Memory Lane

21. Dark powers

21. Dark powers

Back down in the Brain Library, Fred and the others had split up to explore and peruse the collection. Silhouette was speaking with the brain librarian at the front desk, while Fred and Anima were at opposite ends if the building, each pecking through shelved books and filing cabinets. Each document was essentially a small detail of Fred's life on paper, carefully stored and protected from the outside world.

"do you know how many books are in here?" Silhouette spoke over the desk.

"more than fifty thousand in all" the brain librarian replied.

"wow" Silhouette was floored by such a number.

"memories and life events, they all come to me, where they are added to my vast collection" the brain librarian continued.

"interesting. I might look up some of them myself" Silhouette whisked himself through the reception hall into the main chasms of the library. He went to take a book out from a nearby shelf, but as he opened it up to read, a white mask with a dark smile popped out and fell to the floor.

"that's odd" Silhouette went down from the shelf and picked up the mask using his shadow. Elsewhere, Anima was twiddling through a black filing cabinet, when she too discovered something bulging out of a folder.

"why would this be in here?" Anima took out the bulge from the folder. It was a smiling white mask. Not something endemic to a library, more of the theatre. Across the library, Fred pulled out a book from one of the closely packed shelves, just as another white mask flopped onto the floorboards.

"where have I seen this before?" Fred leaned down to pick up the mask, but it began to violently rumble out of control. The same happened to the masks found by Anima and Silhouette, before each mask gushed out a plume of black smoke and molded skyward into three shadowy bodies with sharp claws and pointed feet.

"you thought you had beaten me?. Poor naïve idiot" the masked figure told Silhouette in the reception hall.

"Persona!" Silhouette remembered the mask from the House of Balance.

"your friends are in for quite a treat with my clones. Luckily for you, I am the real mask barer, which means more fun in tearing you limb from limb on whatever surface you are unfortunate enough to be stranded on" Persona placed his fingertips together and edged in closer to Silhouette. He then took off his mask and shot out a coil of nightmares that entangled Silhouette's shadow in a dome.

"Anima?!!" Fred rushed through the bookshelves at the center of the library, shouting while being stalked by one of Persona's clones.

"your nightmares won't work on me, demon!!" Silhouette broke through the coiling dome of nightmares.

"that is not part of my plan" Persona returned the mask to his face. He then sent several dark braces from his hands in the direction of the brain librarian, bolting him to the back wall of the reception hall.

"let him go!!" Silhouette ordered.

"if you want him so badly, you will have to come and take him" Persona took a stance as Silhouette attacked him through his shadow, crushing the planks beneath his feet and smashing the front windowpanes. In the main area of the library, Anima too was being stalked by another clone of Persona. She and Fred both gave a high pitched shriek when they backed into each other from opposite ends of an aisle.

"thank God you're okay" Fred patted Anima's shoulder.

"not yet!" Anima looked over Fred to see a clone at the far end of the aisle in front of her. Fred lifted his head to see the other clone standing silently at the other end. The two travellers were now trapped. In the reception hall, Silhouette continued to fight Persona proper while the brain librarian remained restrained to the back wall.