Chapter 289: Mice

Chapter 289: Mice

“It isn’t going to eat anything else, is it?” Lee asked, edging away from the grimoire. “I don’t want to share.”

“I get the feeling it probably only wants books and Runes, but I don’t think I’d bet on it,” Noah said. He was still half-waiting for a beam of light or an alarm to erupt, but it was silent. Whatever the artifact had done, the Records of the Deceased was gone.

“The real question should be if the Imbuements remained behind,” Moxie said. “I suppose they couldn’t be there in their normal state. Is your grimoire going to set off an alarm if you touch it and then let go?”

“No clue. Care to give an answer that one?” Noah asked, turning to match the book’s eye. That was an odd notion in its own. He’d never thought that a book would be reading him.

Unfortunately, his efforts were not rewarded. His new grimoire blinked, then closed its eye. The leather rippled as its features faded away, turning into a drawing rather than a three-dimensional body part.

While that did make the book a little less creepy, it didn’t help answer any questions. Noah glared and nudged it with his shoe. The book’s cover rippled and the eye reformed, looking up at him.

“You can sleep after you give me some answers,” Noah said. “After all the stuff I just fed you, I’d say I deserve them. Do you still have the Imbuements of the book you ate?”

“Evidently not. You just touched it,” Lee pointed out.

Ah, crud.

“Okay, scratch that. Do you have them in your possession? Or are they just gone?”

The book flipped open and Noah was forced to jump back to avoid getting smacked by its large cover. Pages flipped past before landing on a completely blank one. Then it slammed shut once more.

“I think that’s a no,” Lee said helpfully.

“You don’t say,” Noah said dryly. “I guess they got snacked on. So it only keeps writing and actual Runes, not Imbuements.”

“Still quite useful, though that does depend on it not eating anything you’ve left in its pages,” Moxie said. Noah couldn’t help but notice that she was keeping a good bit of distance between herself and the artifact. “I guess the only way we’ll find out is by testing it. If this is the kind of thing the Linwicks had in their catacombs, it makes me wonder what else there was.”

“That’s probably in the book somewhere,” Noah said. “The Records of the Damned had information about some of the artifacts. We can always poke our noses around later. I do have a question, though.”

“I don’t think we’re the right crowd to answer anything about the Linwicks.”

“It’s not about the Linwicks. Not directly, at least. I was just thinking – Father is a Rank 6, and he’s not even part of the main branch. That means the Family Head of the Linwicks is also a Rank 6, unless there’s some weird political stuff going on. And, if Father couldn’t get into the Main Branch, then there have to be other Rank 6s in the Linwick family that outrank him.”

Moxie nodded slowly. “All logical, yes.”

“Then what was up with the Torrins? The other branch leaders were Rank 5s, not Rank 6. How in the world was Father relegated to a side branch when he’s strong enough to butt heads with Evergreen, the head of the Torrin family? I thought the Linwicks and Torrins were meant to be pretty evenly matched.”

Marble slabs rose from the darkness, forming into a pathway. Jalen stepped inside and the door slammed shut behind him as he headed into the darkness. The echo of his steps somehow managed to sound out, even through the cacophony surrounding him.

By the time he had made it to the catacomb proper, it was perfectly pristine. All had restored to how it had been just a few hours ago – even as far as the layer of dust that covered everything.

Jalen’s senses brushed across the halls as he strode deeper, briefly checking the status of the artifacts stored within them. It had been some time since the main defenses of the catacomb had gone off, but they had done their job.

There was only so much a mage could do against an entire mountain falling down on their head, after all. They really only had two options – stay and get crushed, or flee with their prize and hope they made it out before they were crushed. Destroying the entire catacomb made it much easier to deal with the incompetent intruders that didn’t deserve to make it out, and it wasn’t like any of the artifacts would get damaged by something as mundane as falling rock.

Quite the elegant solution, if I say so myself. The only problem is cleaning up the pasted idiots.

A few Linwick brats occasionally managed to make away with one of the lesser artifacts that they’d read about in a book, of course. Jalen shook his head as he walked. Nobody ever stopped to wonder why the Linwick family would leave records of their artifacts sitting around for any fool to find them.

A little mouse bit the cheese in the trap. All that remains to be seen is if the mouse that triggered this collapse is lucky, talented, or dead. I wonder if they had good taste in what they took.

Jalen snorted as his senses discovered the artifact that had gone missing. A moody book of Catchpaper with a dour personality and an intense hunger for power – hardly a worthwhile target.

They did manage to remove the book without triggering the alarm, though. I would have been more impressed if they’d been smart enough to leave things at that. Unsurprising. It was a lucky mouse, then. Those eventually get cocky enough to think themselves talented – and then they become dead mice.

Arriving at the final door at the end of the hall, Jalen stepped inside. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d wiped the crushed remains of a Linwick brat from the inside of his catacomb.

Number seven this year, was it? Or is this eight?

It was all the same. The latest generation of his family filled Jalen with a single emotion – disappointment. There was no hunger. There was no drive or determination to become powerful on their own. It was pathetic. A group of coddled children that believed they had earned what their parents had gifted to them.

And, as usual, the lucky mouse ignored the warning and tried to pry for secrets. They set off the book’s alarm once – I suppose they never let go of it, even as they died. Somewhat respectable, if stupid. I wonder which branch raised the latest fool.

Jalen stepped inside, looking to the dais that the Records of the Deceased sat on – and froze. The book was missing. There was no sign of anyone’s pulverized body anywhere in the room, and the rest of the catacombs were empty.

It couldn’t have been a high Rank mage. The catacombs told me they were Rank 4 at most, and they would have been marked if they weren’t a Linwick. The door wasn’t forced open, either. But... the alarm hasn’t gone off again.

Jalen stood there for several seconds. Then, slowly, a grin tugged at the corners of his lips and he started to laugh.

They ran out of the catacomb without letting go of the book. What, did they think this was a library?

“This might actually be interesting,” Jalen mused. He turned and strode out of the catacombs. There weren’t a lot of reasons to steal the Records of the Deceased. Despite what it claimed, the book wasn’t particularly valuable. Most of the other noble families already had a good understanding of everyone within the Linwick family, and the same went in the other direction.

The Records of the Deceased was, more than anything, an open challenge. It didn’t have the strength to kill a rodent, much less a mage. It was just a tracker and a test to see if someone was worth Jalen’s attention. Someone wanted him paying attention to them – and they’d succeeded in catching his eye.

Consider me intrigued, little mouse. How long can you keep that book close to chest? I look forward to meeting you the next time you slip up. Perhaps the latest generation of Linwicks has someone of interest after all.