Chapter 33

The title read, Blend and Meld by Atalia Herediarity, and as Mikel picked it from the shelf, thankful it had been so easy to find, the guiding light above him faded away to nothing.

The relative darkness of the library crept back over him until he was shrouded in near blackness.

“Can we do something about the light situation?” Mikel asked the air, intending the request for Librarian.

The typical hum came up, then an answer Mikel hadn’t expected.

“No. Something is interfering with my access to this part of the library. Do you see anything that might be causing an issue?”

Mikel peered into the darkness, squinting hard, but was unable to make out anything. He spun in place, checking every direction until he came upon a sconce set on the side of a bookcase. It was dead and cold with no sign of fire, blue or red, having ever been set to it.

“Can you do anything with this torch?”

The hum, then an answer.

“No. It’s as if my commands are being blocked. Are you sure you don’t see anything around you?”

Mikel glanced into the darkness again, almost half sure the pitch had continued to dim as time went on.

“Fairly certain. But… I can’t see much of anything at this point.”

The hum, then silence when Mikel had expected another response from the disembodied voice.

“Librarian?” Mikel asked as the hum came again - but this time ended in a sharp crackle and a single word that chilled him to his core.

Run

***

Mikel ran into the dark, half stumbling and half falling as sounds cascaded around him. Footsteps screams, and the sounds of crashing bookshelves all collected together into a heady mess that washed over him like a tidal wave.

It was all he could do to keep moving forward.

So far he hadn’t seen anything too terrible - but the sounds around him were bad enough. He’d seen what looked like a dead body in the dark - and again, something slithering away in front of him. Minutes later and terror pounding through his veins, he thought he was about to emerge into the crossroads which led to the Dead Tide location, but something seemed amiss. Something seemed off.

In the near absolute darkness of the library, it was hard to be sure of seeing anything - but Mikel was positive something had shifted.

It took him a moment of careful observation, but he was able to see that the bookcases that had formed the turn back to the front had been ripped to the ground. They’d fallen in the way so the way to the Dead Tide was blocked off - but Mikel had also lost his path.

A cacophony of screams bubbled up from the darkness and Mikel’s skin crawled.

He had no way to get back to a known location to reorient and he couldn’t talk to Librarian for help. He was isolated, alone, and lost - nothing good in that situation.

A scream came from right behind him and Mikel whirled around with his sword drawn and pointed it into the dark.

Nothing moved beyond the mysterious swirling of the mist as it shifted around him on subtle air currents.

His sword arm shook like he had palsy and he struggled to maintain his grip on the hilt. He didn’t know if this was terror or exhaustion-induced, but he meant to stand his ground either way.

“Librarian, I could really use a hand -” His plea was cut off as another scream came from right next to him and he whipped his sword around with terror-fueled speed.

The blade bit deep into the neck of the thing that had emerged from the darkness before it vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving a tiny box of… Something behind to clatter to the ground.

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Mikel hadn’t gotten a good look at whatever the creature had been, only that it was humanoid and emaciated - it didn’t look like anything belonging to the Dead Tide - but he could have been wrong. Most of those bodies had been dressed while this thing had appeared nude, pale, and shriveled.

“Librarian - a little help would be appreciated!” He yelled the last three words as more screams echoed in the distance, maybe moving towards him and maybe not. It was impossible to tell in the swirling darkness which had swallowed him up.

Mikel took a moment to collect himself. Yes, he was terrified - he could admit that much. His heart hammered in his chest and his head felt tight and heavy. He’d been scared before, but never to this extreme degree. It was as if he’d been dropped into a cauldron of bubbling yellow terror and there was no way out.

“I have to get out,” He muttered to himself as Librarian remained silent. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his ever-present companion, but he feared for her. Whatever had happened to the library had affected not only the surroundings and the occupants, but Mikel as well.

He hoped she was okay.

With one motion he bent down while keeping his eyes up and searching (for all the good it did in the dark) and picked up the box on the floor.

He was surprised at how light it was.

There was no time to examine it more closely, so after a cursory glance revealed it was made of some type of thin, delicate wood, he packed it into a large pocket attached to his belt and forgot about it for the moment. He didn’t have the brain power to puzzle out this newest enigma.

He had to find a way back to the front, but the way he knew was blocked and the rest of the library was a maze.

After a quick glance behind him showed there was no way out, Mikel turned towards the blocked path and walked up to the shredded bookcase.

It looked as if a whirlwind had touched down and torn it apart. Pages of books, like feathers ripped from birds, lay all about fluttering in the steady air currents. Torn covers lay all over - the knowledge within them forever lost and mingled among the rest of their kind.

“Librarian said she’d kill me if something like that happened… I wonder who, or what did this?”

Suddenly, her absence was that much more curious. The library had been attacked, and from the screams around Mikel, the screams of the same things that had attacked him, he imagined there were similar scenes all around.

He reached back and touched the book he’d come for and found it still tucked into his belt. It wasn’t his preferred way to carry things, especially books, but it was what he had to do. He needed both hands to fight with and his sword occupied one.

A scream came from far away to his right, near where he thought the front of the library was. He grimaced and thought of the other two books he’d left on the desk there, and hoped they’d be alright. If the evidence blowing around him were any indication, things had gone badly awry in short order.

He looked over the fallen case, shelves now mostly devoid of books, and gingerly stepped onto a shelf. He put his weight on the wood and although it creaked, it didn’t move. Whatever type of wood these were made of, they were solid.

“Hopefully Librarian can forgive me,” Mikel said as he shoved his sword into its sheath and stepped onto the next shelf up. Before long he was clambering up the fallen bookcase like it was a ladder sat at a weird but manageable angle.

Within a minute he’d topped out and jumped to the very top of a still-standing bookcase and sucked in a breath at the strange sights he saw around him.

Although the darkness was thick he could see certain aspects of the madness going on below him. Packs of the undead horde, mini Dead Tides, roamed like wolves, searching for victims to tear apart while other things moved separately from them.

Many of the things he could see resembled the thin, emaciated form of the creature he’d killed and he watched as a single one took on a pack of six or seven shambling corpses.

Upon seeing the pack the emaciated thing shrieked and the sound sent a chill through Mikel’s blood. He was sure these things were the ones making the noise now, and he shivered thinking of all the many examples of the creatures there must be, right then, roaming the stacks around him.

He was happy to be above it all and able to watch, and not participate.

In the next few seconds, he found out how lucky he’d been with his earlier sword strike. He knew the kill had been more luck than anything, but he hadn’t known the alternative to what those things could do if its shriek hadn’t alerted him to its presence.

The thing, shriek finished, barreled into the pack of shambling corpses and struck it like an ax intent on felling a tree.

The two lead corpses didn’t have time to react as sharp claws sprouted from the things… Everywhere, and began rending the two into pulp and dust.

The remainder of the pack walked into the mobile meat grinder without a thought, meeting the same fate as their two companions.

With a triumphant shriek, the creature shook itself like a beast and retracted all of the razor-sharp claws back into its body. It looked at the pile of cloth, flesh, and bone it had created, kicked at it as a child might, and then losing interest, began to look for a new target.

On instinct, Mikel dropped to his stomach and pulled his arms and legs close to him.

Although the creature hadn’t looked up, he didn’t want to chance anything. Those bodies had walked into the meat grinder, but Mikel didn’t think he’d fare much better. Every fight he’d been in in the past two days he’d simply been tossed aside like a piece of trash. To say this treatment irritated his warrior heritage was an understatement - he knew he was bad at fighting, but he hadn’t suspected he was quite this awful.

For now, he knew it was better to play it safe than to get into anything he couldn’t extract himself from. He was safe, as far as he knew, and as long as stayed out of sight of the spikey things on the ground he should be fine.

The Dead Tide was much of a threat at this point - if anything the remnants of the conglomeration would help further obfuscate his mad dash to the front of the library.

Ahead of him, he could see a path that at least went the correct way. Although, from where he sat, several of the bookcases hitched back and forth, moving him away from his intended path, they always seemed to rejoin the overall direction he was headed.

That was as far as he could see, at least. He’d have to make his way further in to see more.

With careful precision he made his way along the top of the bookcases, occasionally slamming himself down to avoid the spikey things below. He caught a couple of other battles between the remnants of the Dead Tide and the spike monsters and thanked his lucky stars each time he saw the carnage a single one of the emaciated creatures could wreak on an unsuspecting enemy.

Half an hour later he was panting and doubled over as he’d come to a four-way intersection where four different cases met at a single corner.

“Damn. Librarian wasn’t lying about watching how I felt. I feel like I’m going to puke I’m so tired. I must have used up most of my Stamina changing it to Essentia. Hey… Wait.”

Mikel pulled the monitor out from an exterior pocket and pushed a finger against the large flat face, waiting for it to activate and help him navigate his way out of this once library-turned-screaming hell hole.