And quickly.

The school has a bit of an objection to that! The quickest way to the main incantations aisle and from there to the reading room is through the Sanskrit aisle - and the aisle stretches longer than normal, all the lights dim in and beyond it. The school it seems doesn't want any big damn heroes rescuing everyone in the reading room. 

(And they hear, distantly, a warbling call and a wavering howl - likely some chimera or another that's causing those screams.)

They've been through the Sanskrit aisle nearly more than anywhere else, and their notebooks are full of which book to expect where - Luthien starts calling out loud the ends of sections almost automatically, glancing out of the corner of her eye to skim the shapes and colors of familiar spines.

Too fucking bad, school, El is going to enable Luthien saving her crush. She knows how long this aisle is supposed to be, and she knows where all the books are.

Chengsu doesn't, so much, so she keeps her eyes scanning for any ambush sneaking up on them.

She starts actually reading the labels out loud - and then identifying specific books from the title or from just recognizing them - and then they hit books she's never seen before, ones with increasingly large numbers - collected early on and then never resorted, some of them might have stayed off the shelves for the last century -

The school really wants to slow them down, and she's getting impatient, distracted from her counting as she glares at the end of the aisle. 

El will pick up Lu's slack then-

-Wait. That one doesn't fit here, a gold-leaf spine amidst the palm-leaf books. Incongruous. Potentially valuable. Enough to justify stopping to grab it? Yes, she decides in a split second, stopping to hop up and pull it down off the shelf.

Lu barely seems to notice - and the bookshelves shiver under El's hand, and the aisle begins to shorten ahead of them. 

(The book El's grabbed is entirely unlabeled - fresh from the void and not collected yet. Which means that it doesn't belong to the school yet, though it will if she opens it here.)

She's going to take it with her, then. Payment or bribe or whatever, now the book's hers. Investigate later.

The school dumps them into the main incantations aisle, angled towards the open reading room - and they can hear evidence of at least four distinct mals now, the warbling and snarling coming from two separate areas, the rustling flutter of a manifestation, someone shouting out tactics against a slime... There's the bright flares of Daniella's fire, and the whistling of Xunyu's wind-sword, and evidence that not just those two are fighting - a good chunk of enclavers seem to be cornered. 

And the aisle is dark and silent, and they can't see the gleam of the vents, and even the books are still. There's no thumping whine of a fan, no rustling of pages. 

Just a quiet, soft sound, barely audible under the screaming, only present in the brief flashes of silence like hairs rising on the back of their necks - 

A sound like someone breathing heavily. Like a small gasp.

And Luthien has frozen, sniffing the air, gaze ahead on the fight at first but then slowly turning around -

"Something's wrong. There's something- behind us."

El turns to look as well.

There is, in fact. 

Another rush of flame billows in the reading room behind them - and the light reflects off of countless glassy eyes, drifting hopelessly through the slick, shiny viscera currently bubbling up out of the main vent. It hauls itself up slowly, lurchingly, and its numerous mouths seem to be panting with the effort. 

A mawmouth has, after all, never climbed this high before. It's quite the distance, and a rather hungry endeavor. 

The girls don't really get the sense it's noticed them yet, except peripherally. Potential future food, maybe, once it finishes taking stock of the room it's dragged itself into. 

And beyond it - a good distance, farther away from the mawmouth than they are, though certainly not far enough - a terrified freshman clinging to the stair rail. A frozen girl, a foolish one who'd made the mistake of looking back while fleeing back to her room from the commotion in the reading room. She doesn't really have anywhere to go but down the stairs and into what will probably be a killing corridor if the mawmouth follows her - she could maybe fling herself back up the stairs, dodge into a side aisle and run far enough the mawmouth lets her go in favor of the tasty snacks beyond her, and go poach some far away room if the mawmouth does indeed settle on her floor, but that'd require first running towards it. 

Oh fuck.

Fuck.

Fuck!!!

Growl. 

The mawmouth finishes heaving its bulk out of the vent, and sits there panting as it oozes from a vaguely boxy shape back into its natural 'undifferentiated pile of gore.' The eyes drift to mostly focus in both directions - the stairwell, with the freshman and a corridor full of nearly helpless snacks beyond her, or the aisle with the three juniors and a room full of powerful kids and more powerful mals beyond them. 

There's an almost lazy sense of calculation to it. Mawmouths aren't very good at not eating things - if it goes for the stairs, and the freshman doesn't run, it'll eat her and then be forced to slow down and digest, and then all the food will run away. But she'll scare easy, and can probably be scared into running. Mawmouths are very good at making prey run away, after all. 

If it goes for the juniors - well, they're right next to an aisle. Probably they'll just flinch out of the way. And if they don't, they have more mana - much more, given one of them has a Shanghai power sharer on her wrist - and it can probably stretch into the crowded reading room, though the food there would get more warning to scatter, and have more places to run...

It pauses for what's probably not that long a time, but it feels nearly infinite in the corridor lit only by irregular flashes of firelight. 

(The girls could, in fact, pretty trivially get out of its way. They could also pretty easily get into the reading room to warn everyone and then even probably escape, and come out of it heroes. Risking yourself to deliver a warning about a mawmouth is itself exceptionally far and above expectations.)

"Lu. Lu. You gotta go, you gotta warn them-"

She just snarls, a deep, bestial sound, and draws her most vicious knives. 

El puts out her arm to bar her path. "No, you can't fight it. Lu, please." El made a promise.

That gets her, finally, to yank her gaze away from the mawmouth to her sister, though her lips are still pulled back from her teeth. 

And, voice raw like she's struggling to remember how words work: "Not letting you pull a dad."