I leapt into the air, spinning to the side as I did to evade the thrust of a long, sharp spear made of sable dark shadow and glimmering blue crystal. I landed on the ground behind the large stone and shadow monster, lifted my wand, and cast abjure shadows. In the same instant, Jackson thrust his hand forward and did the same. Where my spell was a white tinged with streaks of blue from my ether, Jackson's version of the spell had been infused with a divine boon, transforming it to a riot of white, red, and a rich gold. As our spells crashed over the monster, Salem raised his wand and cast a sonic spell that cracked the crystal, and it exploded down into a fine powder. I rose and wiped my brow, shaking my head.

"I don't know how much longer I can go," I admitted. We had been delving for close to nine hours straight at this point, and even with us stopping to hide ourselves away in a hidden hideaway every once in a while, I was getting tired. It was less that I was out of mana or fire, and more that I was just… exhausted.

Since I'd been nonstop using Xander's massage on my spirit with the occasional Maugrim's surge, my spirit was starting to feel wrung out, like a towel that had been used so much that it was starting to become thin and see-through. My muscles might be more empowered by fire than they were by simple biology, but they were getting sore and worn out, and there was an ache in my left leg from where I'd been stabbed by a horse-shaped tentacle monster, and Jackson had been forced to do a rushed healing on it. My mind was getting tired. Brief naps inside of the hidden hideaway spell had helped, but it was still rough.

"We need a break," Jackson agreed, his voice a low rumble that conveyed every bit as much exhaustion as I felt. "But how? I suppose we could turn back and make our way to the reading room."

The thought of a nine-hour trip back to the reading room caused Salem to flinch, and I agreed with him. I thought we could do it, physically and magically speaking. It would be exhausting, but we had the strength of spell and arm to make it back. But even though I knew we physically were capable of it, emotionally speaking, it felt utterly impossible.

"Hidden hideaway? I could wake up every hour and re-cast it," I suggested. "That would work. Technically."

"Mmm," Salem said. "I don' thin' so. We're gonna have ta' wake up every hour to move to the new one. None of us coul' sleep."

I glanced down at my ring, and not for the first time, wished it would allow me to enter or exit its strange demiplane from anywhere. I ran a bit of ether into it, in the hope it would reveal a shortcut in the depths of the library, but I had no such luck.

What about summoning? I was a decent summoner, if I did say so myself, but each summon only had a limited amount of time that it was able to last before it ran out of steam. More importantly, at least to me, I wouldn't be able to use the blood price spell to negotiate for the protection of my summons while we were here. It took hundreds of silver worth of components, and I just didn't have that sitting around. I mentally reached into my locker, pushing past a sheet of papers in order to check the…

Oh. Oh!

"I have an idea," I said. "Mind you, it's not a good one. Jackson, how much healing juice do you have left?"

"Healing juice?" he asked, staring at me blankly. "Oh, you mean my healing boon. Uh. A bit. Why?"

I explained my plan, and after they agreed, I rolled up my sleeves and began to draw things out of my locker. The first thing I drew out was a few sets of spare clothes, uniforms mostly. Then next came a normal knife, and my hydra knife, blank papers, and papers already covered in spellglyphs.

"Do any of you have weapons?" I asked. "It would be best with swords, but whatever it is, I can still animate the clothes to create warriors. I'm just best with a sword or a knife. I'll animate whatever spare suits of clothing you all have, if you have any."

Jackson pulled out a few sets of clothing, as well as two knives and a simple steel sword from his locker. Salem passed me some clothes too, along with his hydra venom knife. I took it all with a nod, then began to cast.

Animate clothes wasn't a short spell, which forced Salem and Jackson to defend me while I cast it, but when I finished, we had eight warriors made of clothing, infused with all of my knife, sword, and unarmed fighting knowledge. I set three of them to protect us from threats deeper in – the swordsman, one hydra knife, and one normal knife – while the other five were sent to go defend us from threats approaching from the rear. All of them gripped the weapons weirdly in the uniform's suitjackets, and I made a mental reminder to buy some gloves.

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Animation done, I began to sort through my spellglyphs, pulling out essentially my entire stock of summons. I would still have some curse related spellglyphs left, as well as a few others, but this was going to burn through my stock. It might seem a touch foolish to spend my glyphs all at once like this, but I didn't think that the spellglyphs were going to waste. If I was able to devise a specific curse to counter the effects of the Traitor Wrym's magic, then I'd be in a much better position than I'd be in without the information. More than that, if I could convince Yushin to open her eyes to the danger, that might let us stop the ritual before it even began.

More than sixty summons felt a bit like overkill, but each spell lasted for roughly an hour, and I wanted a specific mix. Each hour, in addition to the animated clothes, we would be guarded by a gadhar's protective magic, the burning sunvenom of a wadjetktt, the scouting powers of an air elemental, and the massive defenses of a steel crocodile – or, given that I didn't have enough of those, a pair of earth elementals to replace them.

On top of that, I wanted a few heavy hitters, which was why I'd asked Jackson about his healing magic. It wasn't a true replacement for blood, but in a pinch, it was better than nothing. I wanted to leave the group with a couple of lytemoths. They weren't the same as a true abjure shadows spell, but it would last much longer, and should be almost as effective. Between Jackson's healing and downing one of my healing potions, I managed to create six of the glyphs, which would have to be enough.

With the guardians settled, I cast a circle of alarm on the floor. The basic ward wouldn't protect us from anything at all, but it would alert us if something broke through our defenses and forced us to fight. Jackson joined me at this point, casting a circle of his own, which created a softly-glowing, shimmering dome of light that would dampen the effects of shadow magic within the area. It wasn't a perfect counter, but it would buy us time if a shadow creature slipped by everyone else and made it into the circles without setting off an alarm. Salem also wove a circle of his own, which would prevent creatures from entering or attacking our dreams within. None of us were sure that the library would actually be able to do that, but given that people tended to vanish deeper in if they fell asleep without someone watching them, there was every chance that it could.

I debated attempting to create a defensive curse over the area to join with their circles, but weaving such a long lasting curse would drain everything I had left, and even then might not be enough. Instead, I spent the ether on summoning a lytemoth for now, and kept the rest in the tank, just in case.

The spellwork done, I passed some rations around. They were nothing fancy, just some salted meat and dried fruits, but it would fill us up. As soon as they'd eaten, Salem and Jackson laid down and immediately passed out, with me watching over them to ensure they didn't vanish, and that nothing slipped past the collection of defenders. I took the first shift of our rough rest, and it passed by slowly. Monsters did descend from the ceiling to attack us, but the combination of the suited warriors and the summons was enough to dispatch them. A few times, I was forced to intervene with a couple of timely spells, but by and large, our little platoon of powers was enough to keep everyone safe.

Once three hours had passed, I reached down and shook Jackson awake. I'd expected us to have to draw lots over the middle shift, but Jackson had willingly volunteered himself, for which I was admittedly grateful. He took up his vigil, and I lay down on the floor. I expected that with the occasional sounds of spellfire and the hard ground, I would have a hard time sleeping. Instead, after nearly twelve hours of fighting and evading traps, I was out the instant I lay down. I didn't even hear Salem getting up to switch shifts with Jackson.

It felt like I'd only slept for minutes when Salem was waking us up once again, and I yawned. Despite everything, my spirit and body were both feeling much better. I was still sore, but I wasn't horrible, and my magic felt much less wrung out. I was feeling almost optimistic, even as we started to head deeper in. Sure, the way back would be harder, and all of us knew that. We wouldn't be able to stop and sleep for anything more than short, hour-long stints in hidden hideaways, but somehow that seemed easier to face after a night of sleep. Things improved further when Jackson brought out some rations of his own, which were slightly nicer than mine – he actually had some bread in a preservation spell that stopped it from going stale, which made it about ten thousand times better than hardtack.

We pushed deeper, maneuvering out of the way of spellglyph traps, darts from the shelves, swords from the ceiling, and monsters on monsters on monsters, until things on the shelves started changing.

It was subtle at first. The library was full of books, so the slow shift from larger books to thinner ones wasn't the kind of thing that registered until we'd gone a fair way. The shift from thin books to pamphlets was stranger and more obvious, but then things shifted to letters. That hadn't been immediately obvious, but as soon as we had figured out that things had shifted to letters, we shifted our strategy and began pulling out anything and everything.

And that was when we found it. A collection of letters, all written in Hua Long and addressed to various members of the Shé clan. All save for one. In one small space on a shelf, rather than a letter, there was a pile of ash. I wasn't able to stop myself from letting out an exhale of relief. We had found it. Even if I was forced to reconstitute the letter from ash using the unburning flame spell, that still meant that I'd be able to get what I needed.

I quickly checked for traps, and finding none, scooped all of the letters, as well as the pile of ash, into my locker. That revealed something, and I arched an eyebrow. Behind the letters, as if the library had a sense of humor, was a spellguide for a third circle spell: improved sleep.

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