Quinn shook her head as if trying to determine whether she'd misheard Milaro. "Wait a second. Malakai's maternal great-aunt?" Not having had family for the longest time, familial relations weren't exactly her forte.

"Yes," Milaro confirmed, avoiding her gaze, which was unusual behavior for him.

"So you're saying she's part of your extended family?" Quinn asked, just to clarify.

Milaro nodded, cringing slightly. Quinn couldn't help feeling surprised and immediately suspicious, not of Milaro, but of the circumstances surrounding this person's visit to the Library. Especially given that Malakai didn't like talking about his mother's side of the family.

Harish interjected, "You mean Ardenil?" He pointed at the frozen image. "That's Ardenil?"

Milaro sighed. "Yes, that is one hundred percent Ardenil."

"Well, that's just..." Harish stuttered, glancing at Siliqua, who was fidgeting with her hands and avoiding eye contact.

Quinn cleared her throat, completely lost. "Can someone explain to me the significance of this person being Ardenil?"

Milaro sighed again, a habit that was beginning to irritate Quinn. "Ardenil was banished several hundred years ago, I'd say about seven hundred?"

Harish shook his head. "More like seven hundred and fifty."

Quinn held up her hands to stop their conversation. "Rewind. Why?"

"It's a bit of a long story." Milaro cautioned.

"Then make time to tell the long story," Quinn insisted. She was determined that people would fill her in earlier than later. We really need to get a history section, she said, addressing the Library.

We have historical magical texts.

No, just a history section, so I can absorb knowledge about everything, and you guys will stop leaving me out of the loop.

You can’t just absorb random knowledge. It has to be magical.

Then it should be! Quinn realized she was trying to take the easy way out, but it would make things much easier if she could.

The Library remained silent.

Milaro heaved a heavy sigh. "Well, she had a great falling out with Malirsha, who was my son's grandmother, about their, shall we say, species proclivities, way before my son married into the family, but they are technically kin."

"Oh, tell him properly," Siliqua interjected, crossing her arms. "She was of the Chaos Faction."

Quinn raised an eyebrow at the name that sounded very much like a video game. "What do you mean, Chaos Faction?"

"Well, you see, the darigháhnish have a lot of factions. They're more segmented than most of our cousins. They have chaotic factions, fervent religious factions, and then there are the anti-magic factions. Those ones are fun." Siliqua's sarcasm spoke to the reality being the precise opposite.

"What do you mean, anti-magic factions? How can you be anti-magic when everyone on your planet knows magic exists?" That made absolutely no sense to Quinn.

"They believe the body should be used as intended without enhancements or assistance from magic." It appeared to be taking Siliqua considerable strength not to roll her eyes. "Let's just say they often end up having to trade crops with those who have had some magical assistance in producing them. You'd think that made them hypocrites but it's not something they'll even debate. Anyway, we're digressing. Now you know they have factions."

"Thank you," Quinn said to Siliqua. "I seem to recall when we went to the Debilian homeworld that Malakai mentioned he had a chaotic affinity of some sort."

"Yes, exactly," Milaro confirmed. "He got that from his mother's side of the family. The darigháhnish have always had a sympathetic chaotic origin, shall we say." Milaro's expression was thunderous, clearly annoyed. There was some serious history there, but it seemed they would be discussing that later as well.

Still, Quinn understood she'd have to take her wins where she could. She waved everything away and asked outright, "So what does this visit between this Ardenil person and our Librarian mean?"

"Well, I'm not really a chaos theorist, but Ardenil was, and she was very devout about it. She attempted multiple times to get Malirsha to renounce the family's path and veer away from all the other affinities and only take on those with chaotic elements, which several bloodlines have done. But all of the combinations can be extremely dangerous without being tempered by others, especially when combined with a pure chaos affinity."

Quinn scowled and narrowed her eyes at him. "You made me believe that chaos affinities just weren't a thing."

"Oh no, they're a thing. We just don't encourage them." Milaro didn't even seem phased that he'd been caught in an omission. "And well, they're a more rare thing that has a lot to do with your genetic makeup."

Quinn cringed. "Yes, my genetic makeup. Okay, that's great." Quinn looked at the image again and replayed it. "Could this have been just a regular visit?"

"Look at the tension in their shoulders," Siliqua said, leaning in as the image was replayed yet again. It was only a few short seconds and didn't show much but an overview as Aradie had moved through the Library. Probably thinking nothing of it at that stage. "That doesn't look like a friendly chat."

"Maybe she had an overdue book," Cadre suggested, "which we cannot currently check because of the state of the Library's recollection."

Quinn sighed. He wasn't wrong, it was just frustrating. "Okay then, did she frequent the Library?"

"Of course she frequented the Library," Lynx chimed in. "If I recall correctly, which we all know may not be the case right now, she semi-frequently checked in on the restricted section. Although I do recall having to bar her from that several times because she was spending too much time in there."

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

The words came out slower and slower as realization dawned until Lynx finally just shrugged. "I don't know. I just know she was here as a pretty frequent visitor. What, maybe a thousand years ago? Five centuries before we had to shut down?"

"But you do recall her being here? Not just because of this projection, right?" Quinn tried to prod gently.

"I mean yes I recall her as an individual. And I don't recall this particular event. As you can see, I'm not in the image." His voice grew softer as he spoke until he sounded thoroughly confused. "Well, maybe. Really, Quinn, I'm just not a reliable source anymore."

"It's okay, Lynx. We'll get things sorted again, okay?" She gave his arm a brief squeeze and realized it wasn't as tangible as usual.

"I know," he said, but she couldn't help feeling like he was just saying that.

"Well, the image isn't clear enough for us to read their lips," Quinn said, as she bent far too close to it, peering at it.

Aradie hooted.

"I'm sorry, I'm not being critical. I'm just making an observation."

Aradie flew back to her perch. Now Quinn had to deal with an irritated owl later on after they'd figured out what to do about this image. Why couldn't anything just be easy for once? This just made it one more thing that Quinn had to add to the list.

"Malakai won't know anything about this, will he?" she asked, even though she was aware of the base emotions he had for his mother's side of the family.

"No, she was banished about 700 years before my son and his wife met, way before Milaro was born." Milaro chuckled. "I realize the scope of years must seem absurd to you."

"Perhaps a little," Quinn conceded. "You said Malakai is 30, right?"

"Yes, he is still very young."

"Yeah, young," Quinn said. Her head was starting to pound. Couldn't this have just been straightforward? She had missing books to get back to the Library and its new branch. There were lost books from the restriction vault that she desperately had to get back because they were magically dimensionally evil. There were branches to open, fabricated memories, lost memories, warped memories to regain and retrieve. The system was damaged and those were all just starting points. It seemed like the lists just kept getting longer and longer and there was more and more to do.

It felt infinitely impossible to complete all the tasks in front of her.

"Quinn," Milaro said, and she looked up, focusing on him. "It's okay. I realize it all feels very overwhelming right now, but you're not alone in it, at least, right?"

"Yeah," she said. "At least I'm not alone." She glanced down at the picture again and squinted. "Is Ardenil even speaking to Korradine in this?"

They all peered a lot closer and Aradie hooted.

"You don't think so? Well, I'm glad you decided to tell us this now." Quinn said irritably.

Another hoot.

"Of course, I would have listened to whatever... we're talking later," she said to the owl.

Aradie shrugged and turned around on her perch, giving Quinn the cold shoulder. She sighed and counted to three in her head before turning back to the image and speaking. "It doesn't look like they're talking."

"It looks like Ardenil is speaking to Korradine. Korradine doesn't appear to be reacting at all, except for the tension in her shoulders," Siliqua said. "This is actually quite fascinating."

"I'm glad you find the Librarian ignoring a patron to be so exciting," Quinn said. "And it's only a few seconds. For all we know there could have been a very heated response mere seconds after this interaction."

"No, no, Quinn, that's not it. Why would she be standing there talking to her without having an actual conversation? Ardenil was never a patient person. There should be books flying around, which she wouldn't have cared to damage. Probably some fists flying." Siliqua's eyes narrowed. "She was a little bit of a violent person. Probably where Malakai gets his fighting streak from."

Quinn angled the image differently. "Well, she's certainly speaking to Korradine."

Cadre perked up at that and leaned forward, peering closely. "Hmm, it almost seems like she's speaking through Korradine, perhaps. Maybe my eyes aren't what they used to be. There are other options. Just because it's the two of them doesn't mean it's the two of them."

"What?" Quinn asked, shaking her head to try and clear up what she just thought she heard.

Cadre grimaced. "Let me try to explain ... Lynx, could you please become Ardenil for a moment?"

Lynx sighed and suddenly in the blink of an eye, Ardenil was not only in the image in front of them, but also well... in front of them.

Cadre cleared his throat. "See. Just because it's the two of them, doesn't mean it's them."

"So it could also be shapeshifters?" Quinn asked.

Cadre shrugged. "Or something convincing perceptions that events occurred."

"Just like when it showed Lynx taking the book from the restricted section in that owl's memories?"

"Precisely." Cadre smiled this time.

"Oh... I remember reading something," Quinn said as another idea struck her, compounding with Cadre's revelation. The problem with filling her mind with so many new books in the last two weeks was that it was more difficult to locate some of the older information she'd read. It wasn't that it disappeared or that she replaced the space it had taken in her brain. It was more that there was just so much more to recall, which made the fact that one of the first tricks Milaro had taught her was how to speed up her inner thoughts make so much sense.

"There was something... this is... this is really familiar." She continued, trying to pull up the relevant information in her mind.

“What do you mean it's familiar?" Siliqua asked. "Is this something that would happen on earth where people just ignore each other? I... I don't feel like she's ignoring Ardenil. It's something else."

"You don't need to just make excuses for Korradine," Lynx said. "It's enough for us to know now that she betrayed us. The whole Library, me, all of us. I just wish I knew when she turned when they managed to convince her that what the Library was doing was wrong."

"Quinn, I'm sure that's not what they did," Quinn said to Lynx. "I'm positive that she still loved the Library for a very long time."

"Well, it's very obvious that she didn't when she started doing this to us." Lynx blinked out of the room.

Quinn sighed. "Well, that didn't go well."

"Did you think it would?" Milaro asked. "Right now, he's having to juggle the fact that somebody who he worked closely with for thousands of years literally betrayed everything Lynx stands for. Everything he is made of and somehow manipulated his memories and the Library's memories of those events."

"That's it," Quinn said. "Exactly. There was... there was a mention... Oh. Can we figure out if Ardenil came before this time? Maybe a few years? Aradie, please, please, when is one of the most recent times before this visit that Ardenil entered the Library?"

Still not turning her back around to the front, Aradie finally projected another image.

"This is about two years earlier?" Quinn asked her.

Aradie nodded.

"Oh great, you're not even speaking to me in images anymore." Aradie turned her head around and winked before turning it back. They were gonna have a long talk later.

"Oh, but she's not interacting with Korradine?" Quinn asked.

Aradie shook her head and then hooted once, low and mournfully. "Oh, you don't know if she saw her. That's odd. Did she take out any books at that point in time?"

"No, there's no record in the system," Milaro said slowly.

Harish gasped, "but there is one of those gaps."

Quinn had this idea in her head and she wasn't sure if she should pursue it, but some of the actions she'd seen Korradine eliciting spoke against everything Lynx had said about her. "Do you think it's possible that she cast a spell on her or, perhaps that none of this is Ardenil at all and just some shapeshifter insert who is giving us a red herring? Or... I don't know, inserted like a brain-eating parasite to control her with?" Quinn asked, just throwing some ideas out there.

Milaro blinked at her, a sad smile tugging at his lips. "Yes, those are all possibilities, Quinn."

"Oh," she said, not entirely sure what she should say next because she had no idea how to determine any of them.