The clatter of hooves heralded the entry of the party of four into yet another room of the dungeon.

Stumbling into the room, Melt and the others were out of breath, not really daring to look back as the way they'd just come closed with a heavy clunk. No one dared moved for a long minute, listening for the sound of more gears grinding, or the ceiling starting to shift. But nothing moved. They were safe. They had survived. Euele and Solace crowded around Leiken, the heraldic having been the last to stumble through the doorway before the ceiling had come crashing down. By some miracle, he seemed to have avoided his tail being crushed.

Melt watched silently as the three checked each other for injuries, his expression hard to read. Would Mel ever have a group of others who cared for them like that? They blinked the thought away, forcing it from their mind as they looked about the room they and the others had ended up within. It was huge, the ceiling sitting at least 40 feet up in the air over their heads, invisible in the creeping dark their lanternless state left them in, the walls lined with absolutely overly stuffed bookshelves, some of the poor things sagging under the weight of the books they held. The center of the room had three tables, set in a horse-shoe like shape. Two of the tables were absolutely covered with odd implements, broken glass, rusty tools, tarnished silver tweezers, bits of rotted herb and glowing mushrooms. Meanwhile, the third table had books, stacks upon stacks of books pushed to the corners, what looked to be the notes of the mage lying open on the table, quill sitting nearby, the feather looking as though a single touch would turn it into dust.

Strangely enough, none of the books looked like they'd aged at all. They seemed perfectly fine, no brittle pages, no worn ink, their bindings weren't eaten away, and the leather protecting them hadn't rotted...

"A mage's quarters." It was Leiken who spoke the discovery aloud, his eyes practically aglow with delight as Melt stumbled through their thoughts. "We may find more unfinished wands here. Or better yet, magic books!" 

Melt held out their tail, stopping Leiken from going any further, their eyes suddenly narrowing. "Wait... something's not right here." Their ear flicked, causing the charm dangling from their ear to dance and spin. "Listen to that sound." The whole room seemed to be alive, the sound of paper rustling and distant scuttling rushing about in the dark. He took in a sharp breath, and let it out in a rushed voice. "The books are alive. Prepare yourselves for a fight." 

Somewhere in the dark, Euele tsked, her face suddenly illuminated by the wild blue glow of her staff. "Let them come." When the last cold note over her voice died to the strange unrest, it was as though all hell broke loose.

All at once the books rose into the air, flying as though their pages were wings, shrieking in voices that no one but the dead would understand. In an instant they had descended, swooping this way and that, slapping against faces as Euele's blue flames filled the sky, briefly lighting the world with a flash of silver revealing the chaos before all was dark again. Acherna's shrieks joined the cacophony as she dove into the fray, tackling a book from its flight and tearing into the pages with her teeth and claws.

Solace's poleaxe swung through the air with the sound of distant bells, lancing through page and leather as though it were the hide of some god. Leiken's golden magic filling the world with a delicious warmth as book after book burned. Que's fangs sunk deep into books as she lunged, her snapping jaws hardly audible over the ghostly voices speaking volumes of earless knowledge into the burning air. Melt lunged for the heavens, the light rainbow glint of their blade flashing through the dark like a cleaver as it split through books like a hot knife through butter.

It wasn't worth trying to perceive who was winning, the only signal that they might survive the growing piles of books that were falling uselessly about them.