Leather bound books filled the shelves to overflowing, and scrolls of stiff parchment were either wedged in wherever there was room or bundled together on the desk in the corner for closer examination when needed. Behind the desk, and dominating an entire wall of the room, was an extensive selection of ingredients. Bottles held liquids and powders of various colors and consistencies. Labels hung down from white strings tied around the necks of the bottles to identify their contents. Ornate boxes, standing on feet of polished silver, contained leaves, roots, dried flower blossoms, and all manner of things from across the land, both near and far. A few of the items had been removed from the shelf and placed on the desk beside the scrolls and a mortar and pestle.

The eastern doors were open into the connected greenhouse. Sunlight streamed in through the glass walls, providing addition light in the main building. The plants grown in the carefully tended pots would one day be dried and powdered before being added to the stock of ingredients. Birds sang sweetly outside, and the open windows let their peaceful song drift in on a spring breeze.

The tranquility of the morning was shattered by a violent explosion of white energy. Bookshelves were overturned, papers scattered as if in a high wind. A secondary blast went off in the same location, followed by a third. The last was the worst, pushing aside the bookcases already on the floor, shattering the windows of the greenhouse, and cratering the floor.

Darien was dumped onto the broken floor, the Book of Passages landing beside him. Every muscle in his body hurt as he tried to stand, and it made him feel as if he'd fallen off a carriage while its horses were galloping at full speed.

The broken pieces of the cratered floor stabbed at his palms as he pushed himself back into a standing position. Darien coughed as he navigated through the opaque dust cloud of pulverized stone. He couldn't tell where he was, but he knew he wasn't in the wood floored home where he'd been a moment before.

Darien tripped on a toppled bookcase, catching himself on the edge of another, but his weight unbalanced the second bookcase and knocked it over as well, spilling its many books on top of those already carpeting the floor.

A slight groaning reached his ears, and Darien followed the pained noise to its source. In the corner of the room, a chunk of masonry the size of Darien's chest had broken away from the wall of the building. The stone fragment currently pinned a man underneath it.

"Sir, can you hear me?" Darien asked as he negotiated his way across the uneven landscape of the destroyed room to reach the man.

When he got close enough, Darien saw the man was wearing a long sleeved robe. At first he thought it was black in color, but where the light touched the robe's edges, it showed green. A short beard of light brown, with a few traces of gray, covered the man's chin, and a ribbon of blood from the corner of his mouth was seeping into it. His eyes were mostly shut as if he lacked the strength to open them fully.

"My apprentice," the man moaned. He reached into his wide sleeve and pulled out a pouch of dark leather. He held it out to Darien in quivering hands. "You must get this to him. You must..."

"What is it?" Darien asked when the man trailed off, but he soon realized the man was already dead. Reaching out a hand, he closed the dead man's eyes.

Darien was about to inspect the contents of the pouch when a crackling of energy made him look back to the center of the room. Instinctively, he hid the pouch in one of his many pockets.

A bolt of lightning lanced down from the ceiling and held its place in the crater, creating a blinding shaft of light from floor to ceiling. Electricity arced off in tendrils of power. Suddenly, the stationary lightning bolt dispersed, expanding outward in all directions in a cloud of blue white particles. The glowing bits drifted to the ground like luminescent snow until they faded away completely. Standing in the crater where the lightning had struck was an old man.

"Who dares to steal from the Librarian?" the old man thundered in a voice more powerful than Darien expected. The man's white beard, hanging down to the belt of his crimson trimmed purple robes, barely moved as he spoke.

Darien couldn't speak. He didn't know if it was magic or fear that gripped him, but the end result was the same.

The Librarian took a step forward, his green eyes seeming to stare into Darien's soul. Hanging from a leather strap diagonally across his chest was a satchel. Magical emblems shone brightly from the leather cover of the satchel and along the strap. Although glowing when the Librarian arrived, the symbols faded away, vanishing back into the leather as if they had never been.

"Foolish thief," the Librarian reprimanded. "Did it not occur to you the Book of Passages was locked away, not because its value was immense, but because of its danger to those who knew not its power?"

Darien opened his mouth to answer, but the Librarian wasn't waiting. He continued on without pause.

"You wear ignorance as a cloak!" the Librarian snapped. "Had you any sense, you wouldn't have stolen that of which you lack the slightest degree of comprehension!"

The Librarian stormed past Darien to check on the condition of the dead man, kneeling beside him.

"Curse your ignorance, Thief," the Librarian muttered as he stood and faced Darien. "You have no idea what you've brought about this day. This man, deceased as he is, was Cordin Oakstaff, wizard of the castle at Blacklake."

"Wait a moment," Darien said, finding his voice at last. "I know that name. It's from the story 'King of Serpents', but that was a work of fiction."

"Even in fiction there can dwell a word of truth," the Librarian stated. "Therein also resides the power of the Book of Passages. Upon opening the Book, it conveys the reader into the story their eyes last set upon."

"I'm in a fiction story?" Darien asked in bewilderment as it didn't seem plausible. As he remembered the vortex of magical energy responsible for ripping him from the world, and the fantastical entrance of the Librarian, Darien wondered if anything was beyond the realm of possible where magic was concerned. "How do I get out?"

"Out?" the Librarian questioned in return. He fixed Darien with a stern gaze. "What makes you think a way out exists for you to find? You killed Cordin Oakstaff by your reckless use of the Book. How can the story now progress with him lying dead at your feet? This shall be your punishment, Thief. You shall be required to take upon yourself the mantle and responsibilities of the late Cordin Oakstaff until such a time as his story is complete to its fullest measure."

"I can't take his place in the story," Darien protested. "I never finished reading the book. I don't know how it ends."

"That problem is yours, Thief," the Librarian said in a cold whisper. He brushed past Darien and returned to stand in the crater where he'd first arrived. "Every tale must have an end. Whether you outlive this one is up to you. The judgment has been given, now let it be carried out. Perhaps, this will serve as a lesson and make you ponder on the consequences of taking that which is not yours."

Raising one hand to the ceiling, the Librarian vanished in the same bolt of lightning within which he'd arrived.

Darien wondered how he could be expected to carry out the role of a deceased character when he'd never finished the book in the first place. He didn't even know if the character he was to replace lived to the end of the story.

Darien suddenly had an idea. The Librarian had stated the Book of Passages took its user into whatever story they had read last. If he wrote about his own life upon a page, then read from the Book, it might take him home. His hopes were dashed when he looked toward the crater where he and the Librarian had both arrived. The Book of Passages was no longer lying on the ground. He realized the Librarian must have taken it with him. Darien was trapped.