“Your silly legends led us to a dead end, Sable,” chided Calsoon. He stood at the top of a cliff edge. Unlike the others that he had found along the New Estinian shore, this one was not jagged and mangled with crags, roots, and rocks, but a polished stone, glossy like a well-built library or mage school. Reaching over the edge he rubbed his hand against the smooth, glass-like stone. Warm to the touch as if baking in the sun all day.

Calsoon looked to the sky. Overcast, like every other day he spent searching for the seal. How odd.

“Hold your tongue, demon, and you might learn something.” Sable held a large leather-bound tome in her arms. The pages were old and could crumble to powder if she was not delicate. The ancient script in the book was written in a mixture of common and angelic tongue. Under her arm she held a scrolled map of Mervious, the land that had become New Estinia.

Sable moved her finger along the lines of the words, reading out loud.

“To the west of Sik J’Dio Sahde Alanoon stood the largest library constructed by either man or angel. A tower of knowledge that housed vast secrets and histories of the universe to be shared with anyone with eyes to see and minds to understand.

“The angels named it ‘Sel Rosh Rueh’. Which translates to‘Our House of Wisdom’ in the common tongue.

“It was a fitting name, so we all agreed upon it.”

Calsoon rolled his eyes. “If you know where Sik-something or other is, why do you need to seek the library?”

Sable looked up from her page. Her face retched in annoyance. “I have a map to tell me where the library is, but I haven’t the slightest idea where the underground city of Sik J’Dio Sahde Alanoon is.”

Calsoon threw up his hands. “There is nothing but ocean out there! I see no library!”

“Patience, dear Calsoon. The demons are in the details. Allow me to read on?”

Calsoon frowned but nodded. His spaded tail swooshed about as he moaned for Sable to just get to the point.

“Sel Rosh Rueh stood as a pinnacle of innovation and progression for decades, until they brought their war to Mervious. It had been foretold, and we knew of its coming, but alas, we were caught unaware when sword and strife were brought down upon us.

“The demons and angels fought, their power beyond that of the common man or elf. Finally, the ‘wielder’ arrived with his five heralds by his side. This was the day we had dreaded the most. For none had ever survived in the wake of the ‘Thell Yol’Roth O’blivis—”

“In common?” Calsoon interrupted with agitation in his voice.

“You should really learn your enemy’s tongue,” she sighed. “It would literally translate to ‘Weapon of the Sky Destroyer’, but I think you of all people would know what man called it.” Sable gave Calsoon a coy smile.

Calsoon’s mouth dropped open, his eyes wide with a mixture of wonderment and fear. “By Thorton’s spear, The Skyripple!”

“Yes, quite literally, ‘Thorton’s Spear’,” said Sable. She continued to read.

“With one thrust of his lance, Thorton wiped out an entire legion of demons, but likewise swept away the armies of men, elves, and angels. Our library, too, was razed in the wake of this mighty weapon. For the ground itself severed from the mainland and collapsed into the ocean. Forever, all who perished on that day will rest underneath the sea.”

Calsoon crouched down to examine the Skyripple’s handywork. This was where the lance tip struck the ground, the rock around it melted instantly and turned to glass. The stone never grew cold over time, the power of the Skyripple was that great.

Sable closed her book and shoved it into her haversack. “We now know that the library is under the ocean. Can your shadow magic bring us into the structure?”

“Is it imperative that we risk death by drowning to find this city?”

Sable folded her arms. “Would you rather tell our master we were unable to find the city because you were afraid to drown?”

Calsoon slapped his hands together and rubbed them vigorously. “Time for a swim!”

***

From a cloud of shadows, Sable and Calsoon apparated down in the sunless depths. Water rushed through Sable’s nose and began to suffocate her lungs. She let out a muffled scream as precious air bubbles escaped her mouth.

With desperate movement she scryed a white shimmering rune over her palm. The light illuminated her bleak surroundings and instantly formed a sphere of oxygen around her. The magic pushed away the water and once again Sable could breath. She frantically searched for her servant, finding him thrashing below her. She extended her magical bubble and pulled him to safety.

“You idiot!” she blurted out. “Your blunder nearly killed us!”

Calsoon heaved and huffed, sucking in the enchanted air. “Forgive—me—Sable,” he struggled to speak any words at this point. Even demons could not breathe water. “I—I didn’t—know—”

“Take some time to breathe, Calsoon. I need your wits and shadow control to find the library. Concentrate. Locate the library in your mind, do as Master Wrasyln taught you.”

Calsoon clasped his hands and closed his eyes. He slowed down his racing heart and calmed his mind.

“Feel for each surface of shadow. Sense what it touches. The sea, its floor, its creatures, coral, rock formations. What else do you sense?”

Calsoon strained his muscles, reaching further and further, as far as his power could take him. He was not Wraslyn, but the vampire trained him well—well enough to… locate… the… library!

“I found it!” he shouted in joy.

Sable took a hold of Calsoon’s hand. “Good, now bring us to it.”

***

Sable scanned the rubble of the once glorious Sel Rosh Rueh. However, time had not been kind to the library, nor had the sea. Collapsed pillars and walls were piled on top of one another and water cascaded through the many ceilings. Books and bones lay strewn about the ground. Caved in roofs and large boulders created walkways to the other floors. The walls were a testament to its craftsmanship, as they held up under the crushing weight of the sea.

“I doubt we could ask a librarian where we could find books about Sick Jadey,” said Calsoon as he stepped down on a brittle skull.

“Sik J’Dio Sahde Alanoon,” corrected Sable. She grunted as she struggled to lift a fallen bookshelf. “Come here, Calsoon. I have an idea.”

Calsoon cocked his head in curiosity and stepped before Wraslyn’s runecarver. He watched as she rubbed her index finger on his forehead. An aquamarine light in the form of a strange rune appeared where she touched him.

“Do not touch me with holy magic, we Skyfallen should keep far away from the enchantments of the angels,” warned Calsoon. His voice was only slightly high pitched with weariness.

“Worry not, my horn-headed friend. I am using good old fashioned water magic to write a seeking rune on you. You’ll be able to see the entire room in this library, provided you are near water.”

Calsoon’s amber eyes filled with blue light and as he swiveled his head a trail of mist followed. The demon laughed and danced around playfully.

“It’s like I have the eyes of a fly!” he giggled.

“What do you see, Calsoon?”

Calsoon leaped onto a boulder and spun around on his toes. “My vision has been split into many honeycombs of sight! With each pocket I can see every angle of this library and the more I move the more I can see! It’s fascinating!”

“You don’t spend a year studying in Jhoone without learning a few new runes.”

Calsoon chuckled. “So does Wraslyn have sight with all shadows?”

“Enough games, Calsoon, focus!” Sable quickly shifted the subject back to their search.

“Right, what am I looking for?” asked Calsoon.

Sable took out a parchment and a stick of charcoal and wrote ‘Sik J’Dio Sahde Alanoon’ onto it. “This is how you spell the city’s name. Find anything with that word on the title of a scroll or book. Shadowstep to it and retrieve it for me.”

Calsoon nodded and left Sable alone as he searched.

***

Calsoon tossed aside books and parchments with little care for their rarity and age, searching for anything that had the same words of what Sable wrote to him. He eventually came to a set of scrolls. He unraveled them and scanned the letters until he came across the underground city’s name.

Finally, he sighed.

He stowed the scrolls in his backpack. From the corner of his thirty-seventh vision he saw a glass case with a peculiar scroll inside. He moved aside a stack of books and damp papers until he found the case. Smashing it open with the butt of a dagger he delicately pulled out the scroll, not to tear it a shard of the broken glass. The paper was black and the words were written in dried blood. Something from this library he had yet to see.

Interesting.

The title of the scroll read ‘Sik Odek Dalm’na’.

He looked tilted his head and hid it in his vestments. Then he made his way back to Sable.

***

Two hours and forty-five minutes passed until Calsoon brought Sable three leather scroll slip cases. Each had a crescent circle with the pattern of flames hovering above the crescent’s edge embroidered at the top of each case.

Sable opened one slip case and read the first line to confirm that it was a scroll relating to Sik J’Dio Sahde Alanoon. She inspected the heraldry of the symbol once more.

“These look vaguely like the Dawnedge seal.” She scanned through the words of the first scroll and scoffed. “This is written in ancient elven and angelic.”

“Can you read ancient elven?” asked Calsoon.

Sable scoffed once more. “The others are also written with angelic and ancient elven as well!”

“Well, what do they say?”

Sable gently placed each scroll back into their cases. “I know very little about the ancient elven, for there aren’t many teachers left in the world that could teach it.”

“You know angelic,” said Calsoon.

“Salrothian has scholars that will teach to those that have the patience to learn, but ancient elven… those teachers are far rarer. What we need is someone that can read both languages.”

Calsoon cocked his brow and grinned. He opened a shadow portal for them.

“I supposed it is time to pay a visit to our young Mage King,” Sable said as she walked through the portal.