Quinn couldn't let her worry for Malakai interfere with the task before her. She tried to suppress them, to shut them out, but this time, her mental shields weren't helping. Nothing she did could erase the memory of him diving in front of her, absorbing the full force of the vortex spheres. She had to compartmentalize that image; she couldn't afford to dwell on it.

Killing Kajaro might allow them to understand his regeneration process. It didn't matter if he was dead and encased in ice, unless it meant he would dissipate and regenerate elsewhere.

Unfortunately, she couldn't risk that, no matter how much her anger wanted him to pay.

Taking a deep breath, Quinn refocused on the mind and ice magic she'd studied under Milaro and the others. She recalled the countless hours spent wrapping her head around the vast abilities and potential crossovers. The necessity to absorb books before bed so her brain could process the power.

She knew what she had to do. Kajaro needed to hibernate, to be placed into a stasis where he was still alive but essentially in a coma. Wasn't that the humane way to handle this? Not that anything Kajaro had done was humane. Wrestling with her conscience proved more challenging than she'd anticipated.

Maybe if he hadn't hurt Malakai, she could have been more lenient, but she continued to construct the ice prison. This was different from what she'd done with Tenejo because she hadn't known what she was doing back then. Since that time, she'd realized how powerful ice could be when used against the serpensiril.

Given their cold-blooded nature, this was the best way to lower their body temperature and induce a stasis without killing them. Quinn hadn't thought it through properly last time, and leaving his head free had been a mistake. She'd let the Library worry about providing him sustenance. It was the least it could do.

Slowly but surely, she created the ice prison, making it tighter, not allowing him to wake up or understand where he was. She took what she knew from having absorbed the serpensiril anatomy tome, and made sure to suspend him, keeping him whole.

For now.

When she'd figured out this whole nine lives thing and knew how to stop him from coming back - she'd revisit the situation.

Her fingers hurt. In fact, her whole body ached, but Quinn kept on crafting the prison until it was done.

"Quinn," a voice startled her out of her momentary lull. She turned to see Nishpa hovering at her elbow. "Quinn, honey, I need you to come with me. You're injured."

Quinn was surprised. "No, I'm not," she started to argue, but then she looked down at her hands and realized they were caked in blood. In a sludgy red mess that was still congealing all over her body. "Oh," she said, racking her brain for when she could have been hurt. She didn't remember...

The fire. Her own power turning on her. That wasn't a good thing.

"You have to be more careful until you can control it better," Nishpa said. "We can't lose you right now."

"Yeah, I know, I get it," Quinn snapped, taking another breath. The separation of her emotions wasn't working this time. She needed it to work.

But Nishap didn't snap back. Instead, she patted Quinn's hand as she gently infused healing into her patient. "Quinn, he's... He should be okay."

"Should be?" She asked. Even though there was hope in that 'should be', there was also fear. Because she'd already assumed that he wasn't going to be. "What do you mean 'should be'?"

Nishpa didn't rise to the urgency in Quinn's voice, but instead kept her own measured and calm. "I mean if we can get him back to Milaro, as soon as possible. But you need to get the book from Kajaro."

"Oh," Quinn said. She focused for several moments, slowly causing the ice to recede until the storage ring on Kajaro's hand became visible. "Is there a way we can just take it from him? He's not dead. Last time he was dead." Panic rose in Quinn's very not controlled center. She bit it down and tried to look at it logically.

"Not really." Nishpa frowned, hovering over the finger. "But we might be able to forcefully activate it."

"Of course we can force activate it," Hal said, stomping up. His hooves made a strange sound on the scratchy ground. He tapped the now visible finger, and there was an odd screeching sound in the back of Quinn's mind. "Open."

Right in front of them all, the contents of Kajaro's ring displayed. "You'll need to take it," he said to Quinn as he gestured to the third cube, two down, on the right.

"Can everybody do this?" she asked.

"No," Hal said. "I can do it. Give yourself a couple of hundred years, and you can do it too."

"Okay," she said a little meekly, reached in, and grabbed the book. It writhed in her hands at first until it settled, almost purring. She glanced down at it. "Well, that's unsettling," she said.

"It's an odd book. I told you we couldn't touch it. You should be beyond the reach of its corruption."

"Let me check it." She scanned it herself with the best of her ability to make sure that it wasn't going to poison her own inventory. Then she slid out a bag to put it in to purify any potential chaotic contamination, and then slid it into her own inventory. After which she re-extended the ice shielding around Kajaro's hand.

"I guess we're done," she said, finally stopping to look around. Her head felt dizzy, and she swayed slightly, weak all of a sudden.

"I'll open a doorway shortly," Hal said, as he reached out a hand to steady her. "I just have to tend to Ikeshal first."

Quinn blinked and looked over at the other large satyr. He lay on the ground, wounded, hurt badly from a massive gash in his side. Quinn gasped. "I didn't... I didn't feel that. I could have helped."

"No, Quinn, you were fine. You did what we needed you to. It'll be okay. We'll figure this out." Hal squeezed her shoulder before moving over to his friend.

That's when Quinn took in the rest of them. Not even the landscape seemed strange anymore. They'd been here long enough and stained it with enough of their blood to make it eerily familiar.

She didn't think Garon would survive with the amount of brain matter splattered on the ground next to his still corpse. Her throat caught, and she had to remember to breathe.

Eric leaned up against one of those strange not-Christmas trees, one arm hanging limply at his side, his eyes closed. There were gashes and wounds all over him, mottling his skin with chunks of missing flesh.

Ikeshal lay prone, and Hal was healing him.

And Malakai?

Slowly, she turned to see him.

His head was propped up ever so gently. Quinn gasped in a breath and stumbled to his side.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

She ignored the fact that Nishpa tsked irritably because she hadn't finished tending to Quinn's wounds. Quinn, however, exerted her own level of healing, trying to make up for it as she scrambled to Malakai. She should have a few hundred energy left. Surely that was more than Nishpa.

Healing her wounds shouldn't be a priority.

"Mal," she said. He didn't respond.

"I thought you said he was going to be okay." She glared accusingly at Nishpa.

"I said he should be okay. We have to get him transported and we need to do it now. So you need to help us transform the chaotic energy around us into the mana and energy we need to open the portal." Nishpa said patiently.

Quinn took the reprimand for what it was and got her head on straight. Get everyone home first. Worry about life and death possibilities after. She could do that. "I thought we had a portable one. I... Wait, where did Hoody go?" she asked, as she knelt next to Malakai and tried to recall how she'd transformed the chaotic saturation during the fight.

Hal crossed his arms. "He got away."

She could tell he was angry, but she could also sense a sort of mild relief in him. "You don't seem entirely broken up about it," she said softly.

"I'm not. I would much rather stay alive for a while longer." Hal barked out a laugh of derision.

"Aren't you like immortal?" She'd always thought he was sort of like the Library. Invincible to a certain extent.

"You should know, as well as anybody else, that immortal doesn't mean eternal. You can die. It's just hard to kill you. Case in point, over there on an ice block, because we're not sure how to really kill him." He gestured back to Kajaro's prison.

Quinn didn't know what to say, and also only just caught whiff of how she thought she'd manipulated the chaotic energy around them. "Okay, can you explain?"

"Of course I can explain. He's exactly what you are, but he's pure-blooded, and he's been around since before the Library, who happens to be the youngest sibling. He's much stronger than me, especially in a drawn-out battle. So no, I didn't want to keep fighting him, and I'm glad that he's scooched off to wherever he's gone, leaving behind a multitude of corpses. I'm not even sure are going to stay dead now."

Quinn paled. She was suddenly extremely tired and quite nauseous. "Nishpa. I don't feel too good."

"Did you try to heal yourself?" Nishpa asked.

"A little. Is that bad?"

"Quinn, you're down to the dregs. Even if it still looks like a lot to you, your magic was kind of rampant back there. I need you to understand that losing control of it like that, well, it did more harm to you than anybody else."

"Oh, yeah." Quinn could barely move her arms by now. They hurt like they were crusty and sort of just not working. It was all she could do to channel the chaotic energy into mana and energy rejuvenation for the rest of them.

Malakai had wounds all over his body, but at least they weren't bleeding anymore. "Mal," she said, "please wake up."

"I've done what I can. He has a mixed physiology, Quinn. I need to get him back to Milaro. Milaro is the only one I know who can fix him properly."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" Quinn noticed her own voice was raspy

"You." Nishpa said gently. "You need to filtrate more mana. We need a little more power to get back. Sorry."

Quinn suddenly felt so out of depth. She'd known what to do to help them while they were fighting. Instinctively. She hadn't even thought about it. But right now the process was tired and sluggish and curled up in a corner of her psyche like a baby dragon that didn't want to move. She coaxed it, none too gently, into helping her increase the mana circulation for her friends.

"This should help," she said, her body aching so much she was surprised others didn't hear it.

"Thanks." Nishpa patted her hand gently.

Quinn didn't think she dozed off, but she must have, because suddenly there was a thrumming under her butt as she sat next to Malachi. She didn't even have energy to extend, to give him some added healing. Not that she knew what to do. She had no clue how to heal a freaking elf.

"Okay, little egg," Hal said. There was fondness back in his tone. "You did well. You didn't manage to kill anyone or yourself, so I think we did pretty good. You got the book back. But you've got a lot to learn. And it's high time we teach you, even if... "

"Even if I'm an egg," she said, giggling ever so slightly in all her exhaustion.

Hal chuckled. "Can you stand?"

"As long as I don't have to walk on my hands, I should be good." She quipped, fighting to keep her eyes open. She couldn't move her hands at all right now.

"How are your arms?" Hal asked.

"I feel like they've been through a shredder and a meat grinder and then kind of just shoved back into the form of my arms."

"Oh, fantastic." Hal said. "So you're doing great."

Quinn actually chuckled and coughed.

"Everyone ready?" Hal's voice boomed out.

"We're as ready as we're going to be," Eric said, stumbling, his wings not functioning.

Quinn didn't even want to look at him. She felt like this was all her fault. Her dream should have warned them. Everything was so up in the air now.

Hal finished sketching something on the ground that Quinn couldn't see, before he spoke."Okay, opening to the Library."

~~

Everything went so fast after that. Quinn couldn't quite control anything. She stumbled into the Library, heaving in the air, realizing how hard it had been to breathe on that planet. It rushed into her lungs, practically suffocating her for several seconds before she readapted to it and remembered to let go of the filtration spells she'd been holding onto.

There was a gasp right next to her. Quinn thought it might be Geneva, but she wasn't sure because her head and body were battling for which one put her in the most pain.

And Dottie, she could hear Dottie in the background. She was talking nonstop. "Oh my dear, what's happened? What did you do? Quick, over here. Let's get them to the infirmary."

She could feel everything shifting around her. Lynx was there. The Library. And suddenly, she was also in the infirmary. The Library morphed it perfectly, keeping everybody in their own little rooms, giving them all the privacy they needed.

There was a hum as people bustled in and out. It was the only word Quinn could think of at the time, half aware as she was.

Quinn reached out her senses, but it stung and backlashed, and her mind couldn't handle it. And so she pulled in on herself, trying to heal what she could, but there was no energy left. And she fell in and out of sleep.

~~

She wasn't sure how long had passed when she woke back up. But she looked around, and Milaro stood at a table close to her, looking over what seemed to be a projected chart of some sort. He didn't even need to see her before he spoke. "Ah, you're awake."

"I guess," Quinn said, her throat croaky.

"Tried to burn out all your magic centers, didn't you?"

"Not really," Quinn said. "I just... I didn't know how to react."

"It's perfectly okay. You weren't expecting an ambush, and you definitely weren't expecting your opponent to attack absolutely everybody but you. At least not effectively."

"Pretty much," Quinn said.

Millaro turned. He looked tired. Again. She'd hoped she'd fix that.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Why are you sorry? You didn't ambush us. You stepped in. You took care of Kajaro. And you even, unintentionally, rejuvenated everybody's mana and energy, Quinn. You did more than enough for a completely unexpected situation. Please. Don't. Say. Sorry."

Myriad emotions hit Quinn. She knew, in her heart of hearts, that Milaro was correct. She had nothing to be sorry about. But at the same time, wasn't she supposed to be this Librarian? This person who could save everyone and everything? Wasn't she supposed to be able to stand between the Library and destruction? To protect the books and the patrons who actually respected how the library worked?

"You know," Milaro said, interrupting her thoughts, "I don't know if this helps, Quinn. But you've been here like three and a half months and you've mastered a lot for a Librarian who didn't have a predecessor to pass on the position to. You did this, all by yourself, with a malfunctioning Library that still isn't fixed completely, without all of the available branches, information, and tools you should have. And you did it. You knuckled down when it counted."

"But we lost people," Quinn said, her voice small. "I couldn't save them all."

"After the ambush, Quinn, nobody expected you to be the person to save everyone. We're all just happy you saved yourself."

"What about Malakai?" she asked, suddenly feeling very small. This was his grandfather. He had to be so upset.

Milaro sighed deeply, and she swore she could see wrinkles that weren't there before. "My grandson will recover. It'll take a bit of time. But we have time. And you know what else we have, Quinn?"

"What?" she wasn't sure what she wanted the answer to be. But she did know that she had to know what the answer was. For hope.

Milaro gave her a genuine smile, even if his eyes seemed tired. "We have magic. And you know what we can do with magic?"

Quinn managed to return the smile just a little bit as she nodded ever so slightly.

"Exactly, Quinn," Milaro said. "With magic, almost anything is possible."