The archive proper is much less impressive than the library.
It's a cramped, dusty, quiet old tomb, more or less. Cobwebs haunt the corners and shadows, braziers dangling from the ceiling burn a dim white, and hundreds if not thousands of stacks rise like tombstones all throughout. It's cold too. The air is still. Stagnant. And it's so quiet that it makes my scales crawl.
Graves sedates the staff at the front desk with a few quills, then vanishes into the shadows before reappearing behind and above the guards. Her lancet buries into one's inside shoulder, diagonally impaling him and likely piercing all his vitals. At the exact same time, she cuts the other's throat open with a claw, keeping a hand over his mouth until he stops struggling. With that, she haphazardly tosses them into the darkness using her tail, and the dead men simply vanish into thin air, like nothing more than ink dropping into water.
After lifting one finger to her lips and staring at us for a single heartbeat, Graves again disappears into the shadows just the same way. Like black smoke dissipating.
Penny, Zip, and I are left gawking.
"Is she…" Zip trails off. "We're the good guys, right?"
"How do you fight an authoritarian regime that monopolizes the right to commit violence?" Penny walks toward the desk, sticking her tongue out. "With violence."
Zip turns to me. "We're the good guys, right?"
"Yes." I welcome Graves back to my side with a nod as she reappears from the darkness, notably more bloodied than before she left. "Penny's right. It's the only language that monsters like Aurora understand. What do you think she would do to us if we happened to get caught?"
"We will be more lenient with soldiers beyond this place," Umbra whispers, taking me by the hip using Graves' hand. "Leaving them alive here is a terrible risk. It's far too imperative that this remains quiet until it is done."
"Hells, jackdaw, that's a bite. Slipstream."
"Wings," she giggles, then Graves returns. "Faster."
"I'm double checking," Penny huffs, flipping through papers on the front desk. "I know the path. But they may have changed it. We do not want to become lost in the labyrinth."
"Labyrinth," Zip chuckles and shakes her head. "I'm going to start containing my disbelief and just surf these wild ass winds. There's a labyrinth down here. Sure. Obviously. Why wouldn't there be? Makes perfect sense."
Penny snickers, "If that helps you process."
"It does. It so does. Yo, Graves? Do you ever say more than one word at a time?"
She's right behind my left shoulder, looming over me from less than an inch away. "Rarely."
"Strong silent type? Or perhaps… A little shy?"
"Protecting."
"Protecting what? Crimson?"
"Yes."
"Oh, so you're on the job. Staying focused. Staying sharp. Talking would distract you."
"Yes."
"I bite, I bite. Good to know. Peps, are we–"
"Got it." She flattens out a scroll atop the desk and stares at it for a few seconds, pink eyes taking in every detail through her glasses. "Mhm. Done." Igniting it with pink fire, she watches it burn to ashes before rejoining us. "I know the way. With that burned, nobody else will. Once we enter the labyrinth, we won't need to worry about anyone following us. Even if they find the bloodstains or the sleepers."
As we continue following her into the Archives, Zip asks, "So the course is cleared once we're in? We can take our time after that?"
"No." Penny sharply turns to the left and into the stacks. "If Aurora becomes aware of us, she could seal the way ahead." In a deep dark aisle of this crypt-like space, Penny stops at one of the shelves. "But nobody will be able to catch up to us from behind."
"That's not really all that helpful."
"I never said it was." Choosing seemingly at random, Penny tilts one book out towards us, then another, and another, and another. I lose count of how many, but then something quietly clicks beneath our feet. Penny steps back. "Only that it's one less thing to worry about."
"I'm so fucking in love with you, Peps."
"So am I, Penny. You're perfect in every way."
"Thank you. I love you both too." Her tail wagging a little, she hugs onto my arm. "Look. That's our way in."
"Oh, sure!" Zip laughingly says with a smile. "An eerie, ominous, scary black void portal that could lead to literally fucking anywhere! Let's jump right in, dracs!"
"Come on." Penny does exactly that.
Zip meets my eye. "What a wonderful adventure!"
Then she dives in head first.
I'm about to go next but Graves takes my upper arm.
"No. Me."
"U–Um. Okay…"
Wrapping her tail around my waist, she drops into the portal. After a moment or two, I'm pulled in without any warning, ripped off my feet and sent plunging through an endless void of stars. Weightless, I drift through the cosmos, the moons, the infinite. I've never seen anything so magnificent.
Then, it's over.
Graves pulls me into a dark room. I fall in from above, but she effortlessly catches me in her arms and sets me down. It doesn't look like Zip had a soft landing. Penny is already casting healing magic to mend a bloody wound on Zip's forehead.
"Lesson learned," she sighs. "Don't go headfirst into portals."
I can't help a quick burst of laughter. "False start, drac!"
"Don't I know it…"
"Be more careful," Penny huffs, kissing where the wound was. "All better. This way. We're going to wander around for a moment to lose any potential tails. Then we're cutting right to the heart of it."
I help Zip to her feet as she asks, "What the Hells is this place anyway, Peps? Why is it here?"
"A security measure." Penny goes left, leading the way into a hallway lined on either side with loaded bookshelves, which is so long I can't see the end of it in either direction. "One that's entirely configurable and malleable. I said it's below the Divine Archives, but really, it doesn't exist in our reality. This is a location of divine power. We're inside a maze-like library that is a divine entity, which runs parallel to the infinite. Rather than saying we're in a place, it's most accurate to say we're everywhere, at every moment in time, forever, yet perpendicularly aligned with this specific thread of existence."
"Oh, sure, sure. Slipstream. Works for me."
I'm just focused on getting through this.
As Penny continues leading us through dozens of different junctions, Zip strolls along beside her and asks, "So, I know you're an unstoppable, unparalleled, astounding genius, Peps, but how do you know all this? I'm guessing boo–"
"Books."
"Thought so. Care to narrow it down?"
"I'd have to give you a dissertation length explanation as to how I synthesized millions of fragments of information from thousands of different sources and stitched them all together to form–"
"Hells, I love it when you talk dirty."
Penny fucking shoves her back into the shelf with a cute chirp of alarm. "Ahhh!"
Zip and I both laugh. She hurries to catch up and slips an arm around Penny to start murmuring in her ear. From behind them, I can just make out that Zip is speaking, but I can't hear a word of it. Letting them have their moment, I stay in their tracks with Graves haunting my heels, with her tail still around my waist.
It was unnerving before. Now it's comforting.
This is all far too much to take in. I'm scared.
But I'm being brave. And her tail is keeping me brave.
More than a little unnerved, I follow them into the labyrinth.