The Fourth Wall

Florence roughly grabbed hold of a storyline, and squeezed it violently.

Surprisingly, under her grip, the storyline squirmed and thrashed, all while flashing numerous lights, indicating that it was in a predicament.

"Were they always so reactive?" Gilgamesh's eyes widened.

"We weren't trying to reverse their very existence before now, so of course they'll react differently." Florence replied.

Gilgamesh saw the way the storyline was wildly twisting and tremoring in Florence's hand, and his eyes reflected the threatening flashes of light that came from it. He swallowed as a slight trace of unease set in.

It looked like an innocent and harmless animal, doing its best to escape the clutches of a predator.

"Not we. You. You're trying to reverse its existence, not me." He said, as though he was trying to shift the blame-- which he was.

"Heh," Florence noticed his behavior and chuckled, "what are you worried about?"

Gilgamesh shrugged, "I don't know what you're talking about."

"The storylines are just things, without will and desire. It cannot retaliate." Florence said this then returned to focusing on the storyline in her hand.

Gilgamesh nodded as he backed up, then left Florence altogether, moving toward a distant storyline.

'I wonder...'

He stepped as close as he could get to the storyline and leaned forward, trying to look into it. At first, all he saw were the streams of flowing light that he guessed reresented the pure energy of stories.

However, as he focused his sight, his eyes glowed with enlightenment and his perfect vision began to reveal more and more of itself.

Within the flowing streams of light that travelled throughout the storyline, Gilgamesh began to see things.

He saw images of lives, and the passing of time on a magnifcent scale.

He saw the growth of villages, the development of nations and kingdoms, times of peace, war, famine and total destruction.

He saw worlds rise into gleaming golden ages of triumph, and saw worlds descend into chaos, destroyed by ceaselessly warring inhabitants.

He saw galactic expeditions, and clashes between intergalactic civilizations with conflicting ideologies. Trillions of corpses littered the cosmos as trails of dead were left in the wake of the victors.

He saw a universal peace, brought about by complete and total subjugation under a ruthless authority. None were spared who dared stand against them.

Gilgamesh saw the ever-expanding nature of multiverses, and the infinite number of possibilities that they were made up of. He saw living potential in the shape of entire dimensions, representing the desire of all living, sentient things to carry on.

Gilgamesh observed the eventual formation of Omniverses- a unity of spirit acheived by a single leader rising atop it all. He saw what it meant to be a Librarian, and to keep the concepts that governed the Omniverse in check.

Gilgamesh himself did not realize that he was lost in a trance. As he stared into storyline after storyline, he was unable to stop himself from continuing.

It was like he had stumbled across an awe-inspiring book series, and was enraptured by the very first page. With each book he finished, the desire to continue reading the story only deepened.

Eventually, it became far harder to resist than what mere impossibility could explain. Gilgamesh was voracious in his devouring of stories.

And he had no idea what he was doing.

Florence would have noticed his odd behavior, had she not entered a crucial state in the integration process. Her mind and soul were somewhere else, despite her eyes being wide open.

In them, some tiny streams of light began to appear, making circles around her pupils before disappearing into the back of her eyes.

Florence began to see into the stories, but unlike Gilgamesh she did not linger there. She had already seen the stories.

In fact, due to her connection to the Library, she could feel the stories at all times.

Her interest was not in those stories, but in what lay beyond them. She wanted to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond the storylines.

A look at the driving force behind them.

In her mind's eye, she began to encroach upon a certain barrier that left her struggling to press on. She could not bypass it at first, until she began to think on what exactly it could be.

'Between the storylines and what I seek to find, there is a difference of an entire plane. Perhaps even several dimensions.'

'I can't know for sure, because I do not know what separates the Library from The Outside. Is it some kind of magical barrier? Or a domain of energy?'

As she pondered these things and tested some theories, all in an attempt to get past that barrier, Gilgamesh was beginning to integrate with the storylines in his own way.

The more of them he digested, the easier it became for him to see into more and more of them. Eventually, he didn't even have to move.

Standing in place, the storylines' light streamed toward him, and entered his mind directly through his eyes.

Inadvertently, he was doing the same thing that Florence was, albeit with an absent mind.

However, when he began to run out of stories to read, and his mind prepared to read further into things, he met the exact same barrier that Florencr had come to.

When his mind recognized this barrier, it abandoned its mission of integration, and began to seek understanding.

Gilgamesh asked himself questions, even as he slowly came out of his trance. At the same time, he began to collect memories of his story-reading session.

"A barrier that separates the storylines from the power that perpetuates them, acting as the bedrock of their existence."

"In other words, the barrier that holds the Beginningless Library in place, standing between it and what lies outside."

Gilgamesh's eyes snapped open, and he thrust his hand directly into a storyline. "Show it to me."

In his vision, swirling story lights danced like fantastical auroras in his eyes, and Gilgamesh began to see the storylines flitter past him.

With his mind, he travelled through the storylines and backtracked until he came as close to their source as he could.

That was when he saw it, and his eyes widened in terrible shock.

Standing infront of Gilgamesh was a wall of paper, stretching out further than his perfect eyes could discern. When he touched it, he felt as though he were coming in contact with a material that he could never understand.

It was not of the Library. It was otherwordly.

Touching this wall, Gilgamesh suddenly pushed, feeling as though he were trying to move the very fabric of the Beginningless Library.

"This is... a nature that does not exist in the Library..." Gilgamesh could arrive at that conclusion because he already possessed knowledge of every nature within the Library.

He could tell, very easily, if something was not of the Library.

"It is not. This wall of paper is the 4th Wall, the barrier between this fantasy and reality. It is the final obstacle in my way."

Gilgamesh jumped at Florence voice, and looked behind him to see her. "How are you in my mind?"

"I'm not," Florence folded her arms and stepped closer to the Fourth Wall, "you're in mine. You piggybacked off of me."

Gilgamesh took a sharp breath, looking directly at the wall of paper that had no end.

"Why can't I understand? Whenever I try to think of this wall's concept, my mind goes blank. It's like there's a block on my mental capabilities."

Florence spoke without looking back, a single hand on the Fourth Wall.

"It's not a block. It's a limit."

With a puzzled frown, Gilgamesh gave Florence a sideways glance and waited for her to continue her explanation.

When she didn't, he sucked his teeth and pressed her for an answer. "Well? Are you going to explain to me how perfection can be limited?"

Florence immediately put her finger up and shushed Gilgamesh in a whispering, breathy murmur. "Come now. Don't go down that road again."

Gilgamesh immediately froze up, and he realized what he had done without even realizing it. Thinking about it, he suddenly sucked in a breath of cold air and stared at the Fourth Wall in abject horror and shock.

"If coming into contact with the 4th Wall can make you act like the Gilgamesh I knew, then you must not have truly perfected yourself like you thought."

"You're missing a fundamental element that sets you apart from what she created. Being in contact with the 4th Wall should make this clearer and clearer to you."

Taking his hand off the wall, Gilgamesh looked between it and the paper he had been touching.

"So I'm still just a character that she wrote into the Scripture? There's more I need to do?

Florence sighed as her fingers brushed against the Fourth Wall, "You and me both."

She pushed, but her hand would not go through.

"But you're a real person-- you're the Mother of Scriptures' flesh and blood."

"True," she started, "but I'm still tied to the Library, and the Library can't exist Outside, so I can't go outside as long as it and I are connected."

Gilgamesh frowned, and took a last look at the Fourth Wall. As he watched, he felt like he could sense someone staring back at him, reading his very story in that moment.

Perhaps... he could sense the person reading this right now...

Finally, he ejected himself from that strange mental place, and woke up in the layer of stories.

Florence woke up as well, and he returned to her.

Gilgamesh smiled thinly, and Florence wiped her face as she grunted in frustration.

"So," Gilgamesh stroked his chin, "I need to cast off imperfection."

"Yeah," Florence's chest fell as she exhaled, exasperated, "and I need to cast off the Beginningless Library."