The Rubbish Realm

Chapter 8

Chapter 8
Clyde and Lysander lay sprawled out on the floor in Lysander’s room, surrounded by books of similar shapes and many different sizes, if you get the reference. I suppose they were even if you don’t, though. It really doesn’t matter what you think. Anyway, they were paging through them while, unsurprisingly, looking very bored.
“How many books do you have?” Clyde asked, somewhat impressed and quite tired. He had neither gotten over the jet lag nor the shock that this wasn’t a terrible nightmare, and was not having a great time in this new place, to say the least. To say the most you would have to talk about how all his friends were dead, but this book isn’t that dark. Yet.
Lysander looked up for a moment but didn’t answer, unless you count his mumbling of which page he was trying to find from his perusing of the books’ many indexes. “Page 293, page 293, no, no… there we go!” he muttered under his breath. “Nope, not what we’re looking for.”
Clyde was more than a little confused and slightly irritated. “You didn’t answer my question. Also, you still haven’t told me what we’re looking for!”
Lysander tried (and failed) to repress a smile. “Why do you want to know?”
Clyde glared at him. “Broski.”
“We’re looking for prophecies, specifically a larger excerpt of Beresford’s prophecy. You know, the one with the ‘man from above’ that I told you about yesterday?” Lysander slipped into nerdiness.
“Oh, that.” Clyde turned sullen suddenly. “The one about me.” He knew he should have been honored and at least somewhat excited, but he was just nervous. What if I fail? And why me?
Lysander shied away before relaxing, empathy visible in his vibrant eyes. “Well, at least if you fail, you won’t fail alone.”
Oh, yeah. He can read minds. Clyde sagged. “Well, where should we start?”
Lysander grinned, maniacally burying his head in a book to avoid answering the question and flipping through the pages far quicker than he could have if he were actually reading them.
Clyde sighed. Insufferable. “How do your parents deal with you?”
“They don’t. As long as I don’t break anything…”
Clyde nodded subconsciously. “Have you checked this one?” He held out a book entitled Full works of the prophet Beresford. Compiled by Beresford. “It seems pretty… comprehensive, -”
“To say the least.” Lysander, knowing what Clyde was about to say, finished his sentence for him. “Mind reading is pretty fun.”
Clyde shook his head disapprovingly. “Fiend.”
Lysander grinned and bit his tongue. He could always save the snide remarks until later.
“Why is he destroying the world now, of all times? And why did Beresford choose me?” Clyde couldn’t get it off of his mind.
Lysander frowned. He’s such a downer. “Because he thinks he’s unstoppable now. Because he’s saved enough magical energy to stop anybody who opposes him as long as the whole realm doesn’t rise up against him. Because the orcs are finally fine with living underground.” He was going to rattle off quite a few more reasons, but Clyde stopped him.
“But why does he even want to destroy the world? What’s in it for him?”
Lysander simply stared off into the distance, pensive.
Clyde sighed. “Did you try the encyclopedia yet?”
Lysander visibly brightened. “Brilliant!” He grabbed it from the shelf and started paging through it. “Beresford… no, not Basilius, although he is fun… ballooning? No… ah, there we go! ‘Beresford, a prophet who lived from CE 1840 to 1930, approximating, of course, is famous not because he was the greatest seer of his era, (which he was), but because of one prophecy he pronounced around CE 1896, colloquially referred to as ‘Beresford’s prophecy’. For a full transcription of said prophecy, see Beresford under the bibliography.’ The bibliography! Of course!” He jumped up and ran to the bookshelf, suddenly full of his signature energy.
How does he do it? “At least I was of some use…” Clyde trailed off, disappointed as always.
“Thanks!” Lysander resumed mumbling for Beresford as he paged through the large book.
“Why am I even here? You were doing just fine without me, and I’m useless anyway. There aren’t even any electrical wires for me to set up. After all, that’s all I’m good at…” Clyde glared at the floor pointedly.
“You want the honest answer? Because you’re lucky. So lucky that it’s beyond me how you’re grouchy.” Nobody has infinite patience, and Lysander was getting annoyed.
“Thanks a lot.” Clyde griped, sarcasm oozing from his grumpy tone.
Lysander chose wisely not to respond. Finding the page he’d been looking for, he creased the page over and slid the book to Clyde, who started reading it aloud to himself.
“‘When the sky begins to crumble,
Fell things upon the earth shall rumble.
If one from above can save you not,
The world you know will be a blot
Crushed under rubble from above,
Devoid of joy, devoid of love.’
Pretty gloomy, eh?” It seemed as though he had tried to add a bit of chipperness to his tone, but he couldn’t pull it off effectively, especially when Lysander jumped up, threw the nearest book on the floor, and started pacing.
“Of course it just said what we already know. Of course we just wasted hours paging through books that are supposed to know everything but don’t have even the simplest thing we’re looking for. Of course it-”
Clyde interrupted quietly. “Lysander?”
Now Lysander was the one to sigh, and fall back on the floor. “Yeah? Oh.” He read Clyde’s mind just by instinct, immediately knowing what he was about to talk about even before he spoke. “Oops.”
“What?” Clyde read the book over Lysander’s shoulder. “Doesn’t it at least cite sources where you could find more information?”
Lysander snapped his fingers, a grin lighting up his impish figure. “Allistaire would have every book in existence. He’d be able to find them. …where did you say the list would be?”