LSRO: Chapter 53 - Into the Dim (Patreon)

Sooooo - I will still be posting 4 times a week (with occasional extras), but I have changed the days to be Mon/Tue/Thur/Fri

I actually had a ball writing these last four chapters of what will probably end up being book 1? over the weekend. Keep in mind I dictate and you don't want to read the raw dictation lol

But I've managed to give this one a once over and I really hope you enjoy it

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Chapter 53

Into the dim

As Quinn stepped over the threshold, her foot hit the ground. Even beneath the thick boots, she could feel a solid yet spongy sensation as her foot sank against the surface. It had a gritty feel like fine gravel, yet visually, at least, it appeared to be smooth.

The darkness around them was inky, punctuated by flashes of red and white, with hints of purple and blue lighting up the sky. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a torch, or more accurately, a glow stick. It cast a dull golden light around her, extending about four feet in every direction. She could sense Malakai off to her left, Eric hovering behind her right shoulder, and Aradie perched where she always perched, on Quinn's left shoulder.

Then, the Library doors swung shut behind them with a resounding whoosh, and she could feel absolutely nothing.

Light panic set in for a moment, and she had to remind herself to breathe deeply, not fast, and to not let anything distract her from the path. Aradie shot calming visions into her head: an ocean on the shore, the moon at night, trees bowing gently in the breeze.

Quinn breathed in deeply and spoke. "Okay, let's head towards the lights, I guess."

Malakai didn't respond. He'd been grumpy for days now, and she wasn't sure how to approach him about it. So she turned her attention to the imp instead. "Any contribution, Eric?"

"No, I have excellent vision. I will lead the way. I will make sure nothing attacks you. Or at least, if it's dangerous, I'll warn you." She could hear the grin in his words.

"Why wouldn't you..." She paused. He was an imp. "I get it," she said instead. He flashed her what she thought was an impish grin in the low light and pulled in front of her to lead the way.

They moved slowly, testing the ground as they walked. Luckily, Eric wasn't so mischievous that he forgot the human and the elf with him needed to walk on the surface. They didn't have hover packs, although next time she was going to find a book on hovering that wasn't just for defensive maneuvers. She didn't know the terrain well enough here to hover over it anyway.

"Do you see anything up ahead?" She asked Eric. Her eyes were getting used to the darkness and had started picking out rock formations on either side of them. The light in her hand illuminated them very slightly, and she realized it looked sort of like that volcanic rock when it had dried. Igneous rock, perhaps? It was very unusual. A question occurred to her suddenly. "Does chaotic magic burn?"

Eric, ahead of her, shrugged. "It depends on what the chaotic magic is being used for."

Malakai laughed. "Chaotic magic is pure destruction, and it can take any form that will destroy everything around it." He sounded bitter. His words were clipped. Quinn really wanted to know what the hell his problem was. They were however, limited on time in here. They might technically have three days... but she didn't want to be in this cloying air for any longer than she absolutely had to.

She'd have known that the air here was thicker, even if she hadn't been told. It felt dense as it pushed around her, and each step she took required a lot more effort than she would have had to exert on Earth or on either of the other planets she had previously visited.

As they moved farther into the darkness Quinn reached for the Library on a whim, but she couldn't feel it properly, even with the stone pressing against her leg. It felt as though she was trying to reach it through a bowl of pudding. The sensation was thick, viscous, and difficult to penetrate. She stopped trying just as she felt a headache sparking and hoped that when they had to return, it would work properly. She didn't like leaving so much to chance.

They continued, cautiously stepping over the rough terrain. It rose and lowered in ever-slight inclines and declines. Rocks around her looked as though a volcano had exploded here a long time ago and left abstract formations in its wake.

"How does chaotic magic attack?" she asked.

This time, Malakai sighed and Eric snorted. "I think it's better that Mr. Elf tells you about that," he said in a sing-songy way that sounded almost mocking. She caught the scowl Malakai threw at the imp.

This should be good, she thought.

"Chaotic magic doesn't attack. It's insidious. It will gather, expand, and devour once you can't fight it off anymore," Malakai explained, as if it all made sense.

"How do you fight it off?" Quinn asked, not dwelling on the fact that he looked like he was going to throw up. Maybe the golden light in her hand made his skin pallor different than it truly was.

Malakai didn't speak for several seconds, so long that Quinn actually thought he had decided to stop speaking to her. Just as she was about to ask a question again, he finally spoke.

"You don't really fight chaos magic off. You build up immunity to it and you purify it. You turn it from something that is dangerous and deadly to something that can be used for good, and I guess bad as well, depending on the individual. But you turn it into a force that isn't going to try and devour the person from the inside out."

Quinn blinked. She didn't have any spells that could purify chaotic magic. That didn't seem like a very good thing to her. Why hadn't anyone thought to give her a skill like that? And why was the Library not able to answer her out here, even though she knew why the Library couldn't intervene in her thoughts and answer her questions right now? She didn't like being cut off from it. She'd been so closely associated with it for such a short yet long time that she'd sincerely grown used to having it there, popping into her thoughts and answering all of the queries and questions that she had about this new world.

"Don't panic, Quinn," Malakai said, suddenly standing perhaps a little too close to her.

She took a step back. "Don't crowd."

"Oh, sorry," he said, stepping back himself and glancing away. "You just didn't answer me when I spoke to you."

"I get it," she said. She had got a little caught up in her own thoughts and spaced out somewhat. "Anyway, I'm fine."

"No, you were very obviously stressing about the fact that you don't have any abilities that can purify chaotic energy. That's what the suits are for. That's why we're basically wearing chaotic armor, so that it can't in any way impact you and affect you. That is why we have to make sure that we take these bites every three hours, that we attend any cut or any wound immediately. We just have to be careful and we can do that," he said. His tone was very reassuring and as Quinn watched him, she realized that perhaps he had lost his extremely bad mood from the last few days. At least she hoped he had.

There was an impatient snort from Eric's direction. "Enough dilly-dallying, you two. Come on, this imp hasn't got all day."

"No, you've got almost three days," Quinn said, unable to help herself. She let out a small chuckle at her own joke.

"Stop being so pedantic," the imp said, but he definitely cracked a smile.

With a much better mood, despite the extremely gloomy and dark area they were traversing, the group continued on. There was nothing. No sounds, but their footfalls, soft as they were, and the whirr of Eric's wings as he kept himself in place, slowly scouting the territory in front of them.

The golden light did little to expand their visual circle, and every piece of rock reminded her of flowing lava. From the atmosphere, Quinn felt like there should be so much more. Why weren't there evil-looking monsters jumping out to attack them?

"This would not make for a very interesting video game," she sighed softly to herself. She probably shouldn't be wishing for a very interesting video game, considering the fact that she would have to be one of those who fought the monsters off, and suddenly she liked the peace and quiet of walking through the murky stillness.

"Up ahead," Eric said, suddenly. "Do you see those shadows up ahead?"

Quinn paused, looking beyond the imp, and there, in the light that was sparking reds and whites and blues, with the slight yellow glow of her stick for back up, she could see it.

Buildings.

The silhouette of dilapidated, long defunct, buildings.

"Well, I guess that's the best place to head, then," she said. The three of them picked up their pace slightly, now that there was some light emanating from the area where the building silhouette stood. It reached toward them. She could make out shadows now, playing on the igneous rock. The rock formations all around them cast long shadows that moved in strange ways as they passed them. It reminded her of creatures from nightmares.

She still couldn't hear anything except for their footfalls, nothing around them but silence and darkness, and the flashing lights that would remind her of fireworks if they weren't so ominous in the way they lingered and flickered out. She pushed down on the nerves. She shouldn't be afraid of the dark, even if she was walking across a desolate planet that had been ravaged by the chaos of magic and wiped, apparently, every other living thing from the face of it.

"What's there to be nervous about?" she breathed out the words. Malakai nudged her shoulder, and she felt a little better. Aradie hooted low and soft and showed her pictures and images of what the city had once looked like, bright and beautiful. It reminded her a little bit of the Mesa Verde in Arizona and Colorado, where the houses had been built into cliff faces, except somehow more majestic. And then there were beautiful sandstone buildings and wonderful arches. It didn't look anything like what she could see in front of her.

Well, maybe it did. Maybe now it just looked like somebody had put a bomb in it and exploded it and all that was left were some structural elements that had been reinforced by igneous rock. Yeah, that's what it looked like.

About twenty feet from the closest building, they stopped.

"This seems too easy," Eric said very slowly as he scanned around. "I'm going to go and scout. I will return to you. Nothing will befall me. I promise I'm not going to give anything the satisfaction." And he fluttered off before Quinn could say anything.

"Just you and me, kid," Malakai said in a very deep voice that did not suit him.

"Don't do that again," she said.

"Yeah," he coughed, clearing his throat. "That was not a good choice."

They moved toward the building and entered through what must have been a doorway. The Library stone pulsed very faintly against her. Doorways it was then. There were remnants of the buildings all around them.

"All this happened in under five hundred years?" Quinn could have sworn there were better ruins in Rome.

"Yeah," Malakai's tone was cautious as he navigated the room. "You don't understand. Once chaos hits, everything's gone."

"Oh, I'm beginning to understand," she said, not liking that she did.

The first room they stepped into was probably a living room in whatever sort of dwelling this had been, maybe a house or a lower floor apartment. There were remnants of what might have been a chair and a box. Maybe some balls on the floor. The glow of the lights outside and in lit everything up in such a surreal manner. It was like the whole area had been frozen in time.

Just beyond the chair stood a body. It looked like a statue at first, like maybe Medusa had come and paid a visit and turned a person into stone. Somehow it stood there with a hand reached out toward something on the ground that was no longer there. It's face held a shocked expression, the mouth open in an o, like it had been a stolen moment in time where they hesitated and were now transformed into that stoney surprise for eternity.

She examined the statue closely. "Is this?"

"Yep, that is a Debilia." Malakai didn't even need her to finish her question.

She looked at frozen figure. They reminded her of a large scarab, except they had little legs and four little arms to either side. Their heads were just a tiny bit more humanoid and they stood upright. "Wow, they look fascinating."

"Fascinating is a great word for them. They are no more." Malakai flashed her a sad smile.

Quinn sighed as she looked around the desolate room. "Yeah, I got that much."

They kept looking around, walking through that first room to a second where the remnants of what must have been a baby's crib sat encased in the rock like a stone statue all by itself again. The table had broken and sat unevenly on the floor, leaning against a stone chair. It almost looked like somewhere she could have lived. Any of them could have lived. The air felt thick. She checked her timer. Still 30 minutes to go.

Oh, did she want to make sure she didn't breathe any of this in. If all of this was anything to go by, there was no way she was letting chaotic magic consume her.

Slowly her skin began to crawl like something was worming its way inside her. She kept looking over her right shoulder so as not to disturb Aradie. The bird hooted once softly and launched herself into the air, sweeping around, finally coming to stand very lightly on the edge of what had been the crib. She hooted low and long and Quinn shivered at the sound.

It was more like a warning, like something was coming.

She turned, listening. There was a noise, a skittering, something soft and low and stealthy. She could almost feel vibrations through the floor through to her feet, but they just didn't quite reach. She looked up at Malakai, whose face showed just as much confusion as she felt. Not to mention that hint of fear in the tightening of his eyes.

"Do you feel that?" she whispered.

He nodded, holding a finger up to his lips to silence any further conversation. They stood, unmoving, listening intently.

With a low pop right next to them, Eric was there, his voice low, urgent, commanding, "Get outside. Move, we're about to be attacked."

~~

TADAAAAA

Well... what did you think? See you tomorrow!

Much love

KT