Araxes studied the two corpses before him intently, violet eyeflames flickering and flicking over the various telltale signs on bodies that had quite clearly been dead for centuries at least, and likely—given the locale—quite longer.

“I do not have record of these individuals,” Persephone said, sounding as close to an emotion—possibly confusion—as the lich had ever heard the child avatar come. “They should not exist here.”

“And yet, here they are.” Araxes strode forward and knelt down beside the closest one. The flesh was dessicated and papery, the effluvia and other organic run-off had long since melted away or dried out. Not quite mummified, but not quite decomposed either. Dark ugly splotches washed out a couple feet in all directions, with the corpses at the center, discoloring the floor of the Blue Room.

“Clearly this is not an impossibility,” the child-avatar said, frowning. “But it is an anomaly. I have no records of these persons entering my knowledge base. Only the Guardian should be able to do so, and I have accounted for all those who have been Guardian before.”

“Hm.” Araxes frowned, prodding at various points on the nearest corpse. He was not squeamish about it—one tended to lose such inhibitions after a couple centuries of death. “It appears very much that these two died of non-violent means, at least. So we shant have to worry about unknown predators. No Booksharks lurking amongst the stacks, nor Volume-Constrictors waiting to drop upon an unsuspecting head.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“My dear,” Araxes dusted off his phalanges and stood up. “I am a past master of death. I am intimately familiar with it in all its forms and phases. These two,” he gestured at the bodies, laying in front of one of the large blue bookcases that made up, apparently, the bulk of the information stored within the curious core, “Died laying down, practically in each other’s arms, with nary a mark on them to indicate grievous physical trauma.”

“They are skeletons.”

“Mummies, technically,” he corrected her. “But even then, enough flesh remains to make the prognosis.” He paused for a moment and turned slowly, looking around at the vast expanse of blue and bookcases. “Hm. Pity, actually.”

“What is?”

“They clearly did not find a way out.”

Persephone’s child-avatar blinked her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Think, child,” Araxes turned and tapped her in the center of her forehead with one bony finger. “Obviously these two were trapped here, much as I currently am. And they obviously had the same notion that I did, examine your records and knowledge of dimensional and extra-planar spaces in the hope of finding a way to transport themselves from this benighted place back to from whence they came.”

He paused then as the implications of that particular realization sunk in.

“Well, damn them for breathing,” he muttered after a moment.

“What now?”

“Also obvious, I’m afraid; they were unsuccessful in their attempts to escape from this place utilizing the same plan which we have concocted.”

“I have concocted no plan. I am merely facilitating yours.”

“Yes, wonderful, thank you for pointing out my shortcomings.” Araxes gave her a look. “My point is that they were attempting to do exactly what I hope to do; find a method of transporting myself out of here utilizing the knowledge stored in this section. Which clearly did not work.”

Araxes stepped back from the corpses and looked up at the bookshelf in front of him. It was twice as tall as he was and easily six times as wide, containing what appeared to be hundred of blue-bound books with golden lettering he could not decipher on the spines.

“Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “it is possible that they did not have a young fleshbag genius on the outside waiting to render aid in that endeavor, either. Either way, I can think of no better plan than what I have already decided upon, so I shall continue on in that vein.” He paused again, glanced at the corpses, and added, “well. At least we have one intriguing new factoid about you, my dear.”

That got Persphone’s attention. “You do? What is it?”

“Think it through, child,” he said. “I am in this predicament because I am your Guardian, but not Guardian to the whole of you. Were you still one being, it would be a simple thing to teleport out of here and back to the world, yes?”

“This seems accurate, yes.”

“So.” Araxes nodded at the dead bodies. “Assuming that only a Guardian or something so near a Guardian as it makes no difference is the only type of being who can enter this place, that would make at least one of these two a Guardian, yes?”

“This also seems logical.”

“Then why couldn’t they merely teleport out?”

The child-avatar’s mouth opened to reply… And stayed open.

“I… Do not know,” she said finally, then looked up at Araxes, her eyes narrowing. “Do you?”

“I have a theory, yes.” He moved forward finally, nudging the nearest corpse out of the way with his foot and reaching up to select a book from the shelf. “If we assume that one or both of these poor souls was a Guardian, then it follows that there is one logical possiblity for why he could not extricate himself from this place, and it is the same reason I cannot do so myself.”

He studied the title on the book—“Q-spaces and Interdimensional Five-Space Esoterics”—and placed it back. Not what he was looking for.

“What reason?” Persephone finally all but wailed.

Araxes turned from the bookshelf to look the girl in the eye.

“Isn’t it obvious? Clearly, this is not the first time you and your sisters have been apart.

“Sometime, far in the past, something split you apart just as it did now. Curious, isn’t it?”

* * *

Sam floated in a void, warm and cozy and with a slight rocking motion that put him in mind of a boar trip he had taken when he was young. Of course, that trip had ended with him puking his guts out over the railing—from the bad seafood soup the cook had served, not from the motion of the waves thankfully. Hopefully this sensation would not also be violently interrupted—

His eyes snapped open. Which didn’t help, he still couldn’t see. He tried to move. Couldn’t. Tried to inhale. Nope. Tried to—

Oh hell, am I dead again?

That is a curious thought to entertain as a first thing. Have you been dead before?

Cora? Is that you?

I don’t believe so. Who is Cora?

Sam jerked himself upright, and suddenly there was light. He was in his room—not his room of the dungeon, but his room back in Melloram, in the house he had been renting with his parents, before the earthquake. Before Cora. Before the insanity.

It was his room… But not. There was a sense of wrongness about it, and as he tried to focus on what was wrong he found little details around the room shifted as he looked at them. The blanket on his bed went from cream-colored to blue to yellow in the span of as many heartbeats. The walls seemed to expand and contract in time with his breathing. And his desk floated an inch above the ground but seemed perfectly stable.

Oh. I’m dreaming. That made sense. He’d crashed hard, hadn’t he? Next time… Next time he was going to listen to the healers when they warned him of the consequences of indulging in too many amp-up spells.

It is very rude to not answer a question when it is asked of you.

Sam glanced ceilingward. The voice seemed to come from all around, and was unfamiliar in his head. It was feminine, but… Harsher. Rougher, than what he’d come to expect from his conversations with Cora and Sally. Was this another figment of his imagination given a voice in this dreamscape?

I’m not answering your question until you answer mine.

The voice sure sounded real… And, as he thought about it, it had a strangely more solid feel to it than the shifting, malleable dreamscape around him.

“Cora is—“ he paused. If the voice was real, who was to say it was friendly or had good intentions towards him?

“A friend,” he finished slowly. “Who are you?”

I am an enemy.

Sam jerked his head back and stared at the ceiling. “What?”

The walls of his room suddenly dissolved, letting in a hot wind from somewhere that stank of sulphur. Harsh red light hammered at his eyes, and he could see flames and strange images leaping and dancing in the distance among jagged spikes of black stone and deep pits.

I am your enemy, Samuel James Tolliver. And I have come for you and for those you command. I give you one chance: Surrender or be crushed.

“Definitely listening to the healers next time,” Sam muttered as the hellscape stretched out before him and the shadows started to turn his way.