Rain entered her library, then turned around and closed the door. Immediately after, she opened it again, revealing a completely different view. She stepped through and onto the balcony overlooking the shaft with its blurry eye at the bottom. 

 

She had to duck as a book zipped by her head, only to burst into flame and disintegrate into ash. The flying books and pages had picked up fervor since the last time Rain had been here, yet the whole place maintained its eerie silence. Rain also noted that she could see no hint of shimmer in this place, not even on herself. And why would she? This place was where her shimmer belonged, and she could only see shimmer when it was foreign to a realm.

 

Rain bent down and placed one of her two coins in front of the door to the mist room. Direction and distance meant nothing here, and Rain wasn’t positive that she could use the doors in this part of the library to leave. She was definitely sure she couldn’t find her way back here once she left. Best to have a way to warp straight to a known door out. The other coin was how she was going to move around this place.

 

Walking to the morbid railing of the balcony, Rain tossed a coin straight off and onto a lower balcony before warping to it. The ground here was patterned in red and white with shapes Rain didn’t have names for and doubted she could draw even if she wanted to. It was different from how it appeared when she looked down on it from above, making her believe she hadn’t ended up at the same place she had warped to.

 

She shrugged and picked up the coin. If she didn’t know where she wanted to go, then any place was as good as another. 

 

[Warning: due to prolonged exposure to unreality, your mental corruption has increased by 1%, current mental corruption 1%.]

 

Ignoring a message from Mr. Purple about her mental corruption ticking up, Rain walked through the first door she found: a white one only a foot wide and made of something that felt like bone. 

 

The whole world seemed to shift when she passed through, and Rain found herself standing on the vaulted roof of a room full of scroll shelves. Each cubby held a cylindrical case made of either black or white metal. Neither Rain nor her past self had any idea what those metals could be. 

 

Rain tried to reach one of the shelves, but the distance between her and where the shelves hung above her - or were they sitting on the floor, and she was the one hanging? - was too great, and her pitiful jumps did nothing but make her hair sway where it hung straight up from her head. 

 

Rain hugged Snow, afraid that if she dropped him, he would fall to the ground - her ceiling - where she would never be able to get him. She turned her attention away from all the knowledge just out of reach and instead searched for a path further into the room. There was no way to reach a door from where she had ended up. How had she stepped through a door and ended up here anyway?

 

No matter, not too far ahead, there was a massive hole where the ceiling had a tower or something. 

 

Rain advanced carefully and peeked over the lip of the hole. She couldn’t see the bottom; everything past a few feet was shrouded in darkness.

 

Too curious for her own good, Rain dropped her coin only to have it float in front of her, spinning lazily, unable to fall to the floor or ceiling. Rain was completely stumped on what to do.

 

[Warning: due to prolonged exposure to unreality, your mental corruption has increased by 1%, current mental corruption 2%.]

 

Rain winced at the message and grabbed the floating coin. Giving up on this route, she warped back to the coin she had left by the entrance. 

 

Ready for round two, Rain threw her coin at the same balcony as last time and warped to it, arriving at yet another different balcony than she had intended. Instead of walking through the plain stone door straight ahead of her, Rain headed down the walkway, dodging flying books as she went. The things really didn’t seem to care if they hit someone.  

 

Out of curiosity, Rain tried to grab one of the books and jammed her finger when she missed the timing. 

 

Massaging her finger, she glared at the book as it landed in a pile just behind her that hadn’t been there when she passed. Still, Rain wasn’t willing to give up and waited for the next flying book to pass. Maybe if she caught it, she would be able to ride it. A mental picture of her riding a flying book made her smile.

 

Her opportunity came shortly with a thin red book flying towards her. This time, Rain managed to catch it.

 

With more than a bit of trepidation, Rain opened the book.  She knew the books in the mist room wouldn’t give her enough corruption to be a problem as long as she had relatively little corruption when she read them, but these books out in the shaft could be completely different.

 

Rain resolved to only read the first few lines and see how she felt afterward. Strangely the book was written in normal letters not some strange runes.

 

‘Jeckus Sakys is stealing from the royal treasury. Tine Husith slept on guard duty. Jonathan Williams doesn’t actually enjoy studying. Kawii has a crush on Kieli. Gregory’s porn stash is…’

 

Rain had told herself she wouldn’t read more than a few lines, but the completely nonsensical nature of the book distracted her. The names didn’t sound right to Rain; they weren't proper Islander names or the stupid names the rich had adopted from the mainland. They didn’t sound right to be from any mainland country that past Rain had shared with present Rain either. 

 

Flipping through the book, Rain found it was just more of the same. It didn’t even raise her corruption. If she had to guess, these books were where the library kept human secrets. That meant that when a book burst into flame, those things were probably no longer secret. As Rain looked at the book, a few lines writhed before sinking into the page, leaving their place on the page blank.  

 

Rain let the book go, and it flew off. She supposed secrets were forbidden knowledge, but the chances of finding the secret of something important by reading through the books flying around this infinite room were almost nonexistent. Rain would go completely mad from the atmosphere long before that happened. 

 

Giving up on the books of petty secrets, Rain returned to her search for something useful.

 

“Mr. Purple, if there really is something in here you want me to find, then I could use some direction.”

 

No answer.

 

Rain hadn’t really expected one, but it was a disappointment. 

 

Rain kept walking; however, whenever she decided to open a door, it just felt wrong. So she found herself wandering around the balconies of the shaft, dodging flying books. Eventually, Rain found a door that felt right; it was formed from a flat piece of metal so shiny it made a perfect mirror.

 

Rain turned, opened the door, and then stepped through. Fortunately, she wasn’t placed in any weird places; instead, she walked into a hall made of rough sandstone. 

 

She took a moment to admire the stone. She knew what it was, but she had never seen sandstone before. She was pretty sure it didn’t exist on the Archipelago. 

 

The hall itself was an unadorned rectangle with sharp angles. As far as Rain could see, there wasn’t a single door in the hallway; it simply went on and on. Reaching the end side of this hall would take far too long. She should go back and find a different place to search. Yet something about this place called to her.

 

Rain hugged Snow tightly and rested her chin on top of his head before striding down the hall. She was interested to notice that despite there being no source of light, everything was still visible; shadows were even cast by the nonexistent light source. 

 

[Warning: due to prolonged exposure to unreality, your mental corruption has increased by 1%, current mental corruption 3%.]

 

Rain kept walking down the hallway with no end in sight. There was no change and no indication that she was getting anywhere other than the door fading into nothingness behind her, and still, Rain walked on and on. And on.

 

[Warning: due to prolonged exposure to unreality, your mental corruption has increased by 1%, current mental corruption 8%.]

 

She was wasting so much corruption she should turn back, but she couldn’t. For some reason, she felt drawn further in. She knew that if she made it to the end, she would find something good.

 

[Warning: due to prolonged exposure to unreality, your mental corruption has increased by 1%, current mental corruption 9%.]

 

Rain kept walking until something finally changed, and a wall appeared, blocking off the end of the hall. Rain ignored the feelings of frustration at wasting so much time just to find a dead end and kept going until she stood in front of the wall that ended the ridiculously long hallway. 

 

The wall was covered in runes, but unlike the books Rain had read in the mist room, these runes didn’t seem to want to be understood. That didn’t stop Rain from trying, though. However, after a few minutes of furious staring, Rain realized that determination wasn’t enough to understand a different language.

 

There was no way this room was completely pointless, right? Reaching out with her left hand, she pressed it into the wall in front of her, and the whole hallway shivered. Ripples ran down the stone walls like water before the hallway closed behind her, trapping her in a tiny box. 

 

Rain pushed harder into the fleshy stone in front of her, and the stone retreated, opening the way to a small room beyond before the walls changed, melting and turning into a dark, slimy substance. The room only held one thing: a black book covered in seals and suspended by chains. The moment Rain saw it, she could hear it singing in her mind, calling for her to come and claim it. And her mind wasn’t the only one.

 

[I̶̮̒n̵̼̏i̵̘̓ț̵̊i̵̝̋a̵̱̾t̵̞̅ẻ̵̹ ̵̭̌m̵̬̓ȅ̵̙s̵̝̒s̵̘̉a̵̖̓g̵̯̋e̵̼̓ ̵̹̏s̵̥̓y̵̳̒s̵̫̉t̵̮̓ẻ̵̯m̵̬̏ Error: not yet authorized. 3rr0r{TAKE IT]e̵r̵r̵o̵r̵]