Silence engulfed the library as the echo of the void faded. The mana in the air started to curl, under some unseen influence, it formed long chains, curses aplenty. There were multiple ways to avoid one’s mana being encroached onto by such a passive curse, be it burning the mana to do something else or repelling it from one’s body, but Sofia did none of that.
Open your soul to curses dire, the voice said.
Cinthia seemed to have reached the same conclusion, and was cautiously monitoring her chat and health as the curses slowly entered her mana circuit.
“I don’t feel any different. You?” Sofia asked in a hushed voice, taking a few steps forward between the two tall bookshelves.
“Not different at all,” Cinthia confirmed, also speaking softly, “I would say it is dormant, but I have no idea. The chat’s also gone mostly quiet already, they’re just watching now, fourteen of them.”
“Let’s give them a good spectacle, then,” Sofia continued, and, thinking they might be on a timer, she started sharing her first impressions, “The library’s rules are key here. Proving ourselves worthy of the code can mean a few things but I think, whether it’s a code like an encoded thing we have to decipher, or a code of conduct we have to abide by, but either way I tend to think the rules and the code are one and the same.”
“Jumping to conclusion quite fast,” Cinthia commented, “but that might be what we need right now. ‘Open your soul to curses dire, and the library’s rules acquire’ definitely sound like a single sentence, so the two might be related. That might be why the curse is doing nothing right now. Maybe it only acts up if we break the rules?” she suggested.
“Good guess. The beyond the flames part makes me wonder if we’re supposed to burn the place down, but let’s not be rash, could very well be about the candles. And that’s not all, here’s what I had on the scroll before summoning you: Here lurks the Candle-meistre. The writing is on the wall, will your obstacles go up in flames? Does the flame of your ambition yet burn hot enough?” Sofia recited from memory.
“This definitely does sound like we should be burning the books to have a look at the walls behind,” Cinthia quickly said, “but I wouldn’t feel safe doing that before we know what the curse does.”
Sofia stopped to think for a bit, before spinning on, her heels to face Cinthia, “Don’t move for now, this is my trial so I should take most of the risks, not many things we can do here so let’s try things out. This is a library so if we’re trying to learn the rules, there are a few obvious ones. Be ready to defend yourself, just in case.”
Cinthia answered with a confident nod.
Alright.
Sofia took a deep breath.
“HELLO! IS ANYONE HERE?!!!” she yelled.
“W- what are you doing?!” Cinthia asked in a hushed voice, a slight panic visible on her face.
“No reaction from the curse... In most libraries, you have to be careful not to make too much noise so as to not disturb other readers. That’s one of the most basic of basic rules, but if the curse is supposed to activate for rule-breaking, then this isn’t one.”
“I see...”
“Well, I’ll be trying a few other things,” Sofia announced as she walked closer to the left side shelves, her eyes gliding over the title of the many leather-bound tomes. They did not all have names on the spine, but most did, and the vast majority of those were in ancient human. “Can’t Identify them for some reason,” she noted out loud.
As far as Sofia could tell, these books seemed to all be about plants.
Common medicinal flowers of the south.
“Good, that means I didn’t hallucinate anything. I remember the exact same thing... Except that the curse activated when I closed the book... And I completely forgot the contents,” Sofia explained.
“Just like that? Let me also try with another book,” Cinthia offered, pulling out a random book from the shelves, and opening it. She only read a few pages quickly, trying to remember them, and said a few lines out loud, asking Sofia to try to remember them.
Then she closed the book.
Sofia felt the curse activate once again. Even as she was repeating the lines Cinthia had told her in her head, her thoughts were suddenly muddled, her internal voice interrupted, she forgot.
“I don’t remember anything,” Cinthia said first.
“I know you read me a few lines, but I also forgot them,” Sofia then informed her. Crap, I should have tried writing it down to see what happens.
“Alright, well. We do understand the curse now.”
“Or the first rule, maybe? When you close a book, everyone forgets the contents, pretty straightf-”
Before Sofia could finish her sentence, all the candles abruptly went out, leaving Sofia and Cinthia in complete darkness for a brief instant, before dozens more lit candles emerged from the darkness, just a bit further away, illuminating a new large corridor of bookshelves.
“Sofia?” Cinthia asked.
“I’m here, let’s go to the light.”
“Alright.”
Both of them jumped straight into the newly illuminated zone still holding their books on plants. Although the sudden lights-out was surprising, no apparent danger had come from it.
“The light forced us to change sections, pretty much,” Sofia commented, already picking up on the fact that the books here all had a common subject once again, magical creatures.
As she read the titles, and remembered her early conclusion about having to burn down the place, she was starting to feel ill. Even if these books were thousands of years old, their knowledge potentially outdated, what was their value?
“Oh fuck...” Sofia cursed as she turned to Cinthia, “The knowledge here might just be more valuable than the divine item itself.”
“Sofia... I think we have a more pressing issue,” Cinthia worriedly said, observing her own hands.
“Shit.”
It was only when she also looked at Cinthia’s hands that Sofia noticed. The curse was ever-so-slightly more active than before, it now had an actual, continuous effect. Both hers and Cinthia’s hands were starting to become pitch black like a shade’s, starting from the tip of their gloves, slowly crawling down their fingers.