On the third day, Leandro asked David to let him handle whatever beast Jordo was going to point out, saying he wanted to make use of the excellent training opportunity.

  David was pretty sure he didn't mean for himself, and was proven right when, mid-morning, Jordo alerted the group to a couple of Amaroks, Leandro called up Sybil and Sammie.

  While the pair, under the supervision of the knight-general, went off to deal with the oversized wolf-like creatures, and Jordo kept on the lookout for more beasts, Niala walked up to David.

  He knew she had something on her mind, a sentiment of unease having bled through their link shortly after they'd begun their trip. He guessed she had been waiting for a private moment to talk to him about it.

  As the sounds of battle reached them, she spoke up. “Do you think we're doing the right thing?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Going up to an ancient library on a fool's errand?”

  She stared at him for a moment. “You also think we won't find anything? Caleb seemed so certain.”

  He shook his head. “Caleb had very little to lose in proposing his plan. He knows it's a long shot, but he's betting on us coming out of this unscathed. It's about as risk-free a chance as he could get away with.”

  She scratched her head. “Well... I'm still not sure what he stands to gain from this, apart from those taxes he talked about, but I was more thinking about the natives.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her ears twitched. “Is leaving them in the living vault really the best thing? It's full of fels, and they're living in maintenance rooms. Maybe relocating them would be the best?”

  He hummed. “We talked about this, remember? Moving a few thousand people safely through the hungerwoods would be... an achievement, without even knowing where to plop them down afterwards.”

  She sighed, staying silent for a few seconds. “And the library, if you don't think we'll find anything, why are we even going?”

  He shrugged. “I think we'll find something, I just don't think it'll be what Caleb thinks we'll find. That aside, even if we don't find anything that would allow us to lay claim to the living vault, I'm more interested in finding a way to keep your weaving from having you carried off to the Library.”

  “And you think we'll find something like that at the... huh... library? The ancient one, not the weaver's one.”

  “Honestly? No, but I think it's worth at least checking out.”

  They listened to the sounds of battle for a while. Nobody was screaming, and they could hear beastly whimpers. The fight seemed to be going well.

  David spoke without looking at her. “I've tried thinking about a way to keep you out of the Library if your weaving was revealed, but apart from going to war with the kingdom, I haven't got a clue.”

  She chuckled. “You'd go to war with the kingdom for me?”

  He nodded solemnly. “Of course.”

  Her lips tugged into a smile as she stepped closer and leaned against him. He put an arm around her shoulders and planted a small kiss on her head.

  Her ears wiggled. “I haven't really thought of a way either. What Caleb proposed, to become foreign dignitaries... as crazy as it sounds, it still seems like the easiest solution. I'm a bit scared of what will happen if we manage, though. It's not like we'd have an actual country to support us.”

  He snorted. “And yet, if the Amberfall crown goes along with Caleb's plan, it wouldn't matter. Their endorsement would make it official.”

  “...I hate that it makes sense, in an insane way.”

  He smiled. “That's politics for you. You'd cry, or maybe laugh, at the things I've heard when my Father had me attend meetings.”

  “Hmm, I heard plenty at my father's balls and receptions, you know?”

  “Do you want to trade stories, see who's got the worst one?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Please, no. I ran away because of those receptions. I really don't want to try and remember.”

  He smiled and squeezed her against him, realizing a second later that the sounds of combat had disappeared.

  Sybil and Sammie, followed by Leandro, walked around a copse of trees, the two guards looking fine, if maybe a bit dusty and tired.

  Leandro, with a huge smile, announced that the training session had been a huge success and asked Jordo and David to let the three of them handle all encounters from now on.

  David readily agreed, ignoring the disbelieving stare that Sammie was giving him.

  Sybil, strangely, looked happy about the arrangement.

  Her attitude changed quickly on the fourth day, when Leandro asked Jordo to avoid fewer creatures, so they could have more than one or two “training sessions” every day.

  Leandro tried to motivate the two by saying that they had Niala's potions, should either of them suffer injuries.

  Sammie argued that, even if they could be healed, injuries still hurt. The Knight-General countered that pain was the best teacher.

  All further complaints were ignored.

  The fourth day turned into the fifth, then the sixth, and the seventh. Their progress was a bit slower than planned, due to the number of fights Leandro was having his two proteges go through, but David figured it would, at most, add one or two days to the already weeks-long trip.

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  Nothing to be concerned about. They had plenty of food stored in his cargo cloths.

  A week of travel had them reach the outer limits of the adventurer's zone of activity. Only the most experienced or daring ventured this far out, and by the ninth day, it began to show in the relatively pristine state of ruins they encountered.

  They still did little more than look at them from afar, not interested in stirring up trouble for no reason. They also began offering insights into what the Luminous Reign had been as a country.

  Their architecture tended to the grand, making heavy use of hewn stones, with lots of arches and monolithic parts. Everything seemed to be a display of technical prowess first, and function second. As if every architect and builder wanted to demonstrate they could build in the most inefficient way possible. Sammie didn't have any other explanations for why walls would be single slabs of rock, instead of layered bricks.

  Jordo had replied that it was indeed the case. Between the relatively cheap Golem labour and advanced magitech machinery, such as giant cranes, what appeared to be feats of engineering to them were relatively common practices back then.

  On the eleventh day, Jordo was able to direct the group to what had been a major highway. Although much of it had been reclaimed by nature, there still remained vestiges of the road, which offered a relatively clear path through the forest.

  At this point, the ruins became more numerous and extensive. The golem explained that they were entering what had been considered the Reign's core lands, and he expected the still-standing ruins to grow in number.

  This held true for the twelfth day, but on the thirteenth, the ruins suddenly stopped, as did the highway. The land became more broken, with small hills and depressions covering the land, many of them ending or starting with an escarpment.

  Small streams and ponds multiplied, and the flora became much more varied, with the uneven land offering a large variety of environments.

  Which meant that, of course, Niala began spotting several rare or interesting plants.

  She managed to hold herself together for a whole three bells before begging to have the column halt so she could gather “a few samples.” David was very proud of her for having held on for so long.

  He also knew what “a few samples” meant, and went looking for a nearby spot to set up the travelling shack.

  They resumed their travel the next day.

  Over the next few days, the scenery alternated between the strange, haphazard terrain and stretches where the highway, along with extensive ruins, reappeared.

  On the fourteenth day, they came across the remnants of a large, mostly rusted-away machine, half-embedded into the ground. It was made of a long, central, oblong part, with a long, tapered part attached mid-way at a right angle.

  Jordo was unable to identify what it might have been. Niala remarked that the central, oblong part, to which a long, flattened part was attached mid-way, reminded her of the volantes from the Fairlands. David immediately saw the similarity. Both wondered if, perhaps, volantes had been a thing back during the Reign.

  The golem said that nothing in his memory matched their description. He posited that the ancient library might have an answer for them.

  On the fifteenth day, late in the afternoon, as they crested a small hill, they finally laid eyes on their destination.

  The adventurers had described it as a “large, cathedral-like building, surprisingly well-preserved.”

  David suspected that the adventurers hadn't known what those words really meant.

  The thing was massive. The ruins around them, the larger ones, were about a hundred meters wide, maybe two or three stories tall.

  The library was five times that, at a minimum. It imposed itself upon the land, shooting up into the sky, with spires and buttresses built along its length and on top of each other. A central tower rose up, maybe twenty stories tall. There was no way to know just how high it had been, as the top was missing, having seemingly tumbled to the side, crashing into the building below.

  The strange part was that the amount of damage this had done appeared to be minimal. Windows had been shattered, and plenty of debris were strewn about, but the outer wall and roof persisted, although they appeared rougher than the surrounding area.

  Apart from that bit of damage, however, the building could have passed for something abandoned a few years ago, and not for the thousands of years it had existed.

  After laying his eye upon the structure, Jordo was able to confirm his suspicion: this was, indeed, an archive. The Radiant Archive, in fact. If the various repositories strewn about the Luminous Kingdom had been vaults of knowledge, this was the fount from which all such knowledge flowed.

  The golem, with a bit of pride in his voice, rattled off some numbers, most of which seemed nonsensical. There was no way this building could contain five million books.

  Jordo then explained that, like many Reign buildings, they were only seeing the top. There were vast underground layers, where the majority of the works were stored in climate-controlled rooms. The top-side structure was mainly for publicly available works, visitor centres, rooms for events, and classrooms for supplementary courses.

  Given the time of the day, and that the archive was still a few bells of march away, Jordo suggested getting closer but camping early, giving everyone extra bells of rest before beginning their exploration in earnest.

  Sybil and Sammie gave their immediate approval, though their votes didn't really count.

  They went along with Jordo's suggestion; it was better to start early in the morning and well rested, especially if there were defence golems still active, as the previous adventurers had reported.

  And so, they made their way to the periphery of the archive and made camp in what had been a public park.

  In the evening, Jordo, who had thus far always been the nighttime guardian for the group, walked into the shack and asked Leandro if he could take up watch outside with the two azure guards for a little while.

  As the trio left, he turned toward his masters.

  “Sir, Madam. I have a topic I wish to broach with you. It is, unfortunately, a concerning one, and I have struggled in finding the appropriate time to inform you.”

  David and Niala looked at each other before returning their sights to their majordomo.

  “Go ahead,” David said.

  Jordo bowed his head in thanks and explained how he doubted that Leviathan had been materialized. That, instead, he suspected he might have been incarnated, of a sort.

  His masters displayed the expected reaction: puzzlement, denial, and concern.

  David pinched the bridge of his nose. “If... if I didn't materialize my mana. How in the pits... How do I do it, Jordo?”

  The golem's eye blinked. “I do not know, sir. I am still running through the materialization experiments that were stored in the repository, but, so far, the results are inconclusive.”

  He tilted his head. “I do wish to remind sir and madam that it had always been nothing but a theoretical possibility. As Geralt had pointed out at the time, none of the experiments had been successful.”

  Niala looked up at David, taking his hand in hers, feeling him squeeze back. She turned her head toward Jordo. “If you're telling us now that means you think we might find something in the archive to help David?”

  The golem nodded. “Indeed, madam. The repositories are vaults of knowledge, but they are limited. The Radiant Archive had no such limitation. It was the single greatest collection of information throughout the Reign. This provides both an opportunity and a possible complication.”

  David frowned. “What kind of complication?”

  “That not all knowledge contained within the archive was available to all. In fact, the majority of works were kept under lock. While a good portion of it simply required one to be a citizen in good standing, I would think that the information we are looking for will be... harder to access.”

  “Wouldn't my being a scion give me access?”

  Jordo's eye flashed. “Unfortunately, your status as a scion is not official. While I call you a scion, because you are, under the definition of the term, the actual recognition requires the proper forms and approvals. Such a process will be difficult to complete, seeing as there are certainly no living individuals able to approve such forms.”

  David sighed. “I guess we'll have to punch our way through, then.”

  The golem angled his head. “Possibly. We will have to see, tomorrow, the state of the archive's defences. They were, during its heydays, quite substantial.”

  The young man sighed once more, slumping back into his chair. “I guess we'll see...”

  Niala shook his hand, catching his attention. He looked at her, finding a big smile on her face. He quirked an eyebrow, asking a silent question.

  Her smile widened a bit. “It'll be fine. I bet the architects didn't plan for a weaver with access to unlimited mana when they made those defences.”

  David's eyes widened, and then he mirrored her smile.