Yelena is chased into the Chained Library, but the fun and games get darker, and they make a disturbing discovery relating to the Mortress and her realm. To learn more about the real life chained libraries that inspired this section of worldbuilding… read on!
CWs: monster smut with primal play elements, reference to ritual self-sacrifice.
Music Credits:
Kevin McLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Quinn’s Song: The Dance Begins
Achaidh Cheide
Morgana Rides
Chained Libraries
I really enjoyed my tour of Hereford Cathedral’s chained library a few years ago (pre-COVID). Chained libraries were to prevent book theft, and were most prevalent between the 16th and 18th centuries.
St Wulfram’s Church in Grantham, Lincolnshire is home to the Francis Trigge Chained Library. You can see the chains here are a bit chunkier, and for Yelen’s library I was imagining something like this.
The books are held in place by the chains, so if you don’t put them back in the correct slot, the chains will get tangled up. The binding is attached to one end of the chain, and the other is locked onto the shelf, with a good length of chain to allow you to pull the book down to a desk height and read.
As Yelen is roughly 17thC to Yelena’s very early 19thC in my magical equivalent world, this would have been peak chained library time, and it was also a wasted opportunity to not play with the chains in some sort of sex game, since that’s basically all they do together (and the library will reset at sunrise, so nothing they do actually matters).
Listen to Dr Rosemary Firman on the History West Midlands website talking about Chained Libraries.
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