Dragon Aster Trilogy

21: LIBRARY



Another fire wall came up before Sybl as she chased after Loki, and this one was hot enough to stop her in her tracks. Once he had regained his lead, it died down. “You cheater!” she panted.

His laughter echoed back to her from another hall.

She swore she would kick him just to feel better when she did manage to catch him, but she was too tired to run anymore. Sybl leaned against the wall to catch her breath. It soaked her with just the right refreshing temperature. She was too hot to care about appearances while still wearing her nightclothes.

She looked to the end of the hallway from where she had just come from as it began to glow. Figuring it was Loki’s Ancient messing around some more, she didn’t pay it any mind. It cut through the corner and emerged before her with its dark green spirit form. Its mouth looked like it bit down on a burning fire. It was as thick and armored as a tank in comparison to the slender forms that Lintrance and Loki had.

Deciding it was best to get out of the way of this new dragon, she calmly walked in the direction Loki vanished to. But the dragon followed.

Panic struck her, and she made a desperate run for it. She hit the wall of the next turn, before scrambling her feet in order to continue her sprint. The Ancient singed her heels and hair that trailed behind her escape. On reaching a large set of heavy wooden doors, she pulled one open. Sybl ran inside as her heart raced to a new speed limit. But she had stumbled on the worst place to escape a fire, as she looked up to the countless books along the shelves and walls.

“This is not the female’s dormitory wing.”

Sybl looked up to where Cecil sat on the railing of the second floor. “I think I have a fire...following me,” she said after she pulled in a deep breath. Then she immediately began to look around for a place to hide.

“Damn that idiot,” Cecil grumbled as he sent his water sphere to float down before the door. A fiery glow appeared under it for only a moment, before the sphere was shattered into droplets when the door burst open. Then the dark green Ancient of Dyaus’ infuriated somn burst into the library.

Sybl ducked and rolled out of the way with a cry, as the dragon took a swipe at her with its claws of fire. Its attack ignited the shelves and floor around her into flames.

Cecil somned as he jumped down, and his blue mist took shape of his dragon form in the center of the library. Dyaus’ enraged Ancient ignored him as it remained determined to get to Sybl. When Cecil stepped into his way, it spat a flare of fire at his face.

It was enough to strike Cecil on a personal note, and he pulled the aeri water from the walls to him all at once. Then he unleashed the tornado of it at the Ancient, flushing it out of the room in a counterattack. It slipped and fell a few times at having become a solid form. Then it vanished into the wall of the hallway.

He looked back at Sybl, where she huddled in a nearby corner. “What did you do to threaten him?”

“I didn’t do anything,” Sybl retorted as she looked around at the damage done to the library. Some of its books were torched, soaked or both. Her hopes of not turning this world against her had officially hit a new height of failure.

Cecil lifted the water from the floor and everything else that was hit by it, and sent it back to the walls in small tornadoes. “An Ancient can’t attack a soul unless you’re a direct threat to it.” He brought his face right up to her, as if to sniff out any ill intentions.

“I really didn’t do anything—I swear.” Sybl gulped as the blue dragon was anything but happy with her. Hopefully she wasn’t a threat by the default of being hopeless.

“You’re still cleaning this mess up.” Cecil unsomned and his blue mist passed through her and dissipated. He healed his burned face before returning to where he had been sitting a floor up, to supervise.

Sybl picked up the nearest charred book that had been dried mostly by his power, before opening it to see just how much of its story had been lost. As she flipped through the pages, they proved to be all white and blank. Oh no. I erased them!

She set it down on top of the closest shelf and picked up another, before finding that it too, was empty. Shit! I’m so dead. I don’t wanna—

“Stop swearing!”

Sybl dropped the book with a start, as if it had caught fire all of a sudden. One of psi’s weak spots looked to be panic, and she was nothing short of shaking from it.

“They’re woven in pluma Thread. You can’t see the story or mend it unless you touch it.”

Sybl looked closer for any bumps that might indicate it was braille, before setting her hand down in the center of the first page.

The library vanished as her consciousness was taken in by the book. She rubbed the blur from her eyes to look at the dark-sanded beach before her. The water that rolled in was an equally dark tide. In the horizon over the ocean, glowed a weak light. “Sweet.”

“Asil, what are you doing here?”

The voice was deep and large enough to make her bones rattle. Sybl carefully turned around to face the biggest dragon she had ever seen. She gulped, and kept telling herself it was a dream. Then she dared to try and find its eyes.

It beamed them back down at her in a blue light that its constantly moving, long black fur didn’t conceal. As she looked closer, it became clear it had no wings. Or scales. It could have just as easily been a fluffy wolf-like snake, if it weren’t the size of an instant death for her.

“Asil?”

“Um… Who are you?”

The dragon tilted its head to the side, confused. “Are you well?”

“I am...great. Where am I?”

The dragon brought its face closer, till she could feel his gentle, but cold breath. Before she could have her answer, his face was replaced with an annoyed-looking Cecil. She was already out of the book when he sent a sphere of water like a water balloon at her face. “What you do that for?”

“I said to repair the book, not rewrite it,” he replied upset. Then he snatched it away from her, before taking note that she had somehow mended the burns in it as well. Confused, he grabbed her hand as if she were a thief and looked at the lines on her palm. “So you aren’t completely useless.”

“Thanks... I think. But I was watching that,” she pleaded and pulled her hand back from him to try and take the book back. “That dragon was just...just huge! He like blocked out the whole sky! Was he real?”

Cecil re-shelved the repaired book by using his Ancient to climb the shelf. When he looked back to her with his sphere of water, Sybl had already scattered off to gather all the remaining burned ones.

With a giant stack in her arms, she carefully teetered them back to the closest table, and picked up another to read. When Cecil sighed at what was now stacked-up against him to be a long duration of her presence, Sybl only flashed him a closed-lip smile. Then she opened the next book.