The day after Mera had shown him the armory, she came into his room and woke him just as the walls were starting to illuminate. She had warned him of their “dawn” departure, but he was used to early marching times with the army.

The night before, they had prepared several portable meals that would keep throughout the day. Mera planned on a short excursion for his first day and had kept the menu small and light. With their food packed and both of them armed, they rode the lift to another of the mid-shaft doorways.

By an unspoken mutual agreement, they remained quiet throughout the morning hike; speaking only when necessary to pass information. Ashur was mentally preparing for what lay ahead of them while Mera seemed to be deep in thought. The tall soldier wondered if she was having some doubts about having him come along but with her face and skin unreadable, he resigned himself to following along with her.

The other reason for his taciturn demeanor was due to his constant attention on one of the three Library maps that he kept about him. He knew that, should he lose sight of his azure guide, the maps would be his only way of finding a way back to more familiar areas. It still amazed him to watch the images and words on the folded paper move and change as they traversed from one area of the Library to another.

After several hours of walking, the map seemed to go blurry on one edge. The writing was fuzzy and distorted on the side that corresponded to their destination. When he showed Mera, she had nodded and explained.

“Remember when I said that the Library is now bordered by other planes and realities? The map cannot keep up since it is tied to the space that the Library occupies. As we get into the overlapping areas, we are both inside and outside the Library at the same time and the map gets confused.”

Thinking that the map wasn’t the only one, Ashur folded it up and stowed it into a pocket. As part of outfitting him for these jaunts, Mera had given him clothing that was more appropriate for what they would need. His new trousers had several pockets sewn very neatly into the legs while the shirt and vest had more along the breast and sides. The stitching of the pockets was strong and intricate and the soldier was still getting used to them. It felt strange not to have a pouch or two hanging from his belt and bumping on his thighs. He had caught himself stopping to see if he had dropped them several times during their morning walk only to remember that he had used the pockets. When he had joked about this, Mera had simply shaken her head sadly and murmured, “So much lost.”

Now, as they moved further into the muddled area between the Library and some unknown place, Mera slowed and became more alert. She stopped often and looked around the edges of bookcases or moved circumspectly around common reading areas. The juxtaposition of soft, deep chairs and intricately designed tables with the stalking woman’s demeanor made her actions surreal and conveyed the gravity of their situation more than if she had simply told him to be careful. Taking the cue, he mimicked her movements and went from “soldier” to “hunter” in the space of a few heartbeats. As if she had felt the change in him, she turned to look back and nodded her approval.

Silently, they roved through the aisles with eyes moving back and forth looking for danger. What kind of danger, Ashur had no clue, but, having seen what had happened to Mera, he knew it was quite real. Working with decades of experience hunting and foraging while on long patrols, he watched for movement between the shelves and listened for anything above the soft susurration of their breathing and foot falls.

And so, they both heard the clicking of claws on stone floor. Ashur whipped his new sword from its sheath and activated the shield on his arm. Bracing himself for the fight, he saw Mera remove a small glass globe from the folds of her skirt as she stepped up beside him. It looked much like the one the female half of the giant statue held, but any further curiosity was pushed from his mind as the source of the clicking stalked around the corner of a bookcase.

The soldier almost took a step back from the monstrosity. It had seen them and started stalking forward on six large legs. The beast held its long scaled snout low to the ground and sniffed the air in their direction. Overlapping plates of thick green made up its hide and they moved across each other with the creature’s movements. Once, it had cleared the corner, Ashur could finally see the entirety of what they faced. From snout to tail tip, it was no more than ten feet long, however the mis-proportioned thing stood nearly six feet at the shoulder. The strange monster waved its stocky head back and forth on an elongated neck as if to see them with both eyes which were set in either side.

Ashur braced himself to run forward to fight but was held back by Mera’s hand on his arm. “Wait,” she said. Holding up the globe, she stared intently at the approaching animal. It stopped in midstride as the ball in the woman’s hand began to glow. Growling, the creature shook its head as if to clear something away, but, as the light intensified, both growling and shaking stopped. After a few moments, it stumbled backwards; obviously confused. Finally, it turned and retreated back among the shelves.

As the illumination in Mera’s hand faded, Ashur relaxed slightly, but still remained ready should the strange beast return. The caretaker returned the globe to her dress and nodded with satisfaction. When she saw that he was splitting his attention between her and the receding clicking, she patted the air between them to reassure him.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Right now, that poor thing is really pining for home and will follow the path I gave it back to wherever that is.” At his confused look, she pulled the globe free again and held it up. “Part of the magic of the caretakers is in a manipulation of sorts. The female half can work with the thoughts and emotions of others since we are more attuned to them. The male half tends to work more with the body and its workings.” She shrugged a bit and put the glass ball away. “There is a bit of overlap which is how I can speed up my own regeneration, though not nearly as fast as Colphon could. On the other hand, he could only receive impressions of other’s emotions where I can change thoughts and desires if needed.”

She waved in the direction of their recent visitor. “Simpler minds are easier to work with. I implanted our friend there with a desire to go home and put the directions in his head. I’ve found it’s a much cleaner and less exhausting way to work.”

With that, she turned and resumed her patrol. Eight more times that day, they ran across similar animals; all of which Mera was able to connect with and send home. They eventually called a halt to have a quick lunch.

“If you can bend minds to your will, how were hurt so badly?” Ashur asked. “Did something catch you by surprise?”

“No,” she admitted. “The wounds you saw weren’t from any meandering animal. In a few days, we’ll actually need to go back to that area and make certain that the entity that got me truly is gone.” She leaned against a bookcase and sighed deeply. “Not all of the beings that wander into the Library’s space are as benign as what we have faced today. To be honest, I’ve been dealing with these hexapeds for about fifty years or so when, I’m guessing, they migrated into the area where the spaces overlap. I’m not sure what reality they come from, but they’re basically harmless.”

Pulling up her skirt to look at her newly healed foot, the caretaker wrinkled her nose. “The damage you saw was from something more powerful and definitely malevolent. It was looking for a way to cross over to another plane and this happened to be the first opening it found. I’ve run into many of those over the centuries and, let me tell you, they are not fun. I was fortunate that my first encounter with something that strong was around three hundred years after the cataclysm and I’d had some experience to fall back on.”

Finishing her inspection, Mera rose to her feet and extended a hand to help the soldier rise. “Those that are vicious or ambitious enough to attack once they get here are usually mentally strong enough to have some sort of resistance to my attacks. At that point, I have to fall back on the Lexicon. Last time, I didn’t see the need fast enough and it got me before I could react. Fortunately, I was far enough into the Library that my magic was still at its strongest.”

She shrugged and continued on. “We shouldn’t see anything like that today.”

For the rest of the day, they followed the route laid out in Mera’s head and, as the ever present light started to dim, they had returned to the area where Ashur’s map had started to go fuzzy. They took another break to eat a cold dinner before heading back to the lift. By the time they reached the house, the only illumination they had was from a cone shaped device that Mera had produced from her pack.

Turning the house wall-lighting on, they shuffled to the bathroom and showered separately before falling asleep in their respective beds. Ashur slept dreamlessly and woke early the next morning. Apparently, going on a sort of patrol had returned him to a military sleep schedule.

When Mera emerged from her room, he had already made breakfast and replaced the provisions they had used the day before. Her eyes lit up at having the warm meal before setting out and gave him a kiss on the cheek as she gathered the dishes. “Today will be much easier,” she told him. “We don’t have to go as far.”

This time, she took them through the same door as yesterday, but their trek lasted for only an hour before she resumed her quiet stalking movements. The day proved to be uneventful and they returned in time to enjoy another hot meal before once again retiring to separate rooms.

After a few days of short excursions, Mera felt comfortable enough to take him on longer patrols. With no weather to deal with, they were able to make do with simple bedrolls and cooked their food over a simple ring on a stand that Mera could heat with a Word. On the morning before their first overnight, she had shown him her equipment for extended circuits and he had been amazed. The soldier had joked that she must have a magical canteen with unlimited water somewhere as he filled his own from the kitchen sink. His companion had laughed and shaken her head. He had automatically been a bit concerned about their water supply until she told him how to find the small fountains that had been placed in some of the reading areas for visitors. “We knew that most people would be searching the shelves for hours, so we put in amenities,” she explained. She also showed him how to find the one-person bathrooms that contained a toilet and sink very like the one in the house. He had been slightly disappointed by the prosaic solutions but was glad to have them when needed.

His only disappointment with the outing was in the scenery. He was growing to miss being outdoors and, while their single day trips had seemed like he was just wandering around a big building, walking around for days between the ever-present bookshelves was odd. Curious, he asked Mera how she coped with it.

“I used to miss it,” she said. “There are a few places where the overlaps are in rather beautiful groves and waterfalls, but I’ve never felt comfortable relaxing in those areas because they are away from the Library proper.” She sighed. “I’d like to, but it’s hard to take a nap under a tree when you don’t feel safe. Over time, I think I just got used to being in here.”

***

When the light began to fade on their first night, Mera found a nearby reading nook, called a halt for the day and started to set up camp. She showed him how to unfold small squares of brown cloth into bedrolls and set up her heating ring. After they had eaten, it was dark enough that Mera had brought out her hand torch.

“I have to say,” Ashur commented, “this is one of the nicer places I’ve had to camp out in. Granted the floor is hard, but at least I don’t have to worry about a stray rock sticking into my side. I’m getting too old to sleep well that way.”

He lay on his back and looked up into the mist above the bookcases. Nearby, he heard movement, but paid it no mind since it was coming from the direction of Mera’s bedroll.

“Do you ever meet people when you travel?” he asked. “I mean, the creature from the other day was basically like a cow or a wolf and I’m assuming the thing that attacked you is a lot like a bear or something, but do you ever actually meet thinking and reasoning folk?”

The rustling from her bedroll stopped. He would have looked at her, but her positioning meant that he would have had to crane his head at too awkward of an angle, so he continued to gaze into the distance.

“I do…,” she replied hesitantly. “You’re right to call the six-legged critter a cow, but the thing that attacked me would be more like a demon. Where a bear strikes out of hunger or defense, it attacked me with malevolence and rage. I meet more of those than I’d like, but not many.”

She stopped for a few moments. Ashur assumed she was gathering her thoughts so let the silence linger.

“I do come across a few higher functioning beings that you could call “people” and I can even understand a few of them. Most often they have stumbled into the overlap and are wandering lost and frightened. I do my best to help them return to their home without much interaction. It’s rare and quick so I don’t really get to have the feeling that I met someone. Often enough, I can get them on their way in five minutes or so. None have ever tried to return though I sometimes wish they would.”

A long sigh came from her direction.

“Until you came along, I really had no one to talk with. If nothing else, thanks for that.”

“Well,” he chuckled,” I don’t know how good of a conversationalist I’ve been, but you make it easy. I feel comfortable with you and like to see you happy. To be honest, I decided a while ago that I wanted to do as much for you as possible before I left so that you would have a few good memories to keep.”

As he said those words, however, Ashur knew that he was lying a little. He didn’t want her to have only a few memories. He wanted to stay and help her; keep her company. He felt protective of this poor lonely woman and wanted to be there for her. He was coming to consider her a friend. Their occasional sexual dalliances had helped, but he knew better than to equate them with some sort of infatuation.

No, he wanted to stay here in this fantastic library and stand by her side. Mera was beautiful, intelligent, caring, and strong in her own right. She might not need him to be her protector since she had proven that she could look after herself over the centuries, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t bring her more happiness by being her friend. For the first time since she had firmly told him that she would be sending him back, he began to wonder if he could convince her to let him stay.

His thoughts stuttered to a halt at the soft noise coming from Mera. This time he turned and looked over to see her turned away from him. Her body shook and he thought he could hear muffled tears. He cursed his loose tongue for reminding her that he was leaving and made his way to her side. Kneeling down and putting his hand on her shoulder, he tried to figure out how to ease her mind.

“Look,” he started lamely,” I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you sad or anything. I just meant that…” Whatever he was about to say was lost when her lips met his. Focused on his apology, he hadn’t registered her quick movement until she was on him. Her arms wrapped around his neck and held tightly as she kissed him. He could taste her tears as they flowed down her cheeks. His own arms encircled her just to keep his balance until he realized her intent. He wasn’t certain what brought this on, but he certainly wasn’t going to complain.

Her kisses grew more passionate and she started pawing at his clothes while trying to remove her dress at the same time. He would have found that amusing if her actions hadn’t instantly aroused him. In just a few short seconds, he was kissing her back just as fervently. Never one to turn down good sex, he helped her with her dress and started to get his own clothes off. She fumbled at his pants with little mews of frustration when her hands couldn’t get them off fast enough.

He gently batted her hands away and lifted his hips. Pulling down both trousers and armor at the same time, he tossed them to the side while still keeping contact with her lips. Their tongues fought back and forth noisily in the darkness of the aisle accompanied by soft grunts and groans as they shifted positions.

As soon as he was free of his pants, the panting woman raised herself up and grabbed hold of his cock. She broke away to stare into his eyes as she rubbed the head along her lips. He felt her lubrication dripping down onto him, but it was short lived. As soon as the tip of him was covered in her juices, she rammed herself full onto him. Grabbing the back of his head, she resumed their heated kissing and thrust her hips back and forth against his pelvis. He felt her use his neck as leverage and grabbed her hips to help her frantic gyrations.

She never lifted up but ground her clit against his pubic bone while moving his penis inside her. He felt the heat of her passion and exertion radiate from her skin. It wasn’t long before she clamped down around him and hummed tremulously into his mouth as her first peak crested over her. She shook and shuddered and he felt the tremors move through her body in waves.

Expecting her to slow down after her first climax, he was surprised when she kept going as soon as her body would let her. She threw her head back while still clinging to him and he watched swells of pink wash over her skin. Content to let her move as she needed, he enjoyed the show and the feeling of her cream flowing down his scrotum and ass.

Then she came a second and third time. He was afraid she would snap his neck as her back arched away from him and she hissed through clenched teeth. When she started to come down, he grabbed her shoulders and pulled her closer to him. Her body resisted at first, but he drew her into his chest. Her hips were still grinding away at him as if of their own accord.

Bringing her lips back to his, he reached around behind her and seized her ass. By now, he was starting to get close and wanted her to peak at least one or two more times before he finished. Reaching around her, he was able to get the fingers of one hand underneath them both to touch where they were connected. Her thrusting helped and he coated them in her slippery fluids. She seemed not to notice what he was doing until he starting to rub around her other entrance.

She jumped then but pushed back as if inviting him to do more. Encouraged, he stroked in circles around her opening until it started to loosen. When the tip of his middle finger entered her, she seized his shoulders and pushed back harder. Most of his finger slid past the tight ring of her ass. Still thrusting with her hips, she buried her face into his neck and grunted several times. Ashur felt the flood of her peak squirt between their bodies until she started slamming her sex up and down on him at which point it sprayed everywhere.

Mera’s voiceless moans transformed into a steady stream of “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Yes, yes, yes, please, please, oh yes!” Her hard thrusting and the litany of her begging chant soon brought him to the edge. She must have felt him growing close. Reaching behind her, she grasped the hand of his penetrating finger and pushed it in as far as was physically possible.

“Fill me,” she cried. “Please! I need to feel you cumming in me! Do it! Do it!” She slammed down once more and he came. His muscles seized again and again as he filled her with his seed. His finger slipped from her as he grabbed her hips and pulled her down onto him as hard as possible. Breathing in sharp grunts, he held her tightly until he was spent.

Once he was able to see again, he looked down to see his lover collapsed against his chest, her face still nuzzled into his neck. She was making small happy noises. He finished pulling off his shirt and the armor beneath it so that she was resting against his bare chest. Bracing himself with a hand on the floor, he chuckled when he saw the puddle beneath them. It spread out and had soaked part of the unconscious woman’s bedroll.

Rolling them both over so that she rested on her back, he extricated himself from between her legs. She made a small noise of negation when his softening member slid from her, but it was momentary. Giving her a soft grin, he grabbed a cloth and headed for the nearest of the amenity bathrooms. Part of him was subconsciously aware that he was walking around a public building naked, but he chuckled to himself again and ran warm water to dampen the cloth.

Once he had cleaned himself a bit, he returned to his slumbering companion and gently wiped her down. Letting the puddle and her bed dry on their own, he picked her up and settled her into his. She turned onto her side and curled up under the blanket with a sleepy, contented little smile.

***

Ashur woke the next morning to the smell of food. Unsure if a guard was needed, he had stood watch through the night until the day’s trek and their sexual exertions had started to weigh heavily on his eyelids. He had curled up next to Mera then and fallen asleep.

She smiled brightly when she saw him move and stirred the eggs she was cooking.

“Good morning!” she chirped. He laughed inwardly a bit at her bubbling energy, returned her grin, and headed to the bathroom. When he returned, she had plated the food and was inhaling her portion.

“A little hungry?” he teased. “I can’t imagine why.”

She snorted and bits of egg flew out between her teeth. She clapped a hand over her mouth and mock glared at him. His laughter filled the aisleway as she did her best to clean up the specks of food, her eyes shining with her own mirth.

They continued their route that day with only one encounter and that was a quiet deer-like animal that shied away as soon as it noticed them. Fortunately, Mera already had her sphere out and ready. Moments later, the skittish thing moved past them purposefully, its path home firmly in its mind.

They returned to the house and their previous routine. They continued this way for several more days until, one morning, Mera came to the breakfast table with a somber look.

“Today, we’re heading back to where I was hurt. I need to be sure that thing is dead. I’m not certain if there will still be a body, but we have to check. You’ll need to pack for at least a three-day journey. Ideally, it should only be a two-day trip, but I want to spend a full day looking for evidence.”

Ashur nodded and went into his room to repack. In addition to the determined look she had shown, there had been a hint of sadness that he couldn’t quite place. In the time that he had been here, he had come to know the lonely, ageless woman but, for the life of him, was stymied by the small bit of melancholy. 

***

To Ashur’s surprise, Mera took him back to the floating platform that had brought him to the Library from his dirt cell. Knowing what was in store, he had asked how long they would be traveling in the grey, formless space. She warned him that it might be the better part of a day, so he packed a book to her wry amusement.

“What if I want some company while we’re traveling?” she had teasingly asked. Her laughter when he told her that he had gotten in trouble for disturbing her last time filled the living area for some time. She had patted his arm and stuffed an additional book in his pack. His understanding of her language was still mostly rudimentary, but he liked to challenge himself with harder material. He was a bit sad that all of this effort and learning would vanish in a short time, but was enjoying the learning process, nonetheless.

Mera proved true to her word. He had read almost a tenth of the thick book and was starting to get hungry when she looked up from the podium on the platform for the first time. When he understood that she was taking a break from directing the trip, he pulled some of their food and water from the pack and held it out to her.

“Thanks,” she said with a smile, enjoying her meal. “This part of the trip isn’t really all that complex, so it becomes really monotonous after a while.” When he asked if she could teach him to maneuver the platform like the lift, she shook her head. “Maybe with some time, but we really don’t have that much…” Her voice wound down as if reminded of something and the sadness he had seen back at the house had returned. The blue in her skin had deepened as well. Without another word, she returned to the podium and resumed their journey. By now, he knew her well enough that she would probably not respond to probing about her reaction at the moment, so he resolved to ask her about it later and returned to his book.

Ashur realized that he had dozed off when he felt a gentle hand on his cheek. “We’re here, barbarian,” Mera whispered. “It’s time to walk again.”

“Oh, good,” he mused wryly, rising to his feet. “I like to walk.” When he looked around, he saw that they were somewhere that resembled the walkway that he had seen when she had first released him from his cell. This time, however, the rails weren’t of solid metal, but of chain.

“How far are we from where I first came in?” he asked. Mera waggled her hand in the space between them.

“The concept of distance really has no meaning in this context. We are here and we are now. That’s about the best that I can describe it without somewhere around twenty years to teach you all of the theories you’d need to know.

“From here, however, we walk.” She patted his arm and set off down the walkway.

***

Ashur had expected their trek to be long, but they had reached the end of the walkway in short order. When they arrived, Mera turned to the right and opened a door only ten feet away from the junction. The soldier expected to see a hallway much like the one that had led to his cell, but this one opened into a wide room with several more doors; one of which she approached. There were several bolt locks on the door and Mera slowly unlatched each of them before carefully pulling the door towards her. Before it was even partially ajar, her manner changed to huntress once again.

This surprised him since he had expected to travel further before reaching the area of concern. With practice built from the last few days of patrol, he followed her to the door carefully and quietly. She looked around briefly and pushed it shut before he could see what was on the other side. Once it was closed, she slid all of the bolts home again with great force.

“I was going to just start looking, but I think it would be better to do that when we are fresh. We’ll stay here the night and then begin the search in the morning. I want to be rested if I have to face that thing again.”

They set up their bedrolls and the small tripod heating unit to cook their evening meal. Preparations were made with few hiccups since they had been getting practice working together. Once they had eaten, they quietly sat on their beds. Mera was pensive and slightly withdrawn and looked as though she was going to speak but stopped herself and returned to whatever was troubling her. For his part, Ashur tried to speculate where her thoughts were taking her. Eventually, to break the silence, he spoke up.

“Listen,” he started,” we’re going to have a busy day tomorrow, I think, so I just wanted to thank you for everything so far. I’ve enjoyed learning about this place and being with you. I..uh..Look, if I don’t get another chance, I just wanted to say that. Thank you.” He searched for something more to say, but everything else he came up with just seemed like random babbling. With her seeming so lost in thought, he wasn’t expecting an answer and was surprised when her voice came across the space to him.

“You’re welcome. I’ve…ah…I’ve enjoyed it too.” With that, she drew into herself even more and curled up in her blankets soon after. He watched her for a long time and could see that she wasn’t asleep. After a while, he started to come up with arguments and reasons for her to let him stay. She hadn’t put up much of a struggle when she let him convince her to help with patrols, but that had been for a short-term arrangement and he was hoping for something much longer. For a long time, he thought of one rationale or incentive after the other and rejected them all.

In the end, he knew that he wasn’t the Chosen One she was looking for nor was he of the first races so he couldn’t use her kind of magic. Ultimately, he probably would end up killed in one of these encounters because he was merely human. He sighed and wished things could be different. Holding onto that thought, Ashur curled up and slipped into a restless sleep.

***

The next morning, both of them ate breakfast and tidied up their camp without tearing it down. Whether or not they found the corpse of the creature that attacked Mera, they would be returning here before heading back to the house. They were subdued in their actions and spoke little until they were ready to open the door again which Mera did after making certain he was ready.

The space beyond was a forest of thin, scraggly trees; none of which reached more than ten feet in height. The ground was barren except for the occasional patch of moss and rock. The soil was grainy and black, feeling more like sand than dirt beneath his boots. A fog hung in the air which reduced visibility to no more than fifty or sixty feet.

After a long glance around, his guide stepped back and whispered in his ear.

“The fog is an illusion created to fool your mind. There are beings in it that are watching us even now. They are ambivalent about us, but a wrong move could trigger their wrath and they are much stronger than I am. We are almost out of the Library boundaries right now, so what power I have will be weaker than normal.”

This startled him and his hand moved to draw the sword at his hip. Mera’s hand grabbed his. “No!” she hissed. “Do not draw that until attacked!” She waved a hand to indicate the mist in front of them. “Right now, they are neutral, but if you show any kind of aggression, that will change. The one we are looking for is different, an aberration. It is actively hostile to anything not of its own kind. That is how I got hurt. It approached me slowly enough that I mistook its intent and it followed me into the Library. None of the rest of them have ever shown any inclination to enter and they avoided the one that attacked me. We are looking for any signs that it might still be alive. If it is, then we need to finish the job. If not, then we turn around and go home. From this point on, do not speak unless I speak first. Promise me!”

Her eyes were a hard dark blue now and he nodded his agreement. Nodding back, she released his arm and started forward again.

They had been searching for nearly an hour when a dark black spot on a rock caught the soldier’s attention. Not wanting to speak aloud, he reached out, tapped her on the arm, and pointed out the spot. He mimed a question to ask if the spot had been the creature’s blood and she nodded slowly. This seemed to give her a new frame of reference because she walked away from the rock in a different direction and started to pay more attention to the ground than the mist around them.

Had she not been looking for clues on the ground, she might have been quicker to notice the stick thin shape that streaked out of a clump of trees. It was as grey as the mist around them and whipped long multi-segmented arms at the blue woman.

What fingers the creature had ended in points which drew long precise slices along Mera’s upper arms. With a pained cry, she jumped back toward Ashur who ripped his sword free and charged in front of her. The spindly apparition raised an arm and swung down at him. His upraised blade took the force of the blow and almost drove the big soldier to his knees.

He quickly dropped the guard and brought the sword in a circular vertical swing in an attempt to lop off one of the thing’s hands. Even having seen how fast it moved to attack Mera, he was amazed by the speed in which it avoided his strike. It swiped again at him, but he saw the move coming and stepped backward.

“Your shield!” Mera cried out. Momentarily cursing himself for forgetting, Ashur quickly activated the magical vambrace and held the three-foot tall shield in front of his body. The creature howled wordlessly at him and tried to take hold of the top with both hands. Ashur took the opportunity to attack from the side and the creature went flying as his enchanted blade connected with its torso.

He was chagrined to see that there was no wound, though the lanky thing seemed to favor one side as it got up. He set his arms into a defensive position again and waited for it to come to him. He could feel Mera behind him and was focused on protecting her.

“Keep it distracted for a moment more!” she shouted to him. He didn’t know what she was doing, but assumed she was healing her arm.

He took a step forward to engage their attacker and beat at it with short, deliberate blows. It seemed to learn quickly and, in the instant he was pulling back for another strike, shot its hand forward. Stabbing its rapier-like fingers past his shield, it pierced his defenses and struck him in the ribs. He grunted hard and it was his turn to soar through the air. He landed with another grunt and immediately shot to his feet.

The creature had taken the opportunity his momentary incapacitation offered and charged at Mera. Whatever she had been trying to do had come to a halt as she ducked away time and again, but the creature was quick and she had no shield for protection. She screamed when its cutting fingers made another score across her left leg and she stumbled back. The thing raised its arm for what looked like a killing blow and let out its own shriek when the big soldier took it to the ground in a flying tackle. He had landed in such a way that one of its knees had popped the wrong way.

It flailed at his body, but he held it to the ground as best as he could; using his shield to cover as much of its body as possible. He tried to make short stabs, but the angle was awkward and its floundering arms brushed aside what thrusts he could achieve.

He dropped the blade completely when the beast landed a solid blow to his head. His vision went white and the creature took his lapse in attacks to strike multiple times; trying to pierce his body and skewer him. He felt each blow hit, but his fabric armor held. Eventually, it realized that it was while it was not penetrating, it was dealing damage to the dazed man. It levered its good leg underneath the bottom of the covering shield and pushed him off.

Still stunned, he was unable to stop the thing from lifting him by both legs and slamming him to the ground. He cried out as he felt ribs crack and his right leg snapped. Satisfied, the creature hurled him to the side.

“ASHUR!” Mera shrieked. She had finished her preparations and shot her hand out in front of her. In it, the glass ball blazed with red and gold. The creature, somehow ignoring its damaged knee, was racing toward her. When it saw the sphere in her hand, it slid to a halt in the loose black soil and tried to scrabble backwards. It held thin arms up in protection as blades of lights fired from Mera’s hand. At first, they were deflected by the tough skin, but as the angry caretaker poured ever increasing amounts of magic into her work, the blades cut deeper and a black ichor started to ooze forth.

Screaming in sudden terror, the gangly thing tried to run, but fear had overcome rage and it was now hobbled by its damaged knee. Suddenly, the knee no longer existed as the blades of light began to slice through the grey skin with no resistance. Mera methodically cut bits of the thing away; removing the other leg and parts of its torse. It dropped and tried to drag itself away but fell to the ground when one of the blades tore through its neck; removing the head.

Looking on from where he had been abandoned, the injured man was surprised to see that she continued her attack. The blades cut the creature into ever smaller pieces. When the hunks of flesh and bone were no more than a few inches long, she dug into her pack and pulled a vial from it. She spread the clear liquid over as much of the pile as she could then stepped back and said a Word. The body seemed to shudder, then crumple in on itself, and became like the dirt underneath it.

Mera raced to Ashur and grabbed his face. There were tears in her eyes as she kissed him frantically. Letting him go, she ran back to her pack and extracted a jar. It looked similar to the one he had used when she had been hurt and was unsurprised to see the green powder as she mixed it into a cup with water from their flask.

She rushed back to him and held the flask to his shattered limb. “This is going to hurt”, she warned him. As it turned out, she was right. He screamed into the sky when his leg reset. He could feel burning inside as the multiple pieces of bone and soft tissues started to repair themselves. Suddenly, he rolled over and emptied his stomach onto the ground. After several heaves, he was able to stop.

She handed him the water flask to rinse out his mouth and ran her hands along his body, checking for injuries. He hissed when she found bruises and broken ribs. When he tried to rise, he found that he couldn’t. He hurt too badly to move on his own.

After she had given him the water, Mera had gathered their belongings and his sword from where it had fallen. Slinging both packs over her shoulder, she urged him to stand and, with her help, he was finally able to get to his feet.

“We need to get out of here. Now. Once we get back to the Library, we can rest.”

He leaned on her heavily as they made their way back to the door. The mist had seemed to close in on them, holding at ten feet away instead of its previous fifty.

“Someone’s not happy,” he muttered. He figured that the restriction on talking had been lifted at the start of the attack but felt no need to say more. His blue crutch chuckled underneath him.

Forty-five long minutes later, they crossed through the doorway and out of the strange, bleak place. Once they were back in the room, Mera closed the door and slid all the bolts into place.

“That’ll keep them out,” she said. With her help, the injured man lowered himself to sit against the wall next to the door. He could still feel the sharp burning pain of his cracked and/or broken ribs and his head throbbed. Putting his hand to his side, he rested as comfortably as possible on the cold stone floor.

“Is it dead?” he groaned.

Settling down next to him, Mera looked up at the ceiling. “Yes. It returned to the earth and won’t rise again.”

They sit like that for some time until Ashur rolled to look at her. “I think we’d better rest here for a while. Actually, to be more accurate, I don’t think I can move anytime soon.” He patted her arm and settled onto his back.

“It’s a good thing we planned to stay here for the night,” she agreed and helped him to crawl to his bed. She settled his pack underneath his head and, bringing her bedroll over to his, joined him on the blanket. She pulled hers over them and lay back. “This will keep us warm while we rest. If anything wants to join us from the other side of that door, they’re not going to be able to do it quietly, so we should have enough warning.”

Too weary and injured to add anything, Ashur closed his eyes and was soon fast asleep.

***

Two days later, they shambled into the house. The trip from the room to the traveling platform had been short, but slow and Ashur was able to rest again while Mera navigated them through the mysterious medium that only she could see. That, too, had been a longer trip since the tired caretaker had needed to stop often.

After they had both woken from their all too brief rest at their campsite, Mera was able to move more easily. The cuts inflicted by the nightmare creature had healed in her sleep but had left her drained. Being his crutch had exacerbated her exhaustion and she was soon in no better shape than he.

Now, Mera helped him to the bathroom, out of his clothes, and into the large tub. He was able to start the water himself but let her add the green powder since she knew the correct measurements. Leaning back in the soothing warm water, he was unprepared when the curative stuff started to work and his broken ribs snapped back into place. He cursed loudly and slammed a fist down on the edge of the tub. Fortunately, that was the worst of it and he soon settled back and dozed; able to endure the itching and burning sensations in his healing body.

Mera was gone when he woke and, after an hour without hearing anything from the other rooms, he climbed from the tub and made his way into the common area. Mera had passed out on the couch and he smiled down at her. Giving his ribs and torso a quick check, he decided that he was recovered enough and bent to lift her. She didn’t even murmur when he placed her in her bed before shuffling off to his own.

***

Over the course of the next week, they both moved slowly, ate sparingly, and rested often in their own beds without much interaction. Eventually, they regained their strength, and started patrolling again. With two people hauling supplies, they were able to be out for longer before returning to the house, often for days at a time.

For several weeks they toured parts of the Library and, as they did, became more of a team. Ashur was learning Mera’s mannerisms and cues for what was dangerous or not. Soon he began to enjoy himself on these excursions and the time with his hostess with one exception. During their recuperation, Mera would occasionally give him sad looks. They were brief and soon replaced by some other expression, but he noticed them nonetheless. The melancholy glances grew more frequent once the two of them were healthy and active again, especially during mealtimes or as they returned for the night. He wasn’t certain what they signified but started to worry. Was he reminding her of her lost love? Was she upset that he had been hurt?  

Whatever was bothering her started to put distance between them. Mera spoke less and less during their trips and, eventually, began to go straight to her room once the evening meal was cleaned up. After several nights of this, Ashur was not only worried, but slightly irritated. He had tried several times to get her to talk about her problem, but she had deflected, ignored, or flat out rebuffed his efforts. He wanted to help her with whatever it was she was going through, but he couldn’t if she wouldn’t let him.

He took to wandering local areas of the Library after she left him for the evening. He would try to read the glowing script on the bookcases again or visit the magical armory, often hefting and examining various precious items. Finally, one night, his steps led him to the colossal statue where Mera had explained Words and how she was protected by The Lexicon.

His approach brought him almost in line with the female half of the statue. Stopping far enough away that he could see her face, he noticed the myriad of emotions that were packed into a single expression. In that feminine mien, he saw empathy and compassion, courage and trust, determination and wisdom, but most of all, he saw hope.

“Hope for what?” he asked himself.

Knowing the reason for the Libraries, he first thought that maybe it was hope for the future; that the peoples of the world would live better with the knowledge on the shelves around him. But, as he stood immobile, the giant stone face started to resemble the blue woman now avoiding him. What did she hope for? For her destined Chosen One? For the end of her vigil? Or was it more basic than that? Did she hope for love? For connection?

He didn’t know and probably never would.

Keeping his distance, he moved around the great hub until he was facing the male half. This side was easier for him to understand. The titanic visage held the same courage, determination, and wisdom of the woman, but he also saw honor, loyalty, and ferocity. Most of all, he saw in the man’s face something that he had long ago recognized in himself: the need to protect.

When he was younger, he had thought it was possessiveness or simply an urge to fight and prove himself. However, as time and maturity reshaped his worldview, he had examined himself and found a compulsion to safeguard those who could not shield themselves. Once, during a more introspective moment, he speculated that this drive was what had made him enlist in the army in the first place but had realized that it ran deeper. It was part of his core; an instinct. He could no more deny it than he could his own life. All of his training, his weapons practice, his reflexive urge to help train younger soldiers to be better prepared, were part of this deep-seated need to shelter and defend.

Dropping his head and letting his shoulders sink from an unconscious parade rest, he gradually made his way to the base of the male guardian. As much as he wanted to be Mera’s protector, he knew that he couldn’t. He was ill-qualified to stand in front of her against danger. He didn’t have her regenerative abilities which meant that she would constantly have to guard for his physical safety, distracting her from a fight. Enchanted weapons aside, he had no magic to stand by her side as a partner.

Placing his hand on the bare foot of the statue and looked up at it. He cursed the circumstance that had taken Mera’s mate away from her. By all accounts, Colphon had been what she needed in a companion. The long dead Library steward had the abilities needed to complement her both in strength and power. More importantly, he had the blessing of the Library itself.

“Damn you for leaving her,” the somber soldier muttered. “She needs you. She needs her partner. She needs someone to stand with her and I can’t, though I wish I could. With everything in me, I wish I could.”

He stood there a few moments more, letting his desire and yearning to be the guardian that the lonely woman deserved radiate from him into the air and the statue beneath his hand. With a final frustrated thump of his fist on the stone, he turned away and started to make his way back to the house. He would simply have to resign himself to returning to the world and forgetting about this wonderful place and the lady who made it even more so.

His momentum stopped abruptly at the sound of something hitting the floor. Thinking it to be some errant traveler that had somehow made it this far into the Library’s core, he turned back toward the direction of the statue. Rolling near the base was a wooden rod about a foot long.

Ashur berated himself for knocking something loose from the giant sculpture and picked up the dowel. It felt solid in his hand and he hefted it a few times while looking upwards to see where it had fallen from. Several minutes of searching left him bewildered. As far as he could tell, there were no wooden parts on the monument. Looking down, he could see Words along its length, but he could not translate them. Resolving to confess his accidental vandalism to Mera in the morning, he placed the baton-like piece next to the man’s foot and started back to the house.

He was brought up short when he heard it clatter to the floor again. Muttering under his breath, he picked it up and put it back next to the giant foot. As soon as he let it go, it started rolling away. Grabbing it, he tried several times to replace it, even putting it in other spots. No matter how he positioned it, the thing would not stay in place.

“Fine,” he grumbled. “I guess you’re coming with me.” Twirling it absent-mindedly in his fingers, he made his way back to his bedroom and set it on the dresser where he could see it and remind himself to tell his hostess about the restless little thing.

***

His dreams were strange and dark throughout the night. Visions of demons and malevolent beings that his mind shied away from trampled back and forth in front of his eyes. In the distance, he saw a bright blue light that railed against the monstrous parade. It stood alone in the dark and held its ground, but it was just that: alone.

Something deep within him fought against that idea and he charged forward through the darkness. Swinging bare arms about him in an effort to join that azure glow, Ashur felt scrapes and cuts as he shouldered and shoved his way to it. Pain flared in his side from a gash made by the hooked carapace of an insect-like devil. His right hand bled from the fangs of something resembling the grotesque cross between a bear and a maggot. The fiends had been ignoring the dreaming man until now, but his movement through their ranks brought their attention fully upon him. More wounds showed on his skin, but he eventually made it to the small space occupied by the now dimming spark. Taking it in his hand, he cradled it to his chest and poured what was left of his remaining strength into it.

The glimmer did not grow so much as explode. Flaring into a colossal cerulean conflagration, the light roared out at the horde, burning out horror after horror. Suddenly, Ashur realized that the fire was no longer separate from him but blazed forth from the center of his chest and out through his arms. Feeling power fill his body, he methodically rid the space of every terrible creature.

As the last pained roar faded, he looked down in wonder at his hands. They flickered in blue flame and he raised them in front of his face. Movement in front of him caught his eye and he braced himself, preparing to fire off another blazing torrent. Before him, however, wasn’t another nightmare creature, but a staff, hovering gently in the blue light.

Nearly six feet in length, it floated a few feet away from. As it spun slowly on its long axis, he saw Words engraved in glowing white wrapping around either end. Curious, he extended his hand to grasp the pole, but it shied away; staying just out of reach.

In his mind, Ashur felt the reason for its reticence. The staff required something of him. It required a commitment, a pledge. It recognized his need to protect, to guard, but it needed more. Would he be willing to sacrifice his life? Would he be able to give up who he was and who he might have been to a task that would garner him no glory, no riches, no fame? Would he take upon himself a burden that might break his mind and soul in time? A burden that no other would be able to shoulder for him should he flag. To be the guardian he wanted to be, would he accept this responsibility?

Without hesitation, the soldier held out his hand to the hovering staff. The force with which it flew into his outstretched palm made him wince. Suddenly, searing pain drove through his arm and into his body and brain as the blue fire turned to a bright white. He cried out into the darkness that surrounded him as the power of the staff raced through him. Where it flowed, it made changes. His body, starting to feel its age in human years, repaired the damage of four decades of hard life. Blemishes were smoothed away, aches in joints that had started to pain him in bad weather disappeared, and ancient wounds and their scars were undone. His muscles became denser and thicker and his skin tougher.

His brain burned as whispers began to invade his mind. Thousands of voices spoke to his tortured awareness in a rush of noise. One by one, they took their place in his sub-conscious filling him with knowledge and understanding. After an eternity of sound, the vast crowd suddenly stopped and a single deep bass rumbled through him.

“As you have agreed, so do I. Welcome Guardian. Defend well what we have wrought here for the sake of the world and all who live in it.”

As the booming voice faded, so did Ashur’s dream.

***

The next morning, with his head pounding from a restless night that he couldn’t remember, Ashur stumbled into the bathroom without paying attention to his surroundings. He could remember post-victory battle hangovers that hurt less. Even the soft light from the walls drove pins into his eyes and the dull throb at the base of his skull felt like something was trying to twist the muscles there.

He made his way to the tub, turned the water to the coldest he could get it, and held his head under the spout until the freezing temperature started to make the rest of his head hurt. Groaning from the dull pain, he shut off the water and massaged his neck. He wasn’t certain if he felt nauseous, but he felt it was better to be safe than sorry. Mera would be pissed if she had to clean up after him.

He kept his eyes closed against the light and crawled to the toilet. Resting his forehead on the front edge, he took a moment to gather himself then reached around the bowl to pull himself closer. Instead of hard porcelain, his hands found soft flesh. In his beleaguered state, it took him a moment to realize the difference. His hands patted legs and ran up and down them, attempting to catalogue the sensations before sending the information to his brain. Once it had processed, he slowly decided that something was off and that he should take a shot at opening his eyes to see what was blocking him.

Hesitant to cause himself more agony, Ashur slowly unsealed one eyelid then the other and lifted his head a bit. To his utter confusion, all he could see was blue.

“Fuck,” he grunted, “muh eyes’r broken.” Deciding the best course of action was to try again, he let them drop closed and took a few deep breaths. His second attempt wasn’t any better. Still blue.

“Yup. Fucking broken.” He winced as his own voice reverberated through his skull. The next sound almost put him into the floor.

“They don’t look it from here.” Mera’s soft amused voice sounded like a battle horn as it roared down from somewhere above him. He whimpered and tilted his head back a little, resting his chin on the hard seat. She gazed down with mirth to where his face sat between her thighs and giggled. Practically in tears, the suffering man put his forehead back down on the seat, grabbed her knees, and tried to force her thighs around his head in a desperate struggle for quiet. He felt them shake and heard her nearly muffled chortling.

“What possessed you to drink so much, barbarian?” she asked him. To his eternal gratitude, she spoke quietly.

“Didn’t,” he grumbled. Mera raised his head enough to stand without being awkward and put the lid back on the toilet. Once it had settled, she let him rest again. “Didn’t drink a drop. Bad night. Dunno if’m throw up.”

Examining him with concern, Mera helped him to sit up and felt for tell-tale signs of fever or infection. Unable to find anything obvious, she momentarily left the bathroom and returned with a cup of water with something mixed in it.

“Whazziz?” He stared dubiously at what she offered him. “Poison?” He looked up her hopefully.

“No,” she replied.

“Damn. Would’ve drunk t’poison.”

Smoothing the wet hair back on his head, she gave him a little smile. “It’ll help. I promise.”

Wincing a bit at the movement, he tipped his head back and swallowed the contents of the cup in one large gulp. It was slightly bitter and burned going down.

“What happened to you?” she asked incredulously. “You don’t feel like you’re sick.”

“Dunno,” he mumbled. “Went to sleep. Bad dreams. Can’t remember ‘em. Woke up like dis.”

“Well,” she said with a consternated shake of her head,” at least I get to put it off one more day.” She took him by the arm and helped him stand. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

He slept for most of that day, throughout the night, and halfway into the next. Deciding that a little more rest couldn’t hurt, Ashur didn’t emerge from his room until the third morning to find Mera sitting at the table with a cup of tea.

“Good morning,” she greeted him with a small smile. “How are you feeling?”

“Much better,” he responded. “Still don’t know what hit me, though.” He sat down across from her and put his face in his hands. “Our whole company got hit with food poisoning that didn’t hurt that bad. Thanks for whatever you gave me that let me sleep.”

“What I gave you should have had you running from one end of the Library to the other for an hour without stop. What do you remember?”

Pulling his face from his hands, he gave a small shrug. “Nothing much. I went to sleep one night and woke up the next morning like every hangover of my life had been rolled up into one and shoved into my ear sideways.” Rubbing the back of his head with one hand, he gave her a heavily apologetic look. “Um…Sorry about the whole face in the toilet thing. I didn’t even realize you were there.”

Her laughter filled the room. “I got that feeling, barbarian. I have to say that, until I realized you hadn’t been drinking, it was quite amusing to watch you stumble around. When you started heading my way, I wanted to get up, but I wasn’t quite done yet. Be glad I was by the time you reached me.”

The big man thumped his forehead on the table several times. “Ugghh…,” he grunted. “So sorry…”

Eventually, she took pity on him and patted his hair. “It’s ok. Once you said that no alcohol was involved, it stopped being quite so funny. What did you do the night before?”

He looked up her with a slight grimace. “Nothing. I went for a walk close by and came back. I went to bed and…well… you saw…” He pointed at himself in a haphazard way. “I feel like there was something I wanted to tell you about, but it wasn’t that important and I can’t really remember what exactly it was now.”

She stared into his eyes as if looking for something, then stood up with a dismissing wave of her hand. “Well,” she said,” whatever it was, I’m sure you’ll remember soon enough. Would you like something to eat?”

At his energetic affirmative, she proceeded to the kitchen.

Thinking back, he cleared his throat. “Um. I do remember you saying something about putting something off for one more day. Is it something you need my help with?”

In front of the pantry, the blue woman stiffened and then slumped. She turned back to him and waved her hand again. “It’s nothing that can’t wait another few days until you get your feet back under you. How do you feel about going back out again tomorrow?”

“Certainly,” he replied. “It’d probably be a great thing to get my body moving after sleeping so long. What did you have in mind?”

“Nothing serious,” she explained. “Just a day trip. We should be back before dinner.” It seemed as though her amusement at his plight was short-lived because she spoke very little more while he ate.

***

The next day, they traveled again through the formless grey. Frustrated at being able to feel a bit of movement, but not see the pathways they traveled, Ashur once again brought along the book he had been working on. Almost immediately after Mera started their journey, he dove into it. Experience had taught him that there was no mental stimulation to be had in trying to guess what the caretaker must be seeing in order to navigate. As he read, however, slight flickers crossed his peripheral sight. At first, he paid them no mind, but after a while, they grew more pronounced and took more of his attention away from his reading.

What was truly maddening, however, was the fact that whenever he did look up, the optical ghosts disappeared until he focused on the pages once more. Eventually, unable to concentrate on his text, he made a game of trying to catch the images just outside of his visual range.

What he saw, he couldn’t really say since there was no definition to speak of. At times, he might have seen a tree or some sort of plant. Other times, he could have sworn he saw great spheres of various colors that were dominated by blue, green, or yellow. Some of these were white and made him think of the moon. He knew instinctively that they were immense, far greater than he could imagine.

For a moment, just before Mera called a mid-morning halt, a glowing yellow line faded into the distance in the direction he thought they might be traveling in. Confused, he asked her about it.

“You said it would take time to teach me how to use this thing. How long does it take to see where we’re going?”

She shrugged and took a bite of the hard cheese they had packed as he dug out the water canteen. “I honestly don’t know. I kind of gave you a flippant answer before and my mind was on other things. This area didn’t show up until after we submerged the Library and it took me a while to figure out what it was. I think it was around the three-year mark when I could really start to make my way along the trails. Why do you ask?”

It was his turn to shrug. “Not sure. I’m seeing little bits of images out of the corner of my eye and was curious. I thought that maybe I was starting to see what you were, but now I think my eyes are just playing tricks on me. Was it clear to you when you found it?”

“Oh yes,” she replied. “I was still trying to come to grips with my new situation. This platform should have taken me to one of the other Libraries, but when I tried it, I ended up moving through weird space. What are you actually seeing?”

Ashur looked all around them before answering. “All I see is grey. No images, no pathway, nothing. That’s why I think my mind is trying to make things up. It’s bored, I guess. What do you see?”

Mera pointed off to her right. “I can see down that path is three dimensions that we can’t survive in and one that has life that would survive in the Library space. I’ve checked it out before, but there’s really no where to cross over.”

The caretaker turned farther and pointed again. “That way has a world that I’ve visited from time to time. There is no sentient life, but the border is thin. I try to make sure that nothing is growing that might sneak up on me one day.”

Once more, she turned and aimed her finger. “That way leads to a whole new branch with so many offshoots that it took me almost fifty years to map them all. We are currently headed that way, but not very far along it.”

The simple soldier’s eyes widened as she spoke. Incredulously, he asked,” How many trails are there?”

“Too many to think about,” she answered. “It would take an infinite amount of time to find and catalogue them all and I have other concerns. The Library lets me know where a possible incursion might come from and I can keep an eye on the most likely overlaps. Truthfully, part of me wants to travel to them all, but another part can’t wait to be back in the world so I can stop worrying about them.”

She sat down beside him and leaned back against the podium. “I’ve had some truly terrifying encounters keeping track of this part of the overlaps, but I’ve also seen some incredibly beautiful and wonderous things and I’ll miss those when the Library is back in the world.”

After a few more minutes of quiet reflection, she stood, put her hand on the podium and resumed their journey. A few hours later, she looked up and rousted him from his reading. Their discussion had shown him that what he was seeing really was a trick of the mind and he had thrown himself into his book in an effort to block out the ghostly half-pictures.

Taking a moment to get his bearings, he looked around and saw that, unlike the two previous locations that the dimension hopping platform had taken him from and to, they now stood in the middle of a grassland plain. He had marched through several prairies during his time with the army, but this one was different, but he couldn’t quite place why.

When he mentioned this to his guide, she pointed at the stalks. Instead of the round, cylindrical stems he knew from his home, these were octagonal and bounced off one another as the wind blew against them. Reaching out to pull one loose, the strange plant vibrated in his fingers. He looked at Mera and she smiled and took it from him.

“Watch this,” she said. With her travel belt knife, she cut the end off of the stalk; squaring it. Then she raised it to her lips and blew through it like a tin flute. Ashur’s face took on a look of amazement as not one, but three different high-pitched tones sounded from the stem. He was just comprehending that idea when an answering hum came wafting across the expanse. He turned in circles trying to pinpoint the origin of the responding notes.

“They’re coming from everywhere,” the grinning woman told him. “What you’re hearing is the resonating harmonics from other stalks that have been broken or bent. I once spent three days here just figuring that out. It was astonishing to realize.”

She handed back the cut shoot and waved for him to try. On his second attempt, the grassland sang back to him. Looking around, he raised the stalk to his lips to try again, but Mera stopped him. “You can play as we travel, but too much from one location tends to attract animals and not all of them are complacent about visitors.” With that said, she started to travel towards the slightly orange-ish sun that warmed them.

They hiked for around fifteen minutes before reaching the edge of the vast steppe and crossed into a rocky area. Octagonal trees poked up through the stony terrain. Eventually, they came to a rather tall escarpment and looked down over a vast ocean. Mera sat on the hard stone of the edge and gestured for him to join her.

“This is one of those beautiful spots that I mentioned a while back. It’s one of the few that I can sit and enjoy for a few minutes.” Leaning back on her hands, she drew in a deep breath of the salty air and smiled softly.

Ashur looked out over the water and reveled in the crash of waves upon the cliff beneath them. Where they met, nearly three hundred feet below, the earth had been worn away. Looking down, he saw a smooth area in the rock face as though the stone itself had been melted. He stared at it for a while trying to figure out how the unnatural liquesce might have occurred.

“That’s what we’re here for,” Mera noted, pointing down to the object of his attention. “Last year, a group of highly predatory birds roosted there. It wouldn’t have been a problem, but one of their hunting grounds took them into the Library. I had to track them down here and evict them. I promise that none of the ones here were killed though I did have to dispatch a few that wouldn’t leave the overlap. I had to extend out the rock until their nests were filled in and disappeared.”

“How did you do that if we are out of the Library now?” he asked.

“It took while,” she admitted. “I still have a little power here since the Library overlaps part of this world, but it’s weak. All told, I think it took me roughly seven hours to get it done. They flew off across the water, but I come back to check every once in a while to make certain they haven’t returned.”

They sat for a bit and enjoyed the scenery for another hour before the azure woman stood and brushed off her hands. Taking her cue, Ashur joined her and they departed for the platform and home.

They were trudging back through the oddly geometric grass when a sudden premonition hit the soldier and he leaped forward; taking a startled Mera to the ground. He rolled quickly and came to his feet in time to see a red spear hurtle towards where he had jumped from. Looking at the spot, he saw that another auburn shaft was already sticking up out of the ground.

Ashur whipped his sword free and activated his vambrace shield. He stepped in front of Mera who was rapidly getting to her feet. Two more similar shafts shot at them, but the tall soldier was able to brush them away. He braced himself for another attack from that direction, but his eyes swept behind them and was able to catch the movement of the grass that announced a charge that might have caught them off-guard had he been focused on the spear throwers.

His upraised sword blocked the sideways swing of a short green blade wielded by a creature that was barely as tall as his companion. An elongated snout sported two large front teeth that showed when it screamed some sort of challenge at him. Its arms were neither thick nor spindly, but the force with which it had swung at him was more than he had expected. Mossy fur covered most of its body leaving its chest and stomach bare.  

Two more of the green and tan mottled things appeared out of the grass and faced off against him. Their clothing was mostly woven from the tall vegetation that surrounded them and he guessed them to be part of a larger tribe. Mera moved behind him and alerted him that three more had joined the fun. From the direction she pointed out, he assumed these to be the spear throwers.

The two groups faced off for a breathless moment before Ashur’s original attacker raised its sword and ran at him. The other two on his side soon joined the fray. The big soldier waited until the first tribesman started his downward swing before ducking low and hitting it in the legs with the flat of his blade. The creature’s body spun in the air and landed a good distance away. Ashur had felt its leg bone crack.

Spinning on his knee, he used his shield to counter the strike from another assailant and sent the third flying with a swat to its shoulder. The remaining tribesman took the top edge of his shield in the chin and stumbled away before falling unconscious into the grass.

Ashur spun yet again to see Mera holding up a hand toward her opponents. She had formed some sort of shield of her own and they were hacking at it for all they were worth with little effect. He could see her arm shake with every blow, but she held firm.

Noticing that his last move had brought him close to the abandoned spears, he rammed his sword back into its sheath and grabbed one of the protruding poles. Coming up behind her opponents, he struck the nearest one a sharp clip across the back of its skull with the butt of his spear. The motion caught the attention of the next closest tribesman and it turned to face him only to be hit between the eyes by the soldier’s downward swing. As it crumpled to the ground beside its friend, the last one gave up on Mera and turned to face him. Apparently possessing more skill than its friends, the furry fighter successfully blocked several blows before launching an attack of its own with another of the short-bladed swords. With practiced ease, the human parried before slipping past a stab and tangling the creature’s legs up with the spear. As it fell over backward, Ashur pulled the spear free and held its point under the fallen tribesman’s snout. As soon as it felt the blade against its neck, the sword was dropped and it held its hands out in surrender.

“Mera,” he called out,” are you okay?”

“Yes,” she panted, “I’m fine. Just don’t kill him.” She walked up behind him and put a hand to his shoulder.

“Hadn’t planned on it unless he does something monumentally stupid. He seems to be smarter than that though. How far to the platform?” He had eased the pressure a bit, but the spear remained in place.

“About a hundred and fifty feet, I think. Are you hurt?”

“No,” he replied. “I’m fine, but we may need to run as soon as we turn our backs though.” Ashur planned on breaking both spears so as not to catch one between the shoulder blades, but a quick sprint to safety couldn’t hurt either.

“I don’t think they’ll come after us anymore today,” the blue woman said. “You’ve shown that you can out-match them and he looks to be more worried about his friends.” Indeed, the big man noted that, once it became clear that he wasn’t going to kill the mole-like native, it had started to look around for its companions. Ashur nodded and stepped back. Taking the spear in both hands, he brought it down across his knee, snapping it in two. He repeated the action with the other one while the supine creature looked on.

It remained still as Mera and Ashur backed away toward the platform. Once they were out of sight, they turned and started walking at a decent clip. Neither spoke until they were traveling back to the Library.

“Well that was exciting.” Ashur rolled his shoulders and massaged his forearms as the adrenaline started to fade from his system. The muscles felt tight and swollen, but he knew that would fade soon enough. Lifting her hand from the podium, Mera slumped down to sit on the floor. Breathing out heavily with a soft raspberry, she rolled her neck and worked her own hands, clenching and un-clenching them.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “That was definitely not how I planned this trip. I think they must have heard us blowing the grass, but I didn’t think any of them would be so close.” Turning her head, she looked at him with a small frown. “Why didn’t you kill them?”

At his shocked look, she hurriedly held up her hands in protest. “I’m glad you didn’t, but I thought it would be your first reaction since they tried to kill us first.”

The soldier gave his arms one last shake and shrugged. “I’ve dealt with a few aboriginal tribes over the years. Most of the time, they are just defending their home. Since they didn’t really give us a chance to let them know we were just passing through, I thought it the best course of action. We are going to have to go back there at some point, so I’m hoping that they remember that we only wounded when we could have killed. Maybe next time, they’ll give us space.”

Mera looked as though she was going to speak when he said “we” but stopped herself. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Let’s get home.”

***

The trip back didn’t seem to take quite as long, but Ashur was certain that the faded fancies his mind kept throwing up into his peripheral vision were becoming more clear. At one point, he turned his head and saw two glowing lines create a crossroad of sorts in front of him. The almost unfelt shifting of the platform coincided with his vision of taking a turn to the right. However, it happened so fast he chalked it up to his imagination. He suddenly wondered about an anomaly in their travel and, once they had reached the Library proper, brought it up to Mera.

“If we have to travel so far to get to their world to deal with these intruders, how is it that they can just show up among the bookcases all of a sudden?” He had wrestled with the concept during their trip back, but eventually decided that he didn’t have enough information.

Her simple shrug was less than encouraging. “If you ever figure it out, let me know,” she quipped. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for millennia and the best I’ve ever come up with is that the overlap where they come into the Library is fleeting and momentary, but stable enough to allow constant travel. I tend to think of it like a doorway into a house. The door itself might not always be open, so you can’t come and go whenever you want. On the other hand, when it is open, it stays open for long periods of time; letting you walk in and out whenever you want.” She scrunched her face up in frustration. “The worst part is that I can’t always follow, even if the door is open. The few times I’ve been able to follow a creature back, I almost got trapped in their world.

“Whenever a new doorway is made and something comes across, I have to go wandering along the pathways to figure out where it came from and how to keep the incursion from happening again. The problem with the uncertainty of the overlaps is that a new one could pop up within ten feet of the old one on their end and I have to travel to the same world several times to close another door.”

He thought about that for a moment, working through the puzzle as they walked.

“So basically,” he finally ventured, “they get the shortcut and you have to take the long road? Huh.” He shook his head. “That’s really not fair.”

Mera raised her hands, palms up, in a “What can you do?” gesture.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he continued, “what do you normally do in situations like that? I know you said you didn’t like to fight, but it seemed like you were in a tight spot. Did you not have enough magic to fight back?”

The caretaker grimaced at his question. “I said I’m not a melee kind of girl. It’s not that I don’t want to fight, but more like I don’t know how to. Our duties as caretakers didn’t exactly cover the martial disciplines. I’d learned some basic hand-to-hand over the years, but never felt it necessary to learn how to use a weapon until we had to submerge the Library. At that point, there was no one to teach me or practice with. I’ve read all the theory and techniques and practiced a little, but, with no one to show me where I’m going wrong, I don’t really know if I am doing it right. The few times I tried to fight in the field, I ended up really hurt. Over the years, it just became easier to defend myself until I could get away.”

Ashur perked up. “If you want, I could help with that. I’ve lost track of how many youngsters I’ve trained from scratch over the years. The army basic training really didn’t cover much except block, swing, and stab so they got most of their polishing from me. I can train you to fight with or without weapons.”

His heart soared! At last, here was something he could help her with! He had a reason to stay!

Her next words popped the bubble of his eagerness.

“No, you can’t,” she stated simply. Her shoulders slumped and unshed tears started to well in her eyes. She stopped walking, took a shuddering breath, put her face in her hands, and held it there for a long moment. When she finally looked up at him, the sadness and despair in her expression matched the darkening color of her skin.

“Ashur, look…,” she started. Another deep breath stopped her and she walked over to the end of a bookcase. Leaning against it for support, she slid down it into a sitting position. As she had during one of their first talks at his dirt cell, she brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.

Giving her a worried look, the soldier watched her sit and walked toward her. Out of habit, he glanced up at the glowing script on the bookcase and realized that he could finally recognize a few letters. The slight triumph was quickly forgotten in the face of the curled-up woman’s obvious anguish. He squatted down in front of her and laid a hand on her knee. She had been staring into the distance and his touch brought her back to him with a jerk. She reached a hand out to him and he took it.

“Please don’t hate me,” she whimpered. The pain she was experiencing was palpable. “I’ve been lying to you, but I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t!” Her eyes begged him to understand and he sat down next to her, still holding her hand.

“You can’t stay because you’re not a part of the Library. Even if you did stay, you’d get hurt or get killed. You’d grow old and die and I’d have to watch you do it and wouldn’t be able to stop it. I can’t do that!”

She shuddered against him and he put his arm around her shoulders.

“I’ve been so alone for so long and then you showed up and I wasn’t alone anymore. I kept telling myself that it was temporary, that you’d be gone soon enough and that this was just a little treat that I could enjoy while it lasted. But I knew that it wouldn’t, it couldn’t last for long and then I’d be alone again but this time it would be worse! Because I had this time with you, the loneliness would be so much worse!”

She wound down for just a moment and he took the opportunity to try to console her.

“I know,” he said. “I knew from that first night that you said you were going to send me back that it would be rough for you when I left. That’s why I tried to help make good memories for you.”

She shook her head violently. “That’s not the problem! Well, it is, but it isn’t! I lied to you, Ashur! I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help it. I told myself that I needed your help so I could put it off for a few days, then you got hurt and I could put it off for longer. But, after a while, it got easier and easier to ignore, and then I started feeling guilty and wrong, but I’d been putting it off for so long that it was getting easier and easier to keep the lie going!”

Her rambling came to a halt as she looked up at him. “I’m so sorry I lied,” she whispered.

“About what?” he asked quietly. He thought he might have an idea but also knew that she needed to say it.

“About sending you home,” she answered into her knees. “The tether has been open for weeks, but I just couldn’t bring myself to send you back.”

Ashur nodded. “I thought that’s what the sad looks were for, but I figured it just meant that the time was getting close, not that it was ready.” He heaved a giant sigh and stood. Taking her hand, he pulled her up as well. She looked up into his eyes and mistook the pain she saw there.

“You hate me, don’t you?” She backed away from him and wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t blame you. I’d hate me too. I’ve kept you trapped here like a prisoner and you don’t deserve that and I…”

Her self-recriminating ramble was cut short when he reached out and tapped her on the nose. She looked up at him, startled. He took her hand and started walking them back towards the house. He wanted to reassure her but was having a hard time deciding how to do it and wanted the time to get his thoughts in order.

In truth, he was in as much pain as she was. Not because she had lied to him. He completely understood the reasoning and emotions behind that and didn’t blame her a bit. More than likely, he would have done the same thing in her place. If he were honest with himself, he would have been happy if she had never told him at all.

No, his pain came from knowing that, now it was in the open, she had no more excuses to let him stay. She had to send him back. He would do his best to convince her to give him just a bit more time, but he ultimately knew it was futile. She was right in that he wasn’t part of the Library. He was a visitor, an interloper; no different than the long dead researchers who wandered the aisles for a few hours before going home.

He would have to leave and it broke his heart.

Several times on their walk back, he started to say something, but broke off. It wasn’t until they were back in the house that he was finally able to articulate his thoughts. He pulled the still sniffling woman into a great hug and sat them both on the couch.

“I don’t hate you,” he said. “Far from it. You are an amazing person that I’ve come to care for and would call friend, if you’ll let me.” He tilted her face up toward his and saw the relief at his admission. “I’ve actually spent a great deal of time trying to find ways to convince you to let me stay here with you.”

Giving her one last squeeze, he leaned back away from her and settled at one end of the couch so that he could face her. “Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to come up with any good reason for you to let me stay permanently. You’re right, I’m not a part of the Library. I’m not a caretaker or one of the first races. I can’t do magic or heal like you do. Over the years, I’ve had to come to grips with the idea that I’m not the immortal that my twenty-year old self would like to have believed.

“I know that the monster that hurt both of us so badly isn’t a one-time thing. There will be others and I’ll probably be hurt just as bad or killed. Part of me is willing to accept that just so you’re not alone here anymore.”

He took a deep breath and let it out.

“But I also know that it would be worse when it did happen. Worse for you. I’m well aware that you like me too and don’t want to see me get hurt any more than I want to see you injured. However, I do have a proposal for you.”

He leaned forward and took one of her hands in his.

“Let me stay long enough to train you. It might be a few months or even a year, but, in that time, we can give you even more good memories and you’ll be better able to defend yourself when I’m gone. I can also help you for as long as I’m here. I can watch your back and do my best to keep you safe. It’ll be short term, but it’s better than nothing.”

The hope that brightened her features was fleeting and gone quickly. She withdrew her hand from his and backed away to the other end of the couch. Folding her hands in her lap, she looked down at the couch space between them and her head slowly moved from side to side.

“It won’t work,” she said softly. When she looked up at him, the pain and despair were back. “I want it to. You have no idea how much I want it to! I can see into your heart, Ashur. You are a good man and I want you to know that I think of you as a friend too, but it just won’t work. The longer we keep going, the harder it will be to let go.”

He knew she was right, but it didn’t make him feel any better. He silently cursed whatever twist of fate or coincidence that had given them both this taste of goodness and then forced them to abandon it. Returning her penetrating gaze, he resolved to try one more time; even knowing it would do no good.

“Mera, I have nothing to go back to. You saw the same thing I did. Everyone I ever knew is dead and gone. My family was lost a long time ago and you watched my friends get slaughtered. They’re all gone.  

“I have no home to go back to. I’ve been with the army so long that I’ve had to walk away from any that I might have made many times. Truth be told, this is the longest I’ve stayed in one place since I enlisted. I’ve enjoyed my time here and, yes, I want to stay. Give me just long enough so that when I go, I’ll know you will be safer. What’s to keep us from enjoying this a little more?”

He reached out into the distance between them, his hands as pleading as his voice. She shifted in her seat and stared off into the distance.

After a moment or two, she answered him, still gazing off into empty space. “At what point do we end it?” she asked. “Say you stay to train me to fight. Where does the training end? What is the marker that declares me proficient enough to stop? When do I have enough happy memories of our time together to hold me for the rest of time? What is the end point that we both say is the time for you to go? Six months from now? A year? Five? Ten?

“We both know that we will keep moving the line. You want to stay and I want you to stay, so what is to keep us from lying to ourselves and each other as time goes on? If we set a time limit, then we will most likely extend it when we reach it. I know enough about fighting that there is never a point that you are done learning. We will keep making excuses until it’s too late.”

She looked back at him and clenched her fists on her thighs.

“I have to send you back.”

They both sat silently for a long time. Finally, he spoke up.

“When?” he asked gloomily. She had tears again when she answered.

“Tomorrow. Early. If we wait any longer than that, we’ll start this discussion over again and the excuses will keep piling up.”

Nodding his reluctant agreement, he stood, turned, and held out a hand to help her up. When she shook her head, he nodded again and moved to the kitchen to make one last dinner.

***

They were sitting on the couch again some time later. He had pulled out all the stops for the meal. Wanting it to be special, he had made a small feast with as much variety as he could think of. The meal was spoiled, however, by their shared misery and neither had eaten very much. They had retired to the couch after cleaning up and taken their former places at each end.

Not able to keep silent any longer, the morose man turned to his companion.

“Is there anything I can help with before I go?”

Her low monotone answer was short. “No, thank you.”

Neither of them moved as the evening wore on. As the lights dimmed, Ashur realized that he had one last request. Standing and offering his hand once again, his eyes pleaded with Mera to join him. She acquiesced and rose. He held onto her hand and lead her to his bedroom. Their eyes stayed glued to each other as they walked.

When they reached the edge of the bed, he drew her close and put his hand to the side of her face.

“Can I ask for one more night?”

Her answer was to turn her face up to meet his. Their lips met softly and timidly. Unlike most their previous couplings, he wanted this to be gentle.

He stroked the side of her face with his thumb and brought his other hand around to hold her. In return, both of her hands framed his own face and held him down in their kiss.

How long they stayed like that, neither could say. The kiss went on and on with both partners taking turns to keep it going. Eventually, Ashur began stroking Mera’s back. When she melted into him, he reached up to the nape of her neck and undid the tie that held her dress in place. It unraveled and the top of her bodice fell to where their bodies were connected.

When he stepped away from her to remove his shirt, her dress fell the rest of the way to the floor. As soon as his chest was bare, she moved against him again. Her breasts felt hot where they touched his skin and he could feel her chest rising and falling rapidly. He leaned forward to press his lips to her neck and suckle gently there.

Mera moaned as swells of pink washed over her skin. Both of her hands grabbed at the muscles of his upper back and she leaned into his touch even more. Slowly, tracing every curve of her, his hands fell to her waist and he pulled her hips into his so she could feel his hardness and how much he wanted her.

Kissing her yet again, he leaned down to remove his shoes and trousers; giving a little laugh into her mouth when he stumbled a bit. He could feel her smile as she shared the humor.

Once he straightened, however, the amusement was gone, replaced by lust. Taking her by the waist, he easily lifted her and tenderly laid her in the middle of the bed. Taking a moment to appreciate her body one last time, he stood before her proud and erect. By the way her eyes traveled up and down him, he guessed that she was doing the same. He stood there for another few seconds, letting her fill as much of her memory as possible. He regretted that his own mind would be wiped clean of her and that he would not be able to look back on this as the joyous time it was.

Finally, not able to wait any longer, he crawled onto the bed with her and brushed the insides of her knees with his lips before moving up her body, leaving other soft kisses and licks as he went. Her soft sighs and gasps only fueled his own passion and, by the time he was laying fully on top of her, his penis was twitching visibly with his heartbeat.

However, as much as he wanted to move inside her, this would be their last time together and he wanted to savor it. Supporting himself by his hands and knees between her thighs, he took in her face and the cerise hue that colored her blue skin. Her eyes locked onto his and, for a moment, tears returned to them.

He understood those tears and leaned down to kiss each cheek as they trickled down across her temples. She brushed his face with light fingertips.

“This really is it, isn’t it?” she whispered.

He nodded solemnly, unable to respond vocally.

“Then make this last. Make tonight something I can take with me through the years. I promise never to forget you and the time we had together, but I don’t want to think about that now. Keep me in this moment.”

She brought her legs up around his hips and tilted her pelvis until the head of his cock lay on her mound. Understanding what she wanted, he drew his own hips back until his tip slid down along her wetness. Finding the opening, he slid just the head in and stopped. She gasped as he spread her labia but held still and enjoyed the feeling with him.

As if following the laid-out steps of a dance, they moved together on cue. She put pressure on his hips with her feet at the same time that he hunched forward and lowly slid his length into her. When he bottomed out and felt his scrotum resting on her skin, they both stopped moving once more. Several times, they repeated the steps: moving and stopping, moving and stopping; doing their best to make the sensations distinct before continuing on. Eventually, as nerve-endings became more sensitized, they increased their speed, but still kept it easy and unhurried. They knew that this would be the first of many peaks and wanted to enjoy all of them.

Even at their leisurely pace, they were both close before either of them knew it and Mera only beat Ashur by a few seconds as she cried out in a voiceless moan and her body shuddered. Her legs wrapped around his hips, clamping him to her and the waves of grasping convulsions that stroked his immobile length were enough to set him off. He grunted hard with every pulse of his orgasm as his seed coated her insides. Even trapped within the confines of her legs, his hips still tried to thrust into her for several seconds. They both rode their respective climaxes for what seemed to be an eternity before the big man pulled out of her with an audibly wet noise and collapsed next to her. With her thighs still quivering and riding aftershocks, Mera rolled over and climbed on top of him. She lay her head on his chest and they enjoyed the intimate touch of body to body while their breathing settled.

They rested like that for some time until her scent and the feel of her naked body renewed his lust. Feeling himself harden, he caressed her back and sides, tracing the Words on her skin. When his cock brushed up against the inside of her thighs, she gasped and looked up at him. He smiled wickedly and grabbed her hips. Her answering giggle had them both chuckling, but she still wiggled down his body until she could feel him slide along her backside. She reversed her direction and reached between them to grasp his shaft. Smiling into his chest, she guided him once more into her and he felt their combined fluids lubricating his entry.

Suddenly it was her turn to give him a grin and she sat up. Raising off of him, she brought her hand to her pussy and scooped two fingers through the wet mess there. Settling his dick back inside her, she leaned back and reached behind her with the gooey hand. After a moment, her face took on a studied look which dissolved into one of enjoyment.

He felt the finger which she had used to penetrate her ass through the wall that separated the two canals. In the process of opening herself up, she was also playing with the underside of his cock and he was loving it. Her hips shifted again and then two fingers stroked him. The swaying woman moaned as she worked the two digits in and out of her ass. Her hips thrust against him in an effort to grind her clit against his pubic bone.

For his own part, Ashur reached up to grasp her breasts. He kneaded them firmly which increased the volume of her moans, especially when he occasionally pinched her blue nipples. She writhed on him and the flow of her arousal dripped between them. The heady smell of sex that had waned while they rested once again filled the air.

Still holding two fingers inside herself, Mera lifted her hips from his and rotated them with just a few inches of him remaining. She smiled as he groaned and gripped her chest even harder. He sucked air through his teeth when she dropped back down quickly. Repeating the process, she bounced up and down on his cock until he was certain that he would blow again. She felt that in the slight swelling inside her slippery vagina and lifted completely from him. His frustrated protest was quickly cut off when she slid his cock into her ass and slid down it.

The sensation of her tight anal grip was too much and he blew. Grabbing her thighs, his hips thrust up into her as his balls ejected their sticky contents into her bowels. With a satisfied smile, she leaned back, resting her hands on his legs and continued her movements all through his climax. It felt as though the tight ring of her sphincter was doing its level best to milk every drop of cum from him.

After a few moments, he regained his breath and senses. Noticing that her ass still held his softening girth inside her, his eyes settled on her face. The smile was still there, lighting up her entire countenance. Not wanting to let go of him, she kept her weight on his hips. Still supporting her weight on one thigh, she brought the hand that had not been in her ass down to her still wet pussy and started lazily stroking her clit.

He watched in fascination as the telltale strobing of pink washed across her skin in time with her hand. Brushing his hands along her skin, he held her just under her ribcage, trying to give her body more stability. Knowing that it would be at least a short time before he would start to get hard again, he enjoyed the sight of her pleasuring herself.

Her eyes, which had been locked onto his, squeezed shut and she bit her bottom lip as she got closer. Finally, she let him hold all of her weight and fondled one of her breasts with her other hand. The one that caressed her nub was moving faster and she panted heavily.

“Do it,” he told her. “Let me see you cum. I want to feel it. Cum for me.” Her eyes snapped wide at his words and her body quaked violently as she crested. The hand rubbing her breast stopped to pinch the nipple.

“Uunnngghhh….” she keened. Holding her tightly as she thrashed, he felt his own arousal growing inside her. Even through the wash of pleasure, she was aware of his erection expanding her ring and she was overcome by another orgasm. His mouth opened in astonishment when her pussy sprayed across his pelvis and stomach, drenching him in her cum. A hefty amount made it as far as his face and he licked his lips. The taste of her there made his cock even harder.

Not waiting for her to come down, he flipped them both over and pulled her legs up to her chest. His sudden re-positioning almost interrupted her pleasure until he began to thrust hard and fast into her ass. Another orgasm took hold of her body and all she could do was give herself over to it. Wracked again and again by the sensations coming from her rear, she writhed under him, her sex fountaining across his groin.

The wet slapping noise of their bodies coming together filled the room. Her flailing hands slapped at his shoulders. “Please,” she whimpered. Her skin was a distinct pink now, the pulsing alternating colors were gone. “Oh please! Fill me! I can’t take anymore! Please! Ooohhh!” As usual, her words sent him over the edge and he grabbed the sides of her ass, filling it once more. The pulsing of his penis as he came shot her skyward yet again and she collapsed underneath him once it had passed, insensate and unconscious. His testicles emptied the last of their contents and he fell on top of her, breathing hard and feeling his heart pounding against his ribs.

Eventually, he pushed his weight off of her and, rising to his knees, pulled his cum-coated cock from her gaping ass. He saw it twitching in response to being empty, almost as though trying to find him and suck him back in again. The outpouring of his cream mixed with the remnants of hers as it flowed down her and into the sheets.

Still catching his breath, he sat on the edge of the bed. Her breathing had calmed shortly after she had slipped into insensibility. Reaching out, the tired man brushed hair from her face and tucked it behind her ears.

Once he was able, he went to the bathroom and washed himself clean. Returning to the bedroom with a warm cloth, he once again cleaned the comatose woman. He thought about carrying her into the other bedroom, but decided he no longer had the strength to do it.

Exhausted though he was, he wasn’t ready to sleep yet. He knew that once he closed his eyes, the next time they opened would be on the last day of his stay here, something he was not prepared to face. Gathering up his clothing, he walked to the dresser and started to empty the pockets.

Most of what they held were small bits of this and that which were easily put into a pile for Mera to dispose of however she saw fit. Next to the pile, he stacked the three Library maps. The one he used the most now had a tendency to unfold on its own and kept trying to tip over the edge. To weigh it down, Ashur reached behind a stack of clean shirts and pulled out the wooden rod that had fallen from the statue.

Keeping one hand on the papers to hold them still, he turned it once more this way and that, trying to decipher the writing on it. He heard Mera starting to move and put it down on the maps. Crawling into the bed, he tucked her in under his chin and she burrowed deep into his chest.

“I think that will keep me tingling for the next hundred years or so,” she murmured drowsily. He snickered at her joke and pulled her closer. Kissing the top of her head, he caressed her back until she fell asleep again. He sighed and realized he could no longer fight the fatigue. He took one last look at her sleeping body and joined her in slumber.

***

The next morning, he was awake and running his fingers gently through her cerulean hair when she opened her eyes.

“Good morning,” she said. His reply was a soft kiss.

As he pulled away, he tried to hide the sadness he was feeling but a little slipped through. She nodded back at him and reached up to hold his face.

Unable to hide from what would happen today, he decided to face it head on. “So how will this work?” he asked.

Blinking back tears, he saw her breath catch just a little. After a moment,she answered.

“I want to have one more breakfast, then we’ll go back to where I stored your clothing and armor. You’ll need to get dressed before anything else happens because you’re too heavy for me to try it while you’re unconscious. After that, we’ll travel to the tether point. Once we’re there, you’ll go to sleep. When you wake up, you’ll be in the forest somewhere near the hole you fell into. You’ll probably be groggy for a few hours, but after that…” She attempted to shrug but could only manage it with one shoulder while she was lying on her side. “I’ll come back here and go on as I was before.”

The blue woman tried to smile and touched his face again. “After a few months, of course.”

He took her hand and touched it to his lips.

“Thank you again for this,” he told her sincerely. “Even if I don’t remember it, thank you.” He brought his face forward to kiss her forehead. With the day’s plan laid out, he didn’t trust himself with more. It might break him.

“I should be thanking you,” she said. “You’ve given me a bit of hope, a bit of joy, and I think that will be enough to sustain me until I can return to the world again. Thank you for being my friend.”

For a long time, they simply lay there, treasuring the moment. Eventually, he turned to lay on his back. Following him, she draped her body across his and rested her head on his chest. Putting an arm behind his head, he gave a rumbling chuckle.

“You’ll probably spend a lot of time watching me from the viewer, won’t you?”

She laughed.

“How’d you guess? I think I’ll probably be glued there for… What is that?” Her voice was curious, but soon changed to disbelief and then rage.

“What is THAT? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!?”