A/N: I was kinda busy last week, so I pushed back the publish date a little. I hope it was worth the wait. This chapter is a little shorter, a lot of exposition, but things should be picking up next month.
Chapter 2: Days in the Library
Beyond the cement entry is the grand ever expanding Library. It has all the majesty of Olympus, if Olympus was ruled by Athena instead of Zues. Walls of bookshelves, display cases with magical artifacts, the roaring white marble lions I'd seen in my dreams, all done in a scheme of dark wood, cream, red, gold. Cassandra leads us to one of the walls, full of doors and scrutinizes them for a moment, before pulling open a white oak door. "The residential wing!" She announces.
It's a rather simple set up, a long carpeted hall with evenly spaced plain wood doors, not unlike the second deck of the Argo II. Cassandra explains that the rooms will change themselves to suit our needs and tries to assign us each our own room. Some form of demigod paranoia kicks in and we tell her we want only two rooms, one for the girls, one for the boys. She nods and opens two doors, ushering us in.
The room the other girls and I enter has the same carpet as the hall but is otherwise empty. As we watch, a kitchen materializes in one corner and furniture fills the rest of the room, beds, dressers, a table and chairs. We ooh and aah, behind us similar noises come from the boys' room. Each of us claims a bed and a dresser, dumping our bags and shucking off our coats. Piper checks the kitchen and finds it is fully stocked with our favorite snacks. She tosses a few packages of chips and dried fruit at us which we catch easily.
"We need to figure out how we're going to pass the time here," Annabeth says, still chewing. "I don't think the Librarians would appreciate us running wild."
"We could always train." Reyna offers. "There are some Roman drills that would tire even Leo out pretty quickly."
Hazel and I both groan. The drills Reyna mentioned are insane, running five miles in 30 pounds of gear, swimming while carrying stones, blindfolded combat… Romans don't mess around when it comes to training. Between the two of us, we manage to talk her out of the worse ones before Cassandra comes back and tells us all that dinner will be ready in a few hours.
Over the next few days, we leave Flynn and Jake to their work and try to burn off some energy. The Library contains dozens of doors that lead to strange places. A fog covered lake, an office with inverted gravity, but the one we find most use for is a giant green field. It's here that we do our drills and laps, sparing each other with blades and powers. Occasionally Jenkins will come and watch us, but never speaks. We take our meals in a large communal kitchen.
Occasionally I am called to the Annex, the beautiful room we started in, where Flynn and Jake have set up several blackboards and slowly covered them in chalk scribbles. The scroll is spread out and weighed down on the long conference table, surrounded by other books and tools left behind from the Librarians's previous adventures. Somehow, in the midst of all of the chaos, they manage to teach me some of the chicken scratch language that the scroll and my prophecy journal are written in.
The scroll contains a long section of prose that describes a Guild of Masters, an agreement between warriors of different traditions and different walks of life, that protected the world from dangers. The 'circles' I had managed to decipher from the scroll and remembered from the prophecy Rachel gave me so long ago, is what the Guild called the different groups of warriors. From there we move onto the ten or so smaller sections of text below the prose. As we translate them, I can feel a kind of power thrumming off the words, prophetic power. The rhythm of the prophecies are disrupted, disjointed, possibly from the translation, but I start to piece them together. It's a process that takes most of my time, and I rarely see the rest of my Nine save for meals and training.
When we are together, they talk my ear off about their time exploring the Library with Eve, Cassandra, or Ezekial, who each have their own view on their home. Cassandra is overflowing with enthusiasm, talking about science and magic and the good they can do when used in tandem. She and Annabeth have long conversations that go over the heads of everyone else. Ezekial talks about his life as a thief and the challenge magic presents. Eve tells stories about the battles waged over the artifacts and how much she admires each of her charges.
On our second day, my Nine try to stick through the translation process with me, sitting in chairs or on the steps, hanging over the loft above us. A few try to help by passing books and fetching snacks, but mostly all they can watch (which I should have realized would have been bad, but hyperfixation is a terrible curse).
I'm translating one of the prophecy sections when the ringing of metal meets my ears. My head snaps up, scanning the room for threats. Fighting their way down the staircase is Percy and Jason, slashing with their swords and shouting back and forth in what seems to be jovial Greek. I stare at them in horror as a second meeting of blades shrieks through the air, making Jake and Flynn look up as well.
"What's going on?" Jake asks in his Texan drawl, while Flynn gives a whistle. An ancient looking knight's sword zooms into the room, floating over the ground, and into Flynn's hand.
I fix my glare on Percy and Jason who turn and freeze, looking over at me then back to each other, before scrambling back up the stairs in full panic mode. I take the stairs two at a time, gold filaments floating in the air around me. With a thought, two lengths of shimmering gold rope snake around Percy and Jason's ankles, pulling taut and sending them crashing to the floor. Their swords slide to rest next to one of the bookcases on the second floor of the Annex, out of reach. I walk over the two collapsed demigods and look down, "What were you doing?"
"Just a little sparring." Jason sits up but knows better than to move for his sword.
I roll my eyes, "I thought we all agreed that sparring would be limited to the field room?"
"We just got a little twitchy." Percy tries to rationalize.
"Well twitchy just got you five laps of the field." A pair of groans. "Now it's ten. Get going." I let both pass me to get their swords, but watch them carefully as they go down the stairs and out of the Annex.
Eve passes them as they leave, and looks at Flynn questioningly, "I saw Cal head this way. All good?" Flynn assures her with a kiss on the cheek while I descend the stairs.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see Jenkins, lurking at the doorway. He hasn't spoken to me since revealing he knew and cared for one of my past lives, a concept I'm still trying to wrap my head around. Something in me wants to run into his arms and have him take all my uncertainty away, but the rational side knows he is just as lost as I am. We both need space. "Shall we get back to work?"
Two more days pass without too many hiccups, and we finish translating the scroll. Everyone gathers in the Annex to finally hear the full message. Flynn reads the prose section aloud with child-like excitement, constantly peeking back at his audience for our reactions before continuing on.
"Written here is the tale that will be omitted from our shared history. This conflict has ripped into the very fabric of our societies, shaken our peoples to their cores. It is better for them to forget, and to be kept blind to what truly exists in this world.
Fifteen years ago, a force arose that devoured the land and any that stood against it. It spread across the earth like a black stain, growing in power and size, seemingly unstoppable. It drew the attention of heroes and magic workers the world over, who charged into battle against it time and time again to protect their homes. Eventually these heroes learned of each other and decided to fight the evil together. After a long and hard fight, they succeeded in sealing the evil back into its cage. Peace reigned.
The heroes scattered for a time to rebuild what was lost, but each group came to the same realization: There may be other forces in the world that would require the strength of more than one culture to defeat. The alliance they had formed out of desperation could grow into something much greater. And so the Master's Guild of Heroes was formed. Nine cultures joined the Guild, each bringing it's strengths, it's own magics to the table: The Library, The Demigods of Greece and Rome, The Magicians of Egypt, The Einherjar of Scandinavia, The Pandavas of India, The Mayan Godborn, The Anansesem of West Africa, The Shadowhunters, and The Knights of the Templar. Each comprised one circle of the Guild, self contained, but intertwined with others for the good of the world we all shared.
It was our hope that as more groups of Heroes rose up around the world, they would also be brought into the fold of the Guild, but that will not happen now.
From one of our circles, we learned the identity of our first enemy and of the possibility of his reemergence, eons from now. This would be part of our mission, to watch for him, prevent his rise if possible, and defeat him again if not.
After the reconstruction was finished, other problems began to arise. There were those in the world who had seen the wonders and horrors magic could do, and swore to possess it, eliminate it, or both. At the same time, all of the terrors that existed in every story ever told began to stalk the innocent. It was chaos. The Guild could not fight both battles. It was determined that the existence of magic was too great a temptation for those who could not understand it, and it was locked away within the Library. The Circles of the Guild took vows of secrecy and silence; to protect the world, we had to hide from it. All lines of communication would be severed, so that if one Circle was discovered, the rest would not be threatened.
But our first purpose will always be the most important. To this end, we leave this record. Should our enemy rise while we are seperate, follow the clues, find the keys, and bring us back together. Find us and save our world from a fate worse than death."
"There are others." I'm first to speak after Flynn stops, breaking a solid minute of silence.
Jenkins sniffs dryly from the corner, "Of course there are others. The world is a big place. It takes more than one Library and a handful of demigods to keep it safe."
"We've spent years thinking we were alone, that we were the only ones who cared about the magic," Percy says. "We're not alone anymore… It's a relief." A few others murmur soft affirmations and nod. An ever-present weight was just lifted from our shoulders.
"They mentioned clues." Frank prompts, looking at Flynn expectantly.
I stand instead. "They're prophecies. My guess is we wouldn't have been able to read them if it wasn't time." As I cross behind Flynn to one of the many chalkboards we used during our translation project, my Nine and the other Librarians ask a dozen questions each. Flynn deflects them all as I turn the chalkboard over to reveal the eleven passages written on the other side. Another moment of long drawn out silence settles over the room.
"It's us." Jason says. He sees what I saw, the mentions to our godly parents and the events in our lives.
I nod. "This is our next step. The keys Flynn read about? We're supposed to find them."
"And then we find whatever the Guild left behind… Do you think they fight You-Know-What?" Annabeth says, wisely avoiding the name of the entity.
I nod. "I think we'll need all of the Circles to defeat him again."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Leo says, nearly falling off his stool, while trying to embrace Jason and Piper. "Let's get started."
I chuckle. "Alright then. I guess we start with this." I gesture to the first passage and read aloud:
"Temple of Masters hidden from view
Entry is granted to only a few
The Ten will rise with the coming dark
On a grand adventure they will embark
To find the rings, scared birthright all
Open the door and send out the call"