The winds railed against him, but he stood, a pillar in the chaos. Book after book struck his legs, his chest, his arms, but his eyes stayed closed. If he just believed hard enough, with her lifeblood safely in the grasp of his magic, surely her wounds would close. He’d open his eyes and-
Something crashed down alongside him, close enough to shake the ground. A spray of tingling, acrid-smelling water splattered against his mask. He froze. More water. Then...
Owl’s eyes snapped open again. The storm still tore at Alexandria’s walls - and everywhere he looked, he found only faint-glowing water dripping down to rejoin the pool rising at his feet. Here and there, he could see a wall beginning to close, a rooftop starting to mend, but too little and too late.
He couldn’t fix her. The truth drove home like a blade sinking into his chest, straight into his heart.
What, then? He spun on his heel, his breath coming ragged. His hands were already shaking. An exhaustion settled over his shoulders like he’d never felt before, deep and cold and dragging at his limbs. He’d reached his limit.
He hadn’t even realized he had limits, before.
The dreamer stumbled onward, still clutching its head - and as it moved, the eye of the storm moved with it. Each one of its shambling steps brought Owl closer to the whispers, made them a little louder in his head.
And he watched as across the room, a new maw opened in the wall of Alexandria. Light streamed through - but dim. Shadowed. As though night was starting to fall over the Library.
He was moving before he’d even had time to think it through.
Owl ran. Each step came harder than the one before, bogged down by the water and his own weakness. The winds tore at him. The screams of the dreamer’s companions filled his mind. But he ran, his eyes glued to the slender form at the storm’s heart.
He couldn’t fix Alexandria. She’d have to fix herself.
He just had to buy her the time.
His vision blurred, fading to grey around the edges. Everything he had left was focused on keeping upright, on keeping moving. The air around him hissed, growing hotter by the second. Tiny droplets of the water filled his lungs, burning with every gasping breath. And as he closed the gap between them, he could feel it - the heat rising off the dreamer’s furious, brightly-glowing skin.
He’d burn. Somewhere, distantly, he recognized that much. The thing was upset, and it was hot. Going close to it would be asking for injuries.
Owl dropped his chin to his chest, though, his eyes still glued to the dreamer. Somehow, he needed to draw their guest’s attention back to him. Screaming at it had done nothing. Trying to smother the thing in Alexandria’s magical knowledge had done nothing. That left him with few options indeed - but sometimes, the simplest answers were the best ones.
And if Alexandria needed a distraction, he’d provide it.
He was the Librarian, after all.
Grinning through the searing heat that bit at his skin, that set his eyes to watering, Owl lunged forward, throwing himself across the thin gap remaining between him and the dreamer. His arm lifted, snaking forward.
Through the heavy, hot leather and cloth of his gloves, he felt his hand close about the dreamer’s wrist.
He had a single, endless moment to ponder his mistake.
And then it hit.
Owl was on fire.
It surged through him, filling his veins and burning him from the inside out. It wasn’t a matter of his hands, or his wrists, or even his arms. It didn’t seem to matter what part of him was touching the dreamer - the whole of him seared from within.
His limbs locked. His throat ached, tearing with the scream that ripped from his gut. Agony shot through him. He’d never felt pain like this before. Not ever.
Keep holding on. In that moment, with his world blurring away around him, that last thought was all he had left to hold onto. Don’t you dare let that thing go. You’ve got him now. Don’t let it slip.
So he held. It hurt. It hurt bad. But his hand stayed locked about the dreamer’s wrist, hard as iron.
“I-It’s,” Owl began, but his voice cracked. He swallowed, shuddering, and shook his head. “It’s okay. I...I’m here. I-I see you.” The sentence was slow, pushed out in sections as he found enough breath to give it voice. “I’m here.”
His eyes were slits, but he strained, keeping them open against the heat and hurt of the world. Because he could see the dreamer, then, filling his vision with blinding light. He could see it turn.
It didn’t have a face. Once upon a time, perhaps, but the glow beneath its skin was too radiant for that. It was just a blur as its head angled toward his.
Owl sagged, still holding its wrist. There. It’d seen him. “Please. J-Just...Just calm down. I can help. Let me-”
The dreamer’s face kept turning. He could almost feel its eyes slide right off his , returning to the disintegrating Library around them. It tugged against his hold, trying to pull away.
No. Owl’s heart froze. It tugged again, harder - and started to turn away. He’d come so far. He’d tried everything, damn it. If he lost this...if he couldn’t even do something as simple as distracting the dreamer...He licked his lips, ignoring the burning, searing knives digging into his limbs.
“Work fast, Alex,” he breathed, lurching forward.
Before the dreamer could turn away, he grabbed its other wrist.
The good news was that the dreamer stopped trying to turn away. It snapped back to face him, in fact, its skin going even more incandescent than before. With its arms in his grasp, it couldn’t run even if it wanted to. And, finally, it seemed to be giving him its total and complete attention. In the same instant he took it by the wrist, the storm around him quelled. Books fell from the air. The fires stopped their devouring march
