"But..." Fletcher frowned. "How am I supposed to warn you? It's not like I can send a beacon before I arrive."
The Professor was his usual crotchety self, it was good to see. A small taste of normalcy. It was strange how much Skulduggery suddenly craved that normalcy, to know that the world hadn't ended, that he was still here and no one had died. The rest would work itself out, eventually. The magic of perspective would help him to ignore the pierce every time he thought of Ghastly, of Valkyrie.
Professor Grouse was also, apparently, in a strangely good mood. It would have been difficult to tell, but the fact that he relented and basically agreed to heal both of them, on nothing but Gabe's honest plea for help, was unusual enough that Skulduggery finally noticed a certain extra bounce in the old man's step. Not much, but it was definitely there. What brought that on? The realisation that Archangels existed? That he was healing one? Somehow, Skulduggery doubted it.
He did, at once, object to Professor Grouse's phrasing, however. "He's not my - " The objection was bitten off at once with a frustrated cry of pain, and so Skulduggery settled for aiming an invisible glare in the Professor's direction instead, even as he sat obediently where directed.
~~
Lost entirely.
China didn't try to hide her small cry of dismay; probably wouldn't have tried even if she could think far enough ahead. She hadn't even seen it. The few moments she'd spent in the library before grabbing her gun and leaving, which should have been more than enough time for China to assess the damage, had been completely blank.
This library, this collection, was her life. She'd spent countless years acquiring each item, protecting them with the sigils carefully carved into the walls of the library, so meticulously and elegantly detailed that nobody but China herself could have manipulated them. Could have destroyed them. That was no secret, and any dismayed reaction was only to be expected of her.
She had to wonder if the apparent destruction was because of her, or if it was divine punishment for what she'd tried to do. The thought physically pained her, and China sank into the chair she'd been leaning against with a painful grimace. It would take decades to repair the damage, and that was just the repairable things. If anything truly unique had been lost, China would never be able to recover from that.
"I..." she hesitated, some old part of her resurfacing and debating what to keep from Solomon, what amount of knowledge would best benefit China. She rolled her eyes as the thought crashed uselessly against her mind, and when she spoke again, it was perfectly level with only the barest glimpse of the resignment she felt. "I tried to control Gabriel's true name. I couldn't even find it. The moment he felt what I was doing, he didn't just cast me out. He showed me exactly what I was trying to do."
no subject
The Professor was his usual crotchety self, it was good to see. A small taste of normalcy. It was strange how much Skulduggery suddenly craved that normalcy, to know that the world hadn't ended, that he was still here and no one had died. The rest would work itself out, eventually. The magic of perspective would help him to ignore the pierce every time he thought of Ghastly, of Valkyrie.
Professor Grouse was also, apparently, in a strangely good mood. It would have been difficult to tell, but the fact that he relented and basically agreed to heal both of them, on nothing but Gabe's honest plea for help, was unusual enough that Skulduggery finally noticed a certain extra bounce in the old man's step. Not much, but it was definitely there. What brought that on? The realisation that Archangels existed? That he was healing one? Somehow, Skulduggery doubted it.
He did, at once, object to Professor Grouse's phrasing, however. "He's not my - " The objection was bitten off at once with a frustrated cry of pain, and so Skulduggery settled for aiming an invisible glare in the Professor's direction instead, even as he sat obediently where directed.
~~
Lost entirely.
China didn't try to hide her small cry of dismay; probably wouldn't have tried even if she could think far enough ahead. She hadn't even seen it. The few moments she'd spent in the library before grabbing her gun and leaving, which should have been more than enough time for China to assess the damage, had been completely blank.
This library, this collection, was her life. She'd spent countless years acquiring each item, protecting them with the sigils carefully carved into the walls of the library, so meticulously and elegantly detailed that nobody but China herself could have manipulated them. Could have destroyed them. That was no secret, and any dismayed reaction was only to be expected of her.
She had to wonder if the apparent destruction was because of her, or if it was divine punishment for what she'd tried to do. The thought physically pained her, and China sank into the chair she'd been leaning against with a painful grimace. It would take decades to repair the damage, and that was just the repairable things. If anything truly unique had been lost, China would never be able to recover from that.
"I..." she hesitated, some old part of her resurfacing and debating what to keep from Solomon, what amount of knowledge would best benefit China. She rolled her eyes as the thought crashed uselessly against her mind, and when she spoke again, it was perfectly level with only the barest glimpse of the resignment she felt. "I tried to control Gabriel's true name. I couldn't even find it. The moment he felt what I was doing, he didn't just cast me out. He showed me exactly what I was trying to do."