Eloy froze. He waited for a dark magic circle to form under his feet. He waited for the aggressive music to trigger, the heavy brass and strings that always preceded her lethal cutscenes.
The stone floor remained perfectly mundane, and the library remained dead quiet.
He forced his back straight and took another step. The library stretched out around him, rows of towering oak bookshelves casting long shadows across the stone floor. The air smelled of dry parchment and cold dust. The only light came from the high arched windows, and all of it seemed to pool exactly where Isolde Reichenbach sat.
She kept her eyes fixed on the thick, leather-bound tome in front of her.
Eloy closed the distance. Five paces. Three paces. He stopped at the edge of her table.
In every game he had ever run, the protagonist walked up to an NPC, pressed the interact button, and a dialogue wheel appeared. Three options. One gave optimal affinity, one gave neutral information, and one was the designated bad choice. Eloy knew the branching paths of all three thousand NPCs in Chronicle of the Fading Crest. He knew every optimal response.
He had nothing for Isolde.
The devs hadn't coded a dialogue tree for a nameless peasant walking up to the Dark Lord's daughter on day one. He was completely off the rails.
The silence dragged out. Eloy stared at the top of her head. Her silver hair fell forward, shielding her face.
His peripheral vision flared with rapid-fire white text.
[dudefromfloripa]: SAY SOMETHING
[LMAO_cat]: the suspense is killing me
[PraiseTheSun]: press A to interact bro
[IsoldeSimp47]: DO NOT MESS THIS UP ELOY
Eloy cleared his throat. "Huh... Is this seat taken?"
The chat instantly rioted.
[TrollKing99]: I am going to delete my account
[LMAO_cat]: KEKW
[PraiseTheSun]: negative rizz. absolute zero.
[IsoldeSimp47]: MY DISAPPOINTMENT IS IMMEASURABLE
Isolde finally raised her head.
The concept art had given her a sneer. The boss fight audio files had given her a manic edge, one that meant the kill animation was three seconds away.
The girl sitting across from him had dark circles deep enough to be bruises. Her eyes moved across him in one flat pass: tunic, hands, face; the way a person checks a room for exits.
The community had built entire wikis around her crazy energy. But the girl sitting across from him just radiated a bone-deep exhaustion. Defensively tired, in the way of someone who had stopped expecting people to surprise them.
"The library has precisely three hundred empty chairs," Isolde said. Her voice was quiet, stripped of any inflection.
The grip on the book cover was white-knuckled. Her weight was forward: not leaning in, but ready to stand, ready to leave the room at the first opportunity.
"Yeah, I mean..." Eloy scratches his nape while his voice lowered. "I guess you're right."
In every game, she was flagged as an extinction-level event. The community had a tier list. She was her own tier.
Daughter of the Dark Lord. The abandoned child, raised among snakes, learned to kill at the age of six. One of the most powerful characters in the entire franchise, having one of the toughest battles in the history of RPGs...
When a speedrunner hits an unmapped section, they don't rush. They test. They watch what the environment does when you stop feeding it expected inputs.
So he watched.
Eloy pulled out the chair. The legs scraped stone loud enough to make both of them wince.
He sat down. Hands flat on the table, palms up.
The chat was not handling this well.
[IsoldeSimp47]: WHAT IS HE DOING
[omojiOWO]: is he just... sitting there
[TrollKing99]: SAY SOMETHING ROMANTIC
[dudefromfloripa]: COMPLIMENT HER HAIR
[PraiseTheSun]: DO NOT COMPLIMENT HER HAIR
Eloy did not compliment her hair. He looked at the table.
[POLL: WHAT SHOULD ELOY SAY NEXT?]
[A) "You have beautiful eyes."]
[B) "I've heard a lot about your father."]
[C) Say nothing. Hold the line.]
Option B had a nonzero number of votes. Eloy made a note to never let the chat near a live diplomatic situation again.
Option C was winning by a landslide.
He held the line.
[LMAO_cat]: this is the most stressful stream i've ever watched OMGG
[PraiseTheSun]: he's doing the strat
[IsoldeSimp47]: WHAT STRAT THERE IS NO STRAT
[PraiseTheSun]: exactly
"You don't have a book," Isolde said finally.
[TrollKing99]: SHE SPOKE
[dudefromfloripa]: DO NOT BLOW THIS
[LMAO_cat]: CHAT SILENT EVERYONE SILENT
"I'm working on that," Eloy said.
Isolde's grip shifted. She pulled the book an inch closer to her chest. She looked at Eloy for another long, assessing moment. The defensive tension in her shoulders didn't disappear. She lowered her eyes back to the page.
Isolde didn't tell him to leave, but didn't get her guard down either.
That was a start.
Eloy let out a slow, controlled breath through his nose. He sat in the chair for exactly two more minutes, staring at the grain of the wood, listening to the soft rustle of the parchment as Isolde turned a single page.
Then, Eloy stood up.
He pushed the chair back in. He gave a short, polite nod that she likely didn't see from behind her hair.
Eloy turned and walked toward the exit. He kept his pace measured, resisting the overwhelming urge to check over his shoulder. The heavy wooden doors of the Grand Library loomed ahead. He pushed them open and stepped out into the dimly lit stone corridor.
The moment the doors clicked shut behind him, a translucent blue screen flared into existence directly in his line of sight.
[ NEW ROUTE DETECTED ]
[ TARGET: Isolde Reichenbach ]
[ AFFINITY: 1 / 100 ]
Eloy stopped walking. The blue light cast a faint glow over the stone walls.
A second block of text materialized below the first, blinking in bright yellow warning colors.
[ WARNING: This route possesses no historical data. ]
[ No recorded strategies available. ]
[ Proceed at your own risk. ]
Eloy leaned back against the stone wall.
[ AFFINITY: 1 / 100 ]
One. He'd gotten one.
The chat was already debating optimal next steps. Someone had started a poll. Someone else was arguing that Eloy should have complimented her eyes after all, and a third person was explaining at length why that would have gotten him killed.
He looked at the number.
Ninety-nine more.
He had no route, no guide, no historical data, and an audience of four hundred people who thought this was entertainment.
It kind of was, some traitorous part of him noted.
He pushed off the wall and kept walking.
Inside the Grand Library, Isolde Reichenbach lowered the heavy leather-bound book.
She looked at the empty chair across the table. She looked at the closed doors at the far end of the room. The surrounding space was entirely silent again. The library belonged to her.
She stared at the door.