Vol.4 Ch.64 – The Librarian I

Chapter 64: The Librarian I

As much as the resistance members had just demonstrated their competence, Elaine still didn't want them to be the first to enter the building.

Yes, they were clearly competent. Individually they were about as strong as unaltered human mages could get. As a group they were better coordinated than even Elaine's own team, something she was sure would need fixing in the future. But despite that Elaine didn't want to put them in unnecessary danger. Yes, they were competent. But they were also ordinary humans, more fragile than any member of Project Divinity. And for once Elaine didn't have Ophelia along, who could at this point heal pretty much any injury that wasn't outright fatal. Evelyn had a decent healing ability but using it would weaken her own regeneration for the day.

In other words: Elaine couldn't afford to make mistakes. Not like before. She had a lot of firepower with her but none of the sustain and way more fragile party members.

“Esther and I go in front,” she said. “Evie, behind me. Mare, bring up the rear.”

“Got it,” Evelyn said.

“Understood,” Mare said, her voice surprisingly clear and clipped.

Thankfully nobody questioned her and they advanced through the rubble and into the hospital.

She was mentally counting the amount of seconds it would take for them to encounter something spectacularly fucked up but clearly the messed-up stuff was hidden deeper inside the building. They encountered the odd cyborg but the huge groups they'd fought before were nowhere in sight and the cyborgs they did encounter barely registered as threats.

“Evie, any hints from your Akashic Knowledge?”

“I've been checking,” Evelyn said, “this floor has several holding cells near the center of the building. They're guarded by cyborgs.”

“Do they hold civilians?”

“The ones who haven't been processed yet, yes. But there's also a cage with more wendigo deeper into the floor.”

That would need to be a priority, but first... “So what about the ones that have been processed already?”

“The place they called a spare parts storage is in the basement. From what I see that place is more heavily guarded.”

“What about the upper floors?” James, one of the resistance mages, asked.

“Nothing of note,” Evelyn said. “Some of Caulder's assistants are hiding there and that's it.”

“Shouldn't we take them out?” James asked.

“I would prefer we didn't,” Aurora said gently.

“Any chance any of them are here willingly?” Elaine asked.

“Anyone who works for Caulder willingly wouldn't hide upstairs,” Aurora said. “They'll be downstairs, guarding the spare parts.”

“Speaking of guarding,” Elaine said, turning to Evelyn, “any idea where that Knight is hiding?”

“Sub-basement,” Evelyn said. “There's a device there that he seems to be guarding.”

“Could it be some kind of teleporter?” Elaine asked.

“Portal device,” Aurora said. “Much safer.”

“So...” Elaine said, almost scared to say it out loud for fear of shattering the faint hope bubbling up inside her chest.

But before she could muster up the courage to ask, Esther beat her to it: “Could that device take us straight to Caulder?”

“Yes,” Aurora said.

“Assaulting his place of power with half our team?” Aurora asked quietly.

“Let's cross that bridge once we get there,” Elaine said. “First we need to make it past the Knight.”

**

Once the retching had subsided Kaja urged her team onward.

The necromantic energy was still strong in the air and there was no true acclimating to something actively out of this world pervading the air but it did get easier to take. Part of it was getting used to the horrible churning feeling but a much bigger part was that blowing open the entrance had dispersed a large part of the energy into the atmosphere.

There was a chance that simply blowing out the doors had ruined whatever ritual the Necromancer had been going for but Kaja wasn't going to chance it. That Necromancer had to die for the world to heal.

She would never want to admit it but having those conjured wolves going on ahead was far more comforting than she would have thought. Even if the enemy blew them apart it would apparently only cause Lana a mild headache but wouldn't endanger her in any way, making them the ideal forward scouts. The fact that Samantha could then obliterate those enemies from orbit was even better. She wondered idly how many missions Marcus' team had completed simply by letting those two handle things.

Either way they advanced into the library, the wolves going on ahead, somehow not bothered by the broken glass all over the floor. They made it through the entrance area unmolested and Kaja was already hoping they'd encounter no resistance until they found the Necromancer but once they reached the actual library...

“Oh you have got to be kidding me,” Cassie muttered as he saw it.

“Oh sweet,” Ophelia quoted, “horrors beyond our comprehension.”

Past the lobby, the insides of the building had been transformed. The place was still recognizably a library, though this was no longer a college library of the 21st century. The wood appeared to be dark hardwood and all the books, no matter how modern the subject matter was, looked like they had been taken from a 19th century library.

That was not the strange part. If Kaja had not been certain that the library was a modern building this would have simply looked like rustic charm. The concerning part came from the growths. Tentacles and eyes on stalks were dotted around the room and undulating maws sprouted from every knothole in the hardwood. The windows no longer showed the outside of the building but an endless expanse of night sky, only broken up by the heavy storm clouds hanging over the building.

All of that would have been concerning. But the truly traumatizing part was that the library was occupied. Any good library needs a librarian, right? And this librarian had come crawling out of one of the most demented nightmares.

The creature was twenty feet tall, easily. It was hard to tell for the thing was hunched over, at least in as much as its anatomy allowed.

The thing did not have legs. It didn't even have proper tentacles to walk on. Instead its lower body looked like a blob of slime mold, able to spread out pseudopodia to move around on. Atop this blob of slime mold came a torso that was distressingly human compared to the alien lower body, with gray skin stretched so tight over a ribcage that the individual ribs were clearly visible underneath. And atop that distressingly human chest sat a... flower. Or more like a sea anemone. Except the tentacles of the sea anemone's head were human arms. They had too many joints but they had recognizable joints and they were tipped in distinctly human hands. And yet, despite the human features it was a sea anemone, the individual limbs swaying in a nonexistent current or breeze.

All of that would have been enough to freak out even a seasoned veteran, never mind these almost green humans. But then the thing spoke.

“The library is closed during the semester break,” the thing said, its voice sounding bizarrely normal and human, though with a strange reverberation that a human voice didn't have, like the voice was being echoed by dozens more. “Please come back during official opening hours.”

Kaja had encountered many Outsider hybrids that repeated random phrases and most of them were the mindless babbling of monsters but this thing seemed to mean what it had said. Unlike all those abominations it did not attack them. Instead it simply turned its torso away and began perusing a bookshelf, one of its myriad arms reaching out to grab a book and flip it open, then turning it around and showing it to the nearest eye stalk, the eye visibly scanning over the pages.

Kaja was tempted to just leave this thing alone. Yes, it was a horrid abomination but it also seemed quite placid. It would need to be cleansed eventually but if they could get past it without a fight they were practically obligated to, right? But then Omega stepped in front of her, summoning his hunk of iron and turning it into a greatsword before pointing it at the creature.

He didn't waste words on the thing but Kaja could tell there would be no peaceful solution to this.