Contents
Title Page
More from Casey White
Copyright
Dedication
- Chapter One -
- Chapter Two -
- Chapter Three -
- Chapter Four -
- Chapter Five -
- Chapter Six -
- Chapter Seven -
- Chapter Eight -
- Chapter Nine -
- Chapter Ten -
- Chapter Eleven -
- Chapter Twelve -
- Chapter Thirteen -
- Chapter Fourteen -
- Chapter Fifteen -
- Chapter Sixteen -
- Chapter Seventeen -
- Chapter Eighteen -
- Chapter Nineteen -
- Chapter Twenty -
- Chapter Twenty-One -
- Chapter Twenty-Two -
- Chapter Twenty- Three -
- Chapter Twenty-Four -
- Chapter Twenty-Five -
- Chapter Twenty-Six -
- Chapter Twenty-Seven -
- Chapter Twenty-Eight -
- Chapter Twenty-Nine -
- Chapter Thirty -
- Chapter Thirty-One -
- Chapter Thirty-Two -
- Chapter Thirty-Three -
- Chapter Thirty-Four -
- Chapter Thirty-Five -
- Chapter Thirty-Six -
- Chapter Thirty-Seven -
- Chapter Thirty-Eight -
- Chapter Thirty-Nine -
- Chapter Forty -
- Chapter Forty-One -
To Read More
Acknowledgements
More from Casey White
Bonus - The Wastes of Keldora (Prologue)
Chapter One
THE Librarian
- A Remnants of Magic Novel -
Casey White
More from Casey White
——————————
Independent Series
————————
The Flameweaver
Saga
Chosen
Charred
Nightsworn
Ascendant
Halfway to Home
Unknown Horizons
Richard “Quickdraw”
McCallister
A Eulogy
Shorts
Black Skies
Worlds that Never Were
Deposition of the Departed
The Aedanverse
————————
Remnants of
Magic
Silvertongue
Wanderer
Legion
The Librarian of
Alexandria
The Library
The Librarian
Spark of
Divinity
Survival’s Edge
Fortune’s Fool
Terra Rising
This is a work of fiction, and the views expressed herein are the sole responsibility of the author. Likewise, certain characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
The Librarian (Book Two of The Librarian of Alexandria)
Copyright © 2020-2021 Casey White
All rights reserved.
One door closes, another opens.
May the memes rest in peace.
- Chapter One -
The soft padding of footsteps drifted through the hallways.
A figure slipped through the packed-in shelves, sucking in his gut where the books had been stacked a little too enthusiastically. The mess of soft leather and parchment ate up the noise of his passing, until the whole Library seemed swallowed in a pensive, breathless silence.
Owl smiled, letting his hand linger on a pile of texts. No glove, this time. It was only his hand, and besides. Sometimes, you just needed to feel things for yourself.
“You’re feeling better, aren’t you?” he said. His mask-hidden eyes swept across the racks as he pushed down another, even narrower hallway. Something caught at his jacket, and he stumbled. “J-Just, maybe...maybe you could give me somewhere to walk?”
The Library around him tittered, like birds singing in a place where he knew damn well there were none. Owl sighed, rolling his eyes, but couldn’t keep himself from smiling. There was no mistaking it—Alexandria was in good spirits.
His hand drifted to rest against the sling over his shoulder, testing the weight on the strap. He had a few more books to distribute, but...not that many. Not many at all.
Back after the dreamer had wreaked havoc on the Library, it’d seemed like he’d never be free of this. The work. However much he knew that he’d fix her eventually, it had been hard to see the end when every morning brought with it book after book after book. He’d found tables stacked high in every study, carts waiting around every corner. Hell, she’d taken to blocking the doorway of his room with tomes. Briefly. They’d had words about that one.
It was hard to say where things had shifted. He’d spent so long buried under the heaps of work that it’d become something close to normal. Somewhere along the line, his chores had started to lighten again. They must’ve.
Because now, strolling through Alexandria’s interior, she seemed almost whole again.
Almost. He turned the corner, and froze at the sight of the blurry room beyond. “More?” he said with a sigh, drooping. “I’d...I’d kind of been hoping that maybe-”
A candle flared from the end of a bookshelf, gently illuminating the mound of books below. Owl smiled tightly. “Yeah. I get it. Not just yet, then?”
Taking a deep breath, he pushed off the door frame and started walking toward the shelves. This was his fault. It was the mix of his inattention and that bitch’s games that’d led to him being distracted enough for a dreamer to lose their grip. If he’d only been watching, then Alexandria wouldn’t have gotten torn apart in the ensuing maelstrom.
But he hadn’t been, and she was, and now, mending her hurts was the least he could do. Putting a smile back onto his face, Owl unslung the bag of books from around his frame and got started.
* * * * *
“There,” Owl groaned, slumping against the shelf. “That’s the last of them. Anything else, Alex?” He waited, his fingers curled around the wood, but she didn’t deign to reply.
Fine. He was used to that. Starting to grin, Owl turned away and trudged toward the doorway—a doorway that’d changed at some point in his chores, transforming from a winding hallway mostly-obscured by texts into a grand archway. He froze, eyeing the familiar sight.
“Am I...Are you telling me to go back?” Owl said, letting his gaze flick sideways to the books before returning it to the entry. There was no mistaking it. That was the gate to Alexandria’s central hallway, the artery that’d take him straight back to her heart. “You don’t have any more chores you need from me?”
He’d been Librarian for a long time. Centuries, if you counted the twisting, irregular chronology of the Library. And over those centuries he’d learned how to read Alex. In the end, everything was her decision, mind. He was just a passenger in the ship that she steered.
But he could usually figure out when she was starting to nose them into port—and when he gazed down the hall, noting dim-burning braziers and a dark, hazy world beyond the skylights, he could guess what was coming. His smile went crooked. Just a little while ago, he’d been so eager to leave.
