Killing Time

The Academy library was not always a library.  It was originally the manor of a wealthy landowner who had fallen on bad times and was forced to sell a few of his estates.  The expanding Academy swallowed it up and used it for storage.  This was rather undignified for the nobles and so they protested this rather vehemently and the Academy officials, who were a lot more sensitive to the public’s opinion than it is now, changed to a more dignified position – the library.

They neglected to mention that this was hardly better as when the manor was storage it at least had a padlock on the door.  Now it was open to the public body of students, ranging from preteen to young adult with not a whit of common courtesy between them all.  After repairs to the building became necessary the Academy decided to take that one step further and expand on it.  And expand.  And expand.  And expand some more until the only thing that resembled the manor itself was the entryway.  

Of course, being in the middle of a city means that the architects had to get a little creative to avoid running into neighboring buildings.  So the library went up and down and even managed to connect to one of the Academy halls on the east side.  This made navigation rather difficult as some wings didn’t connect to each other except on certain floors and other levels required ‘mancy bending of space in order to get into.  This was intentional.  Professors didn’t want students that didn’t have a certain degree of competency to get to certain books.

Chronomancy was on the fourth floor, east wing.  It was more of a hallway that was filled with books than an actual room.  Chronomancy wasn’t a very popular branch of study due to how confusing it was and all the paradoxes that went with it and so the library designers had tucked it away with the thought that if it was out of sight it’d be out of mind.  For the most part this worked.  Non-chronomancy students only stumbled upon it by accident and those that actually wanted to be there already knew where it was.  The library itself wasn’t protected by any clever means of any kind, as the general consensus was that anyone who was attempting the more difficult chronomancy would have to know the basics, which meant they would know the inherent danger of the field.  Such as how no one had ever been seen again after attempting time-travel.

Brin figured that there would be something there to help him out of this predicament.  Surely he wasn’t the only one to get stuck in timeless space.  It seemed like a common error that new chronomancers would make.  All he had to do was locate a book that told him how to get out and then drag it back to Genoa and the girls and they’d be clear of this mess.

Fortunately for Brin, the professors had the same logic – that anyone stuck in timeless space would head straight for the library.

This wasn’t so fortunate for Genoa and the girls, however.

There was a mountain of books around Brin in a very short amount of time.  He just went systematically down the shelves, pulling one out, flipping through the index, and then putting it on the ground.  He’d emptied an entire bookcase before the door to the library opened.  This startled Brin quite a bit as he had expected that Genoa and the girls would stay at Liqua’mancy.  It startled him even more when he discovered that the person who entered was a girl from one of his classes.

“Oh, hi Brin,” she said, tiptoeing past his avalanche of literature, “Having trouble finding something?  Well, there wouldn’t be any books exclusively about the third principle of chronomancy in there, by chance?”

Brin shook his head, completely befuddled as to what had just happened.  It was almost statistically impossible for someone else to enter timeless space at the exact instant of another person and so, since they stepped outside the timeline at a different point, he should not be meeting anyone here other than Genoa, Presleigh, or Aelisha.  This meant something else entirely had happened.

“That means it’s where I left it.  Ah!”  She leaned over the third bookcase down and pulled out a leather-bound novel.

The girl paused at the door and looked at Brin, who stared back up like an owl.

“You see the explosion a couple hours ago?  The ‘mancy casting the professors did?  Rumors are already saying that it was an utter failure and that the experimenters have to start over from page one.  Wonder what it is?  You heard anything?”

And Brin just shook his head again.

“Ah, too bad.  Well, I’ll be seeing you.  Good luck with your research.”

It was very difficult for Brin for the next few minutes.  He slowly got to his feet.  Slowly looked around.  And finally he thought to look at the doorframe.

There were ‘mancy circles etched in the woodwork.  He moved closer and started studying each one until he reached one near the upper right corner.  He had to use a stool to get a good look at it.

The circle was inverted with the longest string of runes spilling out the top of the circle instead of the bottom.  The central rune was missing from the circle.  It was meant to break ‘mancy, not create it.  Brin sucked in his breath.

Thankfully, the girl from his class was far away enough that she didn’t hear his long stream of cursing.



Presleigh was through with her first draft and onto her final copy.  She would have had many more revisions if not for Aelisha’s help.  The literamancer had picked out every weak argument and every weak sentence on the first go-through.  Now all that was left was copying the paper onto some new sheets of paper and since there was nothing to distract her in timeless space this task was taking far less time than she thought it would.

“Why isn’t Brin back?” she asked as she moved onto the fourth page.

“He’s probably still searching at the library,” Genoa replied.

“It shouldn’t take this long.”

“You been to the library yet?”

The Stormrider shook her head.

“Well, that certainly explains your first draft,” Aelisha said.

“It’s a veritable maze to begin with,” Genoa explained, “and there’s dozens of books for just one subject within one branch of ‘mancy.  Trying to find what you want is very difficult sometimes, especially if the topic is obscure.”

Presleigh nodded absently and continued writing.  Aelisha turned to Genoa and propped her feet up on a coffee table.  They were sprawled among the sofas in Liqua’mancy, as that was the most comfortable spot in the entire store.

“So what is your declared major, anyways?” she asked the vampire.

“None yet.  I’m going to be there for a very long time so I haven’t bothered to decide on one yet.  What made you choose literamancy?”

“Oh, I just like words.  How they go together, how they can be used, and how ‘mancy can be woven into such a human invention.”  She paused, thinking for a moment.  “You know, I actually did work as a literamancer for a few years before buying this café.  It was how I got the money.”

Genoa was quiet and Aelisha took that as a sign to continue talking.

“I worked for a large shipping firm that wanted their documents received by skimmer captains or foreign merchants as favorably as possible.  I’d get a letter to transcribe with ‘mancy added in.  All I did was add the ‘mancy.  Eventually I got tired of seeing all the grammatical errors and poor phrasing passing across my desk and started revising while adding in ‘mancy.  The firm’s business improved, I received a raise even though they had no clue I was doing the revising, and a few months later I had enough to purchase an open shop here.  So I quit and opened Liqua’mancy.  I like the work a lot better.”

“What did your other classmates do?”

“A handful did the same thing I did, except they stayed in that field.  One went off to the Cadre and is an officer now.  A couple others were hired by the government.  I didn’t keep track of the rest.”

“Hm.”

“You done yet, Presleigh?”

“Four more pages.”

Brin was still not back by the time Presleigh had put down the final sentence and packed her notes and papers back up.  She was worried.  The other two were not.

“I say we go exploring,” Aelisha said, “as a reward for a job well done.”

“But it’s boring out there,” Presleigh complained.

“Ah, but we’ll go somewhere not boring.  Someplace where we’d never get to see if not for Brin screwing up.”  She gleefully rubbed her hands together.  “Any ideas?”

The choice was obvious.  Of all the places civilians were not allowed to go there was one building that dominated over them all.  One building that was grander, more expensive, and more respected than any other.  One building that was the heaviest guarded in all of Alannis.  The emperor’s palace.  And so the three set off towards it, weaving among streets full of people that were frozen in place.

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