LSRO: Chapter 9 - Absorption (Patreon)

I would seriously love to be able to do what she does in this chapter. I bet you'd love to be able to too. Let me know what you think?

And this is normal draft mode!

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Chapter 9

Absorption

Quinn barely managed to grab onto a piece of trim in time to stop herself from getting swept away by the wind that buffeted out of the room beyond. She’d never had to use such a death-grip before in her life.

Even Lynx had to brace himself. Maybe it was her imagination but he appeared to flicker ever so slightly. Perhaps magical interference or something. Quinn wished she knew more than she did.

It felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds long. Yet, it left Quinn gasping for air.

"Why didn't you warn me about that sooner?" she asked, still panting to get her breath back.

Lynx blinked at her. "Oh, right. Sorry. I didn't really think... It was a seal I didn’t have the power I needed to deactivate. I'll have to get used to this corporeal thing. It's amazing what a few hundred years without a human, or at least a solid person around, can do."

Quinn crept closer to the door, ignoring the utter lack of consideration from her guide. She filed the fact that his visage had flickered away. There was plenty of time to go over that later. She peered into the room. It was much smaller than she'd expected, with far fewer books.

"This is an odd addition to the library," she said, slowly looking around. It was highly obvious that it had been added on at some stage in the far distant past. Even the wood on the floor was worn in such a way that, if she'd been barefoot, she probably would have gotten splinters in her feet. It was old and dilapidated and not cared for in the slightest.

"Why is it so broken?" she asked, turning around slowly to see all of the bookcases, some of which had splintered shelving, some of them literally cracked in two, or worn in such places that it appeared about to crack with the slightest force. She could almost count the amount of books in this room. Maybe a hundred or so?

For a room with fifteen bookcases, that wasn’t much. Most of them were empty. And there was a window, but it looked like it was boarded up. No light streamed in. She wondered where that might even lead to.

Still. "Lynx, are you going to answer me? I mean, this isn't exactly what I thought we'd be coming into when you said I'd learn to fight." She quelled the panic. Just because it didn’t look like a training room, didn’t mean anything, right?

Lynx didn't respond. His eyes were far away. She stepped closer to him, looking at his face from probably a foot away, the closest she'd been to him since she arrived. And that was when she noticed that his eyes really were more lizard-like than cat-like, and not human-like at all. They had a slit and a weird jeweled membrane over them. It lent an iridescent hue to the golden green of his eyes. She shook herself so she could focus again.

"Lynx," she snapped her fingers in front of his face, and he suddenly blinked. "Sorry, I had several settings that I had to check. The library has begun to slowly recharge."

There was a small smile playing at the corner of his lips, and Quinn felt mildly accomplished. She might desperately want to know how it was recharging, and just how she facilitated that. It was something she could ask the Library later. Right now, she needed to learn to fight before the bookworms got bigger or multiplied. "Look, that's great, but tell me what I need to do. There's nobody else here who can help me."

He looked contrite again. He was actually very good at that. It was like he’d had practice.

"So, spill, what is the story behind this room? Why is it so..."

"Wrecked," Lynx said. "Finished, broken, dilapidated, run down. Take your pick. A few hundred years with nobody to maintain it, with nobody to use it. We came through one of the connecting corridors. Usually, this would be the antechamber for the combat wing. Right now, it’s more like a storage room for the very basics. That's all we've got to go off."

Quinn wanted to scream and tell him to stop trying to coddle her, stop trying to protect her or whatever it was he was doing. Instead, realizing that learning to fight was important, she swallowed that down to save for later and turned to glare at him, crossing her arms as she looked him dead in the eyes. "Can't you just let me use magic? I can take care of it lickety-split that way!"

Link started to laugh; the sound echoed strangely in the small, broken room.

She got exasperated with him and had to calm herself to speak. "Why are you laughing? Don't just laugh at me. Try explaining instead."

That sobered Lynx up a bit. "I'm sorry. I just... You can't use magic on bookworms. Didn't you listen to anything I told you about them?"

Quinn scrunched her brow, trying to remember. "Well, they feed off ma... Oh. So you're telling me if somebody uses magic to try and kill a bookworm, it's just gonna absorb it?"

"Yes and no. If you use magic that is its affinity, then it will absorb that magic. But if you use magic of an alternating or a different frequency, type, or affinity, it could do one of many things. It could explode the bookworm all over you. It could empower the bookworm. It could enrage the bookworm."

Quinn gulped at the visual. "So basically what you're saying is: we don't use magic to kill bookworms."

"Precisely."

"Okay, got it. That's all you had to say about it."

"Well, now I've explained. That’s what you asked for." Apparently, Lynx could be pedantic when he wanted to be.

Quinn couldn't argue with his words though, so she continued on as if nothing had happened. "That could have been a really bad rookie mistake. Make sure to tell me things that might seem obvious to you. Teach me to fight now. I don't care if it's with a stick or a mop or a broom or a desk. We need to get those bookworms under control."

"I know," was all Lynx said.

Quinn watched him as he moved toward one of the far bookcases. He reached up a couple of shelves and grabbed a very old and tattered book before pulling it down. He then crouched on the floor and patted a spot in front of him. Quinn took another deep breath and walked over.

She could put up with this. The way he sometimes treated her like an afterthought. After all, he’d been alone for a long time. She needed power to kill the worms, to feed the owls.

Oh my God, how was this her life now? Taking a deep breath, she spoke as evenly as she could, ignoring the butterflies of doom in her stomach. "Okay, fine. So what do I do? Crouch. Kneel. Sit. What do you want?"

"Just sit down comfortably enough so that you can read the book."

This seemed odd. How did they have time for this? "You seriously want me to sit and read a book right now? You can't just plug that into my head."

This time, it was Lynx's turn to take a deep breath. Did he even need oxygen? Quinn had so many questions. So many questions that weren't pertinent to getting the library up and powered right now. But damn, maybe she could do an equal parts exchange with him.

"Quinn, are you listening?"

"Oh, sorry. I just... Can we do an exchange of information? I'll ask you a question, you'll give me an answer, and then I'll do some of the work you want me to?"

Lynx looked at her, blinking rapidly. Maybe he was accessing information. Magical beings seemed eerily similar to computers in some ways.

"Equal parts exchange. I thought we were sort of doing that already." He said, like he was testing the words out. "I’d say I owe you one, so what question do you have?"

"I want to know... Just... Do you need to breathe? Are you like a sentient being? Are you... What are you?"

Lynx smiled. It was a small smile, but the expression actually seemed to be genuine.

"Well, I'm a manifestation of the library, perhaps the manifestation would be more accurate. It uses some parts of mana, knowledge, and projection. I think your world called it a holograph, but it's not quite accurate because I can manifest tangibly depending on the amount of magic expenditure. So I am a being and I evolve outside of the library, but at the same time with the library. I do not require oxygen, but I do attempt to mimic the life forms around me. Does that answer your question?"

Quinn just sat there and gaped at him. "I think so," she said, because to be honest, she wasn't exactly sure if she understood even two-thirds of what he just said, but he had answered her question and she could process that information on her own time.

Now it was her turn. "Okay. I just read through the book and that's it?"

"Yes," he handed it to her and she crossed her legs, spreading it out in her lap, and began the long and arduous task of reading the book. Except after a couple of minutes of not having turned more than one page, Lynx reached out a hand and placed it on the book.

"What are you doing?" He asked, obviously perturbed. It was like he’d never seen someone read a book before.

She looked at the book and back at him, wondering if she needed to demonstrate in a different way. "I'm reading the book."

"But you're a librarian. That's not how you read a book. You just read it." He said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

She cocked her head to one side and said, "That's what I'm doing. I’m reading each word of the book. That is how you read."

"No. I'm sorry." Lynx paused for a moment like he was mulling over how to explain something to her. "Okay. I need you to spread both hands, actually, wait, open the book up into the middle, spread both hands, one over each side of the book palm down, and place them on those pages."

"Okay. Fine," she said, spreading the book over her knees, she placed each hand on one side of the book. "I just don't see how suddenly..."

A screen flickered in front of her, or maybe it was just a picture. She wasn't sure. It was like a 3D structure of the book that reached down and through and spread throughout her mind. And the moment she let herself connect to that progression, knowledge flooded through her. It was like the wind spread out of the room when they first opened it. It went all through her mind, all through her body, right down through into her veins.

They were on fire, but a different type of fire. It was like windburn and cold and ice. And suddenly she knew, she just knew how to hold a sword.

Basic Swordsmanship for the Beginner
Access level: Highest
Knowledge: Granted and Assimilated
Practical aptitude ready

"What even?" She opened her eyes and blinked up at Lynx. There was a lot she wanted to say, but the only thing she could think of was, "Whoa."

Her head felt as though it was filled with cotton candy. There was a strange taste to it, like clean linen suffused with raspberries, with a sort of tang, perhaps lemon. The smell was fresh but fiery, yet maybe with an underlying odor of sweat. She blinked again, looking at Lynx, who seemed extremely expectant in the way he leaned forward.

"So," he asked, "how do you feel?"

She couldn't answer that quite yet. She closed her eyes, put her hands on the book's pages, and tried to process what she'd done. There was intrinsic knowledge embedded into her now. She instinctively knew how to hold a sword, how to block with a sword, how to swing a sword. These were just extremely basic things, but already so much better than she'd ever been with that broom. She could tell without even having to pick up a sword. But where was she going to get a weapon from?

She opened her eyes. "Is this what you meant? A librarian can just absorb knowledge?"

"To a certain extent," Lynx said. "Basics like this will require very little practical study and provide a solid foundation. You should be able to learn the foundations of absolutely everything in existence. Which is a little unusual, to be honest. It'll be a huge overload at first, but the library should help you begin to recognize the full extent of what you can absorb, what you can process, and what your brain can hold. You'll be surprised." And he smiled. "So, what do you think?"

She grinned at him, not really thinking that being unusual was a bad thing. "You know, I think we need to get me a sword."

This time, Lynx chuckled. "Don't you think you're getting a little ahead of yourself there?"

"Maybe," Quinn said, "but you just gave me a book on how to use swords, so what else am I supposed to do? I can't use a broom like a sword, it doesn't have the same weight ratio." She paused. "Wow, that sounded like I really know what I was talking about."

This time, Lynx laughed. "Well, you technically do, you just need practical experience now."

"Wait, so the knowledge isn't going to just make me an expert in whatever I've read about?"

"Of course not. This magic just provides the avenue to mastering an ability. You'll have to fuel your knowledge with the power of mana so that it makes it so that you have the power to execute the skill that you've just learned. You’ve got to build muscle and memory for the things you master.” He actually sounded quite kind while instructing her. Not as flippant as he sometimes appeared.

Quinn squinted at him. "You say that like I'm supposed to understand it inherently."

"Well, you should, you're the librarian now."

"Great, I'll take that under advisement then, shall I?" She took a deep breath, knowing that he didn't deserve her to snap at him. Apparently, it wasn't just Lynx's fault, it was the library and the magic and the way the universe worked. "Give me a sword so I can practice and we can take care of the bookworms. Then I can make more food so I don't starve to death."

While she'd been talking, Lynx had moved over to another of the bookcases. He was frowning as he rifled through them. Most of them had broken shelving and books that were falling apart. It was like the magic in the library had gotten so low that there was nothing left for it to maintain things far out from the core.

She only hoped that what they were doing could help because, at this rate, nothing was going to survive, which meant neither of them would survive either.

"Here we go," he said finally, gripping a wooden short sword in his hand.

It was a training sword, or at least that's what she gathered from reading the book. Its edges were pointed but not exactly sharp, although enough force should help rectify that with something as soft as the bookworms.

Information still overlapped and ran rampant in her mind, but her body seemed to know exactly how to hold the hilt as she grabbed it. "The hilt of a sword, it's not a handle. Learn something new every day," she muttered under her breath.

Lynx only raised an eyebrow in her direction.

Despite herself, Quinn was actually feeling pretty good about the knowledge in her head. She made a couple of swings in the air with it before tsking under her breath. "Okay, I think, I think this can work, but like, am I supposed to hit you? I mean, there's going to be no resistance because you're incorporeal."

"Give me just a second." He glanced around the room. "I'll have to, I think I'll have to use the winch to get it to rise up since my level of control here is mostly nill. I'm just going to have to make do manually."

"Make do with what?" Quinn wanted to know. She watched him skeptically, still feeling the weight of the sword in her hand, trying to get used to it. It wasn't very well balanced as far as she could tell. While she wasn't sure how she knew that, the fact that she did filled her with excitement.

But it was definitely better than the broom.

She watched as Lynx pulled out a handle at the back of one of the bookcases and wound a winch. A definitive creaking accompanied the action and the floor opened slowly, an extremely old and dusty, what looked like a combat dummy rose out of the floor.

"This is different," she said, eyeing it critically. It was old but in better condition than the rest of the room.

"It's a training dummy. Whack it a few times so you get the feel of the sword." Lynx crossed his arms and stood back against the wall to watch.

Quinn obliged. She whacked it a few times for good measure on the arms, on the body, on the neck, on the head, dancing around, getting a feel for moving with the weight of a blade in her hand.

Well, the weight of a wooden blade in her hand anyway. It was smooth and much lighter than a steel sword would be. All she had to do was reference the stances she'd read about and her body moved of its own accord. Eventually, it would all probably feel like second nature if she practiced enough.

"Just how much can I learn this way?" She asked, a spark of excitement in her gut.

As Lynx was about to answer, there was a tremble, a rumbling that shuddered through the floor and right up into her very bones. She could feel the way the library groaned, the way the magic darted around, and the way the mana twisted.

If even a novice like her could tell, then something was very wrong.

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Thank you for reading.

Much love

KT