Sell you a Bridge chapter 355

July 13th 2016 Rock of Eternity, 8:00 PM EDT

The  trip to the rock was much longer than I expected. With the whole warp  drive think I figured it would be fast, but even moving through  fluctuating space it was a long process getting to the center of the  multiverse. Ten hours of transit, though I suspected even that was only  because the warp gateway that the cube had opened moved in time as well  as space. Merlin really knew his temporal bullshit.

Arriving  through the warp we found ourselves...somewhere. I expected a giant ass  rock floating in space, but given that Scala ad Caelum was built on top  of it and it sat at the center of the multiverse maybe that was stupid.  Instead we were floating over and endless plane of grass, with cities  in several directions, and in front of us was a colossal white marble  building that existed in way too many dimensions and made my head hurt  just to look at it.

That." I said with certainty. "Has to  be the Limitless Library." Or someone had been REALLY bored while  designing a courthouse, which the tall column supported facade reminded  me of.

Mickey nodded. "It is. Haha. I've been there once  before with Master Yen Sid. As he said, there are more than a few  entrances, and their collection of knowledge is impressive. Just don't  call the librarian a monkey. He HATES that." I...wasn't sure how to  respond to that, but since I was talking to an anthropomorphic mouse  king, I was guessing the librarian was some kind of ape...person?

Zee  was staring at the building so lustfully if it had been a person I'd  have been jealous. I waved my hand in front of her face a few times, and  sure enough, nothing. "I think we lost her, guys. Anyone have any cold  water on hand?"

Her eyes snapped to me, narrowing in a  glare. "Don't you even think about it. I'll deal with a lot of nonsense  from you, but if you mess up my hair I won't be responsible for what I  do to you. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it would be for me to  walk around like that?"

I grinned down at her white button up shirt. "That might have something to do with your refusal to wear a bra."

She  just shrugged. "I'm a sex elf, if I can't go braless then what's the  point?" I saw Artemis nodding solemnly in the background and rolled my  eyes. I'd unleashed terror on the world when I created the heavenly  punishment elves, and I was only now understanding the consequences of  my actions. I blamed my ignorance on being blinded by all the amazing  sex.

Taylor cleared his throat, looking noticeably  uncomfortable at the topic, much to the amusement of Suzie and Sindella.  "Be that as it may, we'd better head in. Who knows how far we have to  go. I don't imagine they call it the Limitless Library because of a  convenient centralized layout that lends itself to short walks."

He  wasn't wrong. I doubted that would be the extent of the trouble either.  Master Yen Sid had implied we might run into...obstacles, in this  place. I wasn't sure what those would be, but I doubted they would be  anything as banal as emphatic shushing and excessive late fees.

We  landed the Excalibur outside the library building and filed out. I was  glad to be free of the confines of the ship. Bigger on the inside it may  be, but twenty people in an enclosed metal box for ten hours wasn't  comfortable, even if the box was big and fancy. "Alright." I said as  everyone lined up. "I'll go first, my armor can tank any surprise  attacks. Rana, you take the rear in case someone tries to ambush us from  behind."

My daughter nodded seriously, but I felt a surge  of giddiness through the bond that I trusted her to play rear guard.  Sora, Namine, and to my surprise Kairi and Riku, trailed back to stand  by her, providing silent support. I hadn't realized the latter two had  even spoken to my daughter, but I wasn't going to complain about her  having backup, even if one of them was a suspiciously handsome silver  haired emo who would definitely bear careful watching.

Everyone  took up a formation like I'd suggested, with the various social groups  gathering together within the structure I'd set up. I, as the lead,  expanded my armor, feeling unearthly strength roll through me as the  powerful suit of abyssal alloy clothed me. It was so much more than it  had been before my fight with Darkfather, and I was much more confident  in its ability to protect me. I also called Thanatos out, though I had  to focus some of my energy on suppressing the bloodlust.

Without  an active enemy to battle against the suppression wasn't much of a  problem, even if it was annoyingly everpresent. As we approached the  library building, I took in the huge bronze double doors closing the  place off. They were awe inspiring, not just in size, but in complexity,  the engravings of wondrous scenes of heroism and bloodshed etched into  the metal so delicately I half expected some of the tiny figures to leap  off the doors and come to life.

As I drew near, the doors  rumbled and then began to slowly creak open without me ever touching  them. As we stepped through, I felt the world SHIFT around me in a  strange way that I hadn't experienced before. It felt kind of like the  instant a teleportation started, except it went on forever. Looking at  the aura of this place, that was the closest accurate description that  fit even independent of the sensation. It was like...they built a  building in the location of 'being teleported'. Even considering it made  my head hurt.

Still, it was an incredible feat of  engineering, and involved principles of void construction that I had to  actively work to understand. I'd thought I was pretty accomplished in  void magic, but the person who build this place was working with  concepts I hadn't even considered. Now that I was able to witness them  though, my absurdly firm foundation (that grimoire was comprehensive as  fuck) let me puzzle out the underpinnings with a brief bit of study.  Just standing in here was teaching me a shit ton about spatial  manipulation.

"Morgan." I heard something from a ways off  but ignored it, focusing on the magic. Morgan!" The voice snapped again,  and upon further inspection I could hear it was Zee. My eyes tore from  the aura around us, landing on her with concern, which I saw mirrored in  her own gaze. She had been worried when she couldn't get me to respond.  "Are you ok? You spaced out there for a sec."

I shook my  head a bit to jar some of the thoughts loose. "Yeah." I said with a  croak. "Sorry...this place is...you ever see something that looks  impressive, but only on a surface level? Then you see it later in life  and you know enough to REALLY understand how terrifying it is, because  then you have the context to understand just what was done? This place  is like that. If you guys knew what I knew about void magic this place  would blow you away." Raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm surprised you  aren't gaping actually. You've studied void magic some."

She  snorted. "Some. Not like you have. Plus I don't have your aura sight.  I'd need active spellwork to see the underpinnings of this place, and if  you're this out of it from a quick glance I don't think that would be a  wise choice."

"Fair." I admitted with a sigh. "I'm good  now though, just needed to adjust mentally. This should help out though,  with my task. If Scala ad Caelum is like this I can understand why  seeing it is going to be necessary." I'd probably need to use my little  time dilation trick to digest all the advancements in my void magic too.  I could only assume that the stairway would be even more advanced than  this place.

Forcing my aura sight to shut down so I could  look around without my brain blue screening, I took in the still very  impressive building. The inside looked pretty normal for a library, with  the sole exception of the fact that the stacks extended into the  fucking horizon in every direction. I saw intersections with wooden  tables every so often, breaking up the sight line, but that was the only  real differences aside from the signs on the bookshelves with arrows  that pointed to different sections.

I turned to Taylor.  "Alright big man, you're up. Your gift will work in here right? I never  even thought to question it, but having SEEN your gift in my aura sight I  doubt it'll be a problem. Especially with your keyblade boosting  things." Taylor nodded, calling his keyblade from the air in a swirl of  darkness. Follow the Wind, which helped with treasure hunting, and made  an excellent focus for Taylor's monstrous gift.

Despite  how badly things had gone last time, some part of me DESPERATELY wanted  to watch him open his private eye again, to see the power unfold as it  burned its way into this dimension. I wasn't a fucking moron though, so I  kept my aura sight firmly off as Taylor closed his eyes and focused.

Suzie's  hand snatched Fenrir from the air, clutching her keyblade in a white  knuckled grip as she loomed behind her boyfriend, while Sindella reached  out to grip his elbow and steady him. After a few seconds he opened his  eyes, swaying a bit. "This place is...mental." He said in a disturbed  voice. "I saw far too much about how it works for my own comfort, but I  know the direction we need to follow."

He pointed down one  of the side paths through the stacks, and we all headed in that  direction. As we walked, my eyes skimmed the book titles. They started  out pretty mundane, just thousands of tomes of varying descriptions that  you could see anywhere, but as we went on, my speed reading and perfect  memory let me pick out titles from the morass that seemed slightly off.  Histories of places that didn't exist, biographies with titles that  wildly contradicted the nature of the people they purported to be about,  and the further we walked the more of them showed up.

Some  of the books were magical or supernatural, but those were harder to  identify as being out of place due to their already fantastical nature.  Zee was scanning the shelves as we walked too, and I could feel her  distress through the bond as we walked. I put an arm around her, careful  not to squeeze or anything because of my armor.

Suddenly,  I stopped. Everyone else came to a halt with me, and they all looked at  me in confusion. "So." I said casually, my eyes trained ahead of us.  "Have any of you seen anything but books and tables? Some kind of  decorations maybe or art exhibits?"

All my friends stared  at me in confusion, but Artemis, obviously, was the one who called me  out on my nonsense. "No Morgan, we haven't seen any ART EXHIBITS."  She  sounded impatient and on edge, but I didn't mind, this place made me  uncomfortable too. "This is a library."

I nodded to  myself. "Yeah, I was kind of afraid you would say that." Artemis was  looking at me like I was a lunatic. "Followup question." I said calmly,  the arm not holding Zee coming up to point behind them all. "Do any of  you know when that creepy crying angel statue showed up there? Because  I'm like...ninety percent sure it wasn't under that bookcase a minute  ago." In fact. I was pretty sure it had moved while I glanced at Artemis  a second ago. Despite not having activated my aura sight to check, I  had the sneaking suspicion this series of creepy events boded...poorly.