LSRO: Chapter 180 - Endless Stars (Patreon)

I made it! Okay - back is getting a bit better. I am hoping to be back to my morning postings by the end of the week, but you will definitely be getting your chapters.

I actually love this chapter - I'm starting to weave that damn rug haha

Hope you enjoy it!

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Chapter 180

Endless Stars

Quinn gazed out of the window in the restricted vault, marveling at the endless stars in the vast sky. The universe spread out before her. 

It was quiet in the restricted area, with her newly adapted seating booth and all the books she could devour. However, she didn’t want to devour all of these. She knew that most of them were far above her current levels. That for most things outside of mind magic, ice, and now a bit of fire, she was barely even scraping the intermediate surface. Leap frogging ahead too far before her mind and body were ready, for some of the content in here would be foolhardy.

There were still plenty of abilities and skills for her to gain in the beginner areas... 

Still, she pulled Reality Combined: Chaos Fever Dream toward her and searched for the little mentioning of Ashiron pillar. It took her quite a while to relocate it, so long that she was starting to get irritated. But just as she was about to give up, she finally located it. 

Replacement Ashiron X982 faulty. Third reminder failed.

Maybe now the system was beginning to recover from its glitches, she’d be able to get to the bottom of it. Pulling up her interface, she accessed the system search. Attempting to scroll through the Library catalog and related information would only give her a headache if she didn’t attempt to narrow it down.

Define: Ashiron X982 faulty.

What does Third Reminder Failed mean?

There were several moments of silence in her thoughts, before a whirring sound rushed through her mind, followed by a semi-high-pitched beep. Quinn shook her head, trying to shake the sound loose as it bounced around inside her skull. She groaned, but then sat up straight, staring at the information in front of her eyes as it typed itself out.

Pillar Reminders are issued under the following circumstances:

Filtration change requires an F39B4 form, as long as its induced by positive attrition. 

Should it be faulty, Filtration change requires an F39M3 form be submitted for onsite golems to be activated.

Deterioration of the inner linings and chaotic leak protection function could result in meltdown - An X7524 must be issued for an inner lining, and an X982 for the chaotic leak protection function.

Should neither of these be implemented, a shift V197G will be issued to prevent misalignment and chaotic mass breach.

Has this answered your question?

Yes or No?

Quinn blinked at all the words in front of her. And indicated no.

Please expand your query further.

There had been a chaotic leak that could cause a mass breach... and someone had sealed it? She shook her head. That wasn’t enough information for her to go on, but it was a hell of a lot more than she’d initially had to go on. So at least there was that.

There were golems? Quinn frowned. Surely they could have had them... oh, that was right. There hadn’t been enough power for that back when she precariously balanced in a harness while scaling the failing pillar. 

Taking a deep breath, she tried to get her head around the information. It was still too vague, but at least now she knew the reason Siliqua hadn’t been able to initiate anything with the pillar. It had been shifted... a V197G shift, whatever that meant, to prevent things from breaking further.

Or, at least, that’s what Quinn understood.

She pondered a few moments and then asked another question. “Is a shift V197G in place?”

That strange whirring sound breezed through her brain again. This time, the beep was softer and less prolonged.

Unable to verify. 

Ashiron communications array currently inoperable. 

Recommendation: Repair communications array, enable standard operating beacon. 

Quinn suppressed a groan and pushed her hair out of her eyes.

Has this answered your query?

Yes or No?

“Query now, is it?” she muttered under her breath, but knew better than to tempt anything else. Clearing her throat, she spoke directly to the system. “No it hasn’t. But I’ll instigate another query at a later time.”

Silence filled her head again, and Quinn frowned. So basically, the only answer she’d gotten was that something had gone super wrong, which she already knew. And that it had been shifted out of phase with the rest of the pocket dimension. Something she’d also known thanks to Siliqua’s supposition. 

It irritated her that she’d literally hit a dead end unless she went down there and tried to figure out what was wrong with it in the first place. Perhaps she’d summon Misha soon and have the golem initiated some filtration chamber helpers so they could restore the communications array... whatever that entailed.

Quinn put her head in her hands and just sighed.

And that was when Lynx popped into the room, directly in front of her to such an extend that he almost appeared inside the table.

Quinn started and blinked at him rapidly as his body continued to solidify. She’d left him on the couch in her office, where he’d sequestered himself earlier while she spoke with Geneva and Dottie. After all, he’d seemed fairly engrossed in his own world then. Not that she could blame him, considering all his memories were beginning to come back.

Of course, he needed time for himself, and she didn’t begrudge him that.

But she couldn’t help but be relieved he was here again. Even if she was slightly wary about why he might be there. “What brings you here?” She asked when it became obvious that he wasn’t going to comment first. 

Lynx blinked rapidly, then focused directly on her, a massive grin spreading across his face in that way that reminded her specifically of a damned cheshire cat. She wondered if he’d ever read the book or seen the movie.

“Lynx?”

The grin, if at all possible, got wider. “I didn’t realize you’d left.” he grinned. Not said. Not laughed. Not asked. No, he completely and utterly spoke the words in what could only be described as a grin.

“I left like two hours ago now... is everything okay?” If he’d lost that much time, then she was probably right to be concerned about him. She wondered if she had to contact the Library, and tentatively began to reach out.

“No. No. There’s no need to do that.” He said, gently nudging her senses away. “I am perfectly okay. Perfectly me. For the first time since you met me.” His grin was now a positively beaming smile.

It was difficult not to just get swept along with him when he was lie this. Or at least, that’s what she’d imagined. After all, it was the first time she’d experienced him in this good a mood. Not even when she arrived and saved the Library from collapsing in on the universe had he seemed so excited or happy. Granted, he’d also been in the middle of discovering that he was no longer fully functional.

“You’re okay then?” she asked, a smile tugging at her own mouth.

“As well as I can be right now, anyway.” He said, a slightly more serious tone in his voice. 

“Still piecing everything together?” She asked sympathetically.

“Quite, quite.” His brow furrowed and his runes churned in his hair. 

Quinn was all sorts of glad to have him back. Without him there, it simply felt like a part of the Library was missing. An extremely integral part. “Well, I’m glad you’re back.” She said softly.

Lynx grinned at her. “Good! Because I’ll probably need your help again. Now that I’m starting to get memories and functions back. There are already a few things I didn’t realize I’d lost access to that have returned.”

“Really?” Quinn asked, quite curious. “Like what?”

“The ability to track any book within the Library no matter what it is or who its with or where it’s located.” He frowned for a second and then brightened up just as fast. “Excellent - I should be able to access that once we boot up to the next power level. Although that’s taken longer than I would have liked - due to Jasper using that locating ritual, and then having to basically reassign myself and the Library with that work around... we pulled pretty heftily on those power reserves.”

Quinn held up a hand to forestall another onslaught of words. “So you’re telling me that we’ll be able to locate the other books definitively once we move up to another power level?”

Lynx shrugged. “Mostly. That portion of the system wasn’t activated correctly. It had been shut down, but when we were realigning ourselves with the new sequences, we managed to reset that section of the system and unlock it.”

“That’s very welcome news then.” Quinn said, suddenly feeling like there was more hope to get the books back, defeat the bad guys, and get the Library completely restored. She had a sudden thought. “Hey, who would I talk to about expanding the Library offerings?”

Lynx did a double take and stared at her. “What do you mean, expanding the Library offerings?”

“Precisely that.” Quinn shrugged. “I want fiction book, stories, you know, pieces of writing made for entertainment. I’d think that way it’s far easier to understand what goes on in the heads of others. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes and whatnot.”

Lynx sighed. “Well, perhaps I’m misunderstanding the scope, but once the academy has been unlocked, rebooted, expanded to... whatever you want to describe it as -- there’s a whole fictional section in there. Playwrights, scripts, compositions, right through to children’s story books, fables, and many books. Although I don’t believe there are any from Earth there. After all... you can’t access the Academy if you don’t have magic.” He paused a second and chuckled. “Or at all at the moment, it would seem.”

Quinn flashed him a scowl. “No need to be facetious.”

“No need. But it is fun.”

“You’ve been hanging around Malakai too much.” Quinn grumbled, despite being excited to see Lynx less grumpy. She changed the subject. “Anyway, I take it to mean that the Academy has some fiction and thus it would be very easy to expand it or implement another branch for it in the future, right?”

Lynx laughed. “Yes. That is exactly what I mean.”

His eyes went distant for a second, but only that long. It didn’t seem to take him a ridiculous amount of time to search or communicate now. “Wonderful,” he said. “There are sections starting to unlock. The occasional vision that I didn’t recall before but now, upon seeing the memory, I know exactly what happened. Give me a few moments while I dive into this one.”

Quinn turned her attention back to the book in front of her. Not that it was going to tell her anything more about Ashiron pillar, just that she wanted to have something else to look at other than Lynx’s flickering eyes. Learning about Chaos from these books had definitely helped her understanding of them, but she felt like there was so much more for her to comprehend.

“Damn it.” Lynx said.

Quinn turned to look up at him. His coloring had changed ever so slightly and now fluctuated between a deep red and purple. From the sensations he gave off, Quinn could only imagine how angry he must be for those emotions to boil over considering he usually had such excellent control over himself. She made sure her voice was soft when she spoke. “What is it?” She asked cautiously.

“Just... I know there’s so much more I still need to uncover, and that all of these holes in my mind are one person’s doing. Someone I trusted explicitly and am now, even with this first memory, realizing she used to the fullest of her abilities.” His scowl ran deep, giving a harsh gleam to his eyes. A very unlike Lynx thing.

“But now you’ve got them back despite what she did, and you can put a stop to whatever machinations she had planned. You’ll win this Lynx. In the end, she only delayed the inevitable.”

Lynx focused on Quinn’s gaze for what seemed like an age. Then he nodded once. “You’re right. I’m diving back in. I’ve almost got it.”

Quinn didn’t have to wait long this time. Lynx practically growled with rage and pulled himself out of whatever vision or memory he was in. She knew better than to ask him what was wrong. Instead, she waited for him to be ready to spill it all, to tell her.

Lynx reached out a hand to her. “Please, take it. See what I’m seeing.”

Without hesitation, she did so and plunged into a deeply cold yet soothing sensation that had to be Lynx’s mind. It was different from Milaro’s or Eugea’s. This was a sea of obsessively categorized perfect pockets of information. This was how Lynx operated on the inside.

Quinn could see boxes, stacked neatly, sort of like shipping containers, would be in an organized shipping yard. In each of the boxes there were images playing and replaying - except in a bunch at the far end that were all like TV from the 80s at 3am... where static overtook everything. 

“Those are the empty ones... the ones I’ve yet to reconnect to.” His voice sounded hollow in here, like there was no body attached to it. He gestured toward one box that was slowly coming into clear reception. “That one.”

Quinn watched it... the beautiful slender cyclops figure of Korradine flitted across the image. It was back, close to the beginner combat section of the Library. A door opened there, revealing a person in a hood. Extremely tall, maybe close to how Hal appeared when he was in the Library but not as bulky, and he hid under a hood. Lynx... the one in the vision was about to say something when he stopped and observed.

Hood guy’s words were difficult to make out, but it was obvious from the relaxed way Korradine stood that she was used to dealing with him. She shook her head twice, and then her shoulders slumped slightly in defeat. “Fine.” She said. “We’ll do it your way this time.”

“You’re being watched. Take care of it, or else I’ll have to rethink my decision about molding you for this position.” With a flourish of the cloak, he was gone.

Quinn could feel Lynx about to dissipate, but suddenly a hard wall slammed around him and then Korradine was right in front of his face.

She seemed genuinely concerned, and even her tone when she spoke held the same emotion. “You should know better than to eavesdrop, Lynx. I can’t let you keep that memory... It seems we’re making a habit of this.”

And then there was fuzziness followed by a blank sensation.

Quinn snapped back to reality in the Restricted Vault. “Shit.”

“Yeah.” Lynx said, his tone melancholy. “That about sums it up.”

“But now you know,” Quinn said, unsure how to make him feel better.

Lynx laughed, but it was a forced sound. “Yeah. Now I know... and apparently every time I knew... she just made me forget.”

Quinn didn’t know what to say to him, so she stood and gave him a side-hug. At least now they had confirmation. 

Korradine had been a willing plant from the start, no matter what might have happened later.

~~

I mean we suspected it, right? But now we know knooooooow

Much love

KT