Sanctuary

[WP] "Sanctuary," the child cried running into the library "Nice try," the guard following after sneered, "but only holy places can grant sanctuary." The librarians glanced at each other. A small nod The head librarian gave the guard a stern look. "Sanctuary granted"

*****

Ella found it strange — how some people, like the guard, looked powerful. Built like a great tree, his armour worn from battle, body decorated with scars. Despite her age, she looked at him and intuitively knew he was the kind of man people feared. She had seen enough violence on the outside to recognise those that readily wielded it.

On the other hand, there was the Head Librarian, impossibly old, skin a craggy mass of pox-marks, wrinkles, and liver spots. Yet even as he stood, flanked on either side by two attendants, the Head Librarian projected an undeniable feeling of power.

"Sanctuary is granted," he intoned, his gentle voice barely heard over the commotion outside. The battle still raged, yet Ilnayan's sacred library stood unblemished.

The Head Librarian ushered his attendants away as he hobbled down the stairs, his curved back bringing him almost down to Ella's height. Without realising it, she waited, breathless, the entire time it took for him to descend.

It was quite some time.

"Stories, child." He said. "What was the last you read?"

"S-sir?"

"Mine was the tale of the Goblin and the Troll. Admittedly, the preference of a younger audience." His smile was warm.

"I - I know that one," Ella mumbled. Her mother had often read it to her, trying to hammer in some message about not leaving the house unattended. Ella was smart enough to recognise when her mother did this, although did not have the heart to disobey.

Sometimes, it was fun to see how she tried to make even the most faraway, fantastical tale immediately relevant to Ella's day-to-day life. A tale of knights and sorcerers suddenly became about washing dishes, an epic romance of conflict and betrayal now a cautionary tale about kissing boys.

"It's a favourite," the Head Librarian nodded sagely. "The resourceful goblin, able to fell the brutish troll with wisdom and wit. Words enough to tumble nature's most fearsome predator."

"Mother always said the troll should have stayed at home, in bed."

"Wise indeed. Had he not left his house that day, perhaps he never would have encountered the cunning goblin. And he could have spared himself the misfortune of a roaring headache."

Ella nodded along, not quite sure what to say. She was still unsure how to feel about the feeling she got from the Head Librarian, both exhilarating and terrifying.

"But how does one stop overwhelming violence with words?" He pondered rhetorically. His eyes seemed to look over her, at something faraway.

Ella followed his gaze, seeing the guard who had initially sneered at her open the library doors, charging out into the fray. The screams of battle escalated for the briefest of moments as the door temporarily opened before dimming to background noise once again.

The Head Librarian shuffled to a nearby bookshelf, prising out an old tome and dusting off its cover. As he did, it seemed to glow.

He opened the book, fingers tracing the words on the page with an uncharacteristic urgency. The doors of the library buckled with a thud. Something was coming.

"Ho hum," the Head Librarian continued fiddling with the book as Ella found herself backing up, each thud escalating more than the last. The door began to splinter, holy light spilling out from the cracks.

"Ah, there we are!" The Head Librarian twirled his fingers in a circular motion, as two words seemed to be plucked from the page, floating in his palm. He swapped their positions before they imprinted themselves back into the book, as if nothing had ever happened.

Ella would have found the display mad enough if not for what else she currently saw. The old librarian, — formerly old, she corrected — now stood before her, almost a mirror image of the guard from before. He was muscle-bound and powerfully built, features square and battle hardened. He would have been barely recognisable, if not for the same, calming smile he wore. The Head Librarian's perpetual serenity betrayed his age, even in this new form.

Stranger still, Ella looked to one of the stationary attendants, and noted that they were now wrinkled beyond recognition. They seemed nonplussed, though their posture was curved, much in the same way that the Head Librarian's once was.

"Wh-what did you do?" She gawked, scrambling to the back of the room as the door burst open, a wave of undead pouring into the library, burning as soon as they stepped foot into its domain.

The now youthful Head Librarian regarded her, a twinkle in his eye. "My dear, I simply changed the tune of the story."

A small contingent of the undead were forcing their way through the library's holy defences, some more resistant to the radiant scorch than others. One limped up to Ella, deceptively fast, only to be felled by a tome that flew into its face, shattering its skull.

She screamed as the (twice-dead?) undead collapsed on her, motionless.

Stepping forward, covered in a hale of flying books, the Head Librarian looked back at Ella.

"How else is a goblin to fell a troll?"

Opening his tome once more, he switched around four more letters, and Ella watched as a large part of the undead swarm began to collapse inwards on themselves. Their skulls hit the floor with thuds that were uncharacteristically loud, as if they were suddenly the weight of cannonballs.

"Your mother was right in one respect though," the Head Librarian continued, as if the conversation occurring right now was the most perfectly natural thing to have. "The troll ought to have stayed in his home."

"One should never," the storm of books collapsed into the undead, tearing at them with the force of a barrage of arrows. The Head Librarian was like a mage of legend, a one man army unto himself. The undead fell in the hundreds, the unstoppable tide deterred by an unrelenting force. "EVER step foot into another being's house."

The last sentence was punctuated with a shaking of the ground that launched Ella onto her back. She watched in pure amazement as the floor of the library's doorway simply disappeared. In its place, there lied a pit, which the undead now found themselves pouring into. They did not stop, though few could cross the gulf.

The Head Librarian turned to Ella. "Not without permission, at any rate. Homes are sacred, you know?"

He slammed his tome shut and, at once, the cacophony - the craziness of it all, seemed to stop. The librarian became old yet again, all the floating books dropped to the floor, and the hole in the ground closed off. Ella swore she could still hear the screeches of the undead from within the deepest depths of the library.

"What matters not is how a story is told, nor how it is intended to be understood. What is most sacred is the meaning we ourselves take from those pages. And that, dear Ella, is something anyone can do, so long as they are being honest with themselves."

When had she told the Librarian her name?

He seemed to read her — like, well, a book. "Here, in our library, is the story of everyone. And everything. Told all at once. Yours, mine, the King's and that guardsman alike. In the first two cases, the stories are still being told! All here, within these sacred walls. Altering them, even slightly, however, comes at no small cost."

The once more old man collapsed in a heap, his attendants quickly moving to hoist him up. "Well, I could certainly do with a nap," said the Head Librarian with a weary chuckle. "Come visit again sometime Ella. I'm sure there is more to your tale."

He looked to the side, at a small, thin book, thrumming with an almost eager energy. "Indeed, there is much to tell."

*****

THE END