LSRO: Chapter 47 - So much to do! (Patreon)

Hello absolutely wonderful Patreon people!

You see, Royal Road is doing this thing called a Writeathon - and I need to post another 3 chapters before Wednesday at like 6am to complete it. I was going to leave it but you know what? That slightly obsessive part of me won't let me do that.

Which means, you get 2 days of extra chapters this week! YAY! Right?!

There is so much to do in the Library. In case you didn't notice or something.

~~

Chapter 47

Too much to do

The thing about the Library being universal and everywhere meant that the Library of Everywhere did not close.

Quinn realized, belatedly, that they needed to work in shifts.

However, she also noticed that seven assistants, including one that was pretty much permanently stuck in the book hospital right now wasn't a whole lot. In fact, having a king elf who wasn't going to be there all the time and really was just an honorary assistant, a prince elf who was supposed to be her combat trainer and help her gain some tactical abilities, and a bench as the senior assistants didn't make manning a Library this size seem possible.

It left her basically with six assistants, and three supervisors between her, Malakai, and Dottie. Quinn ran her hand through her hair and decided that she was way too tired to deal with this tonight. Dottie promised she would oversee things during the night shift and stay up with Jim and Bob, the Aracnio brothers, to man the check-in desk.

Trudging up the stairs with Aradie hooting very concernedly in her ear, Quinn decided she needed a great night's sleep for once. And tomorrow, tomorrow morning, she would figure out exactly what needed to be done to sort out the roster in the Library.

The gaping hole left by Lynx's current absence was becoming more obvious.

It won't be too much longer, the Library whispered in her mind. But Quinn didn't dignify it with a response.

She slept fitfully, even though the bed was amazingly comfortable. She tossed and turned and all she could do was lay and think about books and not scanning in the incorrect books and how many different species would be coming in every single day. So far, she'd seen about 80 people walking through the Library since they'd opened. In total, they'd only returned like 350 books. She'd check the exact numbers in the morning. But so many of them were different.

It was all Quinn could do to not stare.

She flopped over onto her other side and tried to get back to sleep again. Eventually, Aradie nipped at her ear to wake her up.

Quinn wanted to push the bird away, but she knew she had to get up. She opened her eyes and a calendar flashed up in front of her vision. She glared at it again. Tenth day here, really, that's all? She sighed. Yeah, that tracked, just about. It felt like an entire lifetime.

She'd been to multiple worlds, almost got killed, learned magic. Sure, just run-of-the-mill library stuff.

Dressed and showered, she decided to head downstairs and snag some food from Cook. That darling golem had another singular cinnamon donut waiting for her. She could get used to this. She flashed him a smile. "Thank you, Cook."

"Always, librarian," they said in that metallic-y voice that held a hint of warmth. Maybe it was like an oven. Perhaps that's where it came from.

She wandered into the main part of the Library, only seeing Dottie, Eric, and Geneva there. The Imp and Firionas fluttered in place as they worked with the console. Quinn looked around. She didn't see Malakai, no Malaro. "Did they leave it up to you? I thought Malakai was going to supervise this morning."

Dottie actually scoffed. "Oh, really? I'm a superellex futora. You should know that I don't require sleep. As such, I can keep an eye on these guys for you and make sure that none of the books that shouldn't be scanned into the system get scanned into the system. Add to that the fact that I can help them navigate the Library and proceed with their training. I'm quite invaluable!"

Quinn smiled and petted the bench on her head, or at least where she was pretty sure her hairline would be. Dottie, luckily, half purred into the touch. "Thanks, Dottie." And she really meant it. Their friendship might have had a rocky start, but Quinn found she really looked forward to seeing Dottie now.

"Shoo. You have to go train with Malakai. Milaro cannot come until later, but he has given Malakai instructions for your mental fortitude training. And right now, you have to go and do that." Her tone was soft, if a little bit chiding.

Quinn grimaced. "Fine. But are you sure that you can go without sleep?"

Dottie sighed. "Well, not forever, but I can definitely go several weeks without damaging any of my cortex. I will be absolutely fine. You require rest, sustenance, and training so you don't get killed. We won't make it another 500 years without a Librarian if you die."

Quinn paused at the voice Dottie spoke to her with. She was actually being stern and concerned. "Fine. I'll go and train, I promise. Just let me have a look around first."

Quinn double-checked the levels through the console. It seemed they'd had 100 or so more books returned while she slept. She leafed through requesting the exact number of books returned so far. It was 382 returned, with only 348 scanned through due to the restrictions they'd had to place on it. After some training and more food she'd go through and make sure she had all the numbers for the other branches included as well. But right now she had things to do.

She sighed at how long it was going to take to get 18,000 books back into the Library. "I guess this is better than nothing," she muttered, hoping that Harish and Siliqua would get to the bottom of the problem as soon as possible.

~~

It didn't take long for Malakai to join her in the kitchen where she was getting some snacks for energy replenishment.

Quinn grimaced at him. "So, I guess you're going to run me through the wringer in the training room?" she asked.

"Well, it had occurred to me," he replied nonchalantly, "but if you're not up to it..."

"Of course, I'm up to it. I just don't want to," she said. "I don't think I'm the most physically fighty sort of person."

"Oh you're definitely not. But you've absorbed some basics, so you just need to train the muscles to follow the knowledge that you already have. You've already got dodging pretty much down, so you know it's fast learning. It's much quicker than having to learn this from the ground up and take lessons for years and years and years, trust me. I've been studying swordwork for 15 of them." Malakai was picking over a few small packages Cook had put out for them to choose from.

Quinn smiled at him. "Yeah, I know, you've mentioned that, and your grandfather mentioned it before that. So I know, I'm sorry for complaining. Let's grab some drinks and some food, and we can go and bash the crap out of me."

Malakai actually laughed. "I'm not going to bash the crap out of you."

"He's lying," Eric said in a sing-song voice as he hovered into the kitchen, holding up a ratty and damaged book in one small hand. "What am I supposed to do with the books that are damaged upon return? Don't you usually leverage a fine?" He seemed very put out by books being treated badly.

Quinn  had to echo the sentiment, but they'd declared no fines for a bit, so she shrugged. "Yes, but it's also not their fault because they couldn't return it for 462 years or something, which means that, like, we're giving them leeway for 30 days or so."

The imp was obviously put out. "You know, I could levy fines. I'd be very efficient with them."

Quinn raised an eyebrow. "I'm sure you would be, Eric."

He harrumphed and zoomed back out of the kitchen toward the check-in desk where Geneva threw him a disapproving glance.

Quinn sighed and motioned to Malakai. "Anyway, let's get started with some training."

~~

Oh, how she regretted those words almost immediately.

Malakai had been right about one thing though.

Dodging worked.

She wasn't quite horrible at it now. She'd retained enough knowledge and muscle memory to successfully roll and fling herself out of harm's way smoothly. For the most part anyway. But her inability to grasp even the most basic concept of ice control infuriated her.

"No. No. Just a sliver of it. You need to control the output of the ice. We don't have to freeze a lake right now." Malakai pinched his brow and took a long-suffering breath. "You can't just command an ice blast to form over your hand."

"But that's what I did when we fought Kajaro," Quinn said, exasperation filling her despite her best efforts. "I just willed it to hit the octopus..."

"...and it went completely and utterly out of control." Malakai finished for her.

"Well, it froze the lake, and I could get over it." She pouted.

"Yeah, but did you ever think that maybe that's not what the spell was supposed to do?" He leaned in. "Lack of control is not a good thing in magic. Too much of it, and you blow things up you never intended to."

"Well, if it wasn't supposed to do that, why did it do that?" Quinn flung her hands in the air in frustration. "Now that's the only way I understand to shoot magic out is to just fling it out there."

Malakai didn't have an answer for that. He simply scowled at her. "I don't know, because ice isn't one of my affinities. But I do know that to use stone, I also had to first master earth manipulation. I have no idea what my grandfather was thinking when he ordered the Library to give you ice tomes. That's like the tree before the seed. You don't have one water or air book in your knowledge, let alone water. How are you supposed to master ice?"

Quinn blinked at him because he sounded like he was making a lot of sense. "What do you mean?"

"You shouldn't just be able to use ice without any inkling of how to control water or air..."

"Well... apparently I can, to freeze a lake and blast in some serpent's face." She shot back at him.

"You just froze his corpse, but still..." Malakai then mulled over those words and nodded. "Good point. I'm just a little bit frustrated."

"That's highly obvious." Quinn took a breath and calmed herself down. "Then what do we do? What do I do, so I can harness an effective combat skill?"

Malakai frowned for a few seconds. "It's also obvious that we need to get you books on water control, on knowing how to defend with water, how to resist water, how to manipulate water, and how to create water. You have all of those affinities. Once you know how to do that with water and with air, combining them to create ice will be a lot more controllable on your end."

"Okay, that makes sense. Why did your grandfather say that I smell like ice then?" Quinn was genuinely curious.

Malakai sniffed the air. "Probably because you do. I'm unsure why. Maybe it's your strongest element. You're really a mixed bag. You smell like every single affinity I've ever come across, and more. And all of it icy.  I don't know why. I'm like 30. Don't ask me these questions."

"You speak like that's not a long time." She grinned at him, goading him a bit.

"In my years, it's not, and very soon, it'll be nothing in your years either." He quipped right back at her.

Quinn thought about that for a moment and realized just how much her life was changing. She could deal with that.

"Okay then, Master Trainer, what's our next step? I can dodge and roll and sort of hover. What do we need to do next?"

"Well, I would like to see if we can get Misha to get us..." And that's all he had to say.

Misha appeared. "You need me, Librarian?"

Quinn did a double-take. It was the first time she'd seen Misha come to the call of someone other than herself. "Well, yes, but we hadn't yet finished discussing what exactly we needed you for."

"Books, I assume," she said, looking at Malakai with some disdain, and that's when Quinn realized if Misha had simply anticipated that Quinn would need her.

She wondered if sometimes the Supervisory Golem had been in charge of combat training. She was going to look that up later, but didn't need to bother because the Library answered her.

On occasion, but in rare instances. The alliance we have with the darigháhnish here has always enabled us to pull on their long history of combat prowess.

Good to know, Quinn thought to herself.

"Well," Malakai said, "we need several books on beginning and intermediate wind, air, and water manipulation. I don't know those elements well enough to think of any off the top of my head. Would you recommend some, please, Misha?"

That seemed to mollify the Supervisory Golem slightly. "Well," they said, almost preening, "there are several books that I can think of. I will have Tom bring them to you shortly. Is that all?"

"That'll be enough for now. There's no huge rush," Quinn said.

"Ah, but Librarian, there is a huge rush. There's too much knowledge in this library for you to learn overnight, but we need to keep you alive because we, very selfishly, want to stay alive as well." And with that cryptic remark, Misha disappeared.

"I'm never going to get used to this," Quinn said.

"Yeah, you are. Look how much more used to this you are right now from the moment I met you," Malakai said, obviously trying to soothe her a little. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Come on. While we wait for the books anyway, let's get in some of that mind training grandfather had you absorb," he said. The elf prince frowned, checking on something obviously in his hud, and nodded very slightly to himself as if he needed some convincing.

That didn't exactly make Quinn feel confident about the whole mind magic stuff. She still found it fantastical.

Finally, after another few seconds, he cleared his throat. "How about I start throwing some spells at you? You've already read a heap and absorbed books on mental defenses. So let's put some of them into practice, shall we? My grandfather instructed me in a few very specific attacks designed to test the parameters of the skills you've absorbed. Again, you should be able to use what you learn from Mental Defense, it's more than you think, and Mental Fortitude and Time Dilation."

"Okay," Quinn said, and she couldn't help but feel nervous. "You sure this is safe?"

"Yes. Grandfather thought so." Malakai shot her a reassuring smile.

Quinn took a deep breath and nodded, even though it drove her anxiety up a notch. "Ready."

The first couple of attacks Malakai threw at her were easy to fend off.

He sent what felt like a mental shove toward her, and she pushed back, making him stumble at first. It surprised her, since she hadn't expected a mental attack or counterattack to translate into a physical act.

She pulled the information she'd absorbed into herself and felt it out in her mind. It was like there were walls with bricks that she could expand and constrict. They were held together by a sort of putty acting as the mortar between each of those building blocks. The analysis felt in place, and right.

She found the harder the hit he leveraged at her, the easier it was to rebound it back using his mental energy. She could return it and impact him in a way that sent him physically stumbling. Which alerted her to the fact that she needed to brace herself physically and mentally during a mental attack.

They lobbed these hits against each other for what seemed like several minutes, or maybe longer. Maybe sixteen or twenty of them even.

But the next one hurt.

It pierced through the mortar, stopped it from expanding, and exploded several of the bricks she'd been keeping intact around her mind.

Pain pierced into her memories and it felt like somebody was driving a nail into her frontal lobe.

Quinn screamed and fell to the ground, rolling in pain.

She couldn't see anything.

She couldn't hear anything.

Nothing but darkness.

~~

Don't hate me! You'll get the next chapter tomorrow, I promise :D

Anyhu - would love to hear what you think. 

Much love

KT