Book of a Thousand Worlds: Angerlarium

Prologue - The Library of Babel

Warning: Lots of religious imagery and aspects to this chapter. This will likely be the only one to contain such heavy religious elements, but I implore everyone reading to not judge based on the prologue, and read the first chapter before dropping. Any religious imagery is not based on my personal beliefs, and is not representative on any real-world religious text, but rather the bible and Christian mythology contextualized for plot. Read at your own risk.

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Angela was a normal woman. Living in a normal family, she rarely ever experienced anything unnatural. No secret society, no mystical hidden world, no portal to another world, nothing of the sort.

So, she immersed herself in books. She read from the age of 3, from her first picture book to everything she would read after. She grew up not with the internet, but with books. She didn't watch any shows or read fanfiction, or web novels. She read books. Insane, truly. She read thousands of books, and this was made possible by her photographic memory.

As she grew up, she developed a trait. She was cold and usually stoic, but she gained a very good sense of right and wrong. Able to easily tell if something was right or wrong, and easily able to decide the truth. She loved when a character messed up, their flaws, their mistakes.

Many told her she would be a good judge or lawyer. But instead, she became a librarian. She named her own library the Library of Babel. It has become somewhat famous, as one of the world's most interesting and helpful libraries. It was considered a tourist attraction and made massive amounts of money. She never used the money for anything other than expanding the library.

But she harbored a secret. From a young age, she had slight hallucinations. Rather than going to a Doctor or therapist, she tried to diagnose herself. She read through dozens of medical textbooks but was unable to find a diagnosis.

Thus, she learned to live with it. Her hallucinations took the form of birds. The most common one was a thin, tall, black flamingo with its face wrapped in bandages. It carried a scale and only appeared during deep sessions of deliberation, when she was weighing the rights and wrongs of a character or idea.

She called it, Judge. After several years, she eventually got a real crow. It was her closet companion, and she named it 'Nevermore.' The tourists seemed to find it amusing at least.

She lived a long life, studying many subjects.

Science, from biology to autonomy, to chemistry, to experimental physics, she studied it all. Math, from algebra to Calculus. She studied history. Evey Myth, every Legend, every folktale, and urban legend. She studied all types of 'magic' in the world. From Aleister Crowley's writings to the Lemeginton, to supposed books written by Merlin, to Kabbalah. She studied them all.

Her photographic memory made this much easier. Eventually, she wrote a book. 'The Judgment of Good an Evil.' It became a worldwide sensation, and was considered to be the next classic to dawn the halls of literature. It detailed the story of a young girl, who was completely emotionless. She would only do something if it was 'good.' Throughout the story, the girl learned to judge different things, based on logic and reason. She judged wars, aliens, demons, magic, science, cloning, identity, crime, and truth itself. The book detailed how by learning about different cultures or laws, her answers would change. It all came to a head when the ending of the book came.

The protagonist is approached by God. The Christian God to be exact. Many religious and pantheons and myths were explored through the story. She was asked to judge the Buddhas, the Greeks, the Norse, the Roman, the Egyptians, and many more gods. But Christianity was always skipped over.