The trip back to the city was relatively uneventful. Mariana almost kills me with an accidental secretary-slap, but that was part and parcel of being her owner. We talked a bit about resurrection spells, and how she lied to me about them. Her excuse was, and I quote “I thought revitalize meant revive.” That was all, I was not going to blame her for a Marianism.

We walked along the motley canvas that were the city streets. There is only so much absurd novelty the brain can take before it shuts-off and every new combination of deformed houses and bright colors becomes equal to the last. A similar effect happened with the people: unless the costume was extravagant enough to stand out among the merely rare and unusual, it wasn’t worthy to remain in my memory. One I remember clearly was the woman —woman? — wearing the horse-headed-femboy-ahegao-patterned chador. Yes, that was a thing. I swear.

“Sir, your dog is burning,” noted a child dressed like a Pride Month Komondor.

“Yes, I know, she doesn’t mind. Sometimes literally.”

“I, in fact, am often devoid of thought,” confirmed Mariana.

After saving the kid’s life by redirecting Mariana’s attention when she gave sings of wanting to play with him, we kept on walking towards the moving point marked on our mind compass. I couldn’t wait to get rid of that fucking bird, that had finally accepted its fate: being Mar’s surrogate stick.

We finally found the wandering peacock.

“You found my girl. And you are both alive. Impressive,” she said, turning to inspect us with an invasive glare.

Mariana let the bird go.

“I am dead where it matters.” Back home. “Like Intel: Inside.”

“So that is the source of the rotten smell, I thought I was the blood and entrails you are so graciously donning.”

“Tell me where should I go to enter the library or you will end up in an early grave, woman.”

“Early? You are going to make me blush, dear,” said the former Glossopteris farmer.

“Tell me where the library is or Ursula is going to kick your ass.”

“After she finishes licking the fire off?”

I looked at Mariana. She was effectively doing so.

“You have a spell to summon a water elemental, Ursula.”

“But the fire is yummy.”

Then I remembered I would sooner catch Mariana dancing chacareras than witness the smallest splinter of common sense bud in her.

“Tell us the location of the library entrance once and for all.”

“There is one path that aligns with the rising sun at morning, and it illuminates the Library gates like the contents inside illuminate the minds of men.”

I poked her forehead with my index finger. “So, a street that extends to the east?”

“Yes, past the whorehouses, but before the gigoloapartments.”

I bade her adieu and grabbed Mariana from her —already put off— tail. It was high hour to acquire some forbidden knowledge.

Remember the fish I talked about a while ago? Turns out they were literally going towards the library. The street, the Hexagon Avenue, hosted more dipnoans than the walls of an African mud hut. Unlike the people, they were all dressed the same, except for the color of their robes.

Mariana had licked off almost all of the fire, only her head still set ablaze. I thought about patting it off, but it looked so cool. Besides, I was finally getting used to the horrible smell of burnt hair. Character development, folks, character development.

A passing thought presented itself: Mariana could just kill everyone in Library city and I, in turn use her new levels to live off every last one of my power fantasies. Yet mom didn’t deserve that, nor dad, nor the toy sasquatch I affectionately call “sister” (she’s adopted or I am adopted or both of us are adopted or my supposed dad cheated on mom and brought her home, and mom accepted because she felt guilty about making him raise me, the son of the milkman or anyone else. I choose to believe this.)

How monotonous was the Hexagon avenue! it didn’t have nothing to envy to New York or Buenos Aires. Except, you know, for the lack of fucking protestors burning shit and painting walls. Abhorrent, if you ask me, and not because the cars were replaced with lungfish.

When we reached the blackerrimous (Yes, I coined a word for very very fucking black, you are welcome and/or screw you—depending on how you feel about it) gates of the library and I saw the group of guard fishes there, I wished I had some sort of express-lobotomy device at my disposal. Besides Mariana, that is, as she was not to be trusted during times of suicidal needs.

They passed through the material of the gates unimpeded, in and out, once and again. The black bodies weren’t disturbed: they didn’t crack or wave or shift in any perceptible way.

“Are you looking forward to accessing The Library?” asked a fish that donned an air of wisdom conferred by age. If not for its calm stare and quiet behavior, I would have confused it with any other of its peers.

“Are you male or female?” I inquired, almost intuitively.

“I am a fish,” my interlocutor deadpanned.

I had to reframe my question.

“Do you produce eggs or sperm?”

“Sperm.”

“Good, you are a he, then.”

“I am a fish,” he reiterated.

“But a male fish.”

“I am a lung fish.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Can we cook him?” Mariana derailed the conversation in a useful way for the first time in her life. I patted her head, extinguishing the fire.

“No,” I said, and Mariana stared at me like I had insulted her whole bloodline, up to Morganucodon, at the very least.

“You will be tried by the library, and granted access, if deemed worthy. Walk up to the doors and face your fictions.”

Mariana shoot for the doors, sat in front of them, they opened and she passed straight through.

For the first time ever, I witnessed a fish with slack jaw.

“That’s the fastest anyone ever completed the trial.”

“What kind of trial is it, anyway?” I asked, looking at the fish.

“One needs to face a monster the library makes out of the works of fiction that person has written or, at least, seriously entertained as an idea,” he hurried to answer.

I scratched my chin for a few moments.

“How does it define fiction? Is it absolute?”

“It’s subjective. It doesn’t make people face their religious beliefs, or plans they made for a family vacation that never came to fruition, to give a few examples that may enhance your understanding,” explained the fish.

“Can it kill me?”

“Can your fictions?”

I swallowed, feeling the knot in my throat. What did it mean to face all of my fictions? The themes? The literal monsters contained in them? From whose perspective?

Well, there was one terrible and necessary way to find out. And I didn’t have Mariana with me.

I stepped up to the library and faced the door. Shadows squirmed inside a black that hid them to the eye, but not to the mind. Shadows that looked a tad too much like a blank page, and a story wanting to be told with words that you can feel but not articulate. With a careful touch I reached for them, and they reciprocated. The contact was brief, gentle.

“So, dear shadows, are you not going to A Wizard of Earthsea my fucking face?”

Not being brutally mauled by a Jungian demon from the world of the dead was almost insulting, and that made me realize that, maybe, I was getting really fucking tired of Planet.

When I turned, all the dipnoans had disappeared from the yard, revealing simple sandstone stone benches and small crassulaceae planted in between them. The awareness of the fact that the library exterior had stopped shifting slowly crept in. The air was not only still, but—and who better than a necromancer to know about this— ead.

Across the library’s front yard, in the middle of an empty street, a giant DNA strand spiraled into the firmament. Distant steps could be heard, and, squinting, I could see a humanoid figure using the nitrogenous bases as a flight of stairs. This ostensible person was chlorophyll green.

“Man, where is Mariana where I need her to use her mildly violent stair magic?”

The green one was descending, and I giving silent orders to my belts. I had to be ready to kill or things could get… nasty. Let’s leave it at nasty.

This entity had been born from the things I had written, so, if there was something I knew about it, is that it was a vegetable, and horny. I tried to remember if had ever written a gay plant-man, and the answer was “certainly not”. Did I look masculine enough for a blind one to not confuse me for a woman, thought?

As he approached the ground level, I could see, first, burgundy spots decorating his articulations. Roses. He wore a cape made of ficus leaves, and his body was built out of intertwined, green stems. He held a porongo in his right hand, and drank the infusion in it out of a root that fulfilled the role of a straw. His wide brimmed hat was composed of zygomorphic flowers of a vibrant red hue.

He looked at me with eyes of jacaranda and smiled.

“This is how meeting one’s maker feels? It’s so… jarring. An experience both gay and queer. Delightful,” he said with a voice that sounded more like a lullaby.

“Are you the sum of all my fictions?”

“All your characters into one, the tongue to speak all of your lines of dialogue. The averaged personality of every hero and villain you ever wrote and not wrote.” His neck extended to an unnatural length as his head advanced until it was in front of me. “I am your passion and your hatred and your greed and your talent and your pain and your love for polysyndeton, Walter.” Up close, I could notice that “he” was truly a bilateral gynandromorph. At least in the human-like characteristics.

Nonchalantly, his body walked up to where his head was, the neck shortening accordingly.

“Are you male or female?”

“Yes!”

I chastised myself in silence for not seeing that coming.

I took a step back and raised my dagger. “How are you called?”

“That’s for you to decide, maker. But the most accurate name—”

“—would be Walter, I know.” I interrupted.

They gave me a joyous applause.

“So, reflection of mine, will we do this?”

“Do what?” they turned their head in the way a dog does.

“I have to defeat you. That’s what the fish said.”

“Fine, stab me all you want. See if I care.”

I obliged. Once and again I buried my dagger into their vines, cutting through xylem, phloem, and dermal tissue without any issue. They stood there, drinking from the mate, sucking until it made the characteristic bubbly sound.

“You done trying to murder me?”

I changed my strategy and slayed at their neck. Cutting their throat and making the tepid infusion leak out. The water smelled like grandma’s stews.

I backed, baffled, scared, disoriented. Their wounds healed in no time.

“Are you… drinking… mate… with…paprika?”

He pointed at me with the index finger. “Add more interrogation marks to that.”

“Fucking paprika?????”

“Better. Yes, indeed, I am.”

“This is considered high treason against Argentina and its people, and Paraguay and its… Paraguayans,” I tried to keep xenophobia down to the minimum I was capable of back then. Now I am better. I recognize Paraguayans as mammals. Primates, even.

They shrugged.

“This is inconsequential. As is attacking me. Look above my head.”

Only thing above their head was the stupid hat.

“What do you see?” they kept on pointing up with their index.

“Ceibo flowers,” I said.

“Game-mechanics-wise…”

They had no HP bar and, therefore, were —probably— not killable. That was outright insulting. I believed every problem needed to be solvable with enough violence and/or readings of Borges. Both, ideally.

“So, even if I had fire spells, I would be unable to burn you?”

“You cannot kill a part of yourself with fire, Walter.”

I immediately felt the impulse of sacrificing my left hand to a pyre to prove them wrong.

“Follow me, maker. I intend no harm to you,” they assured, extending their hand and smiling amiably.

“You drink mate with paprika. You already do enough harm.”

“Well, remain here then, where time stands still, where no one is ever around. The Library can stretch your perception of time as easily as it stretches physical space.”

Being caught there for some millions of years was not what I would call an appealing prospect, thus I obliged, grasping their gnarly hand. I think I saw a grimace that lasted a fraction of a decade.

I followed them up the stairs. My belts criticized me, called me irresponsible, conspirator, madman, traitor, and even Reddit moderator. I infused them with unbearable pain for that last one. The newer belt enjoyed the torture.

Our steps on the thymine, adenine, guanine and cytosine were heavy and rhythmical. The sound echoed as we ascended, this effect augmented by the vertigo. Looking below, there was no floor, not because we had ascended above the clouds, but because my fictions and the DNA strand were the only things that remained in existence.

I needed to keep ascending. A resistance, gusts of wind that were not, pushed my legs from behind, forcing me to take another step. Turning back was an idea impossible to entertain, for it would prelude my annihilation. You just knew, you just knew that every step was harder than the last and yet there was no way back down.

“Do we keep on climbing until I give up and fall to a horrible death and/or mental breakdown?”

“No, we will arrive when we arrive.”

“Right. Maybe we will arrive in Tir-na Nog’ht and a passing cloud will grant us sweet deliverance. From life,” I commented with a casual tone.

“By The Muse, I swear your references to media grow more and more obscure with each second,” they answered without turning to look at me.

“As my mind crumbles under the pressure of this dollar-store isekai world, I may start yapping about an alien eating churros in Barcelona.”

The compound of all my fictions crossed themselves. I was managing to become a burden even for my own creation. Scrumptious.

After the next step, the DNA strand changed to an actual spiraled staircase, the dark beyond it slowly gave place to a boring, academic atmosphere. An emergency exit. I ran to the door there, and opening it, I found myself in front of large window panes, and the stagnant gym room beyond them. To my left, I saw a glass and wooden door that led to a small room. To the right, one of the entrances to the library, mostly used for exams. Posters with an image of Fidel Castro hung on the walls and on some lockers that ran along the aforementioned.

I grabbed them from the chest vines.

“You have brought me to hell!”