Explorer of Edregon

Vin stared at the ominous white square, wondering what exactly the librarian’s game was. Upon revealing that they’d returned with her stolen golem in tow, he’d expected to see anger on her face when she’d first spotted them, or for a dozen massive battle golems to come sprinting across the island with weapons larger than his entire body raised above their heads.

What he hadn’t expected was clinical indifference as the librarian gestured toward the artifact.

“Step onto this device,” she ordered, her eyes glowing briefly once more as the giant golem took a few steps back to give them space. Vin waited a moment to see if she was going to say anything else, but she merely stood there, waiting patiently for them to follow her instructions as though she had all the time in the world.

“Our friend Alka—” Vin began, stopping as the librarian held up a hand.

“I understand your concerns,” she said, her voice still completely flat as she gazed upon them. “No doubt you are worried because you broke two of my three rules the last time you were here. In order to gain access to my library, I requested that you make no efforts to interfere with the golems I had assisting you, that you made no attempts to remove anything from the library, and that you first stepped onto this device before heading inside. While you did step on the device, you also stole one of my worker golems, breaking my first and second rule. You also stole one of my translation bracelets, breaking the second rule again.”

“We know,” Vin said, cringing as the librarian bluntly stated how they’d disrespected her hospitality. Somehow the bland, emotionless statements hit him harder than if she’d been screaming at them. “Which is why we wanted to apologize and try to make things right.”

“You are fortunate that I gave up certain inefficiencies over the years, such as emotion,” she continued, causing him to blink at the announcement. “I imagine I would have been quite furious with you back when I allowed my mind to be swayed by such irritating concepts. As it stands, you have come offering me quite a number of boons, and if they are as valuable as you claim they are, we will likely be able to put the past behind us and form a professional, working relationship going forward.”

“Hold on, seriously?” Vin asked, staring at her in shock. “Just like that?”

“Would you prefer I was angry?” she asked, her face remaining an impassive mask. “My primary purpose is to gather knowledge. Previously, you did not have enough information within your journal to warrant giving up one of my worker golems. Yet now, you come claiming to have a man with an entire library of his own within his head. The paradigm has shifted.”

“And you’re willing to fix Alka?”

“The fact that something has happened to her body alone is useful information to me,” the librarian said, her eyes glowing briefly again as they turned to land on Alka’s inert body. “My worker golems should be perfect constructs. Even if a soul has been bound to the golem, the inner artifact array should have been unaffected. This imperfection is inexcusable and must be corrected. I will learn much while repairing the golem, and I will be able to utilize that information to make improvements to all my constructs. I will even allow her the continued use of the golem, provided she returns to the library at set intervals to allow me to run diagnostics.”

She’s… planning to use Alka as some sort of field stress test? Vin stared, unable to believe what he was hearing. Somehow, this entire interaction was going better than anything they could have hoped for. Yet he still couldn’t shake the feeling that the other shoe was going to drop at any moment.

“Unless you have any further inquiries, I repeat, step onto this device,” the librarian said, indicating the waiting square between them. “As you have members with you who appear to be outside of your usual party and are most likely not yet registered as friends, I will refrain from speaking your highest leveled skills out loud.”

Vin merely turned to stare at his friends, his jaw all but dropped. He received pretty much identical stares back, none of the others able to believe their luck either. While they were all still reeling, Groth stepped forward and walked onto the square. With practiced ease, he shut his eyes the precise moment the powerful flash went off, smiling at the librarian as he stepped off the square and turned back toward them.

“It sounds as though my job here is done, so I shall take my leave and conduct some research while I am here. I wish you all the best of luck with your friend!” With one last wave of his hand, Groth and his undead minions headed through the double doors into the library, where Vin knew one of the worker golems would be waiting to fall in line behind him and follow him around.

“I guess I’ll go first,” Shia shrugged, motioning for Blossom to wait with Alka as she stepped onto the square. After a quick flash, the librarian directed her off to the side.

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“This again,” Scule muttered, no doubt recalling getting temporarily blinded from inadvertently staring at the artifact right as it flashed the last time around. This time, he made sure his head was angled directly upward, and he and Reginald moved to join Shia off to the side as the librarian nodded and motioned for the next person.

Taking a deep breath, Lumel walked up, hiding her face under her hood as she stepped onto the square. Despite what they’d been told, it looked as if she was waiting for one of the golems to try to strike her down for stealing one of the translation bracelets, but as the square flashed and the librarian’s eyes glowed once more, nothing happened.

“You go next, Kym,” Vin said, motioning for the Advisor to step up. Nodding, Kym did just that, nervously walking onto the square and standing before the librarian as if he was attending some big job interview. It was strange seeing the usually impassive man looking worried, but when standing directly in front of someone who truly didn’t have any emotions, Kym looked far more lively in comparison.

Curiously, whatever it was the librarian’s artifact did, Kym received the first unique reaction they’d seen so far. As the Advisor stood there, clenching his eyes so as not to be blinded by the flash, the librarian’s own eyes lit up as they always did. Yet rather than light up for just a moment, they remained lit.

And continued to remain lit as she stared past all of them, her mind elsewhere.

None of them moved a muscle as the librarian stared off into space with her shining eyes, the light seeming to grow in intensity the longer she stared. Finally, after nearly a solid fifteen seconds, they dimmed once more, and she turned her attention onto Kym directly.

“I will provide you with the required sustenance if you remain within my library and work with me to transcribe the books you carry within your mind,” she said, her eyes boring into him as if trying to scrape the information directly out of his skull.

“I would like nothing more,” Kym said softly, smiling wider than Vin had ever seen before as he let out the breath he’d been holding. Rather than join the others off to the side, the librarian summoned two worker golems to come out and safely shepherd him into the library. It was strange seeing what boiled down to two different Alka’s without their armor walking robotically and with glowing blue eyes instead of green, but Vin tried to ignore the weird feeling the sight gave him as he smiled and waved goodbye to Kym. If they were truly being allowed access into the library once more, it wouldn’t be the last time they saw him.

They were down to just Vin and Alka at this point, and the librarian motioned for him to step up. “I will need to use more advanced equipment to figure out what happened to your friend and repair the problem,” she stated. “She does not need to step onto the square.”

“Then I guess that just leaves me,” Vin chuckled, stepping forward. Just like with everyone else, there was a brief moment of pause where the square seemed to be almost charging, before it let out a flash of light and a wave of energy swept through him, reminding him of what it felt like when the System provided them with a new Capstone or prestige class. Though rather than sweep through his body and vanish, Vin had a reaction none of them expected, least of all him.

As the energy swept over him, half a dozen brilliant, golden chains appeared out of nowhere, revealing themselves to be tightly bound all across his body and halting the librarian’s artifact in its tracks. Vin recoiled at the sudden manifestation of the chains as he immediately recognized them as the bindings from the God of Contracts, and his blood froze as he realized he may have just made a grave mistake.

He’d been forced to swear a contract with the God of Contracts, one of the most powerful Gods in all existence, not to reveal the information he’d been given by the Goddess of Benevolence about the other Earthers who had come to Edregon from countries beside his own. Depending on what exactly the librarian’s artifact did…

He might be in trouble.

If he needed proof that the librarian truly had rid herself of her emotions like she claimed, this was it, as her eyes didn’t so much as widen as he unintentionally rejected her artifact.

“Fascinating,” she said, her eyes glowing as she stared him up and down and the golden chains wrapped around his body faded away just as quickly as they’d appeared. “I had recognized the touch of one God upon you the last time you were here, but even my eyes had not picked up on the second divine power that binds you. You swore a binding oath with the God of Contracts to keep something hidden, correct?”

“Yes,” he said, nervously looking up at the sky as he waited for some sort of lightning bolt to come crashing down, or a giant chain to simply crush him from the heavens. “Is that a problem?”

“It is irrelevant,” she said simply, and he breathed a sigh of relief as she continued. “I was able to gather most of the information I required, and I am well aware of the restrictions the God of Contracts is capable of placing on people. As you just witnessed, he himself will intervene if another force attempts to pry the information he demands remain secret from your mind. If I were to try and force it out of you, it is I who would be on the receiving end of his judgement.”

“Really?” Vin asked, surprised to hear that. The God of Contracts hadn’t exactly come across as that much of a reasonable guy during their brief interaction, but he supposed the God had been busy, and more than a little upset at the Goddess of Benevolence at the time for going against something all the other Gods had agreed upon.

“I shall take your friend and analyze what went wrong with my creation,” the librarian stated as one of the giant battle golems carefully picked up Alka’s limp body and another retrieved the square artifact. “The rest of you are free to peruse the library at your leisure while you wait. If you attempt to steal anything more, there will be consequences.”

With that, the librarian turned and drifted off, her long dress dragging along the ground as she vanished with the battle golem holding Alka. Vin and his team merely stood there, staring at her as she went on ahead into the library. After a few seconds, Scule barked out a high-pitched laugh.

“Hah! We got away with it!”