Tor didn’t quite like the sound of that. If Vesper had known exactly what to search for in Sandstone, why hadn’t she told the others?
As Vesper kept walking around and around the stacks, Tor grabbed a book off the shelf, only to find blank pages inside. He reached for another—blank as well.
“It’s enchanted,” Vesper said from above, poking her silver head over the balcony. She rolled her eyes. “Press your emblem to the first page.”
Tor did as she said, and the moment the fish on his skin came into contact with the paper, ink flooded its pages. A title appeared on the cover—How to Catch a Gleamington and Why You Never Should.
He slipped the book back into its place on the shelf, before grabbing another—Low Tide Rituals for the First-time Seafloor Excavator. Another—A History of Mermaid Tail Colors.
Before he could read another cover, there was a thud above, followed by an “Ow!”
Tor rushed to the fifth floor, halfway up the tower. Here the manuscripts were older. Instead of books, each shelf was packed high with tightly rolled scrolls. Vesper was still on the floor, looking like she’d fallen. She scowled at something against the wall. “Help me get that, will you?”
He followed her gaze and froze.
On a tiny shelf carved into the wall sat a skull.
Vesper scoffed. “Not afraid of it, are you? Legend says more than a thousand years ago a great oracle lived in Sandstone. And power from her fortunetelling emblem is still in her bones.”
Tor took a step back. “You’re not thinking of taking it, are you?”
Vesper stood, dusting herself off. “Of course not. I’m just trying to get it to work…” She stepped past Tor to reach back into the shelf, gripping the skull by its sides. “Just a little…” She fell back again with the effort, but something had changed.
The skull’s jaw had opened.
Inside, where a tongue once was, a tiny, thin scroll unraveled.
“This must be it,” Vesper said, reaching for the parchment. It was yellowed and blank. And there were just a few inches of it left.
“What, exactly, is that?”
She took the paper between her two fingers. Then, to Tor’s surprise, she ripped it. “Legend says if you’re able to tear a bit of her parchment tongue off, she will give you a prophecy.”
Tor stared at the bit of paper in Vesper’s palm. Slowly, words began to be etched on it, letter by letter.
Vesper went still.
The curling script fell into place.
Your quest will prove useless—and one of you will perish.
Though now impossible, Tor felt very much like he was drowning.
Something groaned below. He gripped the balcony and stared down at the rest of the tower. That’s when he noticed it extended underground, beneath the entrance. The hollow center of the library was pitch black like a well, so far down Tor would be surprised if even Engle could see the bottom.
Another noise echoed through it—one like a growl.
Vesper was by his side in an instant. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Tor said quietly. “But it’s coming from there.” He pointed down at the abyss.
From which something surfaced.
Fast as lightning, a giant squid burst from the darkness, tentacles first. Tor jumped back toward the hall, pulling Vesper down with him, just as a tentacle the size of a hydroclops struck where he had been standing. The stone balcony crumbled away, falling to the depths below.
“What is that thing?” Tor asked, back now pressed against the bottom of the wall. The squid was looping back, its long orange tentacles thrashing around—trying to find them.
“It’s a capsizal, a type of squid.” She looked panicked. “Some sacred places underwater have keepers, animals who protect them.” Vesper shook her head. “I thought, since the city was abandoned—”
Tor tensed; Vesper screamed.
The giant squid’s enormous eye took up the entire floor as it gazed directly at them.
“Go!” Vesper said, and Tor almost tripped getting to his feet. He shot down the path that lined the walls of the spiral tower, ducking behind bookshelves, trying not to look behind him.
They climbed to the next floor, then the next. Then, Vesper said, “Look out!”
Something wrapped around Tor’s chest so tight he gasped. It pulled him back down in a whoosh, into the middle of the library.
“Fight it!”
The squid had him by the waist now. He punched its tentacle with all his might, but its skin was tough as leather, its suction cups stuck tightly against him.
“Can’t you make it small?” Tor asked, gasping for breath.
Vesper was staring at him, wide-eyed, from a balcony. “No, I haven’t—I haven’t mastered large living things!”
The squid jerked its tentacle—and Tor—forward. Toward its mouth. The creature was at least three times bigger than the Night Witch’s ship, its body taking up nearly the entire tower. “Can you try?”
Vesper squinted, hand outstretched. Focusing. A vein popped from her neck in strain. But the squid remained giant. And Tor was almost at its mouth.
Vesper suddenly brightened. She took a few steps back, then jumped over a crumbled part of the balcony, landing on another one of the monster’s tentacles. It whipped her back and forth, but she gripped its skin and stayed on. Tor watched as she took a charm from her bracelet and made it big—a dagger. Then, she aimed for the soft skin in between the beast’s suction cups.
It roared as the blade found its mark, and the tentacle around Tor loosened. “Think thoughts light as a feather!” Vesper yelled as Tor squirmed free.
First, he fell, right down through the tower, after the monster. But the moment he thought of hoppers—the giant red balloons that Emblemites used for travel—the strange underwater gravity stopped, and the sea took over. He swam once more, up after Vesper, toward the very top of the tower. Its stained glass ceiling had a tiny hole in its center, and Vesper made it a big one.
Before the giant squid could recover, its tentacles having smashed the library to bits on its way down, Tor and Vesper slipped through
