Conviction

I’ll say, the Red Cap suddenly leaving like that didn’t leave me all that happy. Quite rude of it, really. It’s almost as if I was obstinately refusing to work with it out of a sense of self-loathing and continued to insist on suicide by Fear regardless of its opinion on the matter or something.

After the blood was gone, I angrily stomped around the Library for a while, looking for a door out. That’s how I’d gotten out during my previous visits, but during those times I’d also entered through a door, not… Fear… teleportation… universe-hopping… whatever that was. So I had no idea how to get out of there. Wasn’t long before I started to consider just knocking down bookshelves and seeing what happened.

Before I could start doing that, I found the Red Cap again. It was leaning against a shelf, reading a book it had picked off. Occasionally, it would chuckle to itself.

“What are you doing now?” I said.

“Reminiscing.” It tossed the book to me. “Here, you should give it a read. Especially the ending.”

I looked at the cover, but there wasn’t a title on it. It looked different than the other books I’d gotten from the Library before: it was bound with an oddly moist leather, and it was heavier than it should have been for its size. I opened the book and read the first few pages, finding it to be a biography for a woman named Samantha Reynolds. She was a mostly unremarkable woman, and I started to wonder why I was supposed to be reading about her. Then I skipped to the last few pages.

After some late night shopping, she was kidnapped in the parking lot of a grocery store. For the next several weeks, she was repeatedly raped by her captor, and then finally murdered. The book went into quite a lot of detail describing the entire thing.

When I looked up from the book, the Red Cap was smiling. “That was my work. Well, I hadn’t been planning to kill her, but you know, sometimes you’re just struck by a whim, and then-” And then I punched the Red Cap through the neck, tearing its head off.

Not that it really did anything. The blood quickly came back together again, and the Red Cap was whole. I was about to hit it again, when another book fell between us. Looked up, and saw several birds flying above, some holding books in their talons.

“You may want to read the ending to that one, too.” The Red Cap said.

Grudgingly, I picked it up and skimmed through. This one was a biography of Jonathon Williams. He was lynched by a mob during a wave of religious revivalism that swept through his hometown. “That was the Archangel.” The Red Cap said. “He always did love letting humans do all the work for him.” It pulled another book off the shelf, and threw it to me. “Check this one out as well.”

Read the ending of the new book. Ayako Hoshiko, mauled to death in her sleep (“The Rake.”) Another book was dropped by the Convocation. Slava Gavriila, suicide by jumping off a building (“The Cold Boy.”) Adam Summers, shot by the police after he butchered his family (“The Mother of Snakes.”) Jenny Walker, died without warning in her sleep (“The Grotesque.”) More books were tossed to me, each with a similar ending.

“We can keep going as long as you like.” The Red Cap said. “I’ve got billions to choose from. Seriously. BILLIONS.”

“So? I know you Fears are monsters. You don’t have to remind me.”

“Don’t I? You claim to know that we’re monsters, but do you understand it?” The dim lights illuminating the Library darkened even more, and blood started to rise out of the floor. The Red Cap slowly walked toward me, a red cloak that dripped with blood billowing behind it. “Do you understand what we really are? What we are to humans? Because I don’t think you do. Every time you’ve met us, it’s been on a near equal footing. To you, we were just another kind of monster to be fought. But what about those who don’t have your godly powers? The little humans who went through their days without any knowledge of us, until the moment one of us suddenly decided to enter their life?”

The lights had dimmed so that everything around me except the Red Cap was shrouded in blackness. Its face was inches away from mine, and its lips pulled back to show fangs. The blood in my ears was pounding so loud I could barely hears it as it spoke.

“I am their hunger, their lust, their shame. For as long as humans have looked on each other with desire I have existed, fueling their greed. And when I come to claim them….” It grabbed my jaw, and moved me even closer, until we were nearly touching, as its body became more animalistic. “What do you think happened to Samantha? She died, yes, but then what?” It tapped the side of its head. “She’s in here. Still conscious. Still aware of what’s happening to her. I claimed her as mine, and took possession of her for all eternity. Do you want to know what that feels like for her?”

Blood poured from above, drenching me. I suddenly felt like I was floating in a red haze. All at once, I was hit by extreme sensations. There was intense pleasure flowing through me, better than any sex I’d ever had. But at the same time, there was unimaginable pain across every inch of my body. And then there was hunger, a ravenous desire to take everything….

The moment was gone, and I was in the Library again, with the lights back to normal. The blood was off me, but I could still feel it, like a filth I could never wash off….

The Red Cap had moved away from me, and was in the much less threatening child appearance. “It’s true, if the Slender Man erases you, it would be possible to return the multiverse to its old form.” It picked up one of the books I had read. “This form. An eternal hell for the human race, where not even death can free them from their torment. And there will be no one capable of stopping them.”

It took a few attempts for me to stand back on my feet. “But this is still my fault.” I said. “It’s because of me that everyone is dead….”

“Really? Because from what I remember, it wasn’t you who was burning down cities and massacring their population’s. It’s not as if you forced the Fears to go on a killing spree the moment the multiverse started to fall apart. And besides…”  It appeared in front of me, older again, “they’re not all dead.”

“… What?”

“There’s still three… no, wait, one just died, there’s still two humans left.”

“But… what? How?”

“Mostly luck. The Fears were more interested in putting on a show for you than actual efficiency in their purge, and these two were pretty isolated. They’re not going to survive long, of course, but….”

“We’re saving them.”

“Really? I thought you were going to be off dying so that the apocalypse could be reversed.”

“Shut up. We’re saving them. I’m not going to sit here when there are still people out there in danger.”

For a moment, I think I saw the Red Cap smile, then it turned its back to me. “Are you sure? It would be pretty dangerous. Opening another gate out of here will let the Fears realize we’re hiding here. And we’ll probably have to fight them in the process of rescuing these people….”

“What part of ‘We’re saving them’ was so hard for you to understand? Now take me to these two, before they die as well.”

The Red Cap turned back around, a huge smile on its face. It shouted to the air, “Alright, birds, Brute, Bride, get ready! We’re going back on the warpath!” Hundreds of birds flew down around us, and fire roared into the shape of a woman, with smoke billowing behind it. The Red Cap flicked its wrist, and the space behind it began to twist. It gestured to the distortion, and bowed to me.

“After you, my lady.”

Took a deep breath, and then stepped though.