LSRO: Chapter 115 - Second Skin (Patreon)

I don't know if you know, but being an author is a weird thing. I have an end point for book 2. It's always been the end point. I had some points I wanted to hit along the way. But for some reason my characters are all taking detours or coming up with entirely new ways to get to the points while I write.

Anyhu - This is a soft cliffy - it has an impediment to want to know what happens next. I think...

Enjoy!

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Chapter 115

Second Skin

Jasper's expression cycled through myriad emotions before finally settling on angry annoyance. 

In hindsight, perhaps telling them they needed to give Quinn the damn book back, while surrounded by at least four magic users that Quinn could specifically sense, and probably another four to six others, had been a highly foolish idea. 

Jasper was practically spluttering. "The Library has no authority here," she said.

And yet Quinn couldn't help but push the goading a little further. It was almost like she had no other option. "Yes, but you've got my book, and I want it back."

"You're the Librarian?" Jasper asked, disbelief coloring her tone.

"Yes, last I checked." Quinn felt a prickly sensation all over her skin, like every single hair was standing on edge, as if she was being scanned, sized up, dissected in a magical way. Almost automatically, Quinn extended her shielding around herself like a thick outer layer of skin, and extended it around Malakai, Aradie, and reluctantly also Savinth. 

She only just managed it in the nick of time, because a surge of power came from all around them, from those beings that she'd pinpointed as a hundred percent being the Desilish, and the ones that she'd still been on the fence about perhaps being swamp crocodiles. It ranged in toward them, rushing into the middle, and converged on their group. It shook the shielding she could feel around her against her skin, making her slightly nauseous for a few seconds, while Savinth fell to one knee, and Aradie had to settle in a tree to steady herself. Malakai was the only one who seemed unphased.

"Oh," Quinn said, "that wasn't a nice greeting. If you've harmed that book, I hope you know I'm going to have to fine you."

"I didn't borrow it," Jasper said. "We haven't borrowed anything from the Library in over a thousand years."

"Really? So why did you take the Library book?" Quinn asked, trying to keep her tone amicable while she surveyed the surroundings. Being outnumbered was never favorable, but Malakai was pretty handy with his weapons.

"We didn't know it was a Library book," Jasper spat out the lie too fast to make it believable. 

"So, I'm taking it you didn't check the spine or the interior of the book? You know those stamps allow us to trace the book when we need to get it back, right?" Quinn almost had the layout of the other potential attackers now, and she could tell Malakai was doing the same. From the images Aradie shared with her, she knew her little team were all on the same page.

"That's beside the point. We didn't realize that Savinth would swap us a Library book for the deal that she made with us." Jasper's eyes darted from side to side. She wasn't very subtle about having set up an ambush.

 A deal, may I remind you," Savinth spoke, having regained her footing after the pulse knocked her to one knee. "A deal that you reneged on. Give me the book back."

"So you can give it to the Librarian? We don't want to help their kind." Jasper scoffed.

In the corner of her vision, Malakai pulled something Quinn had only seen him do while training with her occasionally. Shadows engulfed him until he was practically invisible, melding into the shadows. She knew he was technically an assassin type of class, and yet she'd never really witnessed him fight that way. He usually used his bow or his sword. Now, she could still feel him because her shielding still covered his skin like a spare epidermal layer. It was the only way she could trace him. If she hadn't cast her protection on him, she'd not have been able to feel his presence at all, despite her extended senses. And that was quite formidable.

"Where did he go?" Jasper said, her tone revealing some concern.

"He does that sometimes." Quinn shrugged and smiled and conjured about a dozen tiny ice balls, swirling them around in her hand. While Malakai was moving towards some of the other figures that were hiding, Quinn kept her focus on Jasper, hopefully keeping Jasper's focus on herself.

"So are you going to explain to me why you didn't know the books belonged to the Library, or am I just going to have to assume that you're that dense?" 

Jasper sneered at her. "You are young." 

A rush of power smashed into Quinn, and she was thankful for all the training Malakai had pummeled into her to make sure she could maintain her shielding under any circumstances.

"You, you're not human," Jasper said, her sort of eyebrow ridges rising in surprise.

Quinn shrugged. "So people have been telling me lately."

"What are you?"

"I'm the Librarian. I thought we'd already established this."

The ice-balls, in the meantime, had shot up into the sky so fast they were practically invisible. They started circling quite a ways above Quinn, out of sight, out of mind, as long as she could keep the attention of the other people on herself and not on them. Quinn attempted to send out telepathy for the first time to somebody not directly attached to the Library.

Don't kill them, she warned Malakai.

That's the plan. His voice came back to her, a fuzzy echo inside of her head. She tried not to let herself heave a sigh of relief. She could feel that the book wasn't present with the group of people surrounding them. It was farther off to the southeast, maybe. If she was getting her directions wrong, she'd never been very good at those.

"So what is your offer?" she asked.

"There is no offer, Librarian. Your kind have ruined magic knowledge for everyone. You can't just gatekeep a species or a clan of people out of the Library just because you don't like them." This time Jasper did spit on the ground, defiance and anger flashing through her eyes.

Quinn raised an eyebrow at the information though, wanting to know more. "What do you mean?" she said, sensing Malakai was almost done with whatever preparations he had been making to finally unleash his attack. Meanwhile, Aradie shot her several images to let her know exactly where a few of them were located. Two of them she'd be able to easily put out of commission with a couple of well-timed ice bullet shots, as long as she aimed them fast enough. It was a good thing she'd picked up a healing spell.

"We didn't come here to talk. We came here to kick out unwanted intruders into our domain." Jasper said finally and launched a volley of fire balls at Quinn. At the same time, Malakai unleashed his attack, and Quinn instructed her ice balls to rain down on the two targets that were within the range Aradie had given her. Savinth, on the other hand, dashed to the side, grabbing one of the watchers out from behind a tree and bringing her to the ground, grabbed the back of her hair, and held a knife to her throat.

"Well, that was a little bit anticlimactic," Quinn muttered.

"You haven't seen anything yet," Jasper growled.

And that's when everything happened at once. The individual Savinth had caught twisted unnaturally, partially dissolving around the knife and reappearing on the other side. She grabbed Savinth by the back of the head and smashed her face into the almost-mud of the ground.

Quinn shoved power into her shielding as Jasper leveraged a fire spear directly at her. The Librarian brought up her arms in an 'X' in front of her body, reflecting it with a mind blast shield to turn the spear straight back where it had been cast from, but the heat left her skin reddened from the close call.

In the meantime, Aradie dive-bombed one of the covert Desilish who was hiding some ways away, flashing with laser eyes and her beak. Quinn could sense, vaguely, Malakai locked in a dagger-to-dagger fight behind one of the other trees. She could only catch glimpses of the elf and she wasn't entirely sure if that meant he was flickering in and out of the shadows he'd concealed himself in, or if the underbrush was just in the way.

Quinn twisted out of the way and rolled to the side shoving herself behind one of the trees as Jasper yelped. Quinn had already sent several more of her ice balls floating up above her head and shot them down, aiming for Jasper's limbs as well as the individual who was currently fighting to keep Savinth under control.

One of the ice balls hit Savinth's opponent's foot. The attacker hadn't realized it was aimed at her, yelped, and released her hold on Savinth's neck long enough to give the other human the chance she needed to break free and fend for herself, allowing Quinn to focus fully on Jasper.

Not a moment too soon. Quinn dove to the side again as a fiery lance cut into the mud right next to her. It left a seared gash up her thigh and a hole in her jeans which she didn't appreciate. She hadn't had enough wits about her after assisting Savinth to recognize the attack in the split second, but now she had all of her attention on Jasper.

Quinn sent a trickle of healing to the spot to take away the sting and ward off the swamp dirt from getting into her wound. She didn't really know enough about fire magic to delve right into it or understand exactly what it was that Jasper was doing, and ice was a very bad opponent to fire. However, as she learned with the Drake fight, air or the ability to extract it from fire, was a pretty formidable tool. It just required a lot of focus.

Even though she could still sense Aradie and Malakai's fights going on in the back of her mind, she realized that they had a lot more combat experience than the Desilish did and thus they were gaining the upper hand. As was Savinth, especially since it appeared that her opponent didn't have any innate healing abilities and thus couldn't heal the damage Quinn had done to her foot. It was preventing her from vapor shifting or whatever that had been.

Jasper, on the other hand, was like a bomb ready to go off. She was pissed and the emotion tried to envelop Quinn in waves. She readied air in her mind, knowing exactly what she wanted to do while she controlled a few more little ice balls hovering around the areas Malakai, Aradie, and Savinth were fighting in, just in case they needed help and she could separate her consciousness enough to aid them.

Seconds later Jasper hefted a fire javelin in her hand, Quinn activated her ability to think fast. She focused on the flame immediately, aiming her oxygen depletion ability at it. The look on Jasper's face was priceless. As the spear wicked out of existence, she tried it again and Quinn sucked the oxygen away, taking several more steps toward her.

"What the hell?" Jasper yelled, and this time a wall of flame rose up directly in front of Quinn. The only thing that saved her from getting engulfed in flames was the fact that she maintained her shielding like a second skin around her body all the time.

She rolled to the ground, to put out the flames that sprang up because of her clothing. The shielding really only protected her body. She stood as fluidly as she could, aiming a gust of wind and an ice blast directly in Jasper's face. It hit her head-on in the chest, leveraging her back against the tree she'd originally been hiding behind. Then Quinn blasted more for good measure and froze her opponent directly to the trunk.

In the meantime, Aradie finished her own fight and Quinn could sense the unconscious forms of about nine other Desilish all around them. Savinth's opponent was groggily restrained by a glowing rope Quinn had a lot of questions about. She approached Jasper, who couldn't free her hands and seemed to be having a little bit of trouble talking.

"So, I was thinking," Quinn said, "now we've got all that out of our systems, that we could maybe have a civilized conversation."

Jasper spat, some of it catching on the ice to freeze immediately. "Damn Librarians, you always play judge."

"No," Quinn said, "Not that I've ever had the chance to meet another Librarian. I've been one for almost two months now. I've lost a bit of track of time here, but I am not judging you. Well, I wasn't at first, but I might be a little judgy now. You stole my book, you won't give it back, you're being a bit rude. So, what do you mean I'm always being a judge?"

"Korradine ruled with a scalding, corrupt fist and the Library let her."

"Excuse me?" Quinn blinked at her and said, "What did you say?"

"The Library is corrupt."

Quinn waved the statement away. "We all know that's a lie, but what did you say about Korradine?"

"She ruled the Library with a corrupt fist, thereby making the Library a corrupt accomplice." Jasper's voice sounded hoarse and Quinn relinquished some of the cold in the ice, bringing it closer to melting.

"I think you need to tell me exactly what you're talking about because the Library was shut for almost 500 years because Korradine retired before any other Librarians could be found. It's only been open again for like 6 weeks." Quinn was really curious now.

Jasper's expression changed from one of seething anger to surprise and skepticism. "You're bullshitting."

"No," Quinn said, "I'm actually not and I think it's about time we had a proper talk."

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Thank you all for reading.

I'd love to know what you think... I'm really excited for the next chapter.

Much love

KT