Finding time just to herself since coming to the Library was a chore. A difficult one at that. After a brief chat with the two of them, Quinn headed upstairs toward the alchemical and medicinal beginners section, accompanied by Aradie of course, to find time to do some research, and perhaps just be alone -- or mostly alone - with her thoughts for a while.
You should go and research some of the basic mind healing methods specifically. Milaro had said. And when she asked him why, he responded so logically she almost felt embarrassed for asking. To help you figure out how the new affinity you established slots into the already existing ones, and how you might best instruct others to pursue it.
Which brought it all back to her that just over a month or so ago she’d managed to heal Eugea of that horrific dimension sucking tree curse, thus giving rise to the 1723rd affinity. She knew there’d be another few sprouting off it once it got established, too.
After all, that was how affinities worked. They had a main and overarching branch and simply needed to be broken down into different aspects. In this case, it would end up as healing, damaging, halting, and lending coping techniques or something. Maybe, if she was lucky, she could introduce an affinity called kicking the butt of anyone stupid enough to endanger innocent people.
Quinn enjoyed the balconied second story where she could look over the banister to the Library below. It was often much more quiet up here, since the seating areas weren’t near the food. She glanced around, noting that only two other people were up here. Then she did a double take. She hadn’t expected one of them to be Misha.
Walking over, she stood beside the supervisory golem, who was studying one of the shelves. “What’s up, Misha?”
Misha turned, their eyes blinking rapidly as they processed who stood next to them. Or at least, that’s what Quinn thought they were doing. “Librarian.”
But that was all the answer Quinn got. So she prodded again. “What are you doing up here?” She was genuinely curious, after all.
“I am trying to retrieve two books that have been requested. Only one of them does not appear to be here, even though the system says it is.”
Quinn nodded slowly, not quite sure why they would be doing the work of the shelving golems. Surely they could just have ordered the construction of others if the workload was too much. Still. “Did you see if Narilin has it? I know she has a heap of books still requiring rebinding, restitching, general repair. A lot of more recently returned ones are in desperate need of a little love and care.”
Misha’s mouth line frowned. “Perhaps that is it. Ah. Yes.” They pulled away and bowed. “Please take care Librarian. Remember. You must be careful, please. We can’t afford to lose you.”
And then the supervisory golem was gone leaving Quinn to gape at the empty space as she tried to run the whole conversation back through her mind. Misha wasn’t usually that cryptic or uninvolved. It gave Quinn pause. She looked around the section Misha had been in, but there were only a few books on basic alchemy and some medicinal tonics.
Surely she could have delegated another golem to come and take care of it?
“Librarian?”
Quinn spun around to see the only other person up on this level in this specific division. He was rather cumbersome, always had been, which led her to think there had to be another entry up to this level.
His smoothed down hedgehog like spine and sloth smile always gave her this measure of comfort and control. Carafax was, quite simply, enjoyable to be around. Even if the news he gave wasn’t always welcome, he never spoke with such negativity that it could ruin your day.
“Carafax,” she greeted him warmly and was rewarded by one of those sunny, lazy smiles he had. “What brings you here?”
He blinked slowly and then smiled again. “There were some books I wanted to check on. While helping Lynx and the Library lately, a few things have come to my attention, and so... I did think I might look into them.”
“Is there anything I can help with?”
He frowned for a few seconds while giving it apparent deep thought. “Perhaps there is. Would you have time to speak with me right now?”
Quinn paused, but only for a second. This wasn’t something to hesitate on, not if, as she surmised, this had something to do with retrieving memories and files. It might have almost been night time as per the Library clock, but Quinn could adjust her sleep schedule if this went too late. Not for the first time, though, she wished the Library was a part of a regular solar system so the passage of time didn’t feel so magical. She liked it being based on moons and suns and tides and whatnot.
“What can I do for you?” She asked, taking a seat at the table where Carafax had dozens of books piled and notes made meticulously in one of his many journals.
“Ah. Yes...” he said, a rare instance of momentary confusion coming over him as he rifled through different journals and finally pulled out one that was, not surprisingly, a deep purple. “You see... I’ve been finding some discrepancies in observations of the Library, and in the matching memories we’ve retrieved so far.”
“How are those memory retrievals going then?” Quinn asked, noting that he needed some time to pull himself back together. She waited while he gathered his thoughts, able to see how his mind worked in this flurry of information he had. It was like he had to flip through his own catalogues to find the references inside his brain. Carafax was one of the most fascinating creatures she’d ever encountered. She almost wished she could watch an entire group of Slothilis interact and react together.
“They have become, perhaps needlessly, complex.” Carafax drawled out. He blinked as he continued to shuffle through notes and then moved surprisingly quickly to pull his chair up next to Quinn. Leaning forward, he pointed out several paragraphs, all in his tidy handwriting that almost looked like it was printed by a computer to Quinn.
Contradicting timelines of Korradine’s presence in the Library.
Several encounters in different instances of the Library.
Example A: Memory of Korradine and Lynx's encounter in the former Librarian’s study, while at the same time encountering several people at the check-in desk. Memory components require analyzing and mind healing is needed to delve in close to Lynx’s memories and the Library’s differing recorded events in order to establish which of these is the real occurrence and which the dupe.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Or perhaps if they are neither.
“Is this frequent?” Quinn asked, only just grasping that they basically had Korradine in two different places if the recollections were correct.
“It is not frequent enough that mosts people would notice it. However, it is a consistent occurrence enough that I have noticed it.” He shrugged and smiled. “But this is something we can fix in time. I simply wanted you to be aware of it.”
Quinn frowned at the information, the documented incidents. There were, once she counted them up, only a dozen of them over what seemed like a couple of hundred years. “Are you always here?” she asked, only just realizing how much Carafax would have had to have been there for him to have these records in the first place. Like she knew he was technically the Library’s chronicler, but she didn’t think that meant he lived there permanently.
“I’m here much of the time, as is custom. However, I do not, as you are probably thinking, live here permanently. Technically.” He gave her a slow wink, and a smile formed to go with it. “I am rather attached to the Library. As most of us are.”
Quinn pondered that. She’d realized by now that many of the patrons enjoyed simply being in the Library’s presence. There were people who came in day in and day out to be there. Just a handful, but they were there frequently. Others stayed and enjoyed the facilities for a few hours every week or two. But their presence was also felt.
One of the worst things Quinn had come across was this sense of longing for the Academy to reopen. People who wanted knowledge, who sought it out, wanted to be taught but had nowhere the go that could provide it for them within their, hey I can open a magical door to anywhere in the universe for free sort of budget.
Quinn got that more than most people would think.
Still...
“So, did Korradine split herself up frequently then, or is one of them really not her?” She finally asked. “I know we’ve had this suspicion before with Ardenil.”
Carafax shrugged. “This is what we are trying to figure out now. It will come. In time.”
In time... that was the component Quinn struggled with the most. It wasn’t like they were in a huge rush anymore because they’d bought themselves some leeway by relieving Kajaro of another book and entombing him alive to figure out how he had so many lives to begin with.
Although, in hindsight, that sounded quite macabre and evil.
Quinn wanted to temper it with - but at least she hadn’t killed anyone... but in a way she’d been responsible for deaths. And she knew that before all this was over, she’d be responsible for even more lives.
Those were sobering thoughts. Aradie nudged her head and hooted softly.
“You look like you still have not healed, Librarian,” Carafax’s tone soothed her, even if the subject matter rankled. After all, it wasn’t like she wasn’t trying to get a rest in.
“It’s not that easy.”
“It actually is. If you let it be. Put your foot down. Stop your brain whirring. Whatever it is you need to do to recenter yourself.” He pointed at the scales on her arms flicking between blue and a deep purple, with some flashings of gold. “That means you are unsettled. For your magic to be so resistant to peaceably ensconcing you in protection. For it to fluctuate to such an extent means your mind is at odds with your body and the purposes you have brought to the fore of your mind are at a cross way. You should meditate and figure out the precise direction you are best headed in.”
Quinn blinked. She’d heard him speak a lot by now, but his voice currently held such a soft and caring timber, that it almost brought her to tears. “Thank you. I’ll try.”
Carafax chuckled as he began to gather all of his things together in a remarkably speedy manner. Once he was done, he spoke again. “I shall leave you to your own devices, but do not overthink things without understanding them or taking actions to rectify or solve the situation. All that does is give you a headache.”
He tapped his head as he turned and walked away.
Belatedly, Quinn called out. “Thank you.” And he bobbed his head in acknowledgement before turning around a stack of books and disappearing from her sight.
Quinn slumped in her chair, quite certain he’d said something poignant, but also that she’d missed the entire point of most of what he said altogether. What she did get from it was that she needed to understand who and what she was better than she already did, and once she’d achieved that, then she needed to dig deeper into the mysteries of Korradine and why the hell she did what she did.
Not to mention how they were ever going to deal with the pillar bomb situation.
Leaning back, Quinn gazed up at the ceiling with its moving storyline, much like that of her bedroom. From this level it was much easier to see than down on the ground floor of the Library where the ceiling still seemed so distant.
Her thoughts, unless she consciously steered them away, always went back to the moment Malakai threw himself in front of her.
He’d saved her... at least that’s what he’d thought, but Quinn was mostly convinced that her scales would have protected her even if she hadn’t called them forth. They seemed to have a nasty habit of rescuing her and leaving her loved ones to die. She knew that thought was a little unfair.
She pushed herself to her feet with a soft groan as Aradie launched herself from her shoulder to the top of one of the bookcases. Quinn realized how little weight Aradie had actually been distributing to her shoulder and immediately wanted to understand how that was possible again. She’d never gotten around to it previously.
With the screen in front of her as she worked, Quinn tried to find the mind healing section. It wasn’t difficult to locate, considering she had an owl to do it all for her. But there were about seventy books in the section, which she hadn’t expected. She frowned, trying to figure out which ones would best work as a basis for her own affinity.
Mental Chaotic Fortitude Abolition
It wasn’t exactly a friendly sounding affinity. But it had, in fact, done everything they needed it to do. Now, if she could only rewind and examine precisely what it was she had done, it would all be rosy. She flipped through the books she found, narrowing them all down to the three tomes she’d absorb tonight to help her clarify just how she’d gone about it in the first place. Perhaps it could help her break the steps down.
She piled them on the desk and began going through them. Better to get an understanding of the magic behind what she’d done before she absorbed the information fully. At least, that made sense to her.
The Gonnella Mind over Maladies Dissertation, Theories of the Brain Core - similarities through one hundred species - a comparison, and Campbell’s guide on How to eject unwanted visitors in your brain.
She got so engrossed in the books that she lost track of time. In this space that was peaceful and lacking in all the hustle of the below level, it was easy to simply switch off and forget about anything outside of herself, the book in front of her, and the information contained within.
It was one of the more pleasant evenings she’d spent in the Library since arriving. The calm that came over her was welcome, and something she’d not witnessed for longer than she cared to admit.
Aradie hooted gently, as if she was trying not to startle Quinn.
“Mhm?” Quinn flipped another page. The absorbing of books came with a heady rush and sometimes blinding pain. Call her old-fashioned, but she still enjoyed sometimes just flipping through a book. Maybe she’d be able to go back home and get some ebooks downloaded onto her phone that Malakai had doctored... Reading for leisure and not saving the universe? Now that was something she missed.
Aradie hooted again, more insistently and Quinn looked up, focusing this time. “Oh what? Uncle Hal is here?”
She pushed herself to her feet, grabbing the books, and dashed down the stairs. He’d saved her more than once, and seemed to be the only person who unequivocally told her the truth or didn’t meter out information.
There were so many questions.
She had to see him before he left!