Peony Min (blackmagicks) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-05-01 10:35:00 |
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The library was still a mess. Books and scrolls and the shelves that had held them were part of the rubble, and the recovery teams had had only time to clear the bodies. A fact Merri tried not to dwell on as he and Peony roamed the ash and dust of the aisles; he knew it was here that Guy had died, among many others. (How many of them had been scholars? These were thoughts that Merri knew he had to let haunt him later. Right now, there was a job to do.) He bit his lip as he knelt down to sort through a pile of books to appraise the damage -- and if, perchance, any of them might give clues as to the sort of beast they had fought. It was the bestiary section, after all, and while Merri had spent hours scouring the texts here after each attack, and each time someone had queried him about a summon, there were still more books here than he could have possibly have gotten through even if he spent a year here, doing little else but reading. Surely there must be something, and if there wasn’t... No, there had to be. There just had to be. Merri picked up a book and wiped the dust off the cover. It was a basic text of all the known beasts in the Outlands, thick with information, and standard reading for anyone who thought that they might help the Rangers someday. This was always one of the first books Merri checked out when researching new monsters, or even old ones, and he knew it well enough that nothing like Vivian’s creature would be in here. Still, he couldn’t help but to flip open the text anyway, scanning the section for Earth-based creatures, his mind not registering the words but instead wandering back to images of bodies lying on the floor of the library, burned, bloodied, scattered-- -- Merri let out a sob, tears blurring his vision. Not now, he berated himself. Quietly, unobtrusively, a hand came down on his shoulder, squeezing lightly before moving on to unroll a scroll as if nothing had happened. There were certainly things worthy of tears in this room, and Merrion was a sensitive soul. She had always been the practical one. “Would you like a pause?” she asked, her voice kind. Merri shook his head and wiped the tears away. “No, I’m fine.” He wasn’t, but he couldn’t allow himself to be anything but until the end of the day. “I’m sorry.” “I see no reason why you should apologize,” she told him. Indeed, despite his obvious distress, it was clear that Merrion intended to work regardless. It was admirable, considering how affected he seemed. Perhaps a change of subject, then. “Have you found anything new?” she queried. At least they were putting part of the library to rights while performing their research -- a very useful task from several angles. And as with many mages, the acquisition of new knowledge would likely have a positive and distracting effect on her colleague. Merri shook his head and closed the book. “No. There won’t be anything in here.” He shifted through the rest of the pile, knowing that none of the titles would give them anything worthwhile. Perhaps this one, at the bottom? Though even when he flipped it open, he knew that at best, it would have something on the other monsters that had rampaged through the city, which he supposed might point to clues about Vivian’s, and yet… It was too much to hope for, too much of a grasp for something that might lead to nowhere. But wasn’t this the art of research? “Maybe in this text?” he suggested, his tone helpless. “If not in this one, then the next,” she said. “Perhaps the one after.” She unrolled a scroll, stopped to read over its contents. For a moment, she was lost to her curiosity. Not what she was looking for, but… She set it by her side. There were many things that could come from this, many useful things, and this could well be one of them, though it had nothing to do with giant beasts. “Merrion,” she said, “you cannot give up. There is no one else but us to do this, so we must.” But after she had said this -- as always, delivering a hard truth in a soft tone -- she added, “But… if you wish to talk to me about your thoughts, this afternoon needn’t be only about work. I can listen as well as search.” "It's..." He was about to say nothing, but Peony knew him better than that. "There are a lot of ghosts here. I can't not see them." “Yes,” Peony said sadly. “I know.” She recalled with perfect clarity the shouts, the fire, the feel of Guy’s body heavy and lifeless against hers. “It may help to think that we are doing this for them.” All of them, mages and scholars and visitors, would wish for justice or for closure, she thought. She prayed they had already found peace. Merri nodded. She was right, and it was reason enough to keep pushing forward, to never give up hope or reason that they would find the answers they needed not only to prevent something like this from ever happening again, but to give meaning to those who had lost their lives to this tragedy. Still, his first admission of guilt couldn’t help but to fall from his lips: “I should have been here.” Not that he believed that anything he could have done would have helped, but that he had avoided being at the heart of the destruction because he had taken an early lunch was difficult to bear. “It is difficult not to think of things we should have done,” Peony told him. “However, I was here, and I could do nothing. She was too powerful -- and too mad, I think -- for anything but a planned assault. She took us all by surprise.” She finished flipping through another book -- nothing of interest -- and set it aside. “We likely should have marshalled our forces quicker, but although we knew something was coming, we did not know precisely what. I think no one could have predicted this, though I wish we had.” Again, Merri nodded. “And that’s why we’re here, now.” Even if it was too late for many. “Yes,” she said, “that is why we are here now.” His spirits seemed bolstered by this, or perhaps he had simply found his determination, but for the next while, he focused on his work, and after a few moments, so did she. There was much still to do. |