Weeks of travel passed slowly as the plains before us grew hotter and hotter by the day. After what felt like far too long, the three of us finally saw something on the road. The closer we got, the more we could make out. It was a few tents and two wagons on either side of the road, with a few people standing about in armour with weapons.
Two of them walked out to meet us a short distance from their camp, holding up a hand to have us halt once we were in talking distance.
"Halt! By decree of Emperor Kor, the border is closed until the war is resolved. None shall pass."
Nigel stepped forward.
"My friend here is Kona Godi of the Fyordlands. She is to return to her tribe."
"If you believe you may cross the border, you must wait for approval; it may take several weeks to a month."
Nigel stepped back and turned to us. "Well, shit. Do you have a letter of passage? You would have gotten one when you crossed from the north side."
Kona took off her pack and started to rummage through it near the bottom. I moved over to help her.
"It couldn't have been destroyed in the fire or lost with the other pack, right?"
"No, that was your pack. I packed it in here somewhere when leaving Red Beach."
The two guards looked at each other and then wandered towards us so they could talk without raised voices.
"Do you have a letter of passage?"
"Yes, just looking for it."
"Even if you do, only she will be able to cross. We will not grant passage to the disgraced noble Nigel Fenring or the wanted criminal Shinya Akame."
We all froze in place as the guard spoke. He knew us instantly. How? How was that even possible?
Nigel burst out into laughter. We all looked at him, concerned as his laughter faded. "Disgraced noble, huh? Do I look like a fucking noble? Do I talk like a FUCKING NOBLE? WELL!?"
He had started to storm toward the guard, yelling and pointing towards him. The guard who spoke waved his hand, and the other one turned and walked away. Nigel rushed towards the guard, swinging a fist. The guard leaned his head to the side, and in the blink of an eye, Nigel fell to the floor, clutching his stomach in pain. Kona and I were too stunned to speak, only watching as the guard squatted down over him and mumbled something neither of us could hear. But to think, Nigel, the best swordsman either of us knew was struck down that easily, just who was this guy?
"Balim" Nigel groaned out.
"What"
"We're going to Balim."
The guard groaned out in frustration before lifting Nigel to his feet. "You just had to say that, didn't you. Fine. Kona, Shinya, let's go."
He turned and started to walk. The two of us were still frozen in surprise, our arms half buried in Konas travel pack, looking for the permit. Nigel gave us a thumbs up and hobbled down the road; we followed.
Catching up to Nigel and the Guard, I had to ask, "What the fuck was that? Who are you? How do you know who I am? And why are you letting us pass?"
"You want me to answer all those questions at once?"
"Yeah."
The guard groaned and spat on the floor. "Fine. Under law, no human is to be barred from entering Balim even in times of great conflict. My name is Levi, and I work for the court, so of course, we all know you. Does that answer your questions? Good, now shut up."
We approached the other guards at the makeshift outpost, and Levi explained that we had invoked our right to enter Balim, and he would be going with us to ensure we don't try and sneak into the empire. He grabbed a travel pack for himself, and the four of us walked north.
"Now listen up. You can stay at Balim for three days, but that's it. If any of you try to run north, I'll ensure you all have a bounty of 50,000 crowns."
"Crowns?"
"That's how much your bounty is, mister Akame. 50,000 crowns or a million franks. Or didn't you know the empire had a different currency?"
I indeed had no idea about crowns, or Balim, really or anything about the empire. I had heard about the library city, but how big was it really? Actually, I'm getting quite excited to see it.
"That big lady finds her permit to cross the border, then I'll let her travel north, but not you two. Orders from the emperor."
We walked up a steep ridge, and as we crested its ridge, it came into view.
In the distance sat a singular building, larger than any other I had seen, dwarfing even a naval galleon in height and width. The building was tall, long and narrow with large cylindrical towers surrounding it, connected to the main building with arching structures from near the top of the towers. The building did indeed earn its title of the library city. One could even fit Trident Wood inside the building several times over with room to spare.
"I didn't know it was possible to build such things."
The guard scoffed and kept walking. "It's not."
I called out to ask the guard, Levi, what he meant, but he either didn't hear me or ignored me. This guard was a strange person; not only did he take Nigel to the floor instantly, but I couldn't help but look at the back of his head. His hair was unlike anything I've ever seen. It was short and a deep brown, but at the back, it was cut incredibly short, with the hair getting shorter and shorter the closer it got to the neck, but on the top of his head, his hair was a lot longer, brushed forward and onto his forehead, where it sat just above his dark blue eyes. I had never seen a haircut like that; it seemed too difficult to do for anyone with a simple blade. I tugged at my own hair that had grown longer over the past few months.
Out of curiosity, I decided to try something. I gripped the part of my hair I wanted removed and then lifted the finger of my other hand to it. Making sure the guard didn't turn around, I focused on the idea of my finger being as sharp as a blade. Just like it had happened before, I felt my finger elongate and become pointy at the tip. I ran my finger through my hair, and it cut.
As I dropped the cut hair to the ground, I looked at Nigel and Kona, who were walking behind me. Their eyes were wide and their mouths hung agape. I held up my black, clawed finger as it turned back to normal.
"I'm surprised that it worked, too."
Without missing a step, I cut the other side to match and scattered the cut hair to the wind. It wasn't a good haircut, but it is shorter now.
We approached the main gate of the building, which itself was four stories in height. Levi approached and took hold of a large metal ring and slammed it against the door. After a short wait, the gargantuan door began to shift and open. From writing emerged a man with a simple brown robe with a rope tied around his waist, with short hair, with the top section shaved completely. He bowed to us.
"Greetings, travellers, what brings you to Balim?"
Levi pointed over his shoulder to us, "These southerners invoked their right to come here even in wartime."
The man looked towards us, taking a step forward.
"Ah, we rarely get visitors, and southerners are rarer still. I remember this tall one, a Godi, correct?"
"Yes, brother librarian, I brought friends this time."
"Friends are a good thing for one to have. And what do these friends hope to find in the grand library of the world?" he said with a smile.
Nigel stepped forward. "I intend to research the seven saints"
"Ah, religious study is a noble goal, especially for one as young as yourself.
"I also wish to learn more about their counterparts."
The librarian's smile vanished. "The sins? We have little material on them, I'm afraid, and fewer reliable sources. And you, red-eyed one, what do you seek to learn here?"
"The sins as well… and… something about the Metonym isles."
"The Metonyms? Your country is at war with them, no? Why do you wish to learn of them?"
"My father was one. I'm told he had been here before, maybe twenty or so years ago."
The librarian smiled and nodded, moving to the side and gesturing for us to enter through the grand doorway.
The building's entrance was grand and open, stretching the whole length of the structure, with a grand hall with tables and chairs aligned in the centre. To the sides were walls upon walls of books. A grand staircase sat in the middle of the room, snaking upward, leading to the many floors above that contained more and more books, with hundreds of others that looked exactly the same as the man who opened the door walking about.
"This is the main hall where most of the books are kept, though this is but only half of the space in Balim. We have two additional wings to the building that house unique texts that the grand librarian considers important."
"Grand Librarian?"
"Yes, his name is Rahǩãn, an old Vekalin name; his office is on the top floor above the pool."
"Pool?"
"Come. You will need to meet with him"
The librarian gestures for us to follow as he walks down the length of the building. A walk that took ten minutes, leading in a straight line to the far end, where there was another large set of doors, much smaller than the ones leading outside but still substantial. Pushing them open, we came into a circular room with a large circular pool in the middle filled with shallow water that shone a strangely light hue of blue.
"This is the pool. I ask that you do not touch it in any way. The Grand Librarian's office is located above; there are stairs there."
He led us towards a doorway in the wall, walking through the stairs that snaked around the circle, leading upwards. I librarian entered a room, the same size and scale as the one below, but this one was ornately adorned with a desk in the middle and an old man with grey hair sitting at the desk, hunched over a book.
As we entered, he glanced up, his face sagging and ancient, but his voice spoke with a thunderous depth that felt as if spoken loudly, it could shake the ground beneath our feet.
"Who goes there?"
His voice caught us off guard; we were floored that a human being could have a voice that deep. The librarian stepped forward on our behalf.
"Grand Librarian Rahǩãn, these southerners are here to learn of ancient texts on the Sins."
"Sins? East wing."
The Librarian bowed and turned to leave. Though I then remembered I had actually heard this man's name before, long ago.
"Do you have a map?" I blurted out.
Rahǩãn lifted his head once more to look at me. With a groan, he stood and hobbled towards a wall with diamond-shaped slots, each holding a scroll. He pulled one and took it to a large table in the middle of the room, unravelling it.
"This is my map. I spent most of my life making it with the goal of it being the most accurate map ever made of the world as we know it. This is an original."
I stepped forward to look at the map, it was different from the one I had seen before; the shapes and scale were larger in some places and smaller in others. The map itself was littered with triangular shapes that grew smaller the closer you got to the coast.
"As you can see, I haven't mapped the interior of the Metonym Isles, only the coastlines."
I looked at where we were, far from any other town or city. The Imperial city was to the north. It was much larger than anything else, even making Vilta look small on this map.
"I'm working on a globe map calculated on planetary circumference. Though I will not live to see this world explored in full. There is much more out there than we know."
He ran his hand across the map slowly as he looked down at it. "It'll all end soon", he whispered to himself.
His head shot up and looked at me in the eye. "Who are you?"
I stared into the decrepit man's eyes, and he peered deep into mine. As if he were reading my soul.
"Red eyes? Are you the one of prophecy? The quake? Are you?"
He leaned forward towards me, gripping the hem of my clothes as he looked up at me.
"Are you? You must be the breaker. ARE YOU?!"
I stopped back, causing the old man to trip forward and fall to the ground, coughing and spitting up blood onto the wooden floor. The Librarian entered and grabbed my shoulder, gently pulling me away, out of the room, and we all descended the stairs again.
"Please forgive him, his age has addled the mind. He's convinced of an ancient doomsday prophecy from some two and a half thousand years ago. He's just a sick dying man; please pay him no mind. Let me lead you to the East Wing, where you can find your research material. If you require a bed, there are rooms available on the upper floors. We also have food and kitchens there. How long will you be staying with us?"
"Three days!" Levi yelled out from the back of the crowd.
The Librarian smiled, nodded and led us towards the East Wing. As we came into the great hall once again, I walked up towards the librarian and whispered to him.
"If I wanted to learn about that prophecy thing the old guy was talking about, could I?"
"Of course, all texts that are religious, mystical, or heretical are housed in the east wing, along with ancient documents and historical texts of the highest importance."
"If that much is in the east wing, how are there so many books in this hall?"
The Librarian pointed up to the floor above, where a large section was. "That section contains twenty-five thousand or so books on mushrooms."
With a nod, I let out an understanding "ah". This truly was the house of all the world's knowledge.