The Missing Library, Chapter Eleven

🐁 The Ratcatchers | Fundamental magic. All I had to do was adjust it to collect what it expelled, sift, and analyze each component. Mind you most were so small I couldn’t see them

THE RATCATCHERS: The Missing Library
© 2025 Liam Armitage

We arrived home while the sun was high in the sky and I started at once. At intervals, Youngji inquired after me—if I needed help, if I wanted to take a break, if I wanted to eat. Each was appreciated but I waved her off. I heard her go out for her daily jog and striking the practice dummy, or mook jung as she called it.

1st Quint, Quadras, 752 RC

Finally somewhere past midnight I was done. I crawled into bed next to Youngji and fell asleep. The next morning I awoke to the smell of bacon, eggs and corn cakes. She brought me a plate and I devoured it.

“So I saw all the tubes and different colors in the lab. What did you figure out?”

“Well, I decided to try to isolate where the books had been. Every contact leaves a trace, we just have to find it. Whether I could find it and if I could understand it and if it took me to the Nullians or the Dragszaz were all up in the air.”

She chewed some bacon while she talked. “We got lucky with the cultists this time. Not sure I want to take that gamble again.”

“Agreed,” I said. “But we have gotten lucky again. There is a common spell used for cleaning things. It creates a model of the thing based on its platonic image and adjusts for the instance and then dispels. Fundamental magic. All I had to do was adjust it to collect what it expelled, sift, and analyze each component. Mind you most were so small I couldn’t see them.”

Youngji interrupted me. “And how does that help if you can’t even see them?”

I smiled. “I made them more visible with compounds that react to different substances. Now I didn’t have much to work with. With more samples I might have been able to trial and error to more granular isolations but as it is I think I got a very good result. The most common substance is a burned form of solanaceae, a type of leafy plant often smoked for recreation. Now in addition I found a number of hashes.”

She paused eating the eggs. “Hashes?”

“It is a broad category of smoked narcotics, no exact formula but uses that kind of smoked leaf as it’s base with one of a dozen kinds of hallucinogenics that activate with the smoking.”

“Legal I take it, from how you’re talking about it?”

“Well, selling it is illegal but possessing and using is not, so there is a predictable market for it. The interesting thing is the sheer variety I dedicated here. We are fortunate that some of the books have cloth covers, they are like sponges.”

“So, they like to float, how does that help?”

“No, no, you see people don’t cross hashes, at least not casually. They tend to interfere with each other. If you use them casually you might be able to use different ones on different days but not at once and if you’re a habitual user you’ll need to ween off one first.”

“You know a lot about this. Ever use?”

“Once, out of curiosity but the truth is I’ve seen too many use this kind of stuff to avoid dealing with life. It doesn’t have much appeal to me. Besides, against league rules.”

“Right, hurling.” She put her plate down. “So, conclusion?”

“Dens. These places rent small rooms for someone to get high and you can easily collect traces from a lot of sources and the rooms are cheap. I suspect they’re hiding in one.”

“How many of those are there in the city?”

“More than you and I have fingers and toes, together. However, only a subset would be friendly to vanarians and only a selection of those would not sell them out to the Nullians.”

“And that number is?”

“Five, maybe six. And there’s a seventh I think we should check to be safe.”

“So, we have a lot of walking to do?”

“No, it’s time for me to call the Gangham Gang.”

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Where Do You Want to Go Next?

🏠 The Ratcatchers
⬅️ The Missing Library, Chapter 10
➡️ The Missing Library, Chapter 12. Coming on Monday 30 June. Probably.

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