”The fire won’t spread, there’s nothing that can catch fire there – I hope.” Anastacia said when King had pointed out that quite a lot of smoke was rising from the staircase they had used to get into the castle’s library after Anastacia had set her old room on fire out of spite. There wasn’t much point to it, but she felt like it’d help her forget Mournvalley after she was truly free. She would have burned the entire castle but felt like Coquelicot might have had some issues with that.

The Library of Mournvalley was the largest collection of tomes, books, notes, scrolls and engravings about necromancy and necromancers in the world, followed by the late Alizarin’s collection in the rebellion’s headquarters as the close second and quite possibly Anastacia’s two books as the third largest one.

So extreme were the cult’s efforts to purge the information about necromancers from the outside world, that if they weren’t able to steal whatever books on the topic some poor soul had acquired, they would burn entire libraries to make sure their secrets were safe. Sadly, because rare books have a tendency to find themselves with other such writings, many unrelated secrets of ancient civilizations had been lost in the process as well.

The library itself was one of the largest rooms inside the castle, filled from wall to wall with shelves and protective display cases, and uncommonly well lit by a row of large glowing crystals embedded into the ceiling. It was without a doubt one of Anastacia’s least hated place in the castle and she used to take every chance she could to visit it.

The one responsible for the well-being and ordering the works was one of the most trusted necromancers in the land and almost as significant as any of the royals. He was known for his protectiveness and unwavering loyalty to the library itself and the fact that the librarian had abandoned his post meant that he was more than likely dead. Though it was lucky for Anastacia, as she was allowed to browse the selection in peace, it would have immensely helped her find what she was looking for.

Arranged on the shelves of dozens of massive bookcases, were thousands of books that all varied in size and looks and appeared to be in no particular order, yet every time she had been allowed to visit it in the past, the librarian had immediately known where to find the books she requested.

“Time to start looking for two books, I know I’ve seen them somewhere in here. The first one is called Those That Made Us and the second one is Where Have We Been. I think they’re both pretty light colored, but I wouldn’t just skip the darker ones based on that.” Anastacia instructed King and jumped over the librarian’s counter. “You start looking for them, I’ll see if I can find like a list of all the books and where they are or something.”

It only took a few seconds for the simulacrum to return with two books. He placed them on the counter and stared at the necromancer, like he was waiting for a compliment.

Anastacia glanced at the books he had brought. “These are not the right ones… Did you just pick the first two you found?” She asked and inspected the books. “Wait, you can’t read, can you?”

King shook his head.

The necromancer rubbed her brow. “Okay, this might slow us down. It’s fine though, you’re still cute even if you’re not smart like me.” She laughed, took out a quill and inkwell from under the counter and started scribbling on a piece of paper that had been laying around. “I’m going to write the names here, so you can just look for books that have the same symbols as this paper. You don’t actually have to know what they mean like this. Keep in mind that they might not be exactly the same as my handwriting, so if you find anything you think is even close, bring it to me.”

King took a look at the paper, rotated it all the way around and resumed his search. Even without knowing the language, he went through the shelves at a surprising pace – though it would still take hours for him to scan every book in the library.

Meanwhile Anastacia’s efforts yielded little results and everything the librarian had kept by the counter seemed useless. There was a ledger of necromancers who had taken books from the library, but none of them had the ones she wanted, so they should have at least been somewhere in the room.

After a brief examination of the shelves nearby, she could tell that the order seemed indeed completely randomized. No two books that were next to each other covered the same subject, had similar names, were written by the same person or dated back to the same age. Anastacia figured that the librarian had been worried about people stealing the opuses, so his way to combat it was to make any single one impossible to find without his aid.

Some of the books had interesting titles that made Anastacia regret that the time they had to browse the library was so limited. “Tyranny of Life, The Amber Method, Comprehensive Guide: Bone Density...” She read the titles out loud. “Someone really needs to start writing again, all of these are at least a hundred years old.” She mumbled and continued going through the titles, until one of them made her halt. A relatively thin opus bound in black leather and with a surprisingly new feeling to it grasped her attention. “’The Violet Margrave by… Amaranth? She made a book?” Anastacia wondered and grabbed the book. She glanced at King, who was still eagerly looking for the books for her and figured that surely there was enough time to at least read the preface to see what it was about.

“It has now been four hundred and seventy-two years since The Violet Margrave and his followers disappeared from our world, leaving nothing but questions behind. Having spent years researching this matter, I can answer but a fraction of them. Yet by far the most important question is: Is there a chance that they are going to return to us? After my gathering all the information about this mysterious sect of necromancers, my sincere answer is that we can only hope there is not.

The violet sect were amoral, power-hungry bastards, who would stop at nothing to extend their power to the realms beyond ours. Necromancy, the gift from death itself was a mere tool in their hands as they mastered both arcane and eldritch magics, miracles and engineering, with no respect to our old ways or The Immortal King himself. Eventually whisking their entire tribe into some other realm, dimension or world, no doubt just to amass all power available there.

Since then, there has been a few sightings of their members, confirming that they are at least able to traverse back and forth between worlds to some capacity. These incidents are covered in more detail within these pages.

As one of the red inquisition, I will make it my mission, above all else, to make sure no seed of their ways ever takes root within the ranks of necromancers ever again, even if this means I have to find them myself and persuade them from returning by force. This book contains most of what I know about the violet sect, if you have any sense in you, use this information to purge anything bearing that cursed shade among us.

High Inquisitor Amaranth”

Anastacia reread the last sentence a few times and looked at her still damp cloak she had thrown on the counter when they had broken into the library. “Well that’s a bit of a worry. Is it too much to ask for a single color to not be ruined?” She asked and was about to put the book back down, when she noticed a pitch-black feather and a folded piece of paper that had been hidden under Amaranth’s book.

The feather was shiny, clearly brand new and had been split and used as a quill recently, which wasn’t exactly weird considering they were in a library. Perhaps the librarian was writing a book of his own before things went south for Mournvalley. Still, it was slightly odd to find it hidden under a book.

Anastacia quickly checked under a few of the other books on the same shelf but didn’t find anything else. She shrugged, folded open the piece of paper and read it out loud. “Take the book. Bookcase 11, shelf 5. Bookcase 45, shelf 1.” The Writing was extremely neat, enough to make Anastacia think it was by someone who wrote for a living or at least almost every day. “Which book? This one?” She asked, picked up Amaranth’s book and turned over the paper to make sure she didn’t miss anything.

“Yes, that one.” The text on the other side of the paper confirmed.

Anastacia looked around, suddenly she felt like she was being watched, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. “Are you magic?” She whispered to the piece of paper in her hand and started flipping it over, but the text on both sides remained unchanged. “Guess not then… Very well, unmagical piece of paper, I will humor you and see where these lead.”

She placed the book on the counter next to her cloak and started looking for the bookcase number eleven. The search turned out to me much harder than she expected, because for whatever reason the cases weren’t arranged in any sensible order either, nor were the small bronze plaques denoting their number always in the same place. So finding the bookcase number eleven was far harder than it should have been. But it had always been like that, Anastacia simply hadn’t had a reason to think about it before, since the librarian was always there, and her movements in the library were always limited only to the wider paths because she wasn’t allowed to go between the bookcases, in case she tried to lose her handlers and run off.

She found what she was looking for along the backwall of the library, hidden in the darkest part of the room, and among the books on the fifth shelf was one of the books they were looking for.

“Okay… Who is fucking with me?!” She shouted and waited for an answer but heard nothing but King’s heavy footsteps, as he ran to her to see what all the noise was about. “Looks like someone has found the books for us. I don’t like this at all, there’s no way anyone should know that I was going to come to the library, let alone the books I wanted. I swear if Vilja pops up from somewhere, I’ll punch her in the face; I do not have the patience for any divine shenanigans right now!” She exclaimed, half hoping that it would cause the goddess to crawl out of a wall and admit that she was behind the note. Of course, it didn’t happen, and Anastacia was left to wonder who or what had set their sights on her, as they went on to search for the second book.

While wandering between the bookcases, looking for the right one, Anastacia started to doubt her earlier actions. “Do you think I went too far? In the throne hall I mean. Like sure, those are some of the worst people in the world, but I totally didn’t need to do that. I didn’t even go in there thinking I’d hurt them, but when I got the chance, I immediately went for it. Good people don’t do that stuff.” She rambled and nervously fiddled with the rings on her fingers.

King shrugged, either he didn’t have an opinion or couldn’t express it clearly enough, though he himself had gladly taken the first chance to kill Anastacia’s mother he came across, showing extreme indifference to the lives of the royals. So the simulacrum most likely didn’t have a problem with what she had done.

“I’m supposed to be better than all of these people but I’m starting to think I don’t do well with too much freedom either, I mean I was in that cell for a reason. It’s not like I’m doing this because I’m a good person either, if I was one, I would have come here willingly, because I’m pretty much the only one with any kind of chance against Amaranth and it would save tons of lives if I pulled this off; mostly dickhead lives but lives none the less.” She continued trying her best to make sense of her understandings of morality. “Maybe I should just swear off all killing and let you handle that part, you seem to have pretty clear idea of what you’re about. Still can’t believe you killed my mother… That’s like all a girl could ever want, someone chopping their mother in half. I don’t know what’s happening with me, but- Oh! here it is, case 45, and yup, there’s our book. Let’s just leave, okay? I don’t want to deal with this note bullshit anymore.”

The library was equipped with a few satchel bags that were perfect for carrying books, so Anastacia figured that she had earned one and shoved the 3 books into it. Though the fabric it was made of was rough, and the shoulder strap chafed a bit against her neck, it was still better than trying to carry the books without it. Her cloak was still damp, so she just threw it over her shoulder before they left The Library of Mournvalley behind and started looking for any staircases that led up.

The layout of the castle wasn’t exactly simple, it was like it had been purposefully built to have as many dead ends as possible and the entire thing was technically just a single path that circled around every floor before there was a way to climb up to the next one. And finding their way around was frustrating and time consuming to say the least. on top of that, almost every floor they passed was completely abandoned, but every now and then Anastacia could feel a few necromancers huddled together, hiding in some of the bedrooms. She chose to not disturb them since there was nothing she could or wanted to do for them anyway. Some of them were definitely on the young side and it did bother her slightly, but all she could do was press on and not think about it.

One of the things that helped her to stay distracted was the barren furnishing of the castle. She had always assumed that the people of the castle, that weren’t prisoners at least, had lived relatively comfortably by Mournvalley’s standards, but almost all rooms they looked into were barely better than her cell and mostly just better lit. She didn’t know whose bedrooms they were, but even her room at the inn crushed them comfort wise. Anastacia had always known that there wasn’t that much wealth to go around in her home country, and that most of it was spent to stay fed no matter how high up in the ranks you were, but she had still expected more from the denizens of the royal castle.

“Honestly, I was going to steal a bunch of stuff but there really isn’t anything here that I can’t just buy back in Valor…” She admitted and peeked into a wardrobe on one of the abandoned rooms they visited thinking it could have been the way forward but found nothing but the same old robes and boring personal items. “This room even has a balcony, how is the interior still garbage? Coquelicot really needs to figure out how to make some money and maybe get some carpets or something, all this stone is really cold to walk on. Maybe a suit of armor here and there, castles are supposed to have those – mine will definitely have tons.”

After a dozen more corridors and twice as many dead ends, they had finally managed to find a staircase that would take them all the way to the rooftop and the supposed garden on it. Anastacia checked, double-checked and triple-checked that there was nothing else besides a single old woman waiting for them. Unlike all the royals before, Amaranth showed no signs of nervousness or terror when she definitely could feel Anastacia so close by. If anything, her heartbeat was on the slow side, even for her age. It could have been just her experience as an inquisitor keeping her calm or that she had some kind of master plan up her sleeve, but either way it made Anastacia extremely uncomfortable.

The last set of stairs were a part of a small tower that was the highest point of the castle and the exit to the rooftop was only a partway up them. There was no point in making an attack plan, since they had no real info to go on and nothing to use, so Anastacia and King had to just step out and face whatever was coming.