Anna had told me almost every time I had asked that the library was empty.

I had thought that she meant that there was no one else within it when she was, like how our quarters would be empty without her there. She may have, but the library of Lun Arcanicil was empty in a much grander sense of the word as well.

Far too dark and cold, I was suddenly grateful for the grey wool of my stockings and the ability for my uniform coat to button closed. I walked forward until I came to an iron railing that was painfully cold to the touch. Nothing lay beyond it or below it, only the seemingly bottomless chasm that hollowed out the middle of the place as far down as I could see.

The sight of it made me think of an emptied glass of milk and how the little liquid that remained once it was drained would cling to the walls of the cup.

Just as the one I found myself on, the balconies underneath me wrapped around the square space and were so thick with darkness that I could barely see the bookshelves that filled them.

From a first glance, I was unimpressed with the size. That was not Lun's fault, I was certain that there was no library in all of chaos that could compete with the near infinite place inside my mind, but it just seemed so small in comparison.

The only light in the place that I could see was far below where I stood. Ten or eleven floors down, I could not be sure because counting was not my sharpest skill even when I had proper lighting, cold white light threw long shadows against the railing and shelves opposite it.

In those shadows, I could see the distorted shape of a person.

"Hello? Anna?" I called down to the shape as I squinted to see if it was the raven haired girl I sought.

There was no answer and the shape's shadow did not move.

I was not surprised. In a place that I had become comfortable with talking to a bubble and taking stairs that sang to me, I knew there was probably some working that had been put in place to keep the library quiet.

Libraries were supposed to be quiet, Anna had taught me that after I had almost gotten her thrown out of the small one in Erosette.

I turned away from the railing and fumbled around in the dark until I found a staircase leading down.

Wishing that I had spent the short amount of time it likely would have taken for me to learn how to make a werelight with every perilous step I had to take in the darkness, I kept my arms wrapped tightly around myself to try to ward off the cold. Every floor down I went, I would go back to the balcony's edge and call out to her again.

"Anna? How can you stand this? It's colder than it is out in the snow!" I yelled from the second balcony.

Down I went.

"Anna! Coach! Ms. Lao!" I tried from the third.

The further I descended, the colder it grew and if it had not been for my under layer, I would have been a shivering mess by the time I left the fourth floor.

On the off chance she was ignoring me because I was being very not quiet in the library, I changed my strategy. If she would not answer, I would provoke her into it.

"You know how I have this bad habit of exposing myself to people? Well, it happened again. I sneezed in class and," I snapped my fingers and sent a sharp echo bouncing off the bookshelves behind me. "Just like that, I fell out of my clothes."

I was beginning to get annoyed. I knew that the shape in the light was her, it had to be, and she was not talking to me. The air was stale and salty smelling and no part of me wished to be in the library any longer.

Six floors down from where I had started, I didn't even bother walking all the way to the balcony. I just shouted from within the pitch black stairs.

"I figured it out. When I was in the covery this morning, I went soul searching again. I know why she is scared of me, Anna!" I said. It wasn't a lie. I never wanted to lie to her for any reason. It was a trick.

Tricks weren't lies if the person I was tricking was ignoring me.

At least, telling myself that in the moment made me feel better about saying something to her that was not true.

"Alright, I didn't do that!" I called out as I passed by another balcony. We had both been working so hard since my super secret training.

Every free moment and long night she had spent supporting me in the last few days, I should have never tried to trick her. If I had needed food or something to drink, she had gotten it for me. When she had needed to catch me or hold me after I had fallen, she had done it. All the times I had needed gentle encouragement or the hard push she could give as my coach, she had known which.

Then there were the drawings. With nothing but my memory of the single glance I had gotten at my soul to go by, she had tried to draw what I had seen so many times that the side of her hand had turned black with ink.

I had never been able to describe it to her well enough for her to get it and so far, I had been unable to see my soul for a second time.

Still, she had not complained once.

And I had tried to trick her.

I was awful.

"I'm sorry! I love you! You deserve so much better than me!" I shouted down from the next balcony I reached. I didn't know which it was, I had lost count somewhere along the way.

Much closer to where the cold white light was coming from, the shape that I thought was Anna stood much more clearly on my right.

I had been right about two things. My shouting had been at the person I had meant it to be, and there must have been a working or charm that kept the library quiet because if there had not been, I would have scared the one I loved off the railing she balanced atop.

She was wearing my cuffed boots and the middle of them rested atop the iron railing several floors below me.

I could not see her face and she was perfectly still.

A terrible vision flashed through my mind that felt so real I almost thought it had happened. It was one of the girl I loved losing her balance and being swallowed by the hollow darkness in front of her.

"Get down! What are you doing?" I screamed, panic pushing me back towards the stairs. Faster than I thought I had ever moved before, I threw myself down each step with no regard for my footing.

I counted the floors wrong and came tearing out of the stairwell one level too low.

"Hold on! I'm coming!" I shouted up instead of down and nearly broke my face against the cold stone of the stairs as I climbed.

My power was at my palm and the blue light of my eyes were staining the walls before I ever set foot on the floor Anna was on.

I turned to my right and rounded the corner.

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Anna still balanced on the railing, nothing but her stillness keeping her there.

With one sweep of my left arm, I brought my azure cord out of me with a sharp crack.

I swung my arm forward and rolled my wrist outward.

My cord curled through the air in a wicked wave and wrapped itself around Anna's waist. I threw myself back on the heels of my boots and the cord pulled taught.

Anna was snatched back from the railing and all of her landed straight onto all of me.

Something sharp, likely one of her elbows or shoulders dug into the flat part of my chest with a stab of pain.

"Let go of me!" Anna demanded as she flailed against my aura and my hands.

Nearly all the air was driven from my lungs as we struggled against one another on the frigid floor, but I came out as the victor.

With both her arms pinned beneath my knees and my teeth clinched in anger, I growled at her as I tried to rub the pain from my chest. "What were you doing standing up there like that? What if you fell?"

"Autumn? Standing? What are-why did you-get off me!" The blue light of my aura reflecting in her dark eyes, she took it into her hands and a shiver shook through her. "Get rid of this, you're gonna get in trouble!"

"I thought this place was empty? Who's gonna catch me? I'm the one that does stupid things like that, not you. That's how this is supposed to work." I said angrily, my will making me feel right in being mad.

She huffed and tried to unpin her arms. "Autumn. I'm not asking. Get off of me."

I did as she said and released my working because I knew deep down that she was right. My azure cord fell away into dust around us, but the loss from my working laid me low before I could move off of her.

I sagged down with a weary sigh. The knees of my stockings slid back off her arms easily and my head dropped to her chest as a dizzy faintness threatened to put me to sleep.

"I'm trying." I whispered weakly, knowing what would come next.

Anna relaxed and wrapped her arms around me.

I don't know if her anger left her or if she had just put it away to comfort me through my afterglow, but the thought of either encouraged the already oncoming tears to spill down my face and stain the front of her shirt.

"Hey, everything is okay. I'm sorry I got mad at you for pulling me down." She said softly.

"Precept Seram was sad. I came to find her clues," I muttered through my tears. My afterglow truly was not that bad, but the panic and fear that I had felt at Anna's perching made me feel worse than I would have if all I had done was make my cord. "You scared me. I'm sorry I snatched you, but I thought you were gonna fall."

She lifted me up gently and made me look at her. "I'm okay, I promise. I was looking for a book and I didn't want to walk all the way over there. I guess I got a little carried away."

A tear rolled down to the tip of my chin and dropped straight down onto her lips.

"That would have been you if you fell." I sniffled as I wiped her mouth with the end of my coat sleeve.

She licked her lips. "Salty?"

"No. You'd break apart. I'd have to come wipe you up." I said, the small sorrow of my afterglow already beginning to fade because of her.

Her nose scrunched and a wicked smile came over her face. "You could put what's left me in your vial and then I'd be with you all the time."

"I just have to learn how to make a bubble. Then you can stay in one piece." I sighed, sitting up and pressing my hands into the sore spot on my chest.

Anna laughed and pushed herself up with her arms. I shifted over her as she shifted under me and the next thing I knew, I was sitting in her lap with our faces only a finger's length away from one another.

"I'm gonna pretend that I understand what that means," She said, her tone becoming an entirely different kind of soft. "You know, we've been so busy with the soul searching and all, that we never finished what I started in the hall the other day."

For some completely unexplainable reason, I no longer cared about Precept Seram's clues. The cold and the stale, salty, smell of the library no longer mattered. Anna being on the ledge was a distant memory.

All that mattered was how close our lips were and the look in her dark eyes that made me undeniably certain that I would do whatever she asked me to. All that mattered was the way her body gave way to mine. The way she relaxed under my weight and fit to my shape, it was an invitation to get even closer than we already were.

"This place is empty?" I asked, barely able to care that we were out in the open. None of Lun's six rules said anything about an Underwitch and her mortal partner kissing in the library, but if it was forbidden, I would surely be the one to get caught.

"Not any more." She smiled and leaned forward to close the small distance between us.

Just before our lips met, a sudden bang sounded in the dark place from somewhere to our right.

"What was that?" Anna snapped, all the softness leaving her words and her body.

"It was nothing." I asserted, trying to bring her attention back to me.

The bang sounded again and then the sound of heavy footsteps began to echo out of the darkness.

"That doesn't sound like nothing. That definitely sounds like something. You said that the other girls say this place is haunted?" Anna asked, real fear in her voice.

She slid herself out from under me.

I dropped to the floor in sheer disappointment and defeat.

From a small hook on one of the bookshelves, she took the source of the pale white light into her hands.

"It's not haunted. It's guarded by a spirit." I muttered as I stood, more concerned with what wasn't happening than I was with what was.

"Spirits glow, Autumn. Like Opa does." Anna said as she stepped over and hid behind me.

The stumbling rhythm of the footsteps grew ever closer and stopped with another sudden bang.

Anna raised the little lantern up by my side and turned its white light towards the sound.

There was no spirit standing before us.

There was only a man.

An almost completely naked man.

The oversized hood that covered most of the man's face ran down to what would have been a very nice robe if it had not been open and exposing the rest of its wearer.

Only a small undergarment kept his crotch concealed, and it was only the shelf he had fallen against that kept him upright.

His body was cut with lean muscle, like Mother Gwyn looked in her little black body suit, and there was a half empty bottle of some kind of spirit clutched in his right hand.

"Why's there? Who are you yelling?" He said, his words slurring as he lifted the bottle and took a long drink from it.

"I think he is drunk." I whispered to Anna, finding the crooked way he was standing far too difficult to not laugh at.

In a great heave, he threw himself off the shelf and held the bottle towards us with a pointed finger. "No yelling. This is a library. What are- what are you doing here?"

"Reading books?" Anna said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

The man hiccuped and gave a wobbly show of crossing his arms. "Oh. Good. That's what you're supposed to do here."

"Who are you?" Anna asked as the drunk man turned on his heels and started stumbling back the way he had come.

"Geez," He laughed as he left the lantern light and rejoined the darkness. "Dark in here. Turn on a light."

I think both of us were too stunned to really understand what we had just seen. We watched the man walk away in complete silence and stayed that way until someone cleared their throat behind us.

Anna whipped around and turned the pale white light of her lantern onto Alexei.

"Was that a proper way for me to approach you, Lady Anna? I would not want you to think that I meant to creep up on you." My guard asked, his one white eye staring off in the direction the man had gone.

"No," Anna snapped before asking a question in a very demanding tone. "Do you know who that was?"

"Every library has a librarian. You just met Lun's" Alexei said simply as if the encounter Anna and I had just had was no different than it would have been if we had met any other librarian.

I couldn't help it any longer. I had held my tongue for as long as I possibly could. I took Anna by her shoulders and turned her to me. "Did you see his-"

"Yes." She smiled and her nose scrunched again.

Laughter took the both of us.

At first, I was laughing at what we had seen. Then, that gave way to laughing at Anna laughing. She began to laugh at how hard I was, and I lost track of myself after that. It was only when I was doubled over and the muscles of my middle had begun to ache that I was able to settle myself so I could catch my breath.

"If you are both done now, I would like to know why there was so much yelling." Alexei said when he could finally get a word in.

Before either of us could answer, the librarian yelled out from the darkness he had disappeared into.

"Turning on the lights!" His voice echoed over to us before yet another hiccup cut him off.

The sound of his voice nearly sent me into another fit, but what I saw next overpowered the memory of what I had seen before.

The shape of him came to light in the darkness of the distant stairwell.

It was not white, but blue, and it shone from his palm as he pressed his hand against the grey stone of the wall.

As the lights in the library cast out the darkness that had filled it only moments before, I became certain of one thing.

The librarian was not just a nearly naked drunk.

The librarian of Lun Arcanicil was a sorcerer.

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