LSRO: Chapter 8 - Corridors (Patreon)

Yeeeep. Beware those angry benches. You just never know where they'll show up. Sort of glad that my furniture can't talk...

Anyhu - again. Welcome to the edited version

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Chapter 8

Corridors

The bench continued to hop up and down like it had been greatly inconvenienced while Quinn tried to get her thoughts neatly lined up. Who was she kidding though, nothing about any of this lined up any which way she tried to put it.

Reaching up to the opposite upper arm, she gave herself a hefty pinch. An "Ow!" escaped her involuntarily regardless of how prepared she'd been for it. This was definitely a reality. Perhaps not the one she was used to, but it was real. So why couldn't she seem to accept it as such?

She was still gaping at the seat and trying to figure out how to deal with what appeared to be a sentient piece of furniture when Lynx returned.

"Oh, well. That's unsurprising." Lynx surveyed the scene in front of him and snorted back a laugh.

Not taking her eyes off the still angrily trembling bench, Quinn added in her own sarcasm for good measure. "I'm so glad you're not surprised. Because everything about this world has, of course, made complete and utter sense to me."

Which was, of course, the wrong time to look at her guide and see that he wasn't, in fact, a simple human replica at that moment. No, he'd managed to grow an extra set of hands enabling him to hold a glass, a water jug, and two plates. Obviously, he'd never waited tables as a part-time job or he probably wouldn't have needed more than two hands to begin with.

Even so, she gaped at his added appendages.

Lynx actually laughed. It sounded like a cross between him having trouble breathing and a squeaky door hinge. "Dottie. Stop it."

The bench, however, seemed even more insulted. "Now you side with this interloper Lynx! How could you? You're being so..."

But Dottie didn't get to say anything else as a pulse of pressure rippled very subtly across the space.

"Fine." the bench blustered in a much more subdued tone. "But I want it on record that I don't approve!"

"You can sit now." Lynx motioned to the suddenly quiet bench as he shuffled over with the bowl held by one of his two extra hands.

Quinn simply sat down, trying not to just drop her weight onto the poor bench that had been so mortified by her taking a seat. She had to try her hardest not to stare. "Thanks." she said as Lynx put the meal down in front of her.

Glancing into the food bowl, she suppressed a sigh. She guessed drive-thrus weren't a thing here. This food didn't exactly look appetizing, and if truth be told, her appetite had mostly fled along with the bookworm goop that was still in her hair.

But her stomach betrayed her and rumbled anyway. There was nothing for it, she did need to eat. She stirred the lumpy liquid and peered into it. It looked like carrots, and maybe some steamed potato and something that looked like rice but she wasn't so sure about it. But then she looked back up to see Lynx standing there, expectantly, like a real boy again -- sans extra hands.

She had to ask. "You just had four hands, and you were like tangible." Okay, so it was a statement and not a question. She knew what she'd seen. For someone who kept harping on how much power the Library didn’t have, he sure was using it.

"Yes, I did. Can't you grow an extra pair when you need it?" Lynx managed to deadpan the question so perfectly, Quinn almost laughed even though she noticed that he didn't add any comment about being solid. She filed it away for later. He seemed extremely deft at not answering questions.

Quinn looked down into her food bowl and chuckled. "Well, no. No, I can’t grow extra limbs. But I know a lot of people who would like to." With that, she finally raised a spoonful of the food to her mouth. She blew on it, making the steam clouds waft away, closed her eyes, and put it in her mouth.

She was surprised by the saltiness and a little bit of a savory undercurrent that she couldn't quite place. It smelled like home in a way, like one of those dishes that your mom or grandmother would make for you on a rainy day when everything else seemed to be going wrong. At least they made it for her before they died in that horrible accident, anyway.

"This... this isn't bad," she said, surprising herself. It definitely tasted a lot better than it looked.

Lynx laughed, but there was a hint of pride in the tone. "Great. It's good to know that you thought I might poison you."

Quinn smiled but forwent a quip of her own because frankly, her stomach was cramping from hunger. Now that she'd given it a taste of food, there was nothing for it but to finish the rest of it. She also thought it best not to ask the Library to define what it was. Best to just enjoy it.

She shoveled spoonful after spoonful into her mouth, pleasantly surprised that the savory sensations increased with each bite. They compounded and made it just a dance of flavors on her tongue, sort of like a milder version of roasted vegetables and grains. Just with so much more.

She guessed the grains were like wild rice. It looked like the type of expensive rice that came in tiny packets in some of the stores back home. There was a hearty aroma underneath all of it, this earthy, amazing taste. Warm, comfortable. Yeah, it was just right.

For a moment she felt like Goldilocks, having found the perfect porridge.

All too soon it was gone and she scraped the spoon around the bowl, making sure she got the good of it all. And then she leaned back.

"Hey now, hey now, don't do that!" The bench beneath her grumbled. It seemed Dottie's mood hadn't improved since her first little outburst. "You can't just go using me like a couch and leaning back like that. You'll overbalance me. Then we'll both fall and I could break!"

Quinn laughed at the visual, which seemed to infuriate Dottie even more and the bench went on a tirade, practically quivering with rage beneath her. "And now you're laughing at me? Do you take nobody else's feelings into consideration? What an impertinent child!"

"Hey," Quinn said, her mood suddenly soured. She pushed herself to stand, staring down at the insulting bench. "I'm not a child, and you guys called me here. You pulled me here away from a potentially decent future and plopped me in the middle of this shit without asking or checking to see if it was something I would want to do. So, stop it with the attitude and be happy I'm not copping one."

There was silence for a moment. Quinn glanced to the side and could see that Lynx actually seemed mildly uncomfortable at her words despite them all being truth. Dottie, on the other hand, was trembling ever so slightly. Quinn could feel it against the back of her legs.

“She doesn’t have all the information, does she?” The bench angled the question toward the Library manifestation. Lynx shook his head, and the bench seemed to sigh.

"I see. I apologize. I was out of line." Dottie actually sounded contrite, and the trembling must have been nerves, not anger this time.

Quinn sighed and reached down to pet the bench before pushing away from the table even though she really could have eaten another five bowls of that stuff. "That's fine, but seriously, sometimes you need to think before you speak. You might not have the full story." Quinn cringed at the fact that there were echoes of her foster parents in there. Maybe she really was growing up.

She'd been transported to another world. There was no safety net anymore. Her inheritance wasn't hoarded in a bank here waiting for her to turn twenty-one soon. She had no backup. Nothing. Heck, she wasn't even sure what passed for currency in this world. Was there even currency?

Lynx cut in before she could go too far down that rabbit hole. "At least we got you fed. Hopefully enough to belay the hunger a bit. The grumbling was starting to disturb me. It was so loud I couldn't think straight." His eyes sparkled in a non-human, sort of electrical outlet way, but at least the humor reached her.

"Well," Quinn said, clearing her throat. "Whose fault is that? You pulled me here before I got to eat for the day, and then wrangled me into synchronizing with the core system thing, and even made me fight a damn monster -- all before feeding me." She could swear that she heard squelching off in the distance that sounded suspiciously bookworm-like.

A sudden well of trepidation formed in her gut. "We're gonna have to do something about those worms, aren’t we? I mean, I can hear them from here. Should I really have stopped to eat? I mean, aren't they just growing and devouring more and becoming larger and worse and..."

Lynx cut her off. "Hey, they’ve been doing this for centuries. It’s taken a while for them to get this far. Before we go back, you're going at least need to know how to swing a broom."

"A broom. Is that really the best weapon you have for me?" Quinn crossed her arms, still expecting Dottie to pipe up at any moment.

"As I’ve mentioned, the Library is only minimally functional right now."  Lynx looked uncomfortable with that last statement.

“But you keep solidifying anyway…” Quinn squinted at him, trying to get a read on what he meant. He blushed at her last comment but in a more embarrassed way. She had to remember that Lynx wasn't actually human, and therefore, it was difficult to get a read on an entity that technically was a library. She shook her head and held up her hand so he didn't say anything else.

"Look, I... So I get what you mean by the library is only minimally functional right now because we just rebooted it and it doesn't have power.”

“Actually,” he cut in. “It’s not quite rebooted yet…”

She shot him a glare and continued like he hadn’t spoken. “The grids have to load, or power up, or insert your magical spell, or whatever you guys call this power structure you have, but it seems to require something other than power..." She paused, waiting to make sure she'd been following correctly.

Lynx nodded, and she could almost see the thoughts flying through his brain. How was he going to explain this to her? "The library has many different divisions. There's magic, alchemy, medicinal, combat, and several more. The portion of the Library we currently have has the basics of everything except for magic which is its only advanced subject. It only has complex magical tomes, or it should have. That's a tangent we'll come back to. Combat, for example, is something we only have the very basic introductory elements of, and some of those are overdue library books and thus not where they belong. So we don't actually have access to that knowledge right now in order to give you the knowledge. Do you understand what I mean?"

Quinn shook her head, noticing that Dottie was trembling again in a weird sort of anticipatory. "Well, I don't understand what you mean, but it seems that Dottie thinks she can probably explain it better."

"I can! I can!" Dottie said, sounding excited to actually be able to contribute after her weird faux pas from earlier. "Since you’re the librarian, anything you read becomes your knowledge and as long as you understand what you're reading, it becomes your power."

"Wait, wait." Quinn pinched her brows with her fingers. "Wait, I don't... So knowledge is power, basically. You're telling me if I read a book and believe and understand what's in it, then I can use that as a form of magic?"

"Well, you're simplifying it a little bit," Lynx said. "That's not quite how it works. You have to have the correct affinity, and taking in the information and processing it into a form that requires you to put it into practice even though you're aware of the technicalities does require a modicum of the Library's functional magic, yes."

"So technically I'll use... innate magic to learn this stuff?" Quinn tried to wrap her head around the ramifications of that.

Lynx grimaced. "I mean, you're a part of the Library now, and thus you do have access to magic. But with the state we're currently in? You need more power, the library needs more power. In order to get your magic and thus generate more power so the library can get more power, you need to learn from your magic."

"Alrighty then," Quinn said, rubbing her temples while trying to absorb all the information. "But the basics is, read a book, learn a book, understand a book, gain magical access to abilities. Correct?"

"Well, technically..." Lynx muttered. "If you want to make it sound easy."

"Maybe you should let it sound easy,” Dottie said haughtily.

Lynx raised an eyebrow at her. "You've certainly changed your tune."

"Well, that's because she treated me with the respect due to me, and because you never gave the the information."

Lynx barked out a laugh. "Yeah, well the information scrambling isn’t something I controlled and we both know you’re not due anything. You're being insufferable."

"Well, at least I've kept you company this whole time." If Dottie had a proper mouth, she would have been pouting.

But it seemed Lynx was being particularly stubborn. "You didn't have to, you know. I have other furniture I can talk to."

"Guys," Quinn interrupted. "Look, I think it's great that you're communicating, but we have a lot to do right now. I need to understand how to fight enough so I can go squish those worms there without simply flailing a mop around. We can start getting the Library on track again if I can defeat them, right? Isn't that the whole purpose of me being here?"

Lynx had the grace to look somewhat contrite.

"You're right," he sighed, which was, you know, a feat in itself, considering sighing while talking was like multitasking. But then Quinn guessed he was sort of a computer in a roundabout, magical way.

"Okay, getting back to magic. You said there are basic books here, basic skills, right? Won't I have to learn all of the basic skills in order to master any of the magic in this place anyway?" Logic. No matter the circumstance, logic was usually a safe bet.

Lynx’s eyes did that weird distance thing again and he nodded. "That's true. There are only a couple of introductory fighting texts available. We'll start with those. Come on, follow me."

A thrill of excitement ran up Quinn's back. She'd dabbled some in martial arts and never really got the hang of it, but she'd always been fascinated by any sort of book or drama or television show that gave her the opportunity to witness fighting, to imagine fighting. Maybe she'd be good at it.

Well, if the broom was anything to go by, she probably wouldn't be. But still, it was worth a try.

She hurried after Lynx, who strode away with complete and utter purpose. They dodged through strewn books, ripped-out pages, bent furniture, broken furniture, and other furniture that skidded out of the way as they approached.

Bending down to grab a book, she started when Lynx snapped. “Don’t touch the books before you know how they work!”

Pulling her hand away, Quinn decided she'd talk to Dottie about that later. Maybe in advertently getting the bench on her side had been a good idea, not that she'd done it deliberately.

Still, she followed Lynx past the hall entrance where she could hear bookworms munching away at magical dust motes or whatnot, and down a small side corridor instead. The walls of which felt like they were closing in, it was that narrow. The wood had become scratched and worn and nothing like the faded beauty that was in the entrance hall or the rest of the library.

In fact, it was quite an eerie sense of abandonment. She hugged herself and rubbed her arms to maintain some warmth because all of it seemed to have bled out of this section of the library.

The Gloom was real here.

A smell of mustiness permeated the whole area, not like the low and earthy smell in the rest of the library or the slightly pungent, mildly disgusting smell that existed where the earthworms were.

No this, this felt like something was angry and festering and old, very, very old. Still, she pushed on and finally, Lynx stopped in front of a door at the end of the narrow hallway. He turned back and looked at her.

"Okay, you wanted to fight, right?" It almost felt like he was speaking in code.

"Well, how else are we gonna get rid of the bookworms?" She tried to keep it lighthearted as the aura in this hall was anything but.

"I know, you're right," he said. "I just wish we had more time to take care of this. Hold your breath for a few seconds, you're going to need to."

And with that, without any further preamble, he opened the door and the gust of wind that tore out of that room threatened to blow everything away.~~

Thank you for reading! Please let me know what you think!

Much love

KT