LSRO: Chapter 335 - Here Goes Nothing (Patreon)

Weeeeeee gettng soooo close now. BWAH HAH HAH So I overestimated how well I'd be able to edit after 17 hours of driving. Hence, you have cha

Weeeeeee gettng soooo close now. BWAH HAH HAH

So I overestimated how well I'd be able to edit after 17 hours of driving. Hence, you have chapters today haha

Hope you enjoy this

~~

Chapter 71

Here Goes Nothing

Fixing Ashiron had been such a thorn in her side for so long that Quinn had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. It had caused her so much stress for way too long. She settled herself down and focused her attention on the people in front of her. Everything else could wait until after they fixed the pillar. Because if they didn’t have a pillar, there was no future for anything, anyway. 

It made sense in a macabre sort of way.

“Well,” she said, “what do we need to do to fix it?”

Cadre’s entire countenance lit up before he launched into his spiel, and Quinn found herself completely mesmerized by the migalexutal. His movements were fascinating. The slightly elongated fingers with the pads that looked like they could suction to anything. The tones to his skin that reminded her of the natural colors of a gecko. He was like a little gecko in short human size.

“Well,” he said, “we finished the calculations. So much as I can anyway, without venturing down to the filtration chambers.”

Quinn frowned. Even though she’d known this was a thing, it still set her on edge. 

Milaro spoke up. “I know you’re brimming with questions, so just ask. We’re here to answer them and get ourselves ready to head down and do what we need to. Everything will go smoother if we’re all on the same page.”

Relief flooded Quinn and even though she knew they didn’t just expect her to follow along, it was always nice to have confirmation. She mulled over several questions in her mind at once and decided to just go for it. “So, how is this supposed to work? What precisely is it we are doing?”

Cadre looked like all his Christmases had come at once. Siliqua and Harish watched, smiling fondly as if he were their own child. Even though she was fairly certain that they were all around the same age.

“Well,” Cadre began, “the problem as we see it. After examining Milaro, Lynx, and your experience with the soul bomb, as you’ve so aptly named it...” 

Quinn wasn’t entirely sure how he’d got her angle of the resealing of the bomb. Had she perhaps offered it up? Probably? Maybe? She might have given it to Milaro at some stage, when she was only vaguely paying attention. Anyway, it didn’t really matter if it had helped, but she also needed to make sure they hadn’t just taken it somehow.

Meanwhile, Cadre continued, “...the soul bomb is currently located in a dimensional time fissure.”

“Wait!” Quinn stopped him, stumbling over the last. “What do you mean time fissure?” Her mind raced. Wasn’t time magic virtually impossible?

Cadre blinked at the interaction as if he hadn’t expected it at all. He seemed bewildered, not used to having his trains of thought derailed. Siliqua stepped in, taking over for a moment.

“Time magic is difficult to control and essentially has far too much destructive potential. We don’t mess with time because of all the ramifications and the way futures can be just maligned and extinguished. However, stasis spells are all based on a variant of time magic manipulated to a minuscule amount. The fissure he speaks of is just another way of saying a moment of frozen time.”

“Which itself is a misnomer,” Harish interjected eagerly. “Time can’t actually be frozen. It simply moves at such an infinitesimal rate that it appears to have stopped.”

Quinn looked at all three of them and then glanced at Milaro, who gave her a very subtle head nod.

“So,” Quinn reasoned out, slowly running everything through her brain to make sure she’d actually understood what they were saying, “the soul bomb, after its initial sealing and even after we resealed it, has actually been moving this entire time. Since Lynx initially set it up?”

“Yes,” Siliqua said.

“So even when we were resealing it, it was actually still moving. It’s still live, not just frozen.” Quinn realized she was repeating herself, but figured the shock of the revelation warranted double and triple checking: she’d understood things correctly.

“Yes.” Cadre nodded, delight flooding his features that she’d understood this much. “Precisely. Hence, I must finish the calculations as close as possible to the time you initiate the ritual to phase the pillar in order to free it of its burden with as little side effects or ill results as we can manage.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Side effects or ill results?” That didn’t sound appealing at all.

Milaro put a hand on her shoulder briefly. “We’ll explain that as soon as everything else is sorted.”

“Okay,” she said, motioning for Cadre to continue. 

“If we don’t do it this way, then we run a huge risk of the bomb actually going off while we initiate the transfer.”

“Transfer?” Quinn asked, even though it made a heap of sense. Why hadn’t she ever thought the solution would include extracting it? She’d assumed they’d figure out a remote way to trigger a contained version.

Are you hearing this? Quinn asked, sending the thought to the Library. But as usual, over the last few weeks, indeed, since her training with the siblings, there wasn’t even a flicker of response.

“Of course you understand,” Cadre was saying.

Quinn held up a hand to stop him from speaking. “Wait, I’m sorry. I missed a bit of that in all my inner turmoil.”

Milaro snorted under his breath while Cadre gladly repeated himself. “Quite all right, Librarian. Transfer. We cannot risk attempting a contained detonation within the Library and thus must remove the bomb completely. Of course, you understand that in order to do this, it means we must remove the entire containment field carefully and quickly, lest too much time lapse between the calculations and the ritual and thus the balance we’ve struck has been upset.” He watched her expectantly, almost as if looking for praise.

She nodded slowly, taking in the information and making sure she could visualize what he meant. “Okay, so we go down and calculate the differentials, initiate a transfer protocol, and how do we move it?” She was trying to get her head around all of it.

Harish piped up. “Well, that’s where I come in,” he said. “Siliqua and I devised a temporal stasis portable device. Although, device is misleading as it is actually quite large. It can only withstand certain amounts of stress on its joints and thus must be calculated precisely to coincide with the current state of the mana bomb within a 0.45% margin of error.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, “is that all?”

“It sounds a lot more scary than it is,” Siliqua said. “We’ve run so many numbers on this, Quinn. We’ve designed the container to be capable of containing anything with that sort of temporal displacement. Within reason, this should give us a good several minutes to get everything organized and destroy it.”

Quinn admitted to being ever so slightly impressed even if five to nine minutes didn’t feel like nearly enough time. “Okay, so where is this portable stasis device?”

“Ah, that’s in Harish’s lab,” Siliqua said. “We’ll pick it up on our way down, we figured.”

“Excellent. It’s quite large, then I take it?”

“Yes.” 

Quinn could tell the Wood Elf was hesitating. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Ideally, we’d like to bring some other people with us to help reinforce the barrier we must erect around you.”

“Come again?” She said. “What barrier?”

“Well...” Lynx popped into view, with a perfectly timed interruption of Siliqua when she’d been about to actually explain something to Quinn.

“You’re late,” Quinn said.

“It’s okay. I can catch up quickly,” Lynx said. There was definitely something more vibrant about him since he’d learned he wasn’t technically confined to the Library. They really needed to have a few more discussions about that whole thing, anyway.

“Catching you up quickly,” Milaro said, as Malakai joined them as well, followed by Geneva and Eric. Quinn glanced around as Milaro began to speak. “We have a device that can help us rid the Library of the soul bomb in the pillar. We require your aid to help us erect a magical ritual barrier around the pillar while Quinn and Lynx are busy transferring it.”

Lynx raised an eyebrow at Quinn, turned into a much tinier version of his Lynx cat self, and promptly jumped up to sit on Quinn’s lap. She looked down at him and automatically scratched behind his ears. He purred and then spoke, which was really odd coming from a tiny, miniature Lynx creature.

“So you figured out a way to displace it without taking the Library with it?”

“Yes.” Cadre leaned forward, close to the cat’s ear, as if he was telling it a secret. “It’s a temporal stasis portable device that we’ll use to adjust for the temporal shifts in the stasis chamber.”

Lynx let out a tiny purr and nodded its head. He then jumped up to stand on the desk and morphed back into himself so that he was sitting with his legs dangling over the side.

“Don’t sit on my desk, Lynx,” Quinn said, slightly amused, and suddenly feeling just that bit less stressed.

“I know,” he said, “but you feel better now, don’t you?”

Malakai snorted in a perfect mimicry of his grandfather. 

“Do we have your consent to do this?” Milaro asked the group gathered there.

Geneva paled slightly. “Wouldn’t my aunt be better at this? She’s far stronger than I.”

“She has the wrong type of magic, Geneva,” Milaro said, understanding in his voice. “If you can’t do it...”

“Oh no, I can do it,” Geneva said. “I’m perfectly capable, I just... I don’t want us to be lacking power because of me.”

Milaro smiled at her. “You will not be lacking power.”

Eric grunted, “Of course I’ll do it. I never lack power.”

Milaro gave him a smile of gratitude. “Thank you for standing in for Hal, since he can’t make it.”

“I guess,” Quinn said, taking a deep breath, “I guess we make our way down.”

“As good a time as any,” Siliqua said.

Quinn stood up. She could feel her hands shaking ever so slightly, nerves shooting through her. As everybody began to file out, Malakai lingered back with her.

“You’re nervous, aren’t you?”

“Gee, you think so? I drop this ball and the universe implodes. No pressure whatsoever.” Her voice barely shook, and she could feel sweat beginning to bead her forehead, but she wasn’t nervous at all. She wondered how difficult it might be to eye roll at herself.

“To be fair... Even without you knowing about all of this magic and stuff, the universe was going to implode. So, when you think about it, you’ve really just given it seven months longer.”

“That’s not helping.”

“Isn’t it?” Malakai asked.

“Fine, it helps a little. Let’s go catch up. They’re getting the device.”

It was a somber troop that headed to the elevator.

“I actually haven’t ridden down in this yet,” Milaro said. “I’d remember you made it. I just haven’t had time. A very nice ask of the Library, Quinn.”

“Yeah, it works,” she said. Still concerned that the Library hadn’t even reached out to her about the Ashiron situation. She raised an eyebrow at Lynx. “Have you heard from it?” She asked.

He shook his head. ‘Curiouser and curiouser’ was turning into ‘really bloody concerneder’. Which wasn’t a word, but now it was.

The elevator landed down at the bottom and they all exited it. Harish and Milaro bearing the burden of what looked like a rather large, mostly square cube. Sometimes the edges rippled, which, Quinn guessed, was probably what allowed it to adapt to different temporal calculations or something. Maybe. She really had no idea.

They stood there and everybody triggered their hovering or flying abilities before they made their way over to Ashiron.

“Here goes nothing,” she said under her breath. And Lynx purred.

~~

Much love

KT