LSRO: Chapter 18 - The old Spear in the Back Trick (Patreon)

Have you ever watched the show Get Smart? 

I think I'm giving away my age with that question. But anyway - he'd always name things like this title. So now, I've decided I like this idea. Stay tuned for more chapters named in this way.

Rough Draft Warning - I write 80% of my drafts through dictation. I then give it a pass to flesh it out and make it the best first draft it can be even though that sort of makes it a second draft... 1.5 draft?

That's what this is. I then go through slowly and carefully before I place it on RR and finesse things. As soon as I do that, I'll replace the rough draft here with what is on RR too... what happens never changes, it's just tweaks for better flow or to include my stats where dictation doesn't work.

Hope you enjoy this chapter! The clock is ticking!

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Chapter 18

The old Spear in the Back Trick

Even as the spear dug into her back, Quinn wondered about the strange, seaweed-like smell. She realized it was coming from the being in front of her. Perhaps that's why they lived out here on the crags, close to the water, ensuring they were near their natural habitat. She needed to know more about everything in these worlds.

"State your case," they said, a strange lilt to their voices. Did that mean they were speaking English? Surely not everybody was speaking English. That was something else she was going to have to talk to Lynx about. The list just wouldn't stop growing. It didn't take a genius to realize that she should probably leave the talking to somebody who had been around in these worlds longer than her. And so, she deferred to Malachi.

"We seek Dinal, your leader."

"Dinal? You are lying." their captor practically spat. His tusks were far longer than the other one in the party. Maybe six inches or so.

"No, we're not," Malachi said, his tone even and patient. "We were sent to retrieve a book from him."

"You want something from our deceased leader?"

"Oh," Malachi stopped short, shooting a glance at Quinn. She shook her head rapidly, having no idea that Dinal had passed away. "We come seeking a book on behalf of the Library."

The creature in front of them began laughing. It was a loud and guttural laugh with a hint of nastiness contained inside. "Library, what library? Do we look like readers to you, boy?"

Malachi's eye twitched ever so slightly, but it was the only sign of his annoyance. "The Library of Everywhere told us to retrieve an overdue book from here." He wisely didn't comment on their reader status.

Their captor scowled. "You claim to be from the library. It doesn't even exist anymore. No one has been to the library in hundreds of years. It's gone along with every manageable magical aspect."

"You seem very knowledgeable," Quinn blurted out before she could stop herself. "Is there something you can tell us about the book?"

"Silence, human. You, you of all people, get no say in this."

Quinn shut her mouth and wondered what humans had done to offend this species. Not that she was surprised. Humans could be pretty violent and selfish. The spear tips prodded in her back and she knew they were doing the same thing to Malachi as they urged them both down the path. They took a pace that was much faster than Quinn was used to and frankly, she half-slid several times, barely regaining her balance and thanking her four years of gymnastics as a very young child for not falling flat on her face.

It didn't, however, save her from badly tweaking one of her ankles.

It took forever for them to reach the first plateau and opposite it was, in fact, a room that held barred cubicles, sort of like cells, jail cells as she realized when they tossed her in one and Malachi in another.

"You will stay here until the Arbiter can see you. I do not like your chances."

Quinn waited until the guard left and moved over to stand as close to Malachi as she could. She noticed he seemed quite defeated.

"What is that all about? I didn't remember that the Walry lived here and that Dinal was one of them." His shoulders sagged.

"Is that their species name?"

Malachi grinned. "Oh, it's a long, really complicated, and your tongue probably could not pronounce it. So Walry is their universal name I guess you'd say."

Quinn nodded thoughtfully. "He seemed to know about humans."

Malachi actually laughed. "Everybody knows about humans. You're like the cockroaches of the universe."

"Oh," Quinn said. She wasn't sure if that was a compliment or not. She was pretty sure it was the latter. After all, even where she came from, nobody liked cockroaches, especially not the flying kind. And the fact that it seemed like cockroaches were universal didn't bode well. She couldn't even be sucked into another world and escape them. "Okay then, is there anything you can tell me about them?" she asked. Her hackles up a little. She was feeling extremely vulnerable right now, standing in the middle of a jail cell at the whim of these Walry people.

"Well," Malachi said, "let me do most of the talking. They don't like humans much and we need to come up with a plan because we can't go back without that book anyway."

"Well, I know all of that. I was hoping you'd have something constructive." Quinn rolled her eyes.

Malachi raised a deftly manicured eyebrow at her. "Seriously, you need to relax and stop getting so snarky."

Quinn grimaced. "I'm frustrated. I'm not used to this world. Time is passing far too quickly for my liking in this new dimension or whatever we're in. I don't understand anything and it should all be a really nasty nightmare, but it's not. If turning my ankle and having it swell up like it is, is anything to go by, this is not just a random nasty dream."

Malachi chuckled dryly. "No, it's definitely not a random dream. Especially not if your pinching bruises are anything to go by."

Quinn felt herself blushing. She hadn't realized she'd been so obvious about that.

Malachi continued, oblivious to her thoughts. "Anyway, the Walry are a seafaring species. They can survive in waters of freezing cold temperatures, but they do not do well in warmer water. Their livelihood is made through fishing and weaving. They're famous for their artistry in tapestries, and their storage baskets. Trust me, if you want one of their storage baskets, we better make nice. Apart from that, I didn't realize Dinal had passed. Granted, this was one of the first regions that we studied and Dinal was still in our books. They're not a very open species, so they don't tend to share everything very often with anyone. We're probably maybe 10 to 100 years out of date."

Quinn blanched. "10 to 100 years. That much?"

"Yeah, that's pretty normal, especially since the library disappeared." At Quinn's blank expression, Malachi continued. "You know, not as easy to just summon a door, pop in and update archives."

She mulled that over for a moment. "Then, he could have been dead for like a hundred years and nobody would have known. Well, they would have known here, which is why we have to wait and see who's in charge now. And the library carries no weight anymore. Probably among the Walry, the library's been relegated to nothing more than a myth. I mean, almost five centuries of absence, that's enough to make anything a legend or a fallacy or just fade in people's memories. So, how do we prove to them that we're from the library?"

"Well," Malachi seemed to mull it over. "Don't you have like a tattoo or a marking or something you can show them?"

Quinn stared at him blankly, watching the time tick down in the right-hand corner of her vision. Although tick was misleading. It's more like it was simply draining away... "I don't think so. What if we, what if we summon the library to a door somewhere here? Isn't that possible?"

Malachi blinked. "That's a good idea since you have access. It should also be able to draw from ambient mana around these parts so hopefully won't drain the minimal reserves it's managed to acrue. I wouldn't be able to summon it, but you can. That's the only way I can see that we could get out of this." As he finished speaking, Malachi actually sounded excited, like he thought it wasn't all hopeless, and Quinn felt good about it.

When their jailer returned, not long in Walry time but a long time later in library time, Quinn was trying her best not to get super angry about the fact that she now had 48 hours remaining on her timer. It was running down so fast. Only two days left.

"Are you still claiming to be from the library?" The guard was back in front of them, obviously derisive of the fact that they had said they were from the magic library of everywhere.

"We are and we can prove it," Malachi said, his tone quite smug.

Their guard practically sneered. "Oh, and how are you going to prove that something legendary..."

"Oh, for crying out loud, Marron, you need to stop treating everybody as if they're criminals just because they've come to visit us in our village." A much smaller Walry pushed his way through to the forefront of the group and glanced down at the two of them in their separate cells. "Well, I'm terribly sorry that you've been treated this way, although you don't exactly look like the usual sort of visitors we get."

Quinn shrugged. "We might be unconventional, but we're making it work."

Their new visitor chuckled. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Dinal's grandson, Tillip. I welcome you to our village and apologize for the overzealousness of my chief security officer. However, Marron did say that you claim to be from the Library, which I personally find extremely difficult to believe. My grandfather told me stories about this library you speak of and he was adamant that it had disappeared and been gone for hundreds of years. That is why we needed to safeguard this tome of herbology, just in case it was ever needed. But he seemed to think that there was no way he was ever going to be able to return it. He'd been trying for longer than he could remember."

"Yeah, that seems to have been a pretty widespread problem," Quinn said dryly, noticing that he didn't mention the actual name of the book just the subject matter.

"Considering how long it's been...," Tillip said, standing back expectantly, tapping his foot and leaving the doors barred. "you need to be able to prove in some way to me that you are indeed a part of the library."

Quinn glanced over at Malachi, who shrugged. "It's going to be pretty difficult to prove that we're from the library if you have us locked in an iron cage."

Tillop blinked, and Quinn noticed, rather absentmindedly, that he had beautifully long eyelashes. The Walry were an extremely unique-looking species. She really wanted to know more about their history and their world, even as the timer ticked down to 47 hours.

Tillip narrowed his eyes as he watched them. "Fine. Marron, let them out but make sure they have guards on them. I can't be too careful. My grandfather told me to guard this tome with my life. And, well, I'm not about to do him a disservice."

Quinn stood up and waited for Marron to unlock the cells. She cast her gaze over Tillip, trying to figure out where he might have hidden the tome. He was speaking as if he had it on him. That's when she realized he probably had a storage item just like Malachi. She really needed to get herself one of those.

Finally freed from the cells, Malachi brushed imagined dirt off his shoulders. He hadn't even sat on the ground, which meant he was still as impeccable as he had been when they arrived in the village at Spearpoint. Quinn, on the other hand, had to dust dirt off her jeans. She glanced around. Nobody else seemed to wear jeans here. Did they not know how comfortable they could be?

A spearpoint jabbed into her back as she half hobbled out of the cell again, wincing at the pain in her ankle. 'Seriously, I'm walking with you. Do I look that dangerous?' Which she wished a moment later she hadn't asked.

"Well, you did have this machete on you," Marron said. "I didn't think that looked like something someone who wasn't a threat would carry."

Malachi wisely kept his mouth shut because his bow was definitely a hunting bow and not some ornate replica that didn't work. Quinn wisely stayed silent as well and followed them out. She hadn't realized how dark the cell room had been until they stepped through the doorway into bright light.

The plateau in front of them was rounded and held several little pens. Some of them had sheep and there were a few, maybe they were closer to boars than pigs, but they did resemble creatures on Earth, so she'd call them boars for now. Otherwise, there was a hut next to it and several people had gathered over in the corner between the pens and that hut. Apparently, new arrivals weren't a common thing in this village.

The guards, on Marron's orders, pushed their prisoners forward, jabbing them in the back with the spearheads, so much that Quinn felt skin break. "Ow!" she yelled. "That hurt. I've done nothing to you."

"Apart from lie," Marron muttered.

But Tillop held up his hand. "Look, that hasn't been proven yet. Show our guests some courtesy until we know for certain that they are truly enemies."

'Who hurt you in a past life?' is what Quinn wanted to ask, but very wisely kept that to herself. The Walrys seemed to take this whole situation very seriously.

Finally, they came to stand in the clear area beyond the pens and in front of the hut. The hut was much like a yurt back in Earth. They were rounded and had sort of tent-like roofs. However, from what she could see there was deftly woven straw and mud used as the base instead of wood. At least if the doors were anything to go by. They looked quite comfortable.

Tillip cleared his throat. "Well then, go on. Show us proof that you're the librarian, that this library my grandfather told me about in tales when I was young really and truly exists."

Quinn glanced at Malachi and shrugged. She had no idea how to summon the library.

He cleared his throat. "I think you just have to will it to be there that you need to get into it? Can't you use your interface?"

"Not yet." she grumbled to him under her breath. "Still reserve power only."

To the gathering, she spoke louder. "I'll need to approach the door," she said, pointing to the hut.

Tillip looked surprisingly smug like he knew she was lying. "I knew you'd say that. Be warned, there's no other way out of that hut. It's the meeting room. You can only get into it by this door. You won't be able to escape that through it."

Quinn sighed, put her hands on her hips and walked over, her spear jabber following her closely. "You better have that book. The library needs power and it needs its books back to do that," she said before she placed her hands on the door and said, "Library, Lynx... I need you."

There was a shimmer to the air, a strange scent of old pages and knowledge, and a minor chiming that sounded sort of sad. Suddenly, the door in front of her rippled and changed.

The door practically vibrated beneath her hands, still placed on its surface. She took a step back, shocked despite knowing this was supposed to happen.

Tillip blinked and rushed forward. "Can I?"

"I'm not sure. It's locked right now and I'm the only one who can summon it," Quinn said, suddenly feeling very panicked. She probably shouldn't bring these Walry people to the library. They were armed and had been very inhospitable to the whole concept of there being a library. But now, with only 46 hours left, she needed to get that book back where it belonged.

"Look, stand there and I'll open it." She reached forward and pushed the door open. It creaked ever so slightly, but there was a melodic undertone to the sound. Frankly, it made Quinn feel welcome, like she was coming home. The scent of worn leather covers and faded yellow pages reached out to her like a calming balm.

"Who's that?" Lynx walked up to the door, his purple hue glowing slightly outside of the barrier where his skin should be. He glanced out of the door. "You shouldn't... Quinn, what?" He looked beyond, his eyes narrowed.

"You are not Dinal," he said, and Tillip paled. There was something about the timbre of Lynx's voice that made Quinn look up, look at him in a sharper light.

The library was angry and she could feel it in the way the power rippled around her.

~~

ooooo angry Library is ANGRY!

Hope you enjoyed it!

Much love

KT