Into a strange location

After the thundering of blood rushed past her ears, Ceinwyn was greeted with the sounds of alien silence. The soft hum of the magic circle was replaced by the whisper of rustling paper. The cool air in Malvern's workroom became a stale, stuffy and dusty miasma. The overpowering scent of mould and rotting books wafted into Ceinwyn's nostrils. Was she at home again? Master Derreth's hut had books and other strange-smelling herbs that lined the shelves along every wall. Dust and dry air irritated her lungs and she shot up from the floor, violently coughing.

When she regained her composure, Ceinwyn took in her surroundings. At first she thought that her eyes were still regaining their focus, but when she realized that the rows upon rows of bookshelves expanding outwards and upwards weren't disappearing, she nearly had a fit. It was just a single, grand room that was stacked and arranged with bookshelves that seemed to go onwards in every direction, she couldn't even see where the room ended. She sat in between two shelves that towered over her and stretched both ways, forming a kind of hallway. It was bright in the artificial corridor, but the light had no discernible source. It just seemed to bleed into all the corners and edges, leaving no shadows and adding to the surreal impact of the massive library.

She had done it. Without a doubt in her mind, Ceinwyn knew that she had breached the Akashic Records. She threw her hands up, cheered as loudly as she could. It worked! It worked! Elated, she stood up and immediately realized that she was not alone.

Standing not two feet away from her was a man of average height, and average build. His hair was a warm, brown color, and a thin, finely trimmed beard lined his jaw from ear to chin. He wore a monk's habit, a faded grey colour likely through numerous washes by an inexperienced hand, and held a long, yellowing parchment in one hand and a feather quill in the other.

"Hello." He said.

No thundering fanfare? No deep, bellowing, ominous voice? Ceinwyn thought. Just an old man greeting me like I was coming over for lunch and tea? She had to admit to herself that she was a bit disappointed and had thought that it would be, well, dramatic.

"Uh, hello." She looked at the withered stranger carefully and said, "Who are you?"

"I'm the Archivist."

"The Archivist?" She replied, confused.

"Just so. The Archivist. The 'the' might not seem important to you, but it's the principle of the matter. I'm not 'Archivist', or 'Archive', or, in the name of all things sensible, "Archie". The Archivist."

"Wait, what? Don't you have a name?"

"Well, I was thinking of calling myself 'The Librarian', but then I once met a very large orangutan with the same name..." The man's voice drifted off, and his eyes squeezed shut, like he just had a bad memory, "It did not end well. So I've called myself The Archivist ever since."

"What? You were...once you..you wh...you met a monkey?!" Ceinwyn rambled, flabbergasted.

"Don't tell him that."

"Stop! For the love of all the Gods and their Children, please stop!" She called out, her hands up in the air defensively, "What's going on?! Am I in the right place? I thought I was in the Akashic records!"

The mysterious man looked upward and around him, letting his gaze fall on the rows and rows of bookshelves. "Well, you're not in the wrong place. You were just lucky, and you got the, er, 'guided tour'." He turned back to Ceinwyn and smiled, "Good on you, right?"

"Right." She answered back, not really understanding at all. "So can you help me then? Do you know why I'm here?"

"I said I'm 'The Archivist', not 'The Psychic'. I haven't the foggiest idea why a naked woman would be travelling around these parts."

Ceinwyn snapped back and looked down at herself, remembering the ritual and how she got here in the first place. Heat rushed up her cheeks and she gave out a little cry, ineffectively trying to cover herself. It wasn't very cold in the room, but she still shivered and stroked her arms for warmth. "Stop looking!"

"Why?" He replied.

"Because it's embarassing!" She yelled, "I didn't come this way because I wanted to!"

"Ah yes...the entry ritual. That's why I'm here, after all." He replied mysteriously. "Those who sacrifice something of themselves always get the golden treatment. Especially those that sacrifice their life."

He looked down at her bare body, not in a lustful way but rather like a botanist who's discovered an interesting breed of plant, and murmured, "Although it appears you have only suffered le petit mort, the little ****. Very clever, druidess."

Ceinwyn could only stare at him in dumb shock. He talked like he wasn't all there in the head and yet, he said things that no other person should know, knew things that showed too much insight. Then a tingling at the back of her head made her curious and she came to a strange conclusion.

"...are you Akasha?" She asked carefully.

She could have heard a coin drop from the massive silence that followed. The ageless man's brow furrowed deeply, but that was the grand extent of his movement, as if the rest of his body couldn't be bothered to react. Eventually, he replied, "I...believe I may have been called that. A long time ago."

Then, there was a deep, thrumming sound of a bell that rang through the halls of the archive. It rolled on and on, and made the shelves shake and books tumble from their precarious perches, kicking up miniature clouds of dust as they slapped the floor. Then, where once there was only an empty aisle, there was suddenly a double-door that stretched from one shelf to the other, towering higher than even the bookcases and arching at the top into a peak that Ceinwyn could barely see.

The archivist inclined his head, looking off into the horizon of the unending bookshelves on the side opposite of the doorway. "Looks like our time is up." He raised his arm and beckoned her to the slowly opening door, "It was a pleasure to be acquainted with you. Mind that first step."

"Wh-what?!" Ceinwyn said, looking at him and then the rest of the records frantically. She jerked his arm off her shoulder and yelled, "B-but I haven't learned anything!"

The Archivist looked to her through heavy-lidded eyes, narrowed to slits by fatigue and boredom, and the tinest of smiles cracked his visage. "Are you sure?"

There was a loud booming sound, like a door slamming, and then Ceinwyn suddenly was back in the Magic College, lying naked in the middle of the prismatic circle.