Chapter Text
Luz and Hunter had a week of summer vacation left until Luz had to return to school and they would end up spending not as much time together as they’d liked. Hunter was not looking forward to it, but he didn’t want to risk getting Luz in trouble by attempting to sneak into her classes. He briefly thought about enrolling but, despite Camila’s alarming willingness to forge false documents, he didn’t want people to start asking questions about the new boy that popped out of nowhere and that knew an alarming amount about espionage and combat. Plus, there was the matter that he never actually attended a school before. He used to be home schooled by a series of tutors at his uncle’s home in between missions and training. Pep rallies, project presentations, and school dances were concepts completely foreign to him and he didn’t feel like he would acclimate smoothly. Luz wasn’t looking forward to the impending change either. Her and Hunter had really bonded over the last few months to the point where she would even call him her best friend. Well, also her only friend. She and the staff from her mom’s work, Wilson’s Wildlife Solutions, got along well enough, but they didn’t exactly hang out or see each other after work. She also wasn’t exactly popular at school, being avoided by students and being known as the girl who set snakes out in the halls that one time and the one who occasionally has roadkill in her backpack. The weirdo. The outcast. So going back to that lonely place without her best friend for about a third of the day, five days a week, made her feel uneasy and absolutely full of dread.
The two had spent the first day of their last week trying to figure out what they should do to really end the summer off with a bang. The two sat in Luz’s room, Hunter laying on her bed playing Stardew Valley on her Switch trying to mine as much iridium ore as humanly possible before collapsing at 2:00 am and Luz on her PC replaying Chapter 2 of Deltarune for what felt like the hundredth time.
“Supernatural marathon?” Luz said after sighing in frustration at her failed tenth attempt to beat Spamton NEO.
“If I have to watch season 7 again, I’m setting the house on fire with all of us in it. Ghost hunting?”
“I don’t want to talk to ghosts that were alive when women weren’t allowed to wear pants again. Laser tag?”
“We’re banned from laser tag, remember?”
Luz remembered how Hunter put his soldier training to use and, while he was efficient at shooting his targets, he went a little overboard and started flipping people over his shoulder, pinning them to walls, and putting them into choke holds. He felt bad for ruining their evening, but Luz had assured him that he didn’t ruin anything and that seeing him duel wielding laser pistols was cool to see.
She glanced at her stack of books from the Wanderer’s Library with a small booklet of the type of entities and locations that could be encountered in the Library catching her eye. Library staff had started giving these booklets out to patrons as a way to better familiarize themselves with the Library. Luz grabbed the booklet and flipped through random pages for inspiration.
“Ooh! How about this?”
She leaped off her seat and onto the bed, landing near Hunter’s socks that had paw prints at the bottom.
“You know how there are lantern koi at the Wanderer’s Library?”
“Yeah, but we’ve already seen them.”
“Ah! But we’ve only seen schools that had one color. There’s apparently a school of lantern koi that has multiple colors hidden in the deepest parts of the library. It’s called the Dazzling Rainbow and only a few people have actually seen it. We could be one of those people!”
“You want to go cryptid hunting for a living rainbow?”
“Yeah! A single colored school of lantern koi was amazing to look at. Imagine how amazing a rainbow school will be. Now that would be a great way to end the summer.”
Hunter couldn’t lie and say she was wrong. The first time they saw a school of lantern koi was magical. Seeing them swim through the air and glow like a warm orange like a sunset made him feel warm and fuzzy. He felt like a little kid seeing fireworks for the first time. It was a sense of wonder he rarely got to feel.
“I guess it would be cool to see and, even if we didn’t find it, exploring more parts of the Library would be pretty interesting.”
“Then it’s decided! First thing in the morning, we go rainbow hunting! Get ready for the best day of your life!”
He smiled. He always loved how optimistic Luz was. Even if his mood was mostly sour, Luz had enough sweetness for the both of them.
…
Ways, or portals, always had odd placements. Sometimes they made sense, being found through a doorway or window. Others could be found in paintings, open spaces of air, or manholes. They could either be made artificially by strong thaumaturges or they could be formed naturally at complete random. The reason there weren’t an absurdly large number of people accidentally falling into these Ways was because of something called a Knock which are special requirements or actions that need to be in place or enacted near the Way for it to open. This can range from literally knocking in a specific way to giving away memories to reciting the Gettysburg Address.
The specific Way that Luz would usually use was in a very convenient location for her, being located practically in her backyard in the Gravesfield Forest. The Way was in a tree with a thick trunk, crooked branches, and dark bark that made it look like it crawled out of Sleepy Hollow. The tree’s appearance dissuaded most people, but Luz Noceda was not like most people. She always saw the beauty in anything dark or morbid.
The Knock needed to open it was something that Luz kept close to her chest, not even telling Hunter. Whenever they went to the Library, she’d always ask for him to cover his ears when she opened the Way. Hunter always found it odd, but he obliged every time. Sometimes he would have a rogue thought that Luz, despite knowing each other and living together for months, still didn’t trust him. He’d shake his head to get rid of the thought and told himself that he was being ridiculous. Of course Luz trusted him. They’re friends. They eat breakfast together. They play video games together. They even, embarrassingly, sleep in the same bed together when Hunter has the occasional nightmare. But that didn’t mean they had to tell the other about anything sensitive if they didn't want to. Luz had a right to keep things private.
After Luz performed the Knock, the trunk of the unsettling tree began to bulge inward. The bark began to twist into a spiral that eventually turned into a mint green colored Way. It was a strangely soothing and satisfying thing to see. It felt so natural.
Luz offered Hunter her hand and he accepted. They didn’t need to do this. Neither of them would’ve been displaced or lost as the Way was an instant route to the Library and Hunter had been through enough Ways to not feel disoriented at the sudden change of scenery. It just felt like the right thing to do. The two stepped through the portal hand-in-hand and as they did, the Way closed leaving the tree as it was before.
…
The Library was magnificent as always. An infinite boon of unlimited knowledge and stories welcomed by anyone willing to learn. Pages, multi-armed entities that were responsible for reshelving books, crawled along the shelves like spindly spiders occasionally helping Library patrons reach and find books they wanted. Docents, humanoids with no mouths and a lantern suspended by chains replacing their left hand, could be seen assisting patrons as guides to certain sections of the Library. And finally, the Archivists, creatures of varying shapes and sizes with no eyes, sat at the front desk assisting patrons by giving Library cards and doing record keeping. Two Archivists could be seen at the front desk. The first was a large, red, centipede-like creature with hands ending at each of its limbs that was in the process of vomiting up a Library card for a patron who had a look of disgust, yet also intrigue, on their face. The nameplate in front of the Archivist read: ROUNDERPEDE: CHIEF ARCHIVIST. The second Archivist, a giant, yellow octopus with purple splotches scattered all over its skin, could be seen typing on two keyboards connected to two computer terminals with two of their limbs while using others to write on pieces of parchment and another to sip coffee from its mug that definitely did not have any alcohol in it. A nameplate in front of the octopus read: MALAISE: ARCHIVIST.
The grand hall, the heart of the Library, was filled by scholars and students studying at the numerous wooden desks that were encased by large, translucent bubbles that blocked sound to focus on their work and studies. The grand hall was lit by chandeliers that hung from the incredibly tall ceiling that accommodated the incredibly tall shelves and seemingly endless number of floors above. The walls were covered in a forest green wallpaper that held intricate patterns of serpents that could occasionally be seen actually slithering on the wall. Portraits were seen hanging on the walls that displayed numerous images, some being Archivists of the Library, pictures of scholars in robes studying ancient texts, and what appeared to be a large serpent with horns hanging from the branches of a tree offering people something that appeared to be a type of fruit. One final portrait dwarfed the others, displaying the image of the large serpent from the previous portrait standing tall and proud, its eye staring out. Under the portrait was a plaque that had a sentence written in gold lettering.
The Garden is the Serpent’s place.
The first time Hunter entered the Library it was completely disorienting. The never ending shelves and abundance of anomalous people just walking about was a lot to take in. He had heard stories of the Library during his Insurgency days. He knew of the group, The Serpent’s Hand, who utilized the Library as a home base of sorts, but knew they didn’t own the Library itself. The Hand never got along with the Insurgency, calling them by the flattering name of “The Madmen” for their violent and chaotic behaviors. It would make sense that a group dedicated to wanting to spread knowledge and letting harmless anomalies be free would be against a group that would seek to weaponize such knowledge and people. They even barred them from entry to the Library. Hunter was worried about this fact the first time he entered, warning Luz about how he might immediately be kicked out and banned. Luz had comforted the boy and said that he was no longer a part of that awful group and even if the Library wouldn’t let him in she would raise hell about it until they did. She demonstrated this by gently pushing a pencil holder and its contents off her desk and onto the ground. She had said that would only be one percent of her fury. Hunter laughed at his friend’s absolute destructive behavior and said that he appreciated it.
“So, where do we start?” Hunter clapped his hands together as if to officially start their search.
“Well,” Luz took out the booklet in her backpack and flipped through it before landing on the desired page, “The Dazzling Rainbow is said to swim around the more darkly lit areas of the Library. Usually around the western to northwestern quadrants. So the less light, the better our chances. Let’s go ask a Docent.”
It took the two no time to find a Docent in the grand hall. They weren’t exactly hard to miss with their striking appearance. Luz was the one who went up to it. Hunter usually let Luz take charge with matters pertaining to the Library as she had far more experience in here then he did.
“Hello! Me and my friend are looking for somewhere in the Library that doesn’t have that much light. Preferably somewhere in the west sections. Could you help us find somewhere like that?”
The Docent slowly turned its head towards the girl and said… nothing because it didn’t have a mouth to speak so instead it gestured for Luz and Hunter to follow it, never lowering its red lantern. The two followed suit, passing by Library patrons and creatures that were common in the library. They saw a renallum, a fox-like creature with front legs that ended with dark hands carrying a book in its mouth probably given by a Page to deliver to a patron in exchange for a shiny trinket; a thaumaturge levitating a stack of books, a book mimic using its spindly legs to run away from a Docent pursuing it, two avian humanoids in robes discussing their travels throughout the multiverse and the most superior type of seeds to consume, and a canine-like creature with a long neck and gangly limbs wearing a white mask resembling a human’s face with empty eye sockets. The canine looked at the two and raised one of its front legs that ended with a hand to its face and did a shushing motion, unsettling the two.
The group of three arrived at what looked like an old-fashioned elevator. They stepped inside and saw a keypad of numbers and letters. The Docent pressed on the keypad 567-A and up they went.