At Erik’s question, Shia froze, her knuckles turning white as she gripped her staff. Laying a comforting hand on the elf’s shoulder, Vin stepped forward, giving Erik a sad smile. Crouching down to better look the concerned dryad in the eye, he did his best to explain their current situation.

  “Alka’s in rough shape. A lot has happened since last we spoke, but the short version is that we found a Witch capable of actually giving Alka a body again, which caused her to change her mind about wanting to pass on. But earlier this afternoon we fought a divine warrior that actually managed to destroy Alka’s sword, and Alka’s spirit is only hanging on by a thread inside me. We think we can save her, but in order to do that, we need to get something from a floating building. Up there.” Vin pointed up at the giant hovering island high up over their heads, and Erik craned his neck upwards, peering at the underside of the island.

  “Well, I believe I see the problem,” Erik said, looking thoughtful.

  “We know your magic is in limited supply and we hate to ask this of you, but we really need your help,” Shia added, practically wringing her staff with worry as they made their case to the ancient magical being. “Alka might only have a few hours left, and it would take me days or weeks to grow a tree that large, if I even could.”

  “Child, there is no need to fret,” Erik said, giving the elf a warm smile and nearly causing Shia to break into tears. “Of course I will do whatever I can to help you save your friend. In fact, please allow me to thank you for all your efforts so far. The three of you have already proven yourselves to be more than capable of retrieving magical fuel for my people. All the monster corpses your people delivered to the Sacred Forest after the battle you warned us about, and the two magical beast cores Shia sent over to me the other day, have done wonders for my people’s supply of magic. For the first time in months, we have actually gone up in magic rather than down, even if only slightly.”

  Erik paused, glancing up at the floating island once more. “I predict getting you all up there won’t even burn through half of what you’ve retrieved for me so far, so I would be more than happy to help you with your plight. Besides, I grew rather fond of Alka during our time together while the two of you were busy studying magic,” Erik said, giving Vin a small wink.

  “We can’t thank you enough Erik,” Vin said, relief flooding through him as they cleared the first of their many hurdles.

  “You can thank me by visiting and telling me all about your adventures when you get the chance,” Erik smiled, his bark-like features wrinkling as he motioned for them to come closer with a small hand. “Now, it sounds like time is of the essence, so as much as I would love a lengthy introduction to your new friends, I won’t keep you any longer. Come closer, and be sure to hang on tight.”

  Following the tiny dryad’s instructions, Shia and Vin moved closer, until they were at risk of stepping on his miniature form. Wiping away her tears, Shia reached out and took Vin’s hand, squeezing it as if afraid of having another one of her party members suddenly taken away from her.

  Returning the squeeze, Vin suddenly heard the sound of wood creaking and straining, and he gasped as he realized what was happening.

  Before his very eyes, the tiny form of Erik was growing at a rather alarming rate. Within seconds, the six inch tall humanoid sapling had doubled in size to nearly a foot. After a few more seconds, he’d grown to two feet tall, now coming up above their knees. Moments later, he was a tiny tree, with leaves tickling the bottom of their chins.

  Vin had just enough time to wonder exactly how fast Erik was capable of growing before he felt a small branch wrap securely around his waist.

  And then they rocketed into the sky.

  Screaming, their group shot upwards as if fired out of a cannon. The wind blasted past their faces as they rose ever upward and Erik’s wooden form grew faster and faster with every second. As the ground rapidly fell away and they quickly approached the island, Vin’s eyes widened as he suddenly realized there was a good chance they all might just die on impact if Erik misjudged the angle he was growing and splattered them against the bottom of the island like crash test dummies.

  Through either some miracle or Erik’s careful calculations, the four of them practically kissed the lip of the island as Erik abruptly stopped growing; the snug restraining branch the only thing keeping Vin from launching off the end of the tree as their velocity suddenly halted.

  Lightheaded and dizzy, Vin stumbled out of the top of the tree, collapsing to his knees and fighting the urge to kiss the solid ground they were once more standing on. From the twisting in his gut, it seemed gravity had weakened even further all the way up here, which was not doing his stomach any favors.

  Turning, he saw Shia share a few parting words with the dryad, who had taken the shape of some extraordinarily tall and thin tree that looked almost like a thick bamboo shoot. Vin watched in awe as the tree dug a few of its branches into the floating island and somehow managed to decay backwards, receding from the ground up with incredible speed. Vin didn’t understand why he went through the trouble until Erik finally withered away to nothing, and a tiny, familiar seed was pulled all the way up from the ground, depositing itself in Shia’s waiting hand.

  Carefully placing the seed back in her pouch, Shia grinned, shooting them a smile filled with sharpened teeth.

  “Well, Vin got us to the fragment, and I got us to the island,” she said, looking at the prone petian that had tumbled off Vin’s shoulder and was currently lying starfished and face down on the ground. “…time for Scule to pull his weight and steal a golem!”

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “I’d argue your magical tree friend was the one that got us to the island,” Scule shot back, his voice muffled by the earth. “One of these days you should really introduce me to him, you know. It feels like we’re at that awkward point where it’s too late for me to just walk up and do it myself.”

  “Sorry Scule, it seems like every time we need to chat with Erik we’re in a bit of a time crunch. Speaking of…” With a grunt, Vin pushed himself to his feet, wobbling slightly from the lowered gravity. Brushing the dirt off his pants, he finally took in the library in all its true glory.

  The building had looked rather impressive from all the way down on the ground.

  But from up here, the only word Vin could think of to describe it was magnificent.

  He’d never been himself, but now that he was standing directly before the great library, he couldn't shake the thought that it looked like a magical version of Notre-Dame. Albeit significantly larger, made almost entirely out of white marble, and with a good number of towers jutting out of it, each topped with a stained glass dome of all things.

  And speaking of stained glass, he could finally make out all the different colorful images displayed in what had to be hundreds of different stained glass windows, and he was surprised to see that each seemed to follow the same simple template. Every window depicted a single person performing some action with extreme skill. There was a baker, putting the finishing touches on a five-tier cake. A fisherman, standing on a storm wracked boat while reeling in a monstrous serpent. A smith, holding up a gleaming sword to the light and checking it for imperfections.

  As Vin’s eyes flicked from one window to the next, he heard Shia gasp.

  “They’re different classes!” She said, pointing toward a window made predominantly from green and brown glass. “Look at that one!”

  Following the elf’s finger, Vin found himself looking at a man in dirt covered robes, smiling gently as he skillfully encouraged three trees to twist and wind around each other as they grew.

  “A Druid…” he muttered, looking at the many windows in a new light. Sure enough, after Shia pointed it out, it was easy to pick out most of the classes each window depicted.

  A thin man balancing on a series of wobbling balls in front of a cheering crowd had to be some form of Acrobat. The woman strumming a strange looking guitar with far too many strings was either a Bard or some sort of Musician. The muscular humanoid covered in shining armor and fighting for the village at their back against a giant troll three times their size was clearly a Knight.

  “This is insane,” Vin said, utterly awestruck at the sheer display of skill and talent that had clearly gone into the library's construction.

  And they hadn’t even gone inside yet.

  “This level of skill…” Scule said, finally getting up off the ground himself and frowning at the masterful craftsmanship. “…makes me worried about how difficult getting our hands on what we need is going to be. Well, more so how difficult getting out alive is going to be afterward.”

  “I know what you mean, but we don’t have a choice,” Vin admitted, giving the petian an apologetic look. “I understand that we’re putting an unfair amount of pressure on you as our Rogue, but you are easily the best shot we have of pulling this off.”

  “If only I knew how popular I’d become before picking this class, I would have chosen another,” Scule sighed, unable to keep the smile off his face. “Obviously, I’ll do what I can. Should we go over an actual plan before we head inside?”

  “There’s too much we don’t know, but we need to get our hands on one of the small golems, and ideally some of the mana stones,” Shia said, finally tearing her eyes away from the windows. “I guess our first priority is to keep our eyes peeled and hope we get lucky enough to witness one of the golems change another’s mana stone like Forpurt mentioned. Then we could grab it while it’s disabled.”

  “That might take too long,” Vin frowned, wishing not for the first time that he had some sort of physical timer as to how long Alka had left. “I can’t imagine the golems have to change out their gems that frequently.”

  “Leave the golem to me and Reginald,” Scule said slowly, stroking his chin as he stared thoughtfully at the library. “I think I have an idea that should work. Forpurt mentioned that each of us will have a golem assigned to us, right? I’ll need a few hours for my plan, so while I’m focusing on that, you two should try and figure out a way to get your hands on some of those mana stones.”

  “If all three of us are acting weird, whoever runs the library might get suspicious,” Shia pointed out with a frown. “Vin, you’re the only one of us that can actually read other languages thanks to your passive. I know you want to help Alka, but if none of us are reading, we might get kicked out for all we know. I’ll focus on the stones, you should go find a book and actually read while the two of us work on the plan. At least for the first few hours.”

  “That makes sense I suppose,” Vin nodded, thankful that their team was competent enough to be able to divide and conquer. He wasn’t a huge fan of being given the least important job, but he couldn’t argue with Shia’s logic. There had been a few times he’d been asked to leave public libraries back on Earth when he’d tried to use them as safe spots to nap instead of reading. Most of the libraries he’d visited had actually been staffed by extremely kind, understanding people, but there were always exceptions.

  “Even if you guys can’t read though, you should still probably pick up a book and stare at the pages every now and again,” he chuckled, imagining Scule pretending to read a book both larger than he was and written in a language he couldn’t understand. “We have no way of knowing how strict the librarian will be after all.”

  Their plan in place and Alka’s eternal rest slowly creeping closer with every second they wasted, Vin led the three of them across the floating island toward the massive library. The building only seemed to grow larger and more intimidating the closer they got to it, and Vin had to take a few deep breaths, shoving the mental images of them getting torn to shreds by dozens of mechanical golems from his mind.

  Just as he was beginning to calm himself down, a strange shimmering dome appeared around the library, and Vin stopped dead in his tracks.

  “Oh you have got to be kidding me.”

  Reaching out a shaking finger, Vin touched the transparent barrier of light, physically wincing at the glowing, golden notification that appeared before him.

  Warning. You are about to enter a Divine Sanctum. While inside the Divine Sanctum, access to the System interface will be temporarily lost.

  another homicidal maniac? 50-50?

  250,000 words as of yesterday, which can be a lot to remember!). Haha deciding how to go about writing with that stipulation took me a minute, but I'm happy with how it turned out!

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