1

The castle library was not merely a hoard of fictional works, educational literature, or biographies. Joined were also the private records of the Royal House. Most of the regime’s political and economical annals were kept elsewhere in the city, but ruling elite customarily kept their own books apart from the state, especially in regards to matters that weren’t meant to be public knowledge. Numerous influential dynasties had lived in these halls and had likely amassed a rotund collection of awkward secrets, confidential correspondence, beneficial intelligence, and otherwise worthwhile trivia, to win an edge over their adversaries here and abroad.

Yet, once it was actually discovered and measured, the castle’s collection proved unexpectedly limited. None of the contents could be considered particularly controversial either, or even especially sensitive. Nor at all interesting.

Margitte could only come up with one natural explanation for this: the main body of the castle archive was hidden from guests. She thought about sending a messenger to inquire the Empress on the archive’s whereabouts, but then decided against it. If there were any notes left regarding the fall, then there was a good chance that the secret archive was where they were hidden, to keep the enemy from erasing this knowledge also—but delving into the secrets of her majesty’s clan and family alongside was still a somewhat awkward thing to do.

Perhaps it was better not to burden her further with it.

Reasoning so, Margitte found herself with no choice but to look for the missing records on her own and try to keep it discreet.

Where could the archive be hidden?

Such a large amount of documents would require a good bit of space, but all the rooms and halls had already been extensively searched. It stood to reason that the records would be somewhere close to the main library, since the managing staff was likely the same. But the building was vast, its architecture elaborate. There were many possible places where to put a secret room or two, and outsiders would never find the way in. Margitte instructed her subordinates to look for any signs of a concealed doorway, but none of them had reported back with any worthwhile discoveries after two hours. The more time passed, the more it began to seem like they had already given up and were merely waiting for the young mage to forget the whole thing.

Did they think she was only being an overly curious youth, chasing secrets? Old letters and parchments didn’t seem the most important thing in the world when death could come for you at any given moment.

But Margitte didn’t think it was irrelevant.

“Good grief...As if I didn’t have better uses for my time.”

With a frustrated sigh, she left the reception desk and went to investigate the hall closer in person. She began the effort by following along the outer wall, starting clockwise from the entrance. If it were her library, where would she put the things she didn’t want anyone else to find...?

Almost the full span of the walls was covered by bookcases and tomes, save for the occasional support pillar, and the windows, with not one open, obvious bare strip for a lock or a switch. If there was a mechanism concealed in the books or shelves themselves, the search could take months.

They didn’t have such time.

On the way, the mage suddenly ran into a dark shadow between the shelves and jumped with a start.

“Hm? So-chan?” Izumi halfheartedly turned to greet the girl. “What’s wrong?”

“What are you hiding here for?” Margitte asked and sighed, feeling her heart.

“I’m not hiding! I’m helping you with your homework!” the woman replied. “But, as expected, it looks like this’ll take a moment. Making sense of these titles isn’t so easy for a foreigner like me.”

It wasn’t the best assistant imaginable, but the need for help was real.

“You can stop that now,” Margitte told Izumi. “I’m looking for something else now. Give me a hand.”

“Huh? New books? Are you telling me you already went through the pile we brought? Nobody reads that fast, you weren’t just skimming, were you? That’s not good! Pity the author a little!”

“Forget books! I’m looking for a doorway,” the mage moodily replied.

“A door?” Izumi repeated. “It’s right there, behind you?”

“Not the front door, fool! A hidden door!”

“Hidden?”

“That’s right. The entrance to the royal archive. It must be here somewhere.”

“Eeh...?” Izumi made a surprised sound. “A hidden archive? They have those here too? Is that a staple of fantasy libraries, or something? Well, I suppose it’s not the most incredible thing to have, in a castle like this. Sure, I can help. There might be things better than books there too.”

“This isn’t for play,” Margitte cautioned the woman. “There could be crucial information. And we don't have a lot of time. I’ll search this side of the hall, so you go the other way from the entrance. Let me know if you find anything worthy of note.”

Izumi raised a brow at the plan. “What? You mean, like, look manually? Can’t you just cast a spell or something to find the way?”

“Don’t say it like it’s the easiest thing in the world!” the mage replied. “Every magician has their own specialty. Mine is in field architecture. I may know a thing or two beside that, but energy vectors and barriers are the core of my study. Seeker spells, charting spells, psychometry, and such like are their own fields, and I have no interest nor experience in them. So what else can we do but look normally?”

“Psycho-what?”

“Psychometry—is the skill of reading immaterial information stored in objects. That’s right, even objects can have memory. Do you want a lecture, or do you want to help, which is it?”

“Psychometry, huh?” Izumi murmured, thoughtfully looking up. “Well, I’m not a fan of walking and standing all day, it makes my hip ache. So do you mind if I use a bit of magic myself?”

“You…?” Margitte frowned at her. “What can you do? You’re not even a magician.”

“Ehehe. Let me show you.”

Under Margitte’s highly skeptical look, Izumi made a mischievous smile, crouched, and laid her palm on the stone floor.

“Ocíl—Statha,” she whispered under her breath.

She braced herself for the familiar, nauseating feeling of being disconnected from her own body, having her senses flooded with information. But the experience turned out entirely different from the usual. As Carmelia had told her, the spell’s intensity was considerably milder without Divine backup, the range also shorter. She could still feel her awareness firmly rooted to her own body. Rather than having the whole world pour into her consciousness without limit, what occurred was only a moment of greatly heightened sensitivity. Light seemed to grow brighter. Sounds sharper. Stone heavier. She felt the weight and scale of the building around her, the presence of the people walking around, and she felt the void behind a bookshelf on the northern wall, a bit off the corner of the hall.

As soon as Izumi let go of her focus, the effect ended. She didn’t get dizzy, or feel ill, only a little short of breath.

“Ah-ha, I’ve got it!” She stood with a triumphant smile and left to examine the place.

“What?” Margitte followed after the woman in confusion. “What was that…?”

“Auntie has her own secrets too!”

They shortly reached the spot. The bookshelf looked no different from the others on the outside, large enough to veil the opening in full. The wooden case was set so tight against the smooth wall that not even a draft could slip past it.

“And here are the secrets of the castle!” Izumi declared.

“Are you sure?” Margitte frowned and put her hand on the shelf. From this close, she could sense the concavity too. It seemed the woman had been telling the truth. “How did you do that…?”

“What, you’re asking a magician to explain her tricks? That’s against the code. More importantly, how do we open the way? Do you see a button somewhere?”

They examined every corner of the shelf and took down a handful of books, but were unable to find any camouflaged mechanisms. It seemed to be an ordinary bookshelf, despite its devious positioning, fully intact. But even if they took down all the books, the case was over thirteen feet tall, twenty wide, crafted of thick oak boards, and likely weighed upwards of a thousand pounds. They weren’t going to move it by hand.

“That’s not all,” the mage commented. “It seems to be attached to the wall by some manner of a metal frame. Possibly part of the mechanism used to move it. But the means to operate it could be anywhere.”

“Can’t you just blow it up?” the woman suggested.

“How old do you think this building is?” Margitte replied with a disapproving scowl. “If I used such force, the whole wall might come crashing down, along with the upper floors. No. I am certain there exists a safer, more sophisticated method of unbarring the way. We only need to find it.”

“My, my,” Izumi said, unable to keep a smile from her face. “Another puzzle, is it? Very well, challenge accepted. You can hang back and leave this to the specialist.”

“Who’s the specialist!?”

—“What are you two doing?” Millanueve had overheard their unusual conversation from the distance and came over to see what was happening. “Can’t you do your work properly? We’re not here to play, remember?”

“I’m your employer, don’t tell me what to do!” Margitte flared in answer.

“There’s a secret passage behind this wall,” Izumi told the girl. “Who knows, there might be treasure inside.”

“Nobody said anything about a treasure!” the mage retorted.

“Treasure?” Millanueve repeated, stars lighting up in her eyes. “Really? How do we open the way?”

“Don’t listen to her!”

“Ahem,” Izumi cleared her throat and began to explain with a pose imitating Margitte to a vexing degree. “Hidden doors can be divided into three main categories: those that are opened by a key; those that are opened by a lever mechanism; and those that are opened by a multi-action puzzle. There can also be combinations of these, like switches that are also a puzzle, or a key that is required to unlock a switch.”

“Do you do this kind of thing for a living?” Margitte questioned the woman in confusion.

“I see.” Millanueve nodded in understanding. “Then, before we do anything else, we need to determine which type it is, right?”

“Yup,” Izumi said. “It’s a mechanism normal humans without advanced technology have made, so I doubt it’s a magic puzzle, or anything overly complicated. A simple device that doesn’t need a lot of room. Something even mortal archivists could understand and operate on a daily basis…”

She touched her chin in thought and gazed around. “Hmm. We’ve looked through the nearby shelves, and there doesn’t seem to be any hidden buttons or switches. No, a small button wouldn’t generate enough mechanical force to move such a heavy load, so I’m thinking it’s the switch type...”

“If it needs a key, we’ll never open it, will we?” Millanueve asked. “There are probably a million keys in the castle. Finding the right one would take a lifetime.”

“I’m sure they wouldn’t remove any necessary items from the library area. If it’s a key, it’d be bad if someone lost it. And they wouldn’t want to run around long distances every time they wanted to open the door. But it being close by doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. It could require insider knowledge, like a specific combination of books that must be moved in order. A password, or a short phase formed by the titles…”

“Really!” Margitte cried in disbelief. “Why do you suddenly know so much about secret doors, of all the things in the world!?”

“Well, they come up a lot in RPGs.”

“What the heck…?”

“Can’t we just pull the whole shelf out of the way?” Millanueve suggested.

“Like I said before, it’s bolted in place,” Margitte told her. “I doubt it can be forcibly moved without breaking a part of the wall itself. It rather defeats the purpose if whatever is behind gets buried in the process.”

“I see. So finding the mechanism is our only way to get the treasure...”

“I don’t want to hear another word about treasures! Aah, I can’t stand either of you! Go! Go look elsewhere!”

The three split up and went to search different parts of the long hall, trying to identify potential keyholes, masked switches, elements of architecture, or suspicious decorations—anything that could be used to unseal the hidden passage.

The jobless bard as well was recruited into the search team.

“It’s Eylia all over again, isn’t it?” Waramoti commented with a weary sigh.

“The upside is,” Izumi told him, “we probably can’t find anything worse in there than what’s outside.”

“Don’t jinx it!”

Even with four of them, the investigators had a lot of floor to cover. Izumi tempered her expectations accordingly, as she stepped on along the central aisle and scanned the shelves with her gaze. At the end of each case was attached a small brass plaque describing the contents, but nothing about the themes and titles caught her attention.

On this tour, she soon arrived at a curious decoration.

“...What’s this?”

There was a wider reading area left near the middle of the hall, with chairs set along its limits. In the center of the clearing, on the floor, was a circular fresco and on top of the artwork stood a metallic contraption.

Scales of cast iron; two hemispherical cups hanging in light chains from the opposing ends of an arcing beam, borne by a large central stand, roughly five feet high in all.

“A mysterious statue, isn’t it?” Millanueve said, coming over. “I wonder what it’s supposed to be...”

“No, that’s not the mystery part!” Izumi exclaimed. “It’s a scale, a scale! You weigh things with it! That was just a joke, right?”

“How should I know what it is?” the girl replied with an offended pout. “I’ve never needed such a thing in my life!”

“Talk about sheltered upbringing…Not that I’ve ever actually used such myself. Not the retro version.”

“Now that you said it,” Millanueve said as she examined the object closer, “my father’s bailiff had one, for measuring tax grain. But it was made of only rope and boards and looked nothing like this. Is this really a weight scale? Why would it be here in the library?”

“That’s what I was wondering,” Izumi said. “As fancy as it looks, I doubt it was used for any practical purpose. Just a decoration. But it’s something you’d typically see in a house of law, not in a library. Since scales are a symbol of balance and fairness and all that. Or wait, maybe it has some other meaning unique to this culture…?”

“I don’t know, but I could go ask Margitte. She knows everything! Wait right here.”

“Ah, sure.”

Millanueve departed to find the Court Wizard, while Izumi took a seat on one of the chairs around the spot, and waited with her fingers crossed.

In a short while, the girl returned, without the magician.

“’How should I know? I’m not an expert on the Langorian culture, or their symbols. Would you not bother me with trivial nonsense like that, while I’m trying to think? Are you even looking properly?’—or, that’s what Master Beuhler told me.”

“You nailed the pitch,” Izumi commented. “But a miss, huh? Not entirely unexpected. In that case, the obvious thing to do is ask a real Langorian. I think Yule might have the answer to this one. Since it’s her house and all.”

“You’re right!” Millanueve agreed. “Why didn’t we think of that sooner? I’ll go ask her majesty right away!”

The girl departed to find the Empress on the upper floor, while Izumi remained seated, quietly waiting, fingers crossed.

It took a while longer this time, but the girl eventually returned, without the Sovereign.

“’Scales have no special meaning in our culture, as far as I’m aware. The decoration in the library has been there since before I was born, but I’ve never seen anyone touch it. You certainly are free-spirited, to be playing around at a time like this. Could you not make a mess of the place?’—or, so her majesty told me.”

“I’m impressed you memorized all of that, word-for-word,” Izumi commented. “Did you ever think about becoming an actress instead of a soldier?”

“Father took us to see the traveling summer theater a few times when I was young,” Millanueve said. “But they always have jack candles to light up the stage and keep the audience warm. I hated getting the smell of smoke in my hair, so I stopped going. Being on the stage would’ve been unbearable. So no.”

“I see. What an unexpected con.”

“Why did you ask?”

“No reason, really. Anyway, what can we do, if not even a native knows? Maybe we should look up a lawyer too, just in case? Ask if they have unusual uses for scales?”

“Izumi!” Millanueve replied with a start. “I am beginning to wonder if you’re not making me run around the castle only for your own amusement!”

“You realized!?” Izumi gasped. “Have you leveled up INT while I wasn’t looking!?”

“I’m going to get angry!”

“Relax, it was only a joke!” Izumi calmed the girl. “That aside, I’ve been sitting here, thinking, and noticed something a bit peculiar: The other scale cup is empty, but the other one is actually not.”

“It’s not?”

Careful not to step on the painting under the device, Millanueve went to examine the holders closer. As Izumi has said, there was nothing in the north side cup, but in the south one was…

“Is this...a feather?” It was not a real bird feather, but a simplistic imitation crafted of silver, roughly eight inches long. “What is it doing in there?”

“I don’t know,” Izumi said. “But seeing the thing reminded me of this one myth from my home world.”

“A myth?”

“Yes. There was this ancient civilization long ago that believed that when a person dies, their soul goes to the underworld, where the god of the dead weighs their heart on a set of scales against a feather. The feather is a symbol. It represents truth and righteousness. An evildoer’s heart was heavy with guilt and pulled down the scale. In which case, the deceased was denied entry into the afterlife and immortality, and was thrown away, to be eaten by a monster.”

“A terrible story,” Millanueve commented.

A story a little too close to their current situation to be amusing.

“Stories aside,” Izumi continued, “I’m fairly sure the answer to our puzzle is there. You’re supposed to put something in the other cup. If the object is of the correct mass relative to the feather, then the scale will turn to the intended angle, and the doorway is unsealed.”

“Eeh?” the girl exclaimed in astonishment. “How did you discover that? Are you a sorceress, after all?”

“It’s nothing too special,” the woman replied, awkwardly scratching the back of her neck. “Look. The scales are actually functional and pretty sensitive too. The cup with the metal feather is slightly lower than the empty one. The part around the fulcrum has a notched wheel to mark the degrees, and it’s freshly oiled. To help calculate the precise mass. If it were only a decoration, there would be no need to make and keep it usable, right? The stand is pretty thick and might extend under the floor, maybe as a part of a larger mechanism. There are no other such tools to be seen, so I’m confident this is related to our hidden door. Just basic deduction.”

But as simple as Izumi tried to make it sound, Millanueve’s awe couldn’t be diminished. On the contrary, it appeared only further boosted. The girl’s face lit with a wide, beaming smile, and she took excitedly a step towards the woman.

“As I thought, you are…! You really are…!” she spoke, but the word she was looking for eluded her.

“I’m what…?” Izumi furrowed her brow and mumbled, turning hot and bothered under the stare of those bright blue eyes.

“Hnngg…!” Looking like she was about to burst out of excitement, Millanueve spun around and left running down the aisle while yelling aloud. “Margitte! Waramoti! We solved it! Izumi solved it!”

“No, not yet…”

The companions soon gathered before the scales and the champion had to explain her reasoning again.

“Well, it may not be only a delusion,” Margitte reluctantly admitted, feeling the floor with her palm. “I can faintly make out some sort of mechanism under the flooring. I was trying to find one in the walls, but it never occurred to me to look down.”

“As expected of the specialist,” Waramoti remarked with a smug smirk. “But what are we supposed to put in the other cup? The people of your past world weighed hearts against the feather of truth, but I’ve seen nothing resembling hearts here.”

“Good question,” Izumi said. “To begin with, the feather might not mean truth here. It’s not an ostrich feather and these people weren’t Egyptians. I’m not sure they believed in the afterlife either. How about it, So-chan? Any ideas?

“Feather…?” Margitte stood and frowned. “I’ve heard of no stories involving the weighing of feathers—wait a moment, it couldn’t be…?”

The young magician interrupted herself with a gasp, turned around, and left running towards the front desk, where she had gathered her books of interest. The others kept back and waited, and she soon returned to them, leafing through a large, worn tome in her hands.

“As I thought,” she muttered. “Langorians worshiped the Divine of Light, and feather is the alchemical symbol of the element of Light. It fits.”

“Huh?” Izumi tensed. “Really?”

“Knowing that much makes the rest of the riddle quite plain,” Margitte resumed. “There is only one element universally perceived as the counterbalance for light.”

“And that is?” Millanueve asked, blinking.

“Do I really have to spell it for you!?” the mage yelled. “Think!”

“...Dark?”

“Congratulations. And the alchemical symbol of Dark is a key.”

“Key?” Millanueve repeated, puzzled. “So we’re looking for a key, after all?”

“So I’d reckon. And here’s one to start with.”

Margitte put the book away and took from her pocket a dark key shaped of iron, with a leathery strip tied on it. “The librarian’s key—what else would you open an archive with?”

“But instead of any lock, it goes...in there?”

They all turned to look at the empty scale cup.

“Well,” Izumi said with a shrug, “simple puzzles are best. Let’s give it a try.”

Margitte removed the key from the strap and dropped it in the cup. The scales, previously tilted in favor of the feather, slowly readjusted, coming to stand in perfect equilibrium.

The key of iron, the feather of silver—in spite of the differences in shape and material, both items were of equal mass, down to the hundredths of an ounce.

Clang. Something moved under the floor. Deep, grinding noise carried subsequently from the corner of the hall. The heavy bookshelf they had examined before and judged impossible to move, pulled down into a slot in the floor, revealing the hidden passage behind.

“No more monsters, please,” Waramoti said.

“You two stay here,” Izumi told the bard and Millanueve. “I’ll go check it out with the young master. Get your whistles ready.”

The two went to the opening and saw narrow stairs proceed down along the wall into complete darkness. The steps looked clean, without much dust or cobwebs. Definitely not forgotten for a millennium, but in regular use up until the hour of the city’s sudden downfall. With due caution, they began to descend.

“I sense nothing,” Margitte said, holding the shadowmeter on her palm to make sure. The rings continued to lazily spin, only slightly slowing down when the arrowhead pointed west, the city’s way, where the enemy presence remained strongest. “Whatever you do, don’t start swinging your stupidly huge sword close to me.”

“I won’t, I won’t,” Izumi assured, but her hand remained on the Amygla’s handle.

“We have more refined methods of defense. Ascrespianos!”

Margitte called out a word, and a small, fairy-like apparition appeared hovering close to her head, glowing faint, lime green. She put the shadowmeter away and continued to descend the stairs in the odd orb’s glow.

“It’s the thing from before. What is it?” Izumi asked as she followed close behind, staring at the light.

“A lesser spirit I’m contracted to. Don’t distract me. It takes some effort to control.”

“What happens if you lose control?”

“Why, it goes berserk and discharges all of its energy before fading.”

“……”

“I have good control of it. So long as you don't speak a word.”

“...You’re not tricking me now, are you?”

The stairs ended on a proper flooring and the two stepped into a room hardly two meters high, stashed between the castle floors by the craftiness of the architects of eld. Despite the low ceiling, the space was about half the width of the library above it, and no less long, more than fit to hide generations of secrets gathered from the kingdom’s past.

Margitte's sprite floated ahead of them and its lime incandescence painted the space with a sickly hue, an impression which the appalling odor wafting at them emboldened.

“What is that stench…?” Margitte groaned and pinched her nose.

“The perfume of the afterlife,” Izumi answered.

“Eugh!” Margitte shook her head. She clapped her hands together, chanting something under her breath, and then parted her palms. A faint, electric light flashed over her cloaked figure and the walls, and the smell of rot vanished.

“What did you do?” Izumi asked.

“I set up a ward to filter the reek, of course. Come on.”

The Court Wizard turned her familiar brighter and sent it ahead of them deeper into the room.

Instead of tall shelves, they saw rows of open-top containers with shallow recesses, where slim files, reports, letters, hand-written parchments, and such were set sideways, to minimize the exposure to light and dust. Like coffins without lids, their ranks went on all the way into the back of the chamber.

The library above had been tidy when found, but the hidden area was anything but. There were torn books, scattered documents, and other miscellaneous archive items strewed over the floor between the containers. A few of the cases themselves had been overturned and lay on their side, their contents ejected in thick piles.

The two walked on past the apocalyptic scene and stains of human excrement, and came to the back, where stood a line of study desks and spent lamps. By the work stations lay three human corpses, and one more expired over the desk in the corner.

“They didn't know about overtime regulations, did they?” Izumi commented.

“Go call the others,” Margitte told her. “There is nothing dangerous here anymore. And as far as I can tell, this is the place we were looking for. And get soldiers to remove the corpses.”

Slightly disgruntled at being bossed around by someone half her age, Izumi did as instructed. The reinforcements brought with them proper lamps and life was partially restored to the concealed archive hall, its nightmarish air dispelled. Though cleaning up the mess was going to take a while.

But would the secret archive give them the answers they were looking for?

“Where’s the treasure?” Millanueve asked, looking around in disappointment.

“Forget the treasure!” Margitte snapped.

“I doubt her majesty would take well to it if we plundered the wealth of her late family,” Waramoti pointed out. “Still, I suspect my audience would’ve been better pleased with gold than carcasses of bookkeepers. It is not a very uplifting discovery. Whatever brought about their doom, anyhow?”

“Daemons didn’t get these guys, but the corpses are not too old either,” Izumi said. “I’d guess they’ve been dead for less than a week. Looks like they managed to escape the mayhem that went down, but forgot one necessity in their rush for shelter: water. They had nothing to eat or drink down here, but were too scared to leave the panic room to find any. Too bad. Had they endured a few more days, we might’ve been able to save some of them.”

“What a way to go…” Millanueve mumbled and shuddered, as she watched the knights carry the bodies away. “Trapped here, alone in the dark, while the whole city around you is dead, dying.”

“Think there is anything their wretched fate can teach us?” the bard pondered. “Other than a vision of our own future?”

Izumi went on to search the desk upon which one of the librarians had passed away.

What had he been looking for, till his very end?

There were heaps of papers, old documents with new notes barbarously scribbled over them in less elegant type, and some old tomes. She picked up a few papers at random and examined the writings closer. Desperate last thoughts by people who knew themselves doomed. They had looked beyond their days and took the pen with the hopes that someone might yet come and find them. But what help could those unable to help themselves offer to others?

First note:

Our world falls apart. The last hour of life is at hand.

Remember the words of the prophecy!

Second note:

Did her highness know this would come to pass?

Where has she gone? Why did she leave us? Did she know all?

Third note:

We sit on top of our sole hope. Alas, we will never reach it!

So close, yet so unbearably far.

Pray to the White Lord for deliverance!

“Were they mad…?” Millanueve whispered, appalled, as she peered past the woman’s shoulder.

Izumi put the notes down and glanced at the rest of them. They didn’t seem any more intelligible. From the aggravating lines, her gaze was drawn to a book left on the corner of the table, which seemed to have escaped the abuse the other materials had suffered. She took it in her hands and looked at the title.

“The Chronicle of the XVII Dynasty and King Machilon the Great”.

It didn’t seem in any way relevant.

Yet, a separate post-it note had been placed on the cover.

Out beyond Baisley, our people once fought off an

alien invasion and returned with a powerful boon.

Izumi stared at the lines, felt them evoke a deep, inexplicable unease and dread, and frowned.

“What in the world is this…?”