The other side of the door opened into a cavernous space after a short passage. The ceiling was far too high and the room too long to fit anywhere inside the Justiciar Law building let alone the offices. No, this room was the size of a football field by Ian’s estimation. All along the walls were muted purple lights though they had no visible source. The lighting only served to highlight the emptiness of the room. Black marble streaked with veins of white created ornate pillars that held up a ceiling lost high above in the shadows. The only objects in the room of any significance were the doors. Lining the walls were doors of all shapes and sizes. Some were modern looking with deadbolts and brass spherical knobs others were ancient complex carvings hewn from stone in the faces of dragons.

“This can’t be right. This place is massive. Is it a trick from the magical lock that we broke?” Ian asked.

“No, this is right,” Ban said as his eyes moved down a line of doors. “These doors must all lead here, wherever here is. We’d need Roland to confirm but I suspect those doors lead all over Paragore. We must find the one that leads deeper inside.”

When it became apparent they were alone, they stepped farther into the room. With there being so many ingresses and egresses it was pointless to attempt to keep watch. Ian nervously hummed “One of these things is not like the other” while trying to find a way out.

“There is a door in the corner over there,” Vale whispered, “It is not obvious like the rest. Someone wants it hidden.”

They moved in a triangle towards the indicated door. Ian stayed in front, Vale and Ban moved backward behind him. They were attempting, as best as three people can, to prepare for anything to pounce from any angle. They made it through the hall unmolested. Now that they were upon the door, Ian found it lacked a handle to twist. But it was no less clear that it was a door. Wooden slats banded together with iron in a broad square.

“There’s no way in," Ian whispered.

“Trade," Ban said and the pair changed places. With nothing to lose and all to gain, Ban stepped up and shoved on it, hard. The door popped back into the wall and became flush; the sound of a click echoed after. The door slid sideways into the wall and the way was open as yellow light poured out from the opening temporarily blinding them.

The adjoining room was the most lavish room any of them had ever set foot in. There were fur skin rugs laid out before an elaborate onyx fireplace. Risque carvings of men and women had been etched into the sides of the firepit. Overhead a massive chandelier provided the warm yellow light; its frame was gold and the crystals were diamonds the size of a man. It was exactly how Ian imagined a supervillain would live.

“I don’t like this. Are they underestimating us? Did they expect the chimera to handle us?” Ian asked.

No one responded.

They crossed the gallery studying the opulent decorations they passed. Around every pillar rested marble statues or more carvings. Unidentifiable antiquities nestled into velvet pillows that sat atop breathtaking wooden sculptures and precious stones were embedded in all of it. Everything was excessive to the point of being ridiculous. There were several more grandiose wooden doors leading out from this room all identical in shape, carving, size, and every other discernible feature. But there was no Star Chart or anything close to resembling a scroll, book, or post-it. So Ian did the most logical thing he could think of.

“Eenie-meenie-minie-moe, catch a tiger by its toe…” At the end of the rhyme, Ian’s finger landed on the third door to the left of where he started. He felt a pull in his gut and to him that was confirmation enough.

“Is that some manner of spell to determine the correct door?” Ban asked. “I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“As long as you don’t need me to explain how it works, yes, it’s definitely a spell,” Ian said. He couldn’t precisely explain the sensation he’d been feeling since his arrival on Paragore. It was the way the hairs rose along the back of his neck warning him of danger. It was the small, incessant, tugs at his gut directing him where to look or move. It wasn’t the same as the instinct he’d developed over his years as a cop but it wasn’t blind luck either. It was as though he’d developed an entirely new sense, a primal sense of survival. And he wasn’t quite ready to share that fact with his companions. He needed more time to figure it out himself.

Past the Gallery of Opulence and through the randomly chosen door was a vast library. Yellow crystals hung from the ceiling at regular intervals revealing an unbroken line of bookshelves. The shelves stretched on as far as the eye could see. Each shelf housed thick tomes, books of every size, and bundles of loose parchment tied into neat stacks. There were sprawling oakalla tables littered with open books and parchments just inside the doorway.

“If I were a Chart, what better place to be than an infinite library?” Ian asked, more to himself than the others.

They crossed the threshold each of them scanning the open books and scrolls on the tables. One red leather-bound tome on the nearest table called to Ian and he found himself drifting toward it. Seductively it whispered secrets and knowledge that could be his if he only reached out and touched it. He knew he’d felt this way before, at the lake in the woods, but he couldn’t remember why it had been so dangerous. After all what could be the harm in looking? His hand was mere inches away when Ban’s thick fingers clamped around his wrist.

“Do not touch,” Ban said as he pulled Ian back. “There are many magical tomes here and like all magical things they seek use. If you listen to them, they will promise you the world but at the cost of your soul. Block them out any way that you can.”

Ian came out of the daze and shook his head to clear it making a silent nod of thanks to Ban. From that point on Ian did his best to block out the pitiable sounds that echoed in his mind. It was like having a mewling, hungry tiger in his head. He started reciting police codes, Delving and Demons rules, and any other odd fact he could call from his memory. The more he recited the duller the sound became until it was as soft as the purr of a kitten and then nothing at all.

Vale left Ian and Ban at the tables and moved deeper into the library. Her attention was drawn to the high shelves on the left. These shelves extended out from the wall forming aisles between them. The aisles were wide, far too wide. She guessed they were twelve feet across and it made her wonder if it was for show or necessity. There were many creatures she could think of that would be happy to guard such a wealth of knowledge and none of them took kindly to intruders. She pulled her bow from her back and nocked an arrow as she continued down the path between the towering stacks.

Ban and Ian split up to cover either side of the many tables with their many books. Ian drifted through seemingly random books with increasing frustration. Most of them were written in languages he didn’t understand and some of them called out to him as the red-bound book had. It made it increasingly difficult to concentrate on his search. He soon found himself at the center table where an exceptionally thick book rested, and what’s more, he could read it. As he flipped through the pages, he realized it was an index and he began flipping madly through the pages.

“I found an index,” Ian called as quietly as he could to Ban.

“Good, find the Chart, I’ll go get Vale. Don’t wander off alone.” The minotaur said and left to retrieve Vale.

It took Ian the better part of an hour to find what they were looking for. And every minute he expected they would be caught. He couldn’t fathom how anyone could read a tenth of what was in this place in a lifetime. Titles like: How to serve Dragon and the Do’s and Don’ts of Spells. His personal favorite was the title: Recall the Unknowable. At the back of the index was a map that marked off the sections of the Librus Infanaitum (as the index called it). Once he understood the layout, it was easy to look for the Star Chart.

“I got it, this way.” Ian took off leading his companions to a nearby aisle and then to an alcove in the back where an ornate scroll rack resided.

The rack was recessed into the alcove and held perhaps forty scrolls. A few slots were empty. Ian began rifling through them searching for his Star Chart. The scrolls themselves varied in size. Some as long as Ian could stretch his arms, others were less than a foot. All of them custom-fitted to the slot on the rack they resided in. Each scroll had a braided blue string hanging from the bottom creating a pull-tab. On his seventh try he found it.

Star Chart was an underwhelming term for the document. The picture on the parchment mirrored the many published images that Ian had seen taken from the Hubble Telescope. Except there was one major difference, this image was moving. The millions of stars that created the galaxy Ian held in his hand made subtle shifts. He caught the flash as a star went supernova, then the document zoomed in of its own accord. Galaxies popped up, solar systems flashed by, individual planets flipped past, and then it zoomed back out coming to rest on a nebula the color of the ocean depths. And at long last, he beheld the spiral galaxy of the Milky Way.

“Ha, here it is!” Ian said in triumph. He pulled the Chart from the rack and clenched it tightly in his fist. He got down from the scroll rack and when his foot touched the floor, the lights snuffed out.

“Aw frak,” Ban spat.