The vision fizzled out, and they were standing back in the chamber of now. Quinn blinked as the bright light hurt her eyes when her vision returned.
Lynx sat on the floor, gazing out at the filtration lake with a saddened look of longing on his face. The mana waves rippled, lapping at the shore, while the activated pillars cast reflections of lights, giving it a soft glow.
Quinn glanced at Milaro, almost nudging him before she remembered he wasn’t his grandson and might not take kindly to it. He looked back and gave her an almost imperceptible shrug. It was a strange feeling when someone who was thousands of years old also had no idea what to do.
Geneva was the one hovering over Lynx, the concern on her face palpable. She flitted back and forth, staying close to him the whole time. Finally, she darted over to Quinn. “What was that? There were flashes, and Ashiron practically growled for several seconds.”
That was enough for Lynx to stir, to pull himself out of his melancholy and straighten up. He morphed through lynx form and up into human just so he could avoid the difficulty of getting up. He was ancient. Maybe his fake bones hurt.
“It should hold. I don’t believe there’s anything to worry about.” His voice sounded hollow, devoid of emotion, or perhaps just completely depleted of energy.
Quinn moved closer. “What happened after all that?” She wasn’t about to not worry. That pillar had been a thorn in their side almost since she got here. Well, since she found the book with the note anyway. They needed whatever was in it to get out of it so they could operate at full capacity. At least once they had enough power.
Lynx slowly began turning to look at her. He nodded slowly. “I’m not sure what happened. I don’t quite remember, but I do recall waking up in the Core chamber and having everything on low-power mode.”
“But the Library didn’t shut itself down, did it now?” Milaro asked gently.
They were all cautious not to alarm or upset Lynx. He seemed like he was hanging by a thread. Quinn wished she understood how the darigánish soothed the people around them. She thought Lynx could do with some soothing, even if she wasn’t entirely sure it would work.
“No. No... it didn’t do it by itself.” Lynx paused and heaved a huge sigh. “I remember being worried that we wouldn’t find a Librarian. Frankly, I was certain of it. We’d been looking for decades for a matching signature at that point. The council had met... we’d set out precautionary plans. It was a bit wild, to be honest...”
Milaro chuckled, but it held no hint of mirth, more of memory and melancholy. “We did have several plans in place. Some of them even wilder than the one we ended up resorting to.”
Quinn knew she was the plan they ended up resorting to and wasn’t entirely certain how to take it, but she was fairly sure it was complementary. “So... you set it up?”
“Yes. Once the Library hit a certain power level, it was going to go into quasi hibernation. That would allow us to conserve the power we needed, shut the doors, and give us enough time to figure out how to replace or find a Librarian, or failing that, figure out if there was some sort of recalibration we could do to keep the Library functional.” Lynx turned around, spread his arms out, and smiled. “At least it stayed in one piece, right?”
“Good job.” Quinn grinned at him. “So the drain of power triggered the shutdown.”
“Yeah. I... I’d always thought I just shut it down once she died, but now...” He just left the words hanging and Milaro picked them back up.
“The shut down was triggered because in preventing the Library’s destruction, you had to pull on so much power that it caused filters to shut off, and the whole operation to begin to shut down. Ideal when you’re trying to conserve power, but in that moment, it was dangerous. But you did save the Library and it was able to filter just enough to have the universe survive until we found Quinn.” Milaro paused. “You should be proud.”
“Probably. But mostly right now, I’m tired. The memory is real, and I have no idea how I avoided the memory wipes she fired at me. Maybe it was determination, perhaps it was sheer willpower.” Lynx laughed dryly at the thought.
Quinn knew there was a part of him reluctant to believe everything they’d seen played out. That a part of him had been hoping Korradine didn’t betray him to such an extent. But she did, and now the bulk of his memories were returnin there was no more denying that fact.
“So... she’s in there?” Geneva asked hesitantly.
Lynx shook his head. “That’s not how it works. The Unusceros dissipate. They become one with the universe as they die. Their essence, or soul, would usually do the same unless they imbue it with power in their final days. Sometimes particularly powerful Unusceri have gifted power sources after their death or done other amazing things. However... they’re also capable of the opposite. Not all of them could manage a curse, but Korradine. Well...” He glanced over at the fluctuating shielding around Ashiron.
“She was powerful.” Milaro finished for him.
“Yeah. She was super powerful. I should have known when she wanted to be the Librarian that something was wrong. No one has that much power and wants to serve others.” Lynx sounded bitter. Not that Quinn could blame him.
Milaro preened a bit. “Hey, I take offence to that. I’m powerful.”
Lynx raised an eyebrow. “But you run your sector and you didn’t try to become a Librarian.”
“Point. But it’s more what her attitude was, not powerful people in general...” Milaro frowned. “Although... whatever. Let’s move right along.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Quinn watched as his face flushed and she laughed. “You’re cracking me up. Anyway. What do we do now?”
Lynx turned to her, his eyes blinking rapidly. “We have to reseal it.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“It is what it is,” Lynx said, “but it’s not going to be easy, and it’s only going to be a stopgap measure until we can figure out how to either seal it away permanently somewhere else, or we understand how to destroy it.”
Another stray thought struck Quinn. “Why is it reacting now of all times?”
“Power levels.” Milaro added promptly. “When Lynx originally set up the failsafe, there were no fluctuations to be aware of. Without a Librarian to activate all the Library’s functions, the power levels were always going to recede. However, I’m guessing from the vision that when Korradine finally put her plan into place, when she finally knew she was going to die, she didn’t expect Lynx to have built failsafes.”
“Sort of.” The manifestation said. “But not quite accurate. Basically, because it took a ridiculous amount of power for me to seal her away, the failsafe tripped. IT should have taken a couple hundred years to get that low, but basically her attack meant we lost two centuries’ worth of power and had to shut down immediately.”
“But in doing so, you literally saved the magic of the universe so... that’s good, right?” Quinn asked.
“That is excellent.” Geneva said. “I’m glad you saved us.”
Lynx actually blushed. “Well, I didn’t realize I’d be saving us in that way. But I’m glad it worked out... sort of.”
Quinn sighed. “So, I’m guessing in order to seal that, we’re going to need to go all the way out to the pillar, aren’t we?”
Lynx nodded and glanced out toward where the skiffs were kept.
“Tell me.” Milaro asked. “We can’t teleport over because of the mana interference, but is there any reason we couldn’t just fly over? After all, we all know how.”
Lynx blinked at him and suddenly burst out laughing. “I don’t know why I didn’t even think of that.”
Quinn laughed too, feeling ever so slightly lighter despite the fact that they had to fly out to the ominously glowing pillar. She felt lighter than she remembered as she lifted off, her scales shifting as she kept them in place, and she loved the sheen of blue and gold they projected.
What she didn’t like was the looming pillar as it grew larger and larger the closer they got to it. The disturbing black nothingness where the operational lights should be was disturbing enough, but the miasma around the pillar, and the red overtones of the filters, just added to the gloom surrounding the whole section of Ashiron.
Quinn wasn’t the best at hovering, unlike Lynx, Geneva, and Milaro. They had far better control over their flying spells or abilities. The base of the pillar didn’t fill her with confidence. It, too, looked black, almost like the sludge that used to cover the lake before they repaired the failing pillar two or so months ago now.
It seemed so long ago, but in reality, she’d barely been at the Library for a blip in the grand scheme of things.
“I can’t land there.” She said. Not only did it look like chaotic magic sludge, but it also seemed slippery.
“Yes you can,” Milaro said, lowering himself to the deck of the pillar. Magic coalesced around him, sending the sludge running down the sides. As if a breeze had come and blown it all off.
Quinn stepped gingerly on the floor of the pillar, a frown on her face. “Was that sludge?”
Milaro shrugged as Geneva and Lynx landed. “Mostly. Something else too, leaking out of the pillar. Be careful. I’ll try to keep an eye on it, but it feels sneaky.”
That was when Quinn noticed it.
The pillar looked like it was bleeding. Oozing black and deep red sludge down from the gaps where the filters usually would be. It was held back by some sort of invisible barrier that no longer seemed to be working.
Lynx paled. “That’s not good. The seal is swelling as the curse reacts to the amount of power surrounding it.”
“Oh fantastic.” Milaro said. “I like a good challenge.”
The sarcasm that dripped from his words was almost as thick as the miasma surrounding the pillar.
“Good, because I have no idea what to do.”
Milaro raised an eyebrow and leveled a stare at the manifestation. “You created the seal in the first place. You’ve regained your memories of the event, so how is it you don’t know what you did?”
Lynx shrugged. “I have no idea. It came to me, it might have been...”
The Library’s voice spoke to all of them, ringing in the air right above their heads. I believe it was the both of us. Working in synchronization once we discovered what Korradine was truly doing. There were split seconds that made this possible, that saved the Library and universe from certain destruction. But we’re going to need to piece together precisely what we did.
“Well, I know what I did,” Lynx said.
“Good start,” Milaro crossed his arms and fixed a pointed look at the location the Library’s voice had come from. “So, get it together. We can’t stay here forever. Literally. This pillar is unstable and we need to reinforce it so we have enough time to figure out how to save it.”
He didn’t have to mention that not saving the pillar would set the filtration system back, and likely interrupt the equilibrium having all of them active could achieve. Quinn didn’t imagine replacing one of them was an easy feat, if it was even possible.
“So what did you do then?” Geneva prompted.
Lynx sighed and looked ever so slightly guilty. “I used a banishment ritual. That’s why the pillar is actually out of synch with us. Just a fraction. I took the soul curse, and I locked it inside the pillar, banishing it to a different dimensional timeless space.”
For a few seconds, no one spoke. It sounded so fantastical to Quinn, and yet at the same time, eerily simplistic. “And then we further locked it down,” she muttered.
Lynx simply nodded.
Milaro spoke solemnly. “So it’s just been floating in limbo.”
Lynx nodded, and Quinn could see how worried he was. His runes and eyes were practically tempestuous.
Geneva drew in a ragged breath. “And now it’s feeding off this extra power. Is it close to breaking free?”
“Yes.” Lynx said, his voice small.
Quinn had a lightbulb moment from one of her many, many books she’d absorbed. “Can’t we reinforce the banishment and move the location?”
Milaro blinked at her. “Yes, but that’ll require preparation and we need a stopgap measure for right now. But...” he said slowly, a grin appearing on his face.
“But what?” Lynx asked, a hint of hope back in his voice.
“But I don’t see why we can’t just reinforce the shields within the pillar, even if the central section of it is technically offline and shifted. There’s still the physical surface area. If we secure that, we buy a good chunk of time.”
“I guess we have a plan then.” Lynx licked his lips nervously.
Quinn nodded. “I guess we have a plan.”
She tried not to think about what could go wrong with the plan. After all, it was better not to invite disaster, right?