The Queen’s Library was vast in a way only 20-meter floor to ceiling bookshelves secured to stone walls could manage. The ladders leading up to the top of the shelves looked sheer and dangerous and the scent of ancient leather-bound tomes hung thick in the still air. Several reading tables sat at measured intervals in the center of the tower, but the sheer number of books was, plainly, the main focus. I was, in a word, intimidated.

“Please tell me you know where this stuff you need is located,” I sighed, not relishing spending the next 10 years of my life looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

“Of course I do!” Carrisyn sniffed. “It’s just going to take some time to break through the magic guarding it.”

“I’m not giving you any more blood. This whole blood fixation is really grating on me,” I snapped.

“What if I asked really nicely?” Sascha grinned at me.

“No! People need to learn to deal with their crap without trying to exsanguinate me all the damn time,” I scowled and flung myself down heavily on one of the nearby sofas, immediately regretting it as a vast cloud of dust puffed up and covered us.

“Watch what the hell you’re doing!’ Alarice coughed, wiping the dust from her face.

“Yeah, that was my bad,” I spit dust out of my mouth and wiped it with the back of my hand. “I’ll own that one.”

“Just…wait here and don’t touch anything,” Carrisyn sighed. For once I could absolutely agree with one of her plans wholeheartedly. I was tired and stressed and hated this castle with a passion. I watched as Carrisyn made her way to a book sitting on a pedestal. The book looked like any of the hundreds of thousands except it being on a pedestal rather than a shelf. I continued to watch as she began to move around the pedestal slowly, her hand slowly tracing intricate patterns in the air.

“What’s sir doing?” Sayuri asked, sitting on the floor next to the sofa and staring at the former countess curiously.

“Low energy Kabuki?” I shrugged. I honestly had no clue. I just knew that it felt good to sit down for once.

“Is friend Ashvallen going to leave Sayuri?” She asked abruptly, peering up at me, her large eyes guileless and sad.

“I…I think so,” I admitted guiltily after a moment’s thought. “Sooner or later, anyway.”

“Sayuri doesn’t want you to go,” she whimpered sadly.

“This place,” I glanced around, “this world, isn’t my home, though.”

“Can Sayuri go with you?”

“But what about all of your friends and family?”

“Sayuri’s family left her alone,” the cat girl sniffled. I noticed that Sayuri’s tendency to speak of herself in the third person seemed tied to her mood at the time. “They did not want her. Sayuri wants to go with friend Ashvallen and find her forever home.”

“Well, there aren’t any cat girls in my world,” I petted her head in what I hoped was a soothing manner. “And I have to work, so you would be lonely.”

“Sayuri can help with doing things!” Sayuri implored. “Sayuri can find things and clean things! Sayuri can be useful, and she promises not to eat much! Please, friend Ashvallen! Please take her with you!”

“Wouldn’t Carrisyn miss you, though?” I asked, trying to force a smile on my face and stifle tears at the same time with minimal success at both.

“Sayuri is only a tool for sir. She does not need or want her. Sayuri wants to be with friend Ashvallen,” Sayuri grasped my hand, holding tight pleadingly.

What, exactly, was going to happen? I glanced around at the party as they lounged or paced around the room. I’d given so much thought to getting back home I hadn’t wondered whether I would miss things here. This world was brutal, callous, and cruel. It was everything awful and more filled with sadists and power-mad human animals that would run their own mothers down in the street if they thought they could get ahead by doing so.

In many ways not so dissimilar to my own, I supposed. We simply hid it better under a veneer of ‘the public good’. In both worlds the powerful held sway over the powerless making arbitrary, selfish decisions that impacted millions. The wealthy trod over those they deemed less worthy all while crying on their yachts about how much money they were losing. In both worlds brave men and women were sent to their deaths for no more reason than one person’s ego. I sighed and glanced around me.

Sascha and Alarice and Isabel were talking quietly in the corner while Zelaeryn paced nervously back and forth. I still stood by my assertion we weren’t a party so much as a group of apex predators but that was ok, too, wasn’t it? Then there was Carrisyn.

She had been my first. In more ways than one. It certainly didn’t excuse any of the monstrous things she’d done to me, but in a world of monsters was she really any worse than any of the others? She was seemingly the personification of everything awful in the human condition, yet she was also a frightened, desperate woman bumbling through things as well as she knew how.

When I returned to my own world what would change? I would have my apartment and, maybe, my job. But I’d soon be right back where I started, waiting for the next Comiket or new manga release or yuri bait anime to come out while the world spun on around me. I would go back to being nothing and having nothing and no one. Here I was important, at least in a very small way.

No. I decided. This was not my home. This was not my world. This wasn’t even my body. While both worlds were equally awful only one was where I belonged. Once it came down to it, I would have to give Ashvallen’s Ferrari of a body back to her. Even when I was back in my own body which didn’t know the touch of Carrisyn’s lips or skin, I would still have my memories. I hoped that would be enough.

“I want you to come too, Sayuri,” I finally smiled at her. I did. I truly, truly did. “But I don’t even know how I’m getting back, yet.”

“Will you try, friend Ashvallen?” Sayuri stroked my hand absently. I kissed her forehead gently and nodded.

“I’ll try, ok?”

“Sayuri will be a good girl! Sayuri can- “she stopped, her ears swiveling anxiously. “Something’s coming,” she whispered nervously. “Something big.”

“I think we’ve got a pro- “I began, getting to my feet. A moment later the massive double doors leading into the Queen’s Library splintered apart and shattered, sending wooden chunks flying across the room.

The creature which rushed through was taller than Zelaeryn by several meters yet painfully thin. It was clothed in shimmering, translucent robes which both hid its form and, strangely, allowed you to see through it as well. Two glowing embers which I assumed were its eyes blazed hatefully in the dark, faceless cowl. The creature’s whole being exuded an aura of hate and power. It cared nothing for protecting the castle or guarding its territory. The beast didn’t want to feed and would not accept parlay. It wanted to kill until there was nothing left to kill. It was evil, plain, and unabashed. And it was rushing like a great whirlwind directly toward Carrisyn.

“Revenant!” Zelaeryn shouted nonsensically at me. A moment later the demon’s blade was free, and she was rushing into combat. A giant, evil-looking scythe burst into existence in the creature’s hands. The shaft of the weapon flickered and faded in and out, glimmering and pulsing with a purple glow while the spectral blade exploded into angry purple and black flames. Zelaeryn’s sword crashed down with crushing force, far more than any normal creature could have resisted, but the revenant brushed it aside easily. Undeterred Zelaeryn maneuvered herself quickly until she stood between the revenant and Carrisyn.

Well, my mind continued along it’s earlier train of thought for a moment, at least the other world didn’t have whatever the hell this thing was. I knew something bad would happen. The whole thing once we’d avoided the husks in the levels below had been too easy and now the grim reaper had showed up. It’s all fun and games until the specter of death breaks through the door, I sighed.

My body was already moving, the daggers whipping out and tearing into the revenant. Not surprisingly the thing didn’t even turn my way, it’s ember-like eyes focused solely on Zelaeryn and Carrisyn beyond. With no time to formulate a plan we simply reacted and joined the battle. Alarice’s bow sang as she pumped arrow after arrow into the monstrosity. My daggers bit deeply into what felt alternately solid and ethereal. Sayuri had quickly transformed, and her razor-sharp claws raked it’s back while Lysabel waded into the fray with her sword and even Sascha used her inhuman strength to pummel the revenant.

“You may want to hurry!” Zelaeryn shouted to Carrisyn as the revenant’s spectral scythe hammered into her sword with crushing force. I knew as soon as the giant demon was desperate, we were in serious trouble.

“I-I’m trying!” Carrisyn shouted back. “This is delicate work!”

Suddenly the revenant shifted its attack, turning toward Sayuri. She tried to dodge but the scythe caught her on the shoulder, biting deeply into skin and bone and staggering her immediately. Sayuri screamed in pain and staggered under the blow. The revenant raised the weapon once more to bring it down on the badly wounded girl, ignoring what should have been a staggering attack by Zelaeryn.

Without thinking I flung my dagger toward the blackness of it’s face, the blade burying itself in the murky darkness beneath the cowl. I called up my magic and emerald fire raced along the chain connecting me to the dagger and exploded into the creature’s face with shattering force.

Giving it no chance to recover, I yanked the dagger back to my hand, slashed wildly at one of its arms before leaping high into the air, spinning in mid jump, and burying both daggers into its face. I continued my leap and landed deftly on the other side, my magic roaring like a beast unleashed up the chains.

I pulled both daggers free and dove into the fray once again, slashing and tearing at anything I could get purchase on, my magic lending itself to the daggers’ ferocious slashes, leaving tendrils of emerald smoke and fire in the revenant’s robes. The creature turned away from the badly wounded Sayuri and toward me. Well, I thought, at least I got its attention.

Arrows began to slam into the revenant’s faceless cowl, and I thought for a second, I saw it stagger under the force of them. Zelaeryn’s massive sword swung upward and hung in the dimly lit air for a moment like a pendulum before crashing down, blue fire exploding into the monster. Sascha suddenly appeared out of a cloud of mist behind the monstrosity and brought both hands down on it with enough force to create a small shockwave. Lysabel’s long, slender blade glinted dully before slipping under where the revenant’s ribs should have been before thrusting upward.

The revenant’s form shimmered and seemed to fade in and out for a moment and I thought we’d finally gotten the upper hand. As if to mock me for my impudence the revenant’s scythe blazed to life even more fiercely than before and he turned on me as if everything we’d done had been nothing more than a mild irritation.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered. The revenant’s eyes, before mere coals burst into raging scarlet infernos. Its form was limned in ethereal purple fire, and it leveled its scythe at me.

“Isteach liom mo bhanríon,” a whispery, hateful voice hissed, the scythe pointed at me burning with otherworldly fire while behind the fearsome creature dozens, if not hundreds of husks shambled through the shattered doors.