Theif

Dellin melted out of the wall. “Finally,” He thought, “I was starting to think that they would never leave.” The room that he found himself in was huge. All around him, giant shelves rose up towards the high ceiling were thick wooden rafters held up the structure. Over the shelves in front of him he could see the balcony of the second floor. Or maybe balcony wasn’t quite the right word, since walls of metal shelves went from the floor of the second floor up to the ceiling, blocking it from sight completely. 

“You need to be more patient Dell,” Gem replied, “Honestly, if you had been wrong about not feeling anyone nearby, then we would be dead in the water.” His voice was a grating stone against stone sound that rumbled inside Dell’s head.

“No candle or lamplight,” Dell said, “And if there were someone here I would just go back into the wall before they saw me.”

 Gen sighed, “To the second floor then?” Dell nodded.

He moved quickly. Luckily Arden had thought ahead enough to give him some soft soled shoes, his normal pair would be as good as tap shoes against the glossy stone floor. He bobbed and weaved through tall shelves and stacks going along the set path that had been hammered into him for the past few weeks. Past three shelves, take a right. Four more, take a left. A u-turn around this pillar. . . and there were the stairs. They were wide enough for ten or twelve people to walk shoulder to shoulder, and the rails were ornamented with thick, carved dark wood, and the patterns that were carved out had a gold and silver metal laid in to replace the wood. At the bottom of the railing, rising up alongside the steps were intricate wavelike patterns. He took another breath and started belting up the polished wood steps. 

At the top he was met with a massive stone door. It was etched all along the edges. Runes that would allow the door to open if the right activation word was spoken. Luckily for Dell, stone doors weren’t much of a hindrance. He moved up to the door and placed his left hand against the cool stone. Then, after taking a moment to prepare himself, he let himself start sinking through it. It was thicker than he was expecting. Thicker, even, than the outer walls of the building. He was two feet into the door when he stopped to take stock of it all. Even if he were to reach his arm straight out in front of him, he still wouldn’t be able to reach the other side of the door. He closed his eyes and felt for the tell tale vibrations that would indicate that there was someone else diving in the walls. He couldn’t feel any. He was lucky. The only thing he could see stopping him now was another diver that could chase him through stone. 

He began moving through the stone again until he could clearly see the inner surface of the door. He began melting out of the door, but, instead of just letting himself go completely out of the door, he stopped with just his head outside of it. He held his breath to listen for any sounds, but there were none that he could hear. He slowly brought the rest of himself out. In front of him was the exact thing that they were looking for; Shelves upon shelves of parchment scrolls. Many of them were tucked away in their own square cubbies. Others were in larger cubbies, stacked together in pyramids of three or ten. Almost none of them looked particularly old. They were the personal copies of banned or otherwise unseemly scrolls belonging to the Head Archivist. He probably had them special made when the order to have them burned came from the king. 

Most of the cubbies were unmarked, just as Dell had expected, though some of them had small brass plaques underneath them, labeling what the scrolls were. Now there were two options; either he could hope that the set of scrolls that he was looking for was one of the few labeled, and he could go from plaque to plaque to find them, or he could go straight into reading every scroll he could in order to find them. 

He opted to check the labels. Even though it was unlikely that the ones he was looking for were actually labeled, this seemed the faster option. There were still dozens of labels to sort through. There were “Histories of Defunct Governments of Eastern Quenni,” and “Rare and Once lost Etching Techniques of the Gods.” He was starting to worry that he would miss the right group of scrolls just because of the way the archivists decided to label them. After twenty or so plaques, however, he saw a group of three large scrolls with a small bronze plate below them. It read “Last Known Locations of Gods and Confirmed Cases of Ecological Absorption of Mist,” Dellin almost jumped when he read it.

He grabbed the top scroll and opened it up to verify it was what he needed. The text was written in a careful hand, it was un-ornamented and, while incredibly boring, was very easy to read. There were sections of a few paragraphs, each one headed by larger text with the name of a god and a regional location. The smaller text was mostly short histories of the gods it pertained to. Dellin felt his shoulders slump a bit. Arden was hoping that there would be detailed maps of the areas the gods had died, or at least instructions on how exactly to get there. He supposed that there wasn’t much point in fixating on that now though. He rolled up the scroll that he had grabbed and put into his pack, then he moved to grab the other two scrolls and do the same with them.

Just then, the sound of heavy stone grinding against stone rang through the small area. Dellin’s head jerked toward the entrance of the vault. “That’s not a good sound, Dell,” Gen said within him.

“No it is not. Looks like we’ll have to make a quick escape,” Dell thought in reply. He focused on the stone below him and let himself sink through it slowly. He needed to make sure he didn’t move too fast, falling from the high ceiling of the first floor would be more trouble than it was worth if he didn’t make sure to temper how quickly he fell. He was down to his knees when he suddenly couldn’t sink any more. The first floor’s ceiling was wood. Dell felt himself panic as the sound of footsteps rose above the cacophony of the now closing door. “Is there another way out of here?” he asked.

“Not one that I could see. Maybe if you just-” Gen was caught off by a loud gasp from a slightly hunched, middle aged man holding a lantern.

“Who are you? How did you get in here?” The man asked. Then his eyes flicked over to the now empty cubby that once held the scrolls Dell was in the middle of stealing. “Those scrolls are banned from public use, boy. And they never leave this room.” He emphasized never with poison in his voice.

“His arms Dell,” Gen said. Dell focused in on the scholar’s arms, where thick, stone-like scales were sprouting out of his skin. “He’s a scaleskin. You can’t fight him.”

The man didn’t give Dell the chance to heed Gen’s warning, however. He dropped his lantern onto a table and charged at Dell as his scales were still growing. The aisle of shelves was too narrow for Dell to duck out of the way of the man. However, Dell had just enough time after pulling his attention away from Gen to push himself harshly out of the ground, propelling himself up like a fish breaching out of open water. The height he gained from the jump was enough for him to manage to clear the head of his assailant. Dell spared a look at the scholar as he began running towards the door. The man’s skin had now been completely replaced by the black scales. He had also begun to grow slightly. His legs in particular now looked misplaced, as though he had borrowed a pair from one of his much, much taller friends. He used his longer stride to charge again, this time running far faster than a person should be able to. 

He wasn’t going to be able to make it to the door in time, and his last trick wasn’t going to work either. Even if the scholar didn’t see that coming and didn't didn’t manage to adapt to it, his head was only a few inches from the ceiling. Dell would never be able to slip in that little gap. His heart started banging in his chest. He was trapped. He wasn’t going to make it out.

“To the ground! Now!” Gen yelled within him, and so Dellin listened and dropped down to a prone position in the ground. Then, he started sinking into it. Gen had started the process for him, and it didn’t take long for Dell to follow suit. Mere moments before the scholar would have bouldered over him, Dell was completely underground. He took a moment of silence to settle his mind

“Thanks, Gen. I was sure I was trapped.”

“You’re welcome Dellin. You need to pay more attention to your surroundings. Just because you can’t sink completely  through something, doesn’t mean you can’t fit within it.” He chided.

Suddenly, there was a crash against the floor above Dell. Then another, and another. The scaleskin was driving his hands into the stone over and over again, breaking chucks out of it with every hit. Dellin took the hint and moved through the stone towards the door and slipped out onto the stairs. There was now a small group of people gathered at the bottom of them, probably coming to see what noise was all about. Their confusion was too slow at changing into understanding, as by the time they tried to stop him, he already had his feet on the stone floor. He sunk into the ground right before their feet, racing away to freedom.

 A half hour later he saw the roots of a tree plunging into the soil. He propelled himself up and out of the ground into the starried skied night and leaned up against the tree.

“You mind if we take a quick break here?” Dell thought

“Well I think we are far enough away now to not have to worry too much. Arden can wait a while longer.” Gen said. Then Dell felt the familiar warmth in his chest as the vol started melting out of him. He was slim and long. Sort of like a weasel or a ferret, but instead of fur he had the hard scaly skin of an armadillo. His clawed feet dug through Dell’s pant leg. He felt himself relax for a moment, placing his hand on Gen’s back.

“Let’s not let Arden talk us into something like this again, okay?”