The Camur library was like a secret level out of a video game, given dimensions in the real world. Tall, well-stocked, redwood shelves stood like the statues guarding ancient tombs. Kritika inhaled the aroma of paper and naphthalene. A silver-fish skittered across the encyclopedia spines, behind the librarian's desk, and embraced the darkness within a gap.

Emilio threw a fireball at a torch mounted on the wall.

"Whoa there, Emperor Nero, take it down a notch!"

"Geez, I got this. Ya'll are really jumpy today."

The ball had disappeared into the flames of the beacon. It started a chain reaction; torches in the room lighted up one by one and the sequence terminated in the chandelier overhead.

"Lady, I'm a champion at basketball. These eyes, they never miss."

"Duly noted."

Emilio swiftly moved to the librarian's computer and spun around on the revolving chair. He booted up the computer and brought up the archive search programme.

Kritika looked the thick layer of dust smudged on her palm after an accidental brush. She rubbed them together, watching Emilio as he combed through the archives.

After a long vacation, one could craft a glass bottle from all the dust by simply taking a stroll through the reference books section.

Esther would've loved to add that to her wine bottle collection. She would've also cleared the passage by now with her chronic sneezing. The poor girl and her eosinophil count. She had been sent to fetch one of the two Sports Captains, who was probably fooling around with her boyfriend in the Gardening Club's orchard.

The system pinged, and up popped a window.

"The book's been issued. Accessed by a library mastercard, given to school staff only," Emilio said.

Kritika squinted at the pixelated words and the picture.

"Anaikos, Hera. She's Clara from the Nutcracker drama, Fantastic! What's her element?"

"Dunno," he said, waiting for the printer to spit out a copy of the page.

"Wait, she's a techie, right? From your class?"

Emilio shut down the system, and stuffed the folded paper into his pocket."Yes, but frankly, I didn't even remember what she looked like. Girl's received a whole lotta suspensions. Wonder if they'd let her write the finals this year. What do you have on her?"

"She's our class teacher's kid, from what I know. Had asked me to give her mom her packet-lunch one day. Seemed pretty normal to me."

"Oh, so that's where she got the master card from. You have absolutely no id–"

The library doors slammed shut in their faces. Someone bolted them in and giggled from outside. They backed away as indigo gas poured in through the keyhole. The smoke swirled into a sphere, like cotton candy being spun onto a stick. It hurled itself at the two students.

The duo leapt apart; Kritika rolled on the ground and recovered with her back against the door. The smoke ball crashed onto the floor and grew into a bubbling fountain.

The smoke began to twist and twirl until it acquired a form resembling an upturned badminton cock. The round end solidified, and it sprouted a pair of beady, black eyes. Its face cracked open in a chasm of a grin.

The thing was an infernal, blue Pac-Man. It squeaked in a high-pitched voice,

"Hi, I am Happy!"

"We're so not," Emilio said, and he lifted his hands in an offensive stance.

"Hi, I'm Happy!"

"Heck no!"

Kritika grabbed an almanac from a nearby desk and chucked it at its head.

The book went down its gullet in a monster bite.

"Kritika, get down!"

Emilio ignited his hands and fired a barrage of fireballs. The Happy giggled and wolfed down every single one of them. The smoke that formed the lower half of its body, grew with each ball of heated gas it swallowed. It began to obscure the furniture nearby; the hairs on the back of Kritika's neck stood up, as the wood cracked within the smokescreen.

"Emil, stop feeding that thing!"

The pyrokinect spun around, kick-blasting the creature with arcs of flames. Roundhouse after roundhouse, the creature curved, bent, and dodged him. The demented grin plastered on its face never faded. The Happy smiled at the boy straining his energy pool to use a double-handed flamethrower. It gobbled up every bit of the fire.

Nearby, a wooden chair caught in its smoke shriveled, and crumbled into black dust.

All the while, the creature hadn't attacked them.

Emil voiced her thoughts. Except he was rather colourful with the curses sandwiched in between. She was in close proximity to the door. If she could just get Emilio on her side, and get him to burn the wood down.

Damnit. Gavain Camur wouldn't have commissioned doors that would burn easily.

Or she could trick the Happy into eating through it. Either way, she had to get Emilio over.

If the Happy can eat through the wood, or break it, corrode it, whatever, why had it come in through the keyhole?

She grabbed the librarian's steel chair from nearby.

"Hey ugly, come on!" She teased the creature. The Happy's head snapped to face her. It grinned a little wider and began to glide towards her. The smoke began to crack the wooden floorboards.

Maybe it works only on wood. And paper is technically wood.

The almanac's cover had been leather.

Works on organic stuff only.

There must've been some mechanism on the door that kept it from corroding it. Does it not work on teak? Or is it allergic to it or something, like Esther?

She lifted the chair's seat over her shoulder, hoping to impale the thing on its metallic legs. Emilio yelped as the desk he had climbed on creaked.

"Hi, I'm Happy!

"Who sent you here?" She asked, circling the creature. The Happy followed in pas de duex, gliding and keeping a constant distance between them. Emilio leapt down as the gas around the floor reduced in concentration. He readied another fireball in his hands and moved in sync behind Kritika.

"Doy, my toy-maker did!"

"Why did your toy-maker send you here?"

A dark tendril seeped into the floor and split a plank open. The splinters withered and curled into black blobs, that evaporated and joined the Happy. Planks snapped like twigs as the tentacle drilled its way through.

"To hug you and make you happy!"

"Hug this."

Kritika launched the chair at the Happy. It intercepted the piece in a nest of its tentacles and munched on the wooden back support. The tentacle crept closer, albeit visibly slower than what it had once been.

Emilio was trying to yank the doors open with brute force. Kritika leapt over the librarian's desk and grabbed a few paperclips. She shoved him aside and began jimmying the lock.

One feeble paperclip snapped as she thrust it in.

The second flew off and landed on the top of a shelf.

Of all the goddamn times to have an empty energy pool.

Should've recharged. Should've recharged.

Dumbass.

I'm not ready to die in the hands of a plushie.

Come on, come on.

Come on you dumb, little. . .

The paper-clips had no traction against her sweaty palms.

"Hey, let me try."

Emilio's dark irises shone from behind his glasses. Wheatish hands gently picked up the red and blue paper-clips from a wheatish palm.

The Happy was content with the gobstopper of a chair. The gases and the maw were doing zero damage to the skeleton, which confused the Happy.

It suddenly flung the chair into the shelves behind it.

"Hi, I'm Happy!"

The locks clicked to their relief.

In a flash, both of them were outside, locking the monster in. Each slam made a yellow seal with a heptagram pulse on the doors.

"Let me out! Please!"

It had a dangerously convincing way of mimicking a child. Kritika took a chalk from an empty class nearby and scribbled a warning in large letters across the door. She stuffed the rest of the chalk-stick into the keyhole.

"Nope," Emilio said.

She rubbed it off and rewrote the warning.

"Better. Ten on ten."

[ Go AhEaD, OPeN THiS doOR ]

The bell tolled as they walked away to find Hera Anaikos, relieved to have survived a period. Purple smoke lapped through the lower gaps of the door. The seal of Gavin, however, had different plans.

⑅ ♾️ ⑅