The path beyond the bridge grew longer. More of a descent.
The pillar shifted. A five degree tilt to one side.
Books fell everywhere, spilling to the ground.
With the noise came Others.
One of the Knights cocked their gun. I could read the tension on them as they looked down.
Company, coming from below.
Looking over to the side, I missed seeing what Alister was doing.
But whatever it was, it ended with him raising one hand.
His ring gleamed in light.
The timeless knight emerged.
Alister immediately dropped to the ground. He brushed away snow and scratched into the surface of the roof with chalk.
This was his maneuver, his trick. He had a means of binding the Barber. The rest of us were supposed to buy him time.
With the first touch of chalk to roof, the Barber reacted.
An arm lurched out of the one face of the blade. Shoulder, head, torso and all the rest followed. That it was a massive beast of a ‘man’ that was appearing out of a window no wider across than the breadth of my hand wasn’t even a factor.
I saw the others react, eyes averting.
The fear was so thick on the air I could taste it, but I couldn’t partake of it. It wasn’t for me to have. Only the Barber.
Tk. The shears clicked together.
Someone was gagging, struggling not to make noise, and only choking themselves. They coughed. It might have been Ty, or the Behaim rose had positioned off to the far right.
The sputtering cough, a sharp sound, rang in the general quiet.
A scream, not distant enough for my comfort, answered the ringing. There was noise.
Something big, on the side of the pillar.
Whatever it was, it was making noise enough to draw others. By the rules here, the other denizens of the Library would be attacking it, but the noise suggested it was drawing closer. It wasn’t slowing down, even while under attack.
I couldn’t take my attention off the Barber. We had to trust the Knights and the Behaim on the far end to deal with it.
I hoped they could deal with it.
The Barber advanced. Alister’s suit of armor rushed forward to meet it.
Lance met shears. There was no noise at the impact, but I was forced to take a step back.
The Barber pushed, the armor didn’t budge.
The armor pushed, and the lance inched closer to the Barber. Sparks flew as it grazed the shears.
The lance’s tip penetrated flesh, just at the Barber’s collarbone. Blood welled out.
The Barber lunged in my direction, letting the lance tear through flesh and bone. It didn’t heal, but the wound closed, so broken, jagged, bloody bits met other broken-up bits and they held together.
The suit moved, putting its empty left hand out to block the Barber’s path. The barber continued past, letting the armored hand clutch it, pulling a pound of flesh free.
The suit spun, turning its back to the Barber, extending its other arm, lance in hand, to attempt once more to bar the path. To delay.
The Barber was so close to me.
We had to distract, to delay. Buy Alister as much time as he needed.
I put myself in the Barber’s way, before it could duck under or around the timeless armor’s weapon. There wasn’t much space between me and the edge of the roof, but we couldn’t let the demon reach the others.
The Barber reacted to my presence, and I shifted my weight, my toes and the balls of my feet digging hard into the surface of the book.
He stabbed the shears in my direction, but I was already pushing myself back and away.
Tch. Metal snapped closed a foot from my face. The metal-on-metal sound rang in the air.
I let myself fall from the pillar, and I could see the effects of just that noise. Things were climbing free of the bookcase, and among them was a massive worm made of a series of overly obese humans, most with their respective heads shoved into the nether regions of the humans ahead of them. Here and there, there were ones that had it backward, mouths stretched wide to a macabre degree, teeth sunken into the shoulders and back of the one behind them, a limb or two jammed into the one ahead.
I saw the head, albeit from behind, and it was spread like a cobra’s hood. People had been slashed and clawed open, and limbs and heads were shoved into wounds, with bits pulled free and wrapped around for structural support. Some of the ones there weren’t so obese. Others had been drawn and quartered, butterflied, but still lived.
It was moist, covered in filth, with mucus and spittle and blood leaking here and there and streaming down the length of it. That moistness was largely what let it flow so freely from the bookcases.
Legs and arms worked to grip the ones behind and the ones ahead, futilely clawing at flesh to try and reduce the strain on neck and shoulders, or the pull on their own nether regions. Of the ones that didn’t, many twitched and flailed, some held weapons, others held books.
I folded one wing, and made the sharpest turn I was able before recovering.
It didn’t make much noise, aside from the sound of its extended lower body sliding between shelves, the periodic knock as a leg or arm struck something.
It collapsed onto the Barber. Almost a lunge, almost a dive, but mostly just blindly, violently falling into position.
The entire pillar wobbled.
Even if the Barber made noise, the Library would act. That was good.
I flew, circling the pillar, tracking the movement of the great worm, watching the head, looking for a sign of the Barber.
Nothing.
Any time he disappeared from view, I had to wonder. Had someone looked? Had one member of our group made that split-second decision and looked directly at the Barber, trying to see if we’d won? If the way was open?
Circling the pillar, I could see that the Knights had dealt with the massive thing that had been crawling up the side. Fingers were still attached to a section of the staircase, but they’d been severed from the hand. I could make out a crater far below where it had fallen, floorboards cracking around it.
Though they’d dealt with the big one, it had stirred innumerable little things into action, and without their previous target to pursue, they’d turned on the Knights.
The fight to hold them at bay was grim, quiet, and tense, both combatants left with little choice but to fight with everything on the line, but still unwilling to risk making noise. Movements were furtive, with more feints and false lunges than actual attacks.
I didn’t see Ellie or Christoff.
But they weren’t the problem.
Barber.
I circled the pillar, rising.
Barbatorem.
Alister was still working on his diagram. He was using the leeway to draw more of the diagram, even though the worm’s body continued to slide across the middle of the rooftop like a macabre train on tracks. Rose remained exactly where she was. Imperious.
Ty reached out to me, holding a slip of paper in hand.
I flew down, passing him. Unhooking a thumb from my wing, I snagged it, pinching it in place.
Runes. I thought I might have recognized them. One of the first I’d learned.
Silence.
I opened my mouth to speak, and no sound came out.
I’d nearly reached my starting point, where I’d begun my circle around the top of the pillar, when Evan saw it.
“Blake!”
I followed his line of sight, as his head turned.
The Barber was gone. The shears weren’t.
As the ‘train’ ran along its tracks, the shears were periodically bumped and kicked, sent sliding across the roof, dancing along a trail of blood, piss, shit, and mucus. The length of the worm blocked the others from seeing the Barber. He was on the far side.