Kaia the Argent Wing

My aura of weakness lashed out from me in a barely visible wave, while my body began to glow as silvery wisps of light trailed lazily off me. Each enemy it hit was faced with two options—Either continue charging blindly at our group as a whole, or swerve and kill the new irritant that was making their limbs sluggish. They picked the latter, and considering how many of said ‘limbs’ they had, I couldn't blame them.

I had April's gift axe in my hand, and as I eyed the shambling horde, I had an idea. With a burst of power, I imbued the axe with holy moonlight fire. This time, I threw it, and it whirled through the air end over end. It wasn't a clean throw. Only the very top of the edge on the axe made contact, but it was enough. Moonlight splashed over my target like napalm, hitting some of its crowded allies in the process. That was when the corruption at the heart of my angelic power twisted the moonlight into a caustic black tar that ate greedily at their exposed dusty flesh.

I was so surprised by the splashing behaviour that I almost forgot to recall the axe. Almost. It flew back to me like an obedient bunny—if such a thing existed—and as it retreated, little arcs of angelic energy lashed out to hit the nearby enemies. What the heck? That was strange. Why the new manifestation of my abilities? Neither of them had gone off the way I expected them to. I’d have to experiment later.

If these enemies were that squishy, though, maybe it was time to dual-wield? I shrugged my shield onto the hook on my rucksack and grasped my shiny new axe in my left hand.

A blast of chill air whipped past me, and multiple fist-sized chunks of ice slammed into the horde as it reached melee range. Pieces of dust, shredded paper, and other random detritus were flung in all directions.

With April's axe, I deftly lopped off a grasping hand, then kicked the—was that a water damaged copy of Conan? Whatever it was, it had the most obscenely muscled shirtless man I'd ever seen on the cover, and at his feet was a woman who looked like she'd sprung fully formed from the mind of a horny fourteen year old boy.

A hand closed around my ankle, and I looked down to see a politician’s autobiography as it used three of its spindly hands to trip me. Or, it tried to trip me, but I stomped down on the black and white photo on the cover with enough force to snap the spine. It quivered and went limp.

Light fingertips touched me in the small of my back and I half whirled to hack at the surprise attack, but Chloe was there, murmuring under her breath. All at once, like a switch had been thrown, my body came alive with energy. My senses sharpened, my muscles sang like the bow of a cello, and the mana trickling into all of my abilities became a torrent. A moment later, and the mental containers of power that held my abilities were full and ready for use. Even my aura, which was still active!

I unleashed it again, and just like before, a shockwave of invisible magic spread out through the battlefield. Over my body, more silvery wisps of power began to dance, but this time they began to move in unison. It almost looked like—

Scott, as if some primal part of him sensed the irresistible moment of comedic timing, appeared amongst the enraged horde of zombie books. “Watch out, everyone. Silver's going Super Saiyan.”

With a goofy giggle, he snapped his fingers, and something on the floor wriggled. A dark, shadowy rope swept across a section of the skirmish, tripping every single homicidal dust-monster in its path.

“Shit, nice!” I said, hacking down at a mouldy dictionary while it tried to get back up.

The thump of footsteps interrupted me as I tried to swing April's axe at a second monster, and Quinton leapt over our sprawled enemy. He crashed down in the middle of them and smashed his axe into the floor with another wordless shout.

Dust flew up off the floor as little black metal spikes impaled dust and pages alike. None of the spikes were all that deadly in size, but because all the books were on the ground and suffering from a double dose of my aura… well, the damage was severe. In several cases, the monsters outright died, while others quivered with obvious pain.

“Nice!” Mel cried in excitement, “They're thinning ou—”

A whistling, twinkling noise cut her off. Deadly sharp shards of ice ripped through every enemy in a straight line that began at Ben's staff and ended at an unfortunate bookshelf. Eviscerated paper, magnetic tape, and dust followed the stream of ice a moment later—swept along in the slipstream of its passing.

From there, it wasn't difficult to cleave limbs and butcher struggling books. The only enemy that gave us any sort of real fight was the thing Quinton had called a microfilm machine. Thankfully Chloe was able to dispatch it with a guided throw from one of her hex bags, and soon there was nothing left to do but cough all the dust out of our lungs.

“Is it just me, or was that like, legit too easy?” Scott wheezed.

We'd shifted back towards the door to get away from the dust, even if we couldn't leave until whatever passed for a final boss was killed.

“I mean, I haven't even had to do anything,” Mel said, sounding almost like she was complaining that none of us had been hurt. “At least, no healing. I killed some things with my axe, but that's it.”

“The redcaps were way scarier,” Quinton agreed, eyeing the dark library nervously. “Was that just the appetiser, to get us complacent while the real problem is setting up…”

Only vaguely listening, I pulled a cloth rag from my rucksack and covered my mouth, then pressed forward into the carnage of the skirmish. My new axe was back in its sheath, because in the heat of battle I'd forgotten to actually use the damn thing. I guess just holding two axes wasn't enough to dual-wield properly. You actually had to know how to use two weapons effectively.

Anyway, I wasn't just wandering through the dust for the fun of it. I was looking at the covers of the slain books. Most were trash, either because of their subject matter or because of the damage that they'd sustained during the fight.

Let's see… there was that senator’s autobiography with the broken spine… a cookbook that was now in multiple pieces and sodden with melting ice—Aha! ‘The Complete Herb Garden, a Practical Guide to Growing Herbs!’ It was only missing the back cover, too!

Slipping that one under my arm, I continued scanning the books while I approached the first bookshelf. It looked fully stocked, but…

“They're all the same,” I muttered, pulling one out to inspect it. Their spines were as varied as you'd expect in appearance. Some had vivid colours, others were bound in leather, but all of them had the title ‘A Book, by a Person’, in various fonts. To confirm my suspicions, I opened it to find… word salad. Sure, the words were all English, but… Well, ‘Socks I don't scream like because several of you is offering me a to go sunset’, wasn't entirely coherent. Checking a second book indicated that they were—on the surface at least—the same, even if their covers differed.

“Find anything?” Chloe asked, sidling up beside me.

“The books from the monsters are real books,” I said, showing her the gardening book. She took it with interest and flipped open the cover. “The books on the shelves…” I said, trailing off with a shrug. “They’re fake. The shelves are basically filled with Lorem Ipsum.”

“That's very strange,” she murmured, then shrugged and raised the book in her hand. “Can I keep this? I'm actually growing herbs so this will be useful.”

I smiled and took it from her. She frowned for a second as if she thought I was disagreeing, but then I touched her shoulder and tugged gently. She got the hint after a moment of staring up at me with confused, wide eyes.

Unzipping her pack, I slid the book in and said, “You might want to get it a new back cover. To protect it, since it's a lot more valuable now.”

She nodded wordlessly, then turned to face me again. Goddess, but she was cute. Those ringlets…

She cleared her throat and looked away, down a wider artery aisle that ran deeper into the dungeon.

“Huh,” she said, in a voice that snapped me out of the quiet moment and set me on alert. “Do you see a red light down there?”

Following her gaze, I found that yeah, there was a red light… and it was getting closer. Chloe and I realised that little factoid at the same time.

“Guys!” She hissed, gesturing for the rest of the group to join us. “Something is coming!”

It was right about then that the floor began to shake ever so slightly, and a low rumbling could be heard in the direction of the red light.

Okay. Okay… that probably wasn't good… uh…

“Follow me!” Quinton said in a hushed whisper. “We'll hide in the bookshelves!”