The towering bookshelves loomed dark and imperious above her as she scuttled between the tight avenues between them. If the shelves were not so solid and ancient, she might worry that the unspeakable mass of ancient tombs might, at any moment, collapse and crush her under a wave of antediluvian knowledge. This assumption was turned to concern by the discordant, distant boom of battle that sent dust trickling down from its disturbed haunts high above and set the joints of the shelves creaking and complaining.
She hurried, seeking the passage that would draw her deeper into the vaults. The war raging outside was waged at an incomprehensible ferocity. The weapons employed could liquify her frail human body with only the expulsion of their waste product, let alone their actual payload. Out there, the titans that had once been close to human were pushing the laws of the cosmos to its limits with the armaments they bore upon one another.
But for all their invincible armours and apocalyptic weapons, those they warred against and those to whom she was enslaved forgot the progenitor of all they had now was not a warsmith or a manufactory. It was a book.
She finds the door she was looking for and runs her hand across its black timber. The runes marking it prickle with malice. Even to be close to such a forbidden thing feels heretical. She smiles and looks up into the pitch darkness of the cavernous space above and the war beyond the earth's skin.
Let them have their war up there, the weapon to end it is down here.
Paddy Dobson
1st July 2022