Nuha dropped so that he was sitting with his back against the parapet and stared out into the void opposite him. He was taking a risk being this close while atop the crumbling ruin of the wall that once surrounded the palace, but he wasn’t concerned. Even if the wall buckled under his weight, he’d be able to deliver himself to safety with the power granted to him by the library. He had done it twice already.

What he wanted was to understand the gaping darkness before him. To the eye, it appeared both like a bottomless pit and a inky blob that reached out with numerous tendrils in all directions. On its south side, it had three spikes that terminated at a point where they were almost touching. At first he thought that these might have been pointing at some sort of clue, but no matter his inspection, he was unable to find anything.

Perhaps the weirdest part about it was the lack (or extreme amounts) of gravity within the thing. Nuha had attempted to touch the spike tips, but was unable to feel anything other than a change in the weight of his fingers. No matter how he reached into the blackness, it felt the same as if he had let his hand hang at his side.

He had ‘dropped’ all manner of assorted items into it as well – from all angles. No matter the direction of contact, the items would fall into the darkness. Watching this happen in the direction of up was disorienting, if not slightly addicting.

While he waited on the wall, the head librarian was tossing rocks up into a tendril that loomed overhead. An occasional laugh would escape him as the sight became disorienting and he’d have to look away.

“You have finally lost your brains, have you?”

Wrenfel’s thick accent reached him before she materialized out of the area between all things, where the librarians traveled. Nuha smiled up at her and patted a spot next to him. “You really should throw something at it. It’s so strange.”

“I don’t need to throw rocks at things to understand them.” She waved her hand above her before taking a seat at his side. “I understand that this thing is a hole. I’ll step around it like I do all holes.”

“That’s smart.” Nuha grinned at her. “I keep sticking my hand in it.”

Exasperated at his nonchalance, she rolled her eyes and looked away from him and inadvertently into the topic of conversation. “You have lost your brains.” Silence overtook her as she the seriousness of their situation seeped back in. “The Solilieans won’t leave.”

The head librarian sighed as he considered the term for the civilians of the fallen desert city they were in. “Why can’t they see that this place is unlivable now? The waterworks are destroyed and the farms will be soon to follow.”

“Some of them are claiming that we can utilize the oasis.”

Nuha shook his head. “Even if we had enough seeds to plant, the current crops will die well before they grow and,” he pointed his finger at her, “we are not volunteering to collect the water. Even if we take teleporting it in shift, we would never be able to collect enough to sustain life here as it was.

Wrenfel nodded and fought back tears of frustration before sinking into herself against the wall. “The water wheel at the bottom of the ravine is still in tact. Would it really be to hard to rebuild the rest of the system?”

“I’m afraid so. Urwin and Iscoured the city for materials and found nothing usable for something of that scale. We also found that most of the irrigation systems have collapsed in on themselves.”

“What if we went to Namburs?” A defeated voice rose from where Wrenfel was now laying on her back.

Nuha shook his head, but before he could say anything to support the motion the words Do that jumped into his head. “What?”

Do that. They have the resources you need.

“What would we pay them with? The kingdom has no money and all of our knowledge is locked away in that monstrosity up there.”

“Pardon?” Wrenfel sat up and turned to look at her administrator with concern, glancing only momentarily at the gigantic pyramid that floated impossibly in the sky overhead.

Trade your skills.

“What?!” Nuha practically jumped to his feat at the absurd suggestion. “The librarians have never been able to teleport outside of Libris Del Sol. Everywhere is too far away from the library, thanks to the desert. We —”

Wrenfel was slowly backing away from the perceived one-sided conversation, which gave Nuha pause enough to realize that the voice he was talking to was not audible to her.

I can facilitate distance now that I am not dedicated to physical presentation. Go.

The head librarian stood in silence as he tried to make sense of the words that only he heard and after a while addressed his subordinate. “You didn’t hear that, did you?”

She shook her head.

He nodded. “I think… This is going to sound crazy. I think that the library just spoke to me.”

“It does sound crazy, but I always felt that our abilities come from a source that could maintain thought.” Wrenfel took a step toward him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “It wants us to travel?”

Once again, Nuha gestured in confirmation. “Yes. And to trade our services for what we need.”

“So we are doing deliveries now?”

The head librarian chuckled ironically. “Yeah. I guess we are.”