LSRO: Chapter 318 - Dear Librarian (Patreon)

Hey there again!

See! It's another chapter! Told you I had them. I just had to edit them.

Tadaaaa

Let's not talk about my hand.

Hope you enjoy the chapter

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Chapter 54

Dear Librarian

Quinn groaned. It was probably the last place she’d ever wanted to go back to. Thoughts of Dottie, the bomb, and putting the Library back to rights aside. The Dinetian hometown was the last place she wanted to visit. Maybe she just needed to learn how to manipulate time herself, and then a place where time was distorted wouldn’t bother her so much.

Quinn wasn’t exactly sure how she’d let herself be talked into this, but she stood there with Aradie perched on her shoulder, hooting at her angrily while she checked all of her supplies, rations, and her general survivability should everything go wrong.

“I really despise time dilation aspects of anything,” Quinn said.

Malakai chuckled from next to her as he checked his own equipment, fingering the string on his bow with a thoughtful expression on his face. “Is it really the time dilation aspects you hate, or is it just the Hirish Highlands and the Dinetian town that you dislike so strongly?” He raised an eyebrow at her with a knowing smirk.

Quinn glared at him. “Look, it made me feel completely out of sync last time, I think. The place itself is beautiful. That cliff-side village that overlooks the ocean. Just breathtaking. Pity the Walry aren’t the nicest.”

“Well, on the bright side,” Malakai said, “at least this time we don’t have to stop a megalomaniacal snake man from trying to take over the world inside of 72 hours. So really, maybe you were just apprehensive last time.”

Quinn shook her head. “No, that really isn’t how I felt, but I agree to the bright side, at least our 72-hour timeline is gone. At least we’ve still got a couple of months to save the universe meltdown this time.” She sighed, tried to pull her ponytail tighter. They were about as ready as they were going to get.

“Exactly. This time we have a couple of months. Are you alright there?” Malakai asked.

“Just peachy.” Quinn grimaced and rolled her shoulders, trying to work out some of the tension in them.

“Do you have the book names?” Malakai asked, trying to keep her focused on business, it seemed.

Quinn nodded. “Crafting as an Avenue to Energy Management and Bar Hillel’s Guide to Whittling with Magic.“

“Those sound dreadfully dull,” Malakai said.

Quinn shrugged and raised an eyebrow. “Well, maybe, but you should remember, especially when it comes to whittling. Some of these probably helped make that bow you’re so in love with.”

Mal groaned, flicked the string once more, made a couple of adjustments, and popped it over his back. Where it shimmered into, well, invisibility, Quinn supposed. She’d always thought he kept it in storage, but perhaps it simply camouflaged itself. That was a small thing to notice after so long together. Maybe she was just unobservant.

“Stop making sense, will you?” he said. “Are you at least ready to go?”

“I guess we’re ready. Aradie, you hold down the fort here.” The bird literally glided to her perch, turned herself around, and pointedly placed her back to Quinn. “I’m sorry. I don’t think they’re going to like a night owl coming with us. They’re an extremely skittish species. Not to mention they like throwing people in jail,” Mal added.

Quinn wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when she opened the door into the Dinetian town hall that they’d exited the last time she’d been there. She also couldn’t believe how long ago that had been. What was it, seven months now? Eight months? She was losing track of time.

Weekends seemed to be a thing of her past.

They did, in fact, exit straight into the Dinetian town hall, and Quinn had to admit to being surprised. She knew the moment they set through the door, the time in the Library effectively moved faster. But what she didn’t expect was for Tillip, the newer leader of the walrus-resembling species, the Walry, to be standing there and waiting for them along with the guard Marron who’d truly seemed to hate them last time. 

The two of them stood there expectantly, watching her as if they’d known exactly when she was going to step through. That was something she’d have to address, too. Who would have told them she was coming? Which meant that someone was capable of being in contact with others outside of the Library to inform them of the Librarian’s whereabouts, and she wasn’t entirely certain she liked that.

Paranoia, about where the next potential attack on the Librarian would happen, was starting to eat at her.

Apparently, Malakai was surprised too. He reached for his weapon immediately, his face a stony mask. But Tillip stepped forward, his hands up in a placating gesture. “Thank you, thank you for coming,” he said, lowering his hands together where his fingers intertwined nervously.

Quinn eyed him. “You were expecting us?”

Tillip shrugged. “The overdue notice was quite adamant that the book would be retrieved if we didn’t bring it in. I wasn’t entirely certain it would be you, but I really was hoping that it would be you. Since you had been here before, I figured maybe they would send you.”

Quinn waited and crossed her arms because that couldn’t be all the explanation. 

Tillip laughed nervously, his eyes darting to and fro as if he was expecting somebody to burst into the little town hall at any point in time. “I didn’t realize that my father had other books, you see. But then there kept being this dinging, this faint dinging, sort of like a little bell. I only finally dug around in his chests that is in my attic a few weeks ago actually, which is when I found that he did have other books that we should have probably returned along with the one we returned months ago. And I would have if I’d have realized that I even had them.”

He paused as if waiting for Quinn or Malakai to ask him any types of questions. When they didn’t, he knotted his fingers again and continued, “Well, when I went to pick the books up out of the chest to return to you, this fell out and I just... I wasn’t entirely sure what to do.”

In his hand, he clutched an envelope, which he held out toward Quinn. In filigree, beautiful handwriting was one word: Librarian.

Quinn blinked at the envelope he held out to her. She reached as if to take it, but Malakai gently stopped her hand, pulling it back to her side.

“Check if it’s okay first,” he said. “You know, just in case...”

He didn’t add the obvious words that still managed to hang in the air. That they didn’t want to risk it being a trap of some sort that could potentially deprive the Library of another Librarian.

Quinn raised an eyebrow as if asking how exactly he intended to check if it was okay. Tillip looked confused and then realization hit the Walry and he stammered, “No, no, I’d never...”

Malakai raised an eyebrow. “Really? You’d never? Last time you had us thrown in jail.”

“Well,” Tillip cringed, “That’s different. I didn’t mean for that to happen. You were foreigners, and you were trespassing in our village. We had no idea who you were and as far as we knew, the Library was completely defunct and incapable of producing a Librarian. But I am sorry for that,” he said lamely at the end of it.

Mal shrugged, waved his hand toward the envelope which caused a ring of light around it to appear and spark blue, which made Tillip drop the letter. Malakai caught it deftly and then handed it to Quinn.

“It’s safe,” he said. “There are no magical intentions, or insidious magical traps, or poisons or other detrimental substances on it as far as I can tell.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow at him. “Since when can you do that?”

He shrugged. “Since always. It’s one of my security affinity elements, I guess.”

Yet another piece of news for Quinn. She was learning so much about the person she thought she’d known best in this new Library universe today and it was humbling in a way. She took the envelope cautiously and studied it.

Tillip rushed to elaborate. “I mean, it wasn’t deliberate that we didn’t return these books and I suppose if we had returned them on time or with the other book in a timely manner, then you would have already had this letter. But it hasn’t been long here. I really hope you understand that.”

Quinn nodded slowly, still a little hesitant to open the thing. 

“It’s only that...” he paused. Tillip acted like there were things he wanted to say that he wasn’t sure if they’d be welcome and he finally continued, “I felt like, for some reason, you should receive this letter as privately as possible. Or I wouldn’t have kept it here. I wouldn’t have refused to return the books. I was truly hoping you would be the one to come.”

He motioned for Quinn to sit down. “I thought you’d appreciate privacy, so we’ve had the town hall cleared for the last few days.”

Quinn looked at him quizzically. “Privacy?” she asked, although she did refuse to sit down. “You’re worried I don’t get privacy?”

He gave her an unreadable look and then paused. “Well, you do live and work within the Library, right? I apologize for overstepping. We’ll leave you to it,” he said suddenly.

Quinn was curious and called out. “Wait. What do you mean? I live with and work with a Library and therefore have no privacy?”

“Oh, I didn’t say you have no privacy. I just said... well, the Library is sort of everywhere around you there, isn’t it?”

Quinn nodded slowly, and Tillip inclined his head politely. “If you need anything, Marron will be right outside the doors here, ensuring your privacy. I really... I’m sorry again.”

Tillip backed away, the door closed, and Quinn studied the carvings on it, almost lost in thought for a second.

Mal looked at Quinn. “Was that batshit crazy, or is it just me?”

“No,” Quinn said, still trying to process that a dead leader had written a Librarian specific letter to one of them. “No, it wasn’t just you.”

She wasn’t really sure how to react to this. What she did want to know was what was in the letter. Still refusing to sit, she decided to open it very carefully, just in case Malakai’s scan had been incorrect.

The pages didn’t feel too old or brittle or anything, so it had probably been written right before he died. Dinal, the previous leader before Tillip, had probably written this on his deathbed, maybe?

Dear Librarian, it began. I can only hope that they found you. You are their one hope. I tell you this as an erstwhile friend of a Librarian. There are things I cannot say or write on pain of death right now. But as the latter is close anyway, I must at least try. So, please heed these words of warning, as well as I might give them. When all around you is frustrating and nothing quite adds up, the answer could be closer than you realize and nothing like you thought. Pay attention to your instincts once you have honed them. Remember, not all foes are enemies and not all friends are allies. And be careful, watch your back and know who to trust.

Quinn frowned. She reread the letter again.

“Cryptic much?” Malakai said, having read it over her shoulder.

Quinn shook her head very slowly. “Well, it is... it’s sort of advice. He’s not really telling me much, is he?”

“No,” Malakai said thoughtfully, “and yet...”

Quinn couldn’t help but draw the parallels between this letter and what Carafax had been telling her. Was she missing something about whom to trust? Was there something she hadn’t seen or realized? She sighed deeply. There were probably 10,000 things she hadn’t realized.

Maybe this was the universe’s way of trying to tell her something.

“This really doesn’t help.”

“Are you sure?” Malakai asked. 

“What do you mean, am I sure if it doesn’t help?”

“I mean, it’s telling you that not everything around you is as it seems. Which must mean that we’re overlooking something in the Library. Something important.”

Quinn sighed. “When isn’t something important lately?”

“Exactly,” Malakai said. “Now, let’s get home before too many days have passed.”

Quinn chuckled. “Well, we’ve probably just lost the rest of the day.”

“Oh, good,” Malakai said. “I could really go another round of sleep.”

~~

It keeps digging deeper and deeper...

Oops

BWAH HAH HAH

Much love

KT