Beyond nature

If I still had the ability to feel fear... well, I meant it when it was as functioning as it used to be before limbo I would've probably stayed in my room unable to move because of fear, but even without direct effects of fear I still felt dread and fear indirectly.

After a moment of thought I opened the door and walked into the... library!!?

'Damn It's əmpty!'

The library was smaller than my room and the shelfs were carved into the stone walls, the books... are those even books? Some were just a bunch of pieces made from animal hives while some others are made from thin pieces of wood, that's how the mess they call "library" was made, was there even books or just piles of makeshift papers?

There was a desk in the middle of the tiny library with nothing on top of the desk except for a bowl of ink and... a wooden primitive pen, which seemed surprisingly intricate.

What I was hoping for is to find out more about their origin, maybe I'll get some good knowledge out of it.

As I reluctantly started sprawling through the mess of papers animal skin and even fabrics, after some time I started to see weird things, some of these papers are blackened or erased, some had writings and lastly are the empty ones.

The stacks of papers with writings were useless to me, they either were written crafting knowledge as well as artisan knowledge, or recordings of important details as well as mabs and blueprints.

From what I've read they are capable of many crafts but as I thought, crafting those air powered wings is impossible for them.

As I reached the last pieces of hive-made paper mabs, suddenly the sound of footsteps reached my ears.

***

- "Hey Voll, I gotta sleep for real, can't you take my shift?"

Delve spoke with a somewhat tired tone, he was of course faking an excuse to slack off but he had a reason to avoid staying too late, he wanted to eat some roasted fish that his family cooked.

- "Listen Delve, I ain't taking your shift, I am hella sleepy, and you know that.

I barely slept last night because of the night whispers"

Voll who was wearing his normal clothes instead of the armor, ready to walk home and now being forced to speak to his armored friend.

- "Night whispers! Really? Is that your excuse... Ugh!"

- "I'll go now, and... have fun with these freaky whispers.

Believe me, these whispers will definitely like you very much"

With that Voll walked away ignoring his friend while Delve was irritated to the bone.

'Whispers!? Really?? Is that his damn excuse! I have a nice smoky fish at home waiting for me, damn you!...'

.

.

.

After a few hours it was mid night already, Delve was accustomed to the night mood of the cave colony, with only moss as a light source the caves looked both beautiful and a little dim... it's easy to start seeing "things" or hearing them.

As he walked through the corridors reaching the further back rooms of the colony, he started hearing weird rustling faint-sounds from a far.

As he walked closer, the color slowly drained from his face as he paled.

With a gulp the man slowly open the door and as he did he saw... nothing?!

The library looked a little more messy but nothing other then that, so Delve slowly walked into the library, there he found nothing but Delve was skeptical... especially because of his ominous friends Voll.

Suddenly he heard the sound of a faint inhale then the sound of a sudden wind went by.

Delve's blood froze for a second as he looked left and right, his hand was already on his sword but... there was absolutely nothing.

- "Is there anyone here?

...

... Thought so."

He thought to himself 'Voll will cause me a heat attack because of his ghost stories'

Anyone would've felt fear here, not because what happened was crazy but because someone was actually here.

Eventually Delve went back to his normal route.

'At least I got a good prank idea for Voll, the whispers will like it... definitely'

***

Damn! I got out soməhow, if it wasn't for these wings I wouldn't have been able to run out.

The more important thing is what I've found in the library, while most of it is useless to me still there was some bits and pieces.

Firstly it seems they've came from a somewhat kingdom or a village... a big village of elves until something happened.

What happened was described as hearing a wail sound that resembled the sound of a horn, every night that sound spread wide through the skies and with it people started disappearing one by one.

There was just no way for them to fight back, they tried everything and everything failed, eventually the remaining left the village and then they found the trench.

And as I thought special tools like the airo wings did not exist back then.

The problem comes next, because the rest of the band of papers were completely tainted with ink.

As I was walking back to my room I remembered something weird, a map that doesn't make sense.

The maps are usually two dimensional to be fit in paper, well... this mab was kind of different, the problem is that it was a map of a two dimensional land with up down left right, instead of front back left right.

There was a very intricate and detailed line that describes the geographic terrain, and it goes from left to right.

In the left side the line suddenly fades, and on the right side of the map there is only a skull mark of

Up is just clouds which become more violent in the right side, underneath the line is nothing.

The line goes up to indicate a tall hill and down to indicate a valley, across the line there were a lot of marks and terrains that somehow looked familiar.

One especially steep and quite deep valley was marked as

While the map is interesting and accurate, still the fact that they choose to depict up and down in the map makes it very lacking... but I still stole it, it was just too weird...