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Walking the sullied, ravine-like streets of Stelladigmata, one could barely make out the surrounding buildings, their brick walls reaching beyond the fog of the skylight, much less any structures beyond. Such was the fate of the Grand Library, built before the city had fallen underground, from old, wise stones and planks that told tales as flavorful as the books themselves, kept safe inside.
If one set foot within, a privilege in its own right, not granted to just anybody, the sudden space would make them feel like they’d lost their footing. The citizens of Stelladigmata were not adjusted to the cavernous architecture of the old world. They were not used to being able to breathe.
Mumbo walked down these halls every single day, though. Diligently, so that everything was in its rightful place, in the correct order, dirty only to the degree that it was aesthetically pleasing to blow off the dust. He was the Curator of this sacred site.
He walked steadily, heels clacking with the weight that his title carried, the sound echoing through the cavernous monolith with every step. Mumbo did everything in his life diligently, with a sense of duty, from the smallest act to the monumental, from carrying a flier to rearranging the entire archive.
Right now, it was just a tiny task. A small booklet from a friend, of sorts. A poet: Joe Hills. A known, but also unknown figure. Every time Mumbo had met him, which was not many, a different person had been claiming to be him. And, yet, without fail, those people delivered to him a manuscript with the same handwriting. Mumbo had encountered those who contained multitudes of personality, before – Joe Hills was the one case where he’d seen it happen in reverse. Perhaps they were simply a really enthusiastic group of writers – but Mumbo wouldn’t discount something peculiar, as the truth in the sunken city oft turned out to be stranger than fiction.
Regardless of his identity, Hills had a rather distinctive style and a widespread following, accompanied by an ability to write between the lines and thus dodge the numerous “restructurings” of the library collection at the behest of various parties with often opposing interests. Depending on who – the Watchers themselves, the Church of the Void or the rebel group Vi’harmadar – was currently winning the petty turf war surrounding the Grand Library, history had to be rearranged to make the Watcher government the result of a glorious revolution, a curse of the Gods or a totalitarian insurrection. Books cycled on and off the shelves ad nauseum every time the scales of power tipped. All, except for the humble poetry of Joe Hills.
Mumbo took a right turn under the arches of the arcade, between the pillars, clutching her folded skirt to make her way up the stairs, the leather-bound book held tightly in her other hand. She passed a young librarian on her way up, who tipped their hat with a "Good evening, Curator" before rushing past. They were probably the one handling closing today, which meant Mumbo was now on her own, just like every other evening.
He spent his nights at the Grand Library ever since the Watchers had taken over Stelladigmata. Everything was too precarious, he was afraid that if the building left his sight for too long, he'd return to it having disappeared. So, he stayed here. Every single night, without fail, for the past decade. That solitude had grown on him, only briefly broken by Scar's presence a year or two back, but… Scar was gone, now. So, it was back to business as usual.
Mumbo walked along the interior balcony and approached the archive. He passed two men on the way, both looking bored from days of guarding what, to them, must have been an uninteresting place. Uneducated fools, they were. They'd been appointed by Vi'harmadar, to "protect the library" while their rebel group planned sieges in the area. It mostly just amounted to them stepping on Mumbo's toes all the time. He walked past them without a second thought.
"Do you think it's a man or a woman?" one of them asked.
Mumbo stopped, making sure they heard that he had, but didn't turn around.
"Definitely a man, he has a mustache" the other replied.
"Yeah, but what's with the skirt?"
Mumbo kept walking. She had more important things to worry about and than the chatter of filthy commoners. She approached the shelf reserved for Hills's works and held up the book so she could slide it in.
It was then that she realized that the second pair of footsteps wasn't an echo – one of them really had come in after her. She turned around and glared at the smaller man, blond with pure red eyes, no pupils, the bandana around his neck typical of the lowly thugs Vi'harmadar rallied its forces from.
"You're not allowed in here" Mumbo stated, sternly, then glanced at the empty glass bottle in his hand. "And you're definitely not supposed to be drinking on the job"
The guard leaned on the bookshelf with a relaxed posture. "Oh, come on, Miss Curator, nothing interesting ever happens here. Besides, I'm sure you're willing to help me and my friend settle an argument, being a man of the people and all"
"Scram" Mumbo responded, sliding in Hills's newest volume into the already packed shelf. He wasn't a man of the people – We'll, maybe he had been, once, but the people had changed and, now, there was nothing left for him, but the Grand Library.
The guard clicked his tongue and gave him a dejected expression. "Come on, just one thing" he begged.
"Out with it, then leave me alone"
The thug seemed pleased that he'd gotten a foot in the door and took a full stride directly into Mumbo's personal space.
"What do the goods look like, Miss Curator?" he asked with a mischievous, almost childish grin on his face.
Mumbo raised an eyebrow.
The guard's lips curled to a tight smile. "You know, your Magic Flute? Your Secret Garden, perhaps?"
The curator found himself momentary distracted by the fact that the thug knew about either of those works, but got back on track not a moment later. He slapped the commoner across the face, who recoiled, red eyes filled with anger and disbelief.
"Rude!" he spat, gripping the glass bottle. Mumbo took a step back, watchful of an upcoming swing that never manifested. Instead, an impish smile parted the guard's lips as he raised his hand and conjured… Fire. Straight from his fingertips he sprouted flames, live and hot like a torch. Mumbo's eyes widened.
Into her carefully guarded library, filled with rare and vulnerable pieces of literature, Vi'harmadar had allowed a fire mage. Her heart skipped a beat, maybe several. Politeness and platitudes kicked in, a defense mechanism straight from the library's heart, one she had learned to feel the essence of, having become a part of these halls just as any shelf or pillar would have. She'd offended the wrong person and it was time for damage control.
His assailant smirked. "Go on, show me. Or this shelf burns" he pressed with childish glee.
Mumbo's hands stuttered, his mind frantically trying to regain a sense of control over the situation. There wasn't anyone around, safe for the other guard who could already hear everything going down and had, unsurprisingly, chosen not to lift a finger.
Mumbo still had this under control, he told himself. During his many years as the curator, he had dealt with much worse – though, a fire mage casting directly in his archive certainly did hit top ten.
He took a breath. He was in control, he repeated. His hands reached around to his side, to the long bow holding his folded skirt in place. He pulled the end and unwrapped the garment, pausing after the first loop around his hips, leaving a streak of his left thigh exposed. Perhaps he'd been hoping the fire mage had changed his mind, but he just leered at Mumbo. He sighed and opened the skirt, letting him take a look.
"You have no underwear? That's dirty, Miss – Mister – uh…"
The fire sizzled out as a confused expression settled on his features.
"Satisfied?" Mumbo monotoned, knuckles straining to a pale white as she gripped the fabric of her skirt.
Apparently not, because the fire mage squatted down to take a closer look. Not soon after, he raised a curious finger to him, and had both of Mumbo's hands not been occupied with holding his skirt, he would have palmed his face.
"Tango, are you done yet?" came the holler from outside the section, echoing past the archive then back around through the halls. Mumbo could hear rain slowly trickling down the old, stained-glass windows.
The fire mage frowned. "Zed, give me a moment, would you?!" he yelled back.
So, his name was Tango. Mumbo could erase him from every history book as revenge, he thought – though, presumably, the name of a lowlife such as him wouldn't be written in those prestigious pages, anyway. He thought better of it a bit later. He was a curator, but it wasn't up to him to decide what was history and what wasn't – even if it involved dirty nobodies like the scum in front of him.
A warm finger pressed to the base of his shaft, then trailed down the side of his slit. Mumbo did his best to stay still, figuring that if he was uninteresting enough, Tango would leave him alone. That didn't seem to deter the mage, who prodded around between his carefully trimmed netherhair until he found an opening and mouthed a silent "oh!"
Mumbo felt that he was wet. Not that that was a sign of arousal, it was more of a lower instinct to protect his most sensitive parts from the cold, disinterested air of the library.
It seemed that this would take a while and his hands had gotten tired from holding his skirt, so he sighed and looped the long ends of the garment around around his waist to tie a knot, bunching up the excess fabric behind himself so that the mage still had access. The resulting outfit felt quite vulgar, more so than simply being naked with how his genitals were basically the only parts of him exposed, the deep, burgundy red fabric angled in a way that naturally drew the eyes of any onlookers to parts usually kept hidden. Mumbo briefly imagined walking down the halls of the library like this – maybe he could, once Vi'harmadar was out of the area and he had the building to himself for the night. His thoughts were interrupted by a finger breaching his entrance.
Mumbo's body tensed, but the fear was quickly washed out by an odd, sage-like calm. It must've been the library, again, telling her body to remain docile lest a raging inferno envelop the building at the behest of a disgruntled fire mage. Being the curator meant that she was the archive's first servant. The fact that her beloved house of literature was resorting to altering her mood was something she chose to interpret as a sign of care rather than malice.
"She's so tight!" Tango noted, mostly to himself, it was too quiet for the other guard to hear.
Mumbo let out an unwilling gasp as the mage felt around inside him, growing hard from the stimulation. The mage put his hand next to his length, as if to gauge its size – it was around the length of his pinkie finger. He stroked along his erection while he slipped a second finger in and Mumbo had to lean back against the shelf for support as his legs threatened to buckle.
"Oh? Has it been a while, Miss Curator?" he asked, voice deep and suggestive, before leaning in and taking Mumbo in his mouth.
Mumbo bit into his lip to suppress a moan, his body betraying him with how good it felt, the mage's warm tongue licking around his shaft as he sucked. He was truly wet, now, his entrance happily yielding to a third finger, which joined the steady pumping of the ones already inside him. At this rate he was going to…
Tango pulled back, if only to observe the defeated, disheveled expression on Mumbo's face. Then, his red eyes twinkled like he'd just gotten a great idea.
He dragged his hands down Mumbo's legs, wiping off the wetness in the process, before sitting back on his heels and picking up the glass bottle he'd left on the floor. It was on the smaller side, around the length of his palm, with a standard, lean shape and narrow lip. He took Mumbo's length between two fingers and guided it into the opening, all the way to the hilt.
"What are you doing?" Mumbo found himself asking.
The fire mage grinned. "Observe my genius, Miss Librarian"
He lowered a hand way underneath the bottle and conjured fire. Mumbo stared in horror as the flames danced in her assailant's eyes. She was willing to put up with many things, but being burned was not among them. It wasn't what happened, though.
What did happen was that the glass started to warm up and expand – the air inside thinning and pulling Mumbo deeper, sealing to the skin around his shaft until it was on so tight that Tango could let go and leave the bottle hanging. The weight tugged on his skin and he tried to hold on to the object on instinct, but the mage grabbed his wrists before he could manage.
"Hands behind your head, please, Miss Curator" he grinned and Mumbo followed his orders.
It was a humiliating position to be in – Mumbo was the curator, The Curator of the Grand Library, he wasn't some roadside attraction to be gawked at and treated like a toy. He deserved dignity and –
Then came a second wave of that same calmness from before. It was like he was observing himself from outside, through the veil of aloof, half-aroused disconnect. From this angle, he felt thankful for such a mercy. He let his mind drift and let the sensations take free reign.
"See? You and I are finally speaking the same language" the mage smirked, then got up to his feet. "Come on, I'm going to show you to my friend out there"
Mumbo let out soft whimpers as he walked, the bottle tugging on his erection with each step, wetness flowing down his thighs. When he had the thought of strolling down the library hall with his skirt lewdly parted, he hadn't meant it like this. He pulled his elbows closer in an attempt to cover his face.
They approached the archway where the other guard was stationed outside.
"What's the verdict?" he asked.
The fire mage chuckled. "See for yourself"
The other man stepped out from behind the pillar and was met with the pitiful sight of the curator. He snickered, brushing a hand through dense, curly, blonde hair as he stepped closer. "Tango, are you going to get us in trouble again?"
"Maybe" the mage smiled. "Be my partner in crime?"
"I'd love to be" the man replied quite casually. "Nice to meet you, Curator, Sir, I'm Zedaph! Don't think we've had a chance to become acquainted"
He held out a tanned hand – a rarity, considering the absence of natural sunlight in the sunken city – then chuckled, realizing Mumbo couldn't reciprocate. He reached lower and shook the bottle still attached to him. The curator stared daggers at him to the best of his current abilities.
"It's going to fall" Mumbo stated, bluntly, the only form of protest his mind really allowed him. A problem was brewing in the back of his head: He wanted to protect the library, he really did, but this was starting to push him to his limits. That had never happened before, so he had never had the chance to realize a disturbing truth: He couldn't fight back even if he tried. First and foremost, he was a servant of the Grand Library of Stelladigmata and his body simply wouldn't obey if the act would threaten the archive. Mumbo suddenly felt unsure if the arousal he was feeling even belonged to him. It could have, he knew himself well enough to admit that, but the inkling of doubt was enough to make something clench deep in his stomach… Before he relaxed, again.
Zedaph pulled off the bottle with a pop, catching the drip of precum that leaked from the curator.
"We could put a cork in this and sell it" he smirked, Tango chuckling in response.
"You think someone would buy that?" the mage asked, planting his hands on Mumbo's hips from behind. Their warmth radiated through his body.
Zedaph hummed. "If we had a little more"
The fire mage ran his warm palms up under Mumbo's black, knitted sweater. "Think she comes like a man?"
Zed touched twin fingers to the sides of the curator's entrance. "Good question. There is a little something around here, so maybe. Are we correct, Mister Librarian?" he asked, looking up at Mumbo with sparkling, curious eyes, like he was just asking about a particularly interesting book.
Mumbo pressed his lips shut and turned away.
"Aw, cat got you tongue? Let me help" Tango smirked, reaching over to the bookshelf to pull out a tome, fingers sizzling with heat.
"Please, don't –" Mumbo begged.
The fire mage tilted his head. "Easy. Answer the question, then"
"I – I can, I do…" he whispered.
"Let's see it, then" Zedaph prompted, pressing the lip of the bottle to her wet tip. "Go on, make yourself come. You can use your hands"
Tango tossed the book to the ground, the print of his hand charred to the cover, and reached around to unbutton Mumbo's sweater and shirt down to her waist, revealing her flat, slightly soft chest. "Yeah, you can use them right here" he said, grabbing her hands and planting them against her buds.
Mumbo did as he'd been told and started teasing his nipples, unable to hold back his moans, anymore. He wanted to come, he realized, as contradictory as that felt. He needed to come, even. He thrust into the glass bottle, yearning for the friction, uncaring about how shameful or undignified it was, anymore. It was easier not to think about it, for the time being. He'd have plenty of long nights to unpack it later.
"Look, he likes it" Zedaph cooed, running a hand up his thigh.
"M-hm, like a bitch in heat. She wasn't even wearing anything under her skirt, you know. Maybe she does this often" he whispered, right next to her ear, like he knew exactly which buttons to push to send her over the edge.
Mumbo came with a shudder, his whole body tingling as hot white shot out from him, filling the bottle until his tip was touching the liquid.
"Damn" Zedaph reacted, pulling up the bottle so Tango could see, "Must've been holding that for a while"
Tango chuckled into his shoulder. "She's still playing with her nipples, too. Horny slut" he scoffed, grazing his teeth on her neck. "You want us to fuck you? Use your holes until you can't stand straight?"
"Ah, please" The words slipped out without him having to really think about them. It felt right. It felt natural. His being felt a million miles away from the thin screen of his vision.
"Well, look at you, asking so nicely" Zedaph smiled, "Get on your knees and do it properly, though"
Mumbo lowered himself to the ground. "Please fuck me"
He kind of couldn't believe what he himself was doing, but his mind felt too fuzzy to question anything at this point. The Grand Library had to survive. He had to get fucked.
"Think that front hole fits anything?" Zedaph asked while unbuckling his belt.
"It fit three fingers" Tango offered.
The other let out an amused exhale. "Then it'll fit you"
He rolled his eyes. "Oh, shut up. Do you have lube?"
"W-What, you think I do this as a hobby?" the other stammered, before he seemed to get an idea. Zedaph picked up the bottle. "Raise your hips, please, Mister Curator"
He ran a finger down his spine, Mumbo's posture molded by his touch like clay, pressing his chest all the way to the cold, tile floor, making his nipples perk up, again. Once Zedaph reached his hips, he undid his skirt, letting it fall around his legs.
Mumbo felt something lukewarm prod at her back entrance and soon realized it was the bottle filled with her own…
"Oh, that's dirty, Zed" Tango snickered while also undoing his belt.
"Well, he came so much, it'd be a waste not to use it" he exhaled, "Besides, think about how nice it'll feel with all that inside"
He tipped the bottle and Mumbo felt his own hot, thick seed slowly flowing into himself, coating his walls, which seemed to part on instinct to let it deeper.
Tango prodded at his head, laying against the floor, with his boot. "Yeah, you like being creampied with your own come?"
Mumbo's eyes impossibly dilated as he stared past into the distance, down the halls of the library licked by darkness. There wasn't any help coming. He missed Scar. Where was Scar?
Zed pulled the bottle, a long string of come falling between Mumbo's cheeks as he did, then pressed his hard cock to his entrance. He pushed in, pulling Mumbo back by his arms so that Tango had access to the front.
Once upon a time, Mumbo had been a young librarian, still walking the surface world. Once upon a time, he had taken an oath to preserve history for the people. Once upon a time, he had felt ready to take on anything for such a task. Once upon a time, he had been sure that people would respect such an occupation.
It was increasingly difficult, however, not to feel like the denizens of Stelladigmata had lost their right to their history. These were the people he had sworn to endure for? What kind of fate was that?
He snapped back to the present to find that he was abruptly laying on the floor, leaking – well, he felt no need to put it into words. He'd seen firecrackers last longer than these two. Mumbo rested his body on the stone tile floor, slightly lukewarm from their presence. Surely, they were done, now and he could get back to – He could get back to what? He wanted to curl up in a corner and cry for Scar to come and do something about this.
She felt the floor shift, the tiles raising and lowering slightly as if the Library was attempting to soothe her. After all this time, it was still just the two of them. Always just the two of them.
Someone coughed. A woman, by the sound of it. Oh, good, did they have more friends? Though, the voice was oddly familiar.
"Boss?" Tango quivered.
Well, look who the cat had dragged in. Mumbo didn't need to turn his head to know. It was the leader of Vi'harmadar herself, Cleo the Undying.
"We can explain!" Zed started, but was quickly shut down by what sounded like a punch.
"Out, both of you" she commanded.
"We were just messing around!" Tango protested.
"Out, or I'm getting Doc to cut your hands off"
Tango shuddered. "Okay, okay, I'm leaving!" he assured, then as him and Zed were walking away, he added "That guy's a freak"
Mumbo felt the tension in their body ease slightly as their footsteps vanished towards the exit. Cleo hadn't moved. Mumbo angled his head to face her. She looked the same as she had since she survived a Watcher agent’s pipe bomb – like her body had been disassembled and put back together, the patches of stitched skin slightly different colors. That’s not to say she was ugly, she had an odd, grotesque beauty to her. Doc had done a good job. Mumbo can’t imagine what she payed for it.
"The kind of people you ally yourself with" he whispered.
Cleo stayed silent, walking over to his side. She knelt down. "If there's anything I can do to make it up to you – "
Mumbo scoffed. "Make it up to me?" He couldn't help himself, he just started laughing against the floor. "The leader of Vi'harmadar is going to personally make it up to me? This?" he gestured at himself and the floor and the tome with the fire mage's fingertips burnt onto the cover.
Cleo reached over for Mumbo's skirt to cover him with a forearm bathed in stitches and old wounds, the fingertips ending in porcelain. "Or Cleo is going to make it up to you"
Mumbo slowly got up from the floor. "Is she?"
She lowered her head. "She'll try. There's… There's news on Scar, if that's any consolation"
He gripped into the fabric of his skirt. "Don't end sentences like that without saying good or bad"
"Good. Well… Alive, anyway"
The curator let out an exhale – it belonged to a breath he'd taken over a year ago and had been silently holding ever since. "Thank the stars. Where is he?"
"He was spotted with a Watcher agent, so we're… We'll, given that it's Scar we're unsure of his current allegiances" Cleo elaborated.
Mumbo scoffed. "You know exactly where his allegiances lay"
Cleo smiled. "We're unsure of his current long-con, then. Is that more suitable?"
The curator nodded and got up from the floor, eyes widening as what had remained inside from the encounter earlier abruptly found its way out, down his legs, to the floor. He breathed. This was going to be a mess to clean up. He clumsily wrapped his soiled skirt back around himself. Cleo offered him a shoulder. He didn't accept it.
He saw Cleo off to the gate.
"Cleo?" she asked as they stood by the entrance. "Do you know what Vi'harmadar means?"
The leader raised an eyebrow. "Of course, I do. You helped me come up with it, back when – "
"What does it mean, then?"
"We the people" she replied.
Mumbo crossed his arms. "And what does that mean?"
"Mumbo, if I wanted to have someone talk to me in riddles, I'd go find Joe"
The curator shrugged. "No, it's just – The phrasing implies a connection between the 'we' and the 'people', doesn't it? Perhaps ponder that" he said, and shut the gate behind her.
"I feel gross" Tango said, looking down on his hands.
Zedaph leaned back against the tall, stone brick walls of the library. The street was lit by counterfeit light bulbs ever since they had occupied the area – the Watchers had cut them from the grid. "But the experiment was a success, I suppose"
Tango was visibly nauseous. "I'm going to throw up"
"Well, good thing we're outside. Hey, here comes the Boss. Did we do good?"
The Undying walked down the steps to them and nodded. "Let's go, we have an escort waiting"
"You mean you do" Tango added as he fell in line with her.
"You're coming back to base, are you not?" she asked.
Tango stopped in his tracks. "Wait, you don't mean – "
"We really get to see him? How is he?" Zed questioned.
"… Awake. Don't get your hopes up, though"