Sapper

You know, I kind of like the library.

Sure, it's dark, and the butler insists it's haunted. Parts of it move around inexplicably from time to time, and a vestibule might be gone tomorrow and elsewhere the day after, but overall I can find what I'm looking for and I get things done.

It rather reminds me of what I imagine an old university's library should be. The smell of old books, elaborate shelving, sweeping staircases, endless shelves upon shelves, the occasional cobweb, dim light filtering in from stained-glass windows, and at night soft light wafting down from grandiose chandeliers.

Still...

shudder

Just remembering it gives me the heebie jeebies. Lady Elegans' library is dangerous after dark, when the chandeliers' wan light casts eerie shadows everywhere.

A few nights ago I was wandering through the QK section (which is only sometimes present) and suddenly I was in a kind of room-ish space amongst the shelves. Shelves ran out from the circular space on the eight compass points, leaving enough space to comfortably walk around the three-foot-wide dais in the middle. It wasn't quite a pedestal--pedestals hold things up on top of them, while this one held something it its middle. It was a cylinder with a ten-inch hole in the middle of the top.

Mind you, this kind of room-appears-suddenly thing happens occasionally, and sometimes there's cool stuff in it.

So, naturally, I walked over to look inside.

In the bottom of the two-foot-deep darkiron chamber was a blue crystal rose. It was glowing.

Cherenkov, part of my mind warned. That's mean radioactivity. Still, my hand was slowly drawn to the opening--What was this flower? Why was it here?

Botany section, duh, that part of my mind chided. Stay away.

A trick of the light showed fine, glassy filaments stretched across the opening.

My hand was still moving.

They were familiar, but not in a warm-fuzzy manner...

Bracing my will against my hand's motion, I pulled back--and managed to halt its progress.

The whole thing--it was familiar.When broken, those strands don't just fall away--they form a monkey trap. Withdrawing drives them into whatever snapped them.

Realization dawning, I pulled harder, leaning against the compulsion with more clarity and intensity. My hand slowly--so slowly!--started to move away from the maw.

Once they penetrate, the filaments suck. Almost no blood is shed, but years of life, memories, drive, sanity--anything they can pull, they suck out and eat. Fascination with the lure often renders the subject a willing victim until even that is sapped.

As my hand left the edge of the matte grey surface, the compulsion collapsed and I fell to the floor, gasping for breath. Exertion and terror dripping from my face, I shifted to face that fate worse than death. It was fortunate I'd read the Physiologus already.

So that's a myrmecoleon. Ugh.

That's how I learned that there is danger in Lady Elegans' library...