LSRO: Chapter 27 - The Beginning of It All (Patreon)

Soooo here we are.

Welcome to the chapter that never ends (actually it does but it's about 700 words longer than my average chapter). Mainly because - well... don't we all want to know some of how the Library actually works?

So, I've done my best with this chapter to make an infodump seem less tedious than your usual info dumps. I have no idea if I've succeeded. But please, let me know what you think.

Enjoy!

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Chapter 27

The Beginning of it all

"The beginning, huh?" she mumbled, thinking. Quinn had so many questions. There was so much Lynx had simply told her tidbits of.

"Okay, I've got it." She looked up expectantly. "So, why couldn't you find any librarians? How did that even happen? I don't understand."

Lynx blinked at her slowly, and for one odd moment, she wondered if he even knew. Just when he was about to say something, Dottie butted in tossing the manifestation a grumpy look. “That’s not where you should start! You know better than that. How about you give her an overview of how the Library works. What it does and why it requires a Librarian.”

Quinn was really growing to like Dottie, and she nodded emphatically as if reinforcing what the bench said.

Lynx looked like he wished Misha would come back and put him to task cleaning up the Library instead of making golems to do it. But finally he took a deep breath, floated himself up so he was sitting on top of the check in counter, and crossed his legs.

Quinn tossed herself into the big comfy chair and wished she had some popcorn to chew on.

“I can hear you if you don’t keep it to yourself, you know.” Lynx scowled at her. “It’s not that entertaining.”

“Please. You’ve had me locked in this world with no access to social media for like a week now. Anything is entertaining.” She flashed him a grin.

“Social…” Lynx appeared to be counting to five before he spoke. “Whatever. I guess you’re in for the long haul then.”

“I, as the manifestation, do not remember a time before I existed. It’s not uncommon, I simply was. But I do have access to information from such a time, and there is relatively little. In order to interact better with the librarian and Library patrons, the Library created me - or a version of me - to work in concert with it and those it took on as assistants or librarians.”

“The difference between an assistant and the librarian is that a Librarian must be compatible with the neural network magic that the Library accesses. There are specific affinities that would clash if they aren’t tempered by one that matches. Librarians must have this signature.”

“And an assistant doesn’t have to.” butted in Dottie. “It’s why I’ve always been a bit of an honorary assistant myself.”

Quinn reached out and gave the bench a soft pet, hoping Lynx would continue.

“For this reason,” Lynx began again, “the Library usually has dozens of assistants, sometimes even hundreds. A percentage of these have compatible signatures. Just in case.”

“Just in case?” Quinn asked, not sure she wanted the answer.

He fixed her with an appraising gaze. “I told you Kajaro was immortal. And he was. He would have lived forever but for the fact that you and Malakai killed him. Everyone has a weak point, even a Librarian.”

Quinn didn’t like the whispered thought she heard in her mind.

Even the Library.

No shit, she thought. Considering what had almost happened. They’d almost succeeded in wiping out everyone. She shook her head, clearing those thoughts. “Okay, but what I don’t get is why do you need a Librarian. I mean, you seem pretty capable and getting more so the more of the power returns to you. So, why does the Library require a librarian to run it?”

This time Lynx’s eyes shadowed over, the black in the sclera bled clear briefly before returning. His multiple eyelids flickered. “The interface requires a lifeform to interface with it in order to reach its full potential. Without the natural ambient magic that the librarian inputs into the system, many of the Library’s functions won’t reach maturation.”

And Quinn knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that his answer was at least a partial lie. Still, there had to be a reason that he wasn’t telling the full truth right now. She’d take it up with him after she got all the other information she needed.

“So, basically. The Library needs to leech off the ambient mana of the librarian?” She knew she was pushing it a little, but sometimes Lynx needed her to goad him.

“That’s a very simplistic view point to take. But the link allows both the giving and receiving of magical energy. Once linked, the librarian becomes an integral part of the core and benefits just as much as the Library gains.” There might have been a hint of melancholy in Lynx’s voice with that last statement.

Even Dottie didn’t appear to know how to react.

An awkward sort of silence fell over them and Quinn glanced around valiantly trying to find a way to break it.

Which is when Milaro cleared his throat, startling all of them, and grinned like he’d enjoyed it. “Have you explained Magic Flow to her yet? Might want to make sure you’re really getting the beginnings.”

"Hey, I'm the library, she was asking me the questions." Lynx said hotly, somewhat defensive.

"No, you are the Links of the library. Which is very different and yet entirely the same." Milaro laughed at his own joke. "Anyway, you have to understand the chaos that is magic in order to fully appreciate both magical flow and the relationship the Library and thus, the librarian, has to it.”

Quinn was confused. She held up hand. "Wait, I thought without the library, there was no magic."

"Ah, you see, that's where you're wrong, but also partially right." Milaro continuied in that infuriating way that made Quinn want to punch him. "Without the magical partitioning and filtration that the Library provides, the pure chaos of magic will infect those who attempt to wield it. It becomes more dangerous than you can imagine."

"So if the library ceases to exist, magic runs wild?" Quinn asked, testing the words for herself.

"Yes, yes, it does. And wild magic tends to destroy things, passes chaos onto people and things because harnessing it in its raw state is dangerous. It devours people from the inside out, making them husks of magical direction.” Milaro raised his hands allowing a bolt of power to spring up between them.

He lowered his hands, maintaining one on each side of the power he held. It wasn’t quite electricity, but it crackled and was a shade of blue. More liquid and yet, even Quinn could feel the danger emanating from it.

“See. Magic is a chaotic force, pure chaos, really." There was an urgency to Milaro's words that hit Quinn right in the gut. Milaro released his left hand and the bold, no longer contained, jumped out and shot across the Library directly impacting one of the pillars.

A brief scent of sulfur reached Quinn. Like the magic had burned the stone it hit.

“So Magic alone is dangerous. Magic unchecked is bad. Right?” She thought she got it now, even if it felt like there was still something missing.

“More than that.” Milaro lowered his voice. “Magic running rampant will destroy everyone. Even those who think it won’t. Without the library to insert itself and to act as a filtration system for the power in the universe, well, we're all pretty screwed.”

Quinn did a double take though. "Did you just say 'screwed'?"

Milaro chuckled, "Yes, yes, I did. I looked up a little bit of Earth's history while you and my grandson were gallivanting around, and I decided that I liked some of your colloquialisms."

"OK," Quinn smiled. She decided she liked Milaro. "OK, so it's like an air filtration system where it sucks in the bad and churns out the good?"

"More like a water filtration system on your planet. It brings in the mana, runs it through a filter, purifies it and then sends it out to refill wells of power so that they are calm waters, more like a lake or a dam like you have in your worlds. Somewhere the power can sit until it needs to be drained, until the people who use magic need to access it and funnel it through their own magical systems."

"So beings have magical systems within themselves, too?"

"Yes. And they require filtration to harness the most powerful properties of magic without being lost to a chaotic mess."

"OK, I think I get it," Quinn said. She really did. Actually, it made a lot of sense from what she'd seen. Magic was powerful and dangerous if the encounter with Kajaro was anything to go by. And if that was the filtered version… “What happened while the Library closed itself off?”

"The library has been minimally filtering, but didn't have enough power to do it properly." Lynx inserted, pouting like a champion.

"Couldn't it have just pulled ambient mana from the little bit it was able to filter?" She didn't understand the problem here. None of the information in her head gave her clarity.

"A small amount yes. But a little from a small well was barely enough to keep us from completely running out." Lynx inserted himself back into the conversation. "Ambient mana is only meant as a compliment, it's not supposed to fully fuel the Library."

Milaro nodded. "There have been a lot of accidents out in the universe and there's been a lot of trouble since not all of the magic was filterable, for want of a better word."

Quinn tried to absorb all the information. "So your universes have had pretty much 500 years of chaos. If the library were to disappear. It would be thrown into a tumultuous mess."

Both Lynx and Milaro nodded vehemently.

"OK, then," Quinn said, "Got it. Library good, no library bad. Let's move on."

This time, Lynx chuckled. "Okay, are we done then?"

"No!" Quinn cut him off. "Are you serious? You haven't been answering anything. You've just been like, 'I'll explain that later. I'll explain that later.' This is later? This is as later as we're getting. And I'm putting my foot down?"

He raised an eyebrow and glanced at her foot. "Okay then. What else?"

"You said everyone has an affinity."

"Yes, everyone has an affinity."

"Well, how do affinities work?" She paused and then added. "Explain it to me like I'm from a world where there's no magic."

Milaro laughed and Lynx flashed a mild glare, but gave in anyway. "Well, people will generally have an affinity to a type of magic, often elemental."

Quinn stopped him and tapped her head. “Got that much. Every single person, being, creature, species, has a magical affinity."

"Yes," Lynx said. "Most will have at least one, often around ten, a dozen, is pretty average. On the upper level, you're probably looking at 20, 30 for the more powerful mages. Librarian specific affinities number in at 42. Having them all is very rare and not necessary to connect to the core. Now, Korradine actually had 39 of the library's necessary affinities, which was amazing. Yours is very unique."

Milaro scoffed, "That's a good way to put it."

"Before we get to my uniqueness," the word sounded odd on Quinn's tongue. It sounded too much like one of those anime tropes. "Explain to me how affinities work."

"Okay, each element or each type of affinity has multiple branches of affinity. So a water affinity, you can have four water affinities. You can have the manipulation of water, the creation of water, resistance to water, or the deconstruction of water. The same with fire. Everything has a manipulation, creation, resistance, and deconstruction.” Lynx waited to make sure she was digesting the information.

“Some things like weapons will have combat applications. If you get to the mastery level, there might be even more branches that veer off." Lynx began again, but Milaro placed his hand on the manifestation's shoulder and took over.

"Not everyone can manipulate power in all the available ways. Some may only have the ability to manipulate water. So if a body of water is sitting there, they can make it move around. But they can't create water out of thin air, nor can they dissipate the water once it's there. They can just use it. Some people might just have resistance-based affinities. Maybe they have an elemental group of resistances. That makes them strong as a common fighter. It's vast, and there are books you can absorb just on the information about affinities." Milaro seemed able to put it in layman's terms a little better.

Quinn raised an eyebrow and said, "You could have told me that earlier."

"Yes, but I didn't, and I apologize," Lynx muttered.

She raised an eyebrow. "Fine. Okay. Now I think I get it a little bit more. So how many total affinities are there?"

"Right now?" Lynx's eyes flickered slightly. "1722."

Quinn blinked. "Did you say there are currently 1,722 magical affinities?"

Milaro and Lynx shared a look.

Quinn glanced back and forth between them, then put her hands on her hips and glared at them. "This is not the time to be, 'Oh, well, she won't understand,' or, 'Oh, well, maybe don't overload her with information.' I refuse to go in blind."

"New magic is being discovered all the time. It doesn't matter what you think you know about something. There is always more to learn. So magic is the same. Just because nobody's ever combined a water and fire spell together, for example, which they have, but they hadn't at the time, whatever. " He paused for a moment as if he was resetting his train of thought. "And the moment somebody does that, then that particular magic exists. There are fusions of magic that exist because people have pushed boundaries and because people have studied and learned and wanted to create more."

"I get it," Quynh said, "You're saying that the magic in the library will never stop growing."

"Yes, which is why the library exists outside of a solid state. It's like its own little dimensional pocket." Milaro sounded quite pleased about that fact.

It made the information in her mind click together. Thousands upon thousands of possibilities flashed across her vision in the blink of an eye. "Okay, I've got this."

Millaro smiled. "I knew she was pretty smart."

Link rolled his eyes. "Of course she is.”

“But that doesn’t get you off the hook.” She looked Lynx square in the eyes. “Tell me about your previous librarian.”

“Ah.” He breathed out, and this time she could tell he’d been trying to avoid precisely that topic. “That’s what got us started on this.”

Dottie nudged her way underneath his feet, providing a comfy footstool for him. Lynx’s expression softened slightly. Quinn made a note to thank the bench later.

"When a librarian has been a part of the system for a long time, they often choose to retire. A thousand years, two thousand, a couple of millennia, a few millennia, whatever. Kor decided that she wanted to retire. She was done and satisfied with everything that we'd accomplished together. And I didn't see a reason not to let her retire."

He sighed and a wave of sadness washed over Quinn.

Finally, he continued. "It’s not unusual for a librarian to retire. It’s just not a frequent occurrence. To that end, there are always at least assistants with library affinities. We had so many. There was no reason whatsoever to be suspicious or cautious. Once the retirement clause is activated, it cannot be reversed. It takes maybe 50 years for the whole thing to complete. As soon as she initiated the sequence, we began losing our assistants."

His hair lit up, spirals of runes sparking at once. "At first it seemed like accidents. A few died very nasty deaths when they went to retrieve books. When it became obvious the deaths weren’t entirely coincidental, we searched for replacements for new trainees, new assistants, but found none. Nowhere. Anywhere. Everywhere.”

Lynx spread his hands out in a futile encompassing gesture. "They were just gone. I hadn't actively recruited for about half a century before she activated the clause... It had never been a problem before. The years ticked down and Kor just didn't have any time left. She faded and withered and passed."

"You sound really sad, Lynx.” Quinn reached out to gently place her hand on his shoulder for a moment. “Almost human.”

"I'm not human." And as if to prove a point, he promptly changed into his Lynx form for about five seconds. Then into some strange sort of bird that looked oddly like an ostrich crossed with a flamingo. Its feathers glowed pink with trails of golden runes that cascaded to the floor. Song burst into Quinn's head in a calming, soulful sound that almost brought her to tears.

Just when the emotion began to overwhelm her, he changed into a beautiful, ethereal, eight-foot-tall, slender woman with wispy silver hair falling down her back and one eye on her forehead. He twirled around and then presented himself with a bow. "This. This is what Kor looked like. She was gorgeous, inside and out."

Quinn couldn't help but stare. If she was as lovely inside as she was out, she must have been amazing. "She was a cyclops?"

"No, cyclops are a little bit more thick." Lynx's voice sounded strange coming out of Kor's body. He turned and swapped promptly back into himself, falling into the chair. "Kor was the heart of this library for so long. I never thought she'd leave me, but I think she just got tired."

Quinn wasn't sure what she should say, so she changed the subject. "Okay, so do you have enemies? Is there any reason, any natural reason why the library's magical signature should have disappeared?"

"Nope, no magical reason, no natural reason. It was deliberate," Lynx said. There was a hard edge to his voice.

"I guess you’ve been too busy the last few centuries trying to keep the Library from fully fading?" She mulled that over in her head. What would have happened if he hadn't found her?

Lynx scowled. "No time to dwell. Now that the library is partially restored, I can divert some of my resources to researching just that."

It was the first time Quinn heard Lynx sound vengeful. "Well, let me know what I can do to help," she said. "You should make a list of potential enemies, of factions. There's got to be factions in, like, the multiverse, right?"

He chuckled. "It's not a multiverse, it's just a universe. Anyway. Enough of that. More detail won’t help us any. What’s your next question?”

“Bookworms.” Quinn said promptly. "The ones I don't have to kill.”

“Oh you’re going to love them once you see how cute they can be.” Dottie piped up, like she was trying to chase away the lingering sadness from the previous topic.

Milaro continued smoothly, not letting Lynx get a word in. Frankly, the manifestation didn’t seem to mind much. “When the bookworms are small, they are used to absorb the dust from their specific affinity tomes. With me so far?"

Quinn nodded. "Yes."

Milaro dove in deeper. "Those worms are fed to the night owls, which are currently hybernating up in the rafters and have only just begun to rouse."

"Okay, owls in the rafters. Why have we not been crapped on?" It was the first thought she had. Birds in an enclosed space were just bound to crap on them. Despite squinting up, she just couldn't see any owls above them.

"Magic!" Milaro wiggled his fingers at her and Quinn laughed despite herself.

"The cycle works thus: bookworms get fed to their matching magically affinity night owls. The birds shed feathers, but only one special one or two per year. That feather produces a quill. That quill is capable of creating the tomes or codexes of that affinity."

"So we need the worms to make the tomes." This was getting very complex in Quinn's mind.

"Yes. Or reproduce fading tomes or really popular ones." Dottie threw in, glee in her voice.

Lynx held up his hands. "You're forgetting the silverfish. We have to locate those and grind them down for the appropriate ink."

Quinn's head was pounding by now. "Okay. So we have magical worms that get fed to magical birds that get dipped in magical ink to write magical books."

"Yes, exactly." Lynx sat back, beaming with pride.

Quinn rolled her eyes. "Oh, that's so simple. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before."

~~

Soooo there you have it. What did you think? It's not everything, but at least now Quinn isnt' completely running around blind, right?

And onward and upward - how about we see the magical library portions in action next, right?

Much love

KT