July 20, 1722. Ruins of the Silvashar Library of Lësarilis. Deep in a swamp on San Andrés Island, off the contested eastern coast of New Spain in the Caribbean Sea.

I love the smell of an old library, even one abandoned in a tropical swamp. The scent of linseed oil, aged leather, and old parchment lingered behind the swamp musk. It was somehow soothing. But the bitter smell of salty fungus and frustrated anger? That was a different story. I yanked the stained red leather book off the shelf in front of me, then jammed it into my battered canvas backpack. 

“Run!” I yelled to the others.

A manic, staccato-like tapping sound from the floor to ceiling bookshelves flooded the gray, moist air. All around us, shadows shivered while forgotten papers rustled on their own across the wide, three story octagonal room. My blood ran cold. 

“Pedro! The books! They have mouths with shark teeth!” A voice behind me yelped.

“They have razor-sharp claws and venom, too!” I shoved the gunner’s mate ahead of me. “Thesaurus crabs! Everyone, run!”

Jonas didn’t have to be told twice, neither did the rest of the landing party. I pulled a thin glass vial from my belt, then tossed it at the crabs. It shattered, spewing white-hot flame over the sinister swarm. The front line was scattered to bits, but the rest didn’t seem bothered. Everything from room to crabs and their stained book cover shells were just too damp for my elixir to have much effect.

“Mierda!” I spit as I caught up to the others. 

We ran for any exit we could out of the library. Narrow windows with their chestnut frames overlooked the swamp, which could have been a quick way out past the damp cobwebs. But the alarming wave of murderous tooth-filled books filled the entire space between us and those windows. That left the tall double oak doors we came in through on the far side of the room.

It was a desperate race across the tattered, wet carpet, rich with oily black mold. Partway to safety, someone slipped and fell with a muffled squish. Screaming erupted a second later. 

I didn’t look. None of us did. My chest went tight as I ran.

One or even three thesaurus crabs a person could survive. This was at least thirty of the blue and orange book-armored monsters that rattled along with their poisonous promise of death. It was every inch a librarian’s worst fever dream.

The rest of us reached the doors as the wet, gargled screams died away. Behind us, the crabs were on the move again. Their frantic scuttling over the wet carpet was a sloshing chorus of eager violence. Terror screamed that we needed to run faster. Who were we to argue?

We raced out of the main library and into a long entry hall. There wasn’t much left of these ruins. This had once been part of a larger building. Now there were only four rooms here, including the library behind us, and a broken down entrance to the ruin itself. A long hallway connected all of them together. No sooner had we reached the hallway, than the Terrason brothers grabbed the library doors and slammed them shut. Crab claws scrambled for purchase on the other side. It was a manic hailstorm of muffled, lethal clattering.

Both brothers were your typical short, stout dwarf-like grimlings with hard, work-honed blacksmith shoulders to match. They could keep the doors closed for a time, but even the brothers’ strength had limits. Brass metal veins in the brothers’ skin glowed from the strain. The doors’ ancient wood splintered at the bottom with a dire crack from the press of the swarm. A tip of one blue claw peeked through. Durner Terrason stomped at it with a thick boot heel until the claw vanished back inside.

“We need to barricade the damn doors!” Skaldi Terrason yelled. “Use tables! Chairs! Anything!”

Several of us grabbed two thick, heavy oak tables from a nearby reading room and any other forgotten furniture we could find. We had a hasty barricade piled against the doors in moments. It wasn’t well planned, but it would do for now. Thesaurus crabs were known for a lot of things, like fungal infections or brutal cleverness when hunting as a mob. Brute strength wasn’t on that list. Still, we knew the swarm could eventually push through if enough battered at the time-worn doors.

I pulled off my black felt tricorn hat, then wiped the sweat from my face with a gray coat sleeve. Shadows along the hallway fought with the jungle-filtered light from outside while the humidity had us in a headlock.

My old friend and our navigator, Lysander, appeared out of the long shadows next to me. I twitched, but at least I didn’t throw a punch at him. The wiry, olive-skinned Nativan was as sweat-stained and covered in dust as I was from hair to clothes. His dark hair braid practically dripped with sweat. 

“The Codex Luminari? You have it?” he asked, still out of breath.

“I grabbed it off the shelf before the murder crabs noticed us,” I replied between deep breaths. “It looked intact, so Señor Argall should be able to find the maps and notes about Otherworld that he’s looking for.”

Lysander glanced around, tense as a bowstring. I watched his dark eyes dart to the broken windows along the hallway that overlooked the muggy swamp. After a hard scowl at those, he turned his attention to the half-broken, shadow-soaked entryway, at the far end of the hall. 

“A doubloon says he’ll just show it off in a display case in his shop.” He said bitterly. “Better it was a compass that could show us a quick way out.” Lysander pursed his lips. “Pedro, I’ve a bad feeling about all this.”

I frowned. Lysander’s ‘feelings’ sailed closer to being a true warning than just a bad case of nerves. That made me glance around uneasily before I squinted at him in the gloom.

“What do you mean, a bad feeling?”

Lysander toyed with the tiny pendant of a ship’s wheel he wore around his neck before he shook his head slightly. 

“Pedro, we’re not safe here,” he said. “It just feels wrong. The walls. They don’t even feel safe.”

The hallway was typical Silvashar thayan construction, which meant swooping, elegant Gothic archways that looked impossibly fragile. But despite their appearance, they were always made from a durable, gray-white speckled marble that defied almost any damage. The walls here weren’t any different, with bricks set in graceful lines that sloped up to a gentle point in the ceiling.

But they had seen better days. Swamp water and humidity had eaten away at colorful tapestries and paint over the years since the library ruins appeared in 1712. Walls, and even some of the mosaic carpet, looked like a drunken madman had painted them with colored mushrooms and pond slime. I ran my fingers uneasily along the dark stitching in the brim of my hat, then slipped it back on. 

“Fair enough. We’ve overstayed our welcome.” I called to the others, who were fussing over the barricade. “All hands! Make for the ship before those crabs get at us!”

The eight of us ran for the swamp, our ship, and the welcome idea of freedom outside the ruins. We were only halfway to the exit when the west wall exploded into a storm of gravel. Burned marble chunks pelted us like a hellish hailstorm, even as the blast tossed us across the hall like worn-out rag dolls.  

I bounced hard off the far wall before I hit the floor, gasping for air. The world around me was a muffled mess, filled with thin strands of gray-white smoke and marble dust woven into a light fog. Garbled shouts to attack rang out while shadowy figures raced through the blast hole in the west wall, weapons drawn. My crewmates hauled themselves upright, drawing their pistols and blades in reply.

A tall human in a blue-trimmed captain’s coat followed close behind the invaders. I’d never met the man in person before, but his appearance matched the lurid description. His coat was smeared with streaks of soot and swamp water. Mysterious dark stains decorated his broad hat and the basket hilt of his cutlass. 

Dull red streaks in his thick black beard complimented the lightning-shaped scar on his right cheek. The latter heavily accented his ruddy complexion, along with the nasty sneer that was most of his expression. A scrimshaw squirrel skull amulet completed the fashionable nightmare. 

“Captain Dryden Storm,” I coughed.

“The very same,” the pirate captain replied in a chilly tone. 

He arched an eyebrow at me, then widened his sneer. “An you’ll be one Doctor Pedro Alejandro Sangre. If I’m not mistaken, you’ll be having a book I want. Hand it over and I’ll consider letting you and some of your crew keep your lives.”

Those sinister, steel-gray eyes didn’t hold a lick of mercy. 

I answered him by smashing a cloudy glass vial from my belt on the floor between us. Alchemical thick, bitter fog exploded up, eager to swallow the air. I drew myself into a crouch and shot the pirate a sharp glare that would scald skin. Two seconds after, I tugged my hat down low, then melted into the smoke like a living shadow.