Painful Memories and Crossed Writing

I can’t say for sure how much time passed since the Ulysses incident. A few days, probably, since I do remember sleeping. However, sleeping is most of what I remember doing - since I broke down, I don’t have energy for anything left.

Reminds me of when I was a teenager, when my mom had trouble keeping me awake. I sigh, remembering the mother I left behind.

Turns out, staying at the house of a mothering old lady did make me miss my mother more than I ever did before. More so even than when I was living alone for the first time. And boy, did I miss my mother then. I remember I called her constantly, asking about how she was doing or how to do something or another around the house.

I sigh again, feeling the tears flooding my eyes as I try to remember her voice, her feel, her smell. Somethings are engraved in my mind, like how warm she was during those late nights when I was a kid and she would comfort me from my fears. Or how she hates staying without anything to do for too long, making her keep working even after she retired.

Some things, I can’t seem to remember quite right; her voice, in my mind, never sounded like hers. And I couldn’t figure out how did I manage to forget her smell. Or how her hot chocolate tasted - the one I am holding right now that Martha made for me couldn’t compare. I hiccup, feeling the tears as they fall down, just as Martha enters the living room again.

“Aya!” She comes to me, worried. “My dear… What happened?”

“It’s nothing…” I sniffle. “I’m just… Sad.”

“Oh, dear…” She hold my hands, grabbing the cup of hot chocolate and putting it on top of the coffee table. “I know that library was your life. But burned and ripped books are replaceable. You, however, are not. I’m glad you were with such capable people when it happened - I would be beside myself if anything happened to you…”

“I know.” I try to dry my tears with my sleeves. “It’s not that, not really. I guess I’m just feeling… Lonely. I miss my family. My mom…”

“Oh, you poor thing…” Martha says, and hugs me. “I’m sorry. I guess the library was you last memory of them… But you are not alone, Aya, that I can promise you. I’m here, ain’t I?”

I cry harder with that, my hands clutching the back of her blouse as I let her comfort me, my heart aching more and more for my mother. However, the more I cry, the more I can feel something settling in me, as if a catharsis is starting. By the time I feel all my tears dry, we are both on the ground, with me being held almost like a baby by Mrs. Honeyswitch. I sniffle, cleaning my eyes.

“Oh, no… Martha, I didn’t mean to…”

“Nonsense, dear.” She says softly, caressing my cheeks like a mother to a daughter. “You clearly needed it, and I would never deny you comfort. I… Well. I hope I’m not overstepping, but ever since Elias passed, we’ve been company to each other. And I see you like a daughter, Aya, I hope you know that.”

I blush softly, and nod, sitting back and creating a bit more distance between us, but holding her hand.

“I do now. Thank you.”

She pats my hand that is holding hers with her other.

“Now don’t you worry, dear. You will see, everything will be just fine. Why don’t we start by getting off of this floor, huh? Then we can see if you’re up to seeing your library.”

I nod as we both slowly get up, with Martha cleaning the dust off of out clothes. We spend some time cleaning around here, and I finish my hot chocolate - already cold by now - before I nod to myself.

“Ok. I think… I think I can do it.” I say, softly.

“Want me to come with you?” Martha asks. I shake my head.

“I… I think I should do it alone. But thank you.”

She smiles at me, proud, as I exit her home and walk towards the library.

The place is quiet when I enter. The outer wall didn’t take damage, but the destruction gets clear as day inside. The books are scattered across, some charred beyond repair, some with their covers ripped out of them. As I step over a few of them, closing the door behind me, my heart aches. In the couple of months I’ve been here, I’ve grown to love this place.

I’ve grown to love again these books.

Fair enough, they were reminders of past failures, since most of them were stories I never did finish. But still - they were mine. And I had started to see them not exactly as failures, but as steps I had to take to become who I am today.

I grab a few of the less damaged books, and start to pile them up on one of the untouched furniture, a reading table. I focus first on cleaning rubble - taking out what was now trash, broken furniture that couldn’t be repaired and books that had no way of saving. It takes a while, but the more I take everything out, the more the building begins the groan and creak. I smile softly, and pat the door frame.

“There you are, old man. Bet that feels a bit better, huh?”

The building groans again, as if responding to me, and that in turn makes my smile grow bigger. I hurdle the last few bits of trash out, eying the pile I’d have to deal with later, before coming back in again. I close the door behind me, and access the situation.

The ground floor is less of a mess now, but I’m still a long way away from fully cleaning up and repairing it. I decide now is a good time as any to sort out the mess of somewhat salvageable books on the table and pull up a chair, sitting before grabbing the nearest one. Suddenly, the groaning from the wood around me stops, and that fills me with a sense of dread - the library only was silent when there was danger around.

And then I feel it. A soft drip on my pants, staining the fabric black and burning me in the process.

“Shit!” I say, dropping the book as I try to clean the ink. “Really? Again? Can’t I have a second of peace?” I ask the air around me, but no answer comes. Instead, I see a pool of black ink forming from the book pile in front of me, so I tentatively grab the book I let fall and open it, careful to not let it hurt me again.

What I see takes the breath out of my lungs. I can see the words on it melting and bleeding out of the page, as if history itself was being forced out of existence. This one, an old story about a mage I made before writing this world, bleeds out right in front of my eyes, its ink joining the others on the table before it starts to trickle down to the floor. I quickly close it, and grab another one - a history one this time, or as much as it counted as history in this place - and see it is also bleeding. It didn’t matter If they were facts or stories. They all bleed.

I put it in the pile, and quickly move to the rubble that was the reception desk. I rummage through it, and after a couple seconds, find the diary. I pull it out, triumphantly, and rummage quickly through its pages, trying to see if anything changed, but nothing had. The last page was still ripped, the one that had all the suspicious messages and my ‘bring it on’ scrawled on it. The account of the typical events in the library was still written in my own handwriting. Somehow, while all the other books around me were bleeding its contents, the diary was still the same.

I don’t know if that sameness compelled me, or if Failure herself sent a divine inspiration my way, but I grabbed a pen as quickly as I could, hesitating a second.

“What should I even write…? It’s not like it’s going to do anything… Is it?” I ask myself, my hands shivering. However, I press on, and write a single word.

Stop.

For a moment, I hold my breath. I feel the world stalling around me as I feel something leaving my fingertips and running down the pen. I see a few sparks of magic, the same sparks that ignited Dalylah’s hands during that fight, dip into the paper itself.

Then, the pen breaks in my hand. The bleeding gets back, faster, irritated. The word ‘stop’ bleeds out too, but it doesn’t hurt me this time, it just stains my hands.

And someone screams outside.

I run outside, clutching the diary and the broken pen, and the street is chaos. People scatter in every direction, chased by things I wish I didn’t recognize. At least five Choken lurch after them, their paper tendrils cracking against the stone like whips. Their guttural screams scrape through my ears and squeeze my chest, but I can’t freeze now.

One of them lunges after the same boy I saw during the first attack, its tendril already curling around his ankle.

“Watch out!” I shout, hurling the broken pen with all my strength. It smacks against the creature’s chest with a dull thunk, and for half a heartbeat it turns its hollow face toward me. Then it keeps pulling.

The boy shrieks as the tendril drags him down. His eyes glaze over, wide and empty, as the Choken’s memories dig into him.

“No, no, no!” I sprint, grab him by the armpits and yank back with all I have. The tendril tightens, paper fibers cutting his skin, until I stomp down with my heel. Something inside it tears with a sickening rip, spraying black ink that burns against my leg. The tendril slackens, and I wrench the boy free, hauling him up even as my lungs burn.

“Aya!”

I look up and see Martha, running toward me. The Choken turns too. Its tendrils lash, cracking against the stones, and my stomach drops.

“Run! To the Glittering Gargoyle!” I scream, dragging the boy with one hand and seizing Martha’s wrist with the other. “If anyone has fire, use it!”

Behind us, I hear the clatter of something thrown, then the whoosh of flame. A Choken screeches, its body curling like burning parchment. But I don’t look back. Not when two lives are in my hands. I just run.

We run with all we have to the Glittering Gargoyle, and as we get to the square, we can see Yuki and Dalylah fighting the Choken that made their way over. Yusuke is ushering people in, but I can see he is eager to join the fray in teh way he is restless and keeps a tight hold on a torch. We run to him, and I usher Martha and the kid inside.

“Aya!” He exclaims, relief flooding his face. “You’re ok!”

“Somehow!” I exclaim back, trying to get over the noise. “Go on, we can switch! Go help people!”

He nods, determination flooding his expression, and runs to join the fight. I take his place at the door, ushering survivors in. What feels like hours of helping people is actually a few seconds, until I can feel an inferno roaring around us - Dalylah’s magic. Her blade blazed like a living inferno, Yuki’s arrows catching sparks of her fire, Yusuke striking with raw strength beside them. They looked like a painting of heroes, while all I could do was hold a door. My hands ached not from battle, but from shoving people inside. And still, I couldn’t shake the thought that I should be out there, fighting too. Shouldn’t I? I created this world, didn’t I? And yet here I was, small, useless, hiding behind those I wrote to be brave. I look around, trying to see if anyone else was coming, but as no one does, I close the door behind myself and look at the people inside.

Barely a few dozen souls, out of hundreds, stare back at me. Eyes wide, trembling, hollow with terror. Real faces, not just names or sketches in a notebook. Each of them was waiting for someone to save them, and all I could do was stand there and count how few remained. My chest tightened with the cruelest thought: I had written them into existence, and now I was failing them on the page of reality.

Something in my expression must have slipped through, because Martha clasped my shoulder softly.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure more survived, and are just hiding in their own homes.” She says, trying to soothe me. I nod, still not fully convinced, but let her calm me down for a while.

We all stay huddled together, no one daring to look out, when the door opens. I stand, grabbing a nearby candle to use as a weapon, when Yusuke enters, visibly tired and full of soot, but alive. I sigh in relief, lowering the candle a bit, and am about to ask if they won when Dalylah barges in behind him, and grabs me by the collar.

“What did you do?” She hisses the words out, her fingers tightening in my shirt.

“I didn’t do anything!” I answer, startled. “Why do you think this is my fault? I didn’t ask for any of this!”

“Dalylah!” Yusuke yells, startled and goes to grab her, but she shoves him off as if he weighted nothing.

“You have to have done something! There were reports of you acting strange after the deal to buy your library was proposed, and then the attacks started! This has to be your fault!”

“My fault?” I scream back, feeling the hot rage climbing my throat. “Clearly it was, since I sent them to attack me not once, not twice, but three times! When I didn’t even know about whatever deal was made! Hell, someone went behind my back to do it! And maybe that someone was you!” I let it spill, and the room around us plunge into a deep silence.

Dalylah’s eyes fire with rage.

“You dare…?”

“Of course I do!” I hiss, grabbing her wrist tight. “You are the one who shows up with all this information, when the Mayor sent for someone to help. You are the one the abandoned this village in the first place, or do you think I don’t know it?”

“I was trying to save them from the demon lord!” She defends herself.

“And did you? Or did you just use your fucking trauma to run away and put the blame of things happening on other people? Like always?” I ask, my voice hoarse, as my fingers dig crescents on her hand.

I feel the fire starting to grow on Dalylah’s fingertips, and just as she is about to answer, we all hear a cough - too close to the Choken sounds.

We all look at the source, and see a blushing Martha. She tries to speak but only choked sounds come out of her mouth, and my mind goes immediately to the old man on the first attack. She coughs again as Dalylah releases me, her hand going to her sword, but Martha manages to regain her voice.

“I’m sorry.” She says, her voice raspy. “All this fire and excitement made me parched. Yusuke, dear, could I trouble you for a bit of water?”

“Of course!” He says, and busy himself with grabbing water. Everyone else exhales in relief as Martha laughs weakly and dabs at her lips with the back of her hand.

Only I don’t breathe.

Because I see the smear she wipes away, black, glistening, dripping down her pale skin like poison.

Her soft gasp confirms it.

Ink.

Not her. Please, anyone but her.

“No,” I whisper, the word tearing itself out of me. My eyes lock on her trembling, stained hand. “Not you.”