Page 85 of A Tower of Half-Truths

When she removed her finger from the wound, her skin was coated in tar-black blood. She grabbed the pliers Alain had found among Aganast’s alchemy supplies. She probed the bullet hole again, but the bullet itself was lodged between two walls of flesh that were beginning to grow stiff.

“Damn, it’s in there tight.” She put the pliers aside as she pondered what to do next. At most, she had ten minutes until the serum would be useless. “Say I were to cut the wound open, make it larger. Would the serum heal that, too?”

“Er…yes,” Alain said weakly. “It will return the body to its pre-death state. That was why I had a fractured sternum, even after you revived me, as that injury occurred before I suffocated. Mere seconds before, I’ll wager, as the serum is quite precise in that regard.

Fascinating history behind its development, too, now that I think on it… ”

Mavery knew his rambling was to distract himself from how she was about to perform impromptu surgery on a creature that may or may not be a demon.

Perhaps autopsy was the correct word, seeing as how the creature was already dead.

Or, perhaps they needed to invent a new word for a situation as absurd as this one.

She unsheathed her dagger. As she sliced into the creature’s chest, Alain bolted to a corner of the room and retched.

“I would’ve thought you’d have an iron stomach, considering you’ve had your own chest sliced open… Remind me again, how many times was it?”

“Three,” Alain said gravely. “But I never had to bear witness to that procedure. It’s the advantage of being, well, dead.”

Mavery snorted as she laid down her dagger, then widened the wound open with her fingers.

She could see a glint of metal peeking out from the heart.

Instead of giving in to disgust, she treated it as picking a rather complicated lock.

She held the wound open with one hand as her other worked the pliers and prised out the bullet.

She then tossed both pliers and bullet aside.

As she’d done once before, she grabbed the syringe and plunged the thick needle into the heart, dispensed the serum while counting to thirty, then pulled out the emptied syringe.

She got to her feet and backed away, just in case the creature turned violent upon awakening.

Alain joined her at her side, hands half-raised and prepared to summon another protective ward.

And then they waited.

Seconds passed, then a full minute, and the beast remained as lifeless as before. After another minute passed with no change, Alain lowered his hands.

“It appears the serum doesn’t work on these creatures,” he said, touching her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

Mavery sighed.

“We still have Aganast’s books, not to mention his journal,” he said. “If he was a Senser, as the creature claimed, perhaps we’ll find our answers in there.”

She nodded, then stepped forward and kneeled beside the corpse again.

Acting on impulse, she gently stroked the creature from the crown of his head, down to where his wings joined his shoulders.

In this state, he was nothing more than an oversized cat taking a nap.

His fur was much softer than she’d expected, despite the rigid muscle beneath it.

Her hand stilled as she gasped. The incision she’d made with her dagger was smaller than she remembered. The serum was healing the beast, albeit very slowly. Maybe it needed more magic to speed up the process.

She placed her palm against the broken skin and channeled a little of her arcana, performing the same spell she’d once used on Alain’s hand. The wound glowed with a turquoise aura that quickly faded.

“No.” The voice in her mind was barely a whisper. “Paper.”

“What?”

The creature did not speak again. But his torso rose and fell in the tiniest increments. She pulled her hand away and considered whether she’d heard the creature correctly. She looked around the room at the piles of books that had been reduced to nothing but leather covers and…

Arcana.

“Grab a book!” she cried. “Find one that still has its pages.”

Alain’s staff clattered to the floor as he sprung into action. Mavery focused on the creature while Alain opened tomes and tossed them aside.

“All of these have been transmutated,” he said. “I could try upstairs—”

“That’ll take too long. Bring me my Compendium. It’s inside my pack.”

Mavery resumed stroking the creature’s fur. His body was less stiff, a few degrees warmer. But he was still too close to death for her liking.

Alain handed her the bundle of papers. She ripped off the front page.

“All right, I have paper,” she whispered to the creature. “What do I need to do?”

One of his front paws twitched—a movement so subtle, she almost missed it entirely.

She pressed the paper to the pad of his foot and held it there.

The paper turned black and shriveled, as though it had been set on fire.

And then it faded into the same dark mist she’d already seen countless times within this tower.

The air smelled of smoldering wood and damp soil.

“Amazing,” Alain breathed. “The book-eating demons weren’t simply folktales.”

Mavery didn’t have the presence of mind to debate whether what the creature was doing counted as eating. Though his breaths were less shallow, she knew he still teetered precariously on the edge between life and death.

“More,” his voice echoed through her mind.

She ripped out another page and repeated the process.

Then another page, until she was ripping out full sections of her Compendium at a time.

Gone were the herbalism field guides, the illustrations of healing spell rituals, the biographies of ancient wizards.

They all turned to black vapor, but she was too focused on her task to mourn the loss.

With every scrap of paper the creature consumed, a bit more of his life force returned, his wounds stitched back together more quickly. A cloud of thick, dark arcana formed above them.

She gave the beast the final pages—the incantations Alain had written during her lessons—and all that remained in her hand was the thread she’d used to bind her Compendium together.

She was preparing herself to ask Alain to fetch more books when the beast opened his eyes.

Red irises gleamed in the Ethereal light and met her gaze.

“Where is the one who killed me?”

“Don’t worry,” she said softly. “He’s long gone.”

“And his staff of thunder?”

“Staff of…? Oh, you mean his gun. Also long gone.”

The beast slowly raised his head, then rolled from his side to his stomach.

Mavery moved back—not out of fear, but to give him more space.

Though his final words had been fueled by anger, they hadn’t been directed at her.

She couldn’t say the same about Alain. The beast looked behind Mavery’s shoulder and at last noticed the other human in the room. He growled; Alain gasped.

“Easy, now,” she said. “He’s a friend.”

The beast continued to eye Alain with suspicion. Alain, to his credit, took a step forward but only made it as far as Mavery’s side when the beast growled again.

“Y-yes,” he sputtered. “You can tell him we’re all friends here.”

“He says—”

“Though the wizard cannot speak with me, I understand him.”

“You understand Osperlandish?”

“Verily, though you and I require no common tongue to communicate. Our arcana connects our thoughts.”

Mavery relayed this to Alain.

“Fascinating,” he said. “And, er, I apologize for bashing you with my staff before.”

The creature tilted its head. “Bashing?”

“It means to hit—” Mavery began.

“I know the meaning of the word. His ‘bashing’ was no more than the nibble of a flea.”

Mavery decided to not repeat that part. The creature raised himself off the floor, rested on his haunches, and looked at Mavery again.

“That spell you used on me…” He grimaced, flashing his knife-like teeth.“Soudremancy does not agree with my kind.”

“What is your kind, exactly?”

“Ktona. In your tongue, it means, ‘from below.’ ”

“Kuh-tone-ah,” Mavery repeated. “So, ktona are not at all related to demons?”

She winced as the creature growled. “Ktonic magic comes from belowground. Your churches spread lies that ktonic magic comes from deep below. The hells.”

As Mavery repeated what the creature—the ktona—had said, a faint scribbling resounded through the room. She turned to find Alain huddled over his notebook again.

“Don’t mind me,” he said, pausing only to wave his pen. “Just eagerly recording evidence of the churches’ misdoings.”

The creature grunted. “I had mistaken him for a church-sanctioned wizard. ‘Twould seem I was wrong.”

Mavery nodded. “We don’t belong to any churches.”

“What are your names?”

“Mavery, and this is Alain. I assume you also have a name.”

“Noxanthyan, but Master called me Nox. You may do the same.”

He rose, then stretched his back. He stumbled upon taking his first steps, but regained more control of his muscles with each one that followed.

He paced around the room, then ascended the stairs to the upper library.

Mavery rose to her feet and placed her hand on Alain’s shoulder.

He flinched at her touch. Though the ktona had proven friendly, Alain was no less anxious.

“I think we can trust him,” she said.

“You can. You saved his life, after all. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’ve just earned yourself a lifelong companion.”

She smiled. “That reminds me of someone else I know.”

Alain returned her smile, but it faltered as he watched the stairwell. “As for me, I’m half-expecting him to come charging down those stairs and give me another swift wing to the chest.” He rubbed the spot where his head had collided with the cabinet downstairs.

Instead of returning in a rage, Nox descended the stairs at a trot. In his mouth, he carried a small book, which he placed at Alain’s feet. Alain hesitated, then slowly bent over and picked it up.