LSRO: Chapter 293 - Decay (Patreon)

Decay is also an excellent word.

You know, sometimes when you introduce a character, you know they're going to be important later on. But you don't quite know how. That was the case with Jasper to be honest. And I legitimately loved Jasper.

This character isn't quite as important I don't think, but in their own way they're going to be pivotal.

I'm really excited that this seems to be working the way I need it to.

I really hope you enjoy this

Also - update: My cat is a bit sick but he should be okay. We just have to follow a treatment plan for him. I'll post a picture of him in my next chapter free update. He's basically my familiar hahaha.

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Chapter 29

Decay

The door they pushed through wasn’t as robust as Quinn remembered. Its flimsy hinges threatened to buckle under the pressure of being opened. 

“Be careful.” She said to the rest of the group as they followed her into the Esposian Firionas settlement. A chill wind passed over her, as if confirming her idea to come here.

When they’d arrived last time, the rain forest had been teeming with life, even if it had ominous undertones. Magic thrummed through it regardless.

But now, it felt wild, and bereft, and perhaps just a bit unstable. So much that it reflected in Geneva’s face as she crossed the threshold. 

Malakai frowned, bow drawn, as he scouted around the area. Lynx scanned the entire isle from the looks of it, his eyes flashing through myriad colors as he did so. 

Quinn’s own system overlay surprised her. With the filtration reacher farther and farther, the rudimentary options she’d had available to her last time had increased tenfold. She was able to bring up information about the door they’d just come through.

Entrance Door to Treeway 6 Dwellings

Status: 47%

Caution: Repair necessary. Complete Degradation and incompatibility with Library System in seventeen days.

Quinn raised an eyebrow at the message and turned to scan everything else. The walkways above didn’t fair much better. Not to mention the gardens and the other dwellings below. 

Malakai sighed and walked back toward them. “Can’t find any life signs.” He muttered as he leaned a hand against the door and exerted a sliver of his own power.

Quinn watched as the wooden door regained solidity.

“Someone needs to reinforce the hinges. I can’t quite swing metal creation. It’s too far gone for my restoration to work.” He smiled and grinned at Quinn.

Filing through her own catalogue would have taken too long if she didn’t know what to look for. As it was, she reached over and touched each hinge, just allowing some of her earthen metal restoration to leak into it. Fine. She’d never really read a book on it, but she got the gist. And she did have the affinity, right?

The whoosh of power that gusted out of her surprised her. She stumbled back a few steps as the hinges doubled in size and reattached better than they’d ever been.

“See. I knew you could do it.” Mal grinned at her, crouching a little as he began to blend back in with the scenery and turned toward the village. He paused, calling over his shoulder. “We’re supposed to be headed to the copse, right?”

Quinn frowned and looked around at them. She could still sense the endless waterfall off to the other side of this floating island. Memories brushed at her mind. They had more than one option here, but first, she thought Mal was right. The copse was the first place they should look. Nodding her head, she headed off after him.

To say she regretted the decision to see if they could find magical traces here in order to find the actual base of operations behind the Sölem and its members would be mostly incorrect. Quinn was, however, apprehensive about just how decayed everything looked.

And it was the perfect word for it. 

The vegetation smelled like a fetid, rotting swamp without the liquid to go with it. Stench reached them all in varying waves. Not only was the plantlife dying, but there were still remnants of bodies strewn amongst the rotting flora that had been revealed because it too was now coming undone. 

Bones broke the ground, scattered all around them. Hands reaching out toward whoever passed, bony fingers grasping at nothingness.

Quinn barely managed to keep down the bile.

They moved cautiously, even though Quinn couldn’t sense any living people around them. They’d also had a crew of Esposians out to clear everything up -- but that was before the Ishiposan Isle trip, and Quinn was willing to bet whoever came out, didn’t do a bang-up job of it. Now they knew exactly where those loyalties lay. 

“Keep an eye out,” Lynx said, his words soft, almost as if he was speaking mind to mind. “There’s something still here. I just can’t get any life signs.”

That didn’t remind Quinn of a horror movie at all. “Something is here, but it doesn’t have life signs... You realize you’re just asking for zombies, right?” She sighed.

Lynx paused, a scowl on his face. “Well, now you’ve gone and said that...”

Geneva scowled at them. “Enough.”

When she said it in that tone of voice, Quinn was pointedly reminded of Nishpa. They settled down and continued scouting out the area, drawing ever closer to where the blood tree had been.

The copse was up ahead. All the trees swayed, as if their boughs were made of melting rubber, leaking down the sides and making it impossible to stand upright. Any leaves were shriveled and blackened, and hung from equally dead branches. 

The stench, however, roiled in Quinn’s head. She strengthened her personal shielding around herself, allowing plenty of room for the air filtration, and did so to the rest of the group as well. Except Lynx, of course. Somehow, instinctively, she knew the air reaching them right then was dangerous.

Malakai initiated mind communications. I thought they cleared this area of toxins and potential danger.

We also didn’t expect Adrito to try to ambush our Librarian but here we are. Geneva’s tone dripped with anger.

Quinn couldn’t help a small smile as she crept forward, reaching out with her sensory abilities to make sure they weren’t running into anything they couldn’t handle. Flashes of corpse pieces sticking out of that damned tree trunk dashed across her vision. Her memory appeared to enjoy tormenting her. It’ll be in the actual copse. Don’t let your guard down.

Lynx snorted softly. Didn’t need to say that. This place is creepy.

Malakai motioned them forward, and they walked through into the copse together.

After destroying the tree once Quinn had Machmüller’s book disentangled, she hadn’t really given it much attention or even thought.

The trunk itself was mostly destroyed, and the rest of it and what had been contained within it was decaying. However, rising up from the center of the dead trunk was a sludge like ooze that vaguely reminded her of the sludge in the filtration chamber back when they’d had to repair a pillar and she’d discovered how to use Gravitas. Chaos sludge.

It oozed out, creating a little pool around the erstwhile tree. Everything it touched melted into it as it began to trickle toward them.

“It’d be scary if it could move faster...” But that’s all Lynx got to say.

From behind the stump, a figure rose out of the sludge. It pushed up and through, taking on a vague creature like shape. Short and blocky, it reminded Quinn of a squishy toy covered in slime. Black tar like slime.

That stood about four feet tall.

It lumbered out, stumbling through the pool of sludge toward them, reaching out with stubby little arms, trying to wave menacingly in the air.

An arrow of pure light shot it right through the middle of the head, dissipating it entirely and even eating into some of the pool. 

Quinn blinked and turned to Malakai, her mouth open in shock.

“What?” he asked and then shrugged uncomfortably at the attention. “It moved slower than a slug. It wasn’t a hard shot. Did you want me to leave it alive or something?”

Quinn shook her head. “No. It just seemed scarier than that.”

“You need to scan Quinn.” Lynx prodded her from the side. “If you want that signature, you need to scan the area. I’ve already done it, but right now, you might have a little more power behind yours. It’ll enable us to make comparisons of readings if you do it from a few places around here.”

Quinn proceeded to scan the area, getting minor readings, not recognizing anything immediately, but slowly becoming distracted. She frowned, taking a wider berth with her scans, making sure she was meticulous about all of her readings. Not only that, but she clamped down on her shielding of the group even more, making sure none of their own magical signature leaked out.

Something in her rather reliable gut told her it was just as important to know who’d been here as to keeping their own identities a secret from having been here. Several more minutes and she was frustrated beyond belief.

Her sensory abilities were fritzing. Or else she apparently wasn’t sure how to interpret them properly. 

“What’s wrong?” Geneva asked, placing a hand on her shoulder gently. Her huge golden eyes seemed full of concern, and the gentle hum of her wings helped calm Quinn’s frustration.

“Thanks,” she acknowledged the help, even if that wasn’t what Geneva intended. “It’s more like... I can feel something. There’s something around here... I know there is. I felt it as soon as we opened that damned half broken door. I thought it would be here... this made just so much sense.” She frowned, scanning the area once more.

Once again, it remained oddly indifferent to her opinion.

Mal had been weaving in and out of the trees that lined the copse and he paused just across from her. “This wasn’t the only area, though. What about where the Esposians disintegrated?”

Quinn blinked at him. “That’s so true. There was so much magic used there to kill them. Surely there’ll be residue Harish can analyze there.”

“He can analyze what we have already. The Library will be able to once we’re back as well. But I don’t see how more samples could be a bad thing.” Lynx smiled as he turned into his lynx form and began to pad out of the copse.

The others followed. They moved faster now, through the trees, past the decaying dwellings and tree paths that nature had already begun to reclaim, past the door they came through and toward the waterfall.

Quinn couldn’t believe how much duller the surroundings were. Gone was the vibrant rainforest. The vines were brittle, and the life had been sucked out of every leaf, every staghorn fern that had amazed her with vitality last time. This was what chaos did, and the amount on this island had been but a fraction of what was in the filtration chamber. 

She shuddered to think just how bad the unmaking could be if chaos had free rein. Imagine it with no constraints. 

They reached the area at the start of the forest, just beyond the shore of the lake. 

Magic lingered, thick like syrup. Choking the air away from them. Quinn adjusted her shielding appropriately.

“Woah,” Lynx said, his eyes brightening as his runes began to whirr in response, winding their way all along his feline body, glowing as they took in the information. 

The magic here tasted similar and yet different to what she’d gathered in the copse. However, it was much more potent. After all, even all these months later, that magic had to travel and reach in order to disintegrate the Esposians it tried to coerce. And yet... it felt directed, deliberate. That book had almost had a life of its own.

Quinn frowned. Now that she’d adjusted the filtration around her face, and compensated for the cloying magic around them. She could still feel a pull. It grabbed a hold of her, just behind her navel for some reason, as if trying to tug her in a direction, tug her toward something.

“Quinn?” Mal asked, grabbing onto her hand.

She shook her head. “Just follow... this is...”

And she stumbled the first few steps, but then managed to walk with confidence, all the way to the edge of the island. “The tent. We visited the tent to get that damned cook book, remember?”

Geneva rolled her eyes. “How could I forget?”

Quinn didn’t understand. But she knew what her instincts were telling her. And the last few times she hadn’t listened to them, people ended up injured or dead. Before she could give it too much thought, she stepped off the island, the roar of even the cascading waterfall next to her blending into the background as she flew across to the small island and the tent.

The others followed, and Quinn made herself wait as she touched down right next to the campfire. Mal landed a split second later, and then Geneva hovered into view, with Lynx shifting out of a bird form into his human one to stand next to her.

Somehow, the tent appeared larger, and Quinn narrowed her eyes. This was different. Unexpected.

The flap pushed open and a round, quilled body pushed the flap open. He flashed them a huge smile and winked at Quinn.

She rubbed her eyes to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating.

“None of that now, Librarian.” Carafax said in his slow drawl. “I must confess, I didn’t think it would take you so long.”

~~

RIGHT?!?!?!

BWAH HAH HAH

Much love

KT