LSRO: Chapter 38 - Mentor (Patreon)

So now... we have more added to Quinn's plate. 

But that's okay, she can handle it. She's the librarian.

Am now wondering if I should have capitalized that throughout the story.

Oh well. Hope you enjoy!

~~

As much as Quinn enjoyed that her chambers were larger than almost every house she'd lived in, she took only a quick shower, pulled on fresh jeans and a t-shirt, tugged on her combat boots, and headed downstairs with Aradie in close proximity. She stood and surveyed the Library from the top of the spiral staircase.

First up. It was only just hitting her that Lynx had somehow managed to get her her favorite jeans, and t-shirts. She'd have to thank him later. Secondly, as the Library spread out beneath her, she realized it had truly come together. The news that Lynx imparted to her still played over in her mind.

Quinn had to get stronger. She still had one more book to help her increase her energy regeneration that she need to absorb next time she slept. But right now, she had a task.

Getting stronger, meant more combat lessons from Malakai, and grabbing whatever volumes Lynx suggested to strengthen her mind. While she was getting used to communicating with the Library with only her thoughts, she was going to have to make sure that she had complete and utter control over them. This would probably keep her innermost thoughts safe from the Library. too. Her own thoughts gave her privacy and while she was getting used to the idea of being part of the vast knowledge entity, a bit of me time didn’t hurt.

Thus, making sure she knew how to compartmentalize her thoughts was paramount.

It was a win-win situation really.

So many thoughts ran through her head. From how they could use the Serpensiril's contact with her to perhaps find out more about this conglomerate, alliance, or league of supervillains, or whatever they were. These people who had decided chaotic magic needed to rule and the Library was outdated and no longer required made her stomach churn. Those thoughts plagued her.

She didn't understand why anybody would want chaotic magic to reign if the destruction she'd heard described was even slightly exaggerated. It would seem they wanted chaotic magic to perform a natural selection type of deal. One they seemed absolutely certain they'd survive through.

Which made her wonder just how the Serpensiril could be so sure they were strong enough to withstand the onslaught of the magic to begin with. What else did they have up their sleeves?

"You're deep in thought," Milaro said, suddenly standing in front of her at the bottom of the staircase. The taller elf always struck Quinn as kindly. His robes flowed in a way that she'd always imagined a wizard's would. He reminded her of the magic users she'd read about in books, from white wizards to teachers to the old ones who hid in the woods and didn't really want to share their abilities with anybody, but begrudgingly would then teach some new little whippersnapper.

Milaro was everything she thought a high elf would be, appearance-wise at least. His personality was much more approachable. Well, perhaps some of the elves she'd seen on television weren't exactly the right way to judge a species, considering Earth had no idea that they actually existed.

"Is everything all right?" Milaro said, leaning down slightly. "You look like you're having a lot of thoughts in that head."

Quinn grinned up at him. "Sometimes I think my thoughts are my own worst enemy."

Milaro chuckled. "I think that's true for everyone. Speaking of which, Lynx has inquired of me that I teach you some mental fortitude skills. Would you be amenable to that?"

Quinn grinned again. "Yeah, yeah, I think I'd be amenable to that."

She scanned the Library, like she knew what she was doing. "Okay, so, which books would be best for me?"

Milaro pursed his lips and walked farther into the Library. "Okay, so, we're going to want 'Stop Your Mindless Rambling.'"

"Is that seriously what it's called?" Quinn asked. Although she thought she'd gotten used to the odd naming conventions... they still blindsided her sometimes.

Milaro winked at her. "You'd be surprised. The best way to get people interested in books is having a catchy title."

"I guess," Quinn said, finding it odd that Lynx said precisely the same thing. Then a thought occurred to her. "What about covers?"

Milaro waved that concern away. "These aren't fiction books. These are factual books. And thus, you need a catchy title, not necessarily a catchy cover, because, let's just face it, leather-bound covers are always going to win out when you have a lot of wear and tear." He paused, obviously looking through a refined catalog index. "Next, 'The Mind You Forgot.' That's a really good one. It's great for beginners, and it's going to give you a basis of how your mind works and what powers your species has probably forgotten, which, considering your species, is probably a lot."

"Well, I guess they always say that we only use 10% of our brains," Quinn joked, but it fell flat because Milaro just raised an eyebrow and moved on.

"Okay, so you should hopefully have 'Segmenting of Thoughts' here. And if it's not in stock right now, then you might have 'Mind Compartmentalization for Beginners.' Yes, we could probably use both of those. But one will suffice if this mark means Segmenting isn't here..." He pursed his lips for a moment as if considering other options.

"Tom," Quinn spoke the name out loud, and immediately the golem was there. It took maybe three seconds. She looked at him, and she swore he was smiling. "Thank you, Tom. Could you get the following books for us? 'The Mind You Forgot,' 'Segmentation of Thoughts,' 'Compartmentalizing the Mind for Beginners,' and 'Stop Your Mindless Rambling.'"

Tom cocked his head to one side, gave her a nod, and then he was gone.

"That will never not be unnerving," Milaro said. "Even after all these years, their ability to understand without speaking has been quite remarkable. Shall we find a place to sit?" And he gestured in front of them where Quinn was happy to see that all of the seating areas were beautifully relegated now. Comfortable chairs, little tables, even small trolleys that weren't the return trolleys they had crafted, but were just little rolly shelves to put your books on when you were finished.

It was wonderful.

"Is that a water dispenser?," she said, pointing off to the side.

"Oh, yes, people do get thirsty. There's a lot of dust in here," Milaro said. "They're just put out of the way so they don't accidentally get spilled on books."

"Wise choice." Quinn thought fire and water were probably two good things to keep away from books.

Tom was back with their stack already and he placed them on the closest little table to the seating they'd chosen.

"Time to sit on the couch and absorb a few books." Quinn sat down and went through the energy requirements for each book while Aradie perched herself on the back of the couch looking over her shoulder.

Segmentation of Thoughts
Energy Requirement: 192

Stop Your Mindless Rambling
Energy Requirement: 167

The Mind You Forgot
Energy Requirement: 120

Compartmentalizing the Mind for Beginners
Energy Requirement: 85

"That's a lot of energy expenditure for beginner books, right?" she asked.

"What do you mean? Haven't you been eating?" Milaro shot the question at her rapid fire.

Quinn blinked at him. "Of course I've been eating..."

"No. Not just meals. What did you think magical culinary books were about, Quinn? Magical cooking replenishes your energy, mana, so many different statuses depending on what recipe you're using. There are thousands of them. Different species react in specific ways to a whole range of foods. But there are cooking volumes for every single type of energy expenditure. You should be eating regular snacks from..." He paused, looking slightly irate, and shook his head. "Give me a minute. I will go and talk to Cook."

Quinn reclined back into the couch, not opening any of the books. She didn't want to accidentally absorb a book when she was already full of energy, 597 out of 597. That was interesting; it had increased ever so slightly with the absorption of that other energy book the previous evening.

Her stomach rumbled, reminding her of her hunger. She might have said she was eating, but the fact was she often forgot. The library had a way of distorting time around her. Even though time definitively passed, she could tell that she wasn't as attuned to the passage of it as she usually would have been. This meant that her meal times were out of sync, and she was starting to get a little light-headed when she forgot to eat.

Like now.

Lynx had never answered her and told her how long she'd been asleep. She glanced around, but the semi-permanent light still beamed through the windows so much that she couldn't what time of day it was. Did they even have clocks in here?

There was a slight buzz in her head, and she glanced down at the bottom corner of her screen where the timer for the book retrieval used to sit. There was a tiny clock.

Anundrum 15th 12:37.

She wondered if that was the time, and the 12:37 flashed in big numbers in front of her eyes for several seconds this time.

"Okay, okay, I guess that's your way of telling me that that's the time," she muttered to herself. The fact that it had taken her a week to even care about it told her a lot. She liked being here. It made her feel at home, useful, needed, and a little bit adventurous. Damn hungry. A little empty.

So time, in a way, felt almost irrelevant to her.

Maybe it was time to just take a breath and analyze things. Find out what she knew and what she didn't. The library was vast, huge in fact, but it wasn't complete. The levels were at a critical mass. They needed to retrieve a lot of books, and specific books if they wanted to open the branches before collecting all of them.

She understood all of that.

Quinn now knew that food could replenish energy, specifically magical energy, and could target what she needed to replenish. She knew that dream experiences, or whatever it was that had happened, was a thing. That the Library could open onto any world it was so directed to at any time, anywhere. And that people, once it was open to patrons again, would be able to summon one of the doors to open where they were as well. She really wanted to know how that worked.

But maybe dimensional theory was a little bit beyond her.

She glanced around, none of the golems in sight, and wondered what it would be like when more people visited the Library. Wouldn't they need more golems then? Wouldn't they have to go out and find more ingredients so that they could make more golems, make more carts? It was going to be so busy.

This was like a lull before the storm, and she should really enjoy it.

Quinn leaned her head back and looked up at the ceiling. It was so far away, maybe 40, 50 feet. But she could see the carvings of books and the sprays of light that spread across it. It was so beautiful, magical. She let out a deep sigh. Aridie pushed her softly feathered head close and hooted out a soft inquiry.

"Are you okay?" Dottie's voice was soft, not startling, even though Quinn hadn't noticed that the bench was sitting near her.

"Hey, Dottie."

"Hello, Quinn. Did you have a good sleep?" The bench enquired, her tone still soft.

"Do you know how long I was asleep for?" Quinn asked instead of ansering.

"Approximately 12 hours and 23 minutes," Dottie said. "And that includes the horrible nightmare you seemed to have."

"It wasn't horrible, it was just a little informative and slightly confusing," Quinn said.

Dottie shuffled herself under Quinn's feet, and Quinn rested them on the bench.

"Are you sure that's okay? Last time I tried to put weight on you, you almost bit my leg off." Quinn teased.

"Well, that's water under the bridge, under the legs, whatever," Dottie said. "Do you have any questions? I know it's been a little fast, and Lynx seems to be off."

Quinn perked up at that. "What do you mean, off?"

Dottie felt confused for a moment, but her demeanor brightened again almost immediately. “Oh you wouldn’t know of course, having only just met him. You have nothing to compare him to.”

“Compare him to what?” Quinn was pretty sure the confusion had been passed on to her.

"He's not functioning the way I'm used to seeing him," Dottie answered very slowly, as if she was trying to taste the words in her mind before she spoke them. "You have to understand, I've never known the Library to be this low on power, ever. Frankly, for a while there, we thought we were all goners because we were trapped in the Library. It didn't have power to get us out and still search for a way to continue existing, and we just sort of were withering away."

"What do you mean?" Quinn leaned forward, her curiosity spiking.

"The library has always been at full power, until no librarians could be found, and right now, getting it to reset and reboot itself through its systems, well, it almost seems like a part of Lynx is missing." The bench said in a conspiratorial tone.

Except what she said sure as hell made a lot of sense to Quinn. "What do you mean, a part of him?"

"It could just be the power levels," Dottie said. "But Lynx isn't himself."

Quinn frowned. "What do you mean, like he's not acting like the Lynx you know - or the Library you know?" Because realistically, Lynx was an individual as well as an entity. If she'd understood it all properly.

"Well, I believe it's a little bit of both." Milaro cut in as he returned with a full tray of various types of food, including a sugar donut. Quinn's mouth practically drooled on the spot as he turned to the bench and thanked her. "Thanks Dottie."

Quinn made to reach for the donut but Milaro pulled the tray away. "Now wait a second. That is a treat from Cook. The rest is very specifically targeted food. This here is your meal." He placed down a bowl of something that suspiciously resembled ramen.

"You need this to replenish your energy and mana," he paused, "even though you've been asleep. This will ensure that your energy regeneration increases for the duration the food allows. I guess that's the best way to put it."

He then gestured to the other items on their plates. "These are for you to take after every book that you absorb so that your energy levels do not fall below 200. I don't want your energy levels below 200 ever. This bread roll has a timed release mechanism that will trigger the moment you start to dip under 200. The library currently has no power and it's still pulling from your direct energy pool to enable some of its functions. You cannot afford for it to empty your energy pool. Do you understand, Quinn?"

"I understand. I understand," she said. She wanted to say more, but Milario cut her off, gesturing to the next plate.

"These are boiled lollies, hard candies, whatever you want to call them. They are low grade, but will offer your regeneration a bit of a boost without having to rest or refuel. Take some and keep them on you. This was what I could get on short notice. Cook will now be preparing more for you." Milaro really seemed to be put out, annoyed even.

"Thanks." and she meant it. Taking a massive bite out of the doughnut, she chewed a bit and then continued. "But Dottie was just telling me some interesting stuff,

Millaro turned to the bench. "And what was that, Dottie?"

The bench cleared her throat, even though Quinn still couldn't tell where her throat was located. "Well, it's just I was explaining to her that Lynx is not quite himself."

"That's a good thing to explain to her," Millaro said with a deep sigh. "I'm uncertain what's happened, but I have a feeling that he will tell us what's happening when he knows what's happening and when he can tell us."

Quinn swallowed another bite of doughnut and mulled that over in her head. "Are you telling me that he may not know himself or he may literally not be able to tell us?"

Millaro nodded sadly. "Yep. Both of those are exactly what I'm telling you."

~~

SEE!!!

DUN DUN DUUUUUN

Things are not right

Much love

KT