Chapter 112: 6.16 – Between the Lines

They were coming for him. Robin’s gut told him that much. Dag and Clara would appear, soon enough, popping out of the shadows with a mind to kill. He couldn’t fully control when or where, but he could make a tactical decision, maybe hole up someplace nice and defensible and wait for them.

Or he could take the fight to them. Hunt them down on their own turf. There were only two of them left, after all. Well, that he knew of. A few others might have escaped or been away on business when the Head Librarian struck.

Robin ground his teeth together. None of this was what he wanted! He was finally making progress on his quest! He was amassing more lore on the powers of shade and illusion!

And they were frelling delicious thank you very much.

Did he really want to risk losing out on that lore, that learning, by running away to play cat and mouse with some street toughs?

Could they even feasibly get at him here in the restricted section? Not the most restricted of restricted sections, granted, but one needed a pass to get this far in. He should be reasonably safe, so long as he watched his back when he exited the place later, right?

He did have the ability to wear faces none of them would expect.

Robin let his eyes play over the illusory book before him, over the artefacts to either side, and he thought.

It wasn’t worth it. He should be safe enough here. And he needed to absorb as much of this knowledge as possible, as soon as possible. He wouldn’t let the Broken Knucklebones get in his way on this.

The Library never closed. There was enough demand (and more than enough obsessive trainee librarians) to see that it stayed forever open. Spells helped keep the place clean, and there was enough magic and mundane manpower to continually be reshelving books and tidying the shelves.

Robin imagined Vryngylla curling up beneath the circulation desk to steal a few hours sleep and grinned. He could understand the impulse! In another life, he might even have settled in like that himself.

Maybe he’d invest in a librarian persona at some point, assuming he could get good enough at fooling divinations to pass whatever entry exams or personnel checks there might be.

Then Robin stowed the thought and returned his attention to the illusory book, renewing the [Visual Phantasm] and resuming reading where he’d left off.

It was more difficult, now. The threat of Dag and Clara was a constant drain on his focus. Part of his mind was tugging at him, always looking at the edges of his vision, keeping an eye out for danger.

Even without ambushing him they were bleeding away his time and attention!

Robin found himself rereading passages frequently. And blinking away blurred lines and a rede-shift to the writing.

He blinked again. No. He wasn’t imagining it. The text really was glimmering a subtle red where there should only be black ink.

Urkhan.

The curse.

Robin’s ears pricked. It was quiet. Too quiet, even for a library.

Especially this library, with its ravenous and ravaging books and screaming crystals and a thousand other eldritch vessels of forbidden knowledge.

He definitely wasn’t alone in these stacks, and he didn’t think it was Vryngylla this time.

He sent a pulse of alarm with a twist of curiosity to Rerebos. The little dragon hissed quietly in agreement and vanished into the shadows, the faint whisper of his wings the only sign of his passage, and Robin only heard that because he knew precisely what to listen for.

The book floated on the shelf in front of him. Robin wouldn’t be able to read it again now, and the red glimmer of the text concerned him. He willed the illusory hands to either side of it to close the tome and mime putting it back on the shelf. As they did so, it vanished from sight.

A muffled curse went up from somewhere in the stacks nearby.

Robin’s gut twisted. That sounded like Dag!

Moments later a spike of alarm and hatred from Rerebos all but confirmed that it was.

How had they gotten in? Dag and Clara were hardly the kind to use the library. They wouldn’t have an access token—Robin bit back the groan that would have revealed his position.

Terlene. She had a pass. A good one. Dag and Clara must be using it.

But why had they reacted when he had shelved the book?

The Curse. The red glimmering lines of text. It had to have been drawing them here somehow, and when Robin caused the book to vanish, temporarily ceasing to exist, whatever avenue the curse was using to guide them must have gone with it!

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That was his best hypothesis for now, any way.

Well, if they’d lost the scent for now Robin might as well take advantage of that fact and slip away. No point in making a fuss here if he could choose a better battleground later.

Before he’d taken two steps, however, there was a burning pain in his wrists. Red sigils, burning and shaped like the links of a chain or manacles, appeared, wrapping themselves around his forearms.

The curse of Urkhan struck again. Robin was really looking forward to breaking this one. And taking the expense of it all out of Gis’s hide the next time he saw the cadaverous old priest.

Because now Robin was certain there would definitely be a next time.

But first he had to deal with Dag and Clara.

‘This way!’

That was definitely Dag’s voice. Made sense that he was the one being aided along by Urkhan’s unholy hand. He was the leader, after all. Robin couldn’t really see the God of Tyrants stooping to help out a lieutenant.

A deity has to have some sort of standards, after all. Even if they are shitty ones.

Move while thinking! No time to stand and ponder. Robin slipped from the space he’d been occupying and made his way toward the most confusing knot of shelving he could remember passing. If it confused him, it would certainly slow down Dag and Clara, even with the help they were getting.

So far, Dag and Clara were not making much of a commotion. That was to Robin’s advantage. It said the duo were not quite ready to go all out. the more restriction on their actions, self-imposed or not, the better for Robin.

He couldn’t count on that lasting, however. The flares of pain in his wrists said quite clearly that he was facing more than just Dag and Clara. Even this whisper of Urkhan’s power was something to respect. The deity may not be focused consciously on him, and this might be the residue of some long-forgotten trap of some kind, but it was nothing to sneeze at.

Urkhan had caused Rhyth to be lost, after all.

Robin could hear footsteps coming closer. That had to be Dag. Clara was annoyingly light on her feet.

The bard picked up the pace. This was decent ground for him, if he had to fight, but he’d still prefer not to. Well, decent so long as he didn’t get cornered.

He resisted the urge to pull his trusty quarterstaff out of storage. With the stacks so close he’d have limited space to manoeuvre with it anyway.

The heft of it in his hand would be comforting though.

Robin paused. Was that movement in the shadows to his right? He quirked an ear.

Nothing.

He sent a query to Rerebos, combined with his best approximation of the irritation the little dragon always sent when Clara was present.

He got back a flash of mirrored irritation and worry. So Rerebos thought Clara was here but didn’t know where she was? That made the most sense. Rerebos had seen that she’d survived the encounter with Ruprecht.

Robin wished he could contact the dungeon and find out what had happened. Not that it would do him much good right now.

He changed his shape again, to try and throw them off the trail. The curse-mark, however, stayed with him, even though this time he changed his entire body using [Mask of Myriad Faces]. he didn’t have any better luck trying to hide the things with [Lesser Phantasm], his [Mask of Disguise], or his other tricks.

He definitely needed stronger illusions, and perhaps a bit of magical disruption or curse-breaking.

With the way things were going Robin couldn’t really conceive of a future where he wasn’t routinely running into curses and dangerous magical effects.

He kept moving. With the curse, he couldn’t hide. Something about that gnawed at his core. Maybe it was the shadeling part of him. That seemed to dislike absolutes and measures that dragged him more fully into view, like Savra’s divinatory insights.

Robin paused. This was wrong. He was going about this all wrong.

He was reacting. Allowing them to drive him. That wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He needed to shift the conflict onto his territory.

Enough of this cat and mouse! He had the tactical and terrain advantages! If he was stuck fighting this battle, here and now, he’d damned well do it on his terms!

Robin flexed his fingers and began to summon his illusions.

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