The Library (The Librarian of Alexandria Book 1) by Casey White (surface ebook reader .TXT) 📕

repeated - with a different symbol.  "What is this, Alex?  I don't understand.  How does this relate?  Are these- Are these all people?  These are the mages out there?"

He'd looked up people's information often enough.  Hell, he did it every time the Library had guests.  He'd done it with Leon and James both. He could recognize a set of biographies when he saw it.  "I guess I kind of expected there to be more than...than this.  I wanted to know how it works, not just that they exist."

Faintly, he felt the floor rumble under his feet, like Alexandria had sighed.  He smiled wryly.  "Sorry.  We just already came this far."

A candle flared to life at the far end of the room, burning with that same blue fire.  Daniel stiffened, his eyes snapping to it.  The narrow pillar of wax sat atop a reading desk, perched on an upper shelf alongside a tiny set of books.  "There?" he said.  His feet were moving before she could give any sort of reply, carrying him closer.  The books were quivering, he saw, shaking like an earthquake rumbled that table alone.  And- His grin spread at the sight of the title plastered in big, bold letters down their spines.  The Basics.  "Thanks," he said wryly.  "Appreciate it, Alex."

Quickening his steps, he hurried down the aisle, closer and closer.  Two dozen shelves flew past him, two dozen sets of pictogram-laden texts.  His head swam.  There were...so many.  But then he stood in front of the desk, one hand on the chair and his eyes sweeping down the length of the spines.

Right there.  His heart leapt.  The answers he'd wanted, the door he hadn't dared open.  He could still walk away, the thoughts in his head screamed.  Someone had told him that, once.  Stay away from their business, and they'll stay away from yours.  Don't play with fire.  Don't invite trouble.

Daniel shook his head, though, his jaw tensing.  As long as he wasn't alone, as long as other magic existed in the world, he wasn't safe.  If any of them learned of his existence, they'd come hungering after him and Alexandria.  He needed to know what he was up against.  He needed to see it. And maybe, just maybe, he’d start finding the answers to his own problems.

Steeling himself, he reached up, hooking his finger over the spine of the first volume - and again, he stopped.

Something wafted through the room.  The smell of something sour, something hovering right at that horrifying boundary of sickly-sweet and rotten.  Something dead.  His pulse thundered faster yet.  Slowly, carefully, Daniel took a step back, glancing around.

The shelves had carried on for so long, he'd assumed they were all the room held.  But while they rose to the very ceiling on the walls around him, lining the center of the study in a maze of towering wood and paper, the spaces alongside the desk were...empty.  Open, with archways in the place of doors.  One of the arches glowed from within, lit by a pale blue-green glow.  The other...

Daniel wrinkled his nose.  The other smelled.  It smelled like fear and death, and before he even knew what he was doing, he crept closer, sliding his hands about the frame of the door-less stone threshold and peering around the corner.

A shiver rippled across his skin.  Despite himself, he flinched back, one arm rising defensively.  Another room waited beyond, deceptively cozy and lit with candles that seemed all too normal.  That was where the comfort of the room ended.

The room he'd passed through had been filled with books.  There were books here, too - a narrow, shoulder-height shelf on the far side of the room.

The rest of the chamber was filled with cages.

Acid burned in the back of his throat.  Daniel staggered back, his fingers clenching about the corners of the doorway.  "W-What?" he gasped.  "Alex, what the hell?  What the fuck is this?"

Alexandria didn't respond.

He cast a glance back toward the main room, wild and wide-eyed.  Only books and stone waited for him there.  He was alone, no matter the backflip his nerves had just done.  He swallowed once, and then again, mustering up his resolve.

One step at a time, he crept into the chamber.

Iron bars lined each wall.  Pens.  Here and there, cages had been stacked on top of each other, filling up the empty space.  A table sat against one wall, long and low with its whole surface covered over by runes.

More than anything, though, Daniel saw the blood.  It coated everything in the room with a red-brown film of dried filth, leaving his eyes burning and an acrid, metallic tang in his nostrils.  "It's like a damn murder scene," Daniel whispered, taking another shuffling step in.  "Jesus, Alex."

Then again...Daniel licked his lips, his unease building.  He'd asked how mages worked.  Alex hadn't been going to show him - right up until he'd asked.  This might exist within the Library, but that didn't mean it was Alexandria's doing.

If this was horrifying, it was just an added bit of encouragement to stay far, far out of the way of the Earth's spellcasters.

Tiptoeing gingerly around a red-brown puddle that seeped from the floor of a broad-barred cage, Daniel inched forward.  His eyes were fixed on that single bookshelf, the one solace he could find within that room.  Where the books outside had been as thin as pamphlets, sometimes, these were massive.  They were arranged in sets, too - and these had titles, he realized with a thrill.  Or...rather than titles, they...

He stopped, one hand outstretched toward a text labeled Fulvia.  His eyes lingered on the word, then darted across the shelf.  "Names," he said, letting his fingers come to rest on the time-worn leather.  "They're names.  Are these..."

The book came away with his hand.  He flipped it open, heading right to the first page.  Somehow, he already knew what he'd find.

Just like the other books in the set, a name was plastered at the top - the same Fulvia as