Of Mystery and Magic || The Librarians

Chapter One

December 2014

Crawling through a steaming hot and enclosed space in Germany was not how Nimue wanted to start her day.

But that kind of thing was, unfortunately, kind of in her job description, given that it was usually how they were able to obtain magical artifacts. Since taking up the position as the Guardian, she didn't have a lot of free time either, minus the rare times that she was able to drag Flynn out of the Library. 

She became Flynn's Guardian when she was 13 years old. Quite a lot of responsibility for someone so young. The youngest Guardian ever, too, she'd been told. Now, at 23 years of age, there were still times when it was difficult to shoulder those responsibilities.

Especially when the Librarian was Flynn Carsen.

Right now, Nimue and Flynn were wedged in a tube in the wall, on a mission to retrieve the Opal of Samara. She was grateful that she was small enough to fit, standing at only 5'5, though it was taking longer than the young Guardian had hoped, given that her eccentric companion was taking his sweet time finding the steam vents that led to where the Opal was supposed to be.

Bloody hell, this job is making me way too paranoid, she thought darkly to herself.

"Oi, when you're done tapping every wall you see, could you maybe, I dunno, find the bloody steam vents please!"

Unfortunately, Flynn proceeded to tap the walls with his knuckles as if she hadn't spoken at all.

"Nope, that's not it," he inquired to himself, making Nimue, who was right behind him, roll her eyes. "Where's the steam vents? Nazis are always mad about steam vents." 

As soon as he finished that sentence, a door just big enough for him to crawl through swung open in front of him, depositing him onto the floor, covered in soot. Nimue crawled out after him, settling herself on solid ground and dusting off her clothes.

"Thank God!" She groaned, rolling her shoulders. "I thought that we were gonna be in there all day; it was boiling--"

It was only then that she realized that she and Flynn were not alone.

"Oh."

She froze, looking over the three new individuals in front of her. Two out of the three were definitely German if their clothes and the beeping nuclear bomb between them were anything to go by. She would have to deal with that later. 

The third person was a woman about Flynn's age, American she guessed, judging by her uniform, which read the name Baird on her name tag (Nimue had to squint in order to read it; distance and dyslexia were not a good combination). Her blonde hair was in a neat bun, and she was pointing her gun between the two German soldiers and the two strangers that had just come barreling out of a steam vent. If there wasn't the risk of having a gun pointed at her head, Nimue would've laughed.

Flynn said something good-naturedly in fluent German, seemingly unaware of the tension in the room, though it didn't get much of a reaction from the three individuals in front of them. The Baird woman, in particular, was staring at him as if he'd lost his mind, then looked between him and the young woman next to him, probably wondering how the pair ended up in the same vicinity, especially since they seemed like the most unlikely pair to be seen together.

The girl gave them her most innocent smile.

"Alright, lads? Lady?" she said sweetly as if this was a perfectly normal meeting place with perfectly normal people. When she realized she wouldn't be getting a response, she switched tactics. They had work to do anyway. "Don't mind us. You lot are obviously busy."