Dark Lord in Chains 52 (Patreon)

Meeting with Emma at the library, at this late hour, an hour before the dawn, where it was guaranteed to be completely empty, was not something I could just write it off as a coincidence. The time was too special to be anything but a deliberate choice. 

Someone else might have assumed that, since she used the main entrance, leaving a record of her credentials, rather than using the secret entrance that she could also access was enough to make it an innocent night visit rather than something underhanded. 

That was a nice assumption. For example, if I were in her place and assumed my presence was suspicious, not only I would have used the secret entrance, but I also used several wards to make sure my presence was never registered by the security measures in place. 

Like I had done at the moment. 

However, I was too much of a suspicious bastard to assume Emma had the same cautious approach to cloak-and-dagger activities, or cautious enough to understand the full implications. She was too easy to play politically. If it was just me that played her politically, I wouldn’t be harsh against her, considering the ease I managed to break even the highest echelons of the Empire through my expertly-crafted ploys. 

But no, Emma wasn’t just played by me, but also by Fernhand, easily tricked into using a dangerous mental trick that would have easily killed both of us if I was as helpless as I looked. Not to mention the Queen, using Emma’s spectacular magical abilities to achieve her aims before politically discarding her, something Emma noticed only weeks after that happened. 

She might be an excellent mage, but her naked ambition combined with her political naivety destined her to be a political tool, and nothing else. 

It would be a lie to say I wasn’t tempted to bend her against one of those dusty shelves that held some of the most precious historical scripts of the Empire and notify her about my presence amorously. Luckily, however, I had just shared a spectacular encounter with Sapphire, stretching from the throne room to treasury, making it much easier to suppress that desire. 

Instead, I used the Blade of Shadows to wrap myself with the shadows of the shelves, getting close enough to Emma to see what she was doing. As I stood above her, just a couple of feet away, her delicious perfume filled my nose, tempting me to ignore my conviction about watching her. 

However, I noticed that she had a large list in hand, with many book names followed with detailed instructions. A little delayed gratification was nothing compared to understanding what she was doing — especially since she already had a reputation for doing dangerous stuff without realizing it. 

Interestingly, her target wasn’t the private section of the royal family like I assumed, nor she targeted the section that held the most important, and most dangerous magical books. No, instead, she started walking around the library, pulling some random frayed book from the bottom of a random shelf, browsing quickly until she found what she had been searching for, taking a rapid note on the notebook she carried, before moving onto the next step. 

At the first glance, it looked innocent, a mage studying to design yet another spell, taking notes. Funnily enough, if it wasn’t for the particular hour she chose to visit the library, along with the panicked glances she was repeatedly throwing toward the entrance — unaware of the shadow that was watching her, ruining her attempts to stay concealed. I got even nearer, trying to read her notes, only to fail for one important reason. 

Her notes were encrypted. 

It wasn’t the first time I saw the encrypted notes of a mage. It was a preferred method of many spellcasters to keep their secrets hidden. Though, oftentimes, they had overestimated the protection their encryption provided for their notes, leaving their notes accessible, making them easily stolen. 

Unfortunately, breaking a code was a time-consuming exercise, making it impossible to decipher it immediately, or without the assistance of a lot of paper and some esoteric spells helping me to calculate. 

So, I turned to the next best option, trying to understand what she was trying to discover from the books she was aiming for. 

That turned out to be another bust. She was simply browsing the content too quickly for me to process, even with my speed reading. After all, as a mage, Emma wasn’t a slouch when it came to reading, and, more importantly, unlike me, she knew exactly what she was searching for. 

So, I tried to put together a theme from the books she was targeting, but even that turned out to be a more difficult task than I had been expecting. The topics spread across a huge variety, from runes to enchanting, with a generous dash of curses and wards. 

The only thing that was missing, interestingly, was elementalism, her exact expertise. However I wasn’t sure whether it was not needed because of the nature of the topic she was searching for, or it wasn’t needed because she had already collected the needed information previously while building her own spell knowledge. 

Other than that, I was struggling to find a connecting thread between the books. Some were advanced books, focusing on spells complicated enough to overwhelm a lesser mage through their presence, while others were elementary books, only fit to be handled by children. Some focused on revolutionary theories that changed the magical landscape, and the others were about disproved magical theories that were on the library only due to their historical context… 

Soon, however, I noticed another very important detail. Every single book she pulled was old, ancient level old. I missed that fact, because some of the books looked new from the outside, because they were actually so old that it was not the original manuscript, but a copy created to preserve the information. The others were so old that the only thing that was preventing them from turning into dust by a touch of Emma’s fingers was the protective enchantments. 

I watched Emma’s research with a frown until she reached the end of the list, and prepared to leave, still unable to decipher what she was trying to find. 

I had another strategic choice to make…