Waiting never got easier. No matter how many times Myriel had been forced to exercise patience, it was still an effort. Now, with so much at stake, all he could do was wait. Not that he expected anything different with the Black. One could spend two lifetimes trying to study It and preparing to interact with It, but it was all vanity. He shifted in his chair and cursed his popping hip. Why couldn't he and Albert have brought something more comfortable down here?
Albert, now how could I have missed that? Percy wondered. Of course it made sense to him now. The late nights spent "studying" and odd quirks Myriel had written off as character traits. That was the way of it, always figuring out what he needed to know after he needed to know it; and when he had tried to get ahead of it? To be prepared for the Cataclysm? It had backfired. Would he have even been looking to take on a second librarian if he wasn't so obsessed with research?
Myriel sighed and double checked his hourglass. He had flipped it three times since they went into the Chamber, which meant the students would have felt one hour pass. Time in the Black was relative.
He took out his record book and looked over the pressure and temperature readings. Applying normal analyses to the Black was mostly fruitless, but the Blades had been able to pinpoint a pattern of pressure and temperature variations that indicated when a Cataclysm was near. The average cycle was a century, but it was not exact. The last Cataclysm, for example, occurred after a hundred and thirty fulldays. It had been seventy fulldays since then.
Myriel could remember realizing that he might have to live through another Cataclysm. He almost fainted when he squinted at the pressure gauge and took down an abnormal reading. His dread grew every moon after that as the numbers continued to match with the Blades' charts. The night he had used the formulas to calculate the dates he had... well he didn't remember what he had done because of all the ale.
And now he was here, watching and waiting for three students to emerge from the Chamber with black eyes.
"You know you don't have to wait down here for three moons..." Mareth said from behind him. Myriel got up. The Prelate was standing a few feet away. Mareth's eyes matched the blackness of the walls so well that the librarian struggled to shake the sensation that he was looking through the Blade.
"I do, and I will." He answered.
Mareth nodded and frowned at the cavern. "I suppose it is for the better, the keep is not as safe as it once was."
"I thought you were going to-"
"They fired on us without warning and without regard for the life of their captain, and they used a ram reinforced with steel. Something tells me they will not stop until the castle is overtaken. Some of the students... " Mareth's frowned deepened.
"How many?" Myriel asked. The silence pressed down on him while he waited for the Prelate to respond.
"Four: Hob, Fiorè, Thane and Violet. Dmitri and two others were wounded. I killed two of the knights."
The friends stood in the darkness. Myriel felt a greedy smile project out of the expanse. He had told himself that the void of the cavern was only an illusion a thousand times, but was it? Of course, it had to be. He had walked the tunnel and taken readings countless times. The feeling that he was being watched out of the blackness was only that, a feeling. The alternative was too maddening to consider.
"Have you thought about the library?" Mareth asked.
"I have," Myriel said. "As much as it pains me, you are right. Dindra has shown that they cannot be trusted. I wouldn't be a Blade if I did not believe that life comes before knowledge... but it doesn't make it hurt any less."
Mareth nodded. "No. It never does."
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