Kaia the Argent Wing

The rumbling grew more frantic as the red light approached and we rushed down a side aisle. We only just managed to get behind the bookcase when the thing arrived. It was… not what I was expecting.

Peeking through the shelves didn’t give us the best view, but I think I’d seen something like this before. Where had I, though? It was square, came up to about hip-height, and looked like a library trolley with a ton of electrical and mechanical components. Around it was the source of the red light—a very faint, dull shield that enveloped the whole thing in a layer of energy that, well, glowed slightly.

“It’s a book sorting robot,” Mel gasped, and god damn but she was right!

We all shut up quickly when it let out a grinding metal screech and turned to face in our general direction. “Patrons will be silent!” It hissed in a threatening, mechanical voice.

Oh… goddess. The front of the robot was covered in old, crusted blood. Its spindly mechanical arms were twisted and warped, but not in a damaged way. It’s like it had evolved more terrifying, sharpened manipulators to make it easier to… what, hunt prey?

That’s when I saw the… maw. Set low on its chassis was a set of horizontal grinding wheels, and they were absolutely caked in gore. As we watched, it began to sweep up the mess we’d made, while placing all the damaged books into the rack on its back. We were perfectly silent as it worked, until finally it moved off, beeping and muttering under its robotic breath.

“Uh… guys,” Ben whispered, causing us all to jump slightly. “I managed to scan that thing.”

“Scan? How?” I asked, matching his tone.

“I have a spell that can tell me a little information about something. It doesn't usually give me much, but for monsters it's pretty useful,” he explained. “When I used it on the robot, I got a few things. First, it's the dungeon's main boss. Second, it's extremely resistant to damage because of a buff called ‘Custodial shielding’. The third thing… it said that the buff was stacked up on it three times.”

Ah, that explained the red shield thing— “Wait, a buff?” I asked, tilting my head in confusion. “With a name, and you can tell how many stacks?”

He chuckled and raised a hand in apology. “Oh, sorry. I forgot that not everyone knows you can customise your storm sense. I made mine stop being all vibes-based and now I get coherent data.”

“That's… really smart,” Mel said as her eyes glazed over. I guess she was going to try now.

“I like my vibes-based storm sense,” I grumbled defensively.

“Discuss this later,” Scott hissed. “How do we remove the damn buffs? Did it say?”

Ben shook his head. “We could try exploring? That's all I got.”

“Quinton?” I asked, putting the decision to our squad lead.

He shrugged. “Sure. Let's move further in. Best if we keep quiet, though. When we run into more book monsters, we kill them fast, loot them fast, then hide, yeah?”

Everyone nodded in agreement, so we took off into the eerie twilight of this impossibly large library. Creeping through the aisles was nerve wracking, and the brief moments where a swarm of dust monsters attacked us were almost a relief because we could be loud again. Then, obviously, we'd quickly sort through the corpses for useful books.

The tally of books thus far was three. The herbology book, a history book about pottery, and a survivalist recipe book. None of them were really what I was after, but they'd be useful back at the settlement anyway. Each time we finished looting, we had to scamper away into the shadows before the library bot got there.

It wasn't long after our third encounter with it that we began to find evidence of the bot's intentions if we were ever caught.

“What is that?” Quinton asked, pointing his axe down a nearby aisle. Then his face screwed up, “And oh god, that smell?’

I squinted, trying to see what he was looking at, but— wait, was that a shoe? Cautiously, I tiptoed towards the shoe that was hanging off a shelf at an awkward angle. It was a shoe, and… oh god. I swallowed my gorge as it threatened to rise.

A whole person had been jammed into the shelf like someone had mistaken them for a book. Limbs were bent and broken, blood and rotting flesh had dripped down the shelving to puddle on the floor, where it'd dried. This was an old body, probably from near the time of the Storm’s arrival.

A small part of me noted that I wasn't even particularly bothered by the sight of a dead human. They were a common sight these days, but this… this was not natural. Something had killed this poor person and then shelved them like a book.

“There's another one,” Scott pointed, all of his usual joviality gone from his tone.

Sure enough, there were quite a few people, all of whom had been ‘shelved’ and left to rot for weeks.

“All of these bodies are old,” Mel noted, giving voice to my observations.

Quinton nodded, expression grim. “A part of the reason for how reluctant we've been to tackle this place is because the library was designated as an emergency shelter. Anyone who decided to go here instead of to the school hasn't been seen since Storm day.”

“Fuck,” I groaned, pinching the bridge of my nose. Maybe that's why we had such a lack of bodies around Edgewood? The damned Storm had decided to turn one of our shelters into a dungeon, and a significant chunk of our population had wandered unwittingly into its maw.

I felt sick. It was such a fucking… a waste. So many individual people with lives, and hopes, and dreams, and…

A hand cupped my face, turning my gaze away from the grisly sight. Chloe was there, grim-faced but intent on keeping me grounded. She didn't say anything, but when she saw my eyes focus on her, she gave me a little pat on the cheek.

“Let's keep going,” Quinton said, voice as shaken as I felt.

We found the first of the books requested by our people not long after we started finding bodies. It was called, ‘Archery, a Complete History of the Art’, which had whole sections about how various cultures made their bows. It was all broader details rather than step-by-step instructions, but it was a starting point. Tess was going to be happy.

Unfortunately, the book was accompanied by a grisly milestone.

“I've just crossed the one hundred mark,” Quinton murmured as we escaped from the scene of the latest skirmish.

It took me a second to understand what he was talking about. Then I realised he'd nodded to another ‘shelved' body.

“Fuck me,” I grimaced. “That's probably not even close to the full casualty count either.”

He nodded grimly, but opted not to reply. We continued exploring.

Five minutes later, Ben held up a hand. “Guys. My Storm Sense is acting strange. Can anyone else see that…?”

I activated my own Storm Sense, and sure enough, there was a strange… something. It was like motes of red dust hanging in the air, or like—

“It looks like motes of dust catching the light of a laser,” I said suddenly as the realisation hit me.

“You're right, but where is the laser?” Ben wondered.

I was wondering the same thing, so after watching the motes a moment more, I decided to go over and climb a bookshelf. It wasn't the most… respectful act in a library, but it wasn't exactly a library anymore anyway.

So far, the aisles had been periodically interspersed with reading nooks, study tables, and computer stations. But I'd also caught a glimpse of something else one time. Something so normal that I hadn't thought much of it at the time. However, the way the magical light was hitting the motes of magic had me thinking…

Yes! A red glow several rows from here, near what looked like a help desk.

I hopped back down and relayed what I'd seen to the others, who all agreed it was worth checking out. So, we crouched and tiptoed our way towards our new objective, doing our best to sneak with all the gear we were carrying. Thank goodness I wasn't in full plate, that's all I could say. Like, I could only imagine how disastrous this whole dungeon would've been if I were a giant walking wind chime.

Getting closer to the help desk, I realised that it wasn't quite right. For starters, the three tall desks that made up the booth looked old fashioned as all hell. Like, it was giving 1600’s. Shit, and there were none of those little bent acrylic things that they always put signs in. There was a white chalkboard looking thing with black symbols on it, but they weren't in any language I recognised. Even the shape of the chalkboard itself was funny. The top and the bottom sort of tapered in slightly, so it wasn't a plain rectangle.

“Well, that's not from the old library,” I said under my breath.

Sneaking right up to it didn't earn us a reaction, so I took the risk and just peered over one of the desks into the little employee only area. Inside were a few chairs which were also extremely strange. Their proportions were a little wonky—They looked vaguely like barstools but with backs like a normal dining chair.

In the centre of the U shaped arrangement of desks, I saw the source of the strange red light. A squat box of polished dark wood framed with brass sat in the exact middle. The uppermost face of the box was glass, and within it there was a brass disk with seven little red gems set into the outer edge at regular intervals. The disk was spinning slowly while the gems pulsed with light each time they reached the point in their path that pointed out in the direction we'd come from.

“What the heck is that?” Quinton asked, standing up straight.

The rest of us froze, like the terrible robot would hear him and appear out of nowhere. It didn't, so we relaxed slightly.

“It's clearly the source of the red magic, but what does it do?” Ben mused aloud, walking around to enter the employee area. He didn't finish any thoughts he'd been brewing, because he grinned and pointed. “Aw, snap. Real books, people.”

Sure enough, tucked into the corner of the booth was a short bookcase with at least thirty different books on its shelves. None of them had the generic title from the normal shelves. In fact, I recognised one book, a fantasy novel, because I'd read it.

I grinned and hurried over to take a look, but Ben cleared his throat. “Guys. This red crystal thing, if I inspect it, it says, ‘Custodial Shield Generator’. I bet if we break this, it'll remove one stack of the buff from the bot-boss.”

“Well then… who wants to do the honours?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. They all stared at me expectantly. Of course.