Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

you’d never before realized how important that item was to you. Imagine that your understanding of it – your feelings of love, pride, and satisfaction – suddenly hit you all at once.
    That was how I felt. There was something right about all of those Lenses. I’d never been in the room before, but to me, it felt like home. And to a boy who had lived with dozens of different foster families, home was not a word to be used lightly.
    Sing, Grandpa Smedry, Bastille, and Quentin moved into the room. I walked up to the doorway, where I stood for a few moments, basking in the beauty of the Lenses. There was a majesty to the room. A warmth.
    This is what I was meant to be, I thought. This is what I was always meant to be.
    “Hurry, lad!” Grandpa Smedry said. “You have to find the sands. I don’t have my Oculator’s Lenses! I’ll try to find a pair in here, but you need to start looking while I do!”
    I shocked myself into motion. We were still being chased. This wasn’t my home – this was the stronghold of my enemies. I shook my head, forcing myself to be more realistic. Yet I would always retain a memory of that moment – the first moment when I knew for certain that I wanted to be an Oculator. And I would treasure it.
    “Grandfather, everything in here is glowing,” I protested. “How can I find the sands in all of this?”
    “They’re here,” Grandpa Smedry said, furiously looking through the room. “I swear they are!”
    “Golf the spasm of penguins!” Quentin said, pointing to a table at the back of the circular room.
    “He’s right!” Grandpa Smedry said. “That’s where the sands were before. Aspiring Asimovs! Where did they go?”
    “Typically,” a new voice said, “one uses sands to make Lenses.”
    I spun. Blackburn stood in the hallway behind us. For some reason, the man’s aura of darkness was far less visible that it had been before.
    My Oculator’s Lenses, I realized. I turned them down.
    Blackburn smiled. He was accompanied by a large group of Librarians – not the skinny, robe-wearing kind but the bulky, overmuscled kind in the bow ties and sunglasses, as well as a couple of sword-wielding women wearing skirts, their hair in buns.
    Blackburn had something in his hand. A pair of spectacles. Even with my Oculator’s Lenses turned down, these spectacles glowed powerfully with a brilliant white light.
    “Back away, lad,” Grandpa Smedry said quietly.
    I did so, slowly backing into the room. There are no other exits, I thought. We’re trapped!
    Bastille growled quietly, raising her crystal dagger, stepping between Grandpa Smedry and the smiling Blackburn. Librarian thugs fanned into the room, moving to surround us. Sing watched warily, cocking a pair of handguns.
    “Nice collection you have here, Blackburn,” Grandpa Smedry said, walking around the perimeter of the room.
    “Frostbringer’s Lenses, Courier’s Lenses, Harrier’s Lenses… Yes, impressive indeed.” I noticed that my grandfather’s hand was glowing slightly.
    “I have a weakness for power, I’m afraid,” Blackburn said.
    Grandpa Smedry nodded, as if to himself. “Those Lenses in your hand. They come from the Sands of Rashid?”
    Blackburn smiled.
    “Why a pair? Why not just a monocle?” Grandpa Smedry asked.
    “In case I choose to share these Lenses with others. Not everyone has realized the value of focusing power, as I have.”
    “The torture, the chasing us,” Grandpa Smedry said. “I was worried that we were taking too long – that you were just trying to distract us long enough for your lackeys to forge those Lenses.”
    “Not just ,” Blackburn said. “I was sincerely hoping that I’d be able to break you with the torture, old man, and find the secret to the Smedry Talents that way. But you do have a point. I assumed that when I had these lenses, I could beat you for certain.”
    Grandpa Smedry smiled. “They don’t do what you thought they would, do they?”
    Blackburn shrugged.
    Grandpa Smedry finally stopped strolling. He reached up and selected a Lens off of a shelf, then slipped it into his hands with several others he’s pilfered. He turned to look directly at Blackburn. “Shall we, then?”
    Blackburn’s smile deepened. “I’d like nothing better.”
    Grandpa Smedry whipped his hand up, raising something to his eye – an Oculator’s Lens. Blackburn raised his own hand, placing a monocle over the one he already wore.
    Sing, of course, tripped.
    “Shattering