Contents
Chapter 30
Overview
Evar leads the battered group into the canith library and reaches the healing center circle, which eases recent injuries but cannot cure Clovis’s long-standing sickness. Drawn by distant crashes, Evar confronts a smaller automaton and is badly injured. The repelling orb in his satchel overheats and disables the mech, buying time but leaving Evar stranded.
Summary
Arpix panics over the lost repelling orb, but Evar reveals he picked it up and keeps it. The survivors, bloodied from the skeer rock-bombardment, follow Evar through the canith door into the vast first chamber of the library. Arpix urges a push to the center circle for healing.
Evar guides them across shelf tops while the humans navigate below. Reaching the circle, Sheetra’s fresh shoulder injury begins to mend, and Evar feels thirst and fatigue ease. Clovis is semi-conscious and fevered; Arpix uses his last water while Kerrol notes the circle cannot cure her older sickness. Arpix insists the circle can at least hold back new damage and keep her alive.
Crashes echo from the west. Fearing pursuit, Evar climbs to scout. Advancing across treacherous shelves, he discovers not the giant automaton but a smaller brass-and-copper mechanoid, twice his height, blade-handed and fur-embossed, methodically stripping shelves. Its form recalls creatures he and Livira once glimpsed via the Exchange.
The automaton detects Evar and topples shelving. Evar falls amid collapsing timber and books, a shard spearing his thigh. With escape impossible, he draws Clovis’s white sword to meet the onrush.
As the automaton lunges, its hand stalls inches from Evar’s face. Evar’s satchel rattles and smokes: the iron orb inside heats violently. A harsh internal crack sounds, and the library falls silent—the mech frozen mid-strike. Evar abandons the sword embedded in its belly, retrieves his satchel, and, still bleeding and burned by proximity to the orb’s heat, prepares for a long, painful hobble back to the circle.
Who Appears
- EvarLeads survivors into the canith library, seeks the healing circle, scouts crashing shelves, is thigh-pierced, and unwittingly uses the orb to freeze the automaton.
- ArpixWorries over the lost orb, pushes for the center circle, tends Clovis with last water, argues to keep her alive within the circle’s limits.
- ClovisGravely ill and feverish; briefly wakes, then fades. The circle sustains her but cannot cure old damage.
- KerrolSupports Clovis, recognizes the circle’s limits, shows rare emotion at her condition.
- SalamondaHelps settle Clovis, fashions a pillow from books during triage at the circle.
- WentworthWaits at the cavern entrance, follows the group into the library, alert but secondary.
- SheetraHer freshly smashed shoulder begins healing upon entering the center circle.
- Automaton (smaller)Blade-handed mechanoid stripping shelves; attacks Evar but is frozen mid-strike by the heated orb.