Florence's laughter spread out across the entire planet, filling the world with its maddening, deafening sound. There was an uncontainable joy, and an unbridled haughtiness that seeped out of her voice, and it brought great confusion to that world's inhabitants.
Instantly, investigations into the source of that voice were launched- a global phenomenon that heralded a strange time. A time where the ignorant innocents of that world- the misguided mortals making their way through life- would have no idea what could come next.
Florence laughed for two hours before her emotions subsided. Her entire face was flushed bright red, and her foxlike ears drooped as if they were entirely spent. Her bright eyes were filled with joyous tears.
As she finally caught her breath after laughing for all that time, she was able to relax.
"One more step forward..." She heaved, still out of breath. "Just one more step, and I can see it..."
A sharp wind cut across the forest, and Florence's head snapped in a specific direction before she fell flat on her back.
A blade of wind tore through the forest, severing every tree in sight. The hills, the mountains, and even the enormous volcano was decimated, severed into two by the horrific power of the wind.
Florence watched as the wind blade passed over her with narrowed eyes. Fierceness was already apparent in the yellow orbs of her face, and her once self-satisfied smile had vanished completely.
Replacing it now was a flat expression, a calm gaze, and the steadily climbing presence of an aura unlike any other.
She stood up and looked at the destruction, an entire forest the size of a massive continent, razed into an unrecognizable hellscape. Her eyes adjusted, and she looked into the distance.
Standing almost twenty thousand miles away, a skinny man in monk's clothing stood with his hands together, large prayer beads around his neck that looked large enough to weigh him down.
Upon his bald head was a tai chi symbol, glowing with the power of divine light. When Florence's eyes met his, the man released all of his aura. Thousands of manifestations came to life behind him for brief nanoseconds, before a single spiritual image was birthed:
The figure of a Cosmic Buddha, standing above all matter.
Florence scoffed as she stood tall, and motioned with her head for the man to approach. He stepped upon the earth, and vanished from where he was, only to arrive near Florence in the next instant.
Without even moving, the monk created a barrage of golden fist images that rained down on Florence, leaving not even an inch of room for her to evade.
As they approached, the very force of the wind being scattered caused the rest of the forest to be destroyed, and ripped away at the earth to reveal the red-hot layers beneath.
Florence's eyes caught all of this in the minuscule moments before the fists reached her, and she finally stopped looking around to stare directly at the monk.
"You shouldn't have followed me, Spiritualist. Avenging Asmodeus' death is a fool's errand."
Her voice defied time, and was echoing in the monk's ear before he had even attacked. When he realized what was happening, his fist images were suddenly eradicated by something he could not see.
"What!?"
In the aftermath, golden dust scattered but Florence was no where to be seen. All that he saw around him was a ruined continent, sinking into further chaos.
"I hope you're less vengeful in your next life."
The monk twitched, but Florence was already behind him. Her hand snaked around his neck and held firm to the back of his head-- her slender legs were wrapped around him from behind, not permitting him to be free of her.
"GRAH! SHUT UP, TRAITOR!" The monk struggled, but his power was subdued, and even his aura began to retreat. Something Florence was doing was restricting him-- suppressing him.
"Don't call me traitor. For me to have betrayed Asmodeus, I would have had to have been on his side at some point; I never was."
With her grip tightening on him, and his power scared into submission, the monk knew that his death was sure. His struggle came to a saddening end, and he fell to his knees, feeling Florence's weight on his back.
In a weak voice, he voiced his final words. "Why did you come to Asmodeus' Book Collection? Why did you have to get him- all of us- to trust you? Why did you have to torment... an entire Omniverse?"
"Just to steal a few treasures?"
"Hm," Florence shifted, and her arm tensed. The man's neck was snapped from the back, then she went further and ripped his entire head off. Golden light escaped from his neck, but there was no blood.
In the short seconds before the monk truly died, she sighed.
"Asmodeus was a Librarian. If he wasn't willing to trust me with everything, I could never had gotten what I wanted."
"No." She looked up at the sky, through the billowing smoke and the clouds of dust arising from the decimated continent. "This isn't just what I wanted."
"It's what I need."
The monk's life expired, and Florence shut his eyes before tossing his head into a pool of magma. She waved her finger in a circular motion, and the items she had dropped onto the floor materialized in front of her, levitating in the air.
With a wave, they were gathered into another jewel, which Florence decided to wear on one of her ears. It dangled, a bit longer than the rest of her earrings, then she closed her eyes and took a single, deep breath.
"I managed to recover about a quarter of my true energy. That should be enough."
When her eyes opened again, the fierceness in them was only maximized. She jumped, and left the planet behind. She was not even entirely aware that, the force of her jumping on one side of the planet, blew open the side directly opposite where she had jumped from.
Billions of lives were instantly lost, and they would never know who caused it.
Florence made her way back up into the universe she had fallen into, flying much faster than light could ever travel. She crossed that universe, then another and another.
Her speed only increased before, suddenly, she breached the hold of some kind of barrier, and entered into the dimension wherein multiverses could be observed.
She saw the multiverse she had just escaped from, and looked around at the countless others.
"There's no way this is a First-Edition Book Collection like Asmodeus'. Third-Edition, perhaps?" As she mused, she surveyed the multiverses before finding one with a satisfying energy signature.
"Well, a shitty Librarian is still a Librarian. Thankfully, I should be able to just take what I need this time, without going through the whole ruse."
Florence flew through the more powerful spatial plane at the exact same speed- or perhaps even faster. She bypassed hundreds of multiverses in mere seconds, not even seeming to be exerting herself a tiny bit.
When she arrived at her destination, she stood upon the precipice between dimensions.
Where she stood was a higher dimension, a place where she could observe multiverses as if they were drawings on a piece of paper in front of her. On the other end, a lower dimension, the beings there could not even perceive her existence unless they transcended their own dimension.
Scouring the infinite universes, Florence finally found her target.
"There you are."
She spread her arms out, and released some of her aura. It appeared around her like a thin mist, and a single image flashed at her back. At the same time, a pure red halo appeared above her head for only a short moment, a sign that she was about to release some of her incredible power.
As for the image that flashed at her back, it was something that no one but her had ever seen- save for one other person.
It was the image of a woman with hair made from strips of paper, on which endless words were being written by millions of floating hands.
As the image manifested and disappeared, and Florence exerted a bit more of her power, the entire multiverse became wrapped up in a thin film of a red, paper-like material.
Florence brought her arms closer together, and the paper tightened around the multiverse. Then, as she slowly spread them apart again, the paper began to pull at the multiverse, causing a dreadful sound like cracking.
The very essence of the spatial natures that kept the multiverse whole began to crumble, before a mind-bogglingly loud boom filled the Omniverse, and the multiverse was parted in a disgustingly obscene show of power.
Florence tore the multiverse in half, and in that moment her full aura manifested, and the image of the woman reappeared behind her.
Only, this time, it was much larger than the multiverse she had just forcefully torn open.
"Librarian..." Florence's booming voice filled the Omniverse in yet another casual show of power, but it came from the spiritual image of the woman behind her. "Come to me."
In all the multiverse, where life still thrived- albeit in panic and confusion- a single glance at the sky would reveal to them the image of the person responsible for their sudden plight.
No matter where in the multiverse you were, all you had to do was look up at the sky.
Women, men, children, animals-- they could all see her. They could all see the woman in the sky who was holding their lives in her hands.
"Who do you think you are?" A male voice replied before a figure raced out of the open multiverse, standing in opposition to Florence.
The woman grinned as the spiritual image behind her went away, but her aura did not subside.
Looking at the man in purple robes hovering in front of her, Florence replied. "Someone who's going to change ...everything."
The man roared in response as millions upon millions of spiritual images flashed behind his back before settling into a single image.
Florence laughed maniacally once more, but the single image of the woman did not reappear at her back. Their clash eradicated the multiverse they were closest to, then went on to destroy others.
Soon, another Omniverse would be laid to waste.
_______________
"What is this?" Gilgamesh stood on the precipice between dimensions, looking into a Book Collection that seemed ...broken... somehow.
Looking into it, he could not exactly see the Omniverse within, but he could feel that something was wrong. The light of the Book Collection seemed dimmer than it should be, and there seemed to be a very faint part of the book that was damaged.
His eyes alone did not reveal much to him, but the more he looked the more certain he became.
"There must be some kind of Seal on these Book Collections- a form of protection or something. This one's been broken. Interesting."
Gilgamesh's long black cloak was motionless as he stood in the void, staring at a Book Collection as he tried to scour every inch of its exterior.
He would have kept walking, but he realized that there was no longer anything driving him forward. Whatever he was being called to find, he felt that he would find it right here.
But what could it be?
As he pondered, a violent tremor escaped the Book Collection before causing terrible cracks to spread out on its surface.
Gilgamesh took a surprised step back as he observed the Book Collection slowly begin to crumble, and felt the swell of a matchless destructive force.
"Shit!" Wasting no time, he grabbed at the void and pulled with all his might, reversing the nature of space around him to create a nigh-unbreakable wall.
He did this because he suspected that the Book Collection was about to be destroyed, and knew from the last example that the destruction of a Book Collection was not enough to harm the spatial natures of the Beginningless Library.
The force within the Book Collection grew, and it finally exploded. The resulting explosion spread out across the Library, and would likely be heard all the way back on the starting ground.
Gilgamesh stared at the destruction from behind the reversed shields of space, and saw a spatial singularity remain where the Book Collection once was.
"Incredible. That must be the dimensional residue of the Omniverse that was destroyed..."
"Perhaps someone will come out?" He gulped.
There was suddenly a booming thunder that, shockingly, did not come from the destroyed Omniverse, but from somewhere within the Library itself.
That voice was loud enough to almost deafen Gilgamesh, but he could never truly go deaf no matter how much his ears bled.
It was, once again, a woman's voice, and it was boiling over with rage.
"FLORENCE!!! NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY, YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE ME! YOUR LIFE IS FORFEIT! DO YOU HEAR ME!? FLORENCE!!!"
Gilgamesh groaned as the minor discomfort he felt suddenly vanished, and he could no more feel that pain. As he looked around at the Library to see if he could see anything, he heard the warping sound of the spatial singularity closing.
When he turned around, he saw someone standing amidst the ruin of the Book Collection where the dimension residue had been.
She was adorned in short clothes and many jewels, and had tattoos on her chest and leg. Her hair was long and red, and there were two foxy ears sticking out from her head.
Gilgamesh returned the space before him to normal, and stared directly at her.
Florence did not yet look at him, instead focused on an object in her hand. It was a silver scroll, which she unfurled to reveal a tiny beating heart. There was nothing else in the scroll except that heart, etched into the paper yet very much alive.
Its pulsations were steady, and the heartbeat sound was incredibly profound-- not at all like a regular heartbeat.
"It really was a Third-Edition Book Collection. Sigh." She put the scroll away into a jewel, and adorned her hair with it.
Finally, she noticed Gilgamesh standing nearby, observing her closely. Their eyes met, and Gilgamesh sucked in a breath of air. His eyes seemed to waver, and he appeared to be lost for a few short moments.
His vision had left reality behind once again, and he once again saw things. Gilgamesh alone knew what he saw.
When he came back to the real world, Florence was standing just before him, an arm's distance away. She stared into his crimson eyes with her own bright yellow ones; her expression was difficult to read.
"Is it really you, then?" Florence muttered to herself, not even talking to Gilgamesh.
"You know me?"
Florence did not hear him- or she seemed not to- and walked circles around him instead. "You look like yourself."
She sniffed loudly. "You smell like I imagine you would smell."
She leaned forward and dragged her wet tongue across Gilgamesh's face, causing him to furrow his brows and regard her as a weirdo. "You taste like I imagine you would taste."
She stopped in front of him again, her expression now puzzling.
"Are you really you? Or just a version of you?"
Gilgamesh snorted, "Who do you even think I am?"
Florence ignored him, and took a few steps back.
"You wouldn't be in the Library if you were you, so since you are here you can't be you. You must be another you, not the same one you were, but the you that you are now. You're... different."
Gilgamesh waved a hand in front of Florence's face. "Hello. Did that voice deafen you, or something?"
Florence scoffed and batted Gilgamesh's hand away. "As if. She could never deafen me... again..."
"Now quiet, I'm thinking."
Gilgamesh blinked, and Florence continued to stare at him and ponder.
"If it helps any, my name is Gilgamesh. I already know yours."
Florence froze up. "You even have the same name as yourself. Why would she bring you here? It doesn't make sense."
"By 'she' you mean God?" He probed.
"That's what we call her, yeah. God. Mother of Scriptures. The Writer of Stories, Dictator of Fates. That old tyrant." Florence spat, clearly having a huge problem with God.
Gilgamesh took note of that. "Is that why you recognize me? Through your connection to her?"
Florence pursed her lips. "I'm not sure I recognize you, but I'm sure you are the you that I know. I was there when the 1st Gilgamesh was written, and I saw the many versions she created in her trial and error for perfection."
"I saw the you that you were, but I did not see the you that you are now. Where does that you come from? Did she finally perfect you?" Florence took a step forward as she prepared to weigh Gilgamesh's answer.
Gilgamesh also took a step forward, scratching the back of his head.
"According to what The Scripture told me, I kinda perfected myself in the end."
"Huh," Florence cocked her head, "that so?"
Gilgamesh gave a nod and she pressed on.
"So you met The Scripture? Did it also try to rope you into its hopeless scheme?"
Gilgamesh noted the mocking smirk on Florence face and laughed in his head. He also took note of the fact that she seemed to have also been approached by The Scripture.
"You refer to Dorian?"
"Ugh!" Florence groaned, then spit into the void. "I hate that name- I hate that kid- and I don't even know the guy."
"The Scripture wanted to create its own poster boy, who it would pour all of its effort out for. It wanted him to be perfect, and have a guaranteed shot at defeating her."
"That's why it wanted my help, and why I'm guessing it wanted yours too. So we could help the little shit!"
Gilgamesh couldn't hold in his laughter at that point, and ended up letting some of it out. Florence shook her head and flashed a smile in response, rolling her eyes.
"I'll admit, I was almost convinced, but in the end I decided against it. I don't blame God for what happened to me. I have nothing against her."
Florence suddenly tensed up, and her yellow eyes turned fierce.
"What the fuck did you say?"
Gilgamesh sensed the shift in the atmosphere, and his heart went cold.
"You do realize that all this- every single story in the Library- is her doing, right? That nothing could ever happen unless she willed it to?"
Gilgamesh waved his hands, "No I get that, but that wasn't the case for me."
"Huh!?" Florence tilted her head, her face contorted in both annoyance and confusion.
"She told me that she left my story up to me. The things that happened... were my doing and my doing alone." Gilgamesh looked down at the endless void below him, and could just barely see a piece of the starting ground beneath.
"I was given control of my life, and I fucked it up anyway. Without her influence." Melancholy returned to his eyes in trace amounts, but was quickly driven away.
Florence did not miss this, but she shook her head regardless. "Tch!"
"You're choosing to blame yourself, and be hard on yourself. I can't fault you for that. I've been there."
"But you need to remember that all you were was what she made you to be. Before you 'perfected yourself,' like The Scripture said, you were still just her creation. Every thought you had, every action you took, it was drilled into you by her directive."
"You were created to be perfect, and to know just how perfect you are. Knowing that was always meant to be your downfall. Whether or not she continued to write the story after creating such a character, you would always end up where she intended for you to be."
Florence took a breath and seemed to slowly regain some of her past calm. She turned aside and looked away into the Library, deeper into it. "Consider that before you say that she isn't to blame. Because she is."
Gilgamesh shut his eyes as he lowered his head further.
"She's the only one to blame." Florence spat again before she moved.
When Gilgamesh looked up, he saw her slowly flying away. In light of her departing figure, he was reminded of the images he saw when he first looking into her eyes.
It felt similar to what had happened when he first looked into Dorian's eyes, but he had thought The Scripture was responsible for that. He did not think it had anything to do with what he had seen when he looked into Florence's eyes.
So he knew that it was something to do with his own mind.
Seeing her depart, he was about to say something when he realized he did not even know what he wanted to say. He sighed and was about to turn away, but Florence stopped and gazed over in his direction.
"Come with me. Let me show you the truth that you've blinded yourself to. The reason why this Library can never be free as long as she reigns above."
Gilgamesh looked to her once again, and saw the intense hatred burning in her eyes. Hatred that he recognized. Hatred that reminded him of the way he had felt back when he first met God, and tried to draw his sword against her.
Florence felt that hatred, but far more than he.
Gilgamesh walked to her side, and she stared at his feet; she stared at the way the natures acted to make a path for him to walk. Not continuing to pay attention to that, she once again stared off into the void.
"You will see the cruelty that she takes pleasure in. The destruction she causes, all out of boredom. The lives she creates and ends because she feels it is her right to do so."
"I may destroy Omniverses, but she has erased countless Omniverses. There are places in this Library, Shelf Collections and Omni-Spaces, which she manipulates without care. There is no end to her madness."
"Do you even have any idea how few of the Library's inhabitants are free like you and I? Free to choose what they want to do, instead of merely living out a story written by her."
"They cannot create or destroy without her say. They cannot kill, protect, build, travel, experience- nothing. Heroes and villains are hers to necessitate- but only people like you and I can choose what we will be."
"That is the kind of world she has created, because she does not belong to it. Everything she does, oppresses the stories she creates. There is no freedom here. Only her will be done."
"That is the Beginningless Library that I will show you, and if no one has, then allow me to welcome you to it," Florence said, sarcastically.
"Welcome to the Beginningless Library."