LSRO: Chapter 39 - Confessions (Patreon)

So... here you have it. 

All the juicy stuff. Well, maybe not alllll of it, but some of it at least.

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Chapter 39

Confessions

Quinn sat on the couch, the books next to her, Aradie still close to her shoulder. She wasn't entirely sure how to interpret what Dottie and Milaro just told her - to digest it even.

What she did know was that she needed these books. So, she placed her hands, spread out and face down, on the open pages of 'Segmentation of Thoughts' and absorbed it into her being. It was fragmented information that, surprisingly, made her thoughts more clearly aligned and less unevenly jumbled in her head. It was a way to pinpoint focus on small details with so many nuances. It was fascinating.

She opened her eyes and didn't experience the immediate rush of dizziness. Without hesitation, Milaro handed her one of those candies to begin regenerating her energy again.

And frankly, it made her start connecting some of the dots between what they were telling her and her own observations. Maybe Lynx wasn’t just trying to be infuriating all this time.

"And then you can have one of these," Milaro interrupted her analysis, pulling out what looked decidedly like a cake pop from behind his back. "These will give you instant boosts of 80 energy each. You cannot consume more than 10 of them a day. These are supposed to be for emergencies only.”

He said the last as Quinn took a huge bite out of the one he’d handed to her. She grinned up at him innocently.

“And if you check now that you have absorbed another book, your energy capacity is greater again.” Milaro continued like she hadn’t attacked the cake pop with gusto.

Quinn glanced at the energy level and realized she’d crested 600. Look at that. He was right.

Milaro hadn’t stopped his information spiel though. “Eventually, your energy level will outpace all possibilities of instant regeneration. So, you cannot rely on this. Instead, you must eat the more fulfilling meals. Cook is also preparing something that I believe the closest thing you would know it to is maple candied bacon. It's something you can carry with you always and will give you an immediate emergency boost as well. They are, however, more finicky and when Cook has made them, I will explain more to you about them. Anyway, here."

Then he reached and pulled something out of the pocket of his robe. "And take this so your night owl can sit on your shoulder without goring you to death until you can get the leather one properly crafted."

Quinn grabbed the strange piece of padded fabric with ties that Milaro briefly helped her tie into place. Aradie stepped onto the perch, sort of biscuiting it like a cat while she got used to the footing, and then settled into a comfortable weight on Quinn's shoulder.

Then Quinn dug into the bread rolls, cake pops and the lollies. And so, Quinn set about absorbing all of the books in front of her. It took a good hour and her head was definitely running full of so much information by the time she finished absorbing 564 energy points worth of knowledge.

But with the help of three cake pops and her regeneration lolly at the end of it, she managed to still finish with 280 remaining and now her cap was 629.

"Is there a rational reason as to how my energy capacity is going to increase every time I absorb a book?" Quinn asked, because there literally didn't appear to be any specific reason for the numbers to increase like they did. “Or is it just arbitrary?”

Milaro shook his head. "Not really a specific reasoning behind the amounts. It’s very individual. You are a slightly different case with your ridiculous amount of affinities anyway."

"See, Lynx," she said, looking up at the ceiling as if to summon him. "I'm not the only person who uses the word ridiculous, thank you very much."

But there was no quip nor an answer flashing up in front of her face. She paused, a little worried. Usually he seemed to hover around just out of sight and pop in whenever someone wanted him, or, more often, didn't want him to appear.

"So, how do we find out what my max capacity is?" she asked, trying to push the worry out of her mind. It wasn't working.

"Well, usually it would peak around 2,000 and slow considerably to maybe like one or two points a book. So, pretty negligible really. We'll see where yours constricts itself and go from there." Milaro paused and then added hurriedly. "You have to understand your energy is more about how you regenerate your mana and how fast and how much magical capacity you have."

"Yeah, I've gathered that much. I really love how the rest is a non-answer," Quinn said, slightly disgruntled. She glanced over at Dottie and then up at Milaro. "Where's Malakai?" she asked.

"I sent him back home to retrieve his things so that he might stay here in a little bit more comfort and perhaps less begrudgingly," Milaro grinned. "He'll be back very shortly."

Quinn paused, looked around a bit more, and decided she was just going to grab the bull by the horns. "Okay, so what are we going to do to help Lynx?"

"Well, I'm sure he'll come to us when he realizes what sort of help he needs." Milaro said, obviously uncomfortable.

Quinn shook her head. "No. Because despite what you think, I think right now he really needs all of us. And I think he might be a bit stubborn."

Milaro chuckled but it sounded somewhat forced. "The Library, and Lynx with it are an extremely complex organism."

"I get that." She said gently, because in truth she did. "Trust me. I've been right there up in that link with the core and the glimpses of a history I still find too complex to piece together."

"Ah." The elf watched her for a moment, and Quinn saw Dottie, very decidedly, raise one of her wooden legs and smack him directly on the top of the foot with it. Milaro winced and glared down at her.

"Fine." he grumbled. "You realize what Links stands for, right? Library Interface Neural Knowledge System. That's why he's called Links. I realize you think of him as the cat he sometimes presents himself as. But that's what he is."

A lightbulb practically went off in Quinn's mind. She'd seen it come up of course when information referred to him as Links whatever his designation was. But she still liked the cheshire-like cat she'd first encountered and insisted on calling him Lynx. The acronym made a lot of sense. Sort of. She'd have thought it would be a lot longer. "Well I guess he sort of is the Interface, right?"

"Not entirely. Lynx enables the full interface to activate. If the manifestation is not able to be projected then the bare minimum the Library needs to function is not present. Lynx is literally what links everyone to the Library. He is an integral part of it, and yet also partially his own entity."

Quinn mulled that over while she munched on another piece of that candied bacon stuff. "So... is the Library also its own entity."

Milaro nodded emphatically. "Yes. Entirely. But it is also a part of Lynx and the latter cannot survive without the former."

Quinn shook her head. "That's enough of that. What we should be talking about is just how we're going to help the stubborn cat out."

Dottie pushed gently against Quinn's leg. "That's just it, I don't know that we can help him. He's a very stubborn one - they both are."

A whoosh of air breathed over them all, and Quinn paused her next bite, a smile crossing her face even as the pages of the still open tome on her lap fluttered.

"I'm really not that stubborn you know." Lynx was there. In all his softly glowing purple and black rune-ringed self. "I do appreciate the concern though. There's really nothing you need to be concerned about."

Which was the precise time his form decided to flicker. Ever so slightly, but to Quinn it appeared like a glitch.

Not like when the television got a bit of static or anything. But more when she thought of some of the anime or even movies that she'd watched. That type of glitching. Like a hologram having issues remaining solid. She frowned up at him and decided that maybe it wasn't the best idea to just take what he said at face value.

Everyone's survival depended on this, not the least her own. His. Dottie ... anyone who'd get gobbled up by chaotic magic if she'd understood that whole spiel correctly.

"I don't think you're being entirely honest. And well, while we're talking about honesty. I can feel the lie." She tried to lock gazes with him, but he avoided looking directly at her. "Lynx... you need to talk to us. I can’t read your mind when you’re not letting me communicate with you. We're all in on this. We're here to help reopen the Library, to recruit assistants, to return books and make sure we combat the chaos in the magic. But we can't do any of that if you're withholding what seems to be pretty heavy stuff from us."

"Heavy?" Lynx cocked his head to one side... but then he sighed. Because he knew full well what she meant. "You are right. This is just a lot and its very difficult to admit to others."

Malakai stepped into view, obviously returned from his trip, and plopped down on the armchair to the left of Quinn. Folding his arms he cleared his throat and got straight to the point. "It might feel difficult to tell us, but you could also just export it to every single one of us through the system that's at your fingertips and then you wouldn't even have to speak. So you can't use that as an excuse."

Quinn wanted to hug Malakai right then and there but she was too comfy in her perch on the couch. "There. No excuses, spit it out."

Aradie hooted for punctuation.

Lynx sighed and a ripple of runes wound around his body. They seemed to do that when he was accessing information, or in a mood about information. Quinn frowned, because this time even the runic line appeared to be somewhat glitchy.

"Very well. But you asked for it."

There was silence for several moments, but Quinn ignored the prophecy of doom in his words and concentrated on going over how her mind felt now that the information she'd absorbed was making the rounds. She felt like a computer with a heap of space had been emptied into her mind so that she might categorize and arrange her thoughts more efficiently. Like there was a lock on the door of her mind. It wasn't very sturdy. So after some analysis, she realized that there was information she had to attune to and understand in greater depth that would then allow her to protect herself in a way that maximized her energy output.

Hours of fun instead of television. All the building blocks and tools, with basic blueprints. She couldn't wait to get started. Once Lynx had finally told them everything anyway.

Finally Lynx squared his shoulders, and she gave over her full attention. She'd figure out how to compartmentalize later when Milaro could show her the basics.

"You have to understand, when we first lost Kor and had no one to replace her, I did what I had to in order to preserve the primary function of the Library."

"To control the chaos right? To prevent the magic from blowing up in everyone's faces?" Quinn offered.

"Yes. That's a decent enough summation." Lynx began pacing ever so slowly, back and forth in front of where they were all sitting. "You see... I knew we couldn't let anymore magic out, because until we found a replacement we'd need every single drop to maintain our cycle as best we could."

"But wouldn't all that magic you were filtrating have ambient mana you could pull from?" Quinn asked, the idea occurring to her suddenly.

Lynx and Milaro winced, and the elf spoke up to explain. "Wild magic is unrefined, while you can get some ambient magic, you require energy to refine it. So anything the Library pulled from it, would have gone back into refining it. Leaving it pretty much zero sum with no excess energy. Frankly, I'm surprised it lasted so long."

The manifestation shot the elf an unreadable look before continuing. "Anyway - to cut a long, almost 500-year boring story short... I conserved magic where I could, while constantly scanning for any sign of the correct magical signature in any of our usually traversed worlds, and barely managed to sustain any filtration of wild magic at all."

He took a deep breath before continuing. "It was rough, bumpy even. I had to conserve all of the energy to such an extent that some of the bookworm containment areas broke, silverfish escaped, night owls hibernated. And still I had no sign. There were so many of my abilities, my functions that I couldn't utilize. I had chalked it all up to lack of power. I discovered Quinn on a last ditch effort scan. Basically it was the final chance I had to do a long range sweep that might find someone. Just on the off chance. Nothing else yielded results."

Quinn stayed silent, and Aradie pressed in close to her head offering soft, feathered comfort. The librarian could tell that this was something Lynx had mega difficulties with, so she pushed the questions back and listened. Apparently, everyone else felt the same way.

"Well Quinn is here now and her energy alone allows the Library to wake up some of its functions. Add to that the return of three integral books to the system and we should be in low power mode, still critical... but there is so much missing from my usual box of tools." He flickered slightly again as he continued to pace back and forth, making eye contact with none of them.

"Well, I haven't been able to access information, or whereabouts of specific books or locations, or even just things within the Library... I just thought it was all a matter of the system not having enough power, or else just being rusty after almost 500 years lack of use..."

"But that's not it, is it?" Quinn asked, as trepidation tried to choke her.

"No. That's not it at all." Finally Lynx looked up, and his double eyelids open and closed in rapid succession. "It has nothing to do with the current power levels, or what magic is available. Right now... I'm quite literally glitching. The system isn't working as it should, and I have no idea why, nor how to rectify it."

~~

So, now we know how poor Lynx has been feeling. Unable to tell what is just a result of 500 years of virtual inactivity, and what is actually not working!

What did you think?

Much love 

KT