His feelings toward her were clear enough to him, but he still didn’t know if it was wise to trust her with these things yet. It was too much of a risk and wouldn’t be fair to the others. Deep down, he also felt like he was protecting her by doing this, keeping her safe both from the trouble it might cause as well as other dangers that might arise. It was safer for all of them this way.
At the end, he feigned the excuse of having to arrive for his guard duty shift, and they parted company amicably. Though they had spoken in a friendly manner, Vincent couldn’t help but be excited. His heart was fluttering and he was in a good mood as he journeyed alone back to the keep. He smiled and exchanged warm greetings with passersby, and there was an occasional skip in his step. Not even the prospect of returning to the vast and dreary library was enough to dampen his spirits.
When he resumed his work, he pushed on with renewed determination yet was only barely noticing the words on the pages. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. Eventually, Stacy joined him since she was done early. Before they started searching through the books together, Stacy couldn’t help but be inquisitive because his joyful preoccupation was so apparent. He told her and she momentarily shared in his mirth. Unfortunately, it was soon tempered in both of them when they remembered why they were there and the disastrous fate they were trying to prevent.
Because of what had happened with Jessica, he had almost forgotten the plan that he had come up with before he had spoken to her, almost. While he and Stacy continued searching for references to the word, he put it off until the last possible moment since it wasn’t something he took lightly. After the library had emptied of even the most committed students and the two of them were putting books back on the shelves, he finally brought it up. It wasn’t easy asking Stacy to exploit her close ties with Master Anthony to discover which object was stolen, but it had to be done. They shared a moment of silence as she thought it over. He could tell that she understood, even if she was reluctant to voice it, and she at last gave her assent.
The morning after, Vincent went to the gardens again to be with Jessica a short time before going back to the library. It was almost a return to their usual routine, yet it also felt like they were getting closer. A few times when she looked his way, he could swear that her eyes brightened just for him, and he had never felt more elated.
Later, Vincent returned to his task and poured through the books like mad. He was already well motivated by his desire to punish the culprits in the murders and disappearances and even more so after learning what he had from Stacy. How it was connected with the catastrophe she foresaw, other than fear on the part of the cult, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he felt invigorated like never before, as though he had a future worth fighting for. He would not let anything stand between or ruin his love for Jessica.
Sometime in the evening, Stacy arrived again to help look through the books. He was almost too afraid to ask what had happened, but did. To his relief, she told him that she hadn’t encountered any difficulties. Master Anthony had been forthcoming and easy to approach. Unfortunately, the information provided only led them to another dead end and another baffling mystery. The object stolen was nothing more than the Arkiban Quill Pen, a pen made from the feather of an extinct bird and infused with magic so that its ink never ran out.
A mere writing utensil! Vincent asked if it had some other property to it, and Stacy told him there was none. He stormed off to go find out more about it, and she followed him and told him not to bother, but her words were dross in the cauldron of his furious disbelief. Beside himself in livid anguish, he frantically searched for the proper volume. He found a book about magic pens and flipped through it only to find that Stacy was correct. Enraged, he angrily threw it hard to the floor, its pages flopping about in disarray. People stared on while he grabbed his hair in his fists and let out a harsh, loud growl of aggravation. It resounded through the entire floor.
When he was done, a library attendant, an older woman approached him and asked him to please keep his voice down and not to destroy Gadrale Keep’s property. Embarrassed, he apologized and returned the book to its shelf. He returned with Stacy to the table they were using, seething and still unable to accept that he had killed people and had nearly been killed himself over a stupid quill. It just couldn’t be true; it made no sense. This thought hammered into his mind over and over again as he sat down in a huff and put his forehead in his hands, his elbows resting on the table.
Stacy first put her left arm around his back and then her right across his chest, folding her hands over his shoulder in a hug to comfort him. “I don’t think that’s all there is to it either,” she consoled while her chin was atop his other shoulder.
As she stood up, she patted him twice with her hand and then went back to work. He quietly brooded for a while longer and then put it aside so he could help her. The anger still remained below the surface…waiting.
Some time after, when it was getting late, Rick and Karl showed up with Karl’s rock still tagging along. With regret, they reported not having found anything either. They were dismayed as well when Stacy told them what was stolen but nowhere near as much as he was. The four of them spent the last few minutes of the day sharing what they had been able to find out, which wasn’t much. The only thing they all seemed sure of was that ‘kargoth’ was not a word in a spell, unless it was an obscure one in the bottom library yet had to admit that the chances of that were very small.
As much as he hated to, Vincent skipped the next morning’s trip to the gardens. It was painful, but he was becoming obsessed. It was the second to last day of the week that Master Clemens had given him, and he had to make it count. He went as far as he could until evening when the other three arrived. The work proceeded much faster with their help, and they were already beginning to look through the last library above the vault before it was late and they had to quit.
* * *
Shortly after her morning shift in the gardens, Jessica returned to her quarters to retrieve her leather bound journal, quill pen, and small ink bottle. Books were expensive as they had to be written by hand, and so they were issued no texts for their personal possession. Subsequently, every student at Gadrale who wanted or needed one for their own personal collection or reference had but one choice: to record what they had learned themselves. When learning the properties and attributes of plants and what alterations could be made to them through magic, keeping meticulous notes with illustrations was a must.
She tucked her class journal under her left arm, holding it against her brown dress, and with her scribe tools in hand, left the keep to attend her plant morphology class taught by Cassandra, an Edmarian Elf. The sound of her soft footfalls was later drowned out by many others in the halls. Out on the walkways of the campus grounds, Jessica once again wondered about Vincent’s morning absence in the gardens. He had been acting strangely lately, and she thought it had something to do with the night he was attacked.
Who wouldn’t be shaken, she thought, but there were other differences as well. Aside from the misunderstanding they had, he seemed unusually preoccupied. “Busy,” he had said, that’s probably what it was today; she might see him again tomorrow. At least certain other things had also come about, things that warmed her heart and left her smiling at times for no reason. A small smile creased her lips now. Terrible as it was, what had happened to him, she couldn’t say that she was completely displeased with the overall outcome. To her, it looked like his displeasure from thinking she had forgot about him was a little bit more than what a mere friend might have, and yesterday when he had come to visit her, there were several moments where their eyes met and…it was wonderful.
And he appeared to sense it too.
Jessica went around the opening to the gardens and entered one of the orange-clay buildings on the other side that had a red-shingled roof. She was immediately greeted by the smell of old wood and dirt. This one building enclosed her entire classroom inside it, and everything wi
thin was earthen including the long tables and chairs of dark brown wood arranged in rows with an aisle between each half of the collection. A number of other students in brown or light tan work clothes or dresses had already arrived and were shuffling papers or talking. A noisy cough echoed. In the front of the classroom sat a podium of the same color as the chairs and tables, as well as filthy tables for placing pots. In the corners of the room, large light orbs placed atop black metal tripod sconces provided illumination. Since many of the chairs were already being used by her classmates, Jessica chose to sit in the left group, third row from the front, at a table near the aisle.
After being seated, she casually set her ink bottle on the table in front of her and thumbed through her journal to the appropriate page before laying it flat near the bottle. The rustling of chairs and people was all around her while she opened the stopper to her ink well, dipped the quill, and began scribbling today’s date. The ink’s bitter odor immediately wafted toward her face. She blew to keep the strongest of it away. Plant morphology required precise notes and illustrations for study, sometimes even more than her other classes, due to having to keep track of more life stages and the magically induced structural transformations to each that couldn’t occur naturally.
Soon after she was situated, the din of talking, murmuring, and the shuffling of pages lessened as their instructor, Lady Cassandra, walked in carrying a clay pot with dirt in each arm and wearing a leather bag hanging from a strap across her right shoulder. She set down the two pots on the table, let her breath out in a huff of relief, and brushed off her hands on her drab brown pants. Her strange green pointy eyes moved toward the left when a male student approached her and asked a question. Jessica couldn’t tell what it was because he had spoken quietly but heard Cassandra hurriedly say “don’t worry, we’ll go over that.” The student left to return to his seat while she took off her bag and put it on the table beside the pots, absent mindedly pushing her blonde hair back behind her Elf ears.
Everyone went silent as Cassandra leaned forward with her hands on the table on either side of the two pots in front of her and addressed them. “Alright class, today we’re going to talk a little bit about gametophyte forms and how to manipulate them.” Jessica began hurriedly writing this down. “As you already know, sporophytes are usually the dominant generational life-cycle stage that is most visible in everyday plants, and most of the magic you’ve been taught so far has focused on them. Even though that has its uses, one must never forget the importance of their gametophyte counterparts or the roles they can play.”
She reached in her bag and pulled out a round hard seed. “I have here a perfectly harmless chestnut encased in its shell,” she placed it in the moist dirt of one of her pots, “and watch what happens when I apply the most basic growth magic that you’re all familiar with.” As Cassandra applied the invisible threads of beneficial energy, Jessica watched a chestnut seedling sprout from the dirt and grow two feet high, shedding its cotyledons along the way. “As you can see,” Cassandra went on, grinning lightly “it grows into a healthy young sporophyte.” She opened the flap to her bag and stuck her arm in, digging around again. “Unfortunately, if you try the same thing on its gametophytes, you’ll get way more than you bargained for,” her hand kept digging and digging, her voice taking on a slight strain of frustration, “gametophytes are normally very small and come in male, female, and bisexual types, though in trees they’re almost always sex-segregated.”
As her hand searched, she explained further. “A sporophyte this young can’t grow flowers yet, but in here…” she stopped and gave a cross look at her bag. Cassandra grunted and opened the flap of her bag wide and began searching with both hands. “Oh I don’t believe this,” she said in dismay. “Class, I think I must have forgotten the chestnut flower sprig in my office. Please excuse me while I go retrieve it.” And with that, she left the room.
After she was gone, some of the talking resumed, starting with a remark from a male voice on the right hand side of the room, mocking the lesson. He raised his arms and waved them in pretend fright. “Oh no, please save me from the chestnut gametophyte!” A few other students snickered and joined in the laughter, but Jessica didn’t find it that amusing. She thought the fool should have realized by now that nearly any plant, with the right magic, could be turned into something horrid and deadly. Or at the very least, something useful.
Jessica waited patiently while overhearing two of her friends, Audrey and Samantha, gossiping behind her. This was not unusual for them to do, and Jessica ignored it at first until part of what Audrey was saying caught her attention. “…and you’ll never guess who of all people I saw Stacy, the star pupil, having a romantic moment with in the library yesterday.” Strangely, a curiosity overcame her, and Jessica turned around to look at them.
“Who? Who did you see her with?” Samantha pressed, neither of them seeming to have noticed her looking.
“The swordsman!” Audrey spurted out excitedly while in a hushed tone.
Samantha’s mouth hung open. “Impossible…” she said in disbelief.
“It’s true,” Audrey maintained.
“What is she doing with him?” Samantha frowned in confusion. “I mean sure he’s cute, but he’s just so… beneath her. He’s practically a normal. And what were they doing together in the library?”
“I don’t know, but I heard someone say they stayed in there late, even after hours. Who knows what they were doing there together…alone.” Jessica turned back around, letting out a short distressed breath. Her troubled eyes slowly moved from one corner of the room to another, not knowing where to look.
It felt like she had just suffered a serious blow, struck by lightning. Her whole world was falling down around her. How could it be true? How could he…with her? It didn’t make any sense. What…why? It was only gossip. It had to be. Though she said the words in her mind, her eyes became wet and she could feel a deep pain welling up inside her.
It was difficult to pay attention to the lesson after that.
* * *
On the last day before he had to resume guard duty again, Vincent proceeded in the same manner, skipping his visit to the gardens and trying to give his friends and himself a head start. When they arrived to join him, they relegated separate tasks to cover material more quickly. Rick took spell books, Stacy took Elvish archives, Karl took Dwarven ones, and Vincent searched through ancient lore and myths.
As it was getting late, and everyone else had left the library, Vincent flipped through a book so old that it was practically falling apart. He had to carefully wipe away a thick layer of dust before he could even view the title. It was an obscure text in an archaic Human language. He was able to tell from its format and some of the words used that it was about gods and goddesses.
His eyes slowly and carefully glided over the worn pages, looking at each word carefully, even if he didn’t understand it. Just as he heard Stacy sigh in the back and suggest that they call it a night, recognition hammered him into a near panic.
“I found it!” He screamed to the others.
Vincent stared hard in shock at seeing the word at last while he heard the hurried footsteps of his friends running toward him. There was a long screeching and scraping of stone on stone as Karl’s rock struggled to catch up. He was amazed that his cousin was still able to concentrate on it. Holding the book reverently like it was the most valuable thing he ever would, he kept a finger pointed where it was and lifted his head to see his friends rushing in.
They wanted to grab at it, but he recoiled for fear they would damage it. “Careful,” he admonished, “this thing can’t take much abuse.”
“Let me see,” Stacy said.
He held it closer to her, continuing to point at it with his finger. “Right there. And look at how it’s spelt, it’s ‘Kargoth,’ with a capital. That means it has to be a name.”
“Let’s bring it to a table and get the other words translated,” she suggested. “The contex
t it’s in might tell us something.”
As they brought it slowly and carefully to the table they had been working at, Stacy looked at a few of the words on the title, attempting to discern what language it was in. It was an ancient dialect of men. She made her guess as to which ones it could be, and Rick hurriedly ran off to find the appropriate dictionaries. The light orb floating above the table where Vincent sat bobbed slightly up and down, but the illumination was unchanged. He felt almost like he was in a trance from at last beholding what they had searched so long and hard for.
Rick returned with several books in his arms and laid them quickly down in front of Stacy, who sat to Vincent’s right. Karl and Rick hovered over them to watch. They were all tired but were far too caught up in the excitement to even consider rest. After some contemplation, Stacy was able to deduce which tongue the book was in, and so began the translation efforts. Karl took out a quill and a piece of paper and sat down next to her. Stacy asked Vincent to see where else the word appeared, and he was only too happy to comply, being careful not to tear the pages. In the entire book, it only appeared just this once.
There were several times where Karl asked them to go back further into the book because what he had written didn’t make sense yet. When they did, he continued translating each word, his face paling whenever he stopped for a moment to think about it. Vincent became deeply concerned about the portent because his cousin was usually not one to take such things seriously. Despite how long this was taking them, none had any intention of quitting. Rick stood above them, leaning forward with his hands on the tops of their chairs, and occasionally offered a word of encouragement.
Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening Page 15