The Bookwyrm
The Bookwyrm was a name used by Auteur to refer to a "primordial god-serpent" which lived within the Plume Coteries' Library. Its true appellation was "a long, complicated, coiling name, one that no human tongue could hope to speak", and it once suggested that it thought Cho, the Ulk-Ra's word for an environment of omnipresent danger, would be a fitting nickname for it. Auteur once addressed the Bookwyrm as the "devourer of stories, eater of words and worlds", and called it a "great Beast" and "ancient worm at the heart the great apple of knowledge".
The Bookwyrm was incredibly ancient and knowledgeable; it once suggested that it knew how and why the Library had come into existence, with its presence there far predating that of the Plume Coteries themselves. It disliked them, though it did have "a taste" for their Birdhemoths. After Auteur came to the Library, he attempted to summon the Bookwyrm with a ritual which involved the sacrifice of a Master Librarian's firstborn child, intending to "ride [the Bookwyrm] into glory" as he made his "triumphant return" to the main universe. His ritual was interrupted by Master Roland, who killed Auteur. Resurrected 258 years later in the presence of Coloth, Callum and Maritsa, Auteur completed his ritual, only for the Bookwyrm to refuse to obey him, and instead swallow him whole. Auteur remained alive within the Bookwyrm and they had multiple conversations.
Some time after those events, the Bookwyrm was resting by a fire when it was encountered by a lost human who'd been transported to the Library by a space-time entanglement. Offering the human some food and a place by the fire, the Bookwyrm decided to tell them the long and digression-prone story of Auteur's visit to the Library and what proceeded from it, leading up to it eating him. The Bookwyrm's narration was long-winded and prone to digression; among other things it mentioned to the listener that it was aware that the Cosmic War was over, but had managed to keep this knowledge from the Bookkeepers, by means of skillfully "misfiling" the chronicles of certain events. (PROSE: The Cactus and the Corpse [+]Loading...["The Cactus and the Corpse (short story)"])
