"Are we still alive?" Ash's voice teetered on the edge of sanity.

  I'd say we were the two left standing, but we were both splayed out on either side of Meredeath and Leyla.

  The foot of the World Snail pulsed beneath us in a gentle reminder that our island wasn't an island at all. It was really only a matter of time before the snail tried to eat us too. Or the gulls, recovering from licking the jellyfish slime off of the team, come back.

  "We need to move." The words came out like a helpful antidote from that one optimistic aunt. Like Tandy's Aunt Stacy saying, "Children need their rest," when everyone knew Tandy's mom was going to have us up and dyeing wool in the morning.

  Neither Ash nor I moved.

  What was the point? Leyla wasn't going anywhere. Meredeath had turned into a [Necromancer]. Argin was probably dying.

  My only solace was that Tandy and Leo had escaped. Whether by choice or circumstance, neither died here with me.

  A shadow fell over my face, interrupting my dissociation. Blinking, I looked up to find Ash hovering above me, hand extended. He didn't have the cheerful smile he normally kept. Leyla's death and subsequent undeath had taken a toll on the man.

  However, this was Ash. He was a young Aunt Stacy in the making, always ready to care, to look on the bright side.

  "Come on, let's get you up, Cole. You will not crack this nut sitting down." See! More proof he's secretly Aunt Stacy. "Besides standing, it gives a new perspective of this place."

  I groaned as I took his proffered hand and pulled me up. The slime of the snail slurked as my bare back pulled off its sticky surface. I hadn't actually had time to look around, and was willing to do almost anything to avoid thinking about the sorry state of [Your Mom's Party].

  The snail wasn't the rounded tan snails that I'd find in my mom's garden. No, it was oak-colored with large walnut spots that twisted up to a peak. The foot of the snail splayed out, supporting the cone like a raft. On the lip of the cone, in the distance, I could see winged Pterrors and other flying creatures had made homes riddled with bones and seaweed. Otherwise, the World Snail was empty.

  "I'm not seeing a portal," I stated the obvious. We'd come all this way, lost half our party, and the World Snail didn't even sport the promised portal? Anger was a more enjoyable emotion than grief. "What the hell?!" I screamed at the dungeon. "You stick us into an unsought [Water] dungeon on the bottom of the sea, fill it with Legendary monsters, steal away our [Immortal], and then expect us to figure out this snail riddle? This stinks of a rigged dungeon and anti-slug bias!"

  Ash stared at me as if I'd gone crazy. Maybe I had. It didn't mean I was wrong, even a broken clock was right twice a day.

  "Cole, I think you've angered the snail." The ground beneath us shook a bit, but it wasn't enough to toss us into the sea.

  I shrugged, "I'm angry, it might as well be too." I stomped a foot.

  The ground shook a little more. If this World Snail dumped us back into the sea like fish food, it would only further support my claim. I was moderately sure the Tuli Monster would save Meredeath and Ash. My eyes guiltily danced to Argin, who was admittedly looking pretty pale as it was.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  "Watch out!" Ash screamed, diving to the side. I looked up just in time to see a giant gray tubular tentacle descending on me. It looked like the top of the snail had sprouted, and I was about to reap whatever justice it was going to met out.

  Arms crossed, the tentacle hit my body like a ton of bricks, and the world went dark.

  Surprisingly, I didn't receive a death notification. Nor was I transported to a disco hall in the snail’s home. Instead, I had a moment of portal sickness to find myself corporeally spat out in a marble-coated library full of books.

  [Quest Updated: [Trials of the Hero: Heart]

  Congratulations [Adventurer]! You have completed two of the three prerequisites to enter the Trial at the Library of Alta. You have successfully satisfied the [Knowledge] and [Location] prerequisites. To continue to the [Trial] you must earn the [Key] from the Head Librarian. This path is not for the faint of heart. Completion of the Trial at the Library of Alta will grant the class [Hero]. No time limit is given for this quest.]

  The words blazed on my interface, meaningless.

  I reached out to touch a pedestal. The cream marble was hard and gritty, as though coated in centuries of dust. Maybe it was my physical perspective this time, but the library looked different. It was ornate, sure. I'd never seen so much marble in my life. And the lithe architecture took the bookshelves and ceiling to the sky. It was a building from before the cataclysm, for sure. But it was also dirty. Uncared for. Abandoned.

  This place was an enclave of humanity’s knowledge. A bastion and safe harbor for intellect. None of which mattered without the humans to take care of it.

  I looked up, remembering that there was a hole in the ceiling during my last visit. If I could orient myself, perhaps I could find the [System] orb that Richard had spoken with last time I was here. I assumed that was the entity that'd stolen me away. The ceiling was composed of a multilayered dome with overlapping thin arches that acted almost like a spider web holding up some sort of marble-tiled ceiling. On the far side of the vast chamber, I could make out a dark hole in the otherwise light-colored roof. I had my direction.

  The space was backlit by little yellow globes of light that were tucked into divots in the shelves and walls. It was obviously magical, but I'd seen nothing like it. My footsteps echoed in the hall, kicking up little swirls of dust. Most of the shelves contained books. They irresistibly pulled me. Here sat the collected knowledge of the last age, and I was just going to walk by?

  I sidestepped into an aisle. For all that my heart tugged at me to figure out why I was here, to save the Ash, Meredeath, and Argin. I just couldn't not look at one little book. Swipe a peek at a destiny-changing volume. I examined the spines of the books. It was all in a language I couldn't decipher. Stepping down the aisle, I walked quickly, my hands pulled behind my back. The characters on the spines of the books changed to another unreadable language.

  Frowning, I looked at the shelves behind me and found yet a third unreadable language.

  Was this common in the pre-cataclysm? I knew we had several languages in Akyrima, but not the hundreds these shelves suggested.

  The mystery only piqued my curiosity. I continued down another aisle. This one had row upon row of scrolls punctuated by a heavy book or two. The spines were still unreadable, but the lettering had gotten more recognizable. The letters were in combinations that made no sense, but they were letters I knew.

  I finally got the guts to pull out a book. It didn't have any words on it I recognized, but it had a symbol I'd seen. The volume was thin, and in opening it up, it held exactly what I thought it would. Sheet music. The notation was similar enough to the music I'd seen around a couple of the musicians in Woodsten. Little tailed x's on a staff of lines.

  Tandy might read it; she’d taken piano lessons for a while at the tavern. Her mom’s one negotiated compromise with the promise that Tandy not learn a [Music] skill.

  That's when I heard it. The sound of a sandaled foot slapping against the marble.

  I quickly closed the music book and tried to shove it back onto the shelf. The hole it'd created had squeezed shut from the pressure from the books on the too-full shelf. Only dust rewarded my efforts.

  Coughing, there was no way I could hide. My cheeks grew heated as the clip-clop of rope sandals stopped.

  My head raised to find a bear-like middle-aged man in brown robes frowning at me. He had a wine-stain birthmark across his right cheek, and a face made for the disapproving frown aimed at me.

  I'd been found by the librarian.

  Also -- recruit your friends, I'll be stubbing book 1 on here in a month -- so now is their chance to read it here on RR.

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