The Beast I Am

Chapter 9

Three flights.

Three flights of curling stairs before my bare feet brushed a cold and smooth floor. I didn't dare breathe, too intimidated to disturb the silence with my noise.

The inky darkness waited with the patience of eternity; Luther's steps swallowed by the nothingness.

So, naturally, I hissed as everything suddenly flashed a blinding white. Forcing slow blinks as I rubbed away the stars, crowding for attention.

Now adjusted, the wall sconces cast an amber glow across the marbled floor, scattering its light against the white flecks like smoldering embers. I heard the heater kick on with the now constant mild hum of the lights, and I couldn't help but roll my eyes. For a man who seemed to dislike technology; he sure enjoyed the physical luxuries it could provide.

But even my extremely well-deserved resentment melted to mix with the fiery pools on the floor at the impressiveness I now witnessed.

At the center of the expansive basement sat a column of stone that matched the floor, as if the carved animals in its base grew out from the ground itself. A brick of an index book supported by the bronze raven's wingspan. From its center, rows of curling bookshelves burst outward like a spiderweb, disappearing into each other in winding waves.

Luther had walked over to a small alcove carved from the wall, with just enough space to hold a chair, a beaten loveseat, and a side table. Its round surface stacked tall with uncatalogued tight-scripted texts. I felt the unease ebb away with each step as the room warmed, the shiver haunting my nightmares when I realized that the source was from the vacant scent of Rhazien.

It had been easier with him gone to resist that urge to please, but still, in his home– it lingered. Hitting me hardest when I first woke and hadn't the strength to scold my Beast for it yet.

That was becoming ritualistic, too.

The game of cat and mouse I held with the carnage in my rib cage. It was frustrating to decipher the voices I heard, layered within each other as if competing for attention. An introspective thought that spurred my heels to open the library index carefully. The Key alone had to be at least 100 pages itself; texts were referred to multiple times in apparent need of importance. My thumb brushed the familiar cursive, each page meticulously lined in handwriting so consistent it seemed printed. My stomach warmed at the thought of Rhazien against my will– how this Key seemed to have me looking into his mind itself.

He had arranged the library like a chain of ideas, taking the time to re-write entire texts in order to have them in multiple sections. My involuntary shiver at the vulnerability encouraged the search for my first question to be answered.

The clan name practically glowing off the page, the one that seemed to be so deliberately scrubbed from the books upstairs;

The Kina.

֍ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ⸸ ֍

I easily spent the rest of the evening down in that library, collecting books and journals like bricks to build a personal kingdom. Everything I needed to solve the riddle of my own existence was here; I was convinced of it. Uncovering it would just take time– something I didn't have much of.

So, I worked with both ears trained on the front door, my heart skipping at every unplanned sound. I could do both, the painful anticipation and the curiosity; that wasn't the problem. It was the intrigue about him. I kept getting sucked into my own mind, my Beast pulling on my cords of sympathy for my captor. No matter how hard I tried to focus on the page.

I started with what was easiest for me: history. Get comfortable with how the clans were organized and their relationships with each other. Quickly, I deduced I needed to develop a set of rules: Rule #1 assumes everything is written by a biased author, and Rule #2 assumes the opposite of everything written is true for someone else.