somewhere in the piles of books and scrolls spread out before Etienne.
He stood
