Madison, Dardania, Prisha, and myself stand on and watch as Nabu gets Avis ready to be put into stasis. Luckily we were able to secure a carriage to bring Avis to the mansion, otherwise we would have had to carry him. Apparently the Minor Arcana has quite an extensive network and one of their local members is letting us use this carriage to transport Avis and then head to Sirius.

  Nabu had clearly prepared this library to exist as a home for basically all of eternity. While there were shelves and study tables in the loft, there was also a small studio apartment as well. Luckily for us, this apartment was perfectly frozen in time just like the rest of the library.

  Nabu places the Hanged Man card on Avis’s chest, crosses his arms over it, and then makes his way over to us.

  “I’m about ready to start.”

  “May I ask what the card does? The rest of the Arcana have their power because of the card, but you… well you’re still alive.” Prisha questions, but I know it was a question I had as well. I have been wondering since seeing the card hanging over the altar when we first walked in.

  “It’s a talisman. Herc and Hitha created one for each of the Major Arcana, it was directly connected to our souls and allowed us to channel our energies into to. For the rest of them, it merely became the vessel for their power upon their deaths. For myself, it grants me greater control over my magic. Rather than just release it, I can channel it directly into the card, and whatever is touching it.”

  “Genius.” Prisha whispers as she walks over towards Avis and leans in to get a better look at the card.

  “I don’t even know how to begin to thank you.” Dardania cries. “They told me what you have to sacrifice for this and I…” The words get caught in her throat as she tries to thank him. Nabu takes Dardania’s hand in his and smiles gently at her.

  “You have nothing to thank me for.”

  Dardania smiles. She squeezes his hands tightly and then makes her way over to her brother to wish him well. Nabu turns to Madison and myself.

  “I am glad to have met the two of you, and once you have found a healer for your friend, I would be happy to tell you more about Tabathia and Lucias.”

  “We look forward to it.” I respond. I grab him and quickly pull him into a hug. I don’t know if it was the right or appropriate thing to do, but I needed to. He was doing something extremely selfless for us, and honestly just thanking him isn’t enough.

  “After the spell is complete, it’s best to not move us for at least a day otherwise it might wear off. At that point, you can move us to the carriage to make your way to Sirius.”

  “How do we wake you up?” Madison asks. “Before it was simply just grabbing the card from the altar.”

  “That will do. It’s currently in Avis’s hands, once you remove it from his hands the spell will be broken.”

  Nabu lays down on a cot next to Avis and mirrors the way he was laying. He crosses his hands over his chest, closes his eyes, and begins to whisper a chant. It’s inaudible to the rest of us. All we could do was simply wait.

  After a few seconds Nabu falls silent, and that was it.

  “That’s it?” I ask. “Seriously? The power to stop time and it’s literally that simple? No big spectacle? No pentagrams and magical circles appearing over them? No blinding flash of light? No nothing? Wow, anticlimactic.”

  “What were you expecting?” Madison asks sarcastically.

  “Uh, any of the aforementioned things. This dude is an Ancient and a Major Arcana, there should be more pizzazz.” I sit down and cross my legs, I was upset. I wanted more spectacle. “So, now what?”

  Harrumph.

  “There is a million ancient books in this library so…. I’m thinking study session!” Prisha says before excitedly running into the stacks to get lost in some book. Madison follows behind her, but with less excitement. She looked more like she didn’t have anything else to do so might as well.

  “Neither of them have a pulse. But it’s clear they’re still alive.” Dardania says as she stands up from leaning over Nabu to check his pulse. I make my way over to her side. “At least we know for now he’ll be okay. Though just seeing him there like that, it freaks me out. He looks dead.”

  “Well, as someone who’s been to one too many funerals, dead people just kinda look like a sleeping person. So, try to think of him as sleeping instead.”

  Dardania smiles through her tears, nods, and wipes them away.

  “We are standing in the library of an Ancient, what do you think we could find here?” She asks as she makes her way over to some magical looking item on shelf. She gently touches it, and quickly pulling her hand back as though she was expecting it to do something, but nothing happens.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “My entire life all I have known is the Order of the Saint. History only knows of the Order of the Saint and yet here we stand in a library that predates them by gods only know how long. The history and knowledge that could be found here… it could change the world.” She slowly walks around multiple cases and cabinets that hold increasingly strange looking objects.

  “According to Nabu, the Ancients were merely humans that perfected magic. That means any living person who can wield magic could eventually reach the point of walking alongside the Ancients.”

  “That’s why the Major Arcana are seen as such a threat to the Order.” I say, only now putting two and two together. Dardania whips around, her mouth agape. She is probably having the same thought that I am.

  “The Order holds the ‘Old Gods’ as the ones who they are attempting to cleanse the world for. But if those selfsame gods are simply just people with perfected magic, then arguably the Major Arcana would be some of the people closest to that. If the world discovered that, it could upend their entire religion and control.”

  “And instead, people might actually start to think the Major Arcana are perhaps even the gods themselves. This changes everything!” Dardania spins around in excitement. Her entire demeanor changes with this revelation. The sorrow and grief that she was holding onto just moments ago has evaporated into thin air and was replaced by what could only be described as hope.

  “We finally have a way forward. A potential way to beat them.” Dardania smiles as she makes her way back over to her brother and kneels down at his side.

  “We might actually stand a chance Avis. So you better sit tight because I know you’ll want to be in fighting shape for this one.” She kisses Avis on the forehead before standing up and whipping around to face me.

  “Let’s get started shall we?”

  * * * *

  “I don’t even know where to start!” Dardania exclaims excitedly while she runs her fingers across the spines of several books as she walks the aisles.

  “It feels like we have history at our fingers.” Prisha says as she pops up from behind a comically large pile of books. Madison was sitting quietly sipping tea as she read a book about the creation of the universe and the laws that make it up.

  “The Universe: It’s Beginnings and Structures.” I read the title, my head titled as I stare at the book she is reading. “Why that?”

  “I mean, I do physical magic so I figured might as well go back to basics. Literally.”

  I nod. That makes sense. I, like Dardania and Prisha, have no idea where to start. One of my big questions my entire life was what was the point of life. Perhaps somewhere in these books dating back thousands of years I might find an answer, but is it really that simple?

  Gilgamesh discovered that the meaning of life was to search for the meaning of life. His journey to find immortal life sent him all over the world and on an epic journey, one that you could argue might rival his time with Enkidu. But is it really that simple? Once upon a time I might have thought so, but that was before I came to this world. Before I met a serial killer, a Saint, and a man who has this weird version of immortality.

  I smack my cheeks.

  “Snap out of it!” I say to myself, I shouldn’t be focusing on existential dread when I have so much standing in front of me. I should instead be focusing on all the knowledge and stuff that I could be getting into. I spin around and dive head first into the stacks.

  “Knowledge is power. Knowledge lets me forget my troubles. Knowledge gets rid of my existential dread.”

  As I weave my way through the bookshelves I try to take in everything that I’m seeing. Which, mind you, would be a lot easier if I understood half of it. A ton of the books are in foreign languages, or perhaps dead languages even. I have no idea, I’m not entirely sure about any of the languages in this world except the one that I was speaking.

  Eventually I make my way to the other side of the library and was greeted with a giant painting of a black hole.

  “That’s a black hole.” I mumble as I slowly make my way towards the painting.

  “What’s a black hole?” Dardania asks. I whip around, surprised that she was behind me. She walks up beside me and observes the painting with me.

  “I don’t know all the technical know how behind it, but it’s basically a super dense area in space with extremely dense gravity. Supposedly nothing can escape it, not even light.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it before.” Dardania approaches the painting and stares up at it thoughtfully.

  “No one in my world has either, we only have far off pictures of them. So, it’s just kinda a bit of a guess what they look like. Which, well, looks like this.”

  The depiction of the black hole looked basically like every other picture of a black hole. A giant black nothingness surrounded by the accretion disks and light bending around the black hole. I didn’t have that much knowledge about them outside of like Interstellar and Dr. Who, so I couldn’t say how accurate it was.

  “If you mastered gravity magic you could do that.” Dardania turns towards me, pointing at the picture, her face lit up with excitement.

  “I mean, maybe, but at what cost?” I question.

  “What do you mean?” She turns towards me and crosses her arms.

  “Nothing close to a black hole can escape a black hole. Plus time gets all wonky near the event horizon, so if I were to try and create a black hole, things could get way fucked way fast. I wouldn’t want to do that.” I look down at the floor, what happened in Enkidu crosses my mind. “I’ve caused enough collateral damage, I don’t want to accidentally destroy the entire world.”

  “Pfft.” Dardania shoves me before turning back towards the painting. Beneath it were different books and trinkets on the shelf.

  “That’s it? Just pfft?”

  “Yep, pfft. That’s all I have to say about that. Oh hey look at this!” Dardania pulls a book off the shelf and hands it to me.

  “Perfecting Gravity Magic: Inspired by the Ancient of Time.” I read aloud as I skim the title. I raise my eyebrow as I look at Dardania. She shrugs.

  “Just accept the coincidence and move on with it.”

  “Deus Ex Machina?”

  “I…. I don’t know what that is.” Dardania’s face scrunches in confusion.

  “Act of God.” Madison says as she steps forward and out of the stacks that led to our current location. “Which is nonsense cause the gods here are just people.”

  “Sure.” I say, though I’m not convinced. The Ancient of Time and the book talking about gravity magic just falls into my lap. “I don’t buy it but sure. What brings you here?”

  “The Altar, the text started to glow. I figured if we have some time perhaps we can see what kind of message it might have for us.”

  Dardania pulls a random book off the shelf and begins walking back towards the stacks.

  “Onward to history!” Dardania exclaims as she marches into the stacks back towards the altar.

  “She’s chipper.” Madison says, a look of confusion on her face.

  “Knowledge makes her horny?” I joke.

  “Probably more likely she is trying to ignore the state of her brother and pretend everything is okay.” Madison says, stating the obvious.

  “Yeah probably that.”