It took Quinn several seconds to digest what Lynx said. Apparently, it took Milaro and Geneva even longer.
“Wait...” Quinn held up a hand and tried not to let Lynx’s stricken expression get to her. “You’re saying Korradine’s corpse is locked inside that pillar?” No matter how she tried to imagine it, that was going to be one messy pillar to fix.
Lynx shook his head. “No. It doesn’t work like that. The Unusceros are an inherently magical species. Their very essence, what some would term a soul, has power both before and after death. Should they choose, they can create a boon, or a curse that activates shortly after their material demise, and before a soul would usually dissipate back into the ether, becoming a part of magic... it’s usually quite poetic. Curses aren’t a common occurrence.”
The more Lynx spoke, the more distressed he became. Quinn wasn’t entirely sure if the manifestation could cry, but he looked like he was about to. She reached out a hand, but he stepped away, shaking his head. “I can’t right now. Just give me a moment to clear my head. The images... the memories, they’re bombarding me right now, and it’s difficult to hold myself apart from them.”
She knew what that meant. He was so caught up in the visions of these memories that he might mistake one of them for someone in those recollections. Which, given the current volatile emotional state he found himself in, would be dangerous.
There was nothing from the Library either. All Quinn could sense was a hesitant hum in the back of her mind. Which meant the memories might have triggered for both of them. While usually Quinn would be ecstatic that they’d recovered something important, right now she was worried about the consequences of this particular memory.
Milaro moved closer to her as Geneva hovered with him and leaned down to speak softly. “Unusceros are notoriously scrupulous. This entire endeavor of Korradine’s makes no sense as far as the species goes. But, there’s no denying it happened. I’m unsure of how to proceed, Librarian.” And his brow furrowed, as if he wasn’t sure why he was stuck.
Quinn nodded. “Maybe... can we help him if we go into the memory with him and watch? Would that be sort of therapeutic for him to share what’s obviously a traumatic event?”
Milaro opened his mouth to respond, but Lynx intervened between them. “Actually, that would help immensely. While I know most of what happened, the emotional response of the memory from my viewpoint, the desperation I felt in that moment... it’s clouding my judgment as well as my ability to perceive the information. Perhaps having outsiders experience it will help?”
“We can observe if you’ll give us permission, but I can’t guarantee we’ll manage to keep ourselves separated from your emotions. They’re wild things and from what you’re saying, even you feel the unpredictability of it all.” Milaro’s tone was gentle. “Quinn has been learning about entering and experiencing memories ever since we tried to extract them from the owls.”
Quinn cleared her throat. “Ever since Kajaro put a mind bomb in my head.”
Milaro smiled. “That too.”
Lynx nodded. “I understand. And I give you my wholehearted permission. We don’t have the luxury of me taking weeks to work through this myself.”
Quinn nodded at the Elf King, and they both placed a hand on Lynx. Even though he was a manifestation, he was currently in his solid form, and memory reviewing worked best with physical touch with the subject. “Here goes...” she murmured.
Lynx closed his eyes, as did Quinn and Milaro, and suddenly she could see the chamber as it was when it had been fully functional.
The pillars rose up out of the mana lake, shining brightly. All ten of them with the filters gleaming blues, greens, and even white occasionally. It was like a beautifully lit up set of Christmas decorations. The mana lake shone blue and bright, and Quinn could feel the power emanating off it in waves.
Korradine stood on the shoreline, facing Lynx.
She was still beautiful, ethereal, with her eight-foot-tall frame and wispy silver hair falling down her back, but her one eye blinked rapidly, and there was a sheen of sweat covering her body. “You can’t stop this.” She gasped out, shooting what Quinn somehow knew was another bolt of power in Lynx’s way.
The manifestation dodged it, his anger palpable. “You’re not cursing the Library.”
Kor laughed. Threw back her head and full on, evil cackled. The sound echoed through the chamber, off the pillars, vibrating in a way that set Quinn’s teeth on edge. “The curse is already activated. You can’t stop this and you can’t run either.”
Lynx took several steps toward her, but she backed away, stepping both feet into the mana at the edge of the lake.
A blue glow suffused her, but instead of revitalizing, she visibly began to wither, as if the lake was sucking the life out of her. The cackle became hoarse, and finally she was gasping for breath.
The next moment, she lay on the sandy foreshore, looking up at a very angry Lynx. His purple eyes glowed manically. And the runes flowed down from his hair, circling his entire body. Quinn could practically hear the chant that should go along with their activation. It was mesmerizing to watch as a wind picked up from nowhere, whipping his hair around his head.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“You will not break the Library. I do not allow it!”
This time when Korradine attempted to laugh, it came out as a hoarse cough that wracked her ever more diminishing frame. She was about Malakai’s height now. She’d already lost a foot. “You don’t allow it? I’ve been taking your memories for millennia now. You allow everything - you don’t have a clue what all you’ve allowed.”
Lynx started slightly, a vague look of concern passed over his face.
“Didn’t you realize?” Korradine carried on, leveraging herself to her elbows, panting with the exertion. “You’ve allowed everything. You’re the reason this was so easy.”
Another wave of uncertainty passed through Lynx, and it was all Quinn could do not to get carried away with it. But he rallied. “No. You made choices for this to happen. That I trusted you is my fault. But that you betrayed that trust is yours.”
A strange expression passed over Kor’s features, twisting them briefly in sadness before the haughtiness and superiority complex took back over. “Think what you will, but you can’t stop an Unusceros death curse.”
“Actually,” Lynx said, his eyes still swirling as if he was accessing every database in the history of databases. “I can’t stop it, but I can halt it.”
“What?” Kor had shrunk a little more. She was barely taller than Quinn at this stage.
Lynx began reaching for something inside him and Quinn could feel the massive swell of power that began. Korradine obviously could too. A look of panic overtook her eyes, and she scrambled finally back up to her feet. By now her skin was practically translucent and she was still shrinking, sweating more profusely, and barely able to breathe.
It reminded Quinn of a scene from a movie she’d seen back on Earth - where one of the characters ended up dissolving into water...
“You can’t...” She looked alarmed now, as if she’d never thought Lynx would take a stand against her. Then her jaw firmed, and she gathered power of her own, even if it was minuscule in comparison to Lynx’s. “And you certainly can’t if you have no idea what’s happening.”
This time a dark energy bolt... no wait, that was a mind bolt she flung at him, barely missed his head. Lynx didn’t even glance at her as she lobbed mind spear after spear at him. Each of them more frantic than the last. There was an edge around Lynx now, as if he was straining to contain the amount of power he pulled.
Finally, when Kor was smaller than an Ilgonomur, Lynx looked up, sheer sadness in his gaze countered by complete determination. His words were practically whispered when he spoke. “You will not doom this universe to live with chaotic magic. I won’t let you, no matter what I have to do.”
“You don’t have a Librarian to replace me.” She cackled before her frame was racked by a severe cough. “Nothing you do will be...” but then she paused, coughed again, and her eyes grew wide.
Lynx laughed at her expression as the power he contained grew more and more. “You were saying.”
“You wouldn’t do that...” but she didn’t sound so confident anymore.
“Maybe not if you’d given me another choice,” He shrugged.
“But you’ll drain so much of the power...”
He glanced at her, all emotion out of his eyes now, the sadness pushed down deep to fuel the capacity for the power he was about to wield. After all, from all measurements, it had the ability to tear him apart if one tiny thing even went wrong. “But not all of it. And maybe I’ll keep enough so we can limp along until something turns up... but I will not let you rip the lives of trillions of people away just because you’ve got some vendetta.” Even with those words, there was a hint of sadness.
But Korradine shook her head. “Don’t you understand how better off we’ll be? The Library was a mistake. You’re a damned mistake. All of this. All of you!”
She was fading and as her size diminished, so too did the timber of her voice. In the end, she started sounding like a certain chipmunk, but Quinn couldn’t bring herself to laugh.
“Maybe.” Lynx said, the melancholy achingly evident in his voice. “But at least we’re able to live and share what we know with everyone.” He began to move toward the ever diminishing Librarian.
There was a jolt throughout the chamber, as her eyes began to grow dull. Quinn could only think it must have been when the Library began to uncouple from its caretaker. Korradine let out what might have been a scream of pain as her eyes began to dim fully.
Lynx knelt down and began to chant under his breath. Quinn watched as the surrounding power began to coalesce and move toward Kor. It billowed around him, a sort of nimbus, floaty and yet final, scooping her up onto its main level. She was tiny now. Way smaller than Geneva and Eric even. Her breath came in short gasps, and there was no recognition in any other part of her.
She wasn’t dead yet, but it was close. Lynx sighed, and his eyes finally returned to their normal lizard like fully purple sclera. She could see the pain this put him through, the anguish he felt. It emanated from him like a warning beacon.
He bent his head down, and then touched her forehead with one finger, closing the eye that now stared off into nothing at all. “Derest ye tirua.” He muttered under his breath, and the translation ability failed to let Quinn know what it meant... but she could feel the sentiment behind it, anyway.
Power consolidated around them, and finally he rose up, nestling the ever fading body that grew brighter and brighter on the pillow of cloud. Maybe that was the soul, Quinn would ask him later.
And then, totally unexpectedly, he threw the cloud toward Ashiron. It catapulted toward the pillar at such speed, Quinn barely followed it with her eyes. When it hit, it didn’t stick onto the outside, but instead melted right through the exterior. All the filters turned black and red, flashing warnings as if its life depended on it. Meanwhile, Lynx chanted again in words Quinn and the translation module had difficulty with. Power began to flux around the pillar, bigger and bigger in a circle around it until finally a whoosh of energy gathered, pulsating around the pillar, drawing on massive amounts of power from the others and the lake.
Blue swirls of magic inundated Ashiron as the ball of energy grew larger.
Until all at once, it snapped back in on itself, sending a shockwave out the entire length of the cavern, knocking Lynx into the far wall in the process.
Ashiron blinked out of commission, all of its lights suddenly dark and black.
One by one the other pillars went offline, until only two of them remained, and the levels of the mana lake drained down several feet.
Light flickered in the cavern and Lynx lay prone on the ground.
But the Library remained standing... despite Korradine’s best efforts.