LSRO: Chapter 310 - Rabbit Hole (Patreon)

Today is not the best day.

Apparently, going to the doctor about my hand, means they poke and prod my hand and then I get home and it all hurts and I'm sulking now because I don't like pain. I mean no one does, right?

Anyhu - sleeping on whether or not I want to just, and I quote, "live with the pain" (yes this is a legitimate option), or get surgery. After this afternoon of about an 8/10 ... I'm leaning toward surgery.

cough

Thanks for reading. I'll get right along to today's chapter then!

~~

Chapter 46

Rabbit Hole

Quinn wasn’t quite sure how she managed it, but she’d fallen down a rabbit hole of crafting. Or at least, of crafting information. She wasn’t even sure what triggered it, except for the fact that they’d open a crafting branch soon. All she knew was that her office was full of tired, dozing people and a sleeping bird. They were working on energy replenishment, or perhaps to hear from Hal.

Eric still hadn’t returned from briefing him, and Quinn wasn’t worried at all. No, she wasn’t.

Dottie’s information about how close they were to opening a couple of branches, while welcome, was a surprise. Quinn hadn’t expected them to be so close, given how much work she knew the retrieval took. Then again, they had hired a lot of assistants over the last while. 

Quinn was exhausted. She could have warped herself up to her bed, and just gone to sleep, and tried to replenish her levels that way, but the Library had been right. She was fairly low on energy, and it did take some energy and way too much concentration for her current state to move herself in that way. So instead, she decided to stay where she was, and look over information about the branches they were about to reopen.

Now, she really loved music. Music was food for the soul, a way for her to replenish her calm, or get out her anger, without having to destroy anything or attack something. Music was wonderful. It was expressive, understanding, and capable of taking her to new heights. However, it was music, and she couldn’t really see it helping them in their current predicament. Although, she did think sound-waves could be interesting. Sound waves and vibrations probably worked well with earthen based affinities. That would be interesting. Maybe she should look into that, too. Later.

But the point was that crafting in the long and short term would probably be more beneficial, because crafting involved the creation of weapons and gear, and probably the instruments that the bardic branch would need. So, it made more sense, from all aspects, to open the crafting branch first. That was her justification, and she was sticking to it. Because she was fairly certain that it included not only weapons, but instruments and armor, too.

She thought too long about it and ended up spiraling into where she found herself right now. She was knee-deep in her HUD’s information section. It listed all the books, and there were thousands of crafting books. It listed their titles and a brief description about them. Which, surprisingly, gave Quinn a basic understanding of everything involved in crafting.

Crafting, as it turned out, was all sorts of awesome. From simple garments, right through to clothes that provided defense, offense, and protection. From the simplest of blades, through to the ones that could cast their own spells.

And then, there was gathering the materials, which was basically a part of crafting. To skin animals, use leather, to cure leather, to gather any of the woods, and to refine them, carve them. Crafting had such a huge scope that it almost made her giddy. 

At least, when all of this was over, she’d have an eventual hobby that she could pick up. Crafting didn’t seem like something that she’d be able to master, even if she managed to live forever. Which, as long as she didn’t die in the next few months, or get blown up by a rogue Library bomb in the filtration chamber, she might actually get to live for a very long time. She also wasn’t sure how she felt about that. She barely resisted the urge to order some of the beginner crafting books into her office. But she did, because she didn’t exactly have the time to fall further down the rabbit hole.

Quinn frowned, looking at her HUD, wondering if she could relinquish that bit of willpower currently stopping her without feeling inordinately guilty. Learning to craft now wasn’t pertinent to their current problems. She sighed and briefly contemplated snuggling into her couch and going to sleep. She wasn’t sure how much time she’d lost in the HUD, going down the crafting trail. 

Mal had fallen sideways and was legitimately fast asleep on the couch, with a blanket draped over him. She had no idea where that came from, but he looked peaceful and a lot younger, less stressed. He seemed so peaceful. His hair was in slight disarray, and not as perfect as he usually maintained it. Asleep, as long as he wasn’t having nightmares, he was probably relaxed for the first time in a long time. And that’s when she realized she also had a blanket draped over her. She hadn’t been asleep. She’d been in the HUD, although it might have looked like she was in a trance. 

Looking around, she noticed that Nishpa and Milaro had gotten up at some stage and left the room while Aradie was still asleep. Maybe that meant they should just all rest, because frankly Quinn hadn’t had a really good night’s sleep in a long time. It was much easier to get a little sleep or sacrifice the sleep, than to get good rest and still achieve everything she needed to do. Eventually, she’d be able to have sleep-ins and be normal, just not right now. 

Which meant that even though she thought she should rest, and was tired, she wasn’t sleepy. That meant she was perfectly capable of getting up and doing stuff. There was so much left to figure out, to take care of. Ashiron and the pillar bomb, the tracking problem, the trapdoor traitor, the Balisor conspiracy, the magical signature tracking she’d started, memories and dragons and Sölem, oh my. And on top of everything else, because of what they had to deal with right now, she still had to learn her Cosmicisodracis abilities, because they weren’t just affinities. She couldn’t just grab a book and absorb them, she needed to be taught them. So basically, if she didn’t try to sleep, they’d finally be able to get around to just running the bloody Library that bit faster.

She felt suddenly wide awake and partially rejuvenated. She glanced down at some of her stats to make sure that she wasn’t just fooling herself. 

Name: Quinn

Age: Irrelevant
Heritage: Earth, Sector 12942 - Infinite reach, pocket Dimensional adaption

Species: Librarian - of Cosmicisodracus origin - determining extent and variations*

Energy Capacity: 6128/6128

Mana Levels: 4972/4972

Regeneration: 

Energy Idle: 17 per second, combat 9 per second. 

 Mana Idle: 15 per second, combat 8 per second

No, her energy levels were up and, well, pretty much full, although every now and again, the energy number dipped slightly. Her mental defenses pulled some energy constantly. She still didn’t completely understand how she had so much energy, although she knew it had something to do with her heritage. But, of course, Drukala was still in the hospital. Had it only been a week? Was she still healing from the dragon fire scars? Probably. She wouldn’t have left without talking to Quinn. Surely. 

Hadn’t she promised to teach her about cosmicisodracus powers? Quinn was pretty sure she had. But Quinn had been so busy she hadn’t made her way to see her yet. That was something Quinn needed to rectify.

Not only could Drukala help Quinn with the dragon side of her and the powers that had nothing to do with affinities and absorption from books, but couldn’t she also compare notes? Like, what were your energy levels like and what were your mana levels like? Surely that was something she could get out of it as well. It gave her a zip to her step, infused energy right back into her. And not the magical kind. The physical kind that Quinn had been sorely lacking since they got back. She hadn’t seen Drukala anywhere else, so she assumed she was still in the hospital. Given how time seemed to flow here, maybe it had been more than a week, Quinn sort of lost track of all the days. They just ran into each other. But surely she was still here and healing.

Not wanting to wake Aradie and Malakai, she tiptoed out of her office and reached for the door handle. They all deserved their rest, and the other two seemed to be sleeping so peacefully. She exited the room, and it took a moment to register. But then there was a cacophony of sound right outside her door that she couldn’t hear in her office. Way to go with those silencing wards. It was loud only because of the sheer number of people. Nobody was yelling. It was just a lot of people who were murmuring or talking to each other. They were huddled in sitting areas, multiple different species with each other. There were ilgonomurs and centaurs and several species that Quinn had never seen before.

It all gave a sense of coming together and camaraderie and simply wanting to discover knowledge for the sake of discovering information and having discourse about that knowledge. It was all the reasons that she’d ever wanted to be a Librarian in the first place. She could see the golems who were in charge of returning books to their shelves. Sometimes they even interacted animatedly with people. Not all of them were like Tim and Tom, who were constantly silent and had never found a need to magically speak. 

She watched the hustle and bustle of the Library, books coming and going, the learning atmosphere that suffused everything around the main hall.

Quinn turned toward the check-in desk where there was a line and many of her assistants were helping out with a smile, answering questions, checking books in. On occasion Quinn was fairly certain she saw a fine pass hands, and that was without Eric there to bug them all about fines. The Library System worked. It flowed and everybody loved being there. She wondered if people who didn’t have magic affinities, if they resented the Library. But then again if they didn’t have a magical affinity that meant their world probably didn’t have magic, which meant they didn’t even know about the Library, which meant they weren’t aware that there was something that they could be resenting in the first place.

Logic 101.

She could even tell from where she stood, from the way the Library felt and the gathering of people in every single corner of it, that the level above her was actually being used quite frequently. There were so many more people lingering around now the alchemical and medicinal branch had opened.

Quinn preened. She felt like this was partially all due to her. And it kinda was.

She turned and walked toward the kitchen to grab something to eat on her way to the hospital because that was where Drukala felt like she’d be. After all, another added benefit of the Library powering up was her senses, especially within the Library. 

Luckily, the Library’s personal mood didn’t lessen the effect of Quinn’s own magic. The Library’s connection to her was still dulled in the back of her mind. It seemed that this time the Library was sulking. Not all conversations went their way. It didn’t mean that Quinn wasn’t willing to listen, just meant that she’d weigh all pros and cons. She’d give it a few more hours and then if the Library still hadn’t come around she was going to have a few choice things to say.

Cook wasn’t in the kitchen for once, which felt odd. How was the culinary branch a culinary branch without Cook? She grabbed a snack off the grab and go shelf and took a big bite of what looked like a churro. It was all cinnamon crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside, goodness. Even in Cook’s absence it appeared that the culinary branch knew exactly what Quinn wanted. She decided to take a couple with her for Drukala. If Quinn was a dragon and liked these, that stood to reason that her aunt would as well.

She made her way through the halls to Drukala’s room without running into anyone she had to talk to. She knocked on the door and waited. Shuffling could be heard from inside.

“Come in,” Drukala called.

Quinn wondered if she’d perhaps changed shape as she let herself in and peered around. Drukala lay on the floor in tiny dragon form like she had the last time. Her scales were white and beautiful, and it appeared that the injury on her face had healed.

“Hey Drukala,” Quinn said. “How are you?”

“Healing up. But I don’t think you came to ask that.”

“You said you’d train me and teach me about our species. I kind of forgot and was wondering if the offer still stands?”

“Of course it still stands. Give me a moment,” and right before Quinn’s eyes, Dru morphed back into human form. The eyes set her apart though. They were still white as if she could see everything and anything, especially what you didn’t want her to, like moons into your soul.

Quinn smiled. “Thank you. So where should we start?” 

“Do you have any questions?” Drukala asked.

“Do you have a lot of energy?” Quinn started and paused. “Like magical energy, not physical.”

“Definitely.”

When she didn’t elaborate, Quinn did instead. “When you say a lot, how do you mean a lot?” 

There was a beep in Quinn’s HUD and stats flew up in front of her. 

Information sharing enabled. Specifically defined statistics only.

Name: Drukala

Species: Cosmicisodracus original

Energy Capacity: 895723/904835

Mana Levels: 492084/492084

Quinn blinked. Did a double take. That was a lot.

“Wow,” Quinn said. 

Drukala chuckled. “I’m the least impressive, and Drev doesn’t really count now. Hope that helped.”

Quinn nodded, her thoughts racing. “I really am an egg...”

The dragon watched her for several seconds before continuing."Keep in mind I’m a lot older. Now what is it you’d most like to know?"

“Everything.” Quinn said firmly. “I only know very basic things with fire and shielding and some flame control.”

Eagerness shone through Drukala’s expression as she launched into a spiel. “Oh, it’s easier than you think. It’ll come to you like second nature...” 

Suddenly, something shuddered against the wards. It was hard and quick, but luckily there was no sense of violence added to it. At least, not that Quinn or the alarms could detect. So while it shook the ground and Quinn frowned at it, she didn’t think they would be in any danger.

Drukala’s eyes grew wide and there was a knock at the door. 

Quinn activated her shielding just in case. 

“Come in,” Drukala called. 

A tall, lanky man entered the room, his eyes blazing. 

Drukala grinned, a ripple of delight emanating from her. “Brother, what a surprise.”

~~

BWAH HAH HAH

Sort of a cliffy but not really, right?

Much love

KT