Week 8

  They moved in a procession: the Oracle leading with a swing of her massive head, Ember and Callie following behind, and the sphere of light tracing lazy spirals above them.

  Callie expected to be taken to a locked chamber or a bone-strewn pit, some melodramatic monster lair, but instead they arrived at a cozy reading alcove set with a pair of outsized armchairs upholstered in indigo velvet separated by a marble table.

  Zalina gestured, her paw the size of a butcher’s block. “Sit, Healer. Make yourself at home.”

  Callie obeyed, not needing to be asked twice. Ember sat at her feet and, with a sound somewhere between a sigh and a huff, settled in to watch.

  The orb, now reduced to the size of a marble, zipped to a small stand beside Callie’s chair and settled, pulsing with anticipation.

  A kobold appeared, so suddenly and quietly that Callie wondered if it had been waiting in the walls. It wore a perfectly clean tabard and round spectacles so large they magnified its gold eyes into dinner plates. The kobold balanced a tray with two mugs and a covered pot, placing it with reverence on the marble table. It poured, never spilling, and set a mug before Callie. The tea was a brown so intense it glowed. The steam curled up in patterns that mimicked, for an instant, the script on the nearest books.

  Zalina eyed the mug, then her own bowl before reclining on her haunches. The floor protested with a small, seismic shift.

  Callie took the mug, grateful for its warmth. The tea tasted like the smell of stones after rain; dark chocolate, nuts, and caramelized sugar. It was thick and smooth and had a long lasting sweet aftertaste.

  “You have excellent service,” she said, nodding at the kobold.

  The kobold smiled, baring the smallest, tidiest fangs Callie had ever seen, and retreated with a crisp bow.

  Zalina took a moment before speaking.

  “As you may have guessed, I am the Oracle of the Petalorian Archive, and I am also its Warden. I have devoured thirty thousand and sixty-one souls since this Archive was built. With every soul I consume, I gain their memories, their skills, their perspective on life. This allows me to answer any number of questions a visitor may pose.”

  Callie’s mouth was dry. “That’s… efficient.”

  “On the contrary, the integration of souls is imperfect.” said Zalina. “ Every drop of blood lost during feeding is a drop of memory gone forever. Every soul I absorb fights, at first, to be remembered. Only with time does their voice fade into the harmony.” Zalina grinned, a slow show of teeth. “But sometimes, if the visitor is very important, or the circumstances unique, I can recall a soul’s voice perfectly: intact, vibrant, as if the person were still her.”

  Callie hesitated, then: “You’re saying you remember everyone you’ve ever eaten?”

  Zalina cocked her head. “Not everyone. But most. Some are louder than others. Some, I confess, I miss.” The voices inside her seemed to murmur in agreement.

  There was a silence. Callie watched the steam spiral from her mug. “Can you tell me what happened to Thistledown?”

  *

  The Oracle’s eyes flickered. The voices stilled, then arranged themselves, like an orchestra tuning before a performance.

  When Zalina next spoke, it was not her own voice at all, but a perfect recreation of Thistledown’s: quick, bright, lightly mocking. Even the cadence was precise: the pauses, the slightly offhand phrasing, the undertone of sarcasm.

  “Calanthe,” said the voice. “Thank you for asking to see me. If I’m being honest, I expected to be a lot more dead, and a lot less in the company of an adorable hyena goddess.”

  Callie went rigid, her mug forgotten. Ember’s head lifted, eyes locked on the Oracle, ears pressed flat.

  “Thistledown?” Callie said, uncertain if it was memory, magic, or a very skilled imitation.

  “Thistle, through and through,” said the Oracle, her eyes suddenly narrower, the posture less animal and more human. “Do me a favor, will you? When you see Theron next, tell him not to… I told him to leave. He would have died otherwise.”

  “My legs were gone from the knee down. I could feel the marrow cooking before I saw the blood. I pulled him off me with my good hand. He resisted, but only a little.”

  Callie’s chest tightened.

  “He left me,” said the voice. “And that was the only good thing he could have done. Tell him to find someone else, please. And… if it’s not too much, be kind.”

  *

  The face rippled, shifting back to Zalina’s default state. She licked her teeth with a satisfied sigh.

  Callie wiped a hand across her face, embarrassed to find it damp. She hated crying in front of strangers. “Thank you,” she said, her voice raw.

  Zalina leaned in. “I know what it’s like to miss the music of a lost friend. It echoes for a very long time, even after you think you’ve forgotten.”

  Callie thought she should tell Zalina that Thistle was only a distant acquaintance; hardly a friend. But she kept her mouth shut.

  Zalina reclined, stretching with feline languor, then lifted a paw and pointed it at a kobold librarian wielding a feather duster, a notebook and quill in her apron.

  “Fetch the Verdant Crucible, second edition, annotated by Master Elias.” Zalina’s tone brooked no argument.

  The kobold bowed and darted off, disappearing up one of the spiral ramps.

  “Why the urgency?” Zalina asked, lounging with an air of easy power. “Is there a pandemic I haven’t noticed?”

  Callie shook her head. “No, just… trying to stay ahead of the next disaster. I’ve seen too many people die of infections that should be treatable.”

  Zalina nodded, a gesture surprisingly gentle for so massive a beast. “I can relate. The world does love to kill off the clever ones first.” She tapped her chin with a claw. “There are at least three good options, if you can survive the harvesting.”

  “Which are?”

  “Pale Fire Mycelium, but it’s dangerous for humans to handle. The spores will eat through your gloves if you get them wet. Second, Heartbloom resin. It’s a little toxic in excess, but if you refine it properly, it’s the closest thing this continent has to your penicillin. And the third, your best option, and which you might find near your village, is Bluebell Pitch. It smells like rotting fish, but when distilled and consumed in discrete volumes has properties approaching a Quinolone antibiotic.” Zalina smiled, all teeth and kindness. “Master Elias wrote a treatise on the subject, which you’ll have in hand soon enough.”

  Callie scribbled in her own notepad. “Thank you,” she said.

  Zalina wagged her tail, which thudded so hard Ember flinched. “You’re very polite, for an engine-breaker.”

  Callie cocked her head. “Is that what I am?”

  “You’re something,” said Zalina. “Most travelers who come here try to exploit the Archive, or conquer it, or destroy me for sport.” She looked almost wistful. “If more people were like you, I’d starve.”

  The kobold reappeared, cradling a massive leather-bound tome. She deposited it in Callie’s lap, curtsied, and then retreated to a respectful distance.

  The book was heavy. On the cover, embossed in blue ink, was a spiral of thorns and a motto: “Let all wounds be known, and none unhealed.” Callie opened to the index and scanned for antimicrobials. As she did, she felt a rush of something—a notification, just at the edge of hearing:

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  [+25,000 XP: Knowledge Acquisition—Major Treatise.]

  She smiled, despite herself.

  Zalina’s eyes narrowed with pleasure. “You like it here, don’t you?”

  Callie closed the book. “I do.”

  The room went quiet for a while. Ember, finally at ease, sprawled on the floor and rolled onto his back, paws in the air. The kobold resumed her dusting, humming a tune with no discernible melody.

  Zalina watched her, unblinking.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up here, in this building?”

  Zalina grinned. “I ate the last Oracle. It’s a long story.” She stretched, filling the space. “But if you’re curious about the job, it’s not so bad. I get all the books I can eat, and all the visitors worth remembering.”

  Callie grinned in return. “I can think of worse fates.”

  Zalina’s laughter rattled the windowpanes.

  “You know, I have a good mind to just stay here for a few months,” Callie said. “Just to escape.”

  “You’re most welcome to do so. As you can imagine, I am well aware of your banal existence in Apsu’s Respite.”

  “I have someone to return to, so it’s not an option.” Callie said, with a certain finality; then mused. “Do you think it will work though? If I stayed here and kept my distance from the main ‘plot’?”

  “Oh…” Zalina sighed with a kind of mock solemnity. “I’m afraid it’s a bit too late for that. You’ll understand better once you leave. Your time with me should be untarnished by the weight of this world.”

  They sat sipping tea and reading, each alone but not lonely. In the heart of the world’s strangest library, even the monsters found peace. The kobold returned at intervals to refresh the tea, and Callie worked her way through the relevant chapters of the Verdant Crucible, taking notes with an efficiency that would have pleased even her old boss.

  “Copying isn’t borrowing, right?” Callie asked.

  “Of course not,” Zalina replied. “That would be rude.”

  It was only as Callie reached for a second cup of tea that she noticed something in Zalina’s smile. Hitherto this, she had simply refrained from looking at her interlocutor's razor sharp teeth.

  It was a small thing, really: the great beast’s upper lip twitched back, exposing a wedge of teeth. For an instant, one eye squeezed shut as if in annoyance or pain.

  Callie set her teacup down. “Do you want me to take a look at that?”

  Zalina blinked, then grinned wide. “I thought you’d never ask,” she said. “Most visitors are too polite to mention it.”

  Callie closed her notebook and approached, pausing at the edge of the table. “Do I have to worry about losing a hand?”

  Zalina opened her jaws with predatory slowness. The mouth was a spiral of ivory and wet blackness, tinged with the mineral glint of glass. Ember, sensing the shift, came to attention at Callie’s side, his own teeth bared in anxious solidarity.

  “Don’t be a worrywart,” Zalina said, her tongue snaking aside with impressive muscular control. “If I wanted to eat you, I would have taken a bite earlier on.”

  Callie steeled herself and reached into the hyena’s maw, bracing her left hand against the lower jaw for leverage. The surface was slick with saliva but oddly warm, like the inside of a fresh loaf, and with a faint sweet air about it. She probed gently, looking for the source of tension.

  At the back of the jaw, above the first molar, something was wrong. Instead of the regular line of canines, there was a jagged gap, and deep within, a sliver of what looked like crystal—cloudy, sharp, and vibrating faintly.

  “Hold still,” she said. Zalina obliged, closing her eyes as Callie traced the gumline and found a raw, bleeding ridge.

  Callie saw several lines of text hanging over the wound culminating in terse reminder:

  [If she dies here, Apsu burns.]

  The words were obscuring her surgical field of vision. She mentally nudged them aside and the bleeding unexpectedly slowed.

  [CAUTION: Unauthorized narrative adjustment detected.]

  “What happened?” Callie asked out loud.

  “An unintentional micro-edit, nothing to worry about,” Zalina murmured, the words vibrating up Callie’s forearm. “The problems is the core fang. It was injured about ten years ago. I tried to heal around it, but every time I do, the filter gets worse. Too many voices.”

  Callie swabbed the wound with a piece of clean linen from her kit, then used her [Purify Water] skill to rinse the area. The taste must have been abysmal, but Zalina only whimpered once, the muscles of her jaw trembling under Callie’s touch.

  “It’s infected,” Callie said, “and the shard is grinding into your palate.” She met Zalina’s gaze, then added, “Do you want it out, or do you want to try and splint it?”

  Zalina bared her remaining fangs in a mockery of a smile. “Splint it. Without the core, I won’t remember aspects of who I am. And the hunger—” she shivered, the sound rolling through her chest, “the hunger gets worse.”

  Callie nodded. She set about the task with methodical calm: first, she injected a local numbing agent (courtesy of her apothecary kit and a few drops of poppy milk), then used a thin probe to realign the crystal fang fragment. Once it was in place, she ransacked her supplies for the best binding agent.

  She found it in a vial labeled Heartbloom resin; the same liquid which formed the substrate of Master Elias’ fabled anti-microbial, a sticky, milky secretion favored for its fast set and strong adhesion. But it needed a fiber matrix to hold, or it would dissolve in saliva within hours.

  She looked at Ember. “You mind lending me some fur?” she asked, only half-joking.

  Ember, ever the professional, stood tall and let Callie pluck three clumps of loose fur from his mane. He didn’t flinch, though he did give Zalina a side-eye that suggested solidarity among predators. Callie braided the hairs, dipped them in resin, and packed the mixture around the broken fang. It set almost instantly, the blue-white crystal glowing faintly under the lamplight.

  “Bite down slowly,” Callie instructed.

  Zalina closed her mouth with delicate precision. For a moment, her entire body seemed to tense, then she relaxed, the purr returning stronger than before.

  “You are very good,” Zalina said, voice rough with new sensation.

  “It’s just bone and glue,” Callie replied, blushing a little at the compliment. “You should be able to use your mouth normally, but avoid anything harder than roast duck for a few days.”

  Zalina licked her lips, testing the repair. “You don’t understand. With the fang in place, the voices quiet. The hunger is… manageable.” She lowered her head in something like a bow. “You have my thanks, healer. If you ever need anything, you know where to find me.”

  Callie wiped her hands and leaned back, suddenly aware of a bright, insistent glow in her field of view.

  [Monster Healing, x500 XP bonus!]

  The notifications scrolled by too fast to read, and for a second, Callie felt the world slow around her. She checked her stats and almost laughed out loud. She’d just leveled ten times, maybe more. The dopamine rush was intense.

  “Yes!” she thought, pumping her fist discreetly while washing her hands in purified water. “Finally, a power-up.”

  Zalina watched her, amused. “I recommend not leveling too quickly. The aftereffects can be… unpredictable.”

  Callie rolled her eyes. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Ember came to her side and nuzzled her hand, tail wagging in approval.

  For the first time since arriving in this world, Callie felt like she’d done something real—something only she could do. Not just patching up scraped knees or dosing out cough syrup, but fixing the sensorium of a mythical beast.

  Zalina sprawled beside the table, eyes closed, tail flicking slowly.

  The repair held. Zalina’s breathing slowed, and for a brief, sublime moment, all was still. Then, as Callie cleaned the last traces of resin from Zalina’s gums, a miniscule drop of the Petalore’s blood fell onto her skin.

  It was cold, almost electric. The world blinked, and for a heartbeat, Callie was somewhere else.

  She stood at the threshold of the Archive’s front hall, the marble polished and immaculate. The doors were open wide to a dawn of searing light. In the entryway, a small kobold cowered behind a desk, trembling as three adventurers advanced, swords drawn.

  Then the edge of Zalina’s form strode into view. She greeted the intruders with words, not growls. The words were gentle, almost formal: “Welcome to the Archive. I hope you brought a library card.” The adventurers replied with violence. The woman in the lead shattered a flask that burst into liquid fire and Zalina lunged to shield the kobold. The memory swirled, fracturing into a thousand images: blood on the marble, the adventurers’ screams, the cold, deep satisfaction of fighting back. Then, like a film melting, the scene glitched, and Callie jerked back to herself with a gasp.

  Zalina was staring at her, the smile less amused and more predatory now.

  “It’s rude to do that, you know? Mother used to do that all the time. It was… irksome.”

  Callie flushed, not just with shame but with the after-burn of the memory’s terror.

  “Sorry,” she said, rubbing her wrist. “The blood, there’s some kind of link. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

  Zalina grinned, showing off the repaired fang. “You’re not the first to taste my story.” She lounged, curling her tail around her paws. “So. Now you know how it happened.”

  Callie nodded. “Why did they attack you? Everyone knows the Archive is dangerous.”

  Zalina’s ears flicked in a gesture of exasperation. “Knowledge is always dangerous. But the Guild keeps sending heroes, every ten years or so, thinking this time will be different. This time, maybe the library is unguarded, or the monsters have grown lazy. Humans are always hungry. I understand it.”

  “But why the doorman?” Callie said. “He was just a kobold.”

  “Exactly,” Zalina replied. “They start with the weakest, to see if I will intervene. Testing the perimeter, like wolves at a fence. When I show mercy, they take it for weakness.”

  Callie considered this. “So when you fought back, the Archive responded?”

  Zalina’s eyes glittered. “The Archive is alive, in a way. It doesn’t like disorder. When it senses violence, it protects its own—books, souls, even the dust. That’s why the shadows moved. Why the Liches and the Lamia appeared. They’re not mine, not exactly. We’re just co-workers.”

  Callie allowed herself a smile. “Does the Archive ever fire you?”

  “Once, centuries ago. But I learned my lesson. I can’t leave. Not unless the engine breaks, or someone hungrier than me comes along.”

  Callie frowned. “If the Guild keeps sending parties, won’t it just keep happening?”

  “It will,” Zalina said. “But the memory fades, even for the living. They tell themselves the Archive is just a building, and monsters can be slain, and knowledge is something to be conquered.” She stretched, paws splayed, and added, “They always forget the real treasure is what you learn along the way.”

  Callie nodded, the lesson as old as narrative itself.

  There was a quiet for a while, filled only by Ember’s steady pant and the ticking of the clock above the mezzanine.

  “I won’t forget,” Callie said, reminding herself.

  Zalina tilted her head. “No, you won’t.”

  They sat together, the air thick with unspoken understanding.

  Callie’s mind replayed the memory, the violence, the hunger. She wondered how many stories in this world ended with the protagonist eating the plot. Probably more than she realized.