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The sun is bright overhead, shining golden between the tree branches and sending a trickle of sweat coursing down the back of Vika's bare neck. Her boots thump rhythmically against the thin dirt path as she walks, restraining her pace to one her companion can match. Emmaline trails behind her, the Book of Names out and held between her slim hands.
Even without turning, Vika knows it is there; she can sense the Book's deep, waiting potential as plainly as she feels the heat of the noonday sun.
"We've been walking for hours," Emmaline complains, taking one hand off the Book to fan herself for a moment. It stirs the air, though that pittance does little to conjure any real breeze or coolness. "Is this all heroism really is? Walking and sweating?"
Vika snorts. Emmaline is the last person who ought to be describing what heroism is like, though the Book in her hands begs to argue otherwise. Not for the first time, Vika wonders what drew it to Emmaline of all people, with her soft, high-born lady's hands and her insufferable, haughty laugh. She's certainly clever enough, in her own way, but she is far from the mold Vika has come to know as being classically heroic.
"A little walking is good for you," is all Vika actually says.
"I've never minded a bit of a stroll about town," Emmaline sniffs. "But this is just excessive."
"What's the Book telling you?" Vika asks.
"It's not telling me anything," Emmaline complains. "It's a book. Even if I am treating it like some sort of mystical dousing rod, at your insistence, I must point out, it's hardly doing anything of particular note. It sits there, and I carry it."
Then Emmaline squeaks, drawing up short when Vika turns around. She's paying so little attention that she hadn't noticed Vika stopping, so absorbed in her own thoughts and preconceptions that she would never even begin to recognize the tension in Vika's shoulders, pulled back and squared off as they are.
"It's yours now," Vika says. "Not that I understand why it's chosen you. Show some respect."
"Respect?" Emmaline echoes. "To a book?"
"To what the Book represents. At least tell me we're still headed in the right direction."
"I think we are," Emmaline says, doubtfully. She pushes back one perfect ringlet curl with her free hand, her light brown hair still perfectly styled about her face despite the heat and their exertions. She's like a porcelain doll, with her pretty little face and her big green eyes. She looks like she should be riding side-saddle on a mild-tempered mare with a lady's companion following along, dressed to the nines in expensive satin and lace.
Not tromping through the woods with the Keeper's honor guard and disgracing the entire calling with every other word out of her mouth.
"Read from the Book," Vika says, reminding herself to be patient. Reminding herself not to take any Keeper for granted, no matter how seemingly ill-suited. This is Vika's calling, down to her very bones. If Emmaline won't take it seriously, Vika will simply show enough respect for the both of them.
Still with a skeptical expression twisting her pretty face, Emmaline flips the Book open. The cover is tilted up; standing across from her, Vika is unable to catch even a glimpse of the contents of its pages. Emmaline rifles through them for a moment, turning pages with brisk, efficient movements. Despite her scoffing, her motions are easy and sure. When she stops on a page, she does not ask Vika whether it is the right one.
Emmaline begins to read.
Her voice is high and clear, reciting the words before her on the page. She describes the forest around them, the exact quality of the heat and light and the precise colors of the leaves above them on the trees' branches. She describes the path they're on and the earth beneath their feet, the sound of the birds twittering to each other, the rustling of their feathers, the sound of little squirrel feet rushing across discarded leaves and broad branches. The Book places them in time and space, so precisely that the universe has no choice but to begin to lean in and listen.
A hush falls around them, the sort of waiting, breathless quiet that comes before an important speech, or perhaps the sort of quiet one finds in a library, the respectful sort that knows books and studying often do best in purposeful silence. There's a weight to it, a humming, expectant pressure that grows deeper and more imminent with every word that Emmaline speaks. It draws Vika in; she's a part of the world as much as anyone else. Honor guard or no, she has no resistance to the weight of the story the Book exists to shape and to tell.
And then Emmaline's voice falters, for just a moment, and the light shifts around them. Vika is hit with a heartbeat-brief moment of vertigo, a breath of chill ghosting its way up her spine. The world seems to just— tilt—
Before everything changes and Emmaline's voice cuts off with a gasp.
"Keep reading!" Vika insists, even as she draws the short sword that hangs fastened at her waist. The forest is dark and chill, now, an icy breeze cutting between the branches. The birdsong and pattering of little rodent feet are gone. There's only the sound of Emmaline stumbling and Vika's own ragged breath, quickening in anticipation of danger.
"I-I can't!" Emmaline protests. "The words, they're... Changing. Squirming on the page, I can hardly read what they say!"
"Then brace yourself," Vika says grimly. "Something's coming."
She holds the sword before her in a guarded stance, dropping her center of gravity and planting her feet squarely. Strong base, agile mind. As ready for anything as she can be. Emmaline stands right behind her, the book in one hand and her other palm hovering, hesitantly, just behind Vika's back. It's near enough that Vika can feel the warmth off Emmaline's hand, in contrast to the sudden cold of the forest. Her breath gusts in front of her in a misty white cloud, fitting in with the dimness that has descended upon them, the startling monochrome of the now-barren trees and their grasping, jagged branches.
Vika is still, listening. She slows her heartbeat, calms her breath. There's a soft whistling sound rising up, barely audible but growing louder, like wind whistling between the trees but somehow off, wrong. Mist hangs about them from waist-height down, obscuring how far Vika can see in any direction. They were miles out from the last town when Emmaline started to read; that town might no longer exist, now. They're on their own, nothing they can count on save for each other.
Then something shoots out of the trees, with a rattle of bones and a crack like a whip. A skull materializes out of the fog, the nose long like a horse's or maybe a deer's, an impossibly long neck extending back and back behind it, too many vertebrae to count, snakelike and serpentine. Vika strikes at it with her sword but it simply dodges around her, curving out of the way and then coming in for another pass from a different angle.
Vika dives around Emmaline, throwing herself back between her charge and the monster. Her sword strikes the long rope of its neck and bounces off, repelled by some preternatural force. It's knocked sideways for a moment, hanging crooked in the air. As it rights itself, Vika stares at the will-o-the-wisps hovering in the skull's eye sockets, uncanny, cool fire burning within them.
"The book!" Emmaline shouts. "It's changed again!"
"Read the story," Vika says, even as she swings again with her sword. The monster materializes claws out of the gloom, skeletal as the rest of it, snatching at the both of them with the razor-edged tips of its digits.
Emmaline begins to read once again. Her voice is shakier now, stumbling over the words of the first sentence as she struggles to find her footing with the text. She describes the unnatural whiteness and hardness of the monster's bones, the precise hue and icy temperature of its fiery eyes, the chilling rage that powers it. She describes the cursed forest all around them, its dead trees and bare branches, its chill and its wind and its fog. She describes Vika, valiantly fighting against entropy itself, against a monster and a realm that exist to drain the very heat and life out of anything it can reach.
Vika moves alongside Emmaline's words, parrying the monster's claws as Emmaline describes the arc of her sword biting out in a parry, defending against its jaws as Emmaline describes her defense. They move together, in a sense; Vika fighting, Emmaline narrating, until Vika cannot be sure whether she is acting and Emmaline is describing, or if the quiet power thrumming beneath the words is compelling her to act. She stops thinking, giving herself over to the motions of the fight, letting Emmaline's voice guide her, like a puppeteer deftly plucking at her puppet's strings.
"—and with a final slash, the Keeper's fierce defender cracks the monster across its haunting skull, hard enough to shatter bone. It reels back, gravely wounded but not yet finished, creating an opening for flight—"
Vika grasps it, jumping back while the monster is stunned and reaching blindly for Emmaline's hand. It's warm and solid and real, binding them together. Emmaline continues to read but the words blend into one another, force building up behind them, weight and meaning bearing down on both of them, on the forest itself, with an impossible, inescapable pressure. Vika can feel the universe listening in, can feel the potential of the turning point they've come to.
And then the world twists again, tilting dizzyingly for a single, impossible moment before falling back into place the way it had been before. Or almost the way it had been before.
Sunlight streams down around them, warm golden beams cutting between the leaves and the branches of huge, solid trees. Birds chirp and warble; here and there, leaves rustle, jostled by the motions of animals large and small. It could be the same woods they'd started off through that morning and which Emmaline couldn't help complaining about. But, deep in her gut, Vika knows that it isn't.
They're on the path they need to follow. The Book has intervened to show them the correct way. Vika will figure out exactly where they are when she needs to do so, and no sooner.
"Oh, that was terrible!" Emmaline exclaims, dropping Vika's hand and collapsing to the forest floor. "Just absolutely monstrous."
"That's heroism," Vika says, though she endeavors not to sound too smug or righteous about it.
Emmaline is silent a moment and Vika leaves her to it. She can hear the heaving of Emmaline's still-panicked breath over the sounds of the forest all around them; gradually, it slows down toward a more normal rate. Vika supposes that she should be comforting her charge — Emmaline is the Keeper, after all, the one chosen by the Book to protect and enact its knowledge, who is on a journey to the mystical Library of All Things as it calls its chosen guardian home. And Vika is her protector, for better or worse, the honor guard who must escort her back to the arms of the Library.
"It's nasty stuff, heroism," Emmaline says tartly, as she pulls herself back up from the ground and sets to dusting off her fine skirts. "And really, I doubt anyone else could have done better than I have. Perhaps I stumbled a little, certainly, but who wouldn't have done? It's all a dreadful lot to become acclimated to and, under the circumstances, I daresay I'm doing a quite fine job."
They're both still alive so, by that metric, Vika can hardly argue with her.
"I suppose you're doing well enough," Vika allows. "Presuming you'll take your role a bit more seriously going forward, of course."
"Take it more seriously?" Emmaline echoes. "I don't know what could possibly be more serious than reading out all of that in the face of that skeletal monster, which meant to eat our hearts or our souls or somesuch other utterly barbaric nonsense. I'm a very serious girl, I'll have you know."
"Of course you are, lady Emmaline," Vika says mildly.
"And really, I'm a quick study," Emmaline continues, warming to the subject of her performance as the actual danger grows ever more distant. "I should only become more skilled with this business as we continue on, I imagine. You should be happy to have me, when I expect you'd be hard-pressed to find someone more naturally talented and adept with magic that hinges on knowledge."
Vika wonders, for what she's beginning to suspect will be far, far from the last time, exactly what drew the Book to someone like Emmaline as its next keeper. But as Emmaline finishes setting her clothes and her hair to rights, the slim volume of the Book clutched tenderly to her chest all the while, Vika can almost -- almost -- catch a glimpse of what must make her worthy for her role. The Book and the Library are never wrong; Vika should spend less time questioning their wisdom.
Emmaline moves to brush past Vika but as she does, she places one slender hand on Vika's shoulder, pulling her down to Emmaline's level and brushing the ghost of a kiss across her brown and sweaty cheek.
"Let's be off, then," Emmaline says. "Much more heroism to be done."
Gamely, if a bit disbelievingly, Vika follows after.
———