Chapter 47

**Merianna**

My eyes… my poor eyes felt like they were on fire. I placed the tomb I’d been sifting through on the useless pile and vigorously rubbed my face. Squinting, I glanced over at the amount of bookshelves Noch and I had finished sifting through on my right, then I glanced to my left at all the bookshelves we still had left and groaned in misery.

“Come now Demon Spawn, it’s too early for you to give up hope already.” Noch chuckled from behind me. We had decided to go through the bookshelves back to back, while he checked out the one on the left, I checked the one on the right as we systematically moved our way down the middle pathway.

“Have you even glanced at how much we still have left to do?” I asked miserably.

“If you don’t look, you don’t know. Ignorance is bliss.” His answer was so bland that I wondered if he was honestly doing just that.

“If that’s what you’re doing right now, I have to say, I’m honestly impressed.”

“Age makes you wiser.”

“It might make you wiser but it doesn’t make you in particular any less compulsive.”

“That might be true, but, I know that if I look at what still needs to be done I’d be more inclined to compulsively blow this place up rather than finish what we’re doing.”

I wanted to respond by shooting down his comment before it could actually become a solid plan in his head - but at the rate that we were progressing and the way I was feeling - that idea didn’t necessarily sound so bad. Our rate of progression wasn’t bad, if anyone from the outside were to look at us, we’d look like we were flying through the work. It didn’t feel like it though…

I felt Noch slowly turning to look at me. I slowly turned to look at him as well.

“Demon Spawn, I never considered you to be on my side over something like this.” He said in obvious delight.

“I might be on your side, but that doesn’t mean that I agree to it though… not logically at least.” I grimaced.

“But you do on some level, and that is what counts. Now let’s get to burning this place to the ground!” He said excitedly.

“I thought you guys wanted answers, not a fire.” Thyrion’s voice filtered in from the entrance.

Oh thank heavens, my external voice of reasoning! I thought happily as I watched Thyrion make his way to us with two grocery bags in hand.

“Your timing is terrible.” Noch grumbled.

“Your timing is perfect!” I sighed with relief.

“Were you trying to corrupt my wife Noch?” Thyrion asked with a smirk as he reached my side.

“I almost had her on my side!” Noch yelled indignantly. “And I think she’s far past being corrupted by now.”

I chuckled as Thyrion pulled me into a one armed hug and placed a kiss on my head. I smelled something freshly baked and sweet wafting up from one of the bags he was holding and my stomach growled. With a smile Thyrion handed the bags over to me to rummage through.

“Looks like I came just in the nick of time then.” He smirked.

“You honestly could have taken your time coming back.”

“I missed my wife.”

“I swear you two have become conjoined at the hip.”

“Happily so.”

“DOUGHNUTS!!!” I exclaimed in joy as I found what had tickled my nose.

Noch’s gears seemed to change immediately at my exclamation. “How many?” He asked seriously.

I snapped the bag closed again and held it protectively against my chest. “Unfortunately for you, just enough for me.” I grinned.

“Oh now that’s not fair, Demon Spawn. Equal work, equal shares.” Noch proclaimed while looking like he was getting ready to tackle me for the bag.

“There’s enough for all three of us.” Thyrion chuckled and nabbed the bag out of my hands. It wasn’t fair that he knew I wanted to create a much needed distraction with the doughnuts as the centerpiece. If we were left to our own devices, Noch and I would be running circles around the whole archive without getting any work done. Even though I was supposed to be the more responsible one…

“Come now spoil sport, we all need a break from time to time!” Noch clearly had the same thing in mind as I did.

“You two have only been in here for about 3 hours now, at the rate you guys are progressing you might even be able to finish by tonight.” Thyrion had figured out our system and took stock of the bookshelves we had already finished checking through.

Noch and I groaned simultaneously at Thyrion’s offhanded observation. The 3 hours that we had already spent going through those bookshelves felt like an eternity. Especially since there weren’t any clocks or windows in this room to keep track of time. If 3 hours already felt like time and effort were standing still, I couldn’t see us breezing through the rest of all this with the same productive speed. Motivation was most definitely a missing factor in this scenario.

He noticed our deflated expressions and chuckled. “At least this will hopefully be something that you guys only need to do once in all your lifetimes going forward.”

“Main word there being, hopefully.” Noch deadpanned as he walked up and snatched the bag from Thyrion.

“Have you guys found anything interesting yet?” Thyrion glanced over at the progress we had made. “Surely something should have popped up in between all that.”

I groaned miserably. “If by interesting you mean a copious amount of 2000 year old recipes for anything from Gryphon steaks to Dragon meatballs and mouse skewers, then yes. Interesting is the right word, helpful, not so much unless there’s a recipe that’ll magically give us unparalleled good luck.”

“You had recipes on that side?” Noch asked curiously.

“Yep, what did you have?”

“I had carpentry tips and some interesting blueprints for rune pens.” He admitted with a shrug.

“Why did I have to get the boring section while you got the good stuff?” I grumbled.

“Beggars can’t be choosers, we’re not here for fun after all.” he sighed heavily.

“Can’t Ela or Hezerial help you guys with this?” Thyrion asked curiously.

Noch and I both froze at that question then looked at each other. “Why didn’t you think of that?” Noch asked me incredulously.

I raised my eyebrow in response. “Really? You’re going to lay the blame for that lack of logic at my feet?”

“Your Guardian is more likely to assist with something like this than Ela is. If I were to ask her, she'd be more likely to allow my sorry ass to get stabbed the next time the situation allows, rather than keep me safe.”

I didn’t like that logic, but it was true. Ela was definitely the type to let something like that happen to her ward just because he pissed her off. Hezerial on the other hand… well - then a different thought struck me.

“How old is Strider?” I asked him seriously.

Noch blinked at me for a second like he couldn’t believe I’d suggested something like that. Strider might be a familiar, but his intelligence was most definitely not something to sneeze at. It wasn’t out of the question that he wouldn’t know how to read the ancient languages, especially if he was already with Noch back in those lifetimes.

Noch seemed to also come to the same conclusion. “Blast it. I should have brought him with us.”

“Poor cat would have hidden away the moment he caught a whiff of that thought coming from you.” Thyrion chuckled as he grabbed the baggs back from Noch and proceeded to wander over to a small table in a corner that had four chairs.

“Him hiding from me is an impossible task. There is nowhere that cat can go that I wouldn’t be able to catch him at.”

“How didn’t you know then that he was meeting up with Thyrion back in the day when you still wanted to kill his ass?” I raised my eyebrow and he glared at me solemnly.

“I didn’t care where he wandered around back then. Now’s circumstances are different.” He retorted.

“Now you just want to exploit him.” Thyrion snarked.

“As if that is something to frown upon!” He scoffed and followed along to the table where Thyrion was starting to lay out the mirriad of snacks he had brought along with him. “And you! Call in that blasted Guardian of yours, the faster we can get all this done, the better!”

“Fine, but only after our break.” I chuckled. It definitely wasn’t a bad idea to get Hezerial in on finding information in these archives, hell, it will probably go a heck of a lot faster with him working next to us.