Lunch had stretched until it was nearly twilight. Team Black had scattered across the mess hall like spilled ink, searching for someone who remembered the Wildewood well enough to map it or get them some answers to their many questions. They had found little. Access to the Wildewood was forbidden to most students, and those who had been there were clever enough to avoid being overrun.

So, they did the only sensible thing left to them. They went to Bookhalla.

The library was an imposing thing of stone and living wood. A cathedral to knowledge. Books slept in alcoves lit by lightcrystals. Shelves remembered hands long dead. Goblins bound into book-keeping service long ago skittered among the stacks.

"No texts concerning the Wildewood may leave this building!" barked Head Librarian Eichenkiel. He stood on a low dais near the central atrium, a storm of dryad robes and gnarled fingers. His spectacles flashed as if the lightcrystals themselves were answering the heat in his voice. "You can read them here just fine. Copy whatever you need. But no one is allowed to remove them from the library until further notice."

His words stirred the book-goblins into fluttering activity. They were everywhere. Chittering, tails swishing, robes askew, eyes like pinpricks of coal. Their little fists struck at any student who tried to slip a tome into a bag. The rules were old, and the goblins enforced the library's fears with ferocious, tiny hands.

As a library assistant, Stitch had no problem ushering them in through a side entrance.

They did not go where the others went. Most students drifted toward the grand reading hall, where the maps of the Wildewood were clamped under glass and watched by book-goblins. Team Black, however, split like a current dividing around a rock. Weylan, Mirabelle, and Stitch threaded toward a hidden reading room. A small hollow between a window and the giant oak tree at the library's heart. The others dispersed, each looking for a different kind of information. Darken investigated plant poisons, Alina focused on combat spells, and Ulmenglanz went to speak to the head librarian directly.

Mirabelle soon excused herself to look for obscure biographies of famously evil wizards. She didn't want to elaborate on how that could be relevant, and Weylan… wasn't that interested, since it meant he could spend some time alone with Stitch.

After some small talk about the books Stitch had found on goblin customs, Weylan reluctantly started on a subject he'd rather have avoided. "Well… there's something I need to tell you."

Stitch froze, almost panicking at his suddenly serious tone. "Did I do something wrong?"

"What? No! It's something I did. I… well… do you remember when I told you I'm a level six house servant?"

The flesh-golem still seemed uncertain where this was leading. "Yes?"

Weylan cleared his throat, then answered in a low voice. "I lied."

Stitch smiled encouragingly. "So, you've not yet reached level six. That's really nothing to be ashamed about at your age. I wonder how you managed to trick all the people with inspect skills."

"No, not about my level. I'm not a house servant. I'm… an assassin."

Stitch blinked. Then she visibly relaxed. "That's nothing you should feel guilty about. No one expects an assassin to openly talk about his profession. Of course you had to lie." She shrugged. "Much like thieves. So… since you're telling me now… ah… you want to visit the Room of Endings on the third floor? The one reserved for members of the assassin's guild?"

He nodded. "We need every edge we can to succeed at the hunt."

"Why? While it's important to get the last ingredient, it doesn't matter if we win or someone else does. It's just a game."

Weylan thought for a moment, then decided to reveal another secret. "I'm in contact with a mage in Mulnirsheim. He thinks the missing ingredient will be the horn of a unicorn."

To his surprise, she ignored the part about contacting a mage and adopted a lecturing tone, citing things she'd read in books. "That doesn't make much sense. Unicorns shed their horns every twenty-one years. After about half a year, their new horn grows to full length, and the old one loses its power. So to get one, you have to scout a unicorn's territory, follow it until it sheds its horn, track down where it hid it, and retrieve it. Then you have to escape the unicorn's wrath, since they can feel the location of their last horn even from a distance. And you have only until it loses its connection to the unicorn to use it." She really got into the topic. "There's a theory that using the horn actually drains magic from the unicorn itself. That's why it's so powerful as an alchemical ingredient. Once brewed, the potion or elixir keeps its power, of course. It would be awkward if the new horn reignited its magic just before you wanted to drink a powerful healing potion and it turned to useless sludge."

He had to digest that much information for a moment. "Wait, that's the usual way to get a unicorn's horn?"

"Of course. There are several organizations that specialize in a single unicorn's area. Once they've seen it without its horn, they mark the date and come back every twenty-one years to try and acquire one. Members of such teams specialize in scouting, stealth, and powerful magic tricks to escape the beast's tracking abilities. During the last plague, it's said revenants often had small guilds dedicated to acquiring rare monster parts. Their top members used combinations of no-smell, invisibility, mage-invisibility, and teleportation spells. There probably isn't a single hero yet who can pull such a feat off alone. Maybe several combining their spells on one individual. Or someone could buy a lot of high-tier potions." She paused. "Do you think they've got the schedule of a local unicorn, so they could time the hunt for its shed horn?"

Weylan hated to destroy her naivety. "I fear they plan to hunt down the unicorn and remove its horn by force."

Stitch didn't seem to comprehend. "But removing the horn would kill… oh…" Now she got it. Several of her skin patches paled. "That's monstrous! Your mage must be mistaken."

"I fear there's so much at stake, the headmaster decided the sacrifice is worth it."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

She sat up straighter. "He'd never…" Then she deflated. "Well… with the war and the whole academy and the kingdom at stake…" She slowly nodded. "Yes. He would absolutely sacrifice everything for the kingdom." She stood. "Let's go to the repository of shadow magic. We have to win this hunt or stop it."

Weylan grinned. "Now that's the spirit!"

Minutes later, they stood before the door to a broom closet on the third floor. Weylan eyed it skeptically. "Are you sure that's the entrance?"

"That's what I've been told. Never tried it, though."

He opened the door. It had no lock and opened easily, revealing a small space with some brooms, a wooden bucket, and shelves holding several kinds of soap and cleaning potions. There was barely enough space to stand inside if he closed the door. He checked the walls, floor, and ceiling for hidden doors but found nothing.

He pulled and pushed at each of the shelves. Nothing. Removing the bucket revealed no secret lever. Pushing a broom against the ceiling did not reveal anything either.

He thought a moment, then stepped in and closed the door. It went dark, except for a sliver of light at the bottom.

He looked around and found a circle marked on the door. Clearly visible. If you had Shadow Sight, as he did. He touched the center of the circle. Runes flared up.

Assassin class recognized. Access granted.

Weylan felt a moment of vertigo. The circle was gone. So was the last sliver of light below the door.

"Stitch? Are you still there? Did you douse the lightcrystals?"

No answer.

He opened the door and found not the third-floor corridor, but a small room with a reading desk, an armchair, and a single bookshelf on the wall. The room was lit by several lightcrystals in the ceiling. It looked surprisingly cozy.

He scanned the titles on the bookshelf. All were in Old Cathurian, which he couldn't read. There was an atlas containing maps of Probably shadow-affinity ley lines. Most lay underground.

Judging by the illustrations, there were several books about beasts and monsters, probably those that could control shadows or used some kind of shadow magic or maybe served as ingredients for enchantments or alchemy. One of the biggest tomes was marked Compendium Umbra Magica. The wizard at the academy had mentioned the word umbra, which meant "shadow," and magica was probably just "magic." He pulled it from the shelf with trembling hands. He just hoped it wasn't also written in Old Cathurian, as the title suggested. He put the tome on the reading desk and opened it. Clear, precise handwriting in pitch-black ink on pale paper… and he couldn't read a word of it.

He sat there, staring at the book. Could he take it with him? Unlikely. There would be an enchantment preventing that. He also couldn't bring Mirabelle or anyone else who spoke Old Cathurian here unless they were also assassins.

He chuckled. Now that was an idea. Mirabelle, an assassin. No one would ever suspect her. He had no idea how to give someone a second class, otherwise he'd be tempted to try and train her. Just for the fun of it.

He almost dropped into the comfortable leather armchair, then stopped. That didn't feel right. Steward Jago had wooden chairs with almost no upholstery. He just couldn't imagine assassins lounging in such a chair, maybe even with their feet up on the table, reading books about dark magic. Well... shadowy magic.

He laid the tome on the desk and knelt to check the chair for traps. He was glad no one was there to see him. He probably would have been too embarrassed to show himself so paranoid. And… he'd have died for it.

With his nose almost touching the chair's surface, he spotted tiny, barely visible gleaming points of metal in a pattern across the white leather. He used one of the brooms to press against them. Nothing happened, but the handle showed a tiny indentation, visible mostly because the wood around it immediately startet darkening and rotting. Poison. And a nasty one at that. Sitting down would have punctured his backside with about two dozen needles. The tips were visible if you looked closely, and they were obviously meant to be seen. Otherwise, they could have been easily hidden completely beneath the leather. Damn. Either the assassin's guild warned their members beforehand and meant the trap for freelancing assassins, or they considered those who fell for such obvious traps expendable.

His hands trembled and his heart raced. He took a while to recover from the shock. That had been close. Too close. He'd have to take the guild more serious.

He checked the rest of the room but found no more traps. His gloves, however, vibrated when he examined the archway he had to leave through. That meant a magical trap enchantment. Since he'd entered without trouble, it was probably a trap designed to catch book thieves. At least, he hoped so, since he couldn't find any way to disarm it.

He returned to the book and studied it. No glued-together pages, as far as he could tell. He touched the writing and concentrated, looking for shadow magic in the ink itself. Nothing. Then he leaned forward a few pages and tried again. And again. On the third try, he felt something. When he infused the ink with shadow mana, the letters shifted and rearranged themselves into… other words in Old Cathurian. Splendid.

There didn't seem to be any translation enchantment as he'd hoped. Just some hidden message he couldn't read.

After checking once more that there was nothing in the room he could understand, he left. When he closed the closet door behind him, the ring reappeared on the surface. He touched it and was transported back.

* * *

He opened the door and stepped out. Stitch stood in the corridor, completely unmoving. As he stepped through, she blinked and came to life again. "Well? How was it?"

"Cozy. And obviously meant for… people who speak Old Cathurian."

He looked around but couldn't see anyone listening. Considering the stealthy book-goblins and students like Lyriel, that didn't mean much.

Stitch also glanced around, winked at a book-goblin she spotted, and whispered, "And? Any good spells?"

"I can't read Old Cathurian."

She blinked. "Really? It's not that difficult."

Weylan remembered the texts he'd tried to read. "It didn't look easy to me."

Stitch folded her hands primly. It would have looked scholarly if her eyes weren't glinting with the faint delight of a predator. "Old Cathurian merely requires mastery of five declensions," she began, "each with its own regal case endings. Six primary cases. Seven, if one respects the vocative's subtle sovereignty."

Weylan blinked. "That already sounds like seven more things than I wanted to think about today."

Stitch waved him off. "No difficulty at all. Once you discern whether a noun dwells in the dominion of -a, -us, -um, or the most dignified -is endings, the language unveils itself like a perfectly behaving summon. Then, of course, you simply account for gender: masculine, feminine, neuter. Each with their natural and delightful irregularities."

Weylan's quill sagged. "Delightful irregularities?"

"Like hidden blades. You'll love it," Stitch said fondly.

He reconsidered breathing.

"And verbs," she continued with lethal calm, "are even easier. Four conjugations, active and passive voices, and the charming deponent verbs that only pretend passivity. Then one embraces the imperative, the infinitive, and of course the subjunctive moods. Purpose, fear, unreal conditions, potentiality. Lovely, delicate shades of thought."

Weylan stared into the middle distance, contemplating either fate or fleeing the continent. "I think my thoughts just died."

"Fear not. After ablative absolutes, indirect discourse, and distinguishing gerunds from gerundives, everything becomes remarkably intuitive."

Weylan exhaled the last remnants of his courage. "That sounds like Old Cathurian exists purely to punish students."

Stitch nodded serenely. "As all elegant systems do."

"So," Weylan whispered, "it's easy."

"Absolutely. I can teach you if you want," she said, eyes bright as polished obsidian.

He deflated like a punctured sheep-bladder ball. "I think I'll have to think about that."

"You do that. Meanwhile, we can start with the rune discovery report you still owe Professor Dullmere."

Weylan considered making a joke about her maybe being a monster after all but quickly dismissed the idea. He resigned himself to his fate and followed her into one of the writing rooms.

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