"Hyran," Serena said quietly, "I can go hunt this down myself, but if you happen to know the answer, you would save me about five minutes."
He glanced at her sideways. "Ask."
"Magic applied to floor surfaces that can withstand time unless activated by a specific mechanism," she said. "Most commonly found in quicksand traps."
"Dormant Plating," Hyran replied immediately.
"Yes. That is it," she said. "Has it ever been applied in other settings. If someone needed to hide something, for example."
"Not documented," Hyran said, lips curling faintly. "But entirely logical. So yes. What are you trying to uncover?"
"There is something beneath this spot," she said, gesturing to the floor. "Something this acts as a key for." She lifted the talisman slightly. "Any ideas on how I would reveal it?"
Hyran regarded the floor, then the talisman, then her. His eyes sharpened.
"Triggers that are not physical are usually magical," he said. "And they are spoken in the same tongue as the one who cast them."
He paused, then added casually, "What does your talisman say?"
Of course.
"Good thinking," she said, annoyed at herself for not starting with that.
She looked down at the talisman, her eyes still green, and began to read aloud in Draken-Vorah.
Hyran's lips twitched. Just barely.
Two weeks. That was all it had taken. Two weeks of exposure, and she was reading Draken-Vorah fluently. Draken-Vorah was not an easy language by any means.
She'd only read it while in a trance until now.
He made a deliberate effort not to look impressed.
Everyone talked about her appearance. The gold. The light. The spectacle of her.
Very few seemed to notice how terrifyingly brilliant she was.
The stone beneath her feet shifted.
An indent appeared in the floor, its size matching the talisman perfectly.
A dragon pattern was carved into the recess, with Draken-Vorah script circling it. It was identical to the markings on her talisman.
Serena set the talisman into place.
It vibrated once.
Then, in a single sharp motion, the edges snapped outward. Hidden blades flicked free simultaneously, flaring into a star shaped formation with a clean metallic snap.
The gold locked into its new shape at once, humming low and steady as it seated perfectly into the indent.
She brushed her fingers over it and felt the hum resonate back into her palm. When she tried to move it, the energy beneath shifted, subtle and precise, like a knob turning a frequency higher or lower.
She paused, fascinated.
This was a lock. A magical padlock of sorts.
She twisted it again, this time aligning the energy to match her own.
Nothing happened.
"Are you sensing different energies as you turn it?" Hyran asked, far too thrilled to hide it now.
She nodded faintly.
The mage librarians who had been so committed to ignoring her were watching outright now. When she glanced up, they all snapped their gazes away with varying degrees of guilt.
"Yes. My gold magic is not the answer," she said, twisting it again.
Then she felt it.
That same energy dragons channeled to her when she called fire.
She did not know how she summoned it in the first place. But, after a night of channeling it to dragon riders and using it herself, she knew it.
Her fingers adjusted minutely, aligning to the exact sensation she felt.
She grinned and looked up at Hyran at the exact moment it clicked.
The floor went translucent, like glass. A long dragon of light formed where marble pattern had been.
It began to snake through the floor of the library, its form mirrored perfectly on every level above and below.
It stopped the instant Serena lifted her hand from the talisman.
She froze, then quickly set her palm back in place. The dragon resumed its path immediately.
The mage-librarians were done pretending to ignore her now. Some started clapping, like they were children and she had presents. Serena couldn't help but like them all. Their excitement made her giggle too.
The dragon continued. It was silent, no vibrations… not until it reached the center where Serena was.
A deep, rolling vibration surged through the entire castle. The sound hummed through stone and bone alike, and several books shook loose from shelves and fell.
Serena looked up at Hyran, oops written clearly across her face.
Then the dragon vanished.
The floor beneath them dissolved into starlight. It was as if the marble had peeled away to reveal the cosmos itself, stretching across every level of the library. They stood suspended among stars, floating in a vast, endless dark.
Serena stared a moment too long.
The sensation was disorienting, like the ground had forgotten how to exist.
None of the mage librarians were offended by the fallen books, to her surprise. If anything, they looked delighted. Completely enchanted by the floor. A few of them actually got down on their knees, even on all fours, peering at it like scholars who had forgotten dignity was a thing.
Then the floor shifted again.
It became a massive map of Skardos.
Not carved. Not etched. Alive.
Castles of each pack stood in real time. Troops marched toward the war summit, banners moving, formations adjusting as they traveled. It was happening now.
"How useful!" a mage-librarian said, clapping her hands.
Above the map, dragons flew.
Velkaris led them, at the front of an arrow formation, unmistakable even from above. They crossed the map in silence and moved straight toward the fireplace.
Bingo.
The fire froze mid flame as if time stopped. A serpent dragon appeared along the front.
Serena stood, her eyes still green, no trance pulling at her, and walked toward it.
It moved in a circle, and flashed gold, waiting for her to do something.
"What do you think it will answer to?" Hyran asked, voicing her thoughts.
"I think I need to summon the flames I did before," she muttered. "But you are not able to tell me how to do that, so I will not ask."
Hyran did not answer.
Several of the mage librarians had been watching with open excitement, but at that, they all looked away at once.
That confirmed it.
Before Hyran could stop her, which he would be obligated to, due to taking a blood oath, Serena vanished up the stairs at alpha speed.