I leapt out of the way, sucking in a breath and holding it as a bright red rune lit and unleashed a yellow powder into the air. Behind me, Salem took hurried backwards steps down the row of books to avoid the powder while chanting out a spell. I started my own, but Salem’s spell completed first.

  A strong wind gust flowed from his hand, but only kicked up the powder even more, forcing Salem and I to retreat, when my nostrils flared.

  I whipped my hand out, putting it on Salem’s shoulder to steady my aim as I launched a goo ball at a massive, mantis-shaped monster that surged up from the floor. It struck, binding the mantis, and Salem unfroze, turning and muttering an arcane missile spell. I began to do the same, and in moments, we’d blown the mantis to bits.

  “Bloody hell,” Salem complained, stepping away from me, looking ever so slightly red in the blue and green shades of our weirlights. “Did’e library decide it wanted ta’ put us in a special sorta’ hell? We’re not that deep in.”

  It was true. We’d gone deep enough that I now had the spell guide for coinshot tucked away in my bag, and Salem had picked up one for astrologist’s sight, a spell to see the stars during the daytime. There were apparently certain other divination spells that required you to observe the stars, making this spell one recommended by his professor, just not recommended enough to make it mandatory in the course curriculum.

  In that time, we’d suffered three monster attacks and two traps, if I included the ones we’d just suffered.

  “Maybe?” I asked. “I’ve heard the library responds to us, though. If it’s challenging us a lot, it’s not for no reason.”

  Salem nodded and we continued to walk, scanning the bookshelves, trading off who was watching and who was looking at the shelves, when I smelled something. There was a powerful scent of a typhoon and warm breeze coming from a little down the tunnel, and I put my hand on Salem’s shoulder.

  “Air elemental,” I warned. Salem straightened and flicked his eyes around, then started casting a spell.

  I ran down my own mental list of spells, trying to find any that might be useful, then started casting orb of air. Air elementals could innately manipulate air, including pushing it out of the way. I didn’t think that they could rip it from a person’s lungs – people’s spirits innately resisted magic – but they could clear it from an area and suffocate you slowly. That meant having a conjured source of air under my own magic was more than a little important.

  I cast another orb of air over Salem’s head while he continued to chant. Given how long his chant was going on, he had to be working on a particularly powerful spell, maybe third circle?

  The elemental soared at us then, like an oversized sparrow made of twisting wind and shadows, and I flicked out quick wierlight spells, setting them to spin around the elemental, who raked at it with claws made of air. The weirlights winked out, and I summoned them again, then tossed a summoned stone into it, disrupting some of its form. The elemental hissed, then turned to focus on me, diving forwards, only for Salem to complete his spell.

  I didn’t know if Salem was taking the air elemental magic course, or if air magic was just a hobby of his, but air swirled in from all around us, sucking in dust and loose scraps of fluttering paper, forming into a tight, compact ball half the size of his fist, before rocketing out and slamming into the air elemental.

  The air elemental extended tendrils of air into the spell, trying to suck away its power in the same way I’d eaten the demonic fire, but it was too slow. If it had interrupted the spell while it was forming, it could have easily made it, but it only had a fraction of a second between the release of the spell and the impact, and I’d been distracting it earlier.

  The air elemental was thrown back and left spinning in the air, and I drew my hand back, summoning another stone and preparing to throw while Salem started a new chant for another offensive spell.

  An instant before I threw, Orla burst from my spirit in a flash of blue ether and materialized in mid-air. Her teeth glowed with blue-white angelus magic and sank into the elemental. I froze, not having realized that she was even awake again, but she bore the elemental to the ground, her magic somehow holding it, even though it was made of air. A moment later, her mouth crunched down, and the elemental slipped back into its home plane. I reached out and patted her head.

  “Good girl!”

  I turned to Salem, then nodded my head to her.

  “This is Orla, my familiar. She was asleep earlier, but now she’s awake.”

  Orla flicked her wings out, as if she was drying them or loosening her feathers, then trotted towards Salem, sniffing at him. She sent me an impulse of curiosity, as if asking why he smelled strange, and I did my best to explain that he’d been raised in a place with a lot of faeries, and that had probably rubbed off on him. She seemed unconvinced, but not upset or judgemental at him, so I let it go.

  “Wait, look there,” Salem said, pronouncing ‘there’ like ‘tear’. I followed the line of his finger and spotted a thick book lodged on the shelf, almost falling out, with an old, ragged scroll sitting next to it. The spine called the thick book ‘Zinthazor’s Guide to Home Defense’, while the scroll was lacking any identifying features.

  I walked over, picked the two up, and immediately realized my mistake. A green rune that had been barely visible on the book next to the guide flashed suddenly and released a sizzling bolt of lightning at me. It struck my arcane armor, which had been reinforced by the power of my dragonfire, but even that wasn’t enough to do more than buy me a few seconds. I flung the book to Salem and tried to throw myself in the opposite direction where the lightning shot up my left arm, leaving long, burning lines.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  My body spasmed and I was thrown into the bookshelf across from me, instinctively rushing dragonfire through my body to heal. Draconic bloodlines aren’t especially good at healing. It doesn’t work on anyone but themselves, and most of that is just accelerating the natural process. The little bit of active healing I can do is restoring my body if it gets burnt, which was why I was able to do anything with the lightning. Even that takes lots of dragonfire for relatively weak healing.

  But I was moving too fast, on instinct, and the slightly sloppy control caused several puffs of smoke to burst from my skin as it got incredibly hot. I didn’t light myself on fire – even out of practice and using an ability that channeled tons of fire, I was only sloppy enough to smoke, not burst into flame.

  But I was hot enough that the wood where my body had pressed onto the bookshelf began to blacken and smoke as well. I swallowed, realizing I’d just broken one of the rules: never damage the books.

  Salem’s eyes went wide as he looked around. He grabbed my fresh-healed hand, and we turned.

  “We’ve gotta’ go,” he said. “Things are movin’ for us. Fast”

  I nodded and we took off down the hall, Orla dissolving into a stream of light and slipping back into my spirit. I paused when I spotted a tripwire, but Salem was moving with too much momentum, and he couldn’t command his body to react as fast as mine, so I started moving again, swept him off his feet, and leapt over the tripwire. Behind me, I heard several loud chittering sounds, like overgrown bugs.

  Salem’s eyes went wide and he started casting a spell, even as I held him bridal style and continued to dash down the hall. I dodged under a swinging axe that could have taken the head off of someone, and then leapt around a living black cloak with gnarled humanoid hands. It tried to grab me, but Salem conjured a shield in the nick of time, glowing bright green. The shield shattered, but I was running so fast that it barely even mattered, we were gone. I leapt up into the air to dodge an oozing slime that flowed from stained carpet, ducked aside from an arrow that would have hit Salem’s face, and let his wind magic knock aside potion bottles that dropped from the ceiling.

  All the while, a horde of beasts and monsters surged up behind us. We were getting near the reading room, I could see it, and they could see us. One of the older students – a third year, judging by his embroidered insignia – leapt out. A staff made of metal, with a head of white stone and red paint appeared in his hand, and he began chanting out a spell, long, low, slow tones. I jumped onto the battered, bloodstained wooden table, then leapt into the reading room in an enormous tumble, shielding Salem with my body. We came to a stop against one of the chairs, and I got a good look at what was going on.

  The tide of monsters rushed out into the center, and another third year emerged from the room, holding a wand. She flicked her hands back and forth, causing bursts of light and sound to push the tide of beasts back, giving the other student time to finish his incantation. It took a long time, as if he were reading pages worth of Words of Power, but when it finally completed, he slammed his metal staff on the floor.

  A wave of white light erupted from him, passing out in a ring. It washed over the monsters, and some evaporated, banished to their home planes, others were driven back into the stacks, and others simply ceased to be, as if they were nothing more than illusions.

  I wasn’t casting ethersight, but I didn’t need to be in order to feel the power rushing through the library as it passed over me as well.

  A larger monster, some sort of massive, gorilla-esque demon with a batlike face, wings, and a snake for a tongue – not a snake tongue, but a snake for a tongue – appeared, and the pair of older mages began attacking in unison.

  The woman started throwing spells like rain on the creature, conjuring illusions that the monster wasted time on, peppering it with bolts of lightning, wind, ice, and arcane missiles, while the staff user unleashing slower but far more powerful spells. His first spell was some sort of acidic beam that cut off the demon’s left hand, while his second was a battering ram of force the size of a cart, and his final spell seemed to twist space, finally forcibly banishing the creature back to its home plane.

  “Emrys?” Salem asked, and I snapped back to myself. I’d grabbed onto Salem without thinking and held him tightly as we’d run, then shielded him as we tumbled into the room. Which meant during the older mages fight, where I’d had a great view, I’d also been holding him flush against my body, his legs wrapping around my torso.

  I turned scarlett and immediately let go.

  “Sorry!”

  “Nah, don’ be,” he said. “I don’ think I’d’a gotten out without you.”

  “You wouldn’t have been in this mess without me,” I pointed out, and Salem shrugged.

  “Aye, but I wouldn’a gotten deep enough in ta’ get my spell guide or the scroll.”

  The older students came back into the reading room then, cutting off my protest and glowering at us, even though both of them held thick books in their hands, which I’d guessed they’d plucked thanks to defeating the horde and giant demon. The woman with the wand shook her head.

  “Whatever books you got, you owe us,” she said flatly. “What are you, stupid?”

  “My bloodline reacted withou–”

  “If you can’t control your bloodline, don’t come into the library,” the man said flintily. “We’re not always going to be able to pull you out of the fire. If we hadn’t been here, you could have wound up in a bad spot.”

  “I understand,” I said, then jerked my thumb at Salem. “But not him. I was the one who set it off. Don’t punish him just because I was stupid.”

  The man’s face softened and he sighed.

  “Fine. What did you get?”

  I pulled out the spellguide for coinshot, as well as the home defense book and started flipping through it. The pair of older students stood over my shoulder, looking at the contents.

  Most of the book was more about the implementation of spellcraft in defending a home, more than about spellcraft itself, but there were a few spells there. Circle of alarm was one I already had, so losing it didn’t sting too much, but parts that went over arcane seal, spellglyph, wizard’s sanctum, and permanency stung. The last two were fourth and fifth circle spells respectively, and even if I couldn’t cast them, I could copy them into my book for when I learned how.

  “Permanency and wizard’s sanctum,” the woman said, whistling. “I call dibs on permanency.”

  “You can’t call dibs, I went out first,” the man snapped.

  They bickered back and forth before eventually settling, and I asked a question.

  “What about the others? Spellglyph, arcane seal, circle of alarm, and coinshot?”

  The students shared a glance, then shrugged.

  “I have them all,” the woman said.

  “I don’t have coinshot, but I don’t need it,” the man said. “I’ve got better spells in every conceivable way.”

  “Then… Can I keep them?” I asked, my hand inching towards coinshot.

  “After we’re done copying our spells,” the man said.

  “Fine,” I agreed, then wandered over to Salem, who had taken a seat at a nearby table. He shook his head.

  “They’re a buncha–”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “They did save us.”

  “An’ got their own books for it,” he said. “This is a bloody robbery.”

  “It’s fine,” I repeated. “I’ll get some of them. What did the scroll turn out to be?”

  “Dreamshield,” he said. “It’s a spell an’ a psychic ability, but I haven’t created the knots for the psychic, an’ I need it. Protects from nightmares an’ other influences in sleep.”

  I gave him a quizzical look and he gave me a tight lipped smile.

  “I get’a lot’a nightmares.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.

  “S’fine, not really a fan a’ talkin’ about it,” he said. “Shall we?”

  I nodded and began copying my spell into my grimoire.

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