Later that day, Mark wandered the school corridors with his hands tucked casually into his pockets, a pair of headphones covering both ears, connected to a phone that played a steady stream of upbeat, pump filled funk beats. Eventually, he turned toward a long staircase that led up toward the school’s Grand Library and began the climb.
Along the way, he came across something that made him stop mid stride, reaching up to pause his music. His brows furrowed sharply at the sight in front of him.
A technician stood there, dressed in the standard uniform of the school’s environmental staff, rubber gloves fitted snugly over his hands as he worked a broom and mop across the floor. A ring of caution signs stood posted around his immediate work area.
"Weren’t you the one who ran my awakening ceremony back at the Grand Hall? I have to admit, I’m genuinely surprised to see you here, doing this," Mark said, glancing around at the immaculate, pristine floors reflecting sunlight all around them.
The technician offered a smile that never quite reached his eyes, slowing the steady rhythm of his cleaning just slightly.
"Ha, tell me about it. But a man’s got to hustle somehow, you know how it is," the man said with a light chuckle.
Mark shrugged. "Yeah, I guess that’s fair."
"So, you’re not paranoid around me the way most people seem to be, are you?" Mark asked, scratching absently at the back of his head.
"If anything, kid, I’d say I’m happy for you, genuinely. Most people, including yourself sometimes, don’t fully understand the kind of potential and value you’re actually sitting on. They just judge based on whatever public perception happens to be circulating."
The technician shook his head slowly, eyes closed, clicking his tongue softly as he spoke.
Mark found himself genuinely struck by the remark. Thinking it over, he realized his mind almost always drifted toward the loud majority, rarely pausing to remember the quieter few who actually seemed to understand the complicated situation he found himself in, people like Hermione. Perhaps a few others too, it seemed, judging by this unexpected conversation.
He hadn’t quite realized it before, but the man’s words rang uncomfortably true, and for some reason, the whole exchange left him with the strange, lingering sense that they somehow already knew each other. The feeling struck him as odd, though he quickly brushed it aside.
Mark offered an appreciative smile. "Thanks, honestly, for people like you who actually get it. It means a lot more than you probably realize. Anyway, enjoy the rest of your shift."
He turned down the adjoining corridor and walked off, hands back in his pockets, unaware that the man’s expression shifted the moment his back was turned, a faint grin spreading across his face as he watched him go.
"No one really understands you. I wish more of them did, but I do," the man muttered quietly to himself, returning to the steady rhythm of his broom and mop across the floor.
Mark eventually reached the library, a structure sprawling wide enough to cover several full blocks of classrooms. Its entrance stood tall and dome shaped, wide and welcoming like some grand gateway, and through the glass he could already make out a handful of students inside, heads bowed in quiet focus over their studies.
He stepped through into the vast interior, removing his headphones as he went and handing them over for safekeeping, in line with one of the library’s standing rules and regulations.
The librarian signed him in with a quick card registration before waving him through. This marked his very first visit to the school’s library. Back during his freshman year, still an ordinary mundane at the time, he had felt entirely disconnected and isolated from the other summoning students, never once venturing inside alongside them.
Even then, the idea of a library on campus had barely crossed his mind. He had been too consumed with physical, practical training to spare much thought for theoretical knowledge tucked away in books.
Looking back now, he sometimes wondered how he had managed to survive that brutal first year without completely breaking down or giving up entirely. It was precisely why he still gave himself credit for whatever stubborn hope had carried him this far.
But right now, he needed real answers, genuine understanding about the Amazons, their history, and their culture. His own soul space had made things frustratingly difficult so far, offering little more than cryptic, enigmatic hints instead of anything resembling a straightforward answer.
Making his way toward the book storage section, Mark navigated through towering rows of shelves that stretched almost all the way up to the distant ceiling. Reaching the highest row would have required a genuinely long ladder.
The sheer number of books was staggering, and finding one specific title felt like searching for a needle in a haystack. Thankfully, certain sections of the aisles carried helpful labels, marking out the different genres and categories available for browsing.
As he wandered further, he eventually found a section labeled mystery and mythology. It seemed like a reasonable place to start if he hoped to make sense of his current problem, and the label itself was intriguing enough to pull at his curiosity, so he decided to dig in.
After several long minutes, he found himself growing tired and increasingly frustrated. Finding anything that actually matched what he was looking for proved far harder than expected, and more than once he thought he had finally found the right book, only for it to fall completely outside what he actually needed.
This, he realized, was probably another reason he had never bothered visiting the school library before now. The whole process felt exhausting and tedious, and he found himself genuinely wondering how the librarian managed to keep up with it all day after day, though he had to give her real credit for the effort. It clearly wasn’t an easy job in the slightest.
This was shaping up to be yet another rough first experience, and the bitterness of it was hard to shake. Still, he refused to give up entirely, driven by some quiet, persistent feeling that there was something here worth finding, even if it might just turn out to be wishful thinking.
After sorting through a stack of books focused mostly on fierce humanoids and dragons, he decided to try a different section entirely, one labeled ancientfeminism and civilization.
Along the way, he paused near a row of books resting at roughly chest height. It reminded him suddenly of the potion Hermione had given him earlier, along with her brief explanation about how it worked specifically on giants, which of course meant his Amazon summon.
Perhaps there was something important he had missed about it, something worth understanding more closely. On a sudden impulse, Mark pulled the small potion bottle from his pocket and gave it a quick, curious sniff, only to recoil almost immediately with a sharp cough, catching himself just in time to avoid disturbing the library’s careful silence.
He shoved the bottle back into his pocket, already sensing he had just made a serious mistake, though he tried his best to ignore the growing sense of dread settling into his stomach. Peering through a gap between the shelves, he caught the faint, familiar sound of a voice drifting from the other side.
His body began glowing faintly, wrapped in swirling golden sparks of dust, and he quickly noticed the entire world around him beginning to look strangely larger.
It took him only a moment to realize, with mounting horror, that it was not the world growing bigger at all, but his own body shrinking rapidly, just before he tumbled straight into a narrow gap between two shelves.
"Oh no. What have I done? I’m such an idiot," Mark muttered, running his hands over his own newly shrunken body in disbelief. Everything about his frame felt strangely light now. He felt exactly like some kind of tiny borrower, and that comparison did not sit well with him at all.
Carefully picking his way through books that now towered over him like buildings, he froze suddenly, his face draining of color, the moment he reached a gap between two shelves and caught sight of what waited there.
Mia’s sharp amethyst eyes narrowed the instant she spotted him, and she recoiled backward with an involuntary shriek, as though she had just spotted a mouse scurrying across the floor. But recognition quickly followed, and Mark watched, with a sinking feeling, as her expression shifted into a familiar, mischievous smile.
Her voice was the one he had heard moments earlier, and now, here they were, face to face again, and he already knew exactly how these encounters tended to end.
Except this time, given his current size, and given how thoroughly he had slipped past her the last time around, this particular encounter was shaping up to be genuinely terrifying.
"Don’t even think about running. Just where exactly do you think you’re going?" Her voice dripped with honeyed, dark intent as she reached out toward him with hands that now looked absolutely enormous.
Heart pounding like a hammer against his ribs, Mark bolted away from her grasping fingers, scrambling through the towering stacks of books around him.
In that moment, he found himself genuinely thankful for their presence, even if they had done nothing so far to solve the real problem that had brought him here in the first place.
At the very least, they were buying him whatever little life he still had left.
"You can run, but you can’t hide. Ratty, ratty, where are you?" Her singsong, gloomy voice sent a cold chill crawling down his spine as he continued leaping desperately between oversized books. One moment of hesitation, even the briefest slip, and he would be finished.
He hated that particular feeling more than almost anything else, the crushing sense of being utterly powerless and weak before someone else, a feeling that always twisted painfully tight in his chest whenever it surfaced.
As he continued his desperate escape, he felt the ground tremble faintly beneath him, the unmistakable sign that Mia had begun tearing through the shelves in frustration, clearly desperate not to let him slip away from her a second time.
Mark crouched low before launching himself in a powerful leap across the gap between two opposing shelves, drawing on the raw strength granted to him as a summoner. Landing lightly on the far side, he continued moving swiftly through the rows of books, only to come face to face with someone else entirely.
Hermione had bent down to retrieve a few books resting near her waist, only to look up and spot Mark standing there instead.
It felt like an oddly convenient coincidence, though thankfully one that worked entirely in his favor. He found himself briefly wondering why two of his female classmates had both wandered into the feminism section on the very same day.
Perhaps they simply needed something reassuring to read, or maybe it was pure coincidence. Whatever the reason, he had no time to dwell on it, not with the actual purpose of his visit still unresolved.
Their eyes met, and at this unusually close distance, Mark noticed details about her he had never quite registered before, the light scattering of freckles across her cheeks, the soft, glossy pink of her lips, and eyes that held a warmth deep enough to rival the very core of the sun.
Hermione let out a soft chuckle and shook her head before grabbing him up quickly, almost like picking up a stray object. Rising to her feet, she held him carefully in her open palm.
"Oops, sorry about that. I completely forgot to mention how it affects a human body, it basically shrinks you down to the size of an ant."
’You really couldn’t have mentioned that a little sooner,’ Mark thought to himself, dripping with silent sarcasm.
She studied him for a moment, holding him upside down with obvious curiosity, before glancing around cautiously. With quick, practiced movements, she slipped over to the opposite side of the shelf just as Mia appeared there, prowling like a hungry cat on the hunt.
"Okay, I think I can fix this. Just calm down. I really don’t want any more trouble, so stay close to me for now." Speaking in a hushed voice, Hermione began weaving her way through the aisles before finally slipping out of the section entirely.
Before Mark could fully process what was happening, he found himself tucked gently into her pocket. Hermione offered the librarian a quick, friendly wave as she passed by, earning a brief, suspicious glance in return, one she chose to simply ignore.
After putting enough distance between herself and the library, arriving finally at a quiet, empty block of classrooms, Hermione slowed her pace at last.
"Okay, I think the coast is clear."
A/N: I hope that you enjoyed. Please help support the book by adding to your library and giving a powerstone or two. Thanks for your attention