Something tugged at her in all directions. She spun and felt a pull as if things attached to her were dragging on her body. With a thought, she brought them into being: golden chains made up of billions of glowing letters. Suddenly she was the brightest thing in that wrong, awful place. The wave of creatures paused, rippling backward. As if in response to their reaction, she grew again, the chains becoming wrist-thick. She flicked those chains, and the creatures surged forward as if she had challenged them instead.
She remembered, then, what she had seen of these creatures before. They fed on other creatures, drained them of their magic, fed again, insatiable and pitiless. They would feed on her if she did nothing.
Whatever those chains were, she was sure they could lead her back where she belonged. She ignored the oncoming tide and focused on the chains. They seemed to float in midair, though there was no air, and she let them drift, hoping if this was like an airless, waterless sea, they might find a current to lead her home.
They rippled, shifted, and gradually pointed up and away. She let them draw her along after them. The creatures were close enough now that she could make out their features, angular or fleshy or round, all of them bent on tearing her apart. If the chains were leading to an escape, it would come too late.
A memory arose, one so clear it felt as if someone else had put it into her mind: a hand, cupping water from a pool to drink. The same hand, flailing from the surface of the pool as if its owner was drowning. The images repeated, drinking, drowning, drinking, drowning. The creatures were so close the reek of their bodies, the same rot that permeated this space, threatened to overwhelm her.
She was pure magic. Let them drown in it.
She faced the rushing tide and drew on all those golden chains. They flared into painful brilliance. A surge of power shot through her, and her body burned with the light of a thousand suns, a golden mirror shooting rays of light in every direction.
For the first time in this dead place, she heard sound, the death screams of a million creatures. As the light faded, she saw the onrushing tide had vanished. A few creatures remained, but they fled, disappearing as fast as they had come. She felt the power continue to pulse through her, filling her with light. The golden chains spun around her in a dizzying display, all of them tugging in one direction. It looked no different from anywhere else in this hellscape.
She gathered the chains into a single thick rope and flicked them like a whip in that direction, willing them to strike. Dizziness claimed her, and once again the chains flared so brightly she could not bear to look at them. They jerked her forward, and then the world spun and she was falling. She threw out her arms and rolled, felt something collide with her immaterial body, and looked in the direction she had fallen from. Blank nothingness met her eyes, a gaping void in an otherwise normal ceiling.
Ceiling?
She remembered ceilings, and floors, and bookcases. She remembered thousands of books. She remembered people, a long line of people who had brought her questions she answered, or not. Why had she done that? Because it had been what she was created for.
Then everything happened at once:
…she fit herself between bookcases arranged at random in a way that nevertheless made a pattern to her, and knew each book and its limitless possibilities…
…she saw a blonde woman sitting beside the door and whispered to her, but the woman didn’t understand even though she had brought her here…
…she watched a bald man in a three-piece suit wander the aisles, touching the books as if looking for guidance, and she told him to change his destiny…
…she saw a woman in a long gown directing others in loading books onto shelves and felt the beginnings of a tug toward a new home…
…she felt the foundations of the store shake and shouted at a woman with vividly magenta hair to break the stone and save them all…
…she came face to face with a creature anathema to life on earth and—
—but that was here, now, and she lashed out with all her golden chains and bore the monster to the ground.
“Impossible,” it said. “It should have killed you.”
Not impossible, she said. It is what I was made to become. I see every possibility, even those about you and your kind.
“It doesn’t matter. We have already begun draining your world. You can’t stop us.”
You’re right. I can’t stop you. Even if you beg me to.
The monster took a step backward. “What?”
You sealed the cracks. You made this the one point of contact between my reality and yours. You made a fatal mistake.
She tilted her head to look up at the void. Its edges trembled. More plaster and paint broke free, but instead of falling to the floor, it was sucked into the void. The air in front of the hole shimmered with heat haze, not invisible, but like a rainbow-tinted oil slick, as if the true nature of the place beyond the void shone through.
Do you know what a firehose is? she asked.
“I’m not an idiot.” The creature’s voice trembled, giving the lie to its defiant words.
You wanted our magic. Take it. Drown in it. Then, when there is nothing left of you, I will seal your reality and you will drift forever, sterile and dead.
The monster snarled and leapt at her. Dozens of golden chains flew between them, binding it so it smacked into the floor, struggling and spitting vicious words in its own language. She snapped those chains upward, and they flung the creature into the void, where it vanished in an instant.
Now, she said, and detached the rest of the chains from herself. They, too, flew upward, but instead of disappearing, they clung to the mouth of the void and made a golden curtain defining its edges. She drifted upward, creating more chains and bringing them with her until she and they filled the space with light. There was power here, not just her own power but a source almost as large as she, a source she recognized from having lived beside it and within it for almost a century. She reached out to it, and felt it reach back until immaterial hand touched inexorable force.
Power surged through her, making her cry out in mingled pleasure and astonishment. She tilted her head back as that power flowed through her and into the other reality. As it flowed, it became visible as waves of red and purple and blue light, powerful and clean and reassuringly of her reality, a wonderful contrast to the bizarre, alien landscape.
Half in and half out of the monsters’ reality, she saw things impossible to perceive, as if some strange synesthesia worked its magic on her. She saw, in that dead, silent place, the screams of creatures tormented beyond bearing; she heard colors clashing and bleeding together as the landscape tore itself apart; she smelled peanut butter and had no idea what it really meant.
Then dizziness struck her again, and she fell, her immaterial body sinking into the floor. She dragged herself out of it and collapsed on the cream-pale linoleum, rolling onto her back. It wasn’t finished. She had to finish it or everything would start all over again and there would never be an end to the war.
The golden chains still waved in the void. The hole in the ceiling needed to be closed. With her last vestiges of power, she directed them to weave together. First one chain crossed the hole, then another, and then all of them wove a tight mat that quivered with golden light. Nothing would ever come through that hole again.
She lay back and examined the hole. The light was already fading, and the chains had taken on the appearance of painted plaster. She, too, was fading, her golden power dwindled to nothing. She rolled onto her side and came face to face with a dead woman. The woman’s dark blonde hair was dusted with chunks and crumbs of ceiling, her eyes were open, and she wasn’t breathing. She should know who the woman was, but her memory was fading as her light did.