LSRO: Chapter 172 - Half the Battle (Patreon)

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Thank you all for being here and supporting this journey, and I hope you enjoy the rest of what Library has to offer

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I love it when I get to tie some plot threads together!

It's one of my favorite things. I hope you all enjoy this one!

Enjoy!

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Chapter 172

Half the Battle

Hal immediately left the room, the rest of them following behind him as he beckoned. 

Quinn managed to have at least the presence of mind to remember that she had a hover skill. She applied it with her flight skill and easily keep up with them without having to exert as much physical energy as she would have walking. She realized she’d have to be very careful with this because it was an excellent way for her to get extremely lazy. But right now, still feeling marginally like crap, she decided this was the best way to travel.

They went through halls that were much more opulent than Quinn had thought an igneous rock formation city would be. 

Red drapes hung over the massive arched windows as they went along, glowing in a way that resembled the lava outside. The red carpets were bordered with gold and a strange type of cross between silver and bronze adorned the floors they traversed. She kept her eyes on Uncle Hal’s back and a very subtle eye on her energy and mana levels to make sure that being here wasn’t causing them to run out quicker than usual. 

She realized that wasn’t the case, so apparently her proximity to the Library had nothing to do with her magic and energy replenishment.

As they went down a massive spiral staircase, she lost track of how many turns they took on the way. It opened out onto a huge underground cavern that was almost as big as the one that housed the filtration system in the Library. She looked around, taking it all in. The ceilings were impossibly high, the floor rough for the most part as it stretched out in front of them, and there were strange domes scattered all throughout. 

Inside of them there was a weird sort of fog that was mostly transparent. 

Many of them appeared to be empty.

“Climb aboard,” Hal said curtly.

Quinn ripped her gaze away from watching the domes and saw that he was standing on a platform. She hurried to float onto it and turned around slowly. 

The platform was about 10 by 12 feet in size, maybe. It was rounded on the edges, so probably not exact. It had a wrought iron type of railing and it hovered across the ground. It moved fast. Quinn thought the inertia should have made her stumble backwards, but somehow whatever magic it worked with allowed her to remain standing as it shot across the area between the domes. Finally, they reached a standstill, only for it to rise up in the air. Quinn clenched the railings until her knuckles went white and they looked down into one of the domes.

Quinn squinted her eyes. What she’d expected to see was seas of lava and people tied to walls being tortured. Images from old cartoons her foster-father used to watch in the wee hours dominated her perception of hell. But Halschius wasn’t the hell from earth mythology...

Halschius was nothing like that. 

Tenejo stood in the middle of the dome, his eyes flickering all around him as if he was watching people. There were reflections in the smoke, a strange sort of mimicry, almost like they were watching a television show. She glanced up at Hal. He grunted.

“Seems he took the bait earlier than usual. This is unprecedented,” he said, a big frown on his face.

“What’s unprecedented?” Quinn asked.

He glanced at her and then back to watch Tenejo before speaking again. “Sometimes I forget that you are not from these worlds. You don’t understand the implications of what Halschius stands for. We are known for our ability to retrieve the information we want to retrieve, no matter what.”

“Okay, that sounds decidedly ominous.” Quinn said, still watching and marveling at how it felt like her eyes were looking through binoculars. The vision below them was so clear. “What do you mean?”

“Watch.”

And so Quinn watched. Tenejo, lost in his own world, tried to break free of the bindings on his hands. He watched what looked like his jailers on the other side of his cell. He observed them carefully and closely, his eye narrowing now and then as he twitched his hands. Every time their backs were turned, he jiggled more at his bindings. Until finally, only several minutes later, his arms fell free. First of all, he rubbed each wrist and then he slowly moved so that he was facing the exact direction of his guards. 

Except from what Quinn could tell, the guards were indeed a simple projection, an image on the smoke or the clouds or screen or whatever it was that they were watching. In just a small section of the dome, Quinn frowned. “Is that... are we seeing what he thinks?”

Hal muttered, “You’re perceptive enough, but you need to start trusting your own judgement. Utilizing your own senses to determine what is and isn’t real. It could save all of our lives if you do.” He glanced at her. “Or else you’ve just spent far too much time around Milaro, probably the latter, maybe a bit of the first.” 

Beneath them, Tenejo moved again.

Uncle Hal frowned again. “That was awfully quick. Does he know where he is?”

The imps who’d come to fetch him earlier both shook their heads. “No, he is under, just like every other prisoner we take.”

Quinn glanced over. “So what’s the deal?”

Hal held up a finger to his lips and Quinn turned her attention back to the dome. Tenejo had suddenly rushed the bars of his cell and he spoke a single sibilant word that Quinn couldn’t quite grasp, couldn’t quite hear. One guard after another slumped to the ground. Tenejo turned around and used his tail to scoop at the guards’ clothing and retrieve the jacket with the keys. Quinn raised an eyebrow. Hal simply shrugged. Malakai looked like he wanted to get some popcorn and sit down to watch the rest of this. And Quinn noticed that Eric was simply hovering in a corner, scowling.

And the next thing they knew, Tenejo was out of his cell.

“Does he know where he is?” Quinn asked.

“Wait...” Hal was grinning now.

“But he’s still in the dome.” Quinn didn’t understand the swirling of the image, and could only assume it was somehow hooked into his thought process or memory, or perhaps a dream?

“Projection imaging is what we call it. It taps into whatever it is that our prisoner wants to happen, wants most to happen, and what they then expect as a result of that to occur.” Hal didn’t take his eyes off Tenejo. “Essentially, we give them an opportunity to escape to wherever it is they most want to venture and follow them there. You’d be surprised how much you learn when a person thinks they’re beyond your reach.”

“So you essentially play on his most desperate desires?”

“Eh, not desires, more wants, goals, items they’re aiming for, things they’re obsessed with. In Tenejo’s case, it appears to be, well, you.” 

Quinn was taken aback. “Me? Obsessed with me?”

“Or your elimination. As he was waking up, he was quite feisty. Violent even with regard to you and Milaro.” Hal gave her a sly grin, but still didn’t look at her. “Whatever did you two get up to that made him so very angry.”

“Existing?” Quinn asked, somewhat down about the whole thing. 

“Ah.” said Hal. “That’ll do it every time. Now, shall we watch and see where he goes?”

Quinn nodded and narrowed her eyes as she watched Tenejo creep out of what looked like a portable prison and escape outside after bashing in two guards’ skulls. Once out of the constraints, he looked around to get his bearings. 

Then he spoke a single word, the surrounding air rippled, and he vanished.

Quinn gasped, stumbling back. “What happened? Why? Where did he go?” Even after getting mostly used to magic, some stuff just still took her by surprise.

“It’s okay, Quinn...” Hal started, nice and calm, but Eric interrupted.

“The barrier he’s inside of is self-realizing. It’s not about to allow him to escape. Don’t worry about it,” Eric snapped. He was in a fiery mood and Quinn didn’t know why, but she also wasn’t about to ask. She’d leave that particular little quirk for him to deal with. 

In the meantime, Hal was watching intently and so Quinn gave the scene below her full attention. 

As if she was watching a movie, Tenejo, in what seemed like fast-forward, found himself outside a castle that looked very snake-like. 

Okay, well, it was made of pale bricks that seemed to have been slimed over with some type of green moss. So, in Quinn’s very experienced opinion, it looked snakey.

Tenejo appeared just as he’d disappeared in a flash. Teleportation within his jail cell...

The guards at the gate let him through after double-checking something he said to them. He wandered the darkened halls. Quinn had to squint to make anything out. It appeared the moss continued inside the structure, and then she could have sworn it smelled faintly of rotting vegetation.

“Careful Librarian.” Hal said, his tone sharper than usual, “Don’t push your mental presence out too much. He’ll feel you and know this is all an illusion.” 

“Sorry.” Quinn said, sheepishly. She hadn’t even realized she’d been doing that in the first place. Pulling back her awareness a bit meant she didn’t smell the nauseating stench anymore, at least. So that was a win.

The halls stretched on until Tenejo finally came upon an audience chamber. After being ushered through a short hall, the room came into focus.

It was long and narrow, with a very lean table down the center. There were several Esposians that Quinn didn’t know from a bar of soap, but she was fairly certain were probably allies of Adrito, sitting in a cluster. There were a couple of Aracnios, neither of which had worked at the Library, and two species that Quinn could neither identify herself nor pull up the information for.

“If you’re trying to figure out who or what they are,” Malakai said from next to her, “it’s a projected image. They’re not actually there. The system can’t pick up on imaginary people.”

Quinn nodded as if that was, you know, commonplace in her world, which she guessed it was now. She continued to watch the events unfold in front of her. 

There were a few more Serpensirils she of course couldn’t recognize, but above all, there was Kajaro. He sat at the head of the table and watched as Tenejo took each step into the room. Then he closed the open book in front of him and pushed it away so he could steeple his hands.

Everything felt so real, even though she knew it was all in Tenejo’s head. 

“This is his goal, then.” she said to Hal.

Hal nodded very slowly. “He has an exceptional grasp of what he wants to achieve. I’m surprised he’s going for this. We made the escape a little easier than we usually would have, but I didn’t believe he’d take to it so fast. He must be desperate.” He frowned as he watched. “Look, Kajaro does not seem pleased.”

“But that’s just a projection, right?” Quinn asked, peering at the book in front of the Serpensiril.

“Yes, yes it is. Unless...” he turned to the imps next to him. “Double-check that he’s not using some internal connection we managed to overlook.”

Several dials on the image array in front of the two imps flared up. They shook their head and spoke in unison again. “There is no infiltration in his mind that we can see.”

Hal nodded, and everyone’s attention returned to the scene below them.

“You failed to kill the Librarian, and you failed to bring us Milaro,” Kajaro said, his sibilant voice full of disdain. “Just why is it you’ve sought an audience when we’re having a meeting?”

Tenejo’s voice, when he spoke, sounded raspier than Quinn remembered. He bowed low before righting himself. “I apologize, but I did bring news. News that the Library is stronger than we anticipated at this point in time.”

“How so?” Kajaro leaned back in his chair, the slim ridge above his eye raised.

Tenejo hesitated, as if he was trying to remember the details. “The Library was able to encase me, to prevent me from following the King’s scent. And then the Librarian was able to stop me. Even after I gave in to the power you gifted me.”

“You used that power already,” Kajaro said, slapping a hand on the table in front of him. His tone had changed from languid to annoyed. 

“Yes,” Tenejo said. “I had to. They had me trapped. I almost gave away things. I almost let them know.”

“You should never have let them know,” a voice said that Quinn couldn’t quite tell the direction from. Even Hal leaned forward, confusion plain on his face.

“Is there somebody hidden in the shadows?” Quinn whispered as she peered in through the smoke.

“Yeah.” Eric said as he fluttered above the railing. “Someone in a robe, I think.”

“That’s curious,” Malakai popped a treat into his mouth, obviously thoroughly entertained. “It’s definitely curious.”

The robed figure continued speaking. “You should have finished the job if you accessed the power.”

“But I had to. Surely there’s something you can do,” Tenejo said, an edge of hysteria in his voice.

That’s when Quinn noticed there was something wrong with his skin. Mottled and scaly he might be, but it appeared to be cracking. She could see red ridges just behind the marks, and they were widening.

“There’s nothing that can save you now,” Kajaro gave a cruel smile. “You should have died at the Librarian’s hand. At least then you would have had a pleasant death.”

“No. I have information. I can give you...”

“I can glean the information from your cold, dead brain, Tenejo. You were warned. You knew what accessing that power would do.” The voice in the shadows faded as the creature retreated into nothingness.

“But you said there was a way to reverse it.” There was panic in Tenejo’s voice now, and Quinn glanced at Hal, who seemed quite concerned. He motioned to the two imps that had fetched them, and they fluttered down toward the dome, taking on guises of Serpensiril guards as they crossed through into it. Quinn wanted that hologram technology.

Tenejo was panicking by now, backpedaling, appealing to every single type of person in the room. But they began to flicker in and out, and Quinn suddenly noticed why. Tenejo’s face was crumbling. First the scales on the back of his head were darkening, and his fingers became black as well. The scales were rotting where they sat on his flesh and the cracks widened even more.

“You have to reverse this,” he said. “Please.”

“Oh, Tenejo,” Kajaro said, sounding not at all contrite. “Did you honestly think that if you came to me, having failed not one but two missions, that I would even give you the time of day? We only listened because we thought you might, on the very off chance, have something of significance to share with us.”

“They moved me...” Tenejo’s voice crackled. 

“Well, that will be your final resting place, won’t it? The last place you were.” Tenejo waved at the guards who were standing on either door.

Tenejo screamed, “No, please. Please, just...” And then his jaw fell off. Blood and a strange black sludge dripped from his face, and he could no longer say anything. His eyes held panic, but Kajaro continued to wave him away and clean that up.

The shadow emerged and looked right up at the observation platform for just a second. Quinn saw a flash of red eyes, and then it, along with the entire image in front of them, was gone, leaving only Tenejo decomposing and sprawled on the floor of the dome.

“Well,” Hal said, “that was unexpected.”

Quinn gaped at him. “Surely that wasn’t all in his head.”

“No... it wasn’t. There were fail-safes built into him.”

“So he’s dead, and we didn’t learn a thing,” Malakai said. “Great.”

“On the contrary.” Hal said, grinning. “Didn’t you see the book in front of Kajaro?”

Quinn sighed. She’d been hoping she was seeing what she wanted to, being an illusion and all. “Yeah...”

“Don’t be so glum, Librarian.”

She rolled her eyes. “Why ever not? It’s Lightyears away.”

“Ah,” Hal said as the platform began to move back down to safety. “But now we know who has Ririn’s Dimensional Distortion Through Sacrificial Means. And knowing is half the battle.”

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LOOK! Threads woven weeeeee

Much love

KT