“Come now children. Quickly! Please make haste! We have to get out of here.”

Ms Togami herded Mul, Milk and their Matches towards the back of the enormous library building. Ms Togami followed behind them, always behind, constantly glancing over her shoulder as they went.

“This is crazy Ms. Where the heck are we going?” Milk demanded.

As she ran, Milk’s little feet clopped to a strange and terrifying rhythm. The day – she had to admit to herself – had gone from delightful, to unhinged more quickly than her brain could compute. She wasn’t enjoying the sudden regression to crisis-mode, and she had a feeling this was just the beginning of a very long and intense journey.

“Ms Togami, is there is anyone else in the Library. We shouldn’t leave anyone behind?”

Ms Togami didn’t immediately respond, but Doubt crept in and showed in her eyes.

“Ms Togami?” Mul asked again.

There had been someone else, she thought. A boy.

Think Nora, think.

She felt so suddenly ashamed of herself. She would have left him here to die, without even considering the possibility. She stopped the group and put down a small book, and a library stamp she had been carrying mindlessly.

“Yes. There was one other, stand back please,” she said moving them a safe distance from her main.

“Apoka-Lipto,” Ms Togami chanted, waving a small, metal spoon above her head.

“Apoka-Lipto Anthropos.”

The spell was like a a stone dropped into a pond. It created concentric waves of unveiling magic that reached out across the library and filled every corner with it’s strange dancing light.

There! Ms Togami thought gratefully, as the spell revealed a boy, bundled behind an overturned desk on the mezzanine level, just above them. There was no Match to be seen.

Before Ms Togami could retrieve the boy gracefully, Milk took it upon herself to provide a more rapid solution.

“Ka-Lo,” Milk chanted, focusing her spell on the figure illuminated by Ms Togami’s spell.

With a (definitely too swift) gesture of her hands the spell was cast. A summoning snare emerged from Milk’s chest, as quick as a whip. The snare darted upwards, grappled onto the hidden boy’s foot, dragged him from behind the table, pulled him across the floor and hurled him over the edge of the balustrade fifteen meters above them right into Milk’s waiting arms with a painful thud.

Milk and the boy slammed together.

“Ooff,” Milk groaned.

“Ahh!” The young boy yelped.

“What did you do that for you dolt?” The young boy said, pulling himself from Milk.

“I’m trying to save you dummy,” Milk shot back, pulling herself up from the cold stone, ready for a fight.

“You almost killed me…Milk?”

Flim Distil was a colossal first year boy, with the girth of two boys his age, and the fiery temper of a Spanish Bull. He was the ‘punch first, ask questions later’ type. But on seeing his friend Milk in front of him, the anger which had been escalating at a dangerous rate, quickly dissipated. Without warning, he bounded into Milk’s arms, pulled her from the floor, and swung her around like a toddler would a rag-doll.

“You’re welcome,” Milk retorted, struggling to dislodge herself from Flim.

“We haven’t got time for this children. We may already be too late to escape.”

They began again to move, with even more haste than before.

“What the hell guys! What just happened out there is wild nuts!” Flim said, pointing back outside towards the Harbinger as he tried his hardest to keep up, already panting.

Mul and Milk agreed.

Ms Togami led the growing cadre of children, at long last, to a small door at the very back of the library, marked, ‘Staff Only’. The door led into the private research area, which was studded with hundred of workstations, and at the centre of the room, the giant card catalogue, which provided the largest reference of critical magical truth in the Southern Hemisphere.

Milk didn’t know why exactly, but going through that door made her twitch with guilt. She was of the firm belief that rules should not be broken. She was a junior, not a senior, and certainly not a Ky-Rios. She had no business in the Research area.

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“Come on, through here,” Ms Togami said, unlocking another older door at the very end of the Research Study, onto the narrow landing of a stone spiral staircase, which led deeper into the bowels of the building.

That was when they heard a terrifying shriek, and the sound of furniture being flung about in the halls of the library above them. The shriek was unlike anything they’d ever heard before, except of course for Ms Togami, who knew the sound all too well - from the last time.

“That, my poor children is the screech of a Sku-Zo! If you have any energy left within you, children! Run!”

Mul, Milk, Flim and Ms Togami broke into a mad sprint. They were panting desperately as they reached the bottom of the treacherous staircase.

“What is this place?” Milk screamed - more scared of what was ahead than behind.

“It’s too dark to see anything,” Mul and Flim yelled, tripping over each other.

“Forti-Su,” Ms Togami muttered, as she lifted her spoon towards the sky.

“Forti-Su!”

A small orb of light appeared above them and guided there way into the dark cavern ahead.

Three flights above them, the old door they had just exited, shattered into a million splinters. What used to be the Senior Boy, Kendall Arbitrage, shrieked down the stair case. His madness filling the space between them. The Sku-Zo proceeded to throw himself down the stairs towards his prey, with no regard for his soul-less body.

This time it was Milk who - on hearing the terrifying scream - broke into a sprint ahead of the group. The others followed as fast as they could, followed closely by the orb of light which could barely keep up. They ran through the cavernous hall under the library. Around them, thick, stone columns stood at regular intervals. The subterranean hall seemed to go on forever, and was easily four or five times as voluminous as the library, which was itself incalculably large.

The Sku-Zo tumbled down each step, with a series of bone-cracking thumps. It ended up at the bottom of the stair-case, in a tangle of bone and flesh.

“It’s coming,” Flim screamed, pointing back over his shoulder at the Sku-Zo who was already righting itself for the chase.

The Sku-Zo wailed into the darkness of the hall. It’s howl was echoed and amplified by the darkness.

There was no escape for them now.

“Dianmu and LeiGong in heaven, it’ll be upon us soon,” Milk screamed, her legs beginning to give way beneath her.

A bolt of unnatural lighting from the Harbinger, must have hit the library at that moment, because ground beneath them shook with unnatural fury. One of the columns nearest to their position burst into wet rubble. At this rate, they would be crushed by the ceiling before the Sku-Zo would ever catch them.

“We’re almost there, you just have to keep going! Don’t look back!” Ms Togami screamed.

They continued on, as fast as they could, for what seemed like hours. The Sku-Zo was gaining on them, spitting and choking with evil. They could hear the horrid sound of its scrambling little feet upon the ground. They could smell the dampness of the grave in their nostrils.

“Porta!” The Librarian called into the darkness.

Just ahead of them, another passage seemed to open. It was somehow blacker than the cavernous hall they were in. Though they did not know this at the time, it was called the Black Door. A door as dark as the furthest corners of space. Hideous, lion-like creatures stood in mirrored poses on either side of the door - they gnarled at each other in still life; their eyes like pin-point stars glinting into the void. The statues were named Mavro and Aspro.

The Sku-Zo, sensing its moment had come, lunged at Flim, who was lingering at the back of the group. The Sku-Zo was in mid air, its arms clutching at the large boy. It grabbed at him with an unholy vigour and would surely have claimed him, if not for little Dibs.

With a bloop, and a fizz, Dibs the lizard, who was normally the size of a small shoe, ballooned suddenly to the size of a large chariot. Dibs struck the Sku-Zo with his sticky tongue, knocking it backwards momentarily. With the speed of a cannon-ball, Dibs inhaled the Sku-Zo completely into its mouth for just a moment. Dibs then discharged the Sku-Zo like a ball of spit, into the darkness of the hall they had just run down.

They heard it collide with a supporting column a few hundred meters away.

“Good boy Dibs,” Milk cried, as Dib shrunk back to his normal size.

“I had no idea you could do that!” She continued.

“Don’t slow down now Children. We got lucky. That thing will be back. Quickly into the Perasma!”

They were about to enter the dark door, when it appeared to burst into life. Before they could even react, an older man stepped out of it, and into the subterranean hall.

“Oh! Dianmu” He exclaimed, not expecting to see anyone in the normally empty space.

Professor Wongul stepped out of the portal’s aperture and it closed behind him.

“What’s this?” He asked accusingly.

“What are you students doing down here? This area is off limits…Mulberry Gnat, why am I not surprised…” he stopped suddenly.

“Ms Togami. What’s the meaning of this? Why have your brought the children here?”

“We haven’t got time for this Armidale. It found him. It’s here.”

There was panic in their stricken face.

“What’s here?” Wongul asked, confused.

“The Harbinger. It’s taken young Kendall Arbitrage. He Shrieks now.”

“A Sku-Zo? ” The horror of it began to dawn on him.

“It’s down here with us. We have to get to Fig city - to Madam Prostasia. We have to get out of here! Please! Close the Perasma – permanently – once we’re through.”

“Go then. I’ll do what I can,” Mr Wongul said, putting himself between the group and the yawning darkness which held the Sku-Zo just out of view.

With that Ms Togami led them them all through the Perasma, out of the library and into the unknown.

“Telos-Eonia!”

With a delicate hiss, the passage which had linked the city with the great library for five millennia closed forever.

“Come creature,” he roared into the lightless expanse.

And with that, the monster was upon him.