"The human identity of your brother? From when he went to that city you mentioned." I ask, curiously, giving a passing glance to the mysterious research papers written in English scattered over the floor. 

"Yes. It actually is asking him to meet the author of this note in Bothin." She says, putting the shining stone closer to the other sheet. Her face grew dark as she continued to read. 

"Here it mentions something about an experiment. They seem to have intended to move on to the second stage of their test."

"The water?" I ask. 

"That seems to be the case." The dragon girl says, her face starting to contort in anger. 

"I knew he should have never consorted with those humans!" She, muttering this violently, crumpled up the paper in her hand. 

Hey, I'm still human. I didn't exactly want to tell her that at the moment and I'm almost sure that she wouldn't even listen to me regardless. She's convinced that I'm something else to the extent that she's willing to express open hatred for my own species to my face. That's pretty bad but… 

Yeah, it seems like someone took advantage of Melody's brother to turn him into that monster that she's having so much trouble taking down. In this situation, it seems like if they're writing him letters, these evil humans were not only in cahoots with the true master of the silent forest but also completely unaware that he was actually a zombie.

Looking back at the wall of books and papers looming behind us the contents of those English documents is probably the research for those micro-monsters in the eating water that seems to have taken over the dragon. Now isn't the time for me to worry about that, though, because Melody stood up.

"I will subdue that lost brother of mine once and for all and confront these bastard humans by burning their puny city to ashes." She hissed. 

"It seems like the papers here are the information about what happened to the river and your brother. Maybe you can find a cure for him instead?" I suggested if only to distract Melody. Burning a city to ashes sounds pretty bad. 

She looked back down at me slightly stunned and slightly confused. At least she was easily distracted from that vicious rage from a second ago. Her fist was still tightly clenched around the crumpled note. 

"Right. You can read those." She assured herself, sitting back down. 

I looked nervously back at the wall of documents reaching far back into the darkness. What did I just suggest? Am I an idiot? When I was in school I was never one for research or study. The most effort and time I invested into any activity was playing dungeons and dragons with a group of friends when I was 14. It had been years since I'd studied anything to a competent degree and even beyond the effort that it would take to read everything here I still couldn't understand half of it. This seemed like high-level magic knowledge. It was at least to the point of a scientist studying the subject. 

"Well…" I say, looking back at Melody. 

"A cure… I never even considered…" she was looking down at the papers. He moved her hand gently over the manuscript that she herself couldn't read. 

God damn it. 

 

It had been 6 hours since I'd agreed to at least try to find this magical cure that I only assumed existed in this pile of mess. Melody was still desperately trying her best to find anything that she herself could read in this world's language. I'd given her a small list of words in English that she could look for in the papers rather than sitting around doing nothing. She was diligently searching for anything that resembled what I was looking for. Somehow, it seemed like she was even catching on to the vague meaning of sentences and individual words in English after having supposedly never read it beforehand. How sharp is this girl? 

I, on the other hand, was not having a good time. My eyes glazed over as I read more of the technical mumbo-jumbo written on the sheet. Words seemed less and less like words the more I read them. I was starting to fall asleep sitting on the floor. 

 

Achlys too sat with her mouth vaguely hanging open while sitting on her throne. The sound of Hypnos snoring gently in the background was starting to get frustrating. The older-looking woman had been interested in the research development at first but was starting to grow frustrated and distracted. 

If only, Achlys thought with her eyes drifting aimlessly away from Iris, there was a montage for real life moments such as these. Of course, she could go into her room and ignore the trivial actions the man was taking but then she would miss that satisfaction of having him finally find what he was looking for. This is the struggle and the pain of live television. But, there was something else that could easily be done when one mentions live TV. Unlike in the drawn-out tedium of actions you have no power to affect, with this circumstance particularly Achlys could have easily helped her entertainment out hours ago. That is if she hadn't just woken up from her own nap and found that the scene on the screen still had somehow not progressed. 

She trudged off to her room once more. 

 

I checked my pocket watch in the light of the stone Melody had set-up beside me. Apparently, this stone she had given me was a more advanced version of the smaller one that she was still using. According to her, the strain on her magic was greater to make this one than to use the other one with the short span of time that this one lasted. Unfortunately for me, I couldn't actually use magic circles. This was the solution. 

The time was around 5:08pm and I fell backward, exhausted. Something strange appeared in front of my face. A paper. A paper like so many I'd just sorted through. I went to grab it but it moved. No, no it didn't just move, with the fold down the middle it fluttered upwards like a butterfly flapping its wings. 

I closed my eyes. Yeah, I was exhausted. I'd been looking at paper for too long and I didn't get enough sleep. I don't actually know, when was the last time I slept? I opened my eyes again and the flying paper flew into my eye. 

I yelled out and got up, swatting at it while holding my face. 

"What the hell?!" 

The paper fluttered away into the shelf. 

"What? Did you find anything?" Melody asked, walking quickly back to where I was sitting. I was there still, holding my face and searching through the still shelved documents to find whatever the hell just stabbed me in the eye. 

"There was a thing," I said, looking over at her. She looked at me, confused. 

"I see many things here."

"It was a flying piece of paper." I said, seriously. 

"What, did it fall into your eye?" She responded, looking at my face while chuckling slightly. 

"No, it flew. It fluttered over here."

Raising her eyebrows the dragon girl looked at the shelf where I was searching and then back at me. 

"Arthur, do you need a rest?"

Yes, yes I think I do but that's not the point here. A magical flying piece of paper just stabbed me in the eye. 

"I will go fetch us some pure water. Try not to hurt yourself again in the meantime." She said sighing while moving past me. I watched her go without another word. She already thinks I'm crazy.

I watched the dragon girl leave the room and decided to sit in one of the wooden chairs at the desks rather than back on the floor. I leaned back, sighing. 

The paper fluttered in front of my face again. 

"You…" I said, suspiciously. The paper moved to the side, over past the bookshelves, and then again back to me. It did this 3 times before I got up. It was acting unnaturally and surely wasn't an insect of some sort. When I walked over to it, it flew a little farther. I stopped. It flew back and then forward again. 

Going back to the light that Melody had given me before, I picked up that rock and held it out in the direction the paper was leading. Yeah, this paper was definitely leading me to something. 

I followed it as it fluttered forwards. The cave went on for a while. To the left of me, the shelves were stacked with the same endless archive of notes while to the right strange materials were left on desks. Jars of taxidermied animals and potions of different colors lined the room as the piece of paper moved ever onwards.

Suddenly, it stopped. It landed on a book just like any of the other ones.

I picked up the book and looked it over. Upon leafing through the pages, I couldn’t make anything out of this one. Like any of the other books on the shelf, it was filled with math and messy handwriting. I looked back over the shelves that I’d just walked past.

Alright, yeah, this is better than nothing. 

The small paper insect that had led me to this place slowly opened and closed its wings like a resting butterfly. I picked it up and it didn’t resist. Chances are that something here was helping me out. Otherwise this wouldn’t exist, right? Melody wasn’t familiar with it offhand so it’s probably not a common thing. Looking around me right now, this probably isn’t a natural thing either. Maybe this paper bug is like a librarian for this giant bookshelf? It seems like it would be a pain to look through all of this research without a quick way to access a specific book. Actually, it might have been a good idea to look for something like that in the first place. I started walking back.

When I returned to the place that we’d left off, Melody was holding a bucket of water. She looked at me and then at the book in my hand.

“Is that something important? Did you find a clue to what we’re looking for?” She asked, placing the water on the ground.

“Not sure.” I said, opening the book. “This thing landed on this book so I think that it must be important.”

I pointed at the paper bug librarian sitting on my shoulder.

Melody stared at the thing in confusion.

“What is that, exactly?”

“I don’t really know. I was thinking it might be the index, but I’m not sure.”

I scratched the back of my head, looking down at the piece of paper gently flapping its wings on my shoulder.

Once again, the dragon girl looks at the strange creature in confusion. She gives me a glance and then reaches out to touch it. The paper bug crawls over out of my sight away from her finger. Holding up the book, I try to bring her back to her own real and probably important goals.

“Let’s look at this,” I say, sitting back down with Melody. We open the book as I start to read.