When she went to get up to her feet, Vile extended a hand down to her. She narrowed her eyes back at him, and didn’t take it.
“Oh, now you don’t want help? Make up your mind, silly thing.” He huffed. “Either you want chivalry or you don’t. You can’t be offended both when it’s withheld and when it’s offered.”
“That’s not the problem. I just don’t trust you not to pull your hand away or snap my arm off.”
“Ah! Well,thatis a perfectly reasonable reason to refuse my aid, yes.” He chuckled. “Forgive me for jumping to false conclusions.” But his hand was still there, palm up. “Come now, you can trust me.”
Yeah. Nope. She stood on her own, and brushed her knees off. “What is going on? Will you please at least explain why you’re doing this to us?”
Vile hummed and tucked his hand behind his back, unoffended she refused his offer. He strolled away from her. “Oh, my dear. All you had to do was ask nicely.” This time, when he snapped his fingers, the lights switched on, with that kind ofclick-boomnoise that old warehouse lights tended to have. It reminded her of an old Frankenstein film.
Row after row of lights lit up, one at a time, expanding away from them.
“Welcome to fictionitself!”Vile raised his arms and spun in a circle, gesturing around them. They were in some sort of intersection of massive hallways. Beneath them on the marble floor was an enormous compass rose withwaytoo many points. It was almost insane to look at. From each point around them was a corridor of books that stretched off into the distance, impossibly long. The rows of books were still continuing to light up as they went off into the distance.
In the marble floor of each main corridor was inlaid a word.Horror. Fantasy. Science Fiction. Romance. Mystery. Thriller. Action.And on and on. And the corridors branched as they went deeper in.
Genres. A sea ofgenres.“Holy shit…”
“And it never stops expanding, dividing, and sub-dividing.” Virtue sighed quietly. He was still standing close by Sidney, guarding her. “For better or worse.”
“Welcome to our world. Built over the millennia by all of humanity’s stories, this is our domain, where we rule supreme.” Vile gestured out his arms at his sides as he turned in a circle. “Every story you could possibly imagine!”
Vile’s arms dropped loudly to his sides. “And every single one of them isboring.Strip away all the set dressing, all the fancy names with too many apostrophes, and all the core stories areexactly the same.”
Sasha watched him. He had gone from pride to anger to dismay in one sentence like someone switching channels on a radio too quickly.
“Nothing is new. Nothing is unique. Nothing is unexpected.” Vile met her gaze and held it, ignoring the others. “And we are sobored!”His voice echoed through the library.
“He’s bored. I’m fine,” Virtue interjected.
“Pah.” Vile waved a hand at him dismissively. “Don’t lie and pretend you don’t get a kick out of stomping around and playing, well, you. You have just as much of a part to play in this as I do.”
“I’m only trying to stop you. You started this. You always do.” Virtue kept himself between Vile and Sidney.
Sasha, meanwhile, was left standing on her own. Well. Mostly. Vile was looming next to her, which was something he seemed to want to do.
“That’s because you’re with me, darling. Your dear sister is my brother’s champion, and you’re mine.” Vile grinned toothily at her. “Here’s an idea. How about we cut straight to the gothic romance so I can whisk you off while you swoon in my arms?”
Oh, good. Now he was flirting with her. Or threatening her.
Or both.
Vile cackled. “Now you’re getting it.”
Right. Sasha narrowed her eyes. The mind-reading trick was getting obnoxious. “Explanations. Please.”
“Fine, fine.” He took a step back from her. “Spoilsport. But I suppose we’ll have plenty of time for that later. Because, you see, my brother and I have been playing this game for the past few, eh, forevers?”
“He’splaying a game.” Virtue corrected him.
Vile continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “The rules are quite simple. We each take a champion from Earth. Twins, like us. Poetry and symmetry, etcetera, etcetera. And that is where you come in.” He closed the distance between them again, leaning his head in close to Sasha. “And with our champions selected, we playa simple game of best of three…”
She jerked her head back away from him. “What do you mean, best of three? Three what?”
“What do you think? Stories, of course!”Vile laughed, clapping his hands and strolling away from her. “You will join us through a selection of our favorite stories.”
That explained where they just were. “But how do you win a story?” That was what made her nervous. “Like, who ‘wins’ the plot?”
