BtVS by Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Discworld and denizens by their author, Sir Terry Pratchett.
Susan Sto-Helit:
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I might have thought more about where I was, but I was busy.
I, not to mention the guy at my back, fought furiously, so those that had attacked us had to draw back and regroup. We were still outnumbered six-to-one and, worse yet, I was fighting barehanded.
'Iron Lily', my gym teacher years ago in Quirm, had not let any of 'her girls' off easy, but I preferred weapons you could really believe in.
The young man was obviously no slouch either. He was using moves that felt like they'd been practiced on stuff far stronger than men.
It wasn't going to be enough, however.
##
Given two minutes, the black-robed group could have wiped the floor with us, exacting revenge for exactly whatever had happened.
Fortunately, I only needed three seconds to be fully alone, no matter how many people were in the room.
I did not use the voice, not yet at least. Instead, I did the one thing that had always felt natural, something which might the only one of my powers which truly came from me rather than a reflection of my grandfather.
Making the best use of the small and momentary space in front of us, I closed my eyes, stuck my arms straight out in front of me and physically pushed... time... to... a... crawl...
##
When I opened my eyes, I was happy I'd taken the risk. This new place felt off somehow, somehow tainted, but I still had been able to enter the space between moments and all around me were frozen mid-motion.
I frowned as the air of the foreign place grew to be hot and cloying, a far cry from the familiar stillness and the feeling of brushing past pine needles on a mild winter's day.
No matter, it wasn't as if I could live in the fraction of time I was moving about in, anyway.
Exist eternally? Sure. But that's not life.
Feeling something I spun around and noticed that my view seemed to drag somehow, as if there was a dark cloud doing its best to keep just out of my view. Something moving behind the world.
When nothing further seemed to happen, I took the time to peer under the hoods of the young men who had been fighting us, until I was certain I could sketch their faces at a later date. No reason to let something like that slip me by.
We were surrounded by loose boxes and piles of books and supplies. I was fairly certain that the ritual that had brought me here would be written down in one of the books or a scrap of paper in the clothes of the red-headed leader, but that could take some time to find. Deciding to start with the heaviest item, I grabbed the black-haired man I knew only as Xander and dragged him, carefully, out of what remained of the circle and through the shelves of books.
First step, move those in danger to safety. Second, move useful tools to a hidden cache. Third, disarm the aggressors and search and bind them as necessary. Although they didn't appear to be carrying wands, some of the book covers showed them in use. Can't be too careful. I don't know where I am, I thought. But this being a Library only makes sense, the space between worlds would be thin anyway...
I paused to wave my hand quite close to the bindings of the books. "Haven't seen people wearing your clothes before," I told Xander, despite him not being able to hear me. "And I wanted to see if we were in your territory or mine. If we were in an offshoot of the practically infinite space within the Unseen University, I rather think the books would have rustled when I came close, despite being put on hold. If they didn't outright attempt to eat me. Well, here's the end of them."
When I stepped out of the shelves and into a large room and saw the double doors at the far end, I carefully leaned Xander against a shelf and spent a few seconds scanning the area for a good place to store him and the ritual tools once I'd retrieved them. The safest place to thaw him out when all is said and done is probably through those doors, I mused. But something is telling me I'm somehow almost out of time...
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The darkness that had been at the edge of my vision drew close around me and seemed to grow in depth and form and awareness. When I realized that I had been seen, an immense fear welled up from some deep part of me.
As a child-rearing governess, I knew the flavor of it well. Inside the small world that children drew where the sky was blue and the ground was green I had seen grown men fall prey to their oldest fears, but this simply wasn't one of mine. I had inherited certain things from my grandfather, things carried in the soul and the bone, and this felt as deep as any of them...
Funny, I thought, the danger filling my head with an icy clarity. It never occurred to me that Death could have a childhood-
##
I might have thought more, but the darkness had sprung.
