Home for Horny Monsters Ch. 052

"Something wrong?" He walked into her room and looked around. He could tell where the room had been repainted, and noticed that a stack of broken canvasses sat in the corner.

She let out a grunt. "Yes. No. I don't know. I'm feeling restless is all." When she turned around, he saw that she wore a smock covered in different colors of paint. "Struggling to get some of these done."

"How so?" He pulled the door shut behind him. "I noticed you weren't at dinner."

"Not hungry." She sighed and sat down on her bed. "I'm struggling with some things right now."

"Like?"

"To start with, your dumb ass nearly getting killed." She said this with a slight growl that revealed her teeth. "And now that you're back, I just know that you're going to get into trouble again."

"Yeah." He sat next to her on the bed. "I'm really sorry I left you behind."

Her ears drooped. "Well, that's just it. Even if I had been with you, could I have made any difference? I honestly don't know. It's hard to put it into words."

"Try."

"For so many years, my only direction was to come home. I was a creature of rage. You know this."

He nodded. Yuki had almost killed him within seconds of their first meeting.

"Well," she continued, "after coming home, my only thought was to protect this place, and then to protect you. But right now? There's nothing for me to do except prepare. These paintings are a manifestation of my magic and my soul, but now my soul is restless. I've spent so many years fighting that I've forgotten how to hold still, to just live and relax. So while I was angry that you got hurt, now I'm angry that I have nothing to fight."

"I see." He threw his arm around her and squeezed. She rested her head against his shoulder, and he lifted his hand to stroke her hair. "When I was younger, my mom suffered a psychotic break. Growing up, she turned into this hateful, spiteful being that saw fit to torment me whenever she got the chance."

The kitsune nodded. "I've heard about it."

"Well, after she died, I went through a period of elation. My abuser was dead and I was free. No longer would I get cornered, yelled at, or even smacked around. There wasn't even any guilt on my part, I was finally free of the bitch.

"After a week or so, something changed. You see, I started hearing her in my head. She was so deeply ingrained into my life that she had left scars, not on my body, but my mind. What should have been a period of happiness and healing only served to throw me further down a hole. People told me I should be happy she was gone and to just move on, but it isn't so simple. I had spent so long living my life in a state of terror that it was easier to be stuck there than it was to climb out."

"So what did you do?" Yuki asked. She slid her head along his chest so that she was now in his lap, looking up at him. He moved his hand to the spot between her ears and stroked the soft fur there.

"Probably the hardest thing a person can do. I went to a therapist. Several, in fact. It certainly took me a while to find a good one. It's a hard thing to describe, but just because my problem was gone didn't mean that the past had faded away. I needed someone to guide me through the process of confronting my past and learning to heal from it."

"Did it work?"

He shrugged. "With varying levels of success. Naia did more for me than any therapist could. When she used her magic, I gained a certain degree of confidence I was sorely lacking. All of those little voices in my head that told me I wasn't good enough were drowned out by the part of her she left in me, and I'll always be grateful for it."

"I see." She shifted in his lap so that she faced away from him. "Sometimes, when I'm falling asleep, I see Emily again."

Mike rubbed Yuki's ears, but said nothing. Yuki and Emily had been romantically involved when his great aunt had succumbed to the shadow, and the kitsune's heart had been broken. It was a betrayal he was personally unfamiliar with, but he could almost feel the heartbreak in her voice.

"She's her old self," Yuki continued. "From before. And she'll talk to me, but I can never hear what she's saying. I try so hard to listen, to hear what she has to say. Every time I feel like I can hear her words, she changes. It's like someone throwing a sheet over a lamp, and the whole room dims. And now that I can hear her, all I hear is hate in her voice. And then I wake up, and I'm crying, and I hate myself, because I can summon spears of ice, or command Death himself, but I've let this mortal cut me deeper than any blade, and I feel weak."

"Love and compassion are never a sign of weakness," Mike said. "It takes a brave heart to believe in either of these things."

She trembled beneath him, but remained silent. He stroked her hair for a little while longer and continued doing so even when he could tell she had dozed off. Once he was convinced that she was out, he slowly shifted her onto her bed and carefully covered her with a blanket before leaving.

Once in the hall, he looked over at Dana, who now sat on the floor near the rats with her computer and a notebook.

"Trying to crack the code?" he asked.

"Got nothing better to do," she replied.

"Just make sure you keep it down," Mike told her, keeping his voice low. "Yuki really needs her sleep."

Dana threw him a thumbs up and he left her behind, her unblinking eyes staring intently at her screen. Several minutes later, he was in his own bed, his eyes on the wall. How many years had he suffered as Yuki did, teetering on the edge of exhaustion only to be startled back to alertness each time his mother yelled at him across time and space? Thinking of his mother, he could hear her calling for him, her voice dripping with venom.

"Love and compassion," he muttered, treating the words as a talisman to guide him safely to the shores of his mind.

When Mike walked into the office the next morning, he saw that Death was busy with the stereoscopes. While the grim reaper muttered something about consent, Mike let himself into the Library.

"Sofia?" he called when he noticed she wasn't waiting for him. She hadn't been at breakfast either, the only trace of her presence being the continental style breakfast she had clearly set up for everyone.

Curious, he crossed over to the floating globe that sat in the Library's lobby and waited for a few minutes.

It wasn't long before the movement of a floating carpet caught his attention and the cyclops descended from above. She wore a long cloak and carried a magic staff that glowed with a pulsating green light.

"There you are." He smiled at her and stepped onto the carpet once it landed. "Thanks for breakfast, it was good."

"Of course it was." She tapped the staff on the carpet and it rose into the air. Invisible hands pressed against him, holding him in place. "Sorry I wasn't there to greet you. I got up early to try and find the area of the Library that we needed. This place has seen a surge of activity recently, which means books aren't always where I think they are."

"Really? Like what?" He looked over the edge of the carpet. Down below, he saw no movement.

"The Library is constantly reorganizing itself." Sofia turned her head and the carpet slowed. "If you could see this place from high enough up above, it would make you think of thousands of giant gears that turn constantly, albeit slowly."

"But why?"

"Expansion. Books made in your world all end up here, and at a frightening rate. The Library was built to accommodate this, and the pillars rotate in groups so that works that fit in multiple genres at least face one another. New pillars will often form near primary pillars, and everything has to shuffle about to accommodate it."

"Primary pillars?" It was just now occurring to him that despite spending plenty of time here, he had no idea how the place worked.

"Yes. Think of them like the purest form of any particular genre. As the pillar expands, it may blossom outward, like a fractal. The new pillars will break free as a genre is redefined, or even as a sub-genre is formed."

"That's...really cool. How come I've never seen it move?"

She tilted her head at him and scowled. "Your trips here tend to be very goal oriented."

"Can I see one of the pillars that's expanding?"

Something like a smile crossed her lips. "I suppose, if we have time."

"I think I should see it. The Library is just as much a part of the house as anything else."

"Except it isn't part of the house. It's a separate place, remember?"

He shook his head. "I don't see it that way. You're a part of the house, and this place is a part of you. I want to know more."

She looked away from him, her long braid bobbing in the breeze as the carpet accelerated. They were moving fast, and the pillars were moving past him so quickly that he could barely make out the shelves.

The pillars condensed momentarily, and the carpet swayed between them until they entered a large open area. At its center was a gigantic column that stretched upward into a portion of the roof that had been raised, and all he could see in it was darkness punctuated by the occasional appearance of a book. The column was easily the size of a small skyscraper, but instead of being a perfect circle, it looked more like a weathered gear with smoothed out teeth all along its perimeter.

It rotated at a slow pace, and the carpet moved alongside it for a better look. In certain places, the bookshelves looked like they were melting out of the walls and forming into organized rows along the surface of the gigantic column, and books fluttered about like tiny birds as they fell from above and drifted to their resting place.

"Wow," he whispered. Up above, he could hear the rustling of pages and slamming of shelves as these objects shifted onto the new pillars. "What genre is this?"

"This pillar is romance." She pointed her staff toward one of the landing zones. "These off-shoots will eventually have some category of their own, and then break away from here to become their own columns, or maybe merge with another category into a bigger column. You don't often see this at the entrance, because those books are the more popular ones that used to get borrowed all the time." She appraised the enormous column. "I'm rather impressed at how many books seem to be written in this category, but there seems to be a quality issue."

"Quality? Like, the stories suck?"

"Oh, I have no idea. It would be nice to sit around all day and read them. I'll show you what I mean." They had landed, and she led the way to the nearest bookshelf. Several of the books on it looked normal, but she eventually picked one up that was blank except for a title and an author. "I've seen a bunch like these over the last few years, but have no idea why. No cover art, no synopsis on the back. I've looked inside some of them and they might not even be formatted correctly."

"Let me see." He took the book from her and read the title. "Um...this one is called My Sister the Cuck Queen part seven by..." He laughed when he saw the author's name. "Okay, I think I know what's going on."

"Well?"

He held the book up for her. "We can verify when we get home, but I sincerely doubt that somebody actually named their child QueefEater42. This is just some random person's story, probably on the internet somewhere."

"I don't understand." She looked up at the row of books above her. "The Library is only supposed to get in copies of books that exist, not internet dribble."

"I wouldn't automatically assign anything you find on the internet as dribble." He set the book down and looked through the shelves and found another one. This one had a picture of a pair of abnormally big breasted women hugging each other, but the picture and title were stretched dramatically across the cover. "Interesting. This one looks like they didn't load the correct image size."

"You still haven't explained why I am seeing these."

"Well..." He turned the book over. There was no explanation on the back, but when he opened the first page, he saw that the information page just had a web address. "How does the Library categorize what's an actual book?"

She crossed her arms. "Anything that gets bound professionally?"

"Yeah, well, that's not how things work in the real world anymore." He put the book back and looked some more. After digging through a couple and opening several to look inside, he chuckled. "You see, there's been a huge digital revolution recently. People started selling books that you could read on their devices, and I can tell you for a fact that there are a ton of authors who don't even bother publishing their stories on paper."

"Preposterous. Those wouldn't count as books, then."

"Why not?" He held up a book with a pair of anthropomorphic animals on the front. "How does the Library differentiate between what constitutes a book-worthy story? I can guarantee you have published books here that almost nobody has read, but some of these digital ones? Tons of people enjoy them."

She took the book from him and flipped through its pages. "So you're saying this book might not exist in your world?"

"Not on paper. Did you know that people can just pay to have a book published for them? You could write a book of poems and have it printed and mailed to your doorstep in days. Does the Library know that you will only make one copy? Does that book count, or is there some other guideline? Does it have to sell first, or maybe a certain number of people need to read it?"

Sofia pulled a couple more books off the shelf and flipped through them. "I suppose I don't really know. This place was built a long time ago, and the builders would not have foreseen such a thing. I must admit that my role here is largely ceremonial, other than chasing down potential intruders. Metaphorically, the place has a mind of its own."

"You told me once that the Library brings you copies of books once they are finished. Maybe it can no longer tell the difference, and is bringing these here." He took a step back and looked along the shelves. Where he stood, he could see dozens of shelves, and each one was nearly ten feet high. They were all packed full with books of varying quality. "By the way, we seem to be in a very weird crossover of genres here."

"Mmmhmm." Sofia put her book back on the shelf and scowled. "Do many people write these books? The digital ones?"

"Thousands. Millions. I don't know for sure, but it's a lot." He walked back toward the carpet. "Now I kind of wonder what the cutoff is. I imagine that the story has to be complete, right? So you wouldn't have a column of half finished books or something."

"No, unless someone published it. I've seen posthumous works like that." She stepped onto the carpet next to him. "This explains the exponential growth in some of these areas though. Obviously I don't have time to oversee all of the Library's new entries, but this explains several things I have noticed of late."

"Hey, cool. A mystery that was solvable in under ten minutes. And!" He pointed a finger at himself. "I didn't have to fuck my way out of it."

Sofia's cheeks turned bright red and she broke, letting out a laugh. "I mean, we're still in the romance section. I'm sure you could find something to get you off."

It was his turn to laugh. "It would have to be a softcover. The edges on the hard ones are far too dangerous. Hey, I just remembered something. Isn't it your job to read everything and catalogue it properly? That's what you told me when we first met."

She looked away from him and sighed. "It's supposed to be, but the job isn't meant for one person alone. And since I'm the only one here, I figure nobody is going to check up on me." The carpet took them away from the romance pillar and moved amongst the other pillars, occasionally swaying to avoid floating racks of books that moved around them.

"So I'm curious," Mike said. "Why are you the only one here, then?"

The cyclops turned to look at him with a frown, then looked away. "There were more of us, once upon a time."

"What happened?"

"It was a long time ago." She reached into her robes and pulled out her knife. The blade was only four inches long, but when she gave it a flick, it unfolded into a full length blade. "I don't know that there's time for the full tale, but I guess I can give you the highlights. You see, this place used to be accessible to many magical beings and civilizations. There was a screening process, of course. This place was the first of its kind, created long before humans came along. Your modern libraries are modeled after it. In fact, the Library of Alexandria was a knock-off of this place, the idea being a place where anybody could travel and find knowledge."

"Didn't that place burn down or something?" he asked.

"And that's why there was a screening process. As your kind generated texts, the last thing we wanted was for someone to get in and destroy them. Which, as you know, happens constantly." Sofia held up the blade so that he could see her reflection in it. "When I was young and lived with my clan, my uncle had access to the Library. I came from a family of builders who were isolated on an island, so this was the place to come to see advancements in building. It wasn't just buildings or weapons, my tribe could build almost anything. Their skill was superseded only by the gods in this matter."

"I get the feeling that somebody didn't care for this."

She nodded. "A group of men came to our island and asked our people to stop. We had largely pulled away from the rest of the world, but some of us were manufacturing weapons that were being used in terrible wars. The gods had long ago moved on, and our knowledge was considered forbidden."

"I'm guessing that your people turned them down?"

"Sort of. You see, even we didn't know who was doing this. As a tribe, we agreed that the world of Man was no longer a place for us. But secretly? Weapons were still being built, and we had no idea who the perpetrator was. It wasn't long before the men came back and warned us one final time that they would wipe out the island if it didn't stop. Well, remember what I told you about my people being able to see our own deaths? It was at the hand of men like these, so they were promptly killed for threatening the tribe. Despite their deaths, the visions continued, so we prepared for what we thought would be a bloody war."

Mike shivered. "What happened?"

"A slaughter." She folded the sword back up. "I was still very young, but easily the size of a full grown man. My unique ability saved me from immediate death, and my uncle took me to his Library portal. We were attacked by the man who carried this blade, and I managed to kill him shortly after he killed my uncle. With the portal open, I fled inside and closed it, never to open it again."

"That's terrible. Does that mean you're the last cyclops?"

She shrugged. "Probably not. There were others. I imagine they may be in a place like Zel's people were, a location separate from your world, or maybe hiding in plain sight. Anyway, the others who lived here. You see, as the world changed, so did this place. The Library took me in as a refugee and allowed me to stay and learn at their feet. However, I was one of the last new librarians. Once Atlantis fell, the Library was only connected to a few places, and nobody ever came to join our ranks again."

"So what happened to the others who were here? Old age, or...?"

"You don't age in the Library. I actually had to go on several pilgrimages to reach my current age. A cyclops is essentially immortal, but we do start as children. Over time, accidents occurred, or librarians left. Eternity is a long time to live in one place. Occasionally there would be a violent incursion, but my ability with a blade kept me alive through the worst of them. Others weren't so lucky." She tucked the blade back in her belt. "The good news is that pretty much nobody comes here anymore. However, the bad news is that pretty much nobody comes here anymore. If I were to die, the Library would continue to expand without interference until somebody found it. What happened next would largely be up to them, if they didn't get lost and starve to death first."