The door clicked shut behind her as she eased it closed, the fading brown wood unadorned and unremarkable as it stood unresponsive to her quiet, lingering gaze.

  “You okay Alice?”

  “Hm…? Oh, yeah, yeah, sorry.”

  With a deep breath she turned around, stepping away from the house again as she caught up to Gwyn, already waiting for her at the sidewalk’s edge.

  The other girl had already brightened back up, smiling serenely at her as they crossed the empty street together, the duo venturing deeper into the city as they quickly left the outskirts, hopping from bus to bus as the concrete around them grew taller and more packed in.

  Gwyn did her best to keep up some amount of small talk to pass the time, Alice vaguely paying attention to her as she did, muttering half-answers as she stared out at the streets and windows passing by, at least somewhat thankful to not be left to her own thoughts for too long at a time.

  By the time they stepped off of what must have been their eighth or ninth bus, the taller of the women had to catch the other by the arm, Alice nearly having walked to the next stop to wait on yet another winding trip deeper into the city.

  “Um, n-no no, we’re here already!”

  Her eyelid fluttered rapidly, waking from her nearly sleepwalking state to look around at their surroundings.

  Currently they stood snuggled neatly between several skyscrapers, the constant hum of cars racing past blowing in from the interstate nearby, the only other ndmark in sight being the comparatively small two story building sitting across the street from them.

  It sat silently in a modestly small lot, with a parking lot only rge enough for maybe a dozen vehicles at once currently only half full, the rest of its tucked-away space dotted with neatly trimmed grass and hedges.

  Before it sat a sign, the letters sun-bleached even after clearly being repainted several times.

  GRACE PUBLIC LIBRARY & COMMUNITY CENTER

  OPEN 24/7, FOOD AND PETS ALLOWED

  “…so, how many blocks away is it?”

  “No, it’s here! Right there across the street!”

  “I… assumed you meant some kind of secret organization, not… an actual library.”

  “It’s, um… y-you’ll get it after we get in, c’mon!”

  Still clutching her tightly by the upper arm, Gwyn raced forward across the street, all but dragging Alice behind her as she struggled to keep pace with her.

  The door opened and a set of bells strung to it jingled pleasantly, signaling the entry of additional patrons to the library’s occupants.

  “Welcome to Grace Public Library! Let me know if you need anything!”

  “Will do, thank you!”

  Gwyn replied back with sunshine in her voice, already tugging her captive guest along as she rushed into the building’s interior at a polite speed, giving Alice at least a smidgen of time to regain her bearings and look about the pce.

  It was… a library, the same as you could probably see in any decently sized city or town anywhere else. Painted, pressed metal bookshelves were packed in tightly in most of the floor pn, opening up near the back to allow space for some more open sitting areas and a modest staircase leading up to the second floor, other guests occasionally peeking up from their books as they hurried past before just as quickly turning their attention back to what they were doing.

  “Okay, it was… no, not here, a little further on… was it left from here… or…?”

  “Uh, Gwyn?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can you uh… my arm?”

  “…oh, I-I’m sorry!”

  Her face went beet red as she realized she’d been dragging her along for the st several minutes, immediately releasing her tight grip on the other girl as they paused between aisles.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine, just… uh, you sure this is the right pce?”

  “One hundred percent sure! I-I’ve been here a ton since I was recruited, so I know it by heart at this point!”

  “And how long ago was that, exactly?”

  She puffed her chest out proudly, standing up straight as she spoke up with an air of pure confidence and pride.

  “Almost three whole weeks ago!”

  “…uh huh.”

  “Right, c’mon, just a little further and we’re there!”

  Both of them quietly made their way still further in, eventually reaching a back corner of the building. There was a short hallway lined with doors on either side, behind each a small, enclosed study room for guest use.

  Gwyn immediately began testing the handles on each door, either finding them unlocked or already open, each time furrowing her brow before closing it back again, not even bothering to look in before moving on to check the next.

  While she waited, Alice idly reached out to test one of the doors herself. The old knob was cold brass, all color having been rubbed off of it from years of use, set against another identical brown wooden door like every other one of the study rooms was.

  As she gripped down on the metal and turned it, it stayed firmly in pce, giving not the slightest bit of leeway as one would expect from a locked doorknob… but before she could simply shrug and release it, the knob warmed rapidly against her fingers, her entire arm tingling for a moment before the sensation passed, the door quietly opening itself invitingly soon after.

  “Okay, not that one, so… right, it was on the left, so it’d be room number… oh!”

  Having finally recalled the room she was looking for, Gwyn turned back to the very door Alice was standing beside, surprised to see it already open.

  “Wait, did it open for you?”

  “Yeah, and it stung like shit too, the hell kinda security you all running?”

  Alice shook her hand like she’d touched a hot stove by accident, checking to make sure it hadn’t burned her hand before turning her attention back to the room ahead of them both.

  “Oh, well, i-it’s only supposed to react at all if you’re already registered for access… b-but you’ve never been here before, I thought?”

  “I haven’t set foot in a library since I was still in college, and I don’t recall getting my arm fried in that one.”

  “Ah, apologies, I acted without thinking to speak first.”

  A muffled voice spoke up from behind Alice’s eyepatch, Sclera doing their best to speak clearly an externally for Gwyn’s sake even from behind their privacy shielding.

  “Before you made physical contact with the handle, I detected traces of magic lingering in the area around it and inside the room beyond. And upon initiating said physical contact, the presence of some manner of seal was made even more obvious, so I simply decided to apply a bit of my own magical pressure against it. Though I seemingly overdid it somewhat, hence the mild burning sensation you felt.”

  “Oooooh… I thought the seal they used was pretty strong… I wasn’t able to get it to budge at all when I first got here!”

  “Pssh, nothing more than a child’s toy of a lock, I’m afraid. Assumedly meant only to test if any magical ability was present at all before allowing unchecked entry.”

  “Woooow, you picked a shitty lock all by yourself, very impressive. Any other public property you’d like to break, maybe we can go spill something on a couple books back there?”

  “…hmph. For your information, I’ve already reconstructed the seal as it was beforehand, so nothing has been left broken.”

  Alice rolled her eye, looking back towards Gwyn expectantly.

  “…ah, right, s-sorry! Let’s head on in!”

  She led them both into the study room, peeking back down the hall behind them before gingerly pulling the door closed again behind her with a small click.

  Inside was as uninteresting of a room as one might expect from a public library. A computer monitor almost as old as she was stood on a desk nearby, a slightly new tower resting underneath it, both covered in a thin veneer of dust from an extended period of disuse. Several mostly empty bookshelves lined the walls, and a rge, round table filled the center of the space, scattered pstic chairs haphazardly surrounding it.

  “Very, uh, cozy.”

  Gwyn didn’t respond, instead focusing on searching through the room, moving chairs out of the way as she moved to the opposite side of the table towards the lone computer in the room.

  Her hands slipped below the desk, blindly searching for the power button before finally finding it, pressing down on it and earning a struggled whine from the machine as it slowly brought itself to life in front of them.

  “I wonder why they don’t repce this old thing… ah, here we go!~”

  Eventually the dusty monitor flickered to life, burnt out bulbs taking a moment to fizzle before forming a coherent image of a user login screen.

  Seating herself in one of the uncomfortable-looking chairs, Gwyn rested her hands across the keyboard, quickly typing something into the fields before clicking Enter, the login screen vanishing entirely as the desktop seemingly just turned itself right back off again.

  She waited a long, long moment for anything else at all to show up on the blurry old monitor, only for it to remain as bnk and empty as it had been when they first entered the room.

  “…uh, is anything supposed to--”

  The second she’d finally decided to open her mouth, the entire room seemed to lurch to the side, Alice stumbling and barely catching herself on one of the chairs off to her side, trying to lift herself back to her feet again as she leaned heavily on the creaking old pstic.

  Everything twisted and warped and moved in ways that felt entirely wrong to even attempt to perceive, the room itself flickering in and out of view like a TV with a particurly bad signal.

  By the time she’d almost gotten herself back upright, the chair she was leaning against vanished entirely from view in front of her, all her weight leaned onto it instantly tumbling forwards again as she colpsed onto the floor below, every single sense fully disoriented.

  At some point, after what felt like either a scant few seconds or several grueling hours, the vibrations coursing through reality around the both of them finally ended, leaving them both standing in a rge, circur room, Alice sprawled out over the cold, tiled floor as Gwyn seemingly remained wholly unaffected by the sudden change of locale.

  Still on her feet, the younger girl spun nimbly on her heel, arms spread wide and invitingly as she gestured to the grand space around them.

  “Welcome to the Library!~”