After the events of Mabon evening, Diana didn't see Professor Clairmont again for almost two weeks. She kept her eyes peeled for him every time she was close to the Bodleian, but the enigmatic professor was never anywhere to be seen.

However, that didn't mean that he wasn't around.

She'd taken to scheduling her rowing every morning, before her classes and lectures began, and before the university's teams could fill the river. It was the time of the day where Oxford was still shrouded in darkness, with only the edges of the city feeling the warming kiss of the day's sunlight. There was something so peaceful about being on the river that early in the morning, before the cars began to flood the city with their noise and fumes.

Diana would close her eyes and allow herself to glide over the water, letting all of the stress from her days melt away until all that was left was the serenity of the moment – and that cool brush of a familiar gaze across her body.

The first time she'd felt it after Mabon, her eyes had sprung open and she'd searched the riverbanks for the familiar figure she was expecting to find there. But all she'd been able to see was a slight blurring at the corner of her eyes.

Three days later, she'd given up trying.

Diana was certain that Professor Clairmont was watching over her in some way. She didn't know how he was doing it, but she knew that he was. Something about that knowledge made her relax back into her strokes instead of tensing up with unease. Her gut had told her right from the start that Professor Clairmont was someone she could trust – and it had never yet steered her wrong.


If Diana had thought that Monday evenings in the library were quiet, that was absolutely nothing compared to Saturdays.

Gillian was at a Pagan festival that weekend, and the student body had seemed to collectively decide that with exams still so far from their minds, Saturdays should never be spent in the library. But not Diana. She loved the silence the Bodleian carried when it was so empty. Without the regular tapping of fingers on keys or the scratch of pencils against paper, the books seemed to hum with their endless possibilities.

Every now and then, she'd find herself needing to return something to one of the bookcases on the upper level, and as she did, another book in the most random of places would catch her attention, practically vibrating with its need to be in her arms. Every single one of them had proven to be key to Diana's research proposal, and she couldn't have been happier about how well things were pulling together for her so far.

Diana was hoping to make her way through the first six items on her list that day, so after filling in a request slip and handing it over to Sean at the call desk, she busied herself with pulling out her notepad and laptop, and getting herself set up.

A faint sound of chattering drifted through the still air of the Bodleian. Diana turned just in time to see Sean headed her way with a pile of manuscripts balancing precariously in his arms.

"Did an influx of students just come in?" she teased.

Sean set the books carefully down on the table before he offered her a curious look. "It's just you and me in here tonight, Diana."

"Huh." She could have sworn that she'd heard people whispering together. Shaking her head a little to clear it, she thanked him for the books and then turned her attention to sorting them into the order that she'd be using them.

The moment she slipped the first of her manuscripts from its case, Diana knew that something was wrong. As her fingers brushed over the leather covering it, her skin prickled like there were thousands of tiny pins embedded in the material. A slightly iridescent glow seemed to be coming from the edges of the pages, illuminating the many scratches on the old bench that she was sat at.

Diana's instincts were screaming at her to put the book back and move on. She could complete her research without it. But her mind was urging her to open it up. To discover the secrets hidden inside of it that made the book hum so much louder with its hidden potential.

Making up her mind, she reached for the manuscript once more, ignoring the goose pimples that erupted over her flesh as she did, before gently resting it into one of the library's cradles. Her fingers trembled ever-so-slightly as she loosened the brass clasp, and the book seemed to open with a soft sigh.

Diana's brow creased as a strange scent filled the air around her, making her stomach churn. She bent her head forward a little and sniffed at the edges of the pages before recoiling back. The book smelled odd. Unlike anything she'd ever experienced before.

Except, no … that wasn't entirely true.

Diana could vaguely remember something similar from when she was younger. She'd been in her father's study, looking through the pages on his desk, but she couldn't remember what they had contained or why she'd been doing it. All she could remember was that strange scent that was now assaulting her senses.

Maybe that was why the manuscript had left her feeling so shaken? It was triggering long-forgotten memories inside of her, and Diana wasn't entirely sure she wanted to relive them.

Turning her attention to the document she already had opened and labeled as Ashmole 782, she pushed thoughts of her father's study aside and began making notes on the appearance of the book.

When she'd finished the first of her tasks, Diana eased the cover open to begin assessing the worthiness of the manuscript. The first page was only rough paper but the second was made from parchment and had two inscriptions written upon it.

'Anthropologia, or a treatis containing a short description of Man.'

There were no doubts in her mind that the first had been written by Elias Ashmore himself. She'd been slowly making her way through the Ashmole Manuscripts, so she knew his handwriting almost as well as she knew her own.

'In two parts: the first Anatomical, the second Psychological.'

The second part had been written in pencil, in a hand that she knew she'd seen before, but Diana simply couldn't place at that moment. It looked to have been added after the first, so she took a moment to briefly note her observations before she lifted the page ready to study the next.

The parchment was heavy in her hands, unlike anything she'd ever felt before, and as she gently turned it over that scent of wrong filled her nose again. She made another quick note about the weight of the pages in her document as she tried her hardest to push aside the feelings that were building inside of her.

The turn of the page revealed that the next three were missing from the manuscript. Someone had taken a great deal of time and care to remove them from the binding, and she frowned a little at why a person would feel the need to do so. What could Ashmole 782 have possibly contained that would make someone want to mutilate the manuscript?

Shelving that thought temporarily, Diana turned her attention to the first illustration on the remaining pages and gasped in surprise. The image was incredibly well preserved, with its bright colors leaping from the parchment. Whoever had drawn it was incredibly skilled – that much was clear – but the image was flawed!

The caption described it as the philosophical child, but everything Diana had learned so far about alchemy told her that it was wrong. The glass vessel the child had been drawn inside of was upside down. The baby should have been a clear representation of a hermaphrodite, either half black and half white with both sets of genitalia, or at the very least drawn with two heads. But the baby in the image she was looking at was very clearly a little girl, with long black hair.

Turning the page gently she perused the next image in the series, but it too was fundamentally flawed. Every image she examined featured some kind of mistake that threw into question all of the research Diana had completed thus far.

She turned another page carefully, making sure she wouldn't damage the fragile images painted onto the heavy parchment, and froze when the setting sun caught the page just right. There was text written upon it, but it was far too faint to read. Diana blinked away the glare from her eyes and tried to focus again, only to find that the words had started moving.

No … that wasn't right … It couldn't be.

Words didn't move.

She must have been seeing things.

Diana shook her head forcefully to try and clear it, but when she looked again the text was still rapidly flying across the page.

She did her best to try and read what it said but the letters were written far too faintly and were moving far too quickly. Diana was starting to feel nauseous from being that close to the pages, with the scent there so heady.

It was only when she noticed the text transfer from the page and begin making its way up her arm that she moved, dropping the parchment and slamming the book closed. Diana pressed her palm to the front cover to keep the book shut and then quickly withdrew it. Some kind of static charge had passed between the manuscript and her hand, and as she looked down into her open palm, she could have sworn that a faint imprint of the book's cover image was lingering upon her skin.

"Diana? Is everything okay?"

The sound of Sean's voice startled her and she jumped in place before turning to face her friend.

"Yeah. I uh … I just don't feel great." It wasn't a lie. Everything she'd experience that evening had left her feeling off-kilter, and all she could think of doing was putting as much distance as possible between herself and Ashmole 782.

"You've gone really pale," her friend worried. "Go home and get some rest. I'll clean up here."

Diana wanted to protest because it wasn't fair to leave Sean to clean up her mess. But instead of voicing that protest, she found herself offering him a thanks as she stuffed her notebook and laptop back into her bag, and hurried from the building.

Diana was so shaken from her encounter with Ashmole 782 that she didn't notice the man who followed her all the way back to her room at New College.


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