LSRO: Chapter 44 - So Close (Patreon)

Here we go. I hope you enjoy this chapter as we get ready to open the library finally. I've been super sick the past few days, but I hope this is understandable!

Enjoy!

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Chapter 44

Quinn woke the next morning, feeling mostly rested, even if still a little drained. She pushed herself out of bed and realized that she must have simply staggered up the steps and fallen asleep after absorbing all of the books yesterday afternoon. Aradie flew down from the top of the bed where she'd been perched and hooted softly, looking up at her from where she now sat on the bed.

"Hey, girl." There was sort of a question mark in Quinns mind, like a projection asking her if she was okay? "I'm fine this time, no dreams."

Which was sort of odd. Quinn recalled often having dreams, but she thought that perhaps the exhaustion played a part in not dreaming, or at least not recalling having done so. She wandered over to the bathroom, had a quick shower, grabbed jeans and another shirt. She paused to rifle through the bulk of them and had to admit she was really liking this wardrobe.

"Did you pick these things for me?" She asked the Library.

We scanned for popular clothing similar to what you were wearing when you arrived and we have quasi-replicated some of the designs.

"Thank you," she said, popping the smooth rock into her jeans pocket. She hoped the close proximity to her would mean she didn't have to constantly carry it around in her hand to make the lines of communication more robust. Pulling on a pair of sneakers, she made her way out of her room, where she stopped short upon seeing several people standing in the hall just down from her room. It clicked. Those be the quarters for the assistants.

And she had assistants now.

Didn't that mean that the Library conditions had been met?

"Hi," Malakai said, nodding to her in his gallant way. Behind him were Geneva, Eric and Finn, the Furionas, Imp, and Ilgonomur that she had personally interviewed. She raised an eyebrow and nodded toward the rest of them.

"Oh, my bad," Malakai said, "although you could just access their information through the interface."

"I know, but I would rather be introduced to them personally. Thank you, assistant librarian," she said, punctuating the last part deliberately.

Malakai chuckled under his breath. "I guess I deserved that. Danio is our resident centaur library assistant."

Quinn smiled, genuinely excited to have an actual centaur on the team. "Nice to meet you."

"It is an honor to meet you, librarian." He bend down at the waist in a small bow.

She looked him over. His hind quarters were a bay color, beautiful chestnut-y coat with a gorgeous black tail. His hooves were especially polished and his dark red hair cascaded all the way down his back, only tied together by a hair tie at the very end. He stood easily seven feet tall making him about half a foot taller than Malakai. Behind Danio were two aracnios. They skittered forward on their spider-like legs. Quinn couldn't help the little shiver that ran up her spine, considering that they were about six feet tall at their heads and had multiple arms.

Malakai cleared his throat and introduced them. "These are our aracnio brothers, Jim and Bob."

Quinn blinked at Malakai, sure that he was pulling her leg.

"Jim and Bob?" In her mind it sounded super cute for a spider species. Maybe their names were really difficult to pronounce.

"Yes, we," the one she thought was Jim started.

"... are twins," Bob finished.

"Welcome to the Library," she said. And they were indeed identical, right down to the multiple eyes on their faces, and the way the hair on their legs wavered in the slight breeze that ran through the Library at all times. She pulled her eyes away from Jim and Bob and headed downstairs. She could hear the rest of them following her. Once at the checkout desk, Quinn couldn't help the excitement that ran through her.

"Well, today's the day," she said. "We're going to open."

"Ah, my dear," Milaro said. "While true, it's also not quite so."

Sometimes she wished he'd just speak plainly for once. But he seemed to enjoy the riddles. "What's not quite true?"

"We're almost there. There's just a couple more things in the orientation and then we're good. They need to familiarize themselves with the Library layout including the dining hall, book hospital, and Farrow's domain. But that won't take long. So yes, it will be fine. And everything. But it'll probably be a couple more hours, so you should work on with the Library, figuring out exactly what we need to do to open the doors. I'm sure there's all sorts of fiddly things to do."

Quinn pouted for just a second. She'd been so ready to be fully recovered rest-wise and come down here and fling the doors open. Not that she was sure what would happen after that. "Fine, I guess I can do that."

"You guess you can do that?" Malakai asked. "Look, Dottie and I have the recruits, okay?"

"And what about me? Do I have my combat skills yet?" She double-checked her stats. "Oh, wow, my attack skills have gone up. Well, I guess we are set," she said. She couldn't help but feel extremely proud of the amount of information she had managed to absorb lately.

"Are you feeling comfortable with your power?" Milaro asked gently.

"You know, a little bit. But there's still a massive surge of, I guess you could say nervousness, where I'm just not sure if I can handle this sort of power." It was something that constantly sat at the back of her mind.

"Of course you can," he said. "In fact, you can probably handle a lot more than most of us."

"Yeah, how does that work, exactly?"

Milaro sighed, and then shrugged. "Your affinities are off the charts. You have all of them. We haven't seen that before. Nobody else on your world has any type of magic, no affinities, nothing. It... there's no rhyme or reason, except that maybe the universe thought, 'Hey, there hasn't been anybody around with the Library affinities for 500 years, how about we just make somebody with all of them so that's covered too.'"

Quinn gave him a long, hard look. He didn't seem to be joking. "I guess that's a possibility."

He watched her for a long few seconds, and then smiled, his tone reassuring. "It's not like you're the one, you're just the only one right now."

Quinn laughed. "That makes me feel worse and yet somehow a lot better."

"Yeah, I thought it might. Do you want to come and start some of the orientation with us?" He asked.

"You know, I think I should stay here while I'm not being pulled in 50 different directions at once and allow myself to get more acquainted with the way the system works."

"See Quinn, that's why you're going do just fine," Milaro said, before ushering all of the little assistants off toward Cook's domain. She watched Milaro go and decided that she really liked it here. Maybe it had been a mistake to always pull away from others but hadn't that worked to her benefit now that she didn't live on earth anymore? It sounded a little fantastical inside her head. She chuckled to herself as she watched the assistants go off on their final leg of orientation.

Aradie flew to her shoulder and sat on the still cloth version of the protective covering. Quinn really needed to get around to having the leather one made. "So what do you think, girl?" she said. "Should I just access the entire mainframe and see what it is I can do?"

Aradie shot her a look that basically said, Why haven't you done this already?

"I've been busy, like super busy, killing things, not dying, absorbing books, trying to get the Library repaired. Go easy on me. It's my first, well, it's actually my second week still. But that pesky time dilation thing robbed me of a day or so." She stopped herself rambling and focused. "Okay, library access panel."

Nothing happened.

"Library, help me out here. Give me the control panel..." Still nothing. She could feel the obstinacy emanating from the Library and before she could get annoyed, she remembered. "The console!"

And like magic, the console appeared in front of her. "There's no need for you to be so pedantic," she muttered under her breath.

Specificity is an extremely important tool of anyone using a language, especially a librarian.

Quinn thought for just a moment that maybe she'd offended the Library. And then she decided it didn't matter because she had work to do. She went through all of their current stock, pulling it up, and realized just how little they actually had. There was a massive list of things the Library could do. From specific golems, carts, and helpers, to initiating new kitchen sequences, and expanding the dining hall. Not to mention the different branches of the Library.

They needed more stuff. The stock they had seemed woefully low. However, there was a stack of 68,000 fragments of Malachite.

She frowned. "Why do we have so much Malachite?" Also... Malakai-t. She wouldn't make the joke to his face.

The library answered her in a way that she didn't expect. One shard of Malachite means one-dimensional door can be opened. The library requires hundreds of thousands of these to be on hand and currently is low on stock.

"Did it use these in order to find me?" she asked.

Yes, as previously stated, it uses Malachite to open every single dimensional door. The library did not appear to like repeating itself.

"Fine, I'll pretend to know what that means." Quinn thought she did, but you couldn't be too cautious in a dimensional Library.

It requires fuel and a focus, therefore it expends one Malachite shard per door that is opened.

"Including the people coming here?" Quinn asked.

The library repeated it without the question mark, Including the people coming here.

Quinn mulled the answer over and then suddenly remembered Kajaro's ring. She pulled it out of a small drawer in the check in desk to the side of the console. She was thinking of using the ring once she'd emptied it. Opening it up, she surveyed all of the different containers. There had to be at least another 80 books or so in there, but none of them were flagged as a library book. "Not all books are in the Library?" She asked.

Of course not. The library contains magical tomes. Magical alchemy, cooking, combat -- there is always an element of magical usage in every single one of these tomes.

"Okay, so just normal books, don't get entered into the Library?"

Correct.

Quinn took a couple of the books out. She recoiled from the feeling of slime on the leather covers. Like it had aged badly, or been exposed to something that didn't like leather. The words on the spines didn't make sense in her mind. Maybe only books connected to the Library meant she would always understand them. "Maybe these just don't belong here then." she muttered to herself. She left a few of them sitting on the counter for further perusal later and leafed through the rest of his ring.

Some of its contents made her shudder, but they didn't seem out of place for the person Kajaro had seemed to be. She perused it cautiously.

That is, until Harish and Siliqua, followed closely by Milaro, ran up to the counter completely out of breath.

Quinn looked up at them. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Well," Harish intoned in his deep voice, "the Library was indeed sabotaged."

"We were already mostly certain there was sabotague... what's different now?" Quinn asked, trying to wrangle the people in front of her. They were on the clock here.

"It's not easy to explain," Siliqua said. "There's information in the Library that is scattered, out of place, and degrading. Considering the way the systems and the neural pathways work, the Library should not be experiencing such degradation. It's as if chaotic magic was released directly into the system in some way that circumvented the filtration. Like perhaps it was scanned in?" Siliqua looked at the other two and then at Quinn as if hoping they would answer her question.

Quinn leaned back. "Okay, how would that work?"

"When books are returned, they are a part of the Library. They've been produced by the Library and the production system that's contained within the bookworms and the night owls. And those books enter the system and help replenish with new waves of magic." Harish reminded Quinn of one of her old English professors when he spoke. Excellent diction, and no emotion. "However, if a magical book is created outside of the Library, there are certain measures that need to be taken in order to enter it into the system as a library book."

"That being?" Quinn asked.

"For starters, it would need to be copied into the Library format properly," Harish continued, "with the relevant quill, the correct affinity ink. Everything has a balance. And the books are created in a very specific way. It doesn't mean other magic can't be cataloged in the Library. It just means for filtration's sake and for the health of the Library system that those books must be in the ecosystem that is the Library."

Quinn glanced to the side and looked at the books she'd been considering from Kajaro's inventory. She touched the top of one again. And not only was it slimy, but some of the liquid came away on her hands. She pushed them further away from the console and backed away. "Like something that has leaked into the system?" She asked.

"Where did you get those?" Harish asked, his voice clipped.

"They were in Kajaro's ring. I thought I'd take the time to sort through them." If she concentrated she could feel an aura of unease around the books.

"Put them back in now." Siliqua's voice snapped out the command.

Quinn did as she was told, wiping the muck off her hand onto a cloth sitting next to her.

"Burn the cloth." Siliqua sounded less panicked now.

Milaro took it and electrified it into ash. Quinn watched the ashes as they dropped to the ground. Thoughts swirling in her head. "Do you think he gambled on us bringing the ring and the books back here? Do you think the Library book he had to return was infected?"

Harish shook his head. "I don't believe there is a way to infect an already established library book. I could be wrong, though. However, someone at some time inputted multiple books into the system that should not have been there and tainted the Library. We will try and reverse this, find the books, reverse their cataloging, I guess you could say, and hope that we can prevent any further damage. The good news is that because the Library has been mostly shut down for several centuries, it hasn't recirculated any of the books so far.

"But we're about to open," Quinn said. "What will that do to it?"

"Well, it would speed up the degradation. However, we're localizing the problem areas and will simply hold off checking in books on those subjects until we have cleared the problem."

Quinn glanced from Harish to Siliqua to Millaro and nodded. "Okay, but the doors will open soon."

"We know." Milaro reached over and patted her shoulder. "It's okay. We can do this."

With that, the three of them left and Quinn turned back to the console, and it's very obvious timer.

Library System ready to open.

Commencing: 1 hour 42 minutes.

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Well, it's almost there right?

Next chapter tomorrow!

Much love

KT