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She will die here.
She knows that now, has accepted the truth of it, feels it burn in every tendon, in every vein, in every beat of her frantic heart. Blood coats her tongue, a familiar taste. Her muscles strain with exertion, her legs heavy, her lungs cycling fast in a desperate bid for more air.
She's running, though it will do her no good.
She will die here.
Her feet hit the dense packed earth at a frenetic pace. She has never run that fast in her life. It's still not fast enough. Behind her, she hears it, the bellow of the beast chasing her, a raw, guttural roar that shakes her bones. It's much closer than last time. The beast is gaining on her, so very quickly. She only caught a glimpse of it before she took off at full speed, saw a massive, four-legged frame, a glint of teeth, and brownish fur.
She doesn't know what will kill her. The brutal jaws of the beast when they will clamp around her midsection and bisect her, the ground opening up to swallow her like it did for the poor bugger who ran ahead of her, the khert spitting out fire or electricity or any other manner of dangerous traps.
There are so many ways to die in this place.
That is the point, after all.
"Reach the other side and you're free," her captors had said.
A fool's hope. She's never going to make it.
A scream slices the air on her right, and she registers vague movement at the periphery of her vision. Something wet splatters against the ground. She doesn't have any time to process what it means. In the next moment, her foot catches against something that isn't supposed to be there, something she hasn't seen, something that couldn't be seen, and she trips. She swore she threw her hands in front of her, but it's her head that impacts the ground first. Pain lances through her skull, her jaw, her neck, hot and sharp. Her vision blurs, and for a handful of seconds there are two suns in the sky, two twin points of fire stabbing light into her confused brain. Then she blinks, reality crashing back in.
It's too much.
For a time, she lies there. Above her, the sky is bleeding red and all wrong.
She thinks the beast should have gotten to her already.
She thinks she's just going to say there and never move again.
She thinks she's dead already, and her mind has yet to catch up.
But her heart is still beating, a steady drum in her chest, so eventually, she sits up. As she brings a hand to her throbbing head, she becomes aware of wet, meaty sounds somewhere on her right. She glances that way, nearly screams. Some last second impulse keeps the sound locked tight behind her lips.
The beast is here.
It's here, and it's eating one of her fellow prisoners. Fortunately for him, the man is already dead. The beast jostles his limp body as it tears into him, gulping down bloody ribbons of flesh. It looks like a mutated bear, she reflects, strange black spikes sticking out of his back, the heft of his frame too massive to belong to any normal bear. Guttural groans are spilling out of its maw, deep sounds of bestial satisfaction.
She spares a thought to the man that became dinner. She knew him, though her mind can't seem to produce his name at the moment, too busy screaming at her to get up, to run run run. Terror sears her insides, and when she gets to her feet, her legs are shaking. Should she even run? Isn't the beast going to see her, see her movement, react to it and chase after her again? And even if she runs, in which direction, then? The ground is barren, tinted in an odd red color, and everything looks the same. Where has she even come from?
She stays rooted to the spot for long seconds, paralyzed by indecision. A gust of sudden wind tosses her hair about, and high above in the sky, thunder roars. She is still hesitating when rain starts to fall. She doesn't notice it, not at first. It's only when one droplet slices her cheek open that she startles, and realizes that this rain is no standard rain.
It's sharp.
The drops are coming down hard, tossed about by the wind at an oblique angle, and they burn lines of red on her skin, everywhere they land. Shit. Shit, that's going to flay her alive.
She runs.
Picking a direction at random, she runs like there's an entire horde of beasts at her heels.
Fucking khert, she thinks.
She's no wright; she doesn't understand enough about all this crap to know why the rain is this way. It doesn't really matter. It's happening, and she can't protect herself against the onslaught. Her hands are shielding her face, but that's all she can do. The rain shreds the back of her hands, shreds her clothing, shreds her shoulders and her hair and her scalp, an unending downpour that beats pain upon her skin and leaves her dripping with blood.
Perhaps that is how she dies, then. Bleeding out from a thousand cuts, death raining from above in this open, hellish landscape where so many have already lost their lives. Her bones will rest here until the elements wear them away and she is scattered into fine powder over the ground.
She screams, as if she could delay the future with the full force of her voice.
Another scream reaches her. On her right, someone else is running. Another one of her fellow prisoners who has made it this far. They were ten of them, at the start. Their captors took bets on who would survive the longest. Nobody bet on her. "Too scrawny", one of the men said. "She'll made a quick snack for the beasts," another one concurred.
And yet, she has seen everyone else die, and now it is only her and the other woman. She has dark skin, and her tightly braided hair is dotted with shiny baubles. Isn't her name Aryn? Arym? Ary-something. They shared a piece of bread last night, when hers turned out to be too moldy to consume.
Maybe... maybe they can make it together. Still going as fast as she can, she holds out a hand to the other woman. She sees a flash of recognition in her eyes, something that might be acceptance, shining through the pain. The rain is relentless, assaulting them both. The other woman comes closer, stretches out her arm, and their fingers brush, for a fleeting second. Before their hands can connect further, the ground rumbles, then sunders, and a dark abyss opens up under the woman. She's swallowed in a blink, gone with no trace that she ever existed, not even an echo of a scream.
Shock numbs her.
At least it was quick, she thinks as she keeps running, as she keeps getting sliced by the merciless furor of the elements.
She's drenched in blood now. It slides down her face, clumps in her eyelashes, muddles her sight. Everything is blurry, and when she first sees it, she thinks she's hallucinating.
A building stands some ways from her, not terribly far.
A building that wasn't there before.
She's never seen anything like it. It's three stories tall, with beige walls punctured by numerous glass windows, each story narrower than the previous one, which makes the whole building look like a strange layered cake. The walls aren't smoothed, but decorated by deep groves that whirls up and down in intricate patterns. Near the double-doored entrance, she can make out a plaque. Main Library, it says.
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. She doesn't understand how it can be here, or even what it is, but she'll take anything to get out of this rain. Her back is sliced open, she's near choking on her own blood, and at this point she's more stumbling forward than truly running. Still, she advances, and the building grows closer. As she squints at it, she sees shadowed shapes moving behind the windows. People? A tiny flare of hope sparks in her heart. Perhaps she'll find help in there.
Perhaps everything will be all right after all.
A few more wobbly steps, then she's there. She pushes the doors open in a panic, leaving two bloody imprints of her hands on the fine wood, and as soon as she's inside she falls to her knees. Her chest is heaving rapidly, the frantic beat of her heart drowning out any other sounds, but she made it.
She's safe.
No more rain, no more beasts, no more insanity from the damaged khert.
With trembling hands, she wipes the blood from her face, blinks a few times to clear her vision. The floor is marble, white, polished, and she's dripping red all over it. Before her, tall shelves stand, laden with countless books. A small desk made from a wood as white as the floor sits to her right.
She swallows, and sound comes back to her. She hears only silence. The building is empty. There is nobody there after all.
It's a strange silence, almost expectant. It makes her uneasy. No, she's not safe, not safe at all. Yet what is she to do? She cannot go back outside.
Gathering her tired limbs, pushing past her aching body and the throbbing, persistent pain of her lacerated skin, she stands, walks up to the desk. A sign there states the opening hours of the library, and for some reason, she takes the time to read them. Next to that helpful and entirely irrelevant sign, she spots a rack displaying various newspapers. None of their names are familiar, but they all bear the same date.
And it's—
It's wrong. It has to be wrong. It's two hundred years into the future.
Heartbeat quickening again, she scans the headlines.
Weeping plague strikes at the heart of Alderode!
Aldish civil war threatens as Cresce encroaches on western front!
The end of Alderode? Our exclusive revelations about the wicked caste system!
Her head is spinning. She's not Aldish, not Crescian either, so she doesn't have a dog in this fight, but all of this feels surreal. How can she be looking at something in the future, something that hasn't happened yet? It shouldn't be possible.
Neither is a building suddenly appearing out of thin air, she reflects.
The khert is still playing tricks on her.
Hesitantly, she reaches for the closest paper. Perhaps it's not real. Perhaps it's only a Glamour, and the instant she touches it, it will disappear. She stops just before her fingers actually make contact. Something shivers up her spine, an instinctive warning. No, she shouldn't touch it. She really shouldn't.
But she's too tempted.
She takes a deep breath, inches her hand forward. The extremity of one trembling finger grazes the paper. It's enough to damn her. She screams as her skin splits open, as her blood evaporates, as she is broken down into the most basic of particles.
She dies, here.
The echo of her scream resonates for a while between the ancient walls, before silence claims the space once more.
The Library rumbles. Then it sits and waits, patiently.
Its next meal will come along soon enough.