The smooth voice slipped into Tim’s ears like the low murmur of a lover. Disturbed, he looked down at the rat, still nestled in his pocket. “What the hell, rat!” He questioned, pointing accusingly at the rat. However, the rat simply stared at him, squeaked, and then went back to eating the few crumbs left in Tim’s pocket.

“Of course,” Tim chuckled to himself, almost maniacally, “rats don’t talk Tim, you just need to get some sleep or something.” Tim scooped the rat out of his pocket. The mundane critter sat on his hand, chewing quickly on bits of the cookie it held in his weird little claw paws. Its black eyes glinted blue by the light of the lantern.

“Buddy, that was creepy, and I need sleep. I’m going home, and you’ll have to stay here. Heavens knows what the landlord would say to me bringing a rat home,” Tim laughed as he set the rat down on a shelf, already imagining the sight of the landowner’s theoretical horrified look.

As Tim left for the carved wooden doors that would take him back out into the world, taking the light with him, the now uncannily still rat stared after him. Then in darkness, it turned and skittered away deeper into the archives.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

A few hours later, and Tim had made it back. As it turned out, he really had spent most of the night and day in the archives without really realizing it, and no one had even noticed his absence. Nothing new had happened as he had picked up his worn coat in his office, besides another random busywork assignment from Sir Nicholas Collinsby the Fourth of His Line. Tim was beginning to wonder if Sir Nicholas Collinsby the Fourth of His Line was even sentient. Anyways, Tim was able to sneak back to his room to finally get some sleep, and think about what he had found.

“Okay Tim, just got to take it like usual. List the facts, and all will be well,” Tim said to himself, flopping down on his pitiful excuse for a bed with a grunt. “Fact one. That information, while shocking and outrageous, makes…. sense, I guess. Warren really did disappear, there were definitely a few people that were reported missing in the city around the time of those ‘Neverstreet killings’ mentioned in the book, and if that was hushed up, it would make sense why no one would know about it. Fact two, however, is I have no idea why the great scholar Demu would even write all of this. If it’s false, well that’s slander and worth a prison sentence, and if the information is true, the heroes wouldn’t bat an eye at outright killing him. The government, never mind the heroes, would never let someone ruin their reputation. And that brings me to fact three. Tim, old boy, you can’t tell anyone about this. You run your mouth, you end up dead. That’s as plain as day, even to a country bumkin like me.

With that sobering final fact down, the weary half-elf could feel an emotion welling up in his heart, much like what welled up after those… monsters destroyed his old life. Despair. And thus, with that familiar feeling that threatened to once again overwhelm him, Tim crumbled in the face of his exhaustion and slept.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tim jolted out of bed, swearing at whatever abomination that made its nest on top of the building.

“Holy shit, I swear one day that whatever creature makes that unholy noise will die by my hand!” Tim screeched, realizing that the noise was going to wake him like that every morning. No wonder this room was so cheap. Well, with that horrible note to start this day on, I’ve got to think up a plan. As he got up and started pacing around the room, Tim ticked off the possibilities on his hands.

“Right, so out of the facts I listed last night, the one that is most clear to me is the need to verify. For that, either I find some way to track down Demu, or I get lucky and find more sources in the archives that back up the claims of the book.” Scratching his head, Tim mulled it over. Both options seemed viable at the start, but there were issues.

“No matter what, it all starts in the archives. I don’t know where Demu lives, or if he even still lives, and sources to back up that book might be looking for a needle in a haystack.” He paced faster and faster, and finally came to an answer. “Right. Archives it is, and if I look hard enough I should be able to find at least one of these possibilities.” With that settled, Tim spun on his feet, and set off towards the Great Library with all the speed he could muster.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

If Tim had more situational awareness, he may have realized the number of cookies disappearing into the rat was a little unusual. Nonetheless, several hours and ten cookies later, Tim and his rat had finally found what they were looking for.

“Scholars Past and Present, A Compilation,” Tim read out the title, whistling in appreciation of the unfathomable amount of work that must have gone into the creation of the rune-covered book. Turning the book over, he could clearly see the same type of preservation and automatic update runes that had also covered the full history he had read earlier.

“Damn, I don’t even want to think about how much it cost to engrave these runes on something as fragile as a book cover,” Tim mused to himself as he located one of the random armchairs scattered around the archives. For some reason they were all the same, but Tim, being a country soul, thought nothing of it. One chair was just as comfortable to him as another. Finding one, he sat down with a satisfying “plop!”, and cracked open the musty, yet still warm to the touch tome.

“Hmmm… Demu, Demu, Demu. Wherefort art thou Demu? I sure do talk to myself a lot don’t I… Demu, Demu Demu Demudemudemu…” He muttered to himself, scanning through the pages as quickly as he could speedread. “Well then. No chronological or alphabetical order here… whoever wrote this was fucking stupid.” Then, so soft he could have imagined it, a rat’s paw tip-tapped on his forearm. “Oh, do you have something for me, my scarily smart yet non-talking ratty friend?” Tim looked at the rat expectantly. It looked back at him with a gaze unnervingly out of place on a dumb brute. “I’ll buy you twice as many cookies tomorrow…” Immediately the rat pawed to the very back of the book, and then jumped back into Tim’s pocket to nibble on the remaining cookies.

“Well shit,” Tim said to himself calmly, as if he hadn’t just communicated with a rat. “Of course I miss the table of contents, which for some reason is at the fucking back of the book. Only a soulless monster would put the table of contents in the back of the book.” Tim scanned the list and quickly found where he should be looking. “Historians of the heroes, chapter 5, starting on page 207. Demu, known also as the great scholar Demu or as the blue-skinned heretic (to those who know of his true crimes), took it on himself, through the astounding application of 9th level temporal magic (Note: how the hell did a scholar, even if he was the great Demu, get ahold of 9th fucking level magic), to create a full, unabridged record of all the doings of the great heroes past, present, and future.” Tim rolled his eyes with exasperation. Unbiased author, my ass. Seems like ol’ Demu pissed off a lot of people. Tim skipped ahead to any parts that might actually be of some help.

“Ah. Here we go. While Demu currently has no known residences due to the varied and numerous issues his actions have created, it may be possible to meet with the scholar at the Burgundy-Woods, just south of Drassington. (Note: this is only rumor and has not been verified. Several squads, led by REDACTED have attempted to follow the rumor, but Demu has never shown. Keep in mind, he has shown himself capable of temporal magic, so he could simple be avoiding any interference. Investigate further as resources permit.)”

“Damn, Demu was wrapped up in some shady shit,” Tim laughed at the image of a heavily-armed brute squad loitering around the cheerful Burgundy-Woods, dodging cute squirrels and chasing off young couples. “Still, 9th level spells. Isn’t that hero-level stuff? How would Demu have access to spells that good, let alone having the ability to cast them? Normal people can’t even cast cantrips or 1st level spells! Still, I do have a lead now. The Burgundy-Woods. I’ve been meaning to give them a visit. That’s a well-known tourist spot nowadays. Exciting!”

Once again filled with clarity and resolve, Tim patted the rat in his pocket on its head, set it on a nearby bookshelf, and set off.

Behind him, the rat ran deeper into the archives, and was swallowed by the darkness.