[Agatha]

We didn't see Tristan at lunch.

Saoirse giggled all the time because of my novice robe, elbowing her brother. Jack was trying to chat with a pretty raven-haired Echidna Library survivor, who was throwing bedroom eyes all over him, studiously ignoring the giggling little carrot.

A little before leaving the table a giantess approached us. She stepped over the bench with a move like a horse rider getting into the saddle and sat beside me, making the bench creak and bend.

"You're Tristan's entourage," she said with a bright smile. Her robe looked like it was about to burst at the seams around her shoulders. Saoirse was right, she could break Tristan like a twig. Come to that, she looked like she could break Jack too, at the same time as Tristan, and with an arm tied behind her back.

"More like the other way around, but yes."

"Tristan says hello, but he won't join you for lunch." She pushed her hair back behind her ear. I'd have killed to have curls like hers.

"That much I already figured."

"Never mind, I got him covered." She showed me the contents of her robe's front pouch pocket. What I thought was her belly was actually four big loaves filled with ham, cheese and mustard. She winked at me.

"You're gonna make him get indigestion."

"He studied all morning. He must be starving. Besides, I can keep him company if he can't finish everything."

"Well, give him my best, I guess."

"Consider it done." She stood up with a relieved creak from the bench.

I noticed Abbess Litvin was staring at me.

I waved at her as innocently as I could.

In a matter of minutes, I was going to be pumped full of drugs again by the old hag's minions. The three Doctors were sitting across the table, with their backs to me. I briefly toyed with the idea of throwing a knife at them, then decided against it.

For the time being, at least.

***

[Tristan]

It was almost sunset when I decided that I had learned enough to have an overview of the centuries-long chain of events that led to the Miracle of Finisterre.

Two millennia ago, at the end of the Age Before, Earth was dying.

Floods, droughts, poisons, wars, and man-made plagues were turning Earth into a wasteland. Mankind needed a way to heal its home, or to find a new home, and the latter seemed the easier solution.

With the help of the Ghosts, a group of scientists built the first Faraway Bridge, a miraculous device that could cross the abyss between worlds using two machines, one on each world, linked by some otherworldly force that bent reality to the point that faraway lands could touch. The first Faraway Bridge was called Aquarius Bridge and connected two places called Nevada Desert and Mare Sirenum.

The day it was opened was called the Day Of The Crossing, and it marked the end of the Age Before in the year 2135 CE.

That was great news, but very far from enough. The Faraway Bridges were just a way to connect known places more easily, not a means to explore new lands, and the places mankind had already reached were cold and inhospitable deserts where the sun was far and pale, the air thin and poisonous, and the ground barren and frozen.

Men and Ghosts pushed their research beyond every limit, meddling with knowledge and forces they were not supposed to even know about. Dark, dangerous, insane powers were conjured, and after decades of bloody failures and appalling incidents, they devised the Beachhead Bridges.

A Beachhead Bridge did not need machines at both ends: it could punch a one-way path to somewhere else right through the very fabric of reality.

The first successful attempt happened in 2218 CE, as the Beachhead Bridge called Aries Bridge was opened on the day later remembered as the Day Of The Breach. Unfortunately, Aries Bridge led to a place of fire and desolation, so it was closed, its machinery was tinkered with, and it was opened again. This time it led to a barren rock drowning in a starless abyss. The third time it led to a radioactive, acidic, poisonous sea.

But the fourth time, it opened to the luxuriant forests of Janssen.

Now the doors of the sky were open to mankind. Once a Beachhead Bridge was opened to a suitable place, the components to build another Bridge machine were simply ferried through to the other side, and the one-way beachhead Bridge became a Faraway Bridge. That was how the Lands Beyond were founded.

Every time a Beachhead Bridge was turned into a Faraway Bridge, at least another Faraway Bridge was immediately built, often more than one. Officially, it was to make traveling easier, but the true reason was much darker: with every new Beachhead bridge opened, the scientists and the Ghosts overseeing the Bridges were getting progressively weirder readings from their instruments, readings so alien and appalling that they didn't know what to make of them.

But Earth was still dying, even faster now, so stopping was never an option.

Within three centuries, mankind was able to move to the Lands Beyond. Janssen, the Golden Home, Eridani, The Emperor's Edge, Kepler, the Welcoming One, WISE, the Wanderer, and Gliese, which later earned its nickname Screaming Hell.

Three centuries of hope and conquers and successes. It was the Age of Wonders, and it was going to end in disaster.

The Beachhead Bridges had defiled the very fabric of reality to the point of opening fissures that led to other realms, and creatures started seeping through those fissures, creatures as old and powerful as gods, but made of pure, deranged evil. The first monster appeared on Gliese in July 2561 CE in what was later called The Cracking.

And all hell broke loose. The Age of Monsters had begun.

In a matter of decades, the monsters from what was called the Unholy Realm were tearing all the Lands Beyond apart. Impervious to human weapons, immune from the arts of the Ghosts, the creatures from the Unholy Realm roamed free, leaving behind themselves trails of scorched earth and poisoned corpses, feeding on the flesh, the life and the sanity of everyone and everything they came across, animals and humans and Ghosts alike.

In those years, the Abominations were born as a last-ditch attempt to deploy troops that wouldn't go crazy at first sight of the enemy: corpses of soldiers grafted onto self-propelling armors, equipped with weapons so horrifying to be able to kill every human soldier that tried to wield them. Abominations and other ungodly crossbreeds of flesh and machine were able to keep most of the monsters at bay for a while, but it was clear that it was just a matter of time before something even more lethal from the other realm seeped through the cracks.

If mankind wanted to survive, the fissures between the Unholy Realm and our realm had to be closed.

After decades of studies, men and Ghosts found a way. It was called the Invisible Light.

I looked up from the book I was reading and saw the clock on the wall was reading a few minutes to seven in the evening. Dinner time. I'd have liked to keep on reading, but the next bookshelf was empty, and I wanted to see Agatha and the others.

I stood up and made my way to the dining room.

***

[Agatha]

"Found anything interesting?" I asked Tristan as we were leaving the dining room. As of tacit accord we had kept the conversation light at dinner, talking mainly about Sister Hinewai (which embarrassed Tristan) and Eva, the pretty raven-haired Echidna Library survivor going after Jack (which made Jack blush). Nobody kicked me in the shins, but I could see in their eyes they'd have loved to.

Saoirse came to my help dispensing innocently offensive remarks to everybody, until I pointed out that Eva was probably mesmerized by Jack's wide shoulders and rock-hard butt, and Saoirse asked me how I knew the texture of her brother's butt, and soon everybody was wondering aloud how could I know the texture of Jack's butt and I blushed and rushed to find something else to talk about.

Thank goodness dinner ended.

"A lot of things, actually," Tristan said.

"Awesome. Care to share anything?"

Tristan shook his head. "I'm still putting the pieces together. It may be some time before it makes any kind of sense. That's if you think you can wait, by the way."

"I'll make an effort. But there's something I think you should know." And I gave him a brief account of my afternoon in the company of the abbess and the doctors.

Tristan's reaction surprised me.

He didn't sympathize with me for a single moment.

He just looked at me pensively.

"So, the first time they administered you the drugs, they knocked you out. You didn't spill that stuff you say you carry in your head, but you passed out. And the second time too you passed out, but for a shorter time. Same for the third time. And it was a progressively higher dosage."

"The last one was good for a four-hundred pounder. Yeah. I'm still alive, however. Thank you for asking."

"Asking what?"

I snorted. "Never mind. But why the sudden interest in drugs?"

"Nothing. Just something that's been nagging at my mind."

"Something more important than having a friend of yours pumped full of drugs by strangers?"

Tristan grinned. "I'll have to mark it on my calendar. You called us friends."

"Wanna get a kick in your nether regions? 'Cuz you're already halfway there, dude."

"Keep your voice down." But with a broadening grin. We were in the hallway that led from the dining hall into the staircase to the dorms. We had stopped right beside the door to the stairwell, with monks, nuns and Library survivors parading before us, but the flow of people was dwindling down.

We didn't have much time left.

"Knock it off and tell me what's on your mind," I hissed.

"Saoirse. Remember what she said about Captain Shaikh? That we were important people, because grownups always order us around and tell us to shut up when we ask a question, while that guy told us all we needed to know, and then more. Quote unquote."

"Yeah, so?"

Tristan shrugged. "The Abbess sees fit to brief us about the program as though we were her equals, and then says that if you die of an overdose, they must just get rid of the corpse? Why is she so caring a few minutes before, and so ruthless a few minutes later? It doesn't add up."

I nodded. "You might be onto something here. Maybe she wasn't simply warm and cuddly. Maybe she was just trying to keep us quiet and complacent. The other Library survivors were quite on edge the night we got here. Now everybody's happy and relaxed."

"Kids, to your room, please," a stern nun called. Sister Isobel, the girls' dorm's concierge, or watchwoman, or whatever the hell was her job title.

The old bat that kicked us into our beds at night, anyway.

"Right away, ma'am," Tristan replied. Then, in a whisper. "I'll keep my ears open. You too. If they think you're out cold, maybe they'll spill the beans."

"I'll do my best. As long as I don't overdose on the stuff they pump me full of."

***

[Tristan]

Sister Hinewai frowned, and it was the first time her sunny and cheerful disposition gave way to some sort of concern. "You are putting me in a difficult position. I like you very much, but I have precise orders, and I mean to follow them to the letter."

Her voice was low and urgent, the polar opposite of the loud and friendly tone of yesterday.

It was my time to frown. "I just asked about another topic. I'd have looked for the books myself, but the bookshelf is empty."

"Keep your voice down!" An angry whisper. She put down the bag of brownies she was eating, wiped her mouth on her sleeve and her hands on her robe. It had to be something serious if she cut her second breakfast short like that. "Do you want me to get into trouble because of you?"

"I'm really sorry, Sister Hinewai, but I swear to the gods, I have no idea what you are talking about."

She leaned forward. The desk groaned, taking her weight. "Everything related to the Invisible Light and the Blackout is classified. Only the abbess and her inner circle can see those books. Order of Remembrance rules. It's the same in every Library."

I slumped my shoulders.

"Even the fact that the books aren't here anymore is a secret. Nobody must know they have been on loan at Pegasus Library since last week." She rolled her eyes and snorted. "My big mouth will be my ruin. Keep stuffing your face, the Abbess used to tell me when I was a kid. If you're chewing, at least you're not talking about things you shouldn't."

"Nice thing to say to a kid," I mumbled. "Pegasus Library, you said?"

"No, I didn't say that." She looked down. "I did say that, didn't I? Damn." She grabbed my hands into hers. Her hands were more or less twice as big as mine, rough and calloused. "Please Tristan, keep it to yourself. Don't fail me now. My mom sold everything she had to pay my tuition fees here. Everything. I can't afford to get kicked out now."

"I swear upon my honor." I tried to free a hand to put it on my heart, but her grip was like steel manacles. "I swear upon my honor, Sister Hinewai. The abbess will never know it. Not the abbess, not anyone who could damage you."

"You are such a hot boy." She shook her head. "Sweet. I mean sweet. Damn."

I cleared my throat. "Now, Sister Hinewai, would it be acceptable if I spent some more time in the Current Events and Latest News section? I mean, there is no..." I lowered my voice further. "No stuff I shouldn't see, or no stuff I shouldn't know that isn't there?"

"In the Current Events and Latest News? No, not at all. Go right ahead."

"Thanks. Now, how about letting go of me?"

***

NEXT UP: Agatha discovers Abbess Litvin's dirty secret as Tristan finally finds the true story of the Miracle of Finisterre