text: Robby dropped the thick tome down on the mahogany table. "I Guess I should have worn a mask." she coughed in the plume of heavy dust. "Alright, lets crack this thing open" Yin said, eager to find the spell and be out of this dank place. "Its ok" Robby reassured her friend, "We have time on our side." She let the glowing Infinity Pendulum dangle over the Spell book by its silver chain, and spoke - “Ubi est puer Sanguis et aqua non inecum facit quod semel est iterum” The book obeyed, tracing wild, green embers across the cover in long forgotten symbols. A chill wind slapped the book open. The embers rose and ghosted into finger bones fluttering the pages to attention before landing on the correct one. The wind died and all was quiet again. "Tubular" Robby grinned, "Alright Yin, take a picture, I want this page and that one too, then we need to go." Yin pulled from his sack a heavy scanning device, the red laser hummed and passed over the spell book before the scanner promptly caught fire. "You have got to be kidding me!" Yin shook the device until the flame sputtered. "Must be some sort of ancient anti-piracy measure." Robby laughed and up-heaved the spell book off the map table and into her satchel. "Oh well, looks like the book is coming with us." "Are you trying to die twice?" Yin demanded, "That scanner belonged to Onslow, if we don't replace that tech he is going to solder our faces together! If we survive that, well have the Capitol City Magic Department searching for whoever stuck into the archives and stole the 1st edition of Sovereign Ihura's Circulus Salis Et O!" Robby held up her necklace and pointed at the pendulum pennant she wore around her neck. "This pennant means answers. This means a chance to find out who really shut down our school and where they really shipped all our friends. I'm not going to let something so trivial as the C.C.M.D. stop me now. “ “You mean stop US now.” “Exactly.” She grinned. The duo snuck back up through the narrow stone spiral staircase they had used to reach the archives. They both activated the limited night vision afforded them from the HUD goggles, also courtesy of Onslow. At the top of the staircase lay a room that was definitely not the same room they had come through ten minutes earlier. “Well, this is not good” Robby whispered and plucked a data pad from an inner pocket of her orange overalls. The data pad silently bisected itself, the top half acting as the drone. The machine activated surveillance mode and liftied up into the old wooden rafters. Over the dark maze of bookshelves and halls of ornate rugs the drone hovered, sending the image back to Robby. “So, are you going to clue me in as to what is going on?” Yin shrieked. “Patience, my young friend.” she grinned. “I'm less than a month younger than you, my old friend.” “Shut up, I see something.” Robby opened up the options menu of the flight control software and activated functionality mode, a sub menu popped up and Robby chose data extraction and pulled the slider full left. Four of the five drone’s extremities grappled onto a cruddy wooden beam while the fifth leg stood erect. Robby touched the button of a triangle with a slash through it, activating the drone’s optical nano-data diode. “Look, right there!” Yin said too loud, pawing at the screen of the data pad. He pointing out a computer terminal with core access that was sunk into the cobblestone wall a few hall turns away. “I see it, I see it” she elbowed him out of her way “And be quite!” The drone’s blue eye shot its beam into the terminal, easily overloaded its protocols, cherry picked relevant data and sent it back to Robby. At her touch, the pad went dark and all data streamed straight to her goggles. She brought up the schematic, after a moments analysis, she spoke “This is not good.” “Let me guess, the crystalline engine that powers this place keeps the layout procedurally generated to deter would-be thieves from combing over the archives for old magic?” Yin lamented. “Precisely. How did you know that, are you reading my mind?” “You know I wouldn't do that.” “ I know, I’m teasing. Lighten up, we will get through this.” she assured. “I’ll believe that when I wake up in bed tomorrow.” “Okay, it looks like this room is surrounded in some illusionary spell, creating an infinite dungeon labyrinth of ancient bookshelves.” She spoke. “This looks promising... Found it, only a specific combination of left and right turns will trigger illusion magic override and open maintenance hatch, leading...directly to the first floor. “ “Amazing. What's the combination?” “I don't know. The combination changes every hour.” she grinned hard and turned up the opacity of her goggles so she could not see how agitated her friend had become. “This will take about 40 seconds to decode, I’m recalling the drone.” “Then we have to pack away the tech, it needs to survive this mission. We can’t afford to got caught with it, knowing Onslow, its probably stolen.” he admitted. “Here, take these goggles and quit yapping before I hug you,” she knew he hated having his personal bubble threatened. “Here comes the drone, grab it for me wi -” Robby cut her sentence short when a massive suite of medieval armor lunged from the dark, slicing the drone in half with its razor sharp sword before crashing into the ground, thunderously rocking the entire floor of the archive in a shower of sparks. “Stay calm, It’s an illusion spell, its not as tough as it seems!” she said. “Run!” Yin yelled, diving out of the way of the armor’s second sword swing, his poncho nearly nicked by the end of the blade. “It’s clearly not an illusion, are you trying to get me killed?!” “Whoops, my bad, but I do have to combination!”Robby shouted without looking up her her pad. “Left!” she grabbed on Yin’s collar and yanked him down the hall with her. The armor followed close behind with another momentous swing of of the sword. Missing wildly, the very real sword crashed into bookshelf, instead of exploding into a foray of pages and splinters, the sword passed through the illusion of a shelf and crashed into the floor for a second time. The shock wave sent Robby and Yin flying into a nearby wall, a thick tapestry saved them from concussions. They pulled themselves to their feet just when the suite of armor to be upon them once more. “Left again!” Robby yelled, stabilizing herself on Yin’s shoulder before pulling him down another dark library hallway. “Right!” the pair jerked the opposite direction. The Archive’s security measure entitled hall\_patrol.exe lost sight of the two as it’s thudding steps came to a halt, standing unnervingly still. “Three rights and a left,” she then whispered, trying not to to rouse the armors ire. They slunk around the appropriate bookshelves and found themselves at the maintenance hatch. “Finally. How do we open it?” Yin asked. “It should already be open!” Robby spat. “I - I don’t know why its not open!” “Robby, it sees us!” Yin’s eyes grew two sizes and he gripped his friend by the shoulder. The spirit inhabiting the armor grew bright with white and purple rage, turning it into a colossal torch of hot metal and anger. The suit ran toward them, bellowing with furious metallic clank. “Robby, Look at your necklace!” She looked down at the pendent at the end of the chain, upside down T shaped stone pendulum was glowing with the same ghastly green as when it woke the spell book earlier. “Stand back!” Robby ordered Yim. She took off the necklace and, with her heart pounding nearly as loud as the steps of the metal threat barreling upon them, she whirled and slung it stone-first straight at the armor. In the split second that it took to reach the target, the Infinity Pendulum grew into the size of a boulder, crashing into the center mass of the armor and sending it flying backward were it landed in a heap of purple steam and twisted metal. “YES!” Yin cheered like a person who’s life had just nearly come to an end, “How in both hells did you know it could do that?!” “I have done that once before,” she wheezed before falling on her butt. “It takes a lot out of me, but apparently, its worth it.” She laughed. Yin helped her to her feet. Yin grunted, “Unbelievable, after 10 grades at school we never learned how to do anything as powerful as this.” Yin stepped into the crater the armor had made, searched around and found Robby’s necklace, back in its original condition. He tossed it back to her just as the maintenance hatch popped open over her shoulder. “Beautiful.” Robby leered deep into the jewelry. The friends emerged from the hatch of the brick building into a dark, rain-soaked alleyway. They darted under the nearest awning and packed away Onslo’s tech with enough time to catch the midnight Hover Rail across the city to the Little Moon neighborhood. At the crest of the business district, just before the rail descend into residential, Robby could see nearly the entirety of the City. The streets that stank of burring mystery meat. The glowing neon shopping plazas constantly supplying a steady steam of weapons for violence, drugs for sex, and rock ’n roll for everything else. She wasn’t designed for this place, she was destined to be somewhere else, she just didn't know where. “Hey” Yin elbowed her and smiled. “Hey” she elbowed him and smiled back.