Chapter 1-4

Milly’s hotel room looked like not so much a place to sleep as a personal library. Books packed the room in neat stacks, reaching almost to the ceiling – fiction, histories, encyclopedias, comics, and collections of poetry and essays were all immediately visible. It looked like a nice room – spacious, heated, a soft bed and posh furnishings. It even had that indoor plumbing thing that was all the rage. It was hard to find a place for three people to stand amidst the stacks, but they managed to squeeze in there.

“Can we just sit on these?” Anjanette asked.

“No!” said Milly. She set the pile of books she had bought outside the pawn shop down at the end of the stacks. “Um, please. I don’t want them to get damaged. I hope you don’t mind.”

Anjanette rolled her eyes. “Like ‘Collected Thoughts on Fourth-Century AB Sevvekian History’ is worth preserving.” Milly kept her eyes firmly on the ground.

“Do you always travel with these many books?” Leonas said.

“Um, pretty much” Milly said. “See, I have this Robe of Infinity thingy that lets me travel with as much stuff as I like, uh I got it from my grandmother, so I figured, uh, why not bring a bit of my collection with me? See, watch.” She picked up "The Dragonnail Trilogy Book 2" off one of the stacks and shoved it down her sleeve. Despite theoretically not fitting in the thin armhole, the book vanished, not even visible beneath her robes.

“That does seem handy,” Leonas said.

Anjanette fidgeted. “Can you just translate our book already?”

“Oh, right, of course,” said Milly. Somehow, she picked up an Ancient dictionary and translation guide from the middle of one of the stacks in about two seconds. Spreading the two books out on her bed, she got to translating. Anjanette and Leonas waited impatiently among the stacks of books.

And waited.

And waited some more.

“Um, does this always take so long?” Leonas asked. A bored Anjanette was already halfway through "99 Ways to Kill A Vampire".

Milly frowned, stress creasing her forehead. “Um, not usually. I just can’t make any sense of these characters... like, it’s gibberish. Um, sorry.”

“Maybe it’s not Ancient after all?” suggested Anjanette. She was pissed off, and made no secret of it. A person who wasted Anjanette’s time would not be a healthy person for long. “Oh well. Even if it’s not, we can say it is and sell it for a ton.”

Milly whimpered. In a second, though, her emotions did a full turn as she lit up like a firecracker. She scurried off the bed and past Anjanette and Leonas, frantically scanning her pile of books before producing a huge but obviously well-read tome. On the dusty cover the words “Grendel’s History of Magical Artifacts (11th Edition)” could be seen if you looked hard enough.

Anjanette struck up a fighting pose instinctively. Milly’s desperate movements and her grabbing a large blunt object had put her on alert. But rather than using it as a weapon, Milly opened the book to the index and then quickly flipped through the pages. Her eyes were lit up like she was posessed.

“This is it,” she muttered. “One of the the Tomes of Rendai.”

“So this is... a magical book?” asked Leonas, increasingly uncertain.
Milly shoved the book in her face. The most prominent thing on the page was a detailed sketch, in the old-fashioned style of legends and histories. The sketch was of a book nearly identical to theirs, albeit much newer. The caption read “A 7th-BB artist’s rendition of the Tome of Rendai.”

“And what exactly is that?” asked Leonas.

“The Tome of Rendai,” Milly said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. “A magical artifact created by Rendai, one of the first pioneers of magic. He wanted to create an artifact which could directly access the mana pool demons use. He succeeded, and was promptly assassinated by a horde of dmeons before he could use it. The book fell into the hands of Denor, the ancient king, who used it to conquer most of the continent before he passed his way. On his deathbed he divided the power of the Tome into seven seperate tomes, powerless on their own, and scattered them across the land. This is, uh, kind of basic history.”

“It’s always seven, isn’t it?” Anjanette muttered.

“How are you sure?” asked Leonas.

“Well, although the runes in the picture are obviously drawn in the epic style, they match up to the ones we have here. And even though I only dabble in wizardry, I can still feel a really strong magical aura from this thing. It’s more a hunch than for sure, but isn’t it exciting?”

Anjanette shoved an accusing finger in Milly’s face. “Hah! Nice try, but what you didn’t know was that Leonas is a fully trained wizard. And he hasn’t said anything about an aura. Really, I’m interested in what kind of scam you were trying to run here. None I could recognize.”

“Actually, I knew this thing had heaps of magic on it,” said Leonas softly.

“What?” Anjanette turned on Leonas with a mixture of surprise and anger. “Why the hell didn’t you mention this?” snapped Anjanette. “Do you know how much more money one-seventh of a godly powerful artifact could be sold for, as opposed to an indecipherable old book?”

“I don’t like getting involved with magic,” said Leonas, his voice like covered steel. “I’ve told you this before.”

“Yeah yeah, but this is big money!” Anjanette said. “Shove down your angst for this one, won’t you? I mean, god – imagine what we could do if we got all seven! We sell that, and we can buy a nice dutchy and retire in a big castle.”

Leonas had a look of quiet fury in his eyes that was so alien it stopped Anjanette’s gold-lust in its tracks. “We are not treasure hunters, Anjanette. We sell this is old book for a tidy profit, it lies undiscovered on a commoner’s mantle for another few generations, and that’s the way this ends.”

“Fuck that,” said Anjanette.

Leonas didn’t respond with words, but got up and left, an aura of furious dignity surrounding him. The inn door slammed shut, and the two girls spent the next five minutes staring at it.

“So... does he normally do that?” asked Milly.

“Nope,” said Anjanette, just as stunned.

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