by J C Gilbert
Elaine shrugged. “It wasn’t exactly hard.”
“OK, another question. Why were you throttling the Librarian?”
Elaine’s looks were grave. “I had a vision, Alex. I saw a part of what was happening in your world. After that, I hastened my journey toward the goblin encampment. You needed my help, and I realized that there was nothing I could do for you from my home world. I couldn’t let you face that creature alone.”
“So you came to The Library to look for me?”
“The Librarian wouldn’t tell me which books would lead to your world. I tried to tell her that your life was in danger, but, I can hardly blame her, she didn’t believe a word of it.”
“And I still don’t, I’ll have you know,” said the Librarian. “Alex, could you explain to me how she was able to walk right into The Library?”
“She came from her home world,” I said. “The portal is still open downstairs.”
“Oh,” said the Librarian.
“I can help you, Alex, but you’re going to have to trust me,” said Elaine.
I looked at her, uncertain. Seeing her with her fingers around the Librarian’s throat brought back memories of the night she tried to kill Lilly by sacrificing her to The Library’s Heart. It seemed that casual violence was the natural state of Elaine, even without the force of Vicious. It confirmed for me her willingness to do what she liked to get what she wanted.
“Personally, if you want my opinion, I wouldn’t trust her,” said the Librarian.
“I’m sorry,” said Elaine to the Librarian. “Time was of the essence, and you weren’t going to help me help her.”
“And am still not going to help you. Alex, really, after all the damage she has done.”
“I think she is trying to change things. This part of her, anyway. I still don’t know if I trust you, Elaine, but right now, I have my mom trapped in a down wind dimension because someone turned her into a monster. I’m completely out of my depth, and completely out of options.”
“What has happened?” asked The Librarian.
I shook my head. “I hardly know. Some spell from some document in the museum or something. When will it stop?” I ask asked. “It was a boy from my school. He just found the scrolls and decided it was a good idea to summon Beelzebub.”
“I know that name,” said the Librarian. “A demon?”
“I suppose,” I said. I was feeling pretty fed up. “What even are demons, anyway?”
“They are projections,” said Elaine. “A bit like gods. The demon spirit is trapped in their own realm. Different worlds have different demons. It all has to do with how close the dimensions are to each other. A demon can manifest in a world only by first pushing itself through another elemental world. They tend to like destructive elemental worlds, like the place where you find your fire. There are obvious reasons for that. However, some demons by chance have access to greater powers than that.”
“Trust you to be an expert on demons,” said the Librarian.
Elaine shrugged. “It’s useful information,” she said. “Besides, someone has to be.”
“Can you help me stop it?” I asked.
“I can,” said Elaine.
“No,” said the Librarian.
I nodded. “All right, it’s not like I have any other options right now.”
“I never thought that you would be this reckless,” said the Librarian. “I fear that I have been very wrong about you.”
My heart sunk to hear this, but that sinking soon turned to fire as I grew angry. “Can you just keep your opinions to yourself?” I snapped.
“No, I can’t,” said the Librarian. “It is my duty to advise you-”
“And you have advised me. I have taken your concerns into consideration and have made my decision.”
“Let’s hope that this time you don’t threaten all creation,” said the Librarian curtly.
I winced as a wave of pain came over my head. The collision with the bookshelf had been hard.
“You are in pain,” said Elaine. She touched her hand to the side of my head, and I felt pressure immediately relieve. I looked at her in astonishment.
“How did you do that?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. I didn’t even know I could.”
I opened up my book and took Elaine’s hand. “Let’s go, shall we?”
We landed on a city street some distance from the museum and its grounds. The air was hazy with concrete dust from the buildings that had collapsed.
Elaine coughed. She had changed out of her simple garment from Avonheim and seemed to have summoned a new outfit. It was all black, of course, but it was a lot more practical than her lace dress.
“This way,” I said. We quickly made our way through the streets. There didn’t seem to be anyone around anymore. I hoped that meant that people had started evacuating the city, and not that all the people had been snatched by Daniel.
We were still some distance from the museum when a shadow passed overhead, and Lilly landed in front of us, folding up her wings.
“Alex, you're–” that’s when she saw Elaine. She immediately started to charge that purple energy that emanated from the Rose of the Raven.
“Lilly no, it’s all right.”
“It’s all right? We’ve been looking all over for you. We thought you were – why is Vicious here? Why are we acting like this is normal?”
“I’ll explain it all soon, but first let’s find Darcy.”
Lilly sent up a beam of light up into the sky, which then burst with a crack.
“He will be here soon.”
There was an awkward silence. Lilly was angry with me, that was certain. She had her arms folded and was looking about, trying to arrange her thoughts. “Well, you look well,” she said to Elaine at last.
Elaine started laughing. “Of all the things that you might say to me, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Last time I saw you were trying to kill me. Actually, now that I come to think of it, you tried to kill me the time before that as well. I’m starting to feel a little apprehensive.”
“I can honestly promise you that I will not try and kill you today. There, feeling better?”
“No,” said Lilly.
Darcy came jogging around the corner of the block and apparently did not recognize Elaine at first. “Alex, you are alive. Who is your friend?”
“Don’t get any ideas,” said Lilly.
“Elaine,” said Elaine, holding out a hand.
Darcy took her hand. “Pleasure,” he said. Then his eyes grew wide, and he quickly pulled back his hand and started to draw his sword.
“You see,” said Lilly.
“Look, I can explain. But can we go somewhere else to talk? This may take time, and I don’t know if we have time.”
“You want me to take her into my world?” asked Lilly, eyebrows raised above her glasses.
“She can help us. She can help Mom.”
Darcy looked pensive. “OK,” he said at last.
“OK?” asked Lilly.
“Yeah. I trust Alex and Alex trusts Elaine. Yeah.”
“Thank you,” I said, relieved that there was at least one person who thought that I was capable of making a decision on my own.
“Right,” said Lilly. “Let’s make it quick. It’s been a little while since I checked on your mom, and last time she looked like she was coming to.”
Lilly took my hand and Darcy’s, and I took Elaine’s.
“I hate world travel,” said Darcy, and we popped out of this reality.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I soon found myself back in the realm that hung around Lilly’s neck at all times. I had come here with Lilly many times before for holidays, to catch up on reading, and sometimes for homework. Lilly had done quite a lot of work over the months on the thing that I will choose to call a house. It was initially built from a single boat but had since become a sprawling network of rooms floating
on the shallow lime-green water. Only a few of them also had roofs as no rain fell from that reddish sky.
Much of her work was now destroyed.
Lilly’s mouth dropped open a little as we surveyed the ruin. The house itself had been built out of whatever Lilly could find and scavenge. It always had a sort of eclectic look to it, but now it was nothing more than junk floating in an endless sea. We landed on a platform that seemed to be the only stable surface remaining. The giant that was Mom was nowhere to be seen.
“I know this place,” said Elaine, looking around. “This is the Cheathr realm. I have never been here, but my mind has wandered here many times as I waited in the garden.”
I looked out over the horizon, trying to get some glimpse of where Mom might have gone. Time moved so much faster here in this realm, so much so that Mom might have awoken and wandered off somewhere years ago. I shook my head at the thought, trying to banish it from my mind. No, surely we had not left her here for so long. It would have only been a couple of weeks at most.
Lilly seemed to rally herself after first seeing the destruction and was now pressing on some of the keys on the side of her glasses, apparently looking for Mom. “There she is!” she shouted.
“Where? I don’t see her.”
“You wouldn’t, she is way off. She can’t have woken up that long ago though.”
“All right,” said Darcy as he proceeded to take off his jacket and unclasp his scabbard. I noticed a series of symmetrical cuts on his back and wondered if these were remnants from an uncontrolled transformation.
“You’re not going to swim to her,” said Lilly.
Darcy didn’t say anything and just jumped in, swimming off in the direction that Lilly had indicated.
“He swims quite fast, doesn’t he?” said Lilly.
“Alex,” said Elaine, “I can get us there faster.”
“How?” asked Lilly.
“My powers are slowly coming back to me, I think.”
“Yay,” said Lilly without much enthusiasm.
“Do it,” I said. I felt like I was being reckless, but was in the mood to embrace some degree of recklessness. My mom was in real danger, and as far as I was concerned, we could waste no time.
Lilly was clearly not happy. I didn’t blame her, but I couldn’t spare the time to manage her emotions for her. We needed to act now.
Elaine looked about at the surrounding materials. She then closed her eyes and lifted up her arms, energy sparking on her finger-tips. A white mist formed around her, curling lightly against her dark form. There was a creak and a groan from below us. I looked down, wondering if this platform would remain stable under the magical pressure.
“You better not be breaking my stuff,” said Lilly, “people are always breaking my stuff.”
Then there was a crack and the platform rose up a little.
“What did I just say?” asked Lilly.
“Hold on to something,” said Elaine.
And then we began to move. I crouched down atop the uneven surface of the now flying platform, grabbing the corner of an old door as we skimmed over the shallow green water. The wind whipped my hair back as I peered into the distance, trying to get the first sign of Mom.
After a short time, a black smudge appeared on the horizon where red met green. We sped on, drawing closer and closer. Soon Darcy also came into view, having nearly reached the figure himself.
When we arrived, I found that my mom still looked the same as she had outside of the museum grounds. She was tall, twisted, and furious.
Darcy reached her at the same moment as we did. “Take me back!” demanded the creature.
“I can send her to sleep,” said Elaine.
I looked into those furious eyes. “Give me a moment,” I said.
Elaine nodded. Darcy climbed up onto the platform, soaking wet. “OK then,” he said, “next time I’ll wait.”
“I know that you are back there, Mom,” I said. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but we are doing everything we can to get you out of there.” I realized then that I was tearing up. “Just hold on, and soon everything will be back to normal. There are so many things that I want to tell you, so many things that I’ve had to keep to myself, but not anymore. Life is too short, and the world is too messed up for secrets.”
“I ate your mom and am just wearing her skin,” said the giant.
“Knock her out,” I said flatly.
Elaine nodded and waved a hand. The giant immediately collapsed and looked like she would plunge into the water. With a quick movement from Elaine, she was hovering just above the water’s surface.
“We will have to take it back to the, um, house. I can’t hold her like this, keep this platform afloat, as well as scan her mind.”
“All right,” I said, and soon we were speeding back toward where we had landed.
Elaine set Mom down in the boat at the core of Lilly’s structure and began weaving her magic over the bits and pieces that littered the surrounding area. She was able to forge together materials of different kinds and make them merge as if they were one single material. So it was that she built a structure where the walls might be made up of broken deck-chairs, discarded real estate signs and placards, bits of technology, and, because this was Lilly’s place, assorted pieces of pop culture memorabilia.
When she was finished, she had built a structure that was solid and anchored into the seabed. It rose out of the sea like a tree and then curved away into a larger circular platform. At the center of this platform, she had formed a sleeping area where she now set my mom down. Around the edges of the platform, curved pillars rose up and met in the middle, which might have given the impression of a squat birdcage.
Lilly inspected a Deadpool miniature that was now embedded in one of the pillars. “I don’t know how I feel about this,” she said.
“Neither do I,” said the miniature.
I went to mom. Her hair was black and greasy and stuck to her face. Her skin was pale white with the faint indication of purple and green just below the surface. I stroked the hair away from her eyes.
Elaine looked at me sadly and smiled. “Let me see what I can do.” She placed one hand on my mom’s forehead and closed her eyes.
I watched and waited as Elaine did her work. It seemed like an eternity but was probably only a few minutes. At length, Elaine opened her eyes.
For a moment, it looked like she would topple backward, but she steadied herself. “She is still in there,” said Elaine. “I don’t think that she can tell what’s going on around her, but she is definitely still in there.”
“Can you help?”
“The spell is complex and involves magic stretching across multiple worlds. The creature that is now controlling your mom is some sort of lesser demon, I think. It may have even been a worshiper or acolyte and was given this new body as a reward. As messed up as that is, there are a lot of people who are willing to devote themselves to some dark spirit for just a little bit of power.”
Lilly snorted.
“But what about Mom? Can you do anything? Can you change her back?”
“Right here and now?” Elaine shook her head. “No. No, I can't.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My heart sank, and I found myself looking to Darcy. When he first found out about The Library and what was happening, he had been so sure that we needed to spend more of our efforts defending our own world.
How right he had been.
Not only had a power as strong as anything I had ever faced in all of the multiverse materialized in our own backyard, but it had struck me right where it hurt. It had taken my mom away.
“What is there to be done?” asked Darcy.
“If we can find the demon’s home or his true name, then I may be able to transform her back to normal as well as expel the demon from your world. Demons do not have much power themselves. It is their own relative weakness that makes them seek out power and domi
nance over other worlds. At its simplest, a manifestation involves three worlds. The demon’s home world, a second world or elemental world, and the host world. The second world acts as a sort of magnifying force and grants the demon powers far beyond what they have back home. At its most complex, there can be dozens of worlds involved, each one granting the demon another form of protection or power.
“However, all those secondary worlds are useless to the demon if we find its place of origin or its true name. A manifestation of this kind means the demon has had to lock himself up somewhere and will appear to be sleeping to anyone who finds him.”
“So it is information that we lack,” said Darcy.
“Yes,” said Elaine.
“It will take time to find out exactly where he is from. I don’t know that we have that much time,” I said.
“And we have even less time if we are keeping Mrs. Alex’s Mom here,” said Lilly.
That’s when an idea struck me. “The Orb Lyren,” I said. The orb was an object that I chose from The Library’s Lower Vault before we entered the chaos realm to delay the plans of Vicious. A lot was going on, and, in my confusion, I had left the orb attached to a belt that I did not end up bringing with me. I had occasionally used the orb on adventures since then, but doing so always left me so drained. It has the power to pacify the soul of anyone I touch.
“I don’t know this orb,” said Elaine.
“If I can get close enough to Daniel, then I can use the orb to pacify him. We can then take him back here to hold until we find a way of defeating him.”
“That could work,” said Elaine. “Where did you get an artifact like that?”
“Oh,” I said, not knowing quite how to answer. “It was in The Library’s collection.”
“Interesting,” said Elaine. “I like this plan, but I don’t think we should bring the demon back here.”
“Why not?” asked Darcy.
“Because we may have difficulty holding him. We are going to need as much time as possible to find out his origins, and if we keep him here, then we give him too much time to figure out how to defeat us. Demons are not strong, but they are cunning. He will likely be able to break free of any bonds that I can forge here, and then all he would need to do is find another host and use that to project himself into a new world. The boy would be relatively useless to him here as he is non-native, but all he needs to do is find another host.”
