LSRO: Chapter 317 - Not Entirely Sure (Patreon)

Hey there everyone

Slowly getting back to being able to type with the hand. Sadly the surgery doesn't seem to have worked the way we'd hoped. But... hey... it doesn't seem to be much worse. So that's ok. Right?

This week should still get 4 chapters (my weeks end at the end of Sunday). But 100% will have 3 and I'll make the 4th up next week if I don't get to manage it by the end of Sunday.

Things are starting to heat up in the Library

DUN DUN DUUUUUN

~~

Chapter 53

Not Entirely Sure

Quinn grabbed the journal from her desk, holding it gently in her hands before plopping back down on the couch. The journal was soft leather, as if it’d been worn by ages of care and love. It felt like magic, as if it shouldn’t hold as much information as it did. Even sitting down on the couch with Mal to share it, Quinn couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something was wrong. No matter how she turned it over in her mind, there was something she was obviously missing. She really hated that feeling.

Malakai nudged her with his elbow. “Okay, what thought is trying to give you wrinkles?”

She blinked at him and then raised an eyebrow, not quite understanding. He laughed. “Right here,” he said, and reached out to poke the middle of her forehead where her brow had furrowed. “It’s making you scowl fiercely.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, “I’m just...” But that was just it. How did she explain what she was just, and how she was just? It didn’t even make sense in her own head. Like somebody had reached in and was stirring all the ingredients together, so there was no clear picture of each individual thing that had her feeling this way. 

She sighed. “Lynx just felt decidedly off when he was in here earlier. It’s almost like he was back to when we first realized he had this whole memory loss thing.”

Malakai paused, the journal forgotten across their laps. “Well, they have them all restored now, though, right? The memories? Isn’t that the whole reason that Harish, Siliqua, and Cadre were holed up in that room for ages?”

Quinn grimaced. “That’s just it. He’s still having problems recovering some of them. They both are. It doesn’t seem quite as straightforward as they originally thought, I guess.”

Mal pouted. “But that was months ago.”

“Exactly,” Quinn said and threw her hands up in the air in exasperation. “That’s just it. This makes no sense. I don’t see how Harish, Siliqua, and Cadre could have been so off with the estimation they gave us for the retrieval of the memories. For how long it would take for them to restore them back into their own matrixes.”

She sighed again and sat back, pulling her ponytail up behind her and wiggling some strands loose with her other hand.

“So much seems inconsistent,” he mused softly.

“That’s exactly it,” Quinn agreed. “I keep feeling like I’ve missed something obvious or big or that should have smacked me in the face and that I shouldn’t have missed whatever it was.”

“Well,” he said, “we also didn’t think a Librarian and her entire species would try to plot the end of the Library, did we? But that’s a thing that happened now.”

Quinn glared at him and despite that, he continued. “And when you think of it, none of us ever thought that the Librarian strain would be under attack and have people killing off hundreds of potential Librarians in order to, what, destroy the Library? Stop the system working? I don’t even understand the motivations behind all of that, Quinn. What I do know is that where we are right now is a direct result of nobody knowing that this could happen in the first place. So it’s not new, and it’s not just you and you’re not alone.”

Quinn let out another very put-upon sigh. She was obviously not exactly happy to hear Mal’s logic, but she was also unable to refute it. She couldn’t help her concern, though. It ate at her. Her brain felt like one big marshmallow that was filled to the brim with stuffing. She groaned, tugged over the journal, and began leafing through the pages with an overdramatic sigh. “Fine, let’s assume that your logic has some good reasoning behind it and let’s look at it from that point of view.”

“I’m listening,” Mal said.

“So, the first thing they did was have Korradine begin to sabotage the Library in different ways. Like giving away the books that people would need to help shift the dimensions, to help unravel the Library’s actual state of being.”

Mal nodded, obviously sticking with her so far.

“Okay then... our next step is that then she began to wipe any evidence of her doings out of the memory of both Lynx, the Library, and anybody else they came across.”

“But it wasn’t just her,” Malakai said. “It was also my great-aunt, right?”

Quinn nodded slowly. “Apparently it was. At least from the few memories and pieces of information we’ve been able to put together,” she admitted, despite not being entirely sure that took things in the right direction.

He laughed. “No, it was. I know. And then we have Kor tried to turn herself into a bomb to destroy the Library, right?”

“Well, that seems what a bomb would do in the filtration chamber.” 

“And then Lynx saved the day, knocked himself out and came to and had to shut down the Library. That’s right, right?”

“That’s exactly it. It’s taken us, what, seven and a half months to get to this point?”

“There’s no need to be facetious. I’m really trying to figure this out.”

Mal laughed. “I know. I’m sorry. And yet here we are, still trying to restore those memories and still, at least partially, having the Library and Lynx still unable to recall everything that happened, even though those pathways should still be there, if what Cadre explained makes any sense.”

“Well, they should be there because they couldn’t completely delete them - they sort of just fragmented them if I understand it correctly. Retrieval has been difficult. And, as we’ve experienced,” Quinn went on, “Harish is ridiculously good at all this crap, so there should be no way he couldn’t retrieve the memories, right?”

“I think so,” Mal said. 

“But I’m so confused as to why they’re still missing them.”

“I don’t know, Quinn. I guess that’s what we have to find out.”

“Yeah...” She slumped in her seat, feeling absolutely defeated, which was when Dottie trotted into the room.

“Librarian, just the person I wanted to see.” 

The bench’s bright and cheery voice was such a distinct juxtaposition to Quinn’s current mood. She raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like she wasn’t there 95% of the time, anyway. For once Dottie’s exuberance didn’t lift Quinn up. In fact, it sort of annoyed her.

“And what can I do for you?” She hoped she didn’t come off as impatient, ungrateful, or hell, even remotely offensive, but she had a horrible gut feeling that they were running out of time, in some ways, more than others. And every little interruption just seemed to add more to her plate.

It was as if there was an itch in the back of her mind that she needed to scratch, yet she’d overlooked or forgotten something that she was capable of scratching it with. It was probably even something that was just staring her in the face, going, ‘Hey, Quinn, right here, Quinn. Why can’t you see me?’ But Dottie didn’t deserve for Quinn to take her bad mood and irritation out on her. Which was probably a good thing. That Dottie didn’t seem to realize Quinn was in an absolutely foul mood.

“I just wanted to let you know we only need another few books for the crafting branch, and several more for the bardic one. That’s all we need to be able to open those branches.” Dottie seemed just so full of life, zest, and enthusiasm. Quinn wished she could maybe just siphon some off and bottle it to take a swig from whenever she felt completely defeated.

“Oh,” Dottie said, interrupting Quinn’s melancholy train of thoughts. “I did want to double-check, though. How you were coming along with that whole, you know, power boost for the Library thing?”

Quinn’s eyes narrowed. Dottie’s perkiness grated when all Quinn could see were obstacles. One of which was in the filtration chamber, powering the Library, which meant that Dottie bringing up the pillars that still needed activation didn’t sit too well. Not that she thought the bench meant anything by it. It’s just that Quinn was feeling supremely inadequate. 

And now she was just wallowing.

Then she remembered they’d had like 15 books for the bardic section earlier and like seven or nine or something for the crafting one.

“That was really fast,” Quinn said to Dottie.

“Well, of course it was.” Dottie practically preened.

Quinn watched the bench through her magic, trying to find the subtle inflections and color as Dottie answered and preened. There had to be answers somewhere, after all. Dottie would have been beaming if she’d had a face with which to smile, and the bright colors of her aura reinforced precisely that.

And the bench just barreled on. “Well, the thing is that we might need your help to get a couple. I think it’s two of the crafting books. They’re being held in the Hirish Highlands again, and I mean, you have been there before.”

Quinn frowned. “Is that the place with the time dilation?”

Dottie nodded enthusiastically. 

Quinn groaned. 

“Oh, that place.” Malakai said. “I hate time dilation. My stomach is in knots for days after a trip there.”

Quinn nodded solemnly. “I know. It was my least favorite place, too. But if they’ve got some of the crafting books, do they have any of the bardic ones as well that we could knock out?”

Dottie shook herself. “Nope, just the crafting ones. I believe the Walry tend to be a lot more physically inclined and we don’t need the bardic ones as urgently. Yet. Anyway, it’s the crafting ones we’ll need in the next day or two.”

Quinn gathered herself up and flashed Dottie a smile. “Well, we’ll put that on our list.” She turned to Malakai, hoping he’d help her confirm what they needed to do since her head was feeling a bit goopy. “I don’t think your grandfather is ready for me yet. So, I suppose we could head to the Highlands as soon as possible. We can open a door right out into the village now, right?”

Malakai tried to hide a grimace as he nodded agreement. “At least that makes the trip so much easier than running across that damned wasteland and winding our way down that cliff face.”

Quinn chuckled. “So a whole chunk of time has passed, right?”

“Yes, I believe it has.”

“I don’t suppose you want to come with me, do you?” 

“I’d like to see you stop me. Who else is going to make sure you don’t make a fool of yourself, Librarian?” Malakai gave her a wink.

She raised an eyebrow and turned her attention back to Dottie. “Guess that means we’ll go grab the books.”

“Oh, that’s fantastic then,” Dottie said. “That means you and Malakai will go and get those two crafting books. They would be quite difficult for us to retrieve, I believe, just as the last book you got there was. Thank you for offering to deal with them, Librarian. That’s so much appreciated.”

Quinn’s breath hitched. She was just glad that it wasn’t Jasper’s home world. Because that was one place she couldn’t handle going back to just yet. Mal, as if he could read her mind, squeezed her hand and she leaned into his shoulder, pulling some strength that she suddenly felt was lacking.

“Well, visiting the Hirish Highlands is definitely easy enough to do.” Mal sat up. “Can I get the locations, Dottie, so I can plan out exactly where we’re going to retrieve it?”

Quinn wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but for just a split second as Mal asked that question, there was a flicker of something in Dottie’s aura. Just a fraction of a second, though, so maybe she just blinked oddly and glitched what she saw. It was confusing, such a brief dark sensation. Like a splinter in her vision that was only there briefly. Then again, she was tired.

Dottie smiled in her usual way. “Of course, however, it’s best if the Librarian goes for the harder cases, too.”

“I wasn’t suggesting going alone,” Malakai said slowly.

“Oh,” Dottie said. “It’s just in the same place you went last time. Same town I believe...”

She began to say something else but was interrupted with a brightly cool, “Dottie, where did you go?” as Betty, the supervisor of the Library assistants, came to the door and popped her tiny Sprite head in.

“Oh, my apologies, Librarian. You do know how eager she gets. I just gave her an updated amount of the books that we needed to retrieve and her first thought was to come to you and let you know. Which we would have let you know anyway, as you know, but I also realized that you’re extremely busy and thus not always available to talk to us. Dottie, you really should leave the Librarian in peace.”

If Dottie could have expressed it, Quinn was fairly sure she would have scowled at Betty. She wasn’t sure whether to be entertained, amused, or concerned by that.

“Very well, I’ll leave the list with you, Librarian, and I shall go back to the front desk.” And Dottie trotted out of the room. 

Quinn got a message through her HUD.

Betty watched the bench go. “I’m so very sorry about that, Librarian. Dottie has been a bit sporadic lately.” And then the sprite was gone as well.

Quinn watched them both leave thoughtfully. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” Mal said.

“Just... Dottie can’t leave the Library, can she?” Quinn spoke out the thought slowly still watching where the bench had departed. Then she turned to Mal. “Do you have any idea why?”

He shook his head. “Nope. I think it has something to do with her species and her role with the Library since its inception.”

Quinn nodded slowly. Maybe it was time she looked into that.

~~

Poor Quinn

So much left to do

Much love

KT