books rustled and flapped into a giant tentacled ball. Then they unfurled all at once, forming a massive creature that looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a dragon.
“Um, hi?” tried Aru, backing up slowly until she was against a shelf. “What are you, a Thesaurus rex? Ha! Get it? You know, I always thought a Thesaurus rex would be a really friendly dinosaur…. You seem friendly?”
The creature roared, ink and book-binding glue spewing from its mouth. Aru swiveled out of its aim.
“All right, never mind,” she said, snapping her fingers.
Vajra shifted into a glittering spear.
“Look, monster! Go catch the shiny!” yelled Aru, hurling her weapon.
Vajra soared straight up in the air, raining sparks of electricity. They dropped onto the tomes and erupted into tiny fires. The creature roared again, writhing and clawing at its body.
“Stop!” said Kara. “You’ll hurt the books!”
“Better them than us!” said Aru.
She glanced over her shoulder. By now, the exit had widened to three feet.
“Let’s go!” shouted Aru.
“I…” Kara hesitated, her eyes darting to a hardcover that lay nearby.
Slim and blue, it was one of the few books that hadn’t joined to form the beast. Aru lifted her hand, and Vajra, who was still bouncing off the walls to distract the creature, zoomed back into Aru’s grasp.
“Do you want to come with me or not?” demanded Aru, stepping foot inside the passage.
Kara steeled herself, then snatched the book off the ground.
“I do!” she said.
Aru and Kara ran headlong into the dark. Mirrors lined the passageway, so that it seemed as if they were running in infinite directions. A hundred feet away stood a door framed in light.
“That’s it!” said Kara. “Just say where you want to go once you open it, and—”
CRASH!
Aru turned to see the book monster stick its snout and an arm through the corridor’s entrance. It huffed at them. A cloud of ink seeped from its nostrils and spiderwebbed up the mirrors. The monster slammed a fist into the wall, and one by one the mirrors shattered, like a row of falling dominoes. At the end of the hall, the light around the door began to dim.
“It’s trying to cut off our escape!” said Kara.
There was only one way to stop the portal from going dead. Aru prepared to hurl Vajra at the monster….
But Kara grabbed her arm. “No! We can’t damage the books!”
“We’ve got to do something,” Aru said with a sigh.
Kara took a deep breath, then tapped her ring. In a flash of white light, it shifted into a long trident that looked as if it had been wrought out of an actual sunbeam. It brightened the hall and turned Kara’s eyes gold.
“My light doesn’t electrocute things like yours does,” said Kara.
Aru stared. “What the—?”
Kara aimed the trident at the book creature. The trident left a glowing trail before its three sharp-pointed ends sank into the monster’s outstretched arm. The beast howled as ink burst through the air. Aru stood there frozen for a moment before Kara took her hand and yanked her forward.
“C’mon!” Kara yelled. “Sunny will catch up with me later!”
“Sunny?” asked Aru.
“That’s what I named my trident!” said Kara breathlessly.
Aru’s head was spinning. That trident looked like something that should be wielded by a god. So how did Kara get it?
The portal door was finally within reach. Aru lunged and pushed it. It felt cold against her skin. Her lungs pinched with hope. Home, she thought. She was going home!
Just then, something hot squeezed Aru’s ankles. She looked down to see an inky coil wrapping itself around her. Before she could kick it off, the tendril yanked. Aru fell, her chin thudding on the mirrored floor. She watched herself being dragged back down the hallway toward the library.
Aru thrashed, reaching for Vajra to cut the inky rope, but she was being pulled too quickly, and every time her weapon sparked, the ink from the book monster ignited, making the passageway grow thick with smoke and smoldering flames.
This is how I’m gonna go? thought Aru miserably as she fought its hold. A burned Aru casserole?
Aru wrenched herself around, trying to catch sight of Kara, but the smoke in the air and the sparks glinting off the mirrors obscured her vision. Doubt struck Aru hard. Had Kara left her behind? What if this had all just been a ruse to let Kara escape?
Something whistled through the air.
Aru looked up just in time to see the trident slice through the inky tendril.
“C’mon, Aru!” yelled Kara.
Aru scrambled to her feet.