Quinn frowned. Her head began to pound with levels of stress she could barely comprehend. Creature of Chaos didn't exactly sound like a good thing to be.

Nor did she like the sibilant whispers she could hear just out of her reach and the fact that she couldn't tell where they came from. Heightened senses allowed her to tell where everything was going on in the Library, but if the whispers came from there... This was a new turn of events.

They stood in the training area. Yet again it had transformed itself to meet her needs.

Instead of the usual training room, which consisted of padded floors, padded walls, and training dummies, this time it hadn't been transformed into a media facility for viewing owl memories and sifting through them. No, this new room was darker. The walls were lined with a brimstone-type material, and the pools of liquid on the floor appeared to have been pulled up from the filtration area below to demonstrate to Quinn exactly how chaotic energy manifested when there was enough of it.

She'd seen the sludge before, and some of it sat on top of the pool of beautiful blue mana right in front of her.

"Is that how it always appears on purified mana?" she asked, resisting the urge to reach forward and touch the sludge.

Hal let out one of his boisterous laughs. "Oh Gods, no," he said. "No, this is just what we currently have access to here that I can pull to you without endangering the Library and everything in it."

The liquid seemed calm, simply floating there biding its time. "Is it really that dangerous?"

"Yes, in its purest form, chaotic magic will seek to regain power by unmaking creation. Do you understand what that is?" Hal asked softly.

"Well yes," Then something she'd learned earlier floated to the surface in her marginally overtaxed memory. "Didn't they tell me that if I understood how something had been made, I would be able to unmake it?"

Hal raised an eyebrow. "Well, I guess they didn't completely keep you in the dark."

Quinn scowled. "I'll be the judge of that."

He chuckled. "Listen, kid, because you are a kid in my eyes, frankly, you're barely a blip on the radar right now. I'm sure that'll change in several millennia. Don’t be too harsh on them. The need to keep the Library safe wars with their need to keep you safe. It won’t always align perfectly."

Quinn could feel the color draining from her face at that statement. It wasn't something anybody on earth would have told her. No, the only reason he could say this with a straight face was that for Hal, it was fact. Both her age and her presence were miniscule in the grand space of eternity. She cleared her throat and spoke. "Anyway, what's it usually like?"

Uncle Hal seemed to give that some serious thought. "Chaos is pushy and creeps and seeks and finds."

"Well okay, I get that, but what does it look like?" She gestured at the sludge. "I mean the crusty black look is kind of gross, but not the most intimidating or creepy thing I've seen."

Hal reached a hand into the disgusting blackened sludge and picked it up. He rolled it in his palms until it became a ball and then it spread all over one of his hands, except it was smokey and mildly translucent as it did so. The solidity receded and it came alive in his hand, dancing like living slime. Quinn shuddered because at first, it just looked like slime and then it appeared to have a life of its own. It was malleable and able to conform at will. She could tell Hal wasn't directing it. The power of chaotic magic, well, it seemed to have a wee bit of a will of its own.

Quinn gestured toward it. "And the people who are against us purifying this type of magic, are they aware that it can, well, move on its own?"

Just as she finished saying that, the slime globule gathered itself so fast she barely saw it coming. And it was only with his super quick reflexes that Hal caught the ball of slime as it launched itself in midair toward Quinn.

"Ah," he said, "it likes you. I can see why."

Quinn crossed her arms. "I can't. Care to enlighten me?"

He sighed. "In order to make sure the transfer took place when they created you, they had to include a couple of excess chaotic elements. The Library's, shall we say, sample of genetic material, I think is how you would classify it, included every single affinity. And the ability to adapt to more, to combine and create more, and to seek out new affinities. In doing so, it also gave you an innate ability with chaotic magic."

"Oh," Quinn said, "well I, I sort of knew that, but that just reminds me of when everybody was like, 'Oh you have every affinity, that's odd.'"

He chuckled, "Yes, that is very odd."

"So, is that when they knew, or at least when they suspected?"

"Suspected what?" he asked.

"That I was actually the experiment." She paused. "They didn't all appear to know at first... or at all."

"Perhaps. I can't tell you what's on their mind. You should probably just sit down and talk to them about it. That's going to be the easiest way for you to get your answers." For a moment, Hal actually sounded like a kindly old uncle, and then he grinned again, and the spiky shark teeth showed through.

Quinn wondered how she had ever thought that he was just a kindly old uncle.

"Be that as it may, Quinn, you need to concentrate. You need to understand how chaos feels, because sometimes it can slip in with things you eat, drink, wear, see, the air you breathe. You need to understand where it is, how it feels, how it smells, and how it reacts. Because the one thing you don't want to do is inadvertently become addicted to it."

She eyed the strange smoky substance. "It's addictive?"

"Yep," Hal said, "sort of like a drug."

"Or exactly like a drug," Quinn said.

"Well, yes, precisely like a drug. The more you use it, the more you want to use it, and then the more you use it, the more it grabs a hold of everything you are, and subverts the ideals that may have driven you." He winked at her. "So hold out your hand."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Quinn did so very hesitantly, still not entirely sure this was a good idea, but Eric and Aradie sat on what appeared to be bleachers, watching, and it made her feel just that little bit safer. She glanced over at them, and…

Hal noticed her division of attention. "Aradie would protect you, even if I suddenly went rogue."

Which didn't help Quinn's trust issues with the damn King of Hell any at all. "Thanks," she said dryly. "I trust you so much more now."

The slime spread itself across her hand, and Quinn instantaneously stored the sensation, the prickly feeling, as if it was trying to enter her system through the pores in her hand and still send chills down her spine, at the same time. That was how chaos felt.

It smelled oddly like cloves and cedar.

"That's a pungent smell," she said, pulling her hand away and allowing the ball of chaos slime to fall back into Hal's open palm.

"Excellent," he said. "Now you know how it smells and feels. We're not doing a taste. We're not going to invite that in. But you need to remember these sensations, Quinn. They could save yours, and the lives of others. That being said, you will need more experience with all different levels of filtered chaos, right through to pure raw chaos. Do you understand?"

Quinn shrugged. "What, you want me to go down into the filtration chamber and try to get a feel for it? Perhaps mimic what the filtration system does and that would help me understand the properties. Maybe I could break them down?"

"No," Hal cut her off. "While those do sound like very worthwhile experiments on your own time, when you have time. What I mean to tell you is that you're invited to come and visit me. I'll assist you in close combat and association with the chaotic lakes of my home."

"Halschius is situated on chaotic lakes?" Quinn asked.

Hal grinned. "That they are. What did you think it was, a happy playground?"

"No, I didn't." She shook her head for emphasis. "I'd love to take you up on that when I get some time."

"Well, you’ll know when you're ready, just tell Eric and he'll bring you down. He'll stay with you, too. So you have somebody familiar, somebody you can trust to a certain extent." Hal grinned again.

Quinn laughed. "I know exactly what you mean."

He flashed her a grin and leaned his eight-foot height down to her level. "Between you and me, my nephew's pretty fond of you. He thinks you're like the little sister he was never going to get."

Quinn laughed a little nervously and stepped away. Hal radiated extraordinary heat. It was tightly controlled and held within an aura around his body from what she could tell, but he was likely hellfire and brimstone personified. She changed the subject. "Hey, can I ask a question? It's kind of personal."

Hal shrugged. "Worst I can do is not answer, correct?"

"Very correct." She took a deep breath. "Are you really this size or did you shrink yourself down?"

"That's for me to know right now and you to find out when you have the time to come and visit. I must be gone. I have a lot to do, wars to fight, people to maim, people to interrogate." He paused, looking back at her, the fire in his eyes flaring. "Are you sure you don't want to get rid of that Serpensiril you have in here? I have ways of extracting more information than you probably even considered he had."

Quinn blinked at him and for a moment, seriously considered handing Tenejo over. "You know what?" she said.

"What?" Hal asked.

"If I haven't figured out how to get that information on my own by the time we visit you, then I will gladly bring Tenejo with us wrapped in a bow for you to figure out instead," Quinn wasn't sure how she should feel about the fact that she meant every word she'd just said.

"That, my dear," Hal said, "sounds like the beginnings of a beautiful friendship."

And then he disappeared. Quinn stood there, watching as the chaos pool shifted back down through the bowels of the Library, obviously being returned to the filtration chamber. Slowly, the gym changed back to how it was before, and she could hear as Aradie flew in to land on her shoulders, while Eric hovered just behind her.

"Your uncle is very unique," Quinn said after several seconds of fascinated silence watching the pools recede.

"Yeah, I've heard that before," Eric replied. "I've heard him called worse things as well."

Quinn laughed. "I can imagine. We need to go and see Geneva and the Esposians, right?"

"Is that really the most urgent thing?" Eric asked quietly.

"No," Quinn wanted to shout the words out. The lists were compounding worse than sketchy loan interest. "I have no idea what's the most urgent. I have so much on my plate. We have too much to do, it's..."

Settle, Aradie spoke into her mind. All you can do is take one thing at a time. Even if you could split yourself into two, it would mean everything would be less efficient because it would also split your processing and brainpower. You cannot be in two places at once yet. So just breathe.

Quinn had another thousand questions emanating from what Aradie had said to supposedly calm her down. It was possible to split in two? Quinn shook the thought out of her head. For the most part, Aradie's tactic worked. She breathed a few times, steeled herself, and accessed that portion of her brain Milaro helped unlock, that let her methodically and logically speedily think through things, so it wouldn't take forever.

"Out of everything on my bingo card," she muttered under her breath, "I didn't expect to meet the king of Halschius today. Anybody else have that?"

Eric chuckled. "Nope, but I think I might make one with it on it."

"That, my friend," Quinn said, "sounds like an excellent idea. In the meantime, we still have two days before Malakai's mom is available to see us, which I don't like by the way. She might have answers we need to solve this whole conundrum and she's too busy."

"Careful, careful. Boys love their mothers," Eric said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

Quinn shot him a partial death glare. "And we all know how much that is not true of Malakai."

Eric shrugged. "Not much I can do about that."

"I know, so we can't go and see Arnekai yet," Quinn paused as she thought things through. "I need to contact...I'll send Geneva a message about whether we can visit the Esposians with her yet. She'll have pertinent information we need..."

Misha popped into view right next to Quinn making her practically jump out of her skin.

"You have a visitor, Librarian," Misha said, inclining their head slightly.

"Why would you come and tell me that?" Quinn said, slightly breathless.

Misha shrugged. "I was there when your visitor arrived and thus I thought I would bring you the news since I could just appear right next to you."

Quinn half smiled, resigned to the fact that those who could instantaneously teleport, would. Which was another skill she was determined to obtain. "Thanks, Misha."

"Anytime, Librarian." Misha didn't even budge.

"Who is it?" Quinn asked before Misha could disappear again.

"Oh, that odd gardening mage. The hedge witch." Misha paused as if recollecting something unrelated to the Library was a chore. "Jasper, I believe her name is."

Quinn brightened. She liked Jasper. Maybe this day wasn't just going to be full of chaos and stress and overwhelm and complete and utter confusion. It'd be nice to talk to somebody who made sense and explained things without laughing themselves silly. She headed out into the main part of the Library and toward the check-in desk. She didn't make it the full way there as she spied Jasper leaning against the wall outside her office.

Quinn waved and called out Jasper's name. "Hey, Jasper!"

The tall and elegant anime-eyed woman turned to face her and raised a hand in greeting as well. Not quite like a wave, but Quinn would take whatever intergalactic greeting she could get.

"What brings you here?" Quinn asked, genuinely happy to see the witch.

Jasper's large eyes blinked slowly. As if she was trying to process a question she didn't fully understand. "The ritual, of course. I promised I would assist you. You wanted me to perform the location ritual, right?"

Quinn grinned. "Yes. Yes, I do."