LSRO: Chapter 320 - Plan of Action (Patreon)

Hi lovely people!

Here you go! I got you a chapter. I have another written that I just need to edit, so that'll either be later tonight or tomorrow.

My surgeon told me today it can take the nerves up to 6 months to resettle. Sooooo this will be my state of being for the next few months... YAY?

I think I've got the strands starting to come together for the finale in book 5, so that's awesome.

I'm excited to see what happens.

~~

Chapter 56

Plan of Action

Maybe it was the sheer sense of calm, or just the relief of getting crap off her chest, but Quinn felt like all the lights in her brain went on at once. Not that it gave her an exact solution or anything. It was simply that the cogs in her head started to turn in a way that let her come up with a plan of action. A sure path of the way things needed to happen before she could, well... do other things.

One of the main ones was to seek out Milaro. There were so many things she needed to learn specifically from him. He covered the realms of mind magic and apparently also brain-melting mind attacks that she had no idea how to cast or defend against. She was fairly certain that sort of attack would get under or around most shields, which would make it ideal to also have in her very own arsenal.

Tomorrow afternoon or evening, if she had the times right, the pillar would be ready. Once the pillar was recharged, operating, and fully functional, she would have to go and open the crafting branch. This would take up the bulk of the rest of the day, if not the next one as well. Because of that, she had limited time. So her morning would be busy as well.

Quinn sat down and sent a message through to Milaro, asking for his help with the visions she’d had. She sought to reinterpret them, to figure out how she could deliberately project herself into thoughts, situations, or dreams instead of always waiting for when her subconscious pulled her there. Or else when the universe pushed her or however the incidents happened. 

She also wanted to learn more about mind magic and reinforcing her mental shielding, as well as being able to go on the offensive. Before their last foray into Halschius, she hadn’t even realized that apart from maybe giving somebody a horrible headache or stealing their memories, there were other ways to attack someone else’s mind.

“Are you okay?” Malakai asked.

That was when she realized that she was still sitting on the couch with him.

“Yeah,” she said, surprised at how comfortable it felt just to sit close to somebody. The fact that it was Malakai was just a bonus. “I’m just tired,” she said.

“Maybe it’d help if you actually slept for once,” he teased her.

“Well, it’s not like I’m out there having heaps of fun instead of sleeping,” she retorted.

He laughed. “Well, if you were out there having fun instead of sleeping, maybe it would be more acceptable.”

She raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Maybe it would be. But I’m going to bed.”

“Makes two of us,” Malakai said before standing up and stretching out languidly.

Quinn thought for a moment that he’d perhaps been slightly suggestive. But she really did need sleep. She wasn’t entirely sure how to interpret his playful flirting. And to be honest, there was so much she had to do that there wasn’t quite time to see if her growing feelings were being reciprocated right now.

Before she left the room while he was still picking up after them, she stopped at the door jamb and turned to face him. “Hey, Malakai.”

“Yeah?” He looked up at her.

“Thank you. I really needed this.”

He smiled. “I know,” he said. “And you’re welcome.”

Quinn turned around, with Aradie flying slowly next to her and headed up to bed. Warm, fuzzy feelings embraced her, and she fell into bed after changing quickly and doing a very brief nighttime routine. Just before she threw herself into bed, she got an affirmative reply from Milaro. He’d be there first thing in the Library day. She sighed with relief and was probably asleep before her head hit the pillow.

Of course, regardless of how badly she needed or wanted to sleep, it appeared that those specific nights were the ones where sleep was denied her the most. All she knew when she opened her eyes was that she wasn’t asleep, and wherever she wasn’t asleep, it wasn’t her bed.

She could hear Aradie as a sort of echo outside her mind if she concentrated carefully. A very slight hiss that was her owl breathing in because she usually breathed through her nose in and out through her little beak. But that could only mean that she’d been sucked into someone else’s dream or mind.

Although this didn’t feel the way many of her other encounters in this format had felt, she was a bit confused. Her main concern was because Kajaro was dead now, and she’d always attributed her ability to walk the dream thoughts or whatever it was due to his initial intrusion into her mind with the mind bomb when she’d first met him.

And yet, didn’t she also have the genetic components of the mind specialization of the Areiltháhnish? Well, she did, that’s what they told her, and several other species. Which could only mean that perhaps Kajaro had unintentionally triggered that specific latent ability.

But that was all the time she really got to theorize because she needed to concentrate on where it was. Which, if her sensing abilities were anything to go by, had her suspended against the sky. As if she was floating above, somehow out of sight and yet still there, floating almost like a ghost in the sky.

It was mostly dark around her, but even so, she had a clarity of vision as she looked out over what seemed like an estate. Deep green lawns with evergreen trees that were all strictly shaped into that traditional conical design that wooden Christmas tree decorations were made out of. There were blood-red and black flowers that she didn’t recognize the type of sprouting all around the grounds, bordering the houses, and buildings, and just lending a slightly macabre air to the whole affair.

She drifted closer to an area that felt like it was tugging at her and pulling her toward it. She didn’t know if that was a bad thing or not. Extending her senses, it didn’t feel hostile, nor did it feel particularly friendly. It was more neutral, yet beckoning her, letting her know that there was something right in that particular spot.

So it was that she drifted closer to an area that, at first, felt like a gathering of those conical trees. Maybe her eyesight was going, or something, because the closer she drew to it, the more she realized that wasn’t the case. While it was a copse of trees, it did surround something which appeared to be an equally green gazebo of some sort. It was a pretty structure, with a hexagonal roof that met up at a peak, topped with a filigree weathervane. It was attractive, yet so well hidden that Quinn was fairly certain it was a place where secret meetings took place.

She also got flashbacks to the tree in the middle of that nightmare copse and wondered what theses guys had against copses of trees. 

The pretty gazebo made her wish she could circumnavigate the entire estate and figure out who lived here, what they wanted, and what they did. Curiosity tugged at her, yet the pull toward the gazebo was much stronger. Almost as if the universe was saying, Hey, Librarian, over here. This is what you need to pay attention to. And so she headed there, wondering if perhaps there was somebody who would understand why the universe kept tugging her in different directions.

Once she was close enough, she could see into the gazebo and realized that there was a small gathering of people within it. Well, a small gathering of traitorous dragon bastards who were all in their humanoid forms, probably because shifting into humanoid forms meant that they could fit four people in the gazebo without it being completely and utterly obvious that they were there. 

One of the people was Dravishk. She’d know him anywhere, especially after their fight where he basically massacred... okay, he didn’t massacre them, it was just a couple of imps and then Escadril the Salosier’s death and Ikeshal’s the satyr’s injuries, but still, she’d know him anywhere. And then there was his sister as well. Dronar seemed to be gesticulating quite wildly about her, very obviously irritated at something. 

There was also a serpensiril, that she recognized from the conversations that she’d overheard with Kajaro way back at the beginning of everything, before she’d really understood any of this. And there was a sedimentite that looked vaguely familiar, who she didn’t quite recognize but knew she probably should. 

Their mouths were moving, and they were talking, but she couldn’t hear them properly. There was a static overlay, as if they’d put up a protection so that nobody could eavesdrop on their conversation.

Again, there was that tug in the back of her head. Maybe the universe had its own collective consciousness of some sort and didn’t want to be destroyed by the reemergence of chaos magic if the Library did go down. So maybe that was it. It made enough logical sense that Quinn could now cease to procrastinate over it. When she got it, it wanted her to be able to hear whatever they were saying. It was almost like she had to adjust dials on an old-fashioned radio in order to get the right station into tune. She went past it a few times and the voices crackled. It seemed that she needed to concentrate on it to a great extent in order to be able to hear them and concentrate on the specific person speaking each time. 

Quinn couldn’t just sit there with her eyes closed and hope to listen. She had to actively concentrate on the individual.

Finally, she was able to focus enough for the words to become clear and caught Dronar in the middle of whatever she was saying, which ended in, “What do you mean you don’t know what went wrong? This was supposed to be a straightforward element for us to get Drukala out of the way and to gain permanent access into the Library at its control point.”

Dravishk simply shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

“I want you to explain just what it is that went wrong so we can fix it so it goes right,” Dronar said.

Dravishk seemed a lot more relaxed than Quinn would have thought, considering his plan appeared to be falling down around his ears. Maybe she was missing something, though. He leaned back and crossed his arms, although she noticed he maintained a tail, which swished irritably. If dragons were anything like cats, which she thought they probably were, that was a sign of annoyance.

“That’s exactly it, Dro. We had everything in place. The trap should have triggered once we got that damned tracking location from that Alyenarvor. Except it didn’t, did it?” The glare he leveled at his sister was surprisingly mild.

Quinn felt herself almost growling. That was why they killed Jasper? She wasn’t impressed, and it took real effort to push down all of those thoughts quick enough to keep concentrating on the conversation. All she knew was that if she didn’t solve this, and Jasper died for nothing, she was going to make them pay by making sure the Library survived and maybe that the universe sucked these two into whatever maw the bomb would go into in the end.

The Serpensiril looked like he was about to interject with something. However, Dro beat him to it. “You did create the opening, right? I mean, I know it’s a long time ago, but you remember that there was actually a door, right?” 

Drav seemed exceptionally bored and slightly irritated by his sister. “Yes, but even with the coordinates, it didn’t trigger. Something broke, and I’m unsure what actually happened. It should have allowed us entry, and yet there was none. I’m still trying to...” He shrugged. It seemed his go-to action when he didn’t know what to say or do or care enough to talk about it at that moment. 

Dronar didn’t appreciate it. “So there’s no physical entry for us then. You lost the physical entry.”

“I created the path to physical entry,” he said, snapping at her. “It’s definitely gone, though. And yet, I can still feel it ever so faintly.”

Dro narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean you can still sort of feel it? Keeping it rather close to your chest, eh?”

He shrugged again and grimaced. She laughed without a hint of mirth and rolled her shoulders as if she was hating being in human form and felt too big for her skin. “I feel so restricted,” she said. “We’ve taken enough time. This needs to happen, and it needs to happen now. What are we going to do?”

Drav leaned forward and put his hand under his chin, watching her. “You miss the influxes of power when chaos devoured worlds, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. So do you. So does anybody who knows what that sort of power feels like?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, yes, we do miss it, don’t we?”

A shiver ran down Quinn’s spine, and she adjusted herself, knowing that she wasn’t going to like what else was coming.

~~

oooooo

Much love

KT