Returning to the Library proved easier said than done. Quinn's skin itched as if something was trying to break through from underneath, from inside. And it was hot, as if yearning to escape. The sudden heat seemed very abrupt. Yet another reason to insist on going to visit Uncle Hal. Except, there was a spanner in the works that had to do with returning.

Instead of simply being able to retrieve Eugea and escape back to the Library, Quinn found herself stuck in a logistical nightmare.

She understood the reasons, though. They'd secured and healed both Adrito and Latia as best they could, given their non-Esposian heritage. Neither Nishpa nor Geneva could heal them properly. The poor Esposian they'd saved from the fiery doom of the golem's crash was still unconscious and breathing shallowly.

Thus Nishpa ensured that Eugea was sent for, and in the process also retrieved Galetta. The one mostly Esposian healer they could trust. Or at least, Quinn hoped they could trust. Galetta began treating Adrito and Latia with much more success. However, Quinn noticed Galetta only did the bare minimum to ensure they were out of danger before moving on to the rescued Esposian.

"Thank you for not killing them," Galetta said, her eyes fiery with an emotion Quinn didn't associate with healers. It was out of her hands now. Adrito and Latia would have to pay for what they'd done to their Esposian city. Quinn didn't think they were going to appreciate their comeuppance.

Nishpa tugged on Quinn's sleeve.

She looked over at the hovering Firionas. "Sorry, what? Why did you tug? Why didn't you just call my name?"

"I did. Twice. But you didn't answer me," Nishpa said dryly. It seemed that all of her energy and ability to laugh had deserted her.

Quinn sort of understood. The whole trip ended in a much larger mess than she'd anticipated. She sighed. "Sorry, what is it?"

"I won't be able to return to the Library with you. I have matters to take care of here." Nishpa sounded more weary than anything else, as if it took effort for her to hover.

Quinn hesitated, her curiosity piqued.

Nishpa raised an eyebrow. "You can ask, but since I can practically hear you begging me to tell you just what I need to be here for, I'll just go ahead and tell you. We've had our eye on this particular Esposian settlement for a long time. We are..."

"And who's 'we'?" Quinn asked, interrupting Nishpa.

Nishpa let out a short laugh. "I forget you're not versed in intergalactic politics. The Fae Committee. It's made up of Centaurs, the Furionas, Esposians who are not on this planet, and several other conglomerations of species, all stemming from the Fae. I'm unsure just now how many you've already encountered. We have a council which this particular branch of the Esposians has long since forsaken, and thus we have been keeping an eye on them. I was sent to accompany Geneva while trying to heal the injured Esposians that you rescued to try and figure out just what was happening here, which, as you can probably tell, is a lot worse than we initially thought."

Quinn took a moment to glance out at the ruins of the beautiful city that had been presented to her when she arrived. While she knew most of it had been subterfuge with magical illusions overlaying a badly maintained city, the vision of it was still burned into her mind.

The illusions had long since shattered, along with about 50% of the city. She couldn't see any people out there either, but she could hear the occasional sob and moan. She wondered just how many of them had been impacted, how many of them had been injured. Did they understand why Adrito had done what he had done? Did they agree with it?

She highly doubted it.

Quinn was about to say it was fine, when Geneva floated up to her. "You'll have to go ahead without me as well, but you must take Eugea with you. While these investigators are mostly trustworthy, I don't know them as well as I know you and Nishpa. I would prefer it if you would take Eugea somewhere where she can continue to heal and not be poked and prodded because of your healing."

"Plus, well," Nishpa added, "it might be a little bit easier for you and Milaro to figure out exactly what it is you did that healed her in the first place, because frankly, I get the feeling we'll need to know that. I have a distinct and utterly horrific feeling that there are going to be more colonies out there that are affected like this."

Quinn gulped. "Fine, we'll take her with us if she's willing to go."

"I'm willing to go," Eugea said. She looked even better than when they left her a couple of hours ago. Her color was returning, well, as much as an Esposian's color returned to them at all. And yet she seemed eager. "I want to help. I think I have memories. I have recollections. Maybe, maybe that can help lead you to whatever did this to us." She glanced around as if scared someone might overhear her. "I know. I know what it did," she said, whispering the last.

Quinn raised an eyebrow at Malakai, who ushered Eugea over to the door they were about to use to enter the Library. Quinn's skin itched, that fiery sensation threatening to leak out through her pores. She took a deep, calming breath and tried to suffuse the top of her skin with a thin, thin layer of ice. It worked, for the most part. She sighed with relief, a little bit of respite, before she faced the dragon back at the Library. Milaro was going to have so many questions. She knew it. Everybody knew it.

"Do I need to wait to meet with these dignitaries or whatever they are?" Quinn asked.

"Oh no," Nishpa said. "In fact...you don't want to. Hurry up. Go. If you meet with these people, they're going to keep you here for another few hours just to talk to you about the Library, because they're all fully aware that it was gone for a while."

Quinn grimaced. "Great. I'll take that under advisement and we should leave now."

"Truer words have never been spoken," Link said. "Are you ready?"

"Do you have enough energy left?" Quinn asked.

"I didn't deplete myself that much," he said, shaking his head, but she could sort of tell that he was rather happy that she'd asked. She had a very good friend in Lynx. She didn't want to see him disappear and hoped that that got across to him.

"Very well, here we go." They opened the door and Quinn ushered everybody through. Aradie stuck to her shoulder, however, cooing in her ear. Malakai went first, gently guiding Eugea with him. Lynx trotted afterwards and Quinn turned to Geneva and Nishpa.

"Thank you both. Hurry back, Geneva. We miss you."

"I know," Geneva said, "what I wouldn't do just to have time to sit and read a book."

Quinn chuckled as she stepped through to the Library, closing the door to the destroyed Esposian city behind her.

~~

A sense of calm overcame Quinn as she stepped into the Library. It had truly become a home, a place she felt she belonged. Sensations swept over her, the connection with the Library clarifying and solidifying, almost like someone had retuned a guitar string. She looked around and noticed that they hadn't come through the double doors they usually did. Instead, they were standing in the door from her office into the Library.

"Interesting choice," she said to Lynx.

He shrugged. "That way we're out of the way of everybody. If you want, you can close the door and hide yourself. You don't have to talk to anybody." He gave her a wink and sauntered out into the main part of the Library himself. Quinn seriously debated what he'd said. Frankly, she would 150% prefer to just curl up with a load of books, absorb a heap of power, and ignore all of the political and intricate machinations that seemed to want to deprive the Library of power. However, she knew that way she'd only get limited time before something else hit the fan, and she didn't really want to scoop poop.

"Fine," she said, muttering.

Calibration required.

Scanning now.

Quinn blinked. What’s happening? She asked the Library.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

There was a pause and Quinn got a distinct sense of disbelief from it before the Library spoke. You created a new affinity. It needs to be calibrated into the magic system and eventually you’re going to have to define how to approach it.

Quinn was quite stumped. She remembered vaguely the strange messages popping up in front of her when she’d healed Eugea, but she hadn’t thought anything more of it. Sooooo…

I need to verify the different aspects that went into creating a new affinity, then I need to catalog it and establish it. The Library sounded slightly annoyed.

Will that take long? Quinn asked, trying to figure out how long she could manage considering her to-do list wasn’t getting any shorter.

The Library huffed. At least, Quinn was fairly sure it huffed. Fine. I’ll let you off the hook for creating the precursors and prerequisites required for this one. But not for too long. Just long enough to get the pressing matters taken care of.

I’m sorry. Quinn really did feel bad, especially since this could potentially help the Esposians. Will the delay mean others can’t use it?

No, the fact that they can’t wield the amount of affinities you combined to create the new one will mean they can’t use it. The Library sighed. It’s okay, I just haven’t had a new affinity in such a long time.

Quinn chuckled. I promise, as soon as I get a moment, we’ll sit down and work through it.

I’ll hold you to that.

I’m counting on it. Quinn smiled.

Calibrating…

Mental Chaotic Fortitude Abolition added to affinity database

Restrictions in place

Quinn grinned at the last. The Library was just being the Library.

Lynx waited patiently, obviously aware she was talking to the Library.

“Sorry about that,” she said, but didn’t get any farther.

"Ah, there you are," Milaro said just as she stepped into the main part of the Library. Dottie peeked out from behind his legs.

"We were starting to get worried about you. You weren't supposed to be gone long," the bench said, talking as if she was Quinn's grandmother. She reached down and petted the bench fondly. She didn't know what she'd do without Dottie anymore.

"Well, it got a little bit more complex than we thought," Malakai drawled. "You wouldn't believe it."

"Oh, try me," his grandfather said. "I'd believe a lot of things."

Quinn chuckled and recounted the entire situation to which, at least gratifyingly, Milaro's jaw dropped. Quinn was fairly certain that Dottie's jaw would have dropped if she'd had a jaw to drop.

"So," she said, "what do you think?"

"I think... That's pretty screwed up," Milaro said. "I don't understand. That doesn't even make sense. I knew Adrito."

Quinn crossed her arms. "How long ago did you know Adrito?"

"Well, I mean, I didn't know know him, but we'd been to several camps together when we were children." Milaro said hesitantly.

"Seriously," Quinn said, "camps when you were children? What? Three thousand years ago?"

"Well, we take our camps seriously. There’s lots of interplanetary relationships to work on, to try and maintain a peaceful element among us all. Doesn’t always work. There are a lot of us in the universe. We need to get along, mostly. We have to be able to prevent war and needless loss of life." Milaro sighed. "He never struck me as somebody who'd be willing to kill hundreds of thousands of his people just to prove a point."

Quinn shrugged. "Well, just goes to show we never really know people, eh?"

She began to itch again, and as she looked down, her scales flared above her skin, like they were trying to keep in the heat too. It even made them solidify ever so slightly, and she applied cool ice to them to help keep the heat at bay. Naturally, the approximately five seconds that that took didn't escape Milaro's notice, and he raised an eyebrow in her direction that basically said, 'We're going to talk about this later.'

Quinn suppressed a sigh. She knew they had to talk about it later. It didn't mean she wanted to. Quinn gave in and let them all pile into her office with her.

"So," Milaro said, sitting himself on the couch, "it's a lot bigger than we originally anticipated?"

Quinn shrugged. "I'm not sure. I didn't really have anticipations for, you know, universal conspiracies, but from what we're seeing now that we've talked to Arnekai and, well, we sort of talked to Adrito, but he wasn't very forthcoming with information. Only the generalized doom and gloom rhetoric of - we will take over the world."

Malakai snorted. "Universe, Quinn. Universe."

She laughed, but didn't feel very mirthful.

Milaro was watching her closely. "It would appear that way. So, are you going to tell me while you're itching your arms or am I going to have to guess?"

"Quinn sort of..." Malakai offered instead of allowing Quinn to answer, "incinerated a sandstone golem."

"What?" Milaro said. "Your affinity, your strongest affinity is-" But he paused, narrowing his eyes briefly. "Oh, wait, I see. Why in the universe didn't I think of that before... When are you going to visit, Hal?"

Quinn shrugged. "Well, I'd like to go now, but that's not really possible, is it?"

"Nope, not possible at all," Jasper said, popping her head around the door. "You need to talk to Harish, Siliqua, Cadre, and me, because I helped."

Quinn raised an eyebrow, unable to keep the smile off her face at the exuberance her new assistant had. She'd really come to like Jasper and her company. "Okay, I'll bite. What happened and why do I have to talk to them?"

Milaro chuckled and crossed his arms as Jasper practically danced up to the desk. "They fixed it. Well, they know how to fix it. They just need you and the Corps to collaborate together and fix the memories. It'll take a while and it will require a partial reboot, but one that we can control."

Quinn perked up at that. "Wait, you can fix the memories or the time gaps?"

"Yep, we can fix the memories, mostly." Jasper paused contemplatively, "We can fix the retrieval process of the memories and thus likely fix most of the gaps."

"Are the memories still there?" Quinn asked.

"Yes, at least we think so. We just have to retrieve them and that's not going to be painless, but it's doable and thus we win." Jasper grinned again.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. "Is it going to be painful for me?"

"Shouldn't be. You don't have memories to retrieve, do you?" Jasper asked.

Quinn shook her head and glanced over at Lynx.

Jasper laughed and shook her head"Oh, it's not going to hurt Lynx. Lynx is a manifestation."

Quinn smiled. "That's true. So it's going to hurt the Library?"

"A little bit is likely. But, you know, I think it's okay with that."

Quinn felt a thrum under her feet of acquiescence and realized that, yeah, maybe the Library was okay with that. Then she remembered that Adrito had been left back on his world and she scowled. "Damn it! I wanted to take Adrito to Hal. I don't know how we're going to get a hold of him. He's conspiring against the entire Universe. We need the best person to get the information out of him."

Milaro clasped his hands in front of his eyes, leaning on his hands for a moment. "Fine," he said, pushing himself upright. "I guess I'll go and start negotiating."

Quinn grinned. "And then I'll have two presents for Uncle Hal."

Milaro waved her away as he disappeared in a whirl of robes.

"He really does love to make an entrance and exit, doesn't he?" She asked no one in particular.

Malakai chuckled, Aradie cooed, and Jasper laughed outright before focusing on something probably in her HUD and gasping. "Sorry! Going to have to jet. Being called by Siliqua! They'll need you soon. Maybe tomorrow morning? You should probably get some rest." She called out over her shoulder as she left the office.

"Bit of a whirlwind, isn't she?" Quinn muttered.

Mal nodded and stepped closer. "Quinn. We need to talk."

She reached up and pet Aradie, who nipped her finger, cood angrily and took off to see her friends in the book infirmary. Quinn sighed and turned to Mal. "I know... I just..." She itched at her arm again.

"How about we try and deal with this first." He said, pointedly looking at the scales only just disappearing from her arm again. "You're leaking fire."

She looked up at Malakai. Now they were alone in the room. "What do you mean I'm leaking fire?"

Mal sighed, as if he was trying to sort his thoughts. "I don't exactly know when this started, but I'm pretty sure the main trigger for your fire ability as a dragon began when you had to incinerate those infected books and accessed flames that were way above your current level."

After a couple of seconds, Quinn had to admit he was probably right. "That actually sounds pretty accurate. I'm a little confused. It feels like water, ice, and fire are all calling to me simultaneously. It's already noisy enough in my head without all that. There's just so much to do."

He nodded, and offered a sympathetic smile. "We just need to keep you as cool as possible as you can until Hal can help you get a handle on your powers."

"You really think he can help?" Quinn said.

"He battles flames, quite literally, on a daily basis. Pretty sure no one, other than an active cosmicisodracus, can help."

He's right. Hal is our best bet, the Library chimed in unexpectedly.

Quinn was going to have words with the Library sooner than later. Okay, probably much later than she'd like. "Maybe I should go now, then?"

But Malakai shook his head. "You've got too much to do here first. You need another day or two here. Get everything sorted out. My grandfather will get Adrito brought here so we can take him with us too."

Quinn could feel a mild panic start in her gut, but took a few deep breaths, calmed her mind, and tried to tell herself that no, there's only so much you can do. "Okay. I'll just keep up this thin layer of ice, I guess?"

"It's sort of working..." Mal said and sighed. "Just stick with what's working for now so we don't send the whole Library up in flames."

Quinn gulped, because he had a point. The incineration flames had triggered this result in her... which meant she was fully capable of burning the books should she lose control.

Damn it.