Years ago, there was a blip on the scans. Just a tiny little thing, almost insignificant, located on a planet without a proper name, in a region of space nobody had any reason to venture into. The first investigation landed, only a skeleton crew from a vessel that was conveniently close, and found a mess of metal plates and clockwork devices and remains of what could be engines, fallen from the acrid skies above. While the fortress was largely intact, there was not a single life sign. Questions remained.

For decades, beings from all over poured towards the fortress, prodding and poking at everything with even a remote chance at answering the obvious inquiries, but there was nothing. Corporations came and left, leaving large, ugly scars in the wreckage, having found nothing within that could propagate their greed. Slowly but surely the flow of visitors to that lonely world stymied, until one day, the fortress was merely another footnote in history, an indecipherable puzzle that ultimately had no purpose. Life moved on. Wars continued. Archeologists discovered more interesting things on which to spend their time.

And then they found the Library.

The report had been buried by news of the latest conflicts almost immediately, but Karris had been watching much closer than most other people. On the first outbound shuttle she pored over the known layout of the fortress, committing to memory every explored intricacy forgotten by all those expeditions, all the lost details shoved into the furthest corner of their collective knowledge. No entrance or exit was unknown to her, and neither were their contents, except for the Library. Breached only two weeks prior, the majority of its contents had not been catalogued, owing to a lack of funding that was easily devoted to yet another war effort. The original expedition's leader had returned with an odd manner about him, before being found in his study with a pistol in his hand and the remains of his brain stem against one wall, and perhaps that was the most alluring part of it all: what had he seen? Every piece of data Karris read, every person she had interviewed, had not only prepared her for this, but stoked the flames of the mystery that followed into her dreams.

Now she stood before the electronic hatch she knew would lead to the Library, an ill-fitting helmet the only thing separating her from the deadly atmosphere. One more thing to do. Karris placed her gloved hand on a lock she didn't have a key for and concentrated. In her mind's eye, the mechanisms behind it shifted. The design that was burned into her memory came to life, moving in all the ways that would send out the correct impulses to the hinge mechanism, moving the do-

She opened her eyes just as the metal slid away with a heavy grinding, attenuated by the lack of air, exposing a membrane of a more familiar cocktail of gases. The drop into the Library was not significant, and soon her helmet came off, filling her lungs with the scent of musty...paper? Karris sniffed the air again. Definitely paper. All the libraries on the core worlds had forsaken most of that for electronic copies, choosing to preserve the last of their paper books in grand, inaccessible vaults, but she could never forget the feel of paper on her skin, of the rustling of each page as she turned them. Karris stripped off her gloves and tossed them to the stone floors, and walked between the shelves full of pristine, untouched volumes, all bound in leather.

In the early days, there were two brothers. Ethi was the larger one, with hands that could crush a man's skull if he so decided, his fortitude able to withstand those of the largest waves. Wiraz was taller, lankier, but not without strengths of his own; his cunning was unmatched by any other on the island, except perhaps by Father. Each day, when the sun rose, Father's assistants would descend from the mountain on which he perched, and deliver to the brothers in their cave the task for the day. Only one could triumph, they were told, and yet neither had managed to overwhelm the o-

Karris gasped as she lowered the book, her eyes catching the fleeting end of...something illuminating the shelves about a dozen aisles away. It was no soft blue tinge like the artificial lamps the expedition had left scattered, but a harsh, white cloaking light. She inched forwards, one hand on the book against her heart. Three aisles down and the light died without as much of a sound. She stepped in between the shelves, holding her breath.

Nothing came. Karris spied from between the tomes. The light had gone. Maybe a malfunctioning lamp? She shook her head; having made it this far, attention wasted on something so unimportant was simply folly. The book in her hands throbbed, begging to be read, demanding her audience.

It was a stalemate. Locked in war as they were, Ethi and Wiraz found themselves at a constant standstill. When victory went to Ethi in the stone throw one day, the very next it was Wiraz who claimed it with a calm, calculated spear into the side of a fish he had lured. Neither was fit to take Father's place at the top, and so they continued on, proving themselves to the assistants for a role neither really understood. But as the sun went down, the brothers would stand side by side on the shore, gazing out onto the infinitude of the archipelago that Father watched over, their competition washed away by the dusk's light. Sometimes they would point out movements on those islands, unable to make any meaningful observations, but excited nonetheless to explore should Father ever permit it.

Karris blinked, almost dropping the book. The veil that clouded her mind was beginning to tear. She had no memory of ever picking up the book, and a quick glance towards the device on her wrist confirmed to her the worst: she had been reading for hours. Having researched temporal anomalies was one thing; experiencing it was entirely another. Karris made a quick turn back towards the breach, but a light shone from behind an aisle in her way, and a pale hand grasped the edge of the shelf.

She froze, her mind stumbling at a speed far from comfortable, and her legs unlocked, allowing her to turn and sprint in the opposite direction. The fortress rested on a slight incline, and her bulky suit made for a subpar use of her energy, but something primal in the back of her mind simply screamed for her to run. And even as she did, her eyes were drawn downwards once more, towards the shifting text she could not put down.

The day of the duel was the tipping point. Ethi swung with the force of ten men, but just as effortlessly, Wiraz weaved around his movements, barely dodging blows that would have sent him sprawling. In time they grew tired, and like every other day they sat together on the beach to discuss the day's events before the islands. Today, however, would be different. Wiraz was first to bring up the topic of fruitlessness. For all they had done, Father was never satisfied, and maybe he would never be. Unsurprisingly, it did not take long for Ethi to agree that things had to change. That night they did not sleep, but instead plotted. There was only one way it would end.

There was no telling for how long Karris had been running, but the muscles in her legs burned. She ducked between more shelves, with no way of knowing how far she'd come or whether space even still conformed to Euclidean laws. She wanted to scream, to bellow her despair, if not for the harsh light filtering between the books in the direction she had run. A hand over her mouth stifled any need for vocalisation, and she curled there with that dreadful book, waiting for whatever it was to come around the corner.

A pale, young man turned moved through the bookshelf, his entire form passing through the wood and paper like smoke, each passing molecule sparking with the bright white she had seen.

At dawn they attacked. Father's assistants had not seen them coming up the base of the mountain, and they were pierced with spears and bludgeoned with clubs. Even after the alarmed shouting began, and the assistants rallied against them, the brothers stood together, cutting a swathe through the servants and slowly advancing up the slope. They reached the summit just before sundown once more, and there Father was, seated under the great tree at the very top. He stared back at them, the same disappointed look in his eyes, and in that moment they stopped.

Neither wanted to move first.

The boy stared at Karris, and she stared back. In one of his hands was a book too, just like hers, clutched tightly between his thin fingers. He was once human, just like her, but he brimmed with a wrongness she couldn't ratify. Just looking at him flipped a switch inside her, bringing from that primordial fear a new emotion, a bubble of hate about to burst as it rose from the depths. Where her art relied on the intricacies of the world around her, changing the minute to affect the greater picture with grace and versatility; his was more brutish, simply pure, unconstrained power with the potential for untold destruction. It was wrong, and he was wrong. There was only one way this would end.

Both brothers were silent as they stepped back onto the beach. Killing Father would never bring them the approval they so desired, and he had always been right: only one could triumph. Wiraz pushed his boat into the water just as Ethi waded into the waves, into the light of the fading sun. The denizens of those islands would come to know them, in time, regardless of their neutrality in this conflict. Beating the other would not be a straightforward matter, and both sides would need all of the help they could get. As they distanced themselves from the shore they had so lovingly fought over, they could not help but wonder if there was truly no other way. And so they spread out…

"...into the sea," Karris whispered to herself, watching the boy's lips as they moved in unison to her own. Another veil pulled from over her eyes, but this time there was no fear, no hate. He was not an enemy. Just another side of the same coin. Together they could be something greater, something above order and chaos and desire for approval that would never come.

But not today.

Karris twisted her helmet back on, and turned to face the open hatch in the wall. The soft crackling of static behind her told her that the boy was already gone, his essence filtered through the opposite wall to wherever it was he had come from. She took a deep breath as she stepped back outside, fresh with a truth she never intended to find, a promise from the Library itself. No telling if it was alive, or a mechanism of whoever had left it for them, but that didn't matter.

One day, she thought, there would be another way.