The air around Quinn thickened when she opened her eyes. Not even simply like a fog, but instead, like an actual cloying air density all around her. There was dampness to it, almost suffocating, and no matter where she looked, everything haze shrouded everything.

Not the obscured by mist type either, but more like she had very bad eyesight and had forgotten to wear her prescription glasses. Nothing was recognizable, and for several seconds Quinn almost forgot to breathe.

Muffled sounds reached her ears, as if something was climbing around in the walls, perhaps scuttling about on the floors. Yet, she couldn't see any of these creatures. Hell, she couldn't even see the floor properly. It, too, was a hazy grey mass.

That's when she realized a few things. Aradie wasn't perched on her shoulder, nor was she wearing the leather perch for her to do so. Quinn went to sleep ages ago and remembered this distinctly because she'd had a long, relaxing bath beforehand. And this wasn't the same room she'd fallen asleep in.

In fact, as she glanced down and realized there was a couch beneath her and not a bed, things began to twist into focus from the haze of the unrecognizable.

The hall was long and wide, and the only furniture in it was the red couch she'd been asleep on. The grey stone walls, floor, and pillars emanated a coldness she felt through to her bones, and as she stood up somewhat shakily, she realized she had bare feet.

She was back in her dream world. Or, more precisely, the world Kajaro had coaxed her into when he initially triggered the mind bomb he'd planted. Only the last couple of times she's ventured into it, it was clear it no longer belonged to him.

Instead, she'd made it her own.

This was where the tomes she'd absorbed came in handy. Time moved differently in her dreams, and she'd devoured a lot more information and practice since the last time she'd set foot in one of these.

Usually, they were triggered by something. At first it came from the implanted device that Kajaro had planted. Then it came because he was alive, and she was drawn to reveal his machinations. But back then, she'd only had rudimentary mental and dream skills.

Now, she felt much more prepared.

Except for the fact that this was a medieval type reception hall and not the hallway she'd been in the last time she visited. She closed her eyes briefly to send out her senses into this dreamworld. It was her mind, therefore what she wanted to accomplish should work.

She didn't sense anything out of the ordinary, but she did still hear the scuttling and that wasn't something she'd dreamed up on her own. So, it was either someone trying to reach her again, which meant likely Tenejo or Kajaro, or else there was something she'd noticed subconsciously and needed to try and figure out.

Quinn cast part of her mind to sorting through all the observations she'd had recently, pushing through the haze to envision things she'd witnessed in the Library. The whole incident with Tenejo flashed into her mind. He hadn't touched her, not even come close to her.

And yet, there were shadows lingering around that memory that didn't make sense to her. Something she could pry into. Perhaps something that her previous actions had allowed to gain a foothold in her subconsciousness.

But those shadows weren't making the noises that were growing more insistent every minute she spent on something else.

There didn't appear to be any trace left of Kajaro anymore, and her link to him had faded over the last two months so that she would have to focus very hard to see if she could locate his mind. To be honest, trying to do so seemed reckless in her mind.

Then there were yesterday's or last night's events or however time references could work in relation to her dreamworld. This whole Ardenil visit that felt almost like a red herring to her, still needed to be investigated just in case it turned out to be something.

But that wasn't pressing enough to trigger this world. Was it? To trigger this state of mind of hers?

Instead of panicking like she could feel trying to bubble up in her throat, Quinn plopped herself on the ground and sat cross legged, closing her eyes in order to try and center herself. Time warped weirdly in dreams, and in a way, she knew she had all the time in the world right now.

Or as little of it as she allowed herself.

She let herself relax and reached tentatively for those sounds that appeared to skitter out of her hearing just when she thought she'd finally gotten close to them. The more she listened and focused, the clearer the sounds became, until she finally realized they were dry branches blowing in the wind, insects scutting through rotting vegetation...

Rotting vegetation, bloodied tree limbs, remnants of wings and appendages dangling from the bard...

"We've been waiting for you, Librarian. Won't you stay a while?”

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How had this specific memory managed to dangle in the back of her mind so much that it had finally pulled her into this? What was it about that memory, apart from the sheer grossness of it? Were there clues she should have picked up on?

Obviously of course...

Otherwise she wouldn't be here.

Once she'd latched onto the reason for her dreamworld, her senses began to pick up on other things. Slight shifts in the air, an adjustment in the hall she was currently in, and a definitive sensation of decay coming from outside of the hall.

She pushed herself up from the ground, aware now that instead of the initial haze she'd arrived in here with, she now had a sense of miasma seeping in through all of the stones that made up her fortress. Apparently there were cracks it could seep through.

"I want you to disappear."

Those words echoed through her head, through the halls, bouncing off the stone walls to create a cacophony of sound that threatened to split her head.

And then it stopped and complete silence descended upon her. Quinn shuddered.

She had no idea how this one had got through to plant a seed into her mind, but then, it wasn't like the mind bomb. This was like a memory trying to get her attention, perhaps to study it in more detail, to see it in more detail.

Because the devil was in the details.

As she walked out of the hall, it opened up into a misty version of the copse of trees they'd found the demonic tree in originally.

And there, right in front of her, was the tree.

The tree groaned in that horrific humanoid way. The one that made her wonder if it was in fact a person that had been warped into this bloodletting tree.

This time when its branches moved, it was more like shaking itself awake from a long slumber instead of shaking pests loose from itself. There was more blood too, dripping constantly in congealed strands as it slowly dribbled down.

Its two wide and gaping eyes held more malevolence, and were entirely red and black now. The serrated teeth were jagged, some of them having obviously been broken. Several of its branches appeared to be covered in ice. Just like when she'd frozen it.

Only, then she'd exploded it and this shouldn't be possible. Thus, this was a remnant, a memory, either of hers or its. Somehow it had cemented itself into a position in her mind. She just wished she didn't have to figure out the why while having to deal with the visage of that tree over again.

It was one of her least favorite Librarian moments so far.

Then the voice spoke out again - a roar in that guttural voice, like fingernails on a chalkboard down her spine.

Villain! We are no villains. It is you who seek to contain the true power of the universe, who seek to limit chaos. You are the misguided ones

Misguided for not wanting things to be overrun with chaos. That really was a unique take. While Quinn now remembered this portion of the conversation, she wasn't entirely sure what it meant. There seemed to be more meaning behind the words than she'd initially attributed to it.

Quinn wracked her brains as the words echoed through the halls over and over again as if it was trying to fill her mind with anything but.

For just a split second she truly wished Milaro was there with her. He had a way of making these things make sense, of helping her out of her own head.

And then she remembered something Milaro said while she was synchronizing with the Library last time. He'd been speaking to the Library directly and thus it was an in passing comment between the two of them. But it rang through her head now, as loudly as a bell.

You were simply part of original creation.

But wasn't chaos the origin of creation? And wasn't the whole point of filtering the chaotic elements so that chaos didn't overwhelm in volume and start devouring all that it had created again?

She scanned through all her knowledge gained from the books of the Debilian homeworld. Laws of Chaos, Upside Down, Chaos Theory, Myth and Legend, Reality Combined, Chaos Fever Dream and Mastering Your Reality Through Chaos.

Chaos was the originator. It was the very first spark that created everything else. She'd had this pounded into her head by the Library, Lynx, and every book she'd picked up on the subject. With the Serpensiril confirmed as enemies, they'd been seeking their allies for a long time.

Logically, with the phrasing, the voice in the tree had to be one of the original species then. One of the originals. Which meant she had to figure out which species those were.

Quinn walked right up to the tree, taking in everything about it. Trying to push past the gag reflex that was immediately triggered. Her recollection was eerily accurate. Right down to the membranes of the wings sticking out from the portions of the tree that had devoured the Esposian Firionas.

The Fae species who had fallen victim to the tree and the book of sacrifice. Who Geneva had been taking care of ever since.

There was a niggling in the back of Quinn's mind. Something unsettling, something that wasn't quite sitting right. Geneva's shock over the appearance of her cousins had been genuine. But Quinn had never thought to ask why. It seemed that Firionas were relatively fragile, so of course if a bigger and more powerful opponent appeared they'd be obliterated if their magic was also stronger.

But the only creature in that clearing had been the tree. And its shadows of course, but for all intents and purposes as she glanced around her recreation, Quinn could tell the shadows were simply an extension of the tree's will.

So, who had forced the Esposian's into their plight?

The Firionas were a conglomeration of ancient species who all shared similarities. But as Geneva said, and as Lynx and all the information Quinn had seen led her to believe, those factions or differing tribes lived separate from one another.

Quinn's stomach heaved as realization hit her. She didn't want to be right but it was the only solution she could think of. What was worse, was that she didn't know how she'd been blind to it in the first place. Why hadn't she seen it to begin with?

She could feel Tenejo's memories that she'd extracted in the back of her mind, like they too wanted to get out, as if they had so much to tell her. But right now she needed to wake up and let the others know what she'd gleaned from going over that horrific memory several times.

Tenejo was going to have to wait a bit longer.

Right now she had to figure out precisely how to prove, outside of her head, that the Esposians rulers had brought their citizen's demise on themselves.