“That was not the plan!” A voice laughed out awkwardly, as a horse wrenched back his head, narrowly avoiding a book from smashing against his face. The horse was quite tall, and his green eyes were holding a worried gleam as he watched his little bat, Cocoa, cry out as a book smashed against her. She landed on top of a black horse, her little claws catching on a long mane.

Said black horse pinned his ears back sharply as the small creature landed on him, but he had no time to do very much about it as he lashed out with his hind end, kicking one of the books hard enough to turn it into a flurry of torn pages as its screech echoed in the empty halls of the ruins. "And here I thought you knew what you're doing." Shiyuan sharply responded. "Turns out, that is not actually the case."

"Don't be so quick to place your blame, Shiyuan," Another horse was quick to point out. "We can play that game after we got out of this-"

A book had planted itself firmly in Kaihe's face, cutting him off mid-sentence. One could still hear him faintly mutter a curse underneath all the paper, but it was mostly drowned out by the book's own strange shouting.

“I knew what I was doing, five minutes ago.” Logue replied, as he watched the books being torn by Shiyuan, “I didn’t think this was going to happen… In fact? It wouldn’t have, if someone hadn’t poked his nose into them first.”

In the corner of the mage’s library, a horse was hunched over, giggling nervously. Long chestnut locks hid the worried gleam in his red eyes, and he kicked away a book flying nearby, “Listen, I couldn’t have known these books would just… fly out of nowhere.” He answered nervously, “But I mean, isn’t this nice? Shiyuan gets to practice his uh… kicking abilities!” He cheered on the black horse, as if it made anything better.

It did not.

A hound ran forward on all four paws, claws slipping on the wooden floor, before it used Kaihe’s back as a jumping board, launching itself at the books. This was Shion’s little companion, Little Dumpling. When he had earlier revealed the name of this hound, the others had looked at his face dubiously before ignoring him next. All was well.

Kaihe was still occupied with the frenzied pile of pages in his face, shaking his head vigorously until the terrible little beast was finally shaken off. "Just think of something already!"

"I can keep this up for a while." Shiyuan grunted back, pinning one book to the floor with an angry stomp, and continued hitting it until it stopped its attack. But truth be told, more books continued piling up against him, pushing into him and screeching nonsense in his ears. And he was losing patience.

His bay coloured companion finally took pity on him and moved to pull some of the attackers from him with his teeth, launching them as far away from them as he could. "They'll drown us in paper before we manage to fight them all off!"

“Maybe we shouldn’t be fighting them?” Shion called out to them, his tail swiping aside a paper, and he searched around with urgency, his smile growing as he realised that, yes, he found what could work. Perhaps this would be the answer. “Shiyuan, pin that book down!” He called out toward a royal purple book, with golden lettering. It was straying further up in the air, pages gently flowing, trying to stay out of the way.

The books clearly heard Shion, and they went into a frantic drive, and started to attack the party in droves, more ferociously than before. The bat and the dog hurried to cover for them, trying to help as much as they could, and Logue wasn’t far behind, and he looked at what they were doing, a bit confused. “Might explain what you mean there?!” He shouted, and then he copied Kaihe by biting a book too. 

“Well, dear Logue, when we entered the library, nothing happened. I saw Kaihe nudging aside a book too, and nothing! Shiyuan even discreetly opened that grim looking tome in the corner. Yes, I saw that, Shiyuan. But it was only when I opened the purple one, that it all went askew. Funny, right?”

“Not funny.” Logue mumbled, “It’s unlucky.”

Shiyuan shook his thick black mane as the pages tried to hinder him and pin him in place. But he had understood the plan as he whirled around in a fluttering mixture of black and paper to get a line of sight on that accursed purple book Shion had apparently angered. His tail lashed angrily as he pushed through the sheer wall of tomes trying to bare his way.

The shorter and much more lithe built Kaihe did his best to shield Shiyuan from further barrages, but it only turned into a battle for him to not get overwhelmed himself as he rained a whole array of curse words over the books. Not that they seemed to care.

After tearing apart countless books, and destroying untold amounts of priceless knowledge, no doubt, Shiyuan finally found he had a clear shot at the purple tome. And without hesitating even a second, he launched himself forward and up after it.

The old tome tried to escape, but Shiyuan’s teeth were faster, grabbing it by one corner and dragging the struggling book down, before pinning it with one hoof.

The book didn’t want to give in, and slowly, Logue turned his head around, eyes widened in horror. Behind them, the papers had swarmed together, until slowly, a tornado had formed itself before the tired party. Shion nudged Shiyuan aside, shoulders brushing together as he looked at the book with urgency, his heartbeat so loud that he couldn’t even hear past the roar of blood in his head. 

“There’s a tornado, guys.” Logue weakly called out, and his hooves slipped on the floor, as the wind was starting to pull them in.

“I know!” Shion snarked, and he glanced at Shiyuan, “Do you mind covering for me?” The horse pleaded, “I need a few minutes to figure this out, but I promise I’m going to make this stop.”

Shiyuan allowed Shion to take over the book, waiting for the chestnut to place his hoof on the book instead before rushing off, closely followed by Kaihe. "Hurry, you hear me?!" He shouted back at Shion before focusing on protecting him from the onslaught.

His size and weight provided a relatively safe stance for him, despite the increasing storm. But Kaihe seemed to be struggling to hold his footing. So much that Shiyuan resorted to grabbing him by the top of the neck and pushing him further away from the winds. "Go secure the other side before you get blown away!"

”I think I got it!” Shion called out, “There’s a strange riddle, in the middle of the book, I - I couldn’t read it quite normally it seems to love changing the font. Darn you, purple… Okay, the riddle goes as such; What is both a question and an answer, but requires no response?”

Shion was bemused, and he repeated the phrase with a murmur, “Logue, do you have any idea?”

“Could it be a rhetorical question?” He guessed widly, as the dog tried to pull away from the tornado, getting way too close to the swarm of books.

Shiyuan seemed frustrated. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?", he shouted against the noise. "That makes no sense at all!"

"Stop complaining and think!", Kaihe retorted, equally loudly.

"You're the least helpful one here, so don't tell me what to do, Kaihe!"

Unfortunately, neither of them really seemed to focus on the riddle at all, choosing to argue instead. This didn't help the situation at all, and while Logue’s bat crawled deeper into Shiyuan’s mane to stay secure, the tornado was getting dangerously close to the group.

“Not it!” Shion said to Logue, “Can it be a shrug?” He tried, and then, to his dismay, he heard the crackle of electricity, and the sound of rolling thunder. “Gah, I hate this ridd-”
His mouth opened in disbelief. “A riddle is both an answer and a question. I feel so stupid. This is a pun! A riddle requires no response…”

Shiyuan, Logue and Kaihe stopped their argument momentarily to look towards Shion, they could only hope he was right.
If not, there would be a lot of paper cuts in store for them...