LSRO: Chapter 345 - No One Laughed (Patreon)

Weeee and here we go, the whole outline is in place, now we just need to fit in the middle, especially the extra obscure pieces of the puzzle.

I'm starting to have fun again instead of stressing about dropped threads. After this year, I could really use it.

I hope you all enjoy it.

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Chapter 8

No One Laughed

Mentally Exhausted. That’s how Quinn felt. She let herself fall onto one of the outer sofas, collapsing in what felt like a puddle. Malakai moved around the back and began giving her a massage. Her shoulders ached from it, but for several seconds of blissful silence while both she and Milaro situated themselves, the tension relief was pure bliss.

“You okay?” He whispered, concern filling his voice.

“I will be. Not so sure that’s the same for all of us though.” She couldn’t shake the images from Dro’s mind. Couldn’t stop the pain she’d felt when they realized some recollections had been literally ripped out of her memory. Gaping holes amidst some of those pieces of shattered memory. 

Raw. 

Painful. 

She wanted nothing more than to make Dravishk pay. If she’d been reluctant before, she sure as hell wasn’t now. 

Milaro cleared his throat, drawing everyone’s attention, even if Quinn only managed to crack one eye. Better he tell it than her.

To start, he indicated where Dro currently lay, passed out on her sofa. They’d given her a pillow and blankets and kept the bracers on her. No one could be sure how she’d react when she woke up. But right now she was even more mentally exhausted than Quinn and Milaro, so they let her rest.

“Her mind is in tatters, and not from our interference. Where he couldn’t supplant her memories, morph, or twist them... he ripped out the ones that didn’t serve his purpose. Jagged holes, she’s lost.” His voice trembled ever so slightly. Quinn was sure that came from a sense of rage, frustration, and sadness.

People shuffled uncomfortably, and Milaro continued. “No one. No matter who they are or what they’ve done, deserves to have their mind played with like that. Destroyed in that way. I don’t want to ask her anything she can’t handle until she comes out of that nap. Even then we’ll have to be careful for her. She won’t know her limits. We’ll have to monitor any mind fluctuations too.”

Drukala put up her hand. It was the first time Quinn had ever seen her being meek. Milaro gave the dragon a nod.

“Is she going to be okay?” She asked softly, a hint of bewilderment underneath her words.

Milaro shrugged. “I think so. She’ll need a lot of mind healing when we can get around to it. Once things have come to their conclusion, we’ll make sure she gets the help she needs.”

“Thanks,” Driv said, his voice rough. “I never realized Drav was capable of something like this. He’s always wanted to lead. Was just never a natural leader.” He laughed then, full of bitterness. “Sorry, I’m going to need a moment.” He turned and walked across to look down at his sister, conflicted emotions passing over his face.

Quinn putt her hand up to rest on Malakai’s halting the massage. He took the hint and moved to sit next to her, nudging her softly. 

“I’ll be okay,” she said, even if she didn’t exactly believe it herself.

He raised an eyebrow, so apparently she hadn’t been able to fool him, anyway. An awkward silence fell over the room, everyone lost in their heads. Aradie hooted low and soothing as she coasted over to sit on the back of Quinn’s couch. 

Drevicia let out a long sigh, and Quinn couldn’t help notice how strange it seemed to have the Library with her in a corporeal form. She waited patiently for the Library to speak and noticed everyone else leaned slightly toward it too.

“Drav always wanted my power...” Drevicia shrugged as if something cold had just swept over her body. 

Drukala frowned. “Your water ability? He has dimensional manipulation. No offense, but his is way cooler than yours.” She offered a frown to her sibling as if trying to make up for saying those horrible words.

Drevicia smiled. “No, not the water. Maybe it’s more of an innate ability; perhaps it’s not really a power.”

“Stop beating around the bush and spill it,” murmured Drivok as if he was only half paying attention while he watched his oldest sister slumber.

Another sigh, and Drevicia shook itself, determination overcoming its expression. “Well, that’s just it. Knowledge. Literally. I’ve always, from the second I came into being, known things. To know and learn about everything.”

“Can’t everyone do...” Drukala began and then frowned. “As in you automatically know something just by reading?”

“Is that like how I can absorb a book immediately?” Quinn asked, her interest piqued.

Drevicia gave a soft smile and shook her head. “No, that’s not precisely it. That’s one of the rarer Librarian affinities. However, your ability to retain and understand that knowledge without having to study the subject in depth? That’s a part of my innate ability.”

Quinn blinked. “I thought all Librarian’s could just absorb the books.”

“Most have been able to,” Lynx answered instead. “But not all of them. It’s just one of the possible affinities for the Librarian to have.”

“So the way I instinctively know how to use my affinities? I get that from you?” Quinn focused her gaze directly on Drevicia, who nodded in response, locking gazes.

Maybe she should have been more shocked, but instead, Quinn felt at ease. Her ability to simply know what to do with her affinities, to be able to recall things even from the books she hadn’t studied in detail, finally made sense. “Sometimes I feel I need to skim the books to understand them faster?”

Drevicia smiled. “Yes. I’ve noticed that. You wouldn’t have to, the knowledge will adapt to your needs and situations. But you can speed it up by skimming through, drilling the information home, so you can theorize about it quicker.”

Drivok took the few steps back over to the group. “Why wouldn’t you tell us something like this?”

The Library shrugged. “Never felt like it was important. I can’t manipulate dimensional space. I can’t transfigure and morph matter.” It stared at Drivok, who had the good grace to at least blush, then turned to Drukala. “I can’t manipulate organic matter into magical entities.”

“Wait,” Quinn asked, “What?”

Drevicia chuckled, but it sounded tired. “Driv here, is the reason the Library, which took my dragon form, can adjust itself. Drav is the pocket dimension element. Dru here, well she’s the entire reason we have the Nightowls, book worms, the dog-ears, everything that takes its magic and helps create the knowledge of the universe.”

“What about Dro?” Quinn asked, her voice coming out in a hesitant whisper.

“Ah, yes.” The Library almost floated over to its sister, looking down at her thoughtfully. “Well. That’s intergalactic travel. It’s how we get from one side to the other. The doors. With just a pinch of space, she can be anywhere as long as she has access to that particular dimension.”

“How is that different from dimensional travel…” Malakai sounded confused, and then embarressed that he’d asked the question out loud.

“It’s subtle. Dimensional space manipulation is more like adjusting, creating, warping, or manipulating the dimensions around you. It’s a powerful ability. Dro’s is closer to beaming up into a space ship, just across dimensions.”

“Sub space travel?” Qunn asked.

“Precisely.”

“And you’re knowledge.” Quinn felt like everything came together in a strange sort of beautiful. Five siblings worked to maintain this space. To create a depository of knowledge accessible to anyone who had magic. “You knew how their abilities worked, even before they did, then?”

Dru and Drivok turned to their sibling, eyebrows raised.

“Of course I did. I’d never have suggested the Library if I hadn’t known how or that we could achieve it.”

“Does it come with some sort of prescience too?” Lynx asked, even though he didn’t look as surprised as everyone else seemed to be."

“No,” the Library stated, “not exactly anyway. Perhaps just avenues of possibility.”

Quinn had been about to ask why Lynx didn’t seem particularly surprised by the revelation when she stopped. “You know when things are about to happen?”

The Library shook its head. “No. Nothing like that. I can see multiple possibilities dependent on which strands of action I choose to follow. From there, I can extrapolate potential outcomes.”

“That all sounds very scientific,” Milaro said, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Could have mentioned it to me once in a while.”

“Sorry. It was always the way I lived my life. Constantly projecting and calculating possibilities and going for the one that provided the best outcome for the most people. I never intended to play with anyone’s perceptions; I just wanted life to be overall easier and well... chaos free.” The Library shrugged. “It didn’t end up going the way I expected.”

“Oh, no!” Quinn suddenly had an epiphany. “You’ve had to live without them for the past thousands of years. He took them. When they took your memories, or shuffled them, or altered them or whatever... it took away the part of you that always navigated through everything, didn’t it?”

A sad sigh slipped past Drevicia’s defenses. “I didn’t even realize what happened. It wasn’t until we noticed the discrepancies in Lynx that I even had an inkling something was wrong with me. And we all saw how that went.”

Without even thinking, Quinn stood and walked the few steps to reach the Library and give it a hug. For just a second, Drevicia froze, and then she returned the hug and whispered. “Thank you.”

“I’m not a huge hugger,” Quinn said when she pulled away. “But I think sometimes it’s necessary.”

“I’ll agree to that.”

Lynx cleared his throat this time. “So you did know what your siblings could do and thus dragged them into creating the Library?”

Drevicia smiled. “Mostly. This was the one solution, knowing everything, that I could come up with. Literally knowing everything. I coaxed, cajoled, and even baited them into cooperating. I swear they did it in the end just to shut me up. But along with that knowledge came the surety we could do what I envisioned. Except those couple of niggling doubts. What if my ability to know things wasn’t all-encompassing? What if I failed to understand the integration of our skills into one massive Library? Would I doom the universe instead of saving it? That gave Drav his opening.”

For several seconds the room fell completely silent. If the state of thoughts running through Quinn’s head was anything to go by, she knew everyone else was contemplating all sorts of scenarios.

Knoweldge. How could knowledge be an actual power? “Can you look at me and just know about me?”

The Library cocked its head to one side. “Not quite how it works. But if I engage secondary sight, I can see your mana and energy flows, every single leaf of each affinity you hold and just how much strength is within each of those. For you, for example, Quinn, I also see the heritages they grafted together to make you as strong as you can be. For Milaro his brightest abilities shine at me. Mind melding, memory reading, and everything in between. Right now, I see Malakai’s healing strains are far stronger than they were a few months ago. I know instinctively just how much he’s improved and with which specific spells. You have these abilities too, Quinn. Especially the one of unmaking. It’s tied to intricate knowledge about things. I also technically know how to undo each and every element of a creature’s creation.”

Quinn didn’t know how she was supposed to digest that specific piece of information.

The silence in the room changed to wariness as everyone focused on what Drevicia said.

“And that’s exactly what he wants,” came a voice they didn’t expect. Dro pulled herself into a sitting position on her makeshift bed. 

Quinn blinked, and Drevicia snorted. “My ability to unmake things?”

Dro shook her head. “The whole thing. The knowledge you hold allows you to create, extrapolate, and unmake anything, any time, anywhere.”

“I never realized he was so violent...” The Library began.

Dro held up a hand to stop it. “No. That’s not the reason. I’m groggy, angry, and not quite right yet. Give me a second.” She sounded positively drained.

Quinn sent out a plea for a glass of water, and the Library obliged. Carrying it over, she handed the glass wordlessly to the quietly shaking Dro, who took it and gulped it down.

“Thank you,” she whispered before turning her attention back to the room. “When he said it to me before, it sounded so right. Like such the perfect idea.”

The three original cosmicisodracus moved over as one to stand and lend their strength to their flagging sibling.

“He seems to think he needs those abilities so he can be strong enough to withstand Chaos.”

Unexpectedly, Drevicia laughed. “He has no idea how it works then. You can’t unmake chaos; that’s what makes it chaos. At most, it can be slightly tamed through consistent filtering.”

Dro frowned. “That’s not what he thinks.”

“It’s not his ability.” Drevicia said, her tone cold.

“Could you convince him he’s wrong?” Hope clung to each syllable Drukala murmured.

Drevicia laughed. “The only time I’ve ever convinced him to do something, he ripped a part of my psyche from me and almost doomed me to die.”

“So, I guess that’s a no then,” Lynx said.

It didn’t lighten the mood.

No one laughed.

~~

BWAH HAH HAH

Don't worry I'll be back with the next chapter soon!

Much love

KT