Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

a gray perversion of rain forest moss, giving the air a certain moldy, unwelcome scent faintly reminiscent of a baledragon’s lair. At each corner, you expect to turn and see the withered, skeletal remains of some poor researcher who got lost in the stacks and never found his way out.
    And even those kinds of libraries are by pale apprentices to the enormous cavern of books that I entered that day. We walked quietly, passing shelves packed so tightly together that only an anorexic racing jockey could have squeezed between them. The bookshelves were easily fifteen feet high, and enormous plaques on the ends proclaimed, in very small letters, the titles each one contained. Long wooden poles with pincerlike hooks leaned against some shelves, and I got the impression that they were used for reaching between the shelves to pull out books.
    No , I thought, it would take a ridiculous amount of practice to learn to do something like that. I must be wrong.
    You may have guessed that I wasn’t actually wrong. You see, Librarian apprentices have plenty of time to practice things that are ridiculous. They really only have three duties: First, to learn the incredibly and needlessly complicated filing system used to catalog books in the back library stacks. Second, to practice with the book-hooks. Third, to plot ways to torture an innocent populace.
    That third one is the most fun. Kind of like gym class for the murderously insane.
    Sing, Bastille, and I crept along the rows, careful to keep an eye out for Librarian apprentices. This was undoubtedly the most dangerous thing I’d ever done in my short life. Fortunately, we were able to get to the eastern edge of the room without incident.
    “We should move along the wall,” Bastille said quietly, “so Alcatraz can look down each row of books. That way, he might see powerful sources of Oculation.”
    Sing nodded. “But we should move quickly. We need to find the sands and get out fast, before the Librarians realize they’ve been infiltrated.”
    They looked at me expectantly. “Uh, that sounds good,” I finally said.
    “You’ve got this leadership thing down, Smedry,” Bastille said flatly. “Very inspiring. Come on, then. Let’s keep moving.”
    “Bastille and Sing began to walk along the wall. I however, didn’t follow. I had just noticed something hanging on the wall above us: a very large painting that appeared to be an ornate, detailed map of the world.
    And it looked nothing like the one I was used to.

Chapter 8
    At this point, you’re probably expecting to read something like, “I suddenly realized that everything I thought I had known was untrue.”
    Though I’ll likely use that exact phrase, I should warn you that it is actually misleading. Everything I knew was not untrue. In fact, many of the things I’d learned about the world were quite true.
    For instance, I knew that the sun came up every day. That was not untrue. (Though, admittedly, that sun shone on a geography I didn’t understand.) I knew that my homeland was named the United States of America. That was not untrue. (Though the U.S.A. was not actually run by senators, presidents, and judges – but instead by a cult of evil Librarians.) I knew that sharks were annoying. This also was not untrue. (There’s actually nothing witty to add here. Sharks are annoying. Particularly the carnivorous kind.)
    You have been warned.
    I stared up at the enormous wall map and suddenly realized something. Everything I thought I’d known about the world was untrue. “This can’t be real…” I whispered stepping back.
    I’m afraid it is, Alcatraz,” Sing said, laying a hand on my shoulder. “That’s the world – the entire world, both the Hushlands and the Free Kingdoms. This is the thing that the Librarians don’t want you to know about.”
    I stared. “But it’s so… big.”
    And indeed it was. The Americas were there, represented accurately. The other continents – Asia, Australia, Africa, and the rest – were there as well. They were collectively labeled INNER LIBRARIA on the map, but I recognized them easily enough. The difference, then, was the new continents. There were three of them, pressed into the oceans between the familiar continents. Two of the new continents were smaller, perhaps the size of Australia. One, however, was very large. It sat directly in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, right between America and Japan.
    It’s impossible,” I said. “We would have noticed a