Sell you a Bridge chapter 293

June 15th 2016 Hollow Bastion 10:00 AM EDT

I  spent a few hours catching up with Kit after that. The first hour was  basically a guilt fest where we each tried to claim responsibility for  what had happened. Eventually Zee and Rana came and found us apologizing  back and forth and my girlfriend had no trouble telling us both to just  shut up and hug it out. Which we did. once that was done the rest of  the night was spent going back and forth telling each other stories and  binge reading every book we could find before taking turns napping.

In  the morning I spent twenty five thousand points to get access to a  "groundbreaking new delivery app that could deliver anywhere within 30  minutes for no delivery fee with only a single yearly payment of five  hundred dollars" . It was a fragrant abused of my power in the best  possible way, and my ass got donuts for everyone. The food literally  appeared from empty air on the library tables and I had a half dozen  jellies and a steaming cup of coffee to wake me up. I'd actually been  ignoring this particular email for months because of the high point  cost, but delivering ANYWHERE was definitely worth the price.

When  we finished eating though, I was surprised to see John, who I hadn't  noticed hanging around, slam down a book in front of me without a  triumphant grin as he snatched up and bit into an eclair. "Hah!" He  said, still chewing. "You fancy pants magic types are always looking for  ancient forbidden secrets and whatnot. Street punks like me know that  nothing gets done around a place this swanky without some minions  running around doing the doing." He pointed to the page. "Read that."

I  did, scanning the page as I resisted the urge to tell the demon  summoner that he was much more of a 'fancy magic person' than I was. I  was distracted by that when I read through the page, then scanned it  again to be sure. I started flipping through the book rapidly,  committing pages to memories. "Are there more of these?" I asked in  agitation. If there were, we could be onto something fantastic.

He  grinned, gesturing for me to follow. "Bet your arse there are. Dozens  of the damn things. Follow me." I stood up and trailed after him,  stuffing an extra donut in my mouth to hold it as I picked up a second  with my non coffee holding hand. The book I shoved under my arm as we  walked, and Kit, Zee, Drea, and Rana followed behind me. Jim, Eddie,  Sindella, Suzie, and Taylor had come to get food and retreated back to  their research tables, each one chasing a different lead in this  absolutely massive library.

John had, oddly, found this  little gem in a book shelf full of research notes. Well, research  assistant notes. Someone here had been responsible for doing research  into magic, and the notes were the collected manuscripts of the six lab  assistants of the guy who ran the scientific research department here.  Some guy named Ansem the Wise. Aforementioned Ansem was apparently  working on projects related to the darkness permeating the castle, go  figure, and the lab assistants had take consistent notes of every  attempt.

Most useful to us in this case was the notes from  a guy named Ienzo who was particularly concerned with the safety of  himself and his fellow assistants. He'd spent a large portion of the  book noting down different safety features in use during experiments and  where they could be found and accessed. He hadn't listed the actual  item we needed in the book John found, but he HAD referenced it as part  of a previous document. Specifically, a special protective covering that  could keep off the harmful effects of darkness when traveling through  the substance.

I was definitely planning to learn more  about this shit too. They had done a LOT more with corridors than I had,  and I was looking forward to taking the notes with me. For now though, I  arrived at the shelf and started flipping through the neatly organized  books that had been divided into sections corresponding to the assistant  in question. It took me a few to find Ienzo, but once I did I memorized  the whole damn section in about twenty minutes, and by the time I was  finished I had the information I was looking for.

When I  looked up I almost fell over with a yelp as I saw Zee leaning right in  my face. I pushed her back with a laugh. "Damn it Zee. You're such a  nerd, I was planning to tell you what's up, I just got distracted by my  research. Can you seriously not sit still for fifteen fucking minutes?"  It was impossible to stop the grin that crawled across my face at my  fanatical magic girl research nerd and her rabid enthusiasm for the  mystic arts.

She crossed her arms under her breasts (which  I was fucking POSITIVE she was doing to distract me from the subject)  and pouted cutely. "You know, relationships are about communication. You  can ask Drea. You're supposed to share with me and tell me things.  That's the key to a healthy and well balanced love life." Her tone was  sulky enough to make it clear that this was pure justification.

I  still felt the need to point out the obvious. "That's about emotional  honesty and you know it. Our relationship isn't dependent on my  willingness to share my arcane secrets with you." She raised an eyebrow  at that, and I hesitated slightly. "Well, not completely dependent on  that. Shut up. You'd still love me even if I didn't give you magic info  and you know it. At least I hope you do."

"Fine." She  huffed out, tone so dramatic and put upon you'd have thought I just  asked her to push a boulder up a hill. "I guess I love you for other  stuff, but seriously. Give me the dirt. It's super mean of you to hold  out me about magic." Her pout was still there, but it had turned  pleading and her eyes got wide and reflective as she somehow managed to  tilt her head down and look up at me through her lashes while I was  sitting on the floor. Damn. That look was pretty dangerous. She could  weaponize that shit.

I sighed and tossed her one of the  books, open to a specific page I flipped to from memory. "TLDR, there  are some weird ass coats in this castle that can let use travel through  the dark corridors without any of the rest of you getting meme hazarded  into drooling psychopaths by the conceptual corruption between worlds.  They were made on site, so there should be extras around if we can find  the caches Ienzo mentioned. I'm only running into one problem. This  asshole wrote the notes for people who lived here, so they refer to all  the places by NAME."

"Oh." She said with annoyance. "We  don't know what any of the areas here are called. There are bound to be a  few references in the notes, but coordinating all that data and cross  referencing the placement to draw out a map is going to be a huge pain  in the ass. I don't suppose you can cheat us one?" I raised an eyebrow,  taking a long and meaningful sip of my coffee, and she sighed. "Yeah,  ok. Fair enough. Food was the priority. Speaking of which can we get  Gianzano's for dinner? Mom loved their eggplant parm when I was a kid"

I  raised an eyebrows. "Is it considered a stereotype that you grew up  eating pricy italian food? I've always wondered but I never wanted to  ask because of the whole dead mom thing." I sent an impression of  teasing and love across the bond so she knew it was a joke, and luckily I  felt a warm reassurance and amusement in return.

My  sorceress just rolled her eyes. "You certainly didn't have a problem  with my choice of cuisine when you were pawing at my ass for most of our  first date." She turned around and wiggled aforementioned ass at me.  "You want the booty, you need to feed it booty food." She shot me a wink  over her shoulder and I rolled my own eyes back at her before blowing  her a kiss, which she caught and pressed to her cheek.

I  heard a groan of agony from off to the side and looked and a cringing  Rana sitting to one side covering her ears. "Gross, gross, gross. See,  this is why other kids are lucky. Some of their parents act like horny  teenagers, but my parents ARE horny teenagers. You're both absolutely  disgusting. Can we go get these coats and go home please? Because dad  gets extra creepy when mom brings up her butt, and I'd really rather not  need any more therapy than I already do."

Clicking  my tongue, I glared at my daughter. "I know you didn't learn that from  Tina. Cassie is a terrible influence on you. There's nothing wrong with  your mother and I being affectionate. But fine, we can go look for the  coats. Before that though, we need to make a map. I'm not running around  this place like a dumbass, looking for individual landmarks referenced  in the books. We have literal volumes of information here, as well as  the experience of places we've already been and a view of the castle  from the outside to establish size and shape. Go get the others and have  them meet us here."

Rana  rolled her eyes. "Yes dad. Try not to perv on mom too much once I  leave. The poor guy in the coat doesn't need to watch you two be  shameless." I stuck my tongue out at her, because flipping off my own  daughter didn't exactly feel like something I should do.

Once  she left I started flipping through the books, looking for any pictures  or diagrams that might make this easier. Even some kind of small area  map would be fine. Anything we could use for a baseline. I found nothing  like that. I did start finding more references to rooms. Just casual  references, comments about placement or and things like that. Normally  that wouldn't have been useful. Visual stimuli was tough to guess at  from commentary.

I  had experience at this though, and the tools to do it, in a way. I  closed my mind, and conjured the outer body trance. When I was in the  darkness I got to work. The first thing I did was to dig up every  comment and reference to the library itself. I knew what that looked  like in real life, so comparing the two would let me understand how the  others visualized space. Then I created a shadow model of the room  inside the trance where I knew there was no limit on resources.

There  was a lot of data, years worth of notes and commentary to sort through,  but I had time and ability. I was ready and able to make this work. My  void magic training had actually helped with this immensely. Void is all  about space and structure in some ways, and the comments I was using as  my base were simpler than the complex void formuli by far. This was  like easy mode.

Once  I had the model done and had used it to derive the descriptive styles  of each apprentice, I removed myself from the trance, took out a piece  of paper (by shifting one of the books with my power to have a  convenient blank page at the back I could tear out) and then started to  sketch out a two dimensional representation of the room we were in to  form a foundation for the map.

As  I worked, the others came back. I passed them specific books that I  knew had comments we needed and had them scan over them. I was the one  who was drawing the map, but that was fine, my manual dexterity was  staggering, especially as a god. I could do a fine job on it. With  enough people and a good place to start, we all settled in and got to  work. This would be a pain in the ass, but that was fine. Every good  party needed a mini map.