We were clearly in a library corridor, the hall ahead of us fading off into infinity. The left wall was entirely bookcases. As I followed it to the top I realized that the ceiling was also bookcases, the books on it refusing to fall in defiance of gravity.
The right wall was gone, replaced by a railing overlooking a library that seemed more akin to an Escher painting than any coherent space. What used to be the library was duplicated and folded over itself. I could identify pieces, like what was probably another study room, but they didn’t connect in anything approaching reason.
I also recognized I couldn’t see a ceiling above us if I started looking for it from the right, only more of the library folded over itself.
I could feel my mind attempting to grapple with this impossible geometry, to conceptualize the folded library the same way it would a normal three-dimensional space, but I didn’t allow it to. Instead, I forced my mind to engage with the world around it entirely theoretically, as I would a diagram of a multidimensional shape.
Margaret teaching me to do that had put me in a coma for a week, though I was grateful for the lesson. Gaining that awareness of my own mind inspired the technique that made me into Claire the Witch.
The first step was damage control. There was absolutely no world in which Lily would believe this was mundane, which meant she needed to be inducted fast.
“Lily, do you believe in magic?”
“No,” she said immediately, her eyes still locked on the impossible shapes before her. Her whole body was trembling.
I stepped into her line of sight, golden eyes meeting my blue. Lily regained some of her composure as I blocked the folded library behind us. We were close enough that I could feel some of her breath, faintly.
“Don’t look at things like that,” I said harshly. “Your brain will try to make sense of them and it can’t. Just focus on me.” She nodded weakly. Strands of her hair, askew from where she slept on them, drifted in the… wind? Was there wind here?
“Huh- oh right, lie detector.” Lily’s eyes widened, but she kept my gaze. “Holy shit you’re a wizard.”
“What?”
“That’s what the drawings were, they were magic.” She grabbed onto my shoulders far too tightly. “You can magic us out of here.”
I laughed. It was mean, but there was something very funny about her immediate and arbitrary assumptions of how magic worked.
She’d broken my attempt at a commanding presence almost immediately, but it was probably for the best. The laugh seemed to do far more to calm Lily.
“No, I’m not a wizard,” I said, smiling despite myself. “I’m a witch.”
“Isn’t that just a female wizard?”
“Then why would you call me a wizard?”
“Isn’t it like an actor and actress thing- never mind.” She was smiling too now. Her grip had relaxed enough it was no longer painful. I quite enjoyed the feeling, but I forced myself to remain focused.
“Alright, I’ll go through the things that you need to know right now. You can get the full explanation once we’re safe.” And I would tell her, consequences be damned. “First, don’t look at anything too confusing, like the hallways behind me.” She nodded, eyes still locked on mine. “Second, in case I die, you can’t tell anyone about magic. Don’t try to find out more, pretend this never happened. Don’t even report me missing to the police. You will be hunted down and killed.” More hesitation this time, but another nod. “Third, you need to do what I say. Things could start happening very fast and I won’t be able to explain.” Another quick nod.
I didn’t want to leave this moment of closeness, it was the most I’d had in a long time, but we were probably in danger here. I put a hand on one of hers and turned us so she was facing the bookcases. I started to step away from her.
“I’ve been hearing voices,” Lily said suddenly. Her grip tightened and her voice shook. I stopped, turning back to her. “Since yesterday, I think. They were really faint, but they kept getting louder. I… I thought I was going crazy.”
I deliberated for a moment, based on my understanding of her. She was scared, she was tactile, and she still hadn’t let go of me. Her fear put us both in danger. I made a snap decision, channeling Felicity.
I stepped forward, embracing her from underneath her arms. She released her grip on my shoulders in surprise, her arms forced awkwardly over her head.
“You are not crazy. We are going to make it out of this.”
I felt the air cool as I moved away from her, but there was no resistance this time.
I surveyed our surroundings. Our corridor led off into infinity and the bookcases I could see from here didn’t seem to be broken up by another door. We could technically jump off the side of the railing, but that felt pretty suicidal. Looking down confirmed it was more of the same.
I walked over to the bookshelf, grabbed a random book, and looked at a random page.
Something was wrong.
I did not allow my mind to understand the words and snapped the book shut. It was a similar trick to how I looked at the impossible geometry, albeit much harder when done on reflex.
“Don’t read the books,” I told Lily as I put it back. She was staring at me silently.
Something had happened to Amy and Professor… I had already forgotten his name. Books that were dangerous to read generally drove people insane instead of making them explode, which implied that something else here would kill us.
It was probably the outsider, although that theory might be shot. What I was looking at now exceeded what a hedge witch could manage. It might even exceed what Margaret could manage. The Weaving had some authority over spatial manipulation, but this was ludicrous.
There was something there, distant threads that I ought to be connecting but couldn’t.
“You’re a very different person right now,” Lily finally said. I wasn’t sure what she meant, but there were more pressing issues currently.
“Are you still hearing the voices?” I asked. She nodded. “What are they saying?”
Lily tilted her head as if she was listening to a real sound. After a moment, she winced in pain.
“I can’t really make anything out,” she said. “It’s saying a lot, but it’s too much. They’re all... talking over each other.”
“The same voice multiple times or different ones?”
“Different, very different. One of them sounds like a kid.” Lily said.
Oddly enough that sounded like divinatory static, junk information that came along with what you were looking for. It happened sometimes with poorly constructed rituals and was almost always worthless, only serving to disorient people without training.
That was another thread that surely would lead somewhere if I pulled on it, but there was too much competing for my attention. For the time being, it probably wasn’t a danger to us.
I looked out at the maze of the folded library for another study room and eventually spotted one, next to a set of stairs. It seemed like the kinds of corridors we were in were duplicated over and over, each stretching out to a different point. There was a matching set of stairs near our study room, though it was too far away to be accessible.
That wasn’t how folding space was supposed to work. Rooms that were bigger on the inside didn’t multiply themselves. Although, I had already theorized about-
A flicker of movement caught my eye. As complex as this place was, it was an unmoving complexity. Millions of years of evolutionary history had trained my eyes to be very good at catching small flickers of movement. It didn’t take long to find it again, far off in the distance.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
It was trying to hide from us, but occasionally there would be a sliver of obsidian black jumping between two points. The object was bony like a crab but seemed to adhere to surfaces like a spider.
It was difficult to tell in this place, but it seemed to be getting closer.
Snap decision time. I glanced behind me, confirming it was still the same room.
“Go back to the study room,” I told Lily. I saw her turn around in my peripheral vision.
I looked for one of my ritual markers from my backpack, mentally sketching out the ward against outsiders. It was still my best guess.
Rummaging around in my backpack took far longer than I was comfortable with. The distance I could see probably didn’t mean anything here, so I could have seconds or hours. Some distant part of me made a note to find a better solution for ritual supplies.
“What are we preparing for?” Lily called out. She was shouting like it was difficult to hear.
“A monster is coming, probably.” I was shouting too, so I guess I couldn’t blame her.
Fancy ward or simple ward? Simple, I decided immediately. A half-drawn ward was worthless. I’d be doing this free-handed as well, which limited the complexity of what I could do without going insane.
I finally found the marker and started drawing. I drew onto the ground around the doorway. Four glyphs, two accented, and an interior line.
A ward is essentially a landmine. When some condition is met, usually contact with the ritual surface, the ritual releases the power imbued into it at the offending creature. In this case, it would burst when the outsider got too close to it but leave Lily and I, who belonged in this reality, mostly safe.
It would only have one shot since I didn’t know how to design rechargeable wards, but I was building some of the Weaving’s authority over spatial manipulation into this. If I was lucky, it might eject the monster from this place. Most likely, it would just hurt it a lot.
It only took me a few minutes before I was done. I activated it with a thought and was surprised by a splitting headache.
I wasn’t getting any assistance from the leyline crossing here. If I’d tried something fancy the backlash could’ve incapacitated or killed me and I hadn’t even thought of that.
“My phone doesn’t have a signal here,” Lily called out. That was interesting. It meant we were completely outside real space, or at least very far away from it. Or it was a trick of some sort.
I looked out for the monster, trying to figure out where it was. A jet-black limb appearing a few feet down the corridor answered that question. It was as long as I was tall and surprisingly thin, only as thick as my wrist. Definitely more spider than crab, it had far too many joints. It was also slightly indistinct, like I was looking at it and only it through dirty glass.
I screamed and retreated into the study room. As soon as I was inside Lily closed the door.
“Help me with the table,” she said. We pushed the table behind the door to form a barricade. It made a horrible sound as it scratched against the floor, but the weight was more assurance than anything.
I sat down against the far wall and tried to think. I was so tired. Lily looked at me expectantly as if I knew what I was supposed to do now. I should’ve used animation to fling it off the side when it came over the railing. I was an idiot, I learned that spell specifically because it was one of the only forms of combat magic the Weaving could provide. It was for exactly this situation and I’d been too stupid to use it.
Lily grabbed my hands and I realized I was shaking. She was kneeling next to where I’d sat down. Was she going to kill me? It would make sense, considering she no longer had a use for me. Or maybe she had gotten me to move the table to block off my escape route and the spider was just an illusion-
“We are going to make it out of this.” Lily echoed my words, my futile promise earlier. The fatigue was clearly wearing on her too.
I let out a raspy breath, closing my eyes. I was suffering backlash, but I knew how to handle this. Find the threads, cut the bad ones, and reexamine the problem.
I opened my eyes with surprising difficulty. What could I do? I only had one plan, I could give her to the monster. In both of the previous murders, it had shown that it would leave bystanders alone to get its real target. That was unacceptable as a solution. I couldn’t quite remember why, but it just was.
Lily’s eyes started to droop and I realized that we’d been here for minutes, not hours. We shouldn’t be this tired.
“Pull me up,” I asked. It was challenging, but we managed to lean on each other until we were standing. “We need to talk, can’t go to sleep.”
“Ok, talking is good.” Lily pulled us to the center of the room so we wouldn’t lean against a wall. Good idea.
I decided to think out loud. For some reason, the pain in my head didn’t interfere with the need to sleep.
“The books, the sleeping, it’s all to immobilize us. The monster made this place, I think. Or maybe it just evolved to be a predator in this environment, pulling people into the perfect killing field. Dyer talked about that in her diary, an outsider she had which could fold space.” That’s why I’d latched onto the idea of the folded library so quickly. I would’ve caught it if I’d said the name out loud. What I’d seen here had large implications for the study of folded space, but I was together enough now to realize that was a problem for later. “It’s here because someone told it to kill you. I don’t know how they did that so I probably can’t undo it.”
“If it’s after me… is this the thing that killed Amy?” Lily was behind, but she caught on quickly.
There was a sharp banging against the walls. The sound made both of us jump. It happened again, another bang every few seconds.
“Should we be scared of that?” Lily asked. She was looking around, trying to locate the source of the sound.
“Probably,” I answered. Lily was faring with the tiredness far better than I was now. She squeezed my hand to let me know my eyes were starting to droop. “So, if I can’t make it stop attacking you, I need to get us out of here. It waited until each victim was asleep so if we can get out and keep you awake-”
The banging was louder this time and a crack appeared on the wall beside the door. It took me a few seconds to realize what was happening. I kept explaining aloud while I thought.
“Some bindings force it to keep charging straight into danger, but most of the time it’s better to leave it with some self preservati-”
“Breaking the wall to avoid your circle, got it!” Lily interrupted to keep me focused. “Can you stop it?”
“I don-” I cut myself off as the loose threads I’d been reaching for this entire time finally met. “Actually yes. Kind of.”
Where had I put the marker? I’d had it in my hand at some point but looking around the room I couldn’t find it.
Lily, seeming to realize the point of my search, reached into my bag and pulled out a second marker. Oh, right.
“You’re gonna do more magic?” Lily asked. I nodded, taking the marker. I would need the minimum possible folding, which was five glyphs.
I started drawing in the center of the room. Being free-handed for something this big was normally insane, especially while fatigued, but the margin of error here was uniquely high. I just had to make any fold at all.
Lily stepped back out of the way to give me room.
“It was Dyer,” I explained as I worked. Explaining aloud had let me see some of these threads earlier, so it would be good to continue. “She was a powerful witch back in the 60s. She claimed to have copied the technique of folding space from another dimension. Since she was a summoner, it must have come from something like that thing out there.” The banging was getting louder, the crack in the wall widening. “She was killed inside a folded space when her apprentice collapsed it. Everything inside was atomized.”
“Please tell me that’s not what you’re doing!” Lily shouted. The shouting made more sense now, to talk over the assault on the walls.
“No.” I hesitated. I was nearly done, but if the crack got much bigger it wouldn’t serve as a viable boundary. “Well actually I kind of am but it won’t explode us. Lots of witches still use folded space, because of what normally happens when folded space ruptures.”
I cut off my explanation, kneeling on the ground in front of the finished ritual. Five glyphs, all of them accented, and three interior lines balanced by guesswork. This might kill me. Even if it didn’t, it was going to be hell.
Lily was leaning against the wall, on the opposite side of the crack. The combination of fear and fatigue led to a very amusing expression. It would be so much easier to sacrifice her. I could avenge her even, if I felt like it. I probably would.
‘We are going to make it out of this,’ she’d said. I’d certainly changed my mind as soon as the monster appeared, but she’d still been telling the truth. For some reason, this girl thought I could save her.
“I might try to kill you after this,” I warned Lily, placing my hand inside the ritual. “Please don’t let me.”
I activated the ritual and the Weaving spun thread which stretched without fraying and my world became madness.
----------------------------------------
Backlash was a complicated thing. Truthfully, the term was unhelpful. It implied that it was something from the ritual happening to you, but that wasn’t how it worked. Backlash was what happened to the human brain when it tried to interface with something as grand and cosmic as a god.
When the Weaving moved through my mind to read the ritual in front of me, it changed me by osmosis. It hurt, of course, but that was fine. The world became correct.
I could now understand that the thing my former mind had labeled as ‘the monster’ was no such thing. Monster was not a meaningful category to the thing that broke through the wall. One of its appendages had come through slightly, the end getting caught inside the ruptured boundary created by my ritual.
As had to happen when a folded space was ruptured, everything inside was moved to the nearest non-folded point in space, outside the bounds of the extradimensional space created by the thing that was not a monster.
The space around me had not visibly changed much. The ritual under the wooden rectangle at the front was gone and the concrete wall was no longer cracked, which implied that the far wall was the boundary of the space the creature which was not a monster had made. Had it warped the entire rest of the library? That would be monumentally inefficient, so likely not.
Several of the objects within the space had moved as well. I studied them for a time, trying to discern their function. The wooden rectangle on the far wall connected to another point in real space, which I identified as a concept called a passage.
I was attempting to identify the rounded glowing objects above me when there was a sound from my left. Another not-monster, a colorful one this time. It was a mix of browns, reds, blues, and… a pinkish shade of orange. Or was that orange-tinted pink?
It was still making sounds. Was it trying to attack me? It was doing a terrible job of it if so. It was moving towards the passage, perhaps trying to flee.
It wasn’t much of a threat, but that was no reason to let it become one. I reached out with one of my threads to try and… how did these creatures work? Before I could figure out how to kill it, it left, firing another sonic attack to cover its retreat.
Strangling, that’s how I would’ve killed it. The information was too late, but it was still comforting, a final puzzle solved as I drifted off to sleep.