Sailor Tempesti knew that Bacchus had been reluctant to take her to one of the city’s libraries. His loud insistence that the translated Aurent stories were boring accompanied them through the streets but he did little to restrain her curiosity, seemingly content in his certainty that she would find their records as dull and ridiculous as he did. His chattiness on the matter came as a surprise, under the usual circumstances he walked the city with a sullen silence but something about what he claimed was an objectionable task. It didn’t seem entirely unlikely that he simply wanted a chance to gripe about the failings of the traditions of Aurent storytelling despite his own stubborn reluctance to share the stories of his own people.

“You know that there’s no truth to be found in there, right?”

“So you’ve said, I think you enjoy letting everyone know how bad you find their tastes.”

“They have no taste,” he sulked.

“Well, thank you for taking me anyway.”

Bacchus made a face at the foolishness he knew awaited them within the stone cut walls. Despite the library’s presence in the city, it carried the heavy architecture of the Aurentine Empire. A concession to the Aurent who remained within the city. “These words are dead, you know. Their stories were dead long before their bodies were.” The senshi scowled, “The moment they reduced them to ink on paper.” he all but growled. “Their storytellers at least kept some semblance of a pulse, but when they severed their roots they surrendered their power.”

Bacchus would never admit to the shudder that worked its way through his nerves. Whatever remained of his connection to the other world, the words carried the tiniest spark of life within him. Not the roaring life of the divine that had once flowed through his voice and into the realm of the physical. He knew he didn’t deserve to be that conduit any longer, that he’d allowed Chaos to gnaw at his own roots until there was so little left. Of his words and of himself. At least he didn’t surrender what small power remained within them. But words unspoken, words with no listeners to reverberate within and return to the other world, those words grew feeble. Too tired to rouse themselves from their slumber.

Bacchus’ sulking silence had returned, no doubt the victim of whatever ghosts wandered through his mind here and Tempesti felt an intense pang of guilt. It was hardly worth putting her friend through this to satisfy her own desire to understand the nature of the Chaos at work here. Even if her intentions were ultimately help him discover the root of the evil that had consumed his world, hopefully even help him find a way to expel it, maybe it was best to find another way.

“If you’d rather go back to Earth-

“I would. But I’m not going to, I have work to do here anyway if I’m going to keep myself busy back there.” The girl had been denied any chance at exploration in so many of her previous lives, if she wanted to wander through ugly, corpse-filled, stupid, dumb, evil cursed ruins who was he to stop her? Any confession of the brotherly fondness he’d held for her since he was a child remained unspoken but that didn’t mean he wasn’t inclined to indulge her. Within limits. At least he was reasonably certain that the spores weren’t coming back now that they’d eaten everything else.

Tempesti sighed and nodded, feeling embarrassingly selfish despite Bacchus’ assurances that he thought he needed to be here to gather up whatever it was he sold back on Earth. She knew that the process back home was most likely sketchy but it was probably better than other things he could be getting up to, definitely better than looting the belongings of the living. Besides, who else would have a better claim to the stuff here than he would?

Arriving at the library, Tempesti was surprised to see the sharp contrast between its architecture and that of the surrounding city. It was certainly…denser than the rest of them even though it was carved from the same stone. The octagonal form of its vestibule, the blockiness of the entryway felt profoundly out of place beside the botanical forms and she couldn’t help but notice the absence of the central tree present in every other building.
“Just hold on, need to-“ Bacchus pressed a polished stone button beside the graceless door, sending it grinding downward and into a slot at its base. “Probably wasn’t always this noisy.” He shrugged as he spoke, having never actually entered this library himself. No point in dancing with the dead, but Tempesti was used to it. Maybe the words would feel less lifeless for her.

Tempesti leaned forward to examine the button her friend had pushed, curious about whatever force moved it. It didn’t seem to be magical or electrical, purely mechanical. She tilted her head, trying to get a better look at the slot into which it had slid.

“Don’t touch that.”

It was a familiar refrain at this point and the senshi was past the point of feeling stung by the abruptness of the order. She couldn’t exactly blame him for wanting her to keep her hands to herself in places like this. He seemed more comfortable with the records in their sealed containers and she couldn’t complain about that.

Walking through the silent entryway, Bacchus scrutinized the walls of the place, grimacing at the branching lines of black that worked their way across the stone. They didn’t look active but that didn’t stop his stomach from turning, couldn’t stop the bile from rising in his throat.

“Put that mask on. And those gloves. Don’t touch anything. until I tell you to.”

The younger senshi didn’t hesitate, calling them forth from her subspace and donning them immediately.

Satisfied that she had at least a measure of protection, the deep space senshi ushered her further in, continuing to examine the walls as they went. He wasn’t above jettisoning her from the planet if he got so much as a whiff of that s**t. The moment he spotted a room clear of that foul residue, he directed her inside. There was a good chance that nothing in there would be intact enough to read and that was fine by him.

“You can take the gloves off. Don’t touch the mask.”

Bacchus surveyed the room, not bothering to suppress a smirk at the reality that the Aurent lies were housed in something as flimsy as their contents.

“Well, have at it.”

Tempesti nodded and began the long task of gingerly removing the fragments from their places.