LSRO: Chapter 323 - Time to Process (Patreon)

So my little family is on "vacation" at the lake this weekend. And I sort of forgot I hadn't posted this. So... here it is. Drawing in some

So my little family is on "vacation" at the lake this weekend. And I sort of forgot I hadn't posted this. So... here it is.

Drawing in some threads, tying them in nice little bows. Do you know why we tie them in bows? Because they're much easier to undo and tie into more, thicker bows when we need to. If you tie the threads into knots, they're much more difficult to unpick.

And that's my metaphor for the day lol.

Hope you enjoy the chapter

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Chapter 59

Time to Process

Going back through all of Quinn’s recollections of the thought-walking from earlier was tough. It took a lot of energy on her part, and a lot of focus, which exhausted her brain. But Milaro seemed to pull up aspects of her memory Quinn didn’t even recall from her initial observations. Small actions like hand and finger movements, the way somebody’s eyes quirked or nose scrunched, slight expressions of disdain, quick looks of derision that flashed through people’s eyes. He examined literally everything multiple times.

She felt like she was sitting the back seat of a car, watching someone else drive.

It was interesting to see what reactions and actions she’d picked up unconsciously without concentrating on them at all, as well as the interactions between all the attendees who’d been there. Their respect for Dravishk didn’t appear to be as genuine as she’d first thought. However, it seemed that their fear of him was. Pauses and rewinding sequences occurred frequently so Milaro could pull out specific lines that were spoken by Drav.

“Why do you keep doing that?” she asked. “That’s the third time you’ve gone over that line.”

“I know,” he said. “Deeper interpretations, Quinn, intonations and references that perhaps mean more than what was just said.”

Quinn just shook her head and let him carry on. When Milaro was finally done, they sat down while he organized his thoughts and Quinn was at a bit of a loss. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool that had been watered and seeded and was about to have alfalfa sprouts growing in it. She stared at her now cold coffee that she clutched in her hands while she brought her breathing back in line. Slowly breathing in, slowly breathing out with a slight second long hold in the middle of it.

She let herself sigh deeply, shrugged her shoulders around a little to move them because she knew that they’d been at it for at least an hour and she was ready to drop. Then, still mournfully gazing at her cold coffee, she dipped a finger in the liquid, allowed a very small amount of heat to trickle through it, gauging the temperature and the ferocity of it, making sure it was a calm and minuscule amount and she heated her coffee back up, grinning as it reached the perfect temperature. 

Fire abilities. Not just for rampant death.

“Quinn,” Milaro said as if he’d been trying to get her attention for a while. He probably had been as she’d been concentrating on making sure she didn’t boil her coffee over into her lap.

“Sorry, my thoughts are all a bit whirly right now,” she said.

“That’s perfectly fine,” Milaro said. “I apologize. That was more invasive and trying than I expected.”

She nodded, sipping at her perfect coffee. “There were some telling bits in what Drav said. So I want to calm your fears because I can sense that you’re afraid of what he’s talking about and I don’t blame you because it is quite terrifying. I wanted to make sure it was a genuine interaction,” Quinn asked, wishing he hadn’t paused waiting on her.

“It’s definitely a genuine interaction, Quinn. They weren’t aware of your presence in the slightest. That whole transparent floating thing you did probably helped.”

Quinn shrugged because she had nothing to do with that. “I didn’t do it deliberately. It’s just how I appeared when I, I guess, woke up there.”

“Oh,” Milaro looked confused, as if he was trying to parse exactly what she meant. “There were a couple of things they said that do concern me, however.”

“The council?” she asked quickly.

He waved that away as if it was completely unimportant. “Not really. I haven’t trusted that man for a while. There might even be ways to misdirect him, actually. Perhaps that will help misdirect them as a whole.” He seemed contemplative as he tapped his chin and thought. “No, a couple of lines that show me the backdoor isn’t actually a physical one, such as the type you found embedded in the shielding. That has to be something else. But I do need to go over the words and over the inflections to double-check the meanings.”

“Which lines are those?” she asked.

He pulled up one and projected the image of Drav speaking it. “I created the path to physical entry. See here how he’s not quite looking at his sister or anybody else. There’s no eye contact and while he’s completely still, it’s too much. It’s as if he’s trying not to be read. You’d think with so many years to perfect it, he’d be better at lying. But that’s where the distinction is. It’s not a lie, but it is also not entirely the truth.”

Quinn couldn’t quite see it, but she did realize that the way he phrased it was odd, considering the question at hand. “Do you think he’s just splitting hairs?”

Milaro frowned. “It would appear so, although I am unsure why.”

One of the lies occurred to Quinn too, then. “That’s why I set up an alternate entry, right? That’s one of them as well.”

“Exactly.” Milaro looked delighted. “You’re such a fast learner. You’ve got to look for the way people phrase things. When they’re challenged, when something goes against them, they’re often on the back foot and it’s then, especially then, that they tend to expound their lies just that little too much. Anyway,” he looked delighted. “I will continue working on this, but I’ve also organized, or perhaps ordered, is a more accurate term, Kajaro’s mess of memories.”

Quinn perked up at that. “Do you need mine? Can you take them now? They sometimes flash in just the weirdest moments.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

“Well, I don’t know. Walking around the Library, sometimes when I see a book at a specific angle in a certain place.”

“Oh,” Milaro said, “They’re acting like flashbacks even though they aren’t your own.”

“Pretty much,” agreed Quinn.

“If that’s the case,” Milaro said, “I shall remove them from you now. I do have another backup.” He paused as Quinn made to say something.

“Oh,” she said, “so we don’t need them anymore.”

“No, I believe I have the same memories as you, but we funneled them to you as well, just in case something went wrong with my collection of them. However, I think I’ll extract yours into a holding device.” He fumbled around in his storage and pulled out a glowing crystal orb. It wasn’t quite round and smooth like a crystal ball. It was rough on the surface and was slightly off being a perfect sphere.

“Are you going to put all of them in there?” Quinn asked.

“Yes, I believe. Yes, this side should hold enough for me to transport the memories and compare them to the others.”

“Okay, I’m fine with that. Are we going to go through them, then?”

“We’ll go through the ones that I’ve already sorted. Just the pertinent ones, though, the ones that specifically speak to our set of circumstances as they are. While the rest of his memories do hold some pertinent information, it’s for things we’ll address after we put out our little fires.”

Quinn nodded, slightly nervous about Milaro diving into her head again. She always was when someone used mind magic on her, even when Nishpa healed her. Of course, considering her introduction to mind magic had come in the form of a mind bomb Kajaro placed in her head when he first met her, it didn’t seem like such a surprise to her that anybody diving into her mind made her nervous. She actually trembled, she could see her hands shaking.

Aradie swooped down from her perch and landed on Quinn’s shoulder. She snuffled into Quinn’s shoulder, her soft feathers brushing against her shoulders, and the sheer comfort of it allowed Quinn to breathe normally and nod as she looked up at Milaro. He watched her expectantly. Mind magic was so potent and the mind so fragile. Half the Library problems stemmed from memory tampering. So even though it was Milaro doing it, and she did trust him, she really did, but Quinn still found it difficult to relax.

“Quinn?” Milaro asked, pulling her attention again.

“Sorry.”

“You should really stop saying sorry,” he said. She chuckled. “Anyway, would you prefer to keep the memories?” Milaro asked gently.

Quinn felt so embarrassed that she should show such vulnerability in front of anyone, even if it was just Milaro. She sighed and shook her head.

“Okay, then I’ll take that as a no,” he said. “How about instead of me diving in and retrieving them, you gather them and you push them to the edge of your awareness so I can grab them from there? Does that sound better?”

Quinn nodded very slowly. 

“It allows me to obtain them without actually entering your mind proper, Quinn.”

“That sounds reasonable.” Relief flooded her as she realised that this wasn’t going to be as dangerous accidentally or deliberately as she’d originally anticipated.

It was surprisingly easy to pass Kajaro’s memories through to Milaro to dispose of. They weren’t too attached to her, given that they weren’t hers to begin with, and she really wasn’t overly interested in diving into them, considering what she’d seen in Tenejo’s memory way back when the serpensiril youth had tried to destroy the Library himself. A measure of immense pressure released in her mind as Milaro took those memories. It was like a cleansing wipe had passed over her brain, cooling it, and it made her sigh in relief as it felt so light, more like a cloud than drenched cotton wool.

“Thanks.” He smiled.

“Now,” he said, clapping his hands and practically scaring the crap out of Quinn, “let us discuss.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, and Milaro began by projecting one of Kajaro’s thoughts and memories to the wall. She sat there watching it play as if it was an old-fashioned eight millimetre film, the way it sort of stuttered onto the wall. It contained images of Kajaro and Tenejo with multiple engagements, giving them more confirmation of the connection they’d had.

The younger Tenejo seemed to worship Kajaro, and the older serpensiril took complete and utter advantage of that. Quinn looked away. She’d seen enough of that in her encounters with Tenejo and the other serpensiril who’d accompanied him. She didn’t want to relive that.

But then there was one of Kajaro and Sarila, and Quinn couldn’t pull her eyes away from it. They spoke very quietly about taking over the Library until Sarila snapped at him. “If we maintain the filtration, you have direct access to the chaotic elements as they filter through the Library. You can simply extract the chaotic energy that you need for your experimentation and your... hunger, “she said the last word with distaste. “If that’s what you want to do, you don’t need to destroy the rest of the universe in the process.“

Kajaro leaned back and looked at the woman. “Very well. I can certainly understand the advantage of being the most powerful one in the universe. I could keep all of that to myself.”

“Yes, you could,” Sarila said. “As long as you can help us.“

Quinn could get a glimpse of his thoughts, that he didn’t see how this wasn’t just a win-win situation, because either way, one of his sides would win, and thus he’d end up with the power.

Next set of memories showed a meeting with Karilla and Sarila, putting together the Balisor plot as a means to gain access to the Library, as at least an assistant, and then they’d put their plan into action. He’d played both sides, and didn’t seem to care which was victorious.

“This will take some time to process,” Quinn said, as Milaro began packing his things together.

“Yes, it probably will,” he said, “and now you should eat to replenish your energy, and then I believe you have to get ready for an opening.”

“Oh,” Quinn groaned. She was not up to opening a branch, but it would make a lot of people happy and perhaps it would also pull the Library out of its funk. She pushed herself to her feet, but Milaro held out a hand.

“Ah, wait, I forgot this,” and he handed her over a scroll of parchment. “The list of the books that are missing from the restricted section. I do believe we finally nailed down which ones they are.”

Quinn blinked at it, suddenly eager to read it. “Thanks!”

He smiled at her. “Now I must visit Harish, Siliqua, and Cadre. Have a very happy opening.”

~~

And now onto a list, an opening, and some cool stuff

Much love

KT