Rejected (Shadow Beast Shifters #1) - Jaymin Eve Page 0,42
to myself, as we passed dozens of beings, each of them so vastly different from each other, I literally couldn’t take them all in with enough detail.
Gaster chuckled, a grating sound that was almost unpleasant. “It has been a long time since I met someone who didn’t know about the supernatural world. About the Solaris System that connects and branches to each of the lands.”
I shrugged. “I mean, I’m a shifter, so I knew that there were more than humans out there, but outside of Shadow, Inky, and now you, I’ve never actually met any others.”
He blinked, those black orbs so reflective that all the lights surrounding us could be seen in them. “Shadow and Inky?”
I jerked my head toward the darkness following me. “That thing and its master.”
Gaster nodded, like he understood. “Ah, yes. They’re the supreme beings around here. We do not mess with his section of the library, and in return, he doesn’t destroy us all. We also catalog his books. The symbiosis works.” His eyes darted toward Inky, like he was relaying that information directly to the blob.
I leaned down so I was closer to his level. “What is the Solaris System?” I whispered.
Gaster shot me a conspiratorial smile, and I was half in love with this tiny dude and his helpfulness. Pretty sure outside of Simone and Dannie, I’d never had anyone be this nice to me. “It’s a transport system powered by the library. Connected energy portals that allow us to travel between the multitude of worlds. Each of the doorways here”—he waved his hand—“connects to one of the lands. So, I’m a goblin from Faerie.” He pointed out the door with the alluring music I’d almost walked through. “And Chester over there is a water sprite from the land of Karn, which is mostly water.” This time, he pointed to a door that was about ten feet from us, faint swirls of blue visible in the white grain.
And Chester… The Karn inhabitant was waif-like, with icy blue skin and a body so androgynous that I would never have been able to guess gender. Maybe they didn’t even have the sort of gender I would understand on Karn. They had four arms, the second set a little shorter, and I presumed they were useful in the water. Not wanting to overtly stare any longer, I turned my gaze away, waiting for Gaster to continue.
“Marin is a transcendent,” he said, picking up on my cue. “Closely representing the angels of Earth lore, they reside in Honor Meadows.”
Marin was a tall statuesque being, female in appearance. She was dressed in what looked like black and gold armor, with shiny black skin, and grey-tinged feathery wings emerging from her back. Wings that looked very much like they belonged on an angel. “Wow,” I whispered as I took in the full picture.
She was beauty personified, as if each plane of her face had been lovingly carved to perfection. Her long hair reminded me of Simone’s, thick and blue-black. Unlike Simone’s, though, Marin’s hair was in a perfect braid, ending around her calves.
Whatever Honor Meadows was, I could only assume it was filled with more angelic-looking beings like Marin.
“You reach their lands through there,” Gaster said, pointing out a door farther down the library.
This was so incredibly hard to understand and comprehend, but maybe because I stood within these walls filled with so much knowledge, none of it felt overwhelming.
Gaster continued on, pointing out animalistic beings, akin to a centaur who merged human and animals. Horse, goat, panther, and bird hybrids were in the library, but I was assured that in their land of Brolder, there were many, many others.
“Are there any dragon beings?” I asked seriously, still half-existing in an epic book hangover from my last shifter read.
Gaster didn’t miss a beat at my random question. “Not dragons like those depicted on Earth, but we do have great beasts who wander the worlds.”
Great beasts? I mean, if there was anything greater than the Shadow Beast out there, that would be a seriously scary sight to behold. But I was totally here for it.
Gaster continued his journey through the library, introducing me to many of the faefolk, including pixies, banshees, sidhe, trolls, and ghouls.
“In Faerie, there are hundreds of others,” he said. “It would take me weeks to list them all.”
“The universe is so much bigger than I expected,” I breathed, feeling both insignificant and emotional by my discoveries today.
“This is merely a tiny slice of the larger piece,”