Chapter 110: All this for a damned Cookbook! (Patreon)

Yes... that title

So... this one is a cliffy.

Also - so much fun to write. I'm having a blast.

~~

Chapter 110

All this to get a damned Cookbook!

Even as Quinn stepped through her favorite double doors that she liked to leave the Library from, she realized she should have fully anticipated falling on her butt on the other side of the door. It had become somewhat of a running joke that she would. Dusting herself off from the fall through yet another dimensional doorway, Quinn was starting to wonder if she should ask the Library if it was deliberately placing the door two feet above the ground so that she lost her balance in the slight shift of equilibrium that occurred when she stepped through.

By the same token though, it was sort of nice to know the Library had a sense of humor. Even if it involved pranks...

Quinn peered around and discovered that they were in what appeared to be a very old, burnt-out city. Originally, it would have had buildings clustered throughout the whole area. There were still so many partial stone structures left that she could have sworn it was a large city. Any wooden portions of the structures however seemed to have been turned to ash long ago.

If the fire stains against the stone were anything to go by, then something very hot had burned this entire city down a good while ago. Some of the bricks and stones were even cracked. Although that could have been a combination of fire on top of normal weather exposure over time.

This didn't sound like a peaceful 'this species has gone extinct' sort of place to Quinn. In fact, it sounded a lot more like 'this species got wiped out by something large and fire-breathing, oops' sort of destination. She ran a hand that was already covered in soot from touching the stone walls through her ponytail, glad that it was already dark brown anyway.

"Well," she said, looking around and wishing that sometimes when she opened her mouth, she didn't insert her foot, "this didn't look like it was going to be easy. I'm rethinking that whole 'let's do the easy one' strategy."

"Oh, are you now?" said Malakai, laughing softly. He pointed off to the northwest, and Quinn shrugged before they started moving slowly and cautiously in that direction.

The wooden portions of the structures had long since turned to ash. She could see it caked onto the floor, onto the ground in the cobblestones, raked over the stones that were the remnants of the buildings, leaving black soot stains everywhere.

High in the sky, there were two suns. One was yellow like she was used to seeing, and the other was a vivid bright orange in a glaringly aquamarine sky, which was a stark juxtaposition to the city in ruins around them. An uneasy sensation suffused the whole area around them; it basically fed up from the ground, leaking down to her from the destroyed walls.

"Do you get the feeling," Malakai asked, his back to Quinn's as he surveyed the area ahead of her, "that perhaps we're being watched?"

Quinn sighed deeply, and Eric laughed before speaking a little louder than necessary. "Well, of course, we're being watched. We're not the only beings here. It's not an uninhabited planet. The species that borrowed the book has just died out," the imp said quite emphatically.

Just as Quinn was about to retort, there was a rumbling under her feet, very subtle, gentle, almost like something was trying to be stealthy when it was sincerely not a stealthy creature at all.

Quinn sighed. "Oh, this is not what I had in mind."

"I thought you knew better," Eric said, a smug grin on his face.

"Well, I do know better, and I did know better. Also, I didn't think this would happen just because I said we should get the easier books first. I didn't say it was going to be easy. I didn't think I invited fate to come and smack me in the face, but apparently, I did." Quinn felt all sorts of grumbly. "I need to be more careful with my words."

"Did you though?" Eric asked. "I mean, sometimes, Quinn, I think you like a little bit of this danger."

Quinn gave him a very flat stare. "It's not that I like the danger," she said, thinking about it seriously for a few seconds. "It's that I enjoy the fact that I now have abilities that I can use to help solve these little incidents."

"You mean get the books back for the Library, right?" Malakai said.

"Well, that too." she said with an impish grin - doing her best to imitate Eric's.

They continued making their way toward what felt like the origin of the rumbling. Taking street by street and alley by alley where they came up, moving cautiously. Quinn wasn't confident in sending Aradie out when they didn't know just what they were up against, but it was starting to look inevitable.

"So," she asked as she picked her way along the cobblestone street that seemed to have no end in sight, "are we just waiting to be ambushed, or are we trying to figure out exactly where they're located?"

Malakai shrugged, never meeting her eyes as he kept his own on all the shadows cast by the multiple suns. The streets around them were old, sort of like Quinn had imagined they would be in Europe: cobblestone, partial bases, and the initial floor of buildings. The structures had probably been like two and three-story Tudor houses that had a lot of rockwork in them. Gone were the beams and the beauty, all burned away, but the alleyways and the streets, they wound close together all at once, with barely a break for any ground whatsoever, let alone a park or garden. It made every single corner hold a potential threat because they couldn't see around them.

"Aradie, please go scout." Quinn asked, resigned to having to send her owl out. "Just be careful."

With a mournful hoot, Aradie took off. Quinn could sense from her reticence that everything around them wasn't safe and that Aradie didn't enjoy the sensations she was experiencing.

"What's something that my night owl would be cautious about?" She asked as she interpreted some of the visions that were already feeding back to her.

"Aradie?" Eric asked.

Quinn nodded, focusing on whether or not she could see anything suspect in her owl's vision.

"Well, she's almost impervious, like me, so it would have to be something a lot bigger than her and us, really," Eric said.

"So, bigger than us? Great," Quinn said.

"You know, Quinn," Malakai said, "I think deep down, some part of you is probably raring to try out your new skills and be all daring like."

Aradie hooted a low note of agreement and as she flew overhead.

Eric scowled. "Hey, I just said that!"

"Oh, well, now you're just all picking on me," Quinn grumbled. "So, where is this damn book?" She asked as she looked at the map in her HUD again. "Why can't the Library just drop us directly where the book is?"

"Well, that's simple," Eric said. "The guidance system needs upgrading. The power levels aren't there yet, but they should be there soon."

Quinn stared at him. "Library of anywhere, everywhere, my arse." She sighed and continued slowly, scouring the area as they moved further into, or out of, the city. She couldn't tell yet; there were too many buildings remnants all around them, and not enough to go on to even know where they were headed.

And then there was a soft whoosh, a soft rumble. Quinn paused desperately wishing it was part of her imagination.

Malakai whispered. "Did you hear that?" his tone suddenly serious, no longer playful.

Quinn wanted to say, "No, I didn't hear anything. Everything's absolutely fine. Let's quickly grab the book and go home." But that would be a lie. She'd heard the sounds, the ones that were barely there, as if something was trying to sneak up on them and failing abysmally. She guessed, with a couple hundred years of no other residents in the area, that whatever this was, it was probably no longer used to being stealth-checked.

She reached out with her senses, finely attuned to all life around them, and found several alarmingly large, ambiguous shapes that she couldn't quite define. She looked around the tatters of the city, the sheer magnitude of fire damage from another time, fire damage that didn't appear to have begun inside any of the buildings themselves. She didn't like the ideas that were coming to her.

"You realize this isn't looking good, don't you?" Quinn asked softly.

Eric shrugged. "Fire's not gonna hurt me."

"Yeah, Mr. Impervious to Damage, thanks for that contribution." Quinn quipped at him.

"What are you bitching about? Your abilities are water and ice and other stuff. Hell, if you need to, pull a layer of chaos over yourself. It'll probably eat everything in range." He scowled at her, his short temper showing through.

"Including my allies," Quinn said.

"I was just kidding," Eric joked, faking a laugh for a second.

Quinn raised an eyebrow.

"So we're all on the same page," Malakai said. "We know this is gonna be a fire-breathing something or other."

"Do you think it'd be something like salamanders?" Quinn asked, keeping her voice soft as they continued to move through the streets. It wasn't too difficult to keep their footsteps light and soft. The ash caked into the ground helped acoustically dampen the sound.

"Well, fire-type lizards are likely," Malakai said. "This is the correct region of this solar system, I think, for them. But I didn't realize that they lived on this specific planet."

"Probably came over from another one. It's not infrequent that they overpopulate." Eric said matter-of-factly.

"Great," Quinn said. "Okay, anything else?"

"Well, it could be Drakes. If it were Drakes, I think we'd already be burnt to a cinder and we wouldn't be having this conversation." Malakai shrugged.

"Speak for yourselves," Eric laughed again.

Quinn took a deep breath. Sometimes Eric's needling could be a little much. "If you do that once more, I'm gonna use the emergency teleport to teleport you away."

"Take away all my fun, Librarian. You're mean." Eric pouted.

"Fine, I'd prefer to be mean and alive." Quinn winked at the imp before turning her attention back to Malakai.

"City cats too," Malakai said.

"What?" Quinn asked, not thinking she heard right. "Come again?'

"City cats are another creature we could potentially encounter. They're a part of this system too." Malakai was still hyper aware as they continued to move.

"Like the boat or like a cat that like traverses the city?" Quinn asked for clarification.

"Neither of those. You'll notice if you see them. It's difficult to explain."

'Great.' She was getting images from Aradie now. There were lizards half-hidden in the soot caked around the buildings, barely visible. "Can salamanders camouflage?"

"Depending on their species subtype? Yes," Eric said. "We have a lot of them in Halschius. Perfect temperature for them down there."

Quinn put a finger over her mouth asking them both to be quiet. Malakai rolled his eyes, as did Eric, and they all readied for combat. The next corner they rounded was less of an alleyway and more of a street. It was wider by a substantial amount, probably enough for two cars to go down side by side if they were being cautious. The cobbled stones were smoother here as if it had seen a lot of traffic in its lifetime. Even the soot wasn't as caked onto the ground as it had been in the alleyways.

"They're over there," Quinn said, pointing, knowing through Aradie's visions that's exactly where they were. Eric held up fingers two, three, four, and waved it about. Quinn counted through Aradie's eyes and held up five. Eric simply nodded and shrugged. Quinn took a few seconds to cast a new healing ability over all of them. A heal over time that would regenerate them while they fought.

"All this to get a damned cookbook," Eric said.

It was the perfect time for the salamanders to jump out from their hiding spots and attack all of them. Except they weren't expecting Aradie to be there. Aradie, who had scouted out as far as Quinn could tell, another dozen of the creatures heading toward them. And now that sound was breaking out, she didn't think the salamanders would care about any type of stealth whatsoever, which meant they'd moved faster.

"We need to work through these ones first," she said.

"I'd never have guessed," Malakai said, slashing one of them down the side with his sword. A trail of fiery brimstone leaked out of its side.

"Ah," Eric said, 'I guess these ones are the same subspecies as the ones from Halschius. Maybe they're on vacation."

"Shush," Quinn said.

"You don't even let me have any banter while I'm fighting. Damn Librarians," Eric muttered under his breath as he punched yet another one of the salamanders in the face. He was so tiny compared to the salamanders, who looked like 17-foot crocodiles on a wee bit of growth hormone.

"Did we not know they were here? Like as a general rule?" Quinn asked.

"The Library's databases are currently still outdated," Malakai yelled out as a high pitched squeal escaped one of the lizards. He slashed up the underside of one of their mouths just before the instant where lava spewed from its mouth. Luckily, it ended up spewing all over its face. Somewhat out of breath, he continued. "It'll take a while to get all the information up to current parameters."

Quinn nodded, not letting herself get distracted from her routine of dousing the creatures in water and then flash-freezing them. It required relatively little mana and energy to maintain. It helped when Malakai slashed through them, breaking them into thousands of little pieces. But it wasn't a strike the elf prince could use continually, it required some sort of rest between from what Quinn had seen.

By the time they were on their third, Eric had already dispatched two of the first five by himself, with a little bit of help from Aradie's laser eyes.

And that's when the rest of them came.

The whole fight became a blur of lizard claws, fire breath, magma flow, ice, water, sword fight, and screaming. The streets had the soot washed into insignificance by, mostly, salamander blood.

"These aren't so difficult, you know," Eric said, as they finally got down to their last couple.

"That's just what somebody impervious to damage would say." Quinn snapped at him as she dispatched what she hoped was the last one. She had cuts running all down her arms, but the regeneration she'd cast before they started fighting was helping keep them at not grievous wound level.

The armor she'd worn was virtually like shredded paper now. Quinn was winded and bleeding and so exhausted. She grabbed a mana potion out of her inventory and slugged it back as she popped an energy sandwich into her mouth.

'Well,' she said, quite happy with the way things had turned out. Frowning at the corpses she was about to ask Malakai if they looted corpses like these when something happened that made her freeze on the spot.

The roar wasn't just loud, but it seeped into every single pore of her body, holing up to attempt and arrest her limbs. She was barely able to shake herself out of it, and her head began to pound, just as her whole body shook.

"That wasn't a salamander." Eric helpfully stated the bleeding obvious.

"No shit." Quinn sighed out the words as the drake's approach grew closer.

Casting regeneration on all of them, Quinn prepared herself as best she could. Fighting a drake to retrieve the damned lost cookbook, had definitely not been on today's todo list.

~~

WEEEEE Drake Fight incoming!!!!

I am stoked. I mean it's not a bad cliffy, right?

Sort of?

Much love

KT