Verdna did not even see the intruder climbing back up, as she stared at the white silhouette, lying still on the ground. This couldn't be, nothing in the Life Rune Sector was supposed to do that, nothing—!
The intruder was now kneeling beside the unmoving body, trying to pry the small object out of her fist. But the grip was simply too tight, and for a second, it almost seemed like they were about to break her fingers. She caught a few glimpses of the intruder's face, as they stopped to take a breath. A teenage girl, with red streaks in her white hair. Couldn't be older than twenty.
The girl stood up, dashed towards the glass barrier in front of them, and, with a single kick, sent the other sliding door on this level crashing down in a shower of glass shards. As the second alarm started beeping furiously, she lifted the unconscious body onto her back, and made a beeline for the elevator—what? What did she think she was doing?!
"Stop right there, young lady—"
Verdna phased through the girl several times, as she kept drifting in front of her, trying to block her vision and hinder her. The girl only flinched a little at the sensation, when she pressed down on the elevator button. After that, she just ignored Verdna completely.
Oh goodness, did she hate, hate being a formless bundle of cold air at this moment.
"You are already in serious trouble, you—"
The elevator door opened with a ding.
"—don't want to add a kidnapping charge to that!"
The girl was panting heavily as she stepped into the elevator, dragging her captive with her, before slamming down hard on the "LV1" button.
"So put her down!"
She was trembling now, her lips pressed together in a stiff line, but she still did not respond to Verdna's yellings. When the elevator came to a halt, she squeezed her way out of the door before it was even fully open, like a trapped animal escaping out of its cage.
"Leave her here, and you can still get away!"
Verdna followed the girl, who rushed through the narrow passage, heading straight towards the open hall on the first floor. There was a sinking feeling in her, as she realized she had no way to prevent the girl from leaving the building.
At the very least, she needed to see the direction that girl was taking, after she went outside—
Clang. Something hit the marble floor, followed by the dull sound of fists against flesh, and a pained gasp.
The girl had fallen down at the end of the corridor. Before she could pick herself up, a pale shadow slammed into her and sent her sliding across the floor, right into the open space of the hall.
Her hostage was now standing over her, in complete silence.
All Verdna could see was a pair of bright golden eyes, glowing in the dark. Then, she heard a clicking sound, and the white silhouette was gone. Her own light was too dim to illuminate the huge space. Only the sounds of metal striking against tiles helped her to stay close to them, as they scuffled around the front desk—
The girl was leaping in and out of her sight, before her opponent caught up to her and sent her tumbling onto the floor with a kick. Verdna saw a cold glint of light, reflecting off metal. One of them has a blade out.
The person in white was crouching down. Her movements were shaky and uncoordinated, but she made up for it with speed and intensity. She turned into a blur as she went after the girl, who rolled away and barely dodged her flurries of strikes.
Now Verdna could see the blade, strapped to her right arm, but why was she making stabbing motions with her empty left hand, too—
"No!"
The yelling was followed by a loud thud, and she saw the white silhouette lost balance and fell—the girl seemed to have tripped her. Instead of pressing her advantages, the girl just stepped further and further away, with a dazed expression on her face, until her back was pressing against the wall.
She was not even trying to defend herself anymore.
The person in white climbed up, slowly. She was shambling forward with an awkward, child-like gait, as if she was not quite used to her own body. Then, she burst into unbalanced motion, looking like she was about to fall over again as she pounced towards the girl—who, like a rabbit caught in the headlight, remained a motionless statue.
The blade would have gone straight through her temple, when her opponent jammed her fists together in mid-air like she was holding twin daggers. But the girl had broken out of her freeze, and ducked down at the last second. Her attacker lost balance, fell onto her, and they both landed on the ground.
The girl grabbed her by the wrist, as she made another swipe with the blade while lying on top of her. Now she was pushing against the girl's feeble grip, trying to bring the weapon down—
"Flare." An almost inaudible whisper escaped out of the girl's lips.
"Don't do this, don't..."
The blade was inches away from her neck. There was no expression on the other person's face, just a blank stare from those feline-like golden eyes, as she pushed down even harder—
"Daisy Chain!"
For a few seconds, time seemed to slow down. Verdna could see the chains, sprouting out from the darkness, slowly looping around its target in mid-air.
It ended as quickly as it came. The chains tied her up in a crushing bind, yanking her off the girl and smashing her into a wall at the opposite end of the hall. The hidden attacker did not even stop to look back at her, as they leaped over the front desk, and made their way to the girl.
They grabbed the girl by the collar and made a mad dash for the exit, crashing through the glass of the main gate at a dangerous speed. Verdna only saw a blur of cyan, before a bright light erupted in the air, and obscured her vision for the next few seconds.
She halted right before the broken door, frantically glancing at the empty streets. But the pair was already gone.
She opened her eyes with a gasp, her heart still pumping like mad from the adrenaline.
Her sight cleared a little. Above her was an empty grey sky, shrouded in eternal twilight.
Her elbows bumped uncomfortably against the hard edges beneath her. She was lying on a small hill of...books? Squinting, she saw nothing but similar piles of books around her as she sat up, though she could make out vague shapes of buildings in the distance.
Huh?
She picked up the thinnest book nearby and flipped it open. There was nothing written inside it, only a strange symbol drawn on every single page, which she could not recognize. The next few books were the same.
She almost tripped in the dim light while making her way down the small hill. After some fumbling, she finally reached the ground level, where the books were neatly stacked up against each other to form a relatively flat surface. In the shadow of the hill, she noticed a weak glow, coming from above her head.
She reached her hand up, trying to grab the mysterious light source, but all she felt was empty air. With a sigh, she sat down on the ground. Those silhouettes in the distance were...interesting, and certainly worth checking out. She just needed a moment to clear her mind.
She was after a thief, who sneaked into one of the basement rooms, wasn't she? They had something in their hands—she couldn't quite see what it was in the dark. Still, she caught it in her palms, and the next moment, she was not in the archive anymore.
What did that...thing do to her? Teleported her into some bizarre dungeon? Triggered a Resonance event and sent her straight through a dimensional rift? But if that person was holding onto it the entire time, how did she end up here with a single touch while they were not affected at all—
She put a hand to her forehead as she stood up again. This was making her head hurt. Someone familiar with space-time shenanigans, like Gertie, would probably have some kind of gadgets on them, just for dealing with this kind of situation. Not her, unfortunately.
Please don't tell me the clue to getting out of this Living Books Dimension is hidden inside one of these books, she silently prayed to herself and started walking.
The closer she moved towards the buildings in the distance, the more book piles she saw, until they almost cluttered up the path entirely. To her surprise, these buildings were also made out of huge numbers of books, stacked to a seemingly impossible height.
She briefly wondered if she should go climb one of those spires, just to get a better view of the place, but with how gravity-defying and twisted their appearances were, and the fact that they were built out of loose books...
Heck no. She would get buried alive if she screwed up during a climb. Probably collapse most of the nearby buildings, too, like a giant row of dominos.
She made her way up the steep mound of books that made up the foundation beneath the buildings, past the giant arches and walls that encircled the spires, and wandered further and further into this maze of architecture. Most of the structures were just constructed in the rough shape of a building, a solid block with no entry or exit points. But some, like the small dome she was currently peeking into, seemed to have a hollow interior.
A single blue book lay at its center, and, her curiosity piqued, she was about to bend down and crawl into the dark space, when she saw a shadow flickering past.
She turned back, and found herself staring right into a pair of bright, amber-colored eyes.
"Woah!"
She instinctively took a step back, almost knocking over the pile of books behind her.
This kid...she had seen her before. Her pre-trance hallucinations might only last a few seconds or so, but the bright red hair and the black hoodie with cat ears were unmistakable.
Creepy, how the kid just popped up behind her like that. But...
"Uh, hello there. H-Have we met before?" She extended a hand towards the kid. No response. The kid just kept staring, with a blank expression on her face, and it was getting more and more unsettling with each passing second.
"Are you also lost? Hey! Can you hear me?"
She reached out her hand and patting the kid on the shoulder—only for her hand to go straight through it. She quickly pulled her hand back, like she had just touched a hot stove.
The kid...phantom jerked at her touch, but its face remained expressionless. The next moment, without any warning, it suddenly burst into motion, bolting away from her and into the maze of buildings.
"Wait! Where are you going?"
She took off after the kid. This phantom was fast, with an almost feline-like grace to its movements as it made its way through narrow gaps and twisted passages, which she could not quite replicate.
A few turns later, the space became a lot more open, but the terrain also turned uneven, almost bizarre—what was with all these random holes in the ground? It looked like something had burrowed through the surface, and she shuddered a little at the mental image of something lurking underneath the giant mound of books. It could be using the phantom to lure its prey in.
But the phantom was almost halfway across the open field. She stopped at the edge of the field, gritted her teeth, before bursting into a sprint and resuming her chase. Books were shaking under her feet, and she had to force herself to look away as she made her way around the largest openings—they were deep. Was there even a bottom to these holes?
When she finally made her way across this treacherous open space, she could not help but heave a sigh of relief, before she started glancing around for her lost target. The phantom was nowhere in sight, until she looked up, and caught a glimpse of red and black atop a high arch. She barely managed to hold back a curse at the sight.
Just what she was afraid of. The kid had finally learned to climb.
She shook her head. No, she should not be scared of climbing. She had been doing fancy parkour moves since she was eight years old, and absolutely convinced that she was a badass pirate in training. These books might look wobbly and dangerous, but now that she had a good reason to climb them, there was no way she would give up before she even had a go at it.
She took a deep breath, clasped her fingers around a book that was jutting out of the base of the arch, and started making her way up. Look at what's in front and above you, not below.
Still, most of the book covers were either blue or green, with a few red ones here and there, and it was starting to tire her eyes out. Every grip she made was accompanied by a tremble. Her heartbeats were a pounding cacophony that echoed through the eerie silence. Look up. Keep climbing.
With one last careful maneuver, she pulled herself onto a smaller arch that made up the huge structure, and started tiptoeing towards the kid. Now that she was close enough, she could see something lying below the phantom, emitting a weird glow.
Perhaps that was what the kid was leading her to. A clue. An exit.
"Kid..." She extended her arms, and gripped onto the lower ledge of the second arch. "...Please don't be playing a prank on me. Please."
There was even less ground for her to stand on. The arches were getting narrower and narrower as the structure went up. But now that she had climbed onto the second arch, and was close enough to get a clearer look, the kid was definitely floating above a light source. Was it coming out of a book?
One more glimpse wouldn't hurt. She just needed to keep squinting, tilt her head at the exact angle, bent her back a little, and maybe she could see what that weird thing was, before she decided to climb onto a shaky platform fifty feet up in the air—
Balance is like a cheap elastic band that can be stretched, bent, and twisted into beautiful shapes between nimble fingers. It is also a lot more fragile than it looks. Stretching it just a little further than one should, and the rubber snaps.
She felt the snap as she leaned just a little too far over the edge, and did not even have time to regret her decision when the books below her feet crumbled away.
Flailing wildly, she fell backward, desperately trying to grab onto something, but only catching fistfuls of empty air. The phantom turned to look at her, right before an open book tumbled through the air and slammed into her face.
A sudden burst of light flooded her vision, and she kept falling, falling, falling—