“If you don’t want to fight? Well, why do you think I was making you run so much?” - Greg, probably

Milo just wanted to rest, but the feeling that he was going to die before that happened was staring him in the face. Over the years, he had always wondered why Batty constantly changed her attitude whenever he showed up to ask for something, turn in something, or do the odd job. At his current point, he’d arrived in the middle of an argument, interrupting Oz … and Batty… and Batty….. and Batty.

Batty was insane, and as he ground the pieces into place, he began to understand why. “Batty” Alice split her personality into clones, and what scared him was not how he didn’t bother thinking about it earlier but how many copies she made? What was her goal in doing so?

“I'm gonna go find somewhere I can sleep.” Milo turned to leave, “I can’t with this right now.”

Walking away, he angled himself further into the Library, dragging his feet through rows of shelves holding thousands of books and generations of knowledge. At some point, he turned to the right and curled into a ball on the floor, drifting into blissful unconsciousness.

***

Milo walked through the park with Mili, and she led him by the hand through the branching paths off the main trail. It was a happy moment; there was no lingering sense of danger, no impending deadlines, and ambiguous threats to him or his friends. She did this to him a lot, and every time he had that view of her hair as she led him on, it made him smile.

The light flittered down through the tree canopy above, draping the trunks and the floor in shallow shadows and a crisp golden atmosphere. The air was sweet with the scent of post-spring rainfall and the life it breathed into the soil.

As he followed Milli through the park, his chest began to tighten. He tried to speak but could not summon his voice, and the light began to dim. His throat constricted as he struggled to breathe, and the shadows closed in to choke out the light. His body began to slow as he struggled to keep up with the girl outpacing him.

For all the strength he thought he had, he couldn’t summon any of it as his hand left MIlli’s, and she continued without him towards the main path. He watched her go, not looking back even once. As she headed into the world's light, the trees around him took on an uninviting visage, unnaturally growing to block out the sun and pull night down onto him.

He struggled to move forward, but every step toward the girl in the distance seemed to take him backward. Even as he struggled against the weakness of bringing his body, the trees conspired with the shadows to drown him.

As the last bit of light left him and took his breath, they allowed him a glimpse of Milli as he suffocated. The shadows turned to water, and the light faded as he sank to the bottom. His lungs screamed as they threatened to explode, and his vision faded.

Milo woke with a sweat despite the Library's regulated air. He didn’t move at first. Milo just thought about the dream he had recurrently for the last few years of his life. A constant reminder of what he lost and a sort of solemn companionship in a hell of his own design.

He roused himself to his feet, blinked the sleep and moisture from his vision, and went to the break room. He was hungry, and a cup of coffee or tea would make the day easier to face. He passed rows of shelves, each with its own peculiarity; there was no rhyme or reason to the books, tomes, scroll, and occasional tablet placement.

Again, as he meandered toward the promised coffee, he pondered why the Library was the way it was and if he might get some answers from the curator. Stopping in his tracks, he remembered seeing double Batty before his sleep. It wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility that she had a twin sister. However, something Oz mentioned about Batty was clawing its way to the front of his mind and screaming for his attention.

‘Put together’ was what he said. Still, Milo assumed he only meant that she was competent when she wasn’t acting insane. Oz meant it like he said, 'put together' describing a whole Batty. What could be described as Batty being whole really described who Alice was. The real question was why. He pushed those questions aside and turned to more important matters, food and coffee.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Milo walked into the breakroom and met a very contented Oz having milk tea and chocolate cake, accompanied by a very absorbed Batty meticulously dismantling and consuming a huge piece of said cake. Milo was nearly ignored completely, except for Oz, who grinned sheepishly.

“La pêche, Milo,” Oz greeted, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he said. It felt every bit sarcastic. “Coffee? And I suppose we also have chocolate cake and tea..”

“Coffee,” Milo glanced at an enraptured Batty beginning another slice of cake. It felt almost deviant. “I think I will pass on the cake. Anything of substance in that fridge?”

“Depends. Do you like donuts?” Oz raised an eyebrow over his mug at Milo as he made his way around the table, “if not, fry a couple eggs.”

Eggs and a full two baker dozen of donuts were all he found in the fridge, to his contempt. Milo sighed and proceeded to fry the last 3 eggs from the carton on the surprisingly functional gas stove, which he chopped up to magic. About a minute into his endeavor, he broke the silence as it felt awkward to ignore the other two people in the room. He turned around, paused, and mentally corrected himself, accounting for the extra Batty at the table with her nose buried in a book of indecipherable origins.

Milo thought of himself as normally reasonably stable; however, this would drive him insane. “For the love of all that is holy! Why are there two of you!?” He didn’t intend to shout, but it felt like pure catharsis.

“seven, actually.” Milo turned to the Batty with the book. She turned a thick yellow page. It seemed she wasn’t going to explain further.

“Ok,” Milo was developing a headache behind his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose in an attempt to relieve it. “Why are there seven of you?”

“The Library is too much to handle for one person alone. I couldn’t exactly have anyone else help me with my little project. So, I split my personality into the seven basic desires and created a doppelganger for each one to split the load and focus on a separate area of expertise until we were ready and or forced to merge back together. I am the Greed of Alice Thompson, and she is the Gluttony of Alice.”

He stole a glance at Oz, who seemed to be enjoying himself, “ Ah, well.. Consider my curiosity satiated.” giving his eggs the required attention, he did his best to ignore his internal screaming. “Five years.”

Eggs plated, coffee poured, and ass parked at the table, Milo struck up the conversation. “Any word from Tyson?”

“No,” Oz said, “but we can ask Alice. She can ask Vick where all the books she lent are.”

“Vick the Book?”

“Vick is more than any old book,” Oz sighed, “Alice, please explain if you would be so kind.”

“Vick is a sentient artifact.” She stated, turned another page, and said no more.

“Ok,” Milo endeavored to finish his eggs and coffee. A lot was going on right this second. Thinking back to the previous night when he was stopped by the police for a “routine stop and nothing more.” The train and the alarm bells went off in his head. Something was wrong, and he didn’t want to consider the possibility of Bill’s nemesis making moves.

“Can you ask Vick to look into Tyson’s whereabouts?” Milo tried to mask how exhausted he felt. He failed.

“I could.”

“Will you please?”

“I need you to run an errand for me first.”

Of course, the one openly claiming Greed was their primary prerogative wanted something. Typically, dealing with this witch was annoying, but it was disrespectfully inconvenient at this point.

“What do you want?”

Now, her full attention was on him. She closed her book and leaned in his direction, flashing a smile that would make a crooked man straight.

“I need you to retrieve a book” The way she said it made Milo uncomfortable, there was more she had to say, and she was purposely screwing with him. “And all the other books he has with him. He may get violent with you, so be careful.”

There it was. Batty was sending him after someone potentially dangerous. It wasn’t the first time. However, the last time, he had to fight the local wildlife that took out the previous book borrower. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed she lent people books and collected them back as some kind of game out of sheer boredom.

“Alright,” Milo stood up and stepped back from the insane magician, “give me the Besker’s Crook, and I'll be off.”

He received the odd-looking library card, and he slipped out just as fast as he could turn it. He tore through the void between dimensions, struggling to keep his conscious mind from collapsing. It felt like he had been stretched thin as a sheet and thrown into a raging storm.

He didn’t know when he landed. He just became conscious. The first thing that jumped to his mind was how he was staring at rings in the sky around the celestial body he was on and the twilight. The second thing brought to his attention was how much pain he was in.

He struggled to sit himself upright. The gravity was more than he was used to. He felt his face sag slightly, and his heart sped up a little from the sheer strain that pumping blood required. He tried to focus and brought his power forward to bear and strengthen himself, and his mind cleared. In horror, he considered how he could have died if he didn’t wake up at all.

Putting aside his pain and discomfort, bounced up to inspect his surroundings for threats. Confirming his general safety for the time being, he found his target only a moment later. As he looked for some sort of landmark, he spotted a massive castle that rose above the tree line and towered ominously over the hills.

He cursed Batty, Oz, and Tyson for not listening to the rendezvous location. Sucking it up, he stepped off in search of another mad magician possessing another godforsaken book in another godforsaken place. He just hoped Tyson was miserable wherever he was.