It didn’t take long wandering around a dark empty library before the boredom started to set in. “Alright.” I said to the ceiling. “I’ll bite. I do have questions.”

Blood flowed from underneath the bookshelves, and the Red Cap appeared. It was female this time, and dressed like a schoolteacher from a really bad porno. “Knew curiosity would win out. What would you like to know, my lady?”

“What is this place? I keep encountering it, but I’ve never really understood its nature.”

“It’s the Blind Man. His corpse now, I guess.”

“… No, I’ve seen the Blind Man. It’s an old guy with sunglasses, not a building.”

“Yes, he was an old guy with sunglasses. And he was this Library. Typical human, to look at the personified manifestation and assume it’s the entirety of the being. Some of your organizations made all these complicated classifications about ‘Domains’ and ‘Realms’, as if they were somehow separate from us. The Blind Man was time and memory given form, and this Library is part of that manifested concept. Although now that he’s dead, so this place is falling apart; the whole mini-universe might collapse and disappear at any moment. That’s the reason it’s a good hiding place for us: the Slender Man would never suspect we’d wait in someplace so dangerous.”

“That’s… comforting. Speaking of the Slender Man, why are you fighting it? You already told me why the Convocation would help me, and I get why the Brute and the Bride may have a grudge, but I don’t see why any other Fears would side against it.”

The Red Cap shrugged, causing… a lot of jiggling. “Well, the Smiling Man just wanted to cause chaos and destruction. It didn’t take much for Grendel to convince him to join our team. He always wanted to be on the front lines, slaughtering everything he saw… which is probably why he’s dead and the rest of us are alive.
As for me, well, I guess I just got tired of the Slender Man lording over us. Just because it created the multiverse, it thinks it gets to be in charge? No way I was putting up with that.” It stuck its tongue out playfully at me. “Yes, that does mean that my motivation for joining a plan to destroy your planet was basically the same as a teenager shouting at their parents and then slamming their door shut.”

“That… seems a little immature.”

“Of course it does. I am the physical embodiment of sex. What kind of behavior would you expect from me? Next question.”

“That’s all for now.”

It seemed confused by that. “What really? Not going to ask about the current situation on Earth? What about our plans for you? Anything?”

“No. I’m going back to Earth, and then I’m going to die. And none of this will matter because everything will return normal.”

It stared at me for a few moments, and then let out an exasperated groan. “Fine. Be that way. I’ll just have to find another method to convince you. Maybe the birds will have some ideas.” And once again, it dissolved into a pool of blood which slid under the shelves.