LSRO: Chapter 338 - Detached (Patreon)

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I actually have a chapter for you all. I'm actually decently happy with this start to book 6.

I hope you enjoy it too.

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Chapter 1

Detached.

Shadows invaded her vision, making images she couldn’t comprehend dance about underneath her eyelids. Vague shadows, memories, and experiences she couldn’t quite reach.

Quinn’s bones ached; in fact, her whole body did. Her head pounded like she’d downed an entire bottle of whiskey on an empty stomach the night before. Not that she’d ever done that, but she’d witnessed several people who had. Flashes of pain pulled at her. Just glimpses and images of her screaming so much her throat hurt. 

Then again, she tried to swallow. Her throat definitely hurt. Just like everything else. Pain lingered as flashes of memory assaulted her mind. 

In those flashes, she felt her body pulled in different directions, her magical core straining. Most of the ache, now that she compartmentalized better thanks to Milaro’s training, came from her center. The core of her power. She breathed as evenly as she could and attempted to focus on her inner self. The core was brighter than she remembered, and ever so much larger than it had been. 

Pain lingered at the edges of those flashes, just enough to remind her whatever her brain was playing for her was real. 

It had happened.

Her eyes flew open as memories assailed her. Fleeting in their images, and yet intense in their recollection. 

Quinn’s gaze landed on the oddly solid form of Drevicia. The Library’s original form stood there, watching intently, its eyes glowing in an eerie incandescent pink hue. 

If she’d been able to move, Quinn would have scuttled back. As it was, she leveraged her best glare in the Library’s direction. 

“Ah, good.” Neither Drevicia’s stance nor its gaze changed, but its tone sounded tired. “You’re awake.”

Quinn felt a hiss of anger emerge as she spoke. “What did you do to me?” Even with all the flashed memories, Quinn couldn’t quite piece together precisely what happened to her while she’d been blacked out. At least not in the way she needed to understand the current situation.

While the Library considered her, or perhaps simply what answer it would give, Quinn undertook another effort to figure out just what had happened on her own. She delved deep into herself with a view to analyze the differences.

It was difficult to pinpoint, but she could sense something had changed. While it somewhat surprised her it didn’t appear to be a negative change, she was cautious. Fathoming a logical reason behind all this made her head pound even worse than it had been when she’d first come back to herself. She watched Drevicia warily, waiting for the response, while trying to make sense of the fragments of information she knew.

And the fact that her core felt ridiculously flushed with power.

Drevicia emitted what sounded like a sigh, but at the same time filled the entire room, reverberating off the walls and right down to Quinn’s bones. She noticed the pain in her core diminished and she waited less impatiently. Apparently, regardless of how battered and bruised Quinn felt, it didn’t seem like Drevicia was trying to hurt her.

Maybe.

“This wasn’t the way I intended for this to happen.” The cosmicisodracus spoke so softly, Quinn had to strain to hear her. She waited, confident that the Library wasn’t finished speaking yet.

Another sigh before Drevicia continued. “My brother, in all his wisdom in creating a backdoor into my system, created a loophole he didn’t intend, and I didn’t recognize for far too long.”

Quinn’s brow furrowed with confusion. “But didn’t we find the backdoor?”

Drevicia shook her head. “No. Not as such. More as a subconscious representation of what he’d intended, but not what in fact happened.”

Just as Quinn was about to ask what the hell had happened, the Library fixed her with a compassionate gaze. She wasn’t entirely sure how she knew what emotion it embodied considering Drevicia’s expression was closed off and brightly emitting that pink glow, but she knew she felt it down to her core.

“He fractured a part of me. The one part of me that was uncertain. That portion of me that wasn’t entirely sure that what I had in mind solved chaos devouring the universe and everything in it. The backdoor took hold of the part I’d been trying to lock away and wedged the door open ever so slightly. It gave that weaker part of me the ability to separate from myself, from the good intentions, and potentially cause havoc.” 

The sorrow in Drevicia’s voice clung straight to Quinn’s heart. “Then, are you saying this was all your doing? This whole mess?”

The shudder that passed through Drevicia’s frame was the first physical reaction Quinn witnessed from the dragon. 

“Not entirely. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen. I thought I’d locked this part of me away for the longest time. It was always just a fraction of myself that thought my idea dangerous, selfish even... To be just myself and not necessarily something the entire universe would rely on.” Drevicia sighed, but this time it was just for itself, not the entire room. “I never expected my brother to sabotage me or the endeavor. Nor for one of my sisters agreeing so much that she helped him.”

Quinn was a bit confused though. She didn’t quite understand how it worked. “You’re saying he fractured your psyche?” 

“In a way. In a definitive way that it took me millennia to realize. I’d only just understood that a part of me was undermining most of my ideals when Korradine became Librarian. And she...” Drevicia shook her head self-deprecatingly. “well she took advantage of that as soon as she realized what was wrong. Only a split second before I did. But it was enough for her to do more damage to myself, the Library, and Lynx than I’d ever have been able to anticipate.”

Thoughts whirled around in Quinn’s head. Just how had the Library come back from that? “How did you come back from that?”

“I didn’t.” The words were so soft, it’s as if Drevicia didn’t think Quinn could hear her. “I didn’t. What I did was panic and create a stopgap measure that nearly took out the whole universe.”

The light went on, and Quinn knew; she just knew what it was the Library had done. “You cut out your own memories, didn’t you? Trying to keep that negative piece of yourself from providing any sort of avenue for your brother and his plans to manifest?”

“But so much more than that,” the Library practically whispered those words, shame and sadness filling the air so much it was almost suffocating. “I’d begun having glitches well into Korradine’s tenure here. Glitches that I now recall... Korradine and my, well, other portion of me, communicating...”

“Oh! So that’s what he meant in that vision. About the backdoor...” Quinn looked at Drevicia with sudden concern. “Are you okay?”

The Library shrugged. “I am, and I will be, now that I’ve wrestled that portion of me back into control, and out from the influence Korradine left behind. Being whole again after so long has sort of discombobulated me.”

Quinn blinked at the use of the word, partially because she definitely didn’t feel that way. In fact, the more she let her mind compartmentalize and catalogue the sensations her body felt, the more... well, whole she seemed. In a way, it allowed her to sympathize with the Library more. “You’re whole again then? All one piece?”

Drevicia nodded and moved closer, taking a few tentative steps. “Whole, with all my dissenting opinions wrapped back into my head. Whole, which means I don’t just have to appear as a shadow manifestation.”

“Why did I think your body was the Library, and that was why you had to appear as a shadow?” Quinn narrowed her eyes, a part of her still suspicious.

“Because, and to be none to delicate about it, I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t appear in my true humanoid form without a part of my... for want of a better word: soul.” The Library shrugged. “It’s not like I had a blueprint for this whole endeavor. I made it up as I went along. Theorizing, hoping, and mixing a bit of magic in with it. You have to understand that when I began this whole caper, we were under a serious time crunch.”

“And as you are now? Can you assume dragon form?” Quinn couldn’t help the sliver of hope in her voice.

Drevicia shook her head. “No. That portion of me was shifted dimensionally in order to create the Library in the first place. The other part of me is legitimately the Library. Although I should be able to travel in the humanoid form. It takes but a fraction of the power I possess.”

As Quinn was about to speak again, Drevicia held up a hand to stop her. “Not yet. I know you have a billion questions, maybe even more. And I’m still readjusting to who I am. Or who I was, or can be. Why I screwed up enough in the first place to even allow my brother to insert that wedge into my subconsciousness... But we have bigger fish to fry than that.”

“I’m listening.” Despite all of her curiosity, despite her entire being vibrating with needing to know, Quinn managed to pipe down and concentrate on what the Library had to say.

For several seconds, Quinn thought the dragon was frozen, but then Drevicia shook itself as if an icy stream of water had just hit it, and pushed all its focus toward Quinn.

The sensation was like being x-rayed by a cold shower. 

Drevicia’s voice sounded clinical and Detached when it spoke. “Because of my own separation from what the Library was and is supposed to be, due to the incompetence I didn’t even realize I exhibited, your synchronization was at fault. Our connection wasn’t as solid as it needed to be. While Lynx had plenty of time in advance our connection, it was never entirely correct due to the fragmentation. It led me to believe his existence couldn’t be separate from my own, and yet... it absolutely can.”

“Is that why I’m so sore? Why my core seems so much brighter than it was?” Quinn reached into herself again, examining everything from different angles his time. “Did we synchronize again? Is that why you brought me here?”

Drevicia hesitated and then shrugged as if saying In for a penny, in for a pound. “Your connection with the Library was at its most secure and yet at the same time most vulnerable when you shifted the soul bomb into the containment area. It left you open to unfriendly fire for far longer than I’d anticipated, and the only way I could figure out how to save you from the imminent attack was to pull you back and bring you in here with me.

“In doing so, I managed to reset myself. The currents running through both of us when I took you managed to upset the balance restrictions my brother had placed on both my own soul and thus your connection to me. Essentially knocking us into perfect synchronization unintentionally. Which, naturally, kicked my own defenses into overdrive, which extended to you, and yet enabled the Library as a whole to reset in a strange sort of way.” Drevicia looked at Quinn expectantly, a fire of joy dancing in its eyes.

Quinn wanted to be able to return the sentiment, but it was difficult, and she knew it was because she wasn’t quite getting what Drevicia was putting down. It lingered there, just beyond her comprehension, as if to taunt her.

“Can you feel it?” The dragon asked eagerly.

Closing her eyes for an answer, Quinn centered herself. The shining beacon of her magical core had expanded. It shone brightly like the North Star, tingling all through her body; sensations of delight hovered around the edges.

Senses came to her hard and fast, reaching out beyond herself, beyond the room, through the Library, and beyond. Her eyes shot open, and she stared at the Library in disbelief. “Our connection is smooth, even...whole?”

Drevicia nodded. “Better than that even. You, Quinn, my genetic offspring, are now more than a Librarian.”

Quinn blinked in response, her brain going at nineteen to the dozen.

“You are now a true part of the Library with me.”

~~

DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUN

Much love

KT