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Beauregard Lionett dives out of the way of a blast from the golem, reaches for the nearest doorknob (which happens to be placed in a yellow door that she doesn’t remember seeing earlier but, you know, who is she to not make snap decisions in the middle of a fight) and somersaults directly into a library.
The door slams shut behind her with a level of enthusiasm that a slab of wood should not be able to manage. Beau takes a selfish minute to rub her banged up elbow and pity herself and her now slightly-singed hair and clothing before standing up to rejoin the fight.
The door is gone.
“Huh,” says Beau. And then, “Well, fuck.”
She turns back around to face the rest of the library. The shelves stretch away from her for what seems like forever, absolutely jam-packed with books. And not new books, either. These look old. Beau pulls one from the shelf just for hell of it and feels the dust between her fingers. The book itself is bound in dark green leather, with a gold eye set into the center of the cover, and no visible title.
The hairs raise on the back of her neck. Beau’s seen her fair share of eye imagery before; the Cobalt Soul does serve the Knowing Mistress, after all. This feels different, though. Darker. More malevolent.
She doesn’t open the cover, instead sliding the book back into its place. She’s not Fjord .
Glancing over her shoulder to where the door was again—nope, still gone, no luck there—Beau squares her shoulders and creeps down the row, bo clutched at the ready and ki humming beneath her skin. It’s eerily silent in here, no quiet conversation or sound of pages turning, and Beau finds herself wishing Jester was here to fill the air with her incessant chatter. And, well...it would just be nice to have Jester here in general. You know. Because she’s a nice person. And they’re friends. That’s normal, right? To wish her friend were with her, smiling at her, maybe putting her hand on Beau’s elbow like she does sometimes, and—that’s normal. Right? Right.
How does she get out of these damn bookshelves, anyway? Beau kicks at a shelf in frustration and the whole thing shakes ominously. A few books fall out onto the floor, some open, some not. The air fills with static and the smell of ozone and then quiets.
“Cool,” murmurs Beau under her breath. “Great. No, awesome. Cool. Love that.”
One of the books twitches. Beau turns tail and runs. She runs through row after row, passing shelf after shelf after shelf after—and she still can’t figure out how to get out of this mess of old books and towering wood. Who the hell organized this library, anyway? Seriously, what the fuck—
Beau skids to a stop to avoid the person standing in the middle of the row she just turned into. It’s a serious effort to stop her momentum and at the same time not hit the shelves because she’s not about to make that mistake again but she manages it, because of course she does. She’s a monk, and a fucking good one, at that. It’s literally in her job description.
The guy standing in front of her drops his book on the floor ( his book doesn’t make any strange noises or give off any creepy vibes, which is unfair) and turns towards her with a start. “Who the hell are you?” he asks.
Beau looks him up and down. He’s human, light-skinned, and taller than her, probably a little taller than Fjord, too. Heavyset like Jester but with what looks like far less muscle, though it’s kind of hard to tell with the bulky brown sweater the guy’s wearing. He’s got curly brown hair and round glasses and freckles and he looks like every other nerdy loser she’s seen in every library she’s visited and subsequently gotten kicked out of. No visible weapons, no visible spellcasting focus, altogether pretty harmless-looking.
“Hey,” says Beau. “I’m Beau. Where the fuck am I?”
Turns out she the fuck is in the Magnus Institute. The guy’s name is Martin, and he works in the Archives. Beau snorts when he says that but manages to keep it together.
“So you...came through a door?” says Martin. They’re sitting at a metal table in some sort of small, poorly lit kitchen. The shitty light in question isn’t a torch of any kind and if it’s magic it’s some really shit magic, so Beau assumes it’s some sort of wacky science thing, like in Hupperdook. She spent an unfortunate second staring directly into it when she first came in and ended up nearly blinding herself.
“Yep,” says Beau. “Yellow. Kinda creepy. Disappeared when I turned around.”
“Ah,” says Martin. “Shit.”
“Shit?”
He sighs and rubs a hand under his glasses. “Yeah. I’ve seen the likes before. Not...the best thing to walk through but at least you made it out. Where were you before this?”
He’s got that Fjord-slash-Taldorei-slash-Bryce-slash-who-the-fuck-knows sort of generic accent that Beau’s heard a million times, usually on pretentious people but sometimes on okay people. “Happy fun ball,” says Beau, knowing full well it makes no sense and perfectly content to fuck with this soft nerd.
Martin blinks. “Sorry. What?”
“Happy fun ball,” repeats Beau, and then takes pity on him. “Aka the Heirloom Sphere, aka the Archmage Bane. Weird magic ball that sends you to different planes and belonged to this now-dead magic guy named Halas. Lot of different rooms, most of them full of scary magic shit. We fought a dragon in there one time. Almost died but it was kinda cool, I guess. Anyway, my friends and I were fighting a gollum and then I went through a door and now I’m here. I’d like to get back and help them out so if you have any clue what’s up with that door, please share with the class.”
She really shouldn’t enjoy the look on Martin’s face so much, but hey, she’s only human. “I’m sorry,” he says, “did you say a dragon? ”
“Yep,” says Beau, popping the ‘P’. “Blue one. Big and scary. Nearly roasted us. Little girl named Twiggy and her squirrel killed it.”
Martin opens and closes his mouth a few times. Beau wonders if maybe she’s laying it on too thick, and maybe all she’s accomplishing is making him think she’s crazy, but his expression is really just too good to resist.
It’s at that moment that the old guy walks through the door.
Okay, so he’s not that old, but his hair is all salt and pepper and his face is all wrinkled in all the right places to suggest he smirks a lot (not smiles, smirks— there’s a difference and Beau is well acquainted with it) and he’s wearing a suit that doesn’t have a single wrinkle, so close enough.
“Mr. Blackwood,” says the man, and oh, yep, there’s that smirk. “Would you excuse us for a moment? Miss Lionett, follow me to my office, please.”
Beau decides on the spot that she hates his guts. She scowls her very best scowl, the kind that makes weaker men turn tail and run, and stands up from the table. She swings her bo back over her shoulder, just to show him she’s not scared of him. Yeah, that’s right, fucker. I don’t need the stick to beat the shit out of you.
“How do you know my name?”
The smirk just gets bigger. Creep. “I know a lot of things, Miss Lionett,” he says, smooth and cocky like a proper dickhead. “Now, please follow me.”
She follows him. Not because he told her to, but because she wants answers, and if following a creepy all-knowing asshole into his office is the way to do it, fine. She’s kicked ass out of much worse situations.
“You want to hire me?”
Elias Bouchard steeples his fingers under his chin like a proper asshole and smiles. “Yes.”
Beau has to clutch the fabric of her pants to keep herself from punching that creepy smile right off of his creepy face. “Why?”
“Well,” says Elias, “I think we have a lot to gain from each other. You have an archival background, yes? From an institution that seeks knowledge? It’s not so different, here, and since at present you have no way back to where you came from...”
Beau looks at him and his perfectly slicked back hair and his perfectly ironed suit and his creepy green eyes. She looks at his dark office and the portrait over his desk of a man with a very different face but still, those exact same eyes. She looks at the plaque— Jonah Magnus. She looks at the piece of paper on the table in front of her and the way-too-fancy fountain pen resting beside it. She considers the creepy books, the never-ending library, and the bags under Martin’s haunted brown eyes. She considers the yellow door.
“Yeah, sure, why not?” says Beau, and signs her name on the contract.
A tall guy in a muscle tank corners her on her way back to the kitchen.
“I saw you walk out of Elias’ office,” he says. “Who are you?”
“Beau,” says Beau. “And if you work here I guess I’m your new coworker, at least for now.”
The look in the guy’s eyes speaks magnitudes. “No,” he says. “No, no, no. Fuck. Why would you do that? Why would you sign the contract?”
Beau shrugs. “I don’t know. What else am I gonna do? Plus, I’d kinda like to get another look at your spooky library. Might find something for a friend of mine. As a souvenir, you know.”
“It was a mistake,” says the guy, insistent. “You shouldn’t have—fuck. Now you’re trapped here, just like the rest of us. There’s no way out, Beau. There’s no leaving here.”
Beau leans back against the wall and crosses her arms over her chest. “What’s your name?” she asks, looking the guy square in the eye.
“Tim Stoker,” he says, defeated. He looks both sad and angry, enough that she feels kinda bad for him. She wouldn’t want to get trapped here with Elias Bouchard for forever, either.
“Well, Tim,” she says, “I wouldn’t count on it. I have a knack for getting kicked out of archives.”
The first time is an accident. Really, it is. She doesn’t mean to start a building-wide blackout. It’s not her fault the book is cursed.
“Huh,” says Beau into the darkness, and slides her goggles on. “Weird.”
The rest of the institute is in panic, it looks like. Everyone’s running around with light-sticks (flashlights, apparently?) that keep going out and shouting a lot about the Dark which, uh, yeah, duh? Anyway, sucks for them. Beau’s goggles are the genuine article.
She uses the opportunity to go into Elias’ office and pour his fancy wine over the extra suits that he keeps neatly hung in a cabinet, all perfectly pressed and without a single wrinkle. Now they’re ruined. Serves him right. Beau whispers a sort-of-prayer to the Traveler and thinks of Jester’s smile, and then she books it out of there before she can get caught.
Two hours later, when the lights come back on, Elias calls her into his office and gestures to the suits. “Beauregard,” he says, “I hope you know this is completely unacceptable.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” says Beau, and then she gets up and leaves.
The second time is definitely on purpose. She’s thinking about Jester again, and she just watched that Jon guy walk into his office carrying a massive box full of papers, so she waits until he leaves again and sneaks in there. There’s paper absolutely everywhere. Paper and little rectangles with circles on them that spin and spin and low-quality sound comes out. God, Beau hates this world that doesn’t have normal magic. Spooky magic is so much worse.
Anyway, she grabs a pen and draws dicks on as many of the statements as she can in as short a time as possible. For Jester.
The third time is when she gets into a vaguely homoerotically charged wrestling match with Daisy in the library and knocks over four shelves and three tables. At the end of it, she’s sitting on top of Daisy, hair falling in her face and grinning triumphantly. There’s a massive bruise blooming on her cheek from where Daisy caught her, but the other woman is grinning up at her too, so clearly there are no hard feelings.
“Done being mad at me for existing, then?” says Beau.
“I might be over it,” says Daisy.
In another time, Beau might have then kissed her just for the hell of it. But Daisy’s clearly thinking about someone else and Beau is definitely not thinking about Jester, so she doesn’t. Instead, she stands up and helps Daisy to her feet.
“Huh,” says Daisy. “We sure made a mess, didn’t we.”
“Huh,” says Beau. “Yeah. Wanna go grab lunch?”
“You bet,” says Daisy, and they leave the mess for someone else to clean up.
“Miss Lionett,” says Elias. “Please stop drawing penises on the statement files.”
“Stop calling me Lionett,” retorts Beau.
“Fine, then, Beauregard, please stop—”
Beau leans back against the door frame. “Don’t call me that, either.”
Elias’ eyebrow twitches, which Beau decides to take as a victory. “What should I call you, then?”
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“Don’t address me,” says Beau, and walks out.
The thing with the tornado isn’t really her fault, either. Like, okay, sure, she’s the one who opened the book, but if you didn’t want to have a tornado in your library why would you keep a spooky magical tornado-causing book there? Huh?
It’s a little annoying, though, because she did kind of get thrown into a wall when she first opened it, and she wasn’t expecting it so she didn’t catch herself and now her spine is bruised, but it’s fine. She’s had worse. She wishes Caduceus was here to heal her, though. She wishes Jester were here.
To heal her. She wishes Jester was here to heal her. No other reason.
Jonathan Sims (head archivist, looks like he hasn’t slept in a month, eyebags darker than Caleb’s and that’s saying something) walks in to see what all the noise was about, takes one look at the complete mess of destroyed shelves and scattered books and Beau sitting next to the doorway with her boot firmly placed atop an unassuming book with a gray-blue cover, and freezes dead on the spot.
“What,” says Jon with all that super impressive intelligence she’s been told he has.
“Hey,” says Beau. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Beau. Do you guys keep any ice anywhere? I think I may have fractured my spine but only like a little bit so don’t worry.”
“What happened here?” asks Jon, completely ignoring her question about the ice, which is downright rude.
“Tornado,” says Beau, and holds up the book. “Not my fault. Why do you have so many fucked up books in your library?”
Jon stares at her. His gray eyes are...unsettling, but again, Beau’s seen much scarier. Mostly he just looks tired, enough that Beau almost feels bad about the mess. Almost. She reaches for some of the books around her and makes a very short stack. There. Slightly cleaner than before. Good enough.
“I...why were you in here unsupervised?”
Beau shrugs. “I technically work here now and no one stopped me so I’ve kinda just been doing whatever. What is your guys’ actual job, by the way? So far no one has actually told me to do any work and I sure as hell haven’t seen Tim do anything other than curse at the tea machine and give me death glares.”
“I...nevermind,” says Jon, visibly making the probably wise decision to simply Not deal with Beau. “Nice to meet you, Beau.”
“Hey!” Beau shouts at his back as he quickly retreats. “You never told me where the ice is!”
“What are you doing?” asks the very pretty woman in the headscarf.
Beau looks at the woman. She looks at the dent in the wall. She looks at her now-bruised fist.
“Is that a trick question?”
The woman huffs out an annoyed breath. “I meant why are you doing it.”
Beau shrugs. She’s been doing that a lot since she got here. “I don’t know. Got annoyed that the door still isn’t here.”
“So you punched the wall?”
“I mean. Yeah.”
The woman sighs again. Beau gets the impression that that’s something she does a lot. “You must be Beau. I’m Basira. Come on, I’ll get you some ice for those knuckles of yours.”
“Oh, thank gods,” says Beau. “Can you get like maybe a metric ton of ice? I think my spine might be just like a little bit completely bruised. Probably not fractured though, so that’s good. Probably.”
Basira mutters something under her breath that sounds like “I hate my job” but it’s hard to tell. She lets out a sort of huffy half-laugh at the same time, though, so Beau decides it’s enough of a win.
“Please stop destroying the library and drawing penises on the statements and antagonizing my staff,” says Elias.
Beau looks up from her sandwich, smiles, and flips him the finger. He doesn’t even have the decency to look surprised.
Here’s the thing: Elias keeps trying to do spooky mind things to her, but Beau has practice resisting spooky mind bullshit. Plus, in another world, it’s a good day for nat 20s. He can’t manipulate her. He can’t control her. And, well, he can’t exactly fire her, can he?
...can he?
Here’s how it happens.
Melanie finds Beau while she’s icing her back. She says to her, you seem aggressive and willing to pick a fight. Want to help me assassinate Elias? and Beau smiles and responds, of fucking course. What’s the plan?
Melanie King has attempted to murder Elias Bouchard sixteen times. This attempt is the seventeenth, and it comes closer to success by a margin of 9.37%. Beau even makes it into the vents directly above his office before he notices.
It fails anyway, but it’s a lot closer than it’s ever been (by almost 10%!), and Beau just got here. She hasn’t gotten the lay of the land yet. She hasn’t formed enough connections. She hasn’t practiced her murder attempts. And the thing is, from here it’s just going to get worse.
Elias, alone in his office, lets out a sigh so great that it moves the paper’s on James’ Wright’s desk, puts his head in his hands, and makes a tough decision.
Beauregard Lionett has been in the Institute for exactly twenty-three hours and thirteen minutes when she becomes the first person to ever be fired from the Archives. It’s a new record for her. Usually she gets kicked out much sooner.
Tim shows her to the exit. The look on his face is one of pure shock, but there’s hope lying beneath it. Beau fist bumps him.
“Told you so,” she says.
“Yeah,” says Tim, like maybe she’s just handed him the answers to all of his problems on a silver platter. “You sure did, didn’t you.”
The door out of the Institute is yellow. Beau smiles.
“Hey, Tim? Don’t get into too much trouble, alright? Blaze of glory isn’t worth it, trust me.”
He nods. “Yeah. You too, Beau. Stay safe.”
She opens the door.