Once I was clean, dressed in underwear with zero holes—whaattt?—jeans and a simple white shirt, I felt like I was ready to figure out my place in this strange world. My new tennis shoes were silent as I headed toward the door, my hand settling on the ancient black handle, expecting it would be locked when I tried to press the lever. Except it clicked open, and I stepped out to find Inky chilling there, like the creepy version of Casper the Ghost.
“Wow, fancy meeting you here,” I said with fake enthusiasm. “I missed you in the hour we were apart, Inky. Don’t ever leave me again.”
It swirled higher, sliding around my new clothes, like it was trying to figure out what I was wearing. “This is how I normally look when I’m not half-naked,” I said with a smirk.
The black shadow swelled to double its size and seemed to almost… jiggle. I was going to call that its laughing move because anything else was too terrifying to contemplate.
The larger it grew, the more definition I could see inside of what I’d previously thought of as just swirls of shadowy smoke. It looked like a huge brain, with electrical pulses shooting between synapses. Human brains were not my specialty or anything, but it did make me wonder if Inky was way more sentient than I’d originally thought.
There was no way it was just an offshoot of the Shadow Beast… Inky was definitely its own special brand of supernatural creature.
“What are you?” I asked, my curiosity had those words bursting from me. “You’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Fuck knows why I did the next thing, but sometimes my brain is slow. There’s no other explanation for why I voluntarily touched the black smoke. As my fingertips glided through the darkness, an icy chill shot up my arm before I was knocked back onto my ass like someone had punted me halfway across the room.
“Shit!” I gasped, trying to shake the chill off as I awkwardly got to my feet. “I legit did not expect that.” Inky had touched me before, but apparently, it wasn’t a two-way street. Or maybe that was just my first and only warning not to venture where I wasn’t invited.
Inky shrank smaller but was definitely still jiggling.Smug bastard,just like Shadow.
Deciding I’d wasted enough time procrastinating, I made my way past the smoke entity and into the Library of Knowledge. When I stepped through the veil, a goblin was waiting for me right on the other side.
“Gah.” I jumped back, almost tumbling into Shadow’s lair again. “Don’t stand so close, Gaster.”
He bowed low. “My apologies, Miss Mera. I’ve been waiting for your return so that I can continue the tour and outline your duties.”
It felt a lot like I was about to be inducted for my first day of work, but if it led to more knowledge and a chance to find a way to separate myself from the dick of all deities, then I’d take whatever he threw at me. If this library held the knowledge of the world… there had to be something in here that defined the Shadow Bastard’s weaknesses.
“Lead the way!” I said with enthusiasm. Gaster blinked at me, those odd eyes capturing my attention as a sheen of green coated the black before it vanished.
“Finally someone as excited as me to learn,” he said, and I wondered if that flash of green was his happiness shining through.
“Totally,” I chimed in, ready to butter this goblin up so that I could have one powerful ally for future issues. I mean, maybe he wasn’t powerful in a physical sense, but someone who had the role of “concierge of the Library of Knowledge” had to be a useful friend to have.
Truth be told, I kind of liked him. People with his level of enthusiasm and child-like excitement for life were few and far between in my world. Shifters were more about being badass and snarky; even our pups were sassy little shits.
As we moved back through the many bookshelves, I noted that the multitude of beings I’d seen before were all gone, and in their place new ones perused the shelves, stacking books up in their arms and leaving again through their world’s door.
“So none of these beings from the worlds work here?” I asked.
Gaster turned back to look at me, that damn smile still in place. “No one really works here, but there are a few dozen of us demi-fey who keep it running. The Library of Knowledge is a powerful entity, and if it fell into the wrong hands…” For once, that thought did not make him smile.
“Where do all the shelves go when it packs up for the night?” I asked, thinking of my first empty trip through these halls.
He offered me a blank sort of stare. “They go nowhere. The shelves remain as they are right now. Nothing has changed in the Solaris System and Library of Knowledge since I started here a thousand years ago.”
Okay, ignoring the fact that he was at least a thousand years old, I focused on the rest of what he’d said.
“That can’t be right,” I murmured. “When I walked through this building with Shadow, yesterday or whenever, this hall was empty. All I could see were windows and the doors, but no shelves or books at all.”
Gaster took a second to answer, like he was weighing up his thoughts. “The master would have been deciding your fate,” he finally said, his voice lower and less animated than usual. “Until that was decided, you would not have been privy to the gift of knowledge that is contained here.”
Oh. Right. “Shadow probably was planning on killing me at that point,” I said. “So it makes sense.”
Gaster threw both hands up, looking panicked. “Oh, no, I’m sure he wasn’t. He’s just cautious with strangers.”Yeah, that was it.
We were in the center of the library now, surrounded by a mass of tables and chairs and some plump beanbags that looked super inviting. Unfortunately, there was no time for me to dive into their depths with a great book, because I was at “work.”
“Feels weird to be the only one working here who isn’t demi-fey,” I said.
