Rickard only stared at Madis, that same hurt lingering in his expression.
“Where are we going?” Indira finally said, tearing her eyes off Daniel.
Madis nodded. “Onward, Guildmaster. As I told you, we must find the source of this place’s power. There, I can do what I must. And, ah...until then…”
As Daniel watched, Madis snapped his fingers—and energy crackled in response. An orb shimmered to life, filling the between them and Daniel with a transparent blue shield.
“Rest assured that we will be safe,” he said, offering Indira a smile. She returned it.
“No,” Daniel whispered, wrapping his hand around an ornamented pillar “Not...Not like this.” This wasn’t what he’d wanted. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. “Alex. Please. If you’re there...stop them, damn it.”
She didn’t respond—but the scream of splintering, shattering wood filled the air.
Rickard and Indira spun around. Madis followed more slowly, one eyebrow raised.
The hallway behind them shuddered. The timbers shaping it twisted, distorting, then gave way to a blank, hazy fog.
“W-What is that?” Indira cried, stumbling away from it. Her eyes flicked back to Daniel. “L-Librarian? What is-”
“The Edge,” Daniel rasped, lurching away from it, back toward their blue-glowing shield. “It’s- It’s the end. Of Alex, and her domain. It’s-”
“Ah, you see, Guildmaster?” Madis said, his voice smug. “It’s quite simple. It seems such a barrier is the edge of the Library’s territory, her reality. And if that is the boundary, then does it not follow that at the center of it all lies the heart which we seek?”
“You know all of this,” Rickard said, standing on the far side of Indira. “Such knowledge. Intricacies about how this place works. Did you-”
“I-I suppose,” Indira said. Her gaze was on the Edge, though, and she kept inching away from it. “We should...We should go. Yes.”
Light flared. Stumbling down the hallway, Daniel glanced back, eyes wide—in time to see bright-glowing shapes flit from the walls, darting with inhuman speed past him. Just as quickly, they were gone.
“Dreamers?” he whispered.
Madis’s laughter brought him up short. “See, guildmaster?” he said, clapping Indira on the shoulder. “These apparitions move away from such an obstacle, no doubt returning to Alexandria herself. They shall be our guide, yes?”
Daniel shook his head, clenching his jaw. The dreamers were running—fleeing ahead of the destruction. The destruction of Alexandria, of the Library. His Library.
Forcing himself back into motion, he threw himself down the hallway toward Madis and his companions, roaring. The time for subtlety was past. Fireballs flew from his hands to smash into their shield . Over and over again, red exploded against the blue. Each time, the barrier shuddered, coming perilously close to failing, but somehow held.
Behind, the Edge rumbled closer, devouring everything in its path. Rafters fell from higher in the Library, dissolving to dust on the wind as they crashed into the void. Daniel tried to push back on it, to hold it at bay while keeping up his onslaught. Sweat poured down his back, but that was all. The fog didn’t slow its advance in the slightest.
And still, Madis walked, seemingly unbothered by the attacks.
An archway passed by, the bare wood silvered and cracked. Daniel faltered, clinging to it, as the hall widened into a room beyond.
It was just...bare. There were only two shelves, one on either side of the passage, with windows letting a gleam of hazy grey light through their tired, warped glass.
Beyond it, though, loomed the blank nothingness of the Edge, perilously close— in front of them.
The circle is shrinking, Daniel whispered to himself, transfixed at the sight. How far has it collapsed?
If the Edge was behind them, and right there outside the window...too far. It’d shrunk much too far. He turned back to Madis with a snarl, breaking into a shambling run.
The walls collapsed around Madis’s group, pressing in on them, but he only raised a hand. The orb swelled, screeching as its energies scraped along the wood and stone.
The windows shattered. Daniel hurled the fragments straight toward Madis with a gasp, his breath coming ragged. They lanced into the shield, leaving cracks—but dissolved to sand without breaching it. Before Daniel’s eyes, the cracks reformed.
There had to be something he could do. This ‘study’ was small, downright pathetic by Alexandria’s standards, and already he could see another doorway approaching. A doorway he recognized, one as familiar to him as anything in the Library.
He couldn’t let them reach the sitting room. Not now. Not ever.
A wordless cry building on his lips, Daniel plunged deep, calling on the single memory that shone before his eyes—a gout of silvery-blue water, rising from the pavement of a dingy town in the middle of nowhere. Power flowed from his palms. He held it a moment, letting it burn, then turned it loose to flow across the wing. For a moment, the three were perfectly captured, illuminated by the azure glow.
As one, they turned, their expressions ranging from horror to rage. The wall of water bulged, coming to a halt as they pushed back against him. The pressure in his head built, searing hotter and hotter as he strained, until-
His grip slipped. The watery barrier surged back toward him, its glow fading as it went until it was just a wall of ordinary blue-black wetness. The crash of it into him hit like a ton of bricks, sending him tumbling down to the floorboards in a heap.
The air burst from his lungs as the weight of it pushed down inexorably. Every instinct he had screamed to breathe, to open his mouth and suck down a lungful of air, but he knew that would mean his death.
And then the water splashed away, coursing down his form in rivulets, and he was left shivering and gasping against the ground.
“Librarian!” he heard Indira cry, her plaintive words echoed by something low and inaudible from the two Bookbinders. He coughed, fighting to regain control of himself.
Move, something whispered in his head, something
