LSRO: Chapter 21 - He's just a very naughty Library (Patreon)

So I know my Monty Python reference doesn't work that well for this... buuuuut I had to.

Again, this is rough but still awesome!!! Will replace later

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Chapter 21

He's just a very naughty Library

The water in the lake was so dark it was almost black, bubbling in such a way that it looked like boiling oil. Even though Quinn knew inherently that it wasn't, the sight was still unnerving.

"Show me your skills," Malakai said. There was urgency in his voice. She looked at him blankly.

"What do you mean, 'show you my skills'?" Quinn asked heatedly. "I don't think this is the time for me to pull out my machete and try to practice the skills it apparently taught me."

He tsked under his breath. "I don't mean show me physically. I mean share them with me."

"Like list them off? I've got 'Machete for Dummies', 'Beginner's Shield'..." Quinn began, having no clue why they needed to do this when something was emerging from the depths of that lake.

But he cut her off. "No! Did he not even show you how to share your abilities?"

"Obviously not, or I wouldn't be looking at you like a fish out of water." When she got back. Quinn was really going to have a word with that damned manifestation.

"That was a really bad pun, Quinn." He pinched the bridge of his nose and she could tell he was trying not to laugh.

She shrugged, pulling out her machete anyway. Just in case. "I'm a little stressed right now."

"So am I." Malakai took in a deep breath and said, "Look." He focused in front of himself for just a moment, and all of a sudden, information popped up in front of her. Like it had when she first entered the Library. Back before she even connected to it. The information scrolled across her vision.

Recurve Compound Bow of the Lost Soul
Activation Capacity 225 pounds
Damage Capacity Multiplier of 37 dependent on Activation Capacity reached

She sucked in a breath as she read it. "Whoa, whoa, that looks really powerful."

"Yes, yes it is. Now show me what yours is." That was Malakai's impatient voice.

"Well, how did you do that?"

"You call up your abilities in order to recall them and you tell it to share with the person you're standing next to."

"Okay. Skills," she said and took a step back as they flashed up before her eyes with more information that she'd thought. "Oh my god."

It was like the screen that popped up in front of her when she was in the library in contact with its console. "But I'm not in contact with the Library."

"No, but you're literally the librarian, which means it doesn't matter where you came from or what your species is. You have access to the interface at all times even if you're not directly connecting to it. How do you think everybody knows where the library is and when to return their books and what skills they have and how they absorb the knowledge? Everybody has access to the library system because it's technically our magical system. Now show me your abilities."

"Share with Malakai," she muttered with so many more questions popping up in her mind that it felt crowded. "Okay."

"Okay, we might be able to do this," he said, even as a tentacle shot out of the water and splashed down not ten feet before them, drenching them both with the aftermath.

Quinn swallowed a scream and steeled her nerves. "You think we can really fight that thing? That was only one tentacle."

"I realize this," Malakai said. "There is no need to get so worked up."

Quinn simply raised an eyebrow.

Malakai took a deep breath. "Look, you're going to need to use 'Watch Out for That Tree' for yourself and to boost me when I tell you. Keep your 'Beginner Shielding' up and get ready to use 'Bright Light Starters' when I tell you to distract it. That creature is used to darkness not to bright light. This is literally all we have."

Quinn took a deep breath. "Okay, distract it like in a video game, right?"

Malakai didn't even bother glaring at her for that contribution. "Whatever it takes to make it clear in your head is fine. Just follow my directions and when we get back to the damn library, I'm going to have to take over your training because this is ridiculous."

"Hey, don't get angry at me."

"I'm not. Just a little frustrated." He stared at her, his expression serious as he drew out a sword, putting his bow back for the time being. "We need to get this done as soon as possible. You don't yet have the power to cast too many iterations of these spells. I'll do my best."

"How sweet." Kajaro mocked as he sat down on the opposite bank and pulled something out of what looked like a basket. He probably had either binoculars or popcorn. It was a pity that Quinn couldn't tell which from the distance. Another tentacle rose out and splashed them again, smashing where they'd been standing if they hadn't jumped out of the way.

Quinn did not appreciate being sopping wet.

"Well, here goes nothing," Malakai said and leaped into the air, and just as it looked like he was about to descend, he jumped again. It looked like he double-leaped on nothing and came crashing down as a tentacle rose up, severing it right next to the water before he jettisoned off the stub he'd created and performed a double flip through the air to land next to her again.

Quinn gaped at him while the thing in the middle writhed in the water as blood sluggishly pumped from the stump to mingle in the murky depths. More tentacles rose up, splashing water everywhere until they had their own rainstorm.

"That's about the response I was expecting," he said, not even out of breath. And for the first time, since Kajaro had decided to spring this monster of the deep on them, Quinn finally thought they might have a chance to retrieve the book after all.

The creature wasn't stupid, however. It wasn't on a rotation, it didn't have stages like any monster in a computer game did. No, this creature learned from its mistakes. This time, when Malakai shot up into the air, the creature was ready for him.

Luckily, Malakai also wasn't an NPC in a computer game. Instead, he catapulted to the diagonal when he did the second step of his weirdly gravity-defying leap. "Light now!" he screamed. Quinn willed the light to appear exactly where he should have been, hoping she was a) aiming correctly, and b) using the spell correctly. A brief blast of light lit up the cave like a Christmas tree. All she could see for several blinks was bright light in front of her eyes. She probably should have closed her eyes, but hindsight was always 20/20.

The squeal that emanated from the squid-octopus or whatever it was that was in the lake was high-pitched, quite ear-shattering. A couple of the stalactites on the ceiling even rumbled. Pieces of them fell off and plopped into the water, even as Malakai angled down and forced his sword to lop off yet another limb of the creature. He barely alighted on the stub and flipped backward, this time landing a couple of feet into the water and wetting his boots even more than they'd already been. This time, however, his exertion was obvious. He was panting a little bit.

"Nice shot, next time close your eyes."

"Already figured that out, thanks." She was still seeing dark spots in her vision. "Could have warned me."

"Didn't think I had to," he said.

She wondered what sort of life these people led that they were just used to battling squids in the middle of lakes, whereas she was used to doing all of her work with books in the library. Apparently Library sciences really had been her thing.

The creature continued to thrash around. It seemed, however, less occupied with them and more with perhaps finding a means of escape. It dove down and the water bubbled, it was tinged slightly reddish-green now. Its blood intermixed with the murky liquid produced an odd color combination. It seemed scared more than angry and upset. Perhaps it hadn't thought that this would be such a big fight.

Maybe Kajaro was coercing it. Quinn suddenly felt sorry for the monster.

Malakai cracked his neck from side to side. "I'll go in once more."

"Are you sure?"

"Yep, once more should do. It should run away then."

"It'll grow its limbs back, right? It's a squid."

"Well it should, technically, but I don't know what that dude over there's done to it so I can't answer any of that." Even Malakai seemed concerned about the creature he was fighting. He shook his head as our opponent began to calm back down in the water. "This time I need you to use Tree. I need to teleport a short distance and I don't know if you're able to aim me well enough, but we'll have to try it. It's going to know my attack patterns."

That's when Quinn decided it was an octopus. Not to mention it seemed far too agile for a squid. Octopus had always been deemed sentient, near sentient at least, on earth. So she understood that this thing was probably learning every single time they used a different move, which left them with not much time and hopefully with a lot of self-preservation. And damn it was she feeling exhausted.

"Okay, are you ready?" Malakai asked, hefting his sword in his hand.

"Yep, about as ready as I'm ever gonna be."

The octopus had come to the conclusion that it couldn't escape yet. Maybe Kajaro had something blocking its escape route. She didn't know. Whatever it was, the surface bubbled again, and this time its bulbous head poked up just a little bit and Malakai flew in action, catapulting toward it.

"Now," he yelled.

She cast Watch out for that tree, hoping to allow Malakai to land on its head, but he shot past that and glimmered over to the other shore landing calf deep in front of Kajaro. If she'd have realized that that was a possibility, she would have had him make the jump with her.

As its prey flew over to the other side where Kajaro was, the octopus stopped and looked back to where Quinn was standing on the shore with nothing to guard her. The little machete clutched at her side probably wouldn't even make a dent in one of its tentacles.

Quinn looked from it back to the other side and back to it again and realized that this was not a good thing.

"Quinn, you have to move yourself over here."

"It won't reach that far," she yelled, knowing instinctively that it wouldn't. It had been a stretch for him to make it over to the other side and he'd been half way toward the middle with a sky high jump.of She frantically thought of all of her different spells. Surely there had to be one that she could use.

Wait, wasn't this whole thing water? Wouldn't water freeze if she cast a snow storm on it? Wouldn't that work if she used Ice Blast?

She didn't have any more time to think because one of the tentacles bore down on her while another squirted sluggish blood in her direction, drenching part of her clothes as she tried to scramble out of the way. She felt tired and realized that she needed to keep a better eye on what powers she was using. She wasn't used to magic. It drained her energy or magic energy or mana or whatever it was probably faster than a person who'd been using it their entire life.

Malakai had sort of warned her.

She only really had one shot at this. Steeling herself, she summoned the icy blast spell in her head, raised her fist, and released the spell as she opened her palm, just as the tentacle was about to hit her. The end of the appendage crystallized rapidly. The transformation shot up the rest of that limb and passed quickly through the entire body of the octopus, freezing it in place. But it didn't stop there. Instead, it spread out to the water, to where even she stood, so fast that she had to scramble back and she fell finally releasing the active spell.

The tentacle she'd originally been escaping still loomed over her. Gravity was working its wonder as it gave into its own weight plus the ice and fell toward where she'd been. It hit the ground in a spray of wet sand and ice shards.

Quinn realized she was absolutely exhausted.

Maybe she'd poured more power into the spell or something. She knew, at any rate, that she'd kept it going far longer than she'd thought it could last. The water was freezing, even right up to the shore. Even the boat was frozen in place. She could almost feel the way Malakai watched her from across the river, but that didn't matter. She had to get there before everything unfroze. With the amount of water and the size of it, there was no way it would stay frozen for long.

She jumped onto the ice, skidding and falling, slipping and sliding until she finally made it to the other side. Her hands were raw and bleeding in places, her face flushed and cold. Malakai grabbed her by the arm and pulled her in close once she got into the shore, trying to lend her warmth she didn't feel.

They turned to face Kajaro.

He was not what Quinn had expected. She thought he'd resemble a wise, white-haired wizard with flowing robes and a bushy beard or something, but he wasn't.

His skin was scaled like a serpent, and he stood and moved in such a way that she was fairly certain he was an actual type of serpent or at least a reptile. He moved with a grace that belied having bones, and every single inch of her stood on end. Complete and utter fear gripped her core. It was all she could do not to hide behind Malakai, considering he was a much larger target. The fact that she was freezing cold also played into the equation.

"Well, well, well," said Kajaro. His grin didn't reach his eyes. "I see we have a new librarian," he said. The 's' in his words was sibilant, definitely like a snake.

"What of it?" she said. Probably not wise to antagonize the very nasty man standing in front of you, she thought to herself belatedly.

"Well, it's good to see that we found a replacement, but I don't think I like you," Kajaro said.

"What does it matter if you like her or not?" Malakai interrupted. "She's the librarian and she's here to retrieve a book that you've had for longer than the library's been missing."

"Ah, yes, so close to 500 years. I would have claimed it as mine by right of abandonment. Still, I don't like how you arrived on this side of the lake. You cheated," and Kajaro spread his hands and electricity sprung up from each of them, arcing over his head, "and you're not gonna like what I do to cheaters."

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Well now it's getting interesting right?!

All the fun things to come!

hope you enjoyed reading

Much love

KT