A Hackwith - The Library of the Unwritten

“And that’s why I have this.” Andras flipped the blade over in his hands. Claire realized the black surface gleamed not like metal but like polished crystal. “Good-bye, pup.”

The blade moved at her, fast and glinting like a minnow in water. Claire threw the sword in front of her as she stumbled back, using it more as a shield than a riposte. Andras flicked his wrist and turned the movement against her. The sword wrenched out of her hands and flew down the aisle.

Andras stopped, sighing as she clutched her bruised wrist. “This just isn’t fair. I knew I should have taught you swordplay.” He moved again, taking advantage of her reaction to kick her solidly in the gut. Claire crumpled to the floor, breath seizing in her lungs. She felt Andras stop behind her, a cold shadow. He was toying with her. Andras would win any fight, fair or otherwise.

Claire understood it then. She stayed on her knees.

“Hear me,” Claire whispered, words lost to the floorboards. “Hear me, please. I have done my best, but we need you now. If you ever had power, if you ever cared about this place and those in it, please , I need you now.”

Andras heaved a long sigh. A toe nudged her spine. “Praying? I’m disappointed in you. Even if Lucifer was the worshipping type, he’s abandoned you. I thought you were better than cheap begging.”

“Please,” Claire breathed. She leaned against a shelf of books. The leather was cool against her cheek. Nothing stirred beneath it. She squeezed her eyes shut with effort. “This isn’t how the story ends. Not yours.” Hers, perhaps. But hers wasn’t the only story inked in the bones of Hell.

The whispers, when they came, were nothing more than a soft hush of wind. Claire opened her eyes and turned.

Andras still held a disappointed frown, dagger out as if he was waiting for his fancy to take him. His gaze stumbled, catching on something just over Claire’s shoulder. She held very still. She felt the figures at her back, dozens of them. No, not dozens.

Hundreds.

And she knew the books were awake.

Books woken up after a long, very long, sleep. Heroes and villains and damsels and knights. Monsters and rogues and saints and madmen. Books and stories and characters and conflicts from ages long past, furies and passions honed over an eon to a killing edge. Aliens and monsters and queens and mercenaries and children. They crowded the hall behind her and clung to shelves; those with wings and tails crowded overhead. Dozens, hundreds, more. The weight of the wakened Library balanced, heavy and infinite, in the air.

They didn’t bother with the niceties of dimensional physics. Out of the corner of her eye, feet flickered against the floorboards. Boots turned to hooves turned to heels turned to soft shadow. The only thing constant was the weight, the weight of a million gazes on her back. The pressure was like a great wave, obliterating and terrible. And when it turned its gaze on Andras, a tremor shook through the demon’s shoulders. His hand fell to his side, and Andras began to back up. Claire felt the pull of the tide of old stories, hungry ghosts, and dug her knuckles into the floor. It was all she could do not to lose herself with it.

Andras’s voice was haughty but unsteady. “I’m the Arcanist, Grand Duke of Hell. You can’t—”

“We can.” The words came to Claire’s lips, like grave dust. “We are the dreams that did not die with the dreamer. We care nothing for the dark.”

“Nonsense. I’m a demon! I can offer you freedom, escape, power beyond imagination.”

“We are imagination.”

Air rushed out of the aisle, sucking Claire’s breath with it. When she felt the first figure pass her, like a trace of frost over her skin, the prudent thing would have been to close her eyes. There were things human minds weren’t meant to comprehend, and Claire felt her own mind pressed, spread too thin. But she’d called this. She’d asked, and the Library had answered. She’d woken them up. All of them. She ground her hands against the wood until her nails splintered, and she looked up.

Andras backed into a wall, shoulders hunched, with his dagger out. Not in a proficient pose like before, but sweeping, searching for a target. Figures coalesced in the air between them, like a mist swirling on a current. His blade passed through the chest of the nearest figure. It parted like water and then, instead of disintegrating, the figure solidified and power spread like a ripple. Andras’s eyes were gold-and-black cat eyes, all human traces gone, when they found hers and caught.

“You’re not a murderer, pup. Have mercy. You know me. We could have—”

A dark-skinned woman, ageless and terrifying as the dawn, appeared out of the shadows at Andras’s back. A rush of power and a spike of light forced Claire to squeeze her eyes shut. When she opened them, empty air hung where Andras had stood.

The dagger clattered to the hardwood, loud as Claire’s pulse. It was no longer black, but as silver as Andras’s hair, with a tiger stripe of faintly glowing amber.

Claire took an unsteady breath, realizing too late that the ghost woman’s attention was now on her. Her starless black eyes gained weight, as if feeding from the judgment. Claire tried, with the parts of her mind that weren’t screaming, to identify her. The woman didn’t seem like one of Claire’s own characters, or any damsel that had appeared in the past. This wasn’t a character that had ever woken up under Claire’s care, perhaps had never woken up. This was a character from an old book, breathtakingly old, a book conceived when characters such as this were not women, but forces , faces of the gods.

That gaze held Claire immobile, and pressed down like stone. It saw every fleck of ash on her cheeks, the smoke heavy in her hair, every callous disregard she’d ever had. It saw the ink that stained her fingers, time and time again, and measured her life in cruelties. Somewhere distant, she could hear Brevity’s high voice calling her name. They were looking for her now.

But the Library had already found her. The Library would not bring the others here until it was done with her.

Andras had been asking the wrong person for mercy. The mercies of the Library were dust and silence. She was caught in a sea of ghosts, a trap with jaws of ink and bone. The pulse of dreams beat at her skin, pressing in, and hundreds of hungering eyes palmed at her soul. Tasting, testing, finding it wanting. The accusation was there. The accusation and weight of every book that’d burned today. Claire distantly wondered which faces in the crowd were of her creation.

All seemed equally judging, but that was familiar.

The woman in front drew toward her. Claire felt locked in place, but dragged a word from her throat. “Wait.”

It was only a shred of a whisper, but the specter paused. Claire swallowed and tasted iron. “You have a right to be angry. Give me a chance to fix it. I—” She distantly heard Brevity’s voice again. “ We can fix this. I might have failed you, each of you, but the Library wasn’t abandoned today. You had no shortage of champions. You are the Library; we are the librarians. Let us serve. ”

Stories end. The words nearly split Claire’s skull. She winced. The woman at the fore drifted toward her, hair suddenly white, fire instead of shadow.

“Yes. And that’s my fault. Only mine.” Claire struggled to breathe. “Please. I’ll accept what I must do to make amends.”

The woman was as still as a statue, and she considered.