The Protection of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “I could live here and not be bored for a thousand years, Liv.”

  Unsurprisingly, Olivia rolled her eyes. She hated coming here and never left the table once she placed all the appropriate protections. There were too many elements outside of her control in the library, and she hated things out of her control.

  “The library would suck you dry in the one minute succeeding your fifty-five allotted ones, then feast on your bones for that thousand years,” she said.

  “Might be worth it.” I flipped open my folio and extracted the specially designed sheets of paper I had created during the last week of fall term. I had created them just for this purpose—to put wards to paper. To protect my family.

  The sensation of the ward swirled beneath the skin of my fingers, ready to push through my pencil and come alive on the page.

  “You ready?” Olivia asked. She was researching the protections that had been previously placed on my parents' house. We needed to make sure that what I was installing wouldn't conflict and destroy the house while the new wards were seeking to replace the old ones.

  “Yes. Yesterday's batch settled in well. I'm feeling positive,” I said.

  “Using paper was smart, and you have a talent for this.”

  “The first time I died I was attached to a billion wards. That helps, I think.” It also helped that the defensive wards were responding to my overwhelming need to protect.

  “Having a photographic memory for images and the ability to put an exact likeness to paper likely helps just as much,” Olivia remarked dryly.

  “That too,” I said, twirling my pencil. Using magic was exhilarating and art made my magic sing. If only I could use it everywhere.

  If only I could draw directly on the walls of my parents' house... But using magic in the non-magical First Layer was impossible for normal mages without a container like Olivia's, and would, without a doubt, bring the magical spooks of the Department right to my door—the opposite of what I was trying to do.

  So for the past three days while my parents had been under the assumption that I was showing Olivia around our town, we had been returning to the Second Layer, and bit by bit I was constructing new protection wards and embedding them in the fibers of the paper. Olivia was transporting the papers containing the wards through the checkpoint to the First Layer with the crazy all-access pass that similarly allowed her to take a container full of magic into the non-magic world.

  I gave Olivia's foot a bump under the table and started drawing, making the ward become a physical representation on the page through color, design, dimension, and imbued purpose.

  With Christian gone, my life's focus had been...redirected. My vital need to protect and attend him had transferred wholly to a small group of people, of which Olivia had moved dangerously close to center.

  We were taking care of my parents' safety right now, so that when I left for school again after the holidays, I could leave without worrying that the repercussions from my actions last term would negatively affect them.

  And so that I would not worry about the wards that were already in place on the house—the ones set by Raphael Verisetti, a notorious terrorist who killed without remorse. He had placed enchantments on my parents' house before my magical Awakening in order to hide my presence from the magical world. In order to hide me until he could use me, betray me, and collect my magic—along with the magic that had transferred to me when Christian had been murdered during his Awakening.

  Despite the absolute beauty and intricacy of Raphael's wards, I could not let them remain in place without designing my own checkmate. I swallowed down my anger and got to work.

  Thirty minutes in, the library desk ate my folio. Wooden jaws then reached up and grabbed my pencil. I released the vine charcoal just before the jaws clamped my uncovered fingers too. The library swallowed my magical pencil with a gulp.

  Olivia sighed and gave me an irritated wave. “Go.” This wasn't the first time the library had eaten my things, even with all the protections Olivia implemented each visit.

  I rose and sprinted to the materials section, my cloak's hem flying wildly over marble floors. Hungry magical objects trailed behind me and swooped at my sides, trying to nip any part of me that the cloak revealed as I moved.

  Each section in the library was delineated by its time period or subject matter. The materials section was constructed completely of magical materials. Every chair, table, lamp, and rug was an exquisite piece to study. There were books, tomes, scrolls, constructs, and screens, of course. But there were also objects that were far more unusual. Cutting edge magical technology. Every few minutes something new would appear when someone, somewhere, added a new piece of technology or magic to the collection.

  However, sometimes the library bypassed the system and independently acquired pieces it thought ought to be included.

  I located my folio and papers quickly in an “inbound” stack and grabbed them. An outraged roar from the southern wall didn't faze me this time, and I sprinted back to the warding gallery—passing a group of mages dragging long, purple boxes—while marble nipped at my heels.

  The library ate knowledge and magic, incorporating everything into its catalogs and limitless memory. Even with the cloak, books flew out to brush along the bared skin of my fingers, chairs wrapped around me, and magic swirled through my hair, despite the enchantments in place. It tried this with me more than with Olivia, possibly because I was always doing stupid things unconsciously, like connecting to every little piece of the library that took my interest. I loved it here.

  But Olivia had forced me to watch a traumatizing instructional video before we'd entered the halls the first time. The library would consume anyone who stayed past their time limit.

  Excelsine's libraries, unlike Alexandria’s, had special properties and wards that allowed enrolled students unlimited access within its walls—a priceless bonus. But because of the restrictions implicit in the allowance, Excelsine's libraries couldn't contain truly intense magics like those in the warding hall. Which was devastating, as the piddly little hour I was allowed here didn't include time for adventure.

  Not like those lucky mages with four or five hours printed on their slips. So unfair.

  I repeated the sentiment to Olivia as I collapsed back into my seat and took the ward stone she handed to me. I placed the stone on top of the folio and papers. Using the ward stone would shave three minutes off my allowance tally, but running again would expend five.

  “Lucky?” She gave me an unimpressed look. “Normal magic users, the kind who get four hours here because the library can't be bothered to eat them sooner, can't do that.” She pointed at the creations on my pages.

  “I'm normal!” I argued. “People do crazy things at school all the time.”

  “Excelsine educates some of the most powerful young magic users anywhere.” It sounded like she was reading from a brochure, her voice haughty and disdainful. “You aren't used to normal, Ren. Or average. Most mages would be jealous of your one-hour limit here and what it means.”

  “Eh,” I said, equally dismissive, as I stood and approached the web of wards. “Bursts of madness are great, definitely, but if a mage is diligent, she can build magic into a device or ward over time and make powerful things no matter her power level.”

  And then spend as much time as she wanted here, enveloped by magic.

  I wrapped myself in another ward and breathed it in before letting it go. I drew it with fast and sure fingers, then chewed the cap at the end of my pencil, examining the complicated image to make sure everything was correct.

  “I think people underestimate the importance of diligence and working at something for years, Sistine Chapel style,” I mused.

  “Nothing you say will convince me that you would rather spend three months doing something that takes you twenty minutes now.”

  “Time itself? I could use a vacation.”

  Something akin to a growl came from Olivia.

  “Being
an idiot means I'm normal,” I said cheerfully, tickled. The Olivia Price of two months ago wouldn't growl.

  Ten minutes later, I had completed three more papers. Olivia poked a finger toward the clock in the corner. When I looked up, a single digit appeared on the face, indicating my remaining library time.

  “Almost done. Do you think—?”

  My query was lost in a massive boom that shook the entire building.

  Olivia immediately swept everything into her bag and thrust her chair back.

  I followed suit, fumbling with the strap of my bag as I shook off the arms of the chair that tried to pin me in place. “I have seven more minutes.”

  “No. This is an attack.” She was already at the end of the gallery and peering around the corner before the sentence had fully left her lips. She frantically dug two small devices out of her bag and activated a small silver bracelet. A tangerine shield sprung around her.

  “On the library?” I said incredulously.

  “Artifacts, Ren.” The devices she had grabbed from her bag whirled in her palms lighting her hazel eyes with the emerald halo of one device and the topaz of the other. “The library is full of priceless pieces that people want. But also full of magical protection—active, inactive, and sentient. Stupid thieves.”

  The marble beneath our feet started swirling, as if responding to her words about its sentience. Olivia looked at the marble with distaste and a little fear. “Ugh, I hate it here,” she hissed.

  Another boom shook the space around us. I waited for Olivia to take off running, but she kept her position.

  “Does this happen often?” I whispered, watching the active marble swirl closer. But Olivia didn't move, even as other mages sprinted past us, down the main corridor, running toward the atrium and the single exit at the far end.

  “No.” Olivia gripped the emerald device. “The library exterminates all threats.”

  And just like that, the swirls in the marble gathered into a solid fist and shot out into the main corridor, like a predator chasing fleeing prey, and rammed one of the fleeing mages down into the stone floor.

  My heart stopped beating, and sound grew confusing.

  “...is very bad,” I heard Olivia say, once my panic sharpened to tight focus.

  Running the main corridor had just, very plainly, entered my “don't do it!” category. There were shortcuts throughout the library—hidden doors and windows and quicksand floors, books that sucked you in and spit you out of other books, hanging lights that switched you out of existence then switched you back on in a faraway wing, doors that folded and unfolded you from space.

  The building was full of small portals that transported people from one spot in the library to another, but the paths were dangerous, unpredictable, and unknown to me. Olivia was always reminding me not to touch anything other than the parts of the warding gallery we'd painstakingly vetted. I didn't know any shortcuts.

  But I did know there was only one exit to the building. And we were tantalizingly close to it, while being horribly far away as I watched mage after mage go down.

  Guards were fighting mages cloaked from head to toe in black, while others were being swallowed by doorways and floors, and crushed by ceiling beams left and right. Rock, clay, marble, and wood exploded from each crash. Wall trim bent down to crush and rend, and picture frames snapped their jaws. The library had clearly switched to offense and it was winning.

  Olivia and I, standing stock still and peering around the corner, had just enough defensive protection with her bracelet and my cloak, to remain out of the library's immediate notice.

  We had seven minutes to figure this out—probably six, now. And maybe the library wouldn't remember me when my time ticked out. We could try to wait out the attack...spend my remaining six minutes devising a plan. Between us, Olivia and I would think of something in six minutes.

  A cloaked mage threw something small and silver at a statue in the middle of the large atrium. Even a hundred yards from the atrium, the explosion knocked us off our feet.

  And the library...screamed.

  “Holy— Run!” Olivia shrieked, scrambling up.

  Marbled hands thrust out from every wall, one punching straight for Olivia. I launched myself at her. Stone fingers tore my cloak straight off my frame as Olivia and I fell hard to the floor. We grappled with each other, elbows flailing everywhere, as we stumbled to our feet and lurched forward.

  My last look at the atrium was of everyone—guards, terrorists, patrons—being swallowed by toothed arches and marble tiles.

  We skidded down the main hall—away from the atrium, away from the exit—surfing the rumbling floors and dodging falling objects. Olivia slammed me into a wall, saving me from a chandelier hammering into the floor. I wiped the blood from my mouth, then tackled her just as draperies snapped out to behead her.

  We scrambled to our feet again, sliding sideways as the marble buckled. A mage in black, racing toward us, shattered into a thousand clay-like pieces as he was violently crushed by hammering ceiling tiles.

  We had to get out of here.

  “We have to hide!” Olivia yelled amid the nightmare as we avoided the next crushing blow aimed our way. As if we could hide from something that we were already within.

  Another tile crushed downward in a hammered fist and we threw ourselves against the wall, narrowly missing death. But the walls were no safer than anyplace else in the locked belly of the beast.

  Locked? Wild thoughts bloomed. I grabbed the pencil in my back pocket.

  “Shield!” I screeched as the library attacked. “Last stand! Last stand!”

  Olivia threw a shield over us with everything she had left. The reverberation from the library's strike was deafening. We'd withstand two, maybe three more strikes, and that would be it.

  “Door,” I said, already drawing on the wall with one hand as I frantically reached over to fish my lock picks out of Olivia's bag with the other.

  If only I had paint. But I didn't and I had zero time to cry about it. I had only the time to enact my burst of a plan.

  I got the picks free and ducked instinctively as rocks burst against the shield Olivia was clutching around the two of us. Two more strikes.

  My pencil tip flew over the corridor wall as I visualized and created what I wanted in a multi-dimensional landscape, schematics flipping through my mind too fast for conscious thought. I didn't even try to make it conscious, as I thrust the expanding mental balloon into the creation.

  Magical travel was Will's passion, and port technology was one of his favorite discussion topics. Spending fifty-plus hours last term helping him on projects, and doing whatever he needed, had to have left a mark. That, and sheer insanity. I had no other option but to believe that this would work. Somewhere, my subconscious had to remember how to recreate the portal pad Raphael had ripped from my magic when I had Awakened.

  There was, however, a chance this would kill us. Or suck us into some dimensional void.

  “Faster,” Olivia gritted out, holding the shield against the marble floor to also protect us from being swallowed from underneath. Another column of stone exploded.

  I drew the last line while letting conversations with Will, equations, and internal images of magical locks focus the magic sliding along the rays of the mental pyramid construct I used to correctly bring together and balance the cornerstones of magic. I pressed the torque wrench and pick against the newly sketched door, pictured the rotating tumblers of a triple-grade magic lock, thought the word exit, and pushed.

  The door swung inward, shocking me, just as the opposite side of the corridor erupted into a swirling magical vortex.

  My fingers wrapped around the edge of the new doorframe reflexively as the vortex on the opposite wall spun faster and the suction increased. I reached out my hand for Olivia.

  A black clad mage appeared and grasped Olivia before I could. Using the leverage of her body, he flung her backward—toward the vortex—and plunged himself through my door. I
released the frame and dove toward Olivia, frantically grabbing her outstretched hand in both of mine.

  Her torso jerked and her legs flew out behind her. Magic erupted from her toes—defensive spells cast at the vortex, and offensive ones flashing in every other direction. The vortex reacted, swirling faster and swallowing everything into its cyclonic throat. Olivia’s magically thrown ropes, hooks, and fastenings snapped before they could attach—sweeping stone jaws eating all magic before it could connect.

  The eyes of the library were directly upon us. My feet dragged along the floor toward the swirling hole of doom that was sucking us in, inch by inch. I tried to supplement Olivia's defensive magic with my own. My pencil and picks dug into our clasped palms.

  Jagged teeth rent the mangled shield around us, chipping and gouging more holes in the magic with each chomp.

  I pulled Olivia for all I was worth, digging my heels into the slippery marble, and arching back.

  Olivia's legs swayed hypnotically behind her, like a snake in a death trance—the sucking vortex pulling us in while the library's corridor dove toward us for an early kill. No!

  “Let go,” Olivia said, her voice and gaze far too cynical and resigned.

  “No way.” My feet lost six more inches. Gaping jaws tore through the remaining pieces of the shield's top in one giant rip.

  “We will both die,” she said in a voice far too calm and cold. “I would let go of you.”

  Another inch of ground slipped beneath my feet. I looked back to see my door shutting—the library pushing it closed around my magic. Five more seconds and it would be gone.

  Tick...

  Six sets of jaws swept up the walls, converging on the ceiling, then together, dove toward us. There would be nothing to hamper their descent.

  There was just one last thing to do. One action that I wouldn't survive, but Olivia might.

  Tick, tick.

  I thought of the Kinsky painting, of my Awakening paint. A drop of ultramarine dripped in my mind and magic exploded against the door behind me. The momentum flung me forward and I used the initial jerk of propulsion along with a burst of magic to fling Olivia over my head and through the closing door.