LSRO: Chapter 161 - That's All (Patreon)

So, the next time I add another plot thread in, you all have permission to yell at me. Loudly.

Anyhu! Juggling plot threads like a pro (or I hope I am) here is an installment of omg Library sabotage and no one to punch in the face. Quite yet.

Not really a cliffy - perhaps a oooo what happens next chapter.

Enjoy!

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Chapter 161

That’s All

Quinn had never been the biggest fan of the heat. 

She'd always liked summer, but most of summer involved water. Lakes. Beaches. Swimming Pools. Water took away the sting of the heat and most of the humidity, which she also wasn't a fan of because it made her hair frizzy as hell. But now, even though the Library was temperature-modified or air-conditioned or whatever it was, she felt overheated and cold on an interchangeable, constant basis.

She pulled the covers on; she was too hot. She pushed them off; she was freezing cold. She walked downstairs; she felt like an icicle. She walked into her office; she felt like somebody had blasted a furnace across her skin. It was really starting to get old, but at least it was under control. She wasn't spewing flames at things, and she also wasn't constantly being covered in her scales and then not covered in her scales as she had when they first got back.

Although, if she was being completely honest, Quinn kind of liked the scales. They made her feel very mystical and like everything hadn't been a bit of a cluster from the very beginning. 

The next day found her extremely irritable after a very restless night's sleep. She stumbled down when the sun would have usually been coming up and found her way to the kitchen to greet Cook, who was, as always, awake.

Did golems need to sleep? That was something Quinn would have to ask Misha or the Library or anybody who might know.

"You look unrested, Librarian," Cook said as they pushed a plate of what looked like bacon and eggs over to her.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. She'd been feeling like bacon and some fluffy eggs. "You didn't happen to whisk these eggs with salt, pepper, cheese, heavy whipping cream, and whisk them into like a light fluffy batter and cook them in butter, did you?"

Cook grinned at her. "I may have."

Quinn frowned. How would he know that was how she best liked eggs? She'd learned that when she was twelve, about four weeks before the accident. She took a bite of the scrambled eggs, and a wave of nostalgia hit her, followed by a much smaller wave of melancholy.

"These are wonderful," she said.

"I am glad that you approve. Would you like me to work these into your regular rotation of different breakfast foods?" Cook asked her quite seriously.

"Go for it. I'd eat these every single day if I could. But I like the variety," she said, holding up a hand just in case Cook got the bright idea that she meant she didn't want any of the other food like cinnamon doughnuts, waffles, yogurt, and granola. She had a bit of an eclectic taste, she liked to think. Although maybe she was using that word wrong. She didn't think so, though...

Her mood, definitely better for having eaten one of her favorite childhood foods, managed to last with her as she walked out into the Library and looked over it. She stretched and made her way toward the check-in desk but stopped about halfway there and stood in the shadow of one of the pillars, simply watching the assistants serve the people that came to the Library. They were very deft with the books now. They knew exactly how to scan them for any potential threats and then to enter them into the system. All in a fraction of the time it took them the first few days.

She watched for maybe a quarter of an hour as they checked in about a dozen people between the two of them, and she watched and saw how Finn sort of hovered over them. Not that Finn had wings. Finn was running along a bench that was behind the check-in desk or attached to it, which Quinn had never noticed before. Yet another thing that went with the adaptability of the Library. It seemed it was much easier for Finn to keep an eye on everything when they could look over instead of up at. Made perfect sense in a magical world sort of way.

Still, Quinn felt a slight niggle in the back of her mind. Finn was fitting right in now they'd been called to step up. Much more so than Quinn had previously noticed. They were adept at adapting and very good at instructing those under them. Quinn frowned. It could be that their trust in Finn had simply lit a fire under the Ilgonomur. Then again, if Quinn was trying to infiltrate somewhere and spy on a group of people, she would probably try to ingratiate herself, make herself dependable and trustworthy.

Oh, this was going to be a problem. If Quinn suspected everybody all the time, it'd get exhausting. As it stood, Finn had done nothing to alert Quinn's senses. Yet, maybe. Quinn frowned and moved away from her observation spot, making a note to herself to check on everybody else's views of Finn a bit later. Right now, she had traitors and potential spies up in her head like nobody's business. This constant suspicion was something she needed to keep under control.

Instead of heading over to the check-in desk where everything was quite obviously running smoothly, she took herself to her office. Just before she walked in, Aradie swooped down to her place on Quinn's shoulder, chattering ever so birdishly into Quinn's ear.

"You know I can't understand you when you speak that fast."

Aradie shoved a picture at her, an image of Milaro about to return, opening the door.

"Oh," as Quinn approached her office, she saw the door to the holding cell just down the way from her open. "Ah," she said, "I guess he's here with our guest."

Aradie nodded.

"You could have just said so," Quinn said.

Aradie looked away, pointedly raising her beak in the air. Quinn shook her head and decided to take the door through to the holding cells that was inside her office. It would make things smoother. She walked through the office straight into the holding cell and observed as Milaro oversaw the return of Adrito. She stood watching. Milaro finished instructing the entourage he had with him and then turned and entered the antichamber with her. 

"I thought it was better to open the door into the holding cell directly instead of disturbing all of your patrons in the Library with an entourage of guards and a pretty pitiful form of ruler." Milaro offered the explanation with one of his typical smiles. 

Quinn nodded. "Did you have any trouble convincing them to let us take him to HAL?"

"Surprisingly no, but I do have to admit I do think Nishpa and Geneva held more sway than me when it came to those matters." Milaro looked out over their prisoner with a sad sigh. "It's a mess."

"Yeah, pretty much destroyed the entire ruling island, right?"

"Ishiposa Island," Milaro said, correcting her absent mindedly, "I must confess I don't understand his motivations. But it's not for me to understand right now, it is for me to help you figure out why, how, and who decided to do all that."

"I like the way you think," Quinn spoke gently, but desperately wanted to lighten the heaviness of the situation."But I do believe you owe me food."

Milaro cringed at her comment and then smiled tightly, his eyes never leaving the prisoner in his strange trance like state. "You know, I do owe you that. How about, when we get some more of this sorted, I just make you a full-on banquet?"

Quinn narrowed her eyes. "You wouldn't be trying to get out of it, would you?"

"No, I actually genuinely enjoy cooking. It's calming and normal in a way I sometimes need." He paused and gestured beyond the glass they watched through. "However, right now I have a lot on my mind. And thus, I'm unable to give my full attention to meal preparation. How about we just have a big banquet when some of this is over? And then I will gladly cook for you once a week."

"Hmm," Quinn said. "I accept your counter-proposal, but you better keep your promise."

"I'll keep them, don't worry. I'll keep all of them." He said gravely before smiling as he changed the subject. "Anyway, we have other things to do."

Quinn sighed. "I know. Do you have any insight as to why he did what he did?"

Milaro shook his head. "No, literally none."

Quinn watched Adrito through the glass. "What did you do to him? He looks, is he drooling?"

"It's a stasis. He's not aware, he's literally asleep. It's just..." Milaro sounded sad.

"Why are his eyes open if he's asleep?" Quinn asked, not sure what to do with her mentor's mood.

"It's a mind stasis. He's been made comfortable. I didn't want him to have time to dream up some way to attack us from within, so I placed him in a dreamlike state."

"But didn't Tenejo break out of that and murder his supposed best friend?" Quinn asked, quite horrified.

"Yes, but Tenejo had a much stronger mind ability. The power and malice behind his, it was scary bad. He was probably trained by Kajaro, who I also didn't realize was extremely strong." The elven King added. 

"You're not filling in a lot of blanks here, Milaro." 

"I know," He winked at her, a hint of his usual self creeping out. "Anyway, Adrito's mind magic extends to illusions. Even though he's not the strongest when it comes to that, Latia seems to have been the one who maintained the illusions over the city when you arrived. His specialty is controlling objects and people, thus he controlled the golem."

Quinn frowned, "Well, I guess..."

And then Misha stomped in with three security golems that didn't look like the other eight they had. She frowned. Those were culinary golems. Did she activate those? Quinn checked, and yes, she had. And Quinn had told her she could, so there was that. Time was getting slightly mixed up in her head. So much had happened over the last few days.

Quinn nodded in recognition as Misha inclined her head at her through the security screen. Naturally the supervisory golem knew they were watching. "Okay, well, I guess we have three security golems watching over him while your entourage gets back to where they belong, and you and I, Mr. King of the Elves, go and see what it is that Siliqua and Harish have to show us."

"I think that’s a wonderful plan," Milaro said as he took her arm with a flourish and escorted her out of the room out of the door that led to the Library. 

"Where are we meeting?" Quinn asked, suddenly suspicious.

"In your office, but I thought we'd go out and make an entrance. So my office is kind of just the general meeting room, right?"

"Yep, I'm glad you've gathered that."

Siliqua, Harish, Cadre, and Lynx were all in Quinn's office. The Library manifestation looked positively sullen.

"Quinn, it's wonderful to see you again," Siliqua said. She seemed a lot happier than she usually was, which, in a way, was good, of course. But Quinn wasn't entirely certain given the subject matter they were researching that her happiness meant they'd all be happy.

"What news do you have for me?" Quinn asked, glancing at Lynx who hadn't even tried to meet her gaze.

"Ah," Harish said, "maybe we will let Cadre explain that in more detail."

Quinn raised an eyebrow. Milaro let himself fall onto the couch instead of sitting at the conference table that was set up. "Do regale me with your news," he said, a smirk on his face. Quinn wondered at the rivalry between the two of them. They seemed friendly enough.

"Well," Siliqua spoke up first. "There's actually been some, I've had some..." She paused as if she was trying to really get those thoughts sorted out in her head. "I have had some progress on the Ashiron Pillar."

Cadre waved her forward. "This is perhaps better addressed first."

She flashed him a small smile of appreciation before continuing. "Basically, there are some red flags when it comes to it. It was a non-organic failure, not just of the filters themselves, but of the actual filtration system, which is why it cannot be flushed and cannot be reset unless we manually go down there. Once down there we'll actually have to open up the filtration pillar because... well, the problem appears to be within the device itself. We'll need to figure out exactly what has happened to it, and reset it manually."

Quinn frowned. "I sort of assumed that we would have to do that. Anyway, right?"

Siliqua paused, and then hesitated before speaking again. "But there's something wrong with it on an integral level. Not like it was when you had to change the filters, though we'll likely have to do that as well. But Ashiron is currently contained, and I mean airtight contained, in such a way that not even I can access it. I have no idea who set it up that way, but not even Harish, Cadre, or I can figure out how to break through the, hmm, what would you call it?"

"Code?" Milaro offered helpfully.

"No," Siliqua said, shaking her head. 

"Encryption?" The elf King tried again.

Siliqua's face lit up. "That's it. Whoever sealed it away did so with such a complex encryption that I can't break it."

Quinn frowned as she considered everything else Siliqua had been able to accomplish. That had to be some next level lock on Ashiron if even she couldn't break it. "That doesn't sound good. And with all the memory holes that we have, couldn't this be more dangerous than anything else? It's right underneath us. It's tapped into the lake of mana."

"Actually," Siliqua said, "I think whoever locked it away was on our side because whatever they did is keeping it basically out of synchronization with the rest of the manna lake and the filtration chamber. It isn't quite in contact with it."

"What, they did like a dimensional shift?" Quinn asked, a part of her finding it odd that she took this in stride.

"Yeah, that's probably the best way to describe it."

Quinn looked at Milaro and Lynx who wouldn't meet her eyes and back to Siliqua. "So you're telling me it's so dangerous they had to shift it out of synchronization with our current dimension that is already its own dimension? So that it probably wouldn't infect us?"

"Yes, precisely," Siliqua said. "I love the way you get difficult topics, Quinn."

Quinn sighed, counted to three, and decided to veer them back to the original reason they'd come together. "But you're saying we can't work on it until we've solved the other issues first, right?"

"Precisely, but I wanted you to know that we've figured out some of it and we should definitely not be touching or fooling with that pillar right now, as things stand."

Quinn didn't bother to say she had no intention of fooling around with a dimensionally shifted pillar right now, and nodded instead, "I've got it. Okay, so what about the memories?"

"Ah, the memories, the locked files?" Harish said, piping up before Cadre could say anything. 

Siliqua snatched the conversation away from her husband. "Don't you worry, Librarian. We're getting ready to replace all the corrupted and decayed sections. It's just that Lynx will require recalibration and the fix will bleed over into normal every day Library functions. So you'll have to let everybody know that the Library will be experiencing some technical difficulties for the next few days, making borrowing impossible. But that's all."

Quinn let the information sink in for a few seconds before counting to three under her breath again. "Oh, fantastic," she said. "That's all."

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TADDDDAAAAA Haven't we all had that moment where we're like oh That's ALLLLLL?

Much love

KT