Despite the veritable feast going on above them, Quinn still felt like something was off. After all, the bees had an adverse effect on the Salosier as a whole, but their bark or skin hadn’t been peeling when Quinn first arrived, so the bees felt more like an attack than whatever it was trying to grapple with them from underneath.
She frowned, glancing down beneath the tables, and noticed that the vines were trying their darndest to climb the legs of the tables, but for some reason they couldn’t.
“Does the underbrush usually behave in this way?” She asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. For all she knew, the roots were just very attached to their people.
Irias glanced down and frowned. “No. It is usually a matter of brief connections as we traverse the forest, however lately it has seemed somewhat stickier.” She shrugged, like she didn’t know how else to explain it.
“Sticky as in, clinging to you when it shouldn’t be?” Quinn pushed for the answer.
“There are reasons I hovered as we came farther into their territory. I was not just exercising a dislike of the situation, but was instead unsure of the level of heat I felt coming off the forest floor as we stepped through the aperture.” Narilin rolled quite elegantly to her knees and peered down at the ground, her hands gripping the table. “That right there... is a seething mass of roots and foliage, and not what is supposed to be there.”
“She is correct.” Karella coughed out a response, finally having broken out of her quasi-stupor. She blinked large dark brown eyes and surveyed the situation, her face flickered through varying degrees of horror as she did. “When did all this happen?”
“When did all what happen?” Quinn asked, trying not to be too short with the Balisor matriarch. Considering the bewilderment and confusion, whatever this was had been going on a lot longer than anyone realized. “Because a lot has happened, so I’m going to need you to narrow it down for me.”
Karella blinked at her, no recognition passing through those eyes. She furrowed her brow, which, given the skin of the Salosier, looked somewhat frightening as the bark bent and crunched ever so slightly. “I am so sorry, but have we met? You do not look at all familiar to me, but to be fair, right now I cannot even recall why I am in the gathering building, or when we put a ceiling in it.”
Quinn blinked. Surely it wasn’t a total memory loss sort of thing? That wouldn’t even make sense. But... she glanced at the floor, the writhing roots somewhat stiller, and yet, they still moved, like they were biding their time, attempting to gather a sort of camouflage in behaving more like your standard roots. Even as she wanted to ask the question, Quinn extended her senses out beyond the room. Originally, she’d had it in a fairly tight radius around herself, just in case something tried to attack her or the others.
But this?
It called for more than that. Pushing out her awareness, she skimmed along the roots and vines, analyzing them with everything she’d learned about the Salosier and magic in general. Meanwhile, she focused her attention directly on Karella. If the woman was acting, she was doing a bang-up job of it. “I’m Quinn.” She said, hoping to elicit a response of some sort at least.
When Karella didn’t even blink, Quinn continued. “The Librarian.”
“Of what, dear?” Karella said, a motherly tone creeping into her voice.
Out of the corner of her eye Quinn noticed Irias’ brow scrunching in thought as she watched the interaction. Apparently, her mother’s reaction was unexpected. A flash of irritation rose from the ground, brushing against Quinn’s sensory exploration of the ground. Seething impatience rolled off it in small increments, almost like a cloud of hatred. If she hadn’t been specifically watching for it, Quinn wouldn’t have noticed. She delved deeper in her analysis, while continuing to answer Karella’s questions. “Of the Library.”
Karella digested that, a confused look on her face. The expression seemed genuine, even so far as to reach Quinn’s senses. “I’m sorry.” Karella said, “Did you say the Library? As in the Library of Everywhere? The one with all the magical books that no one has been able to visit for almost five hundred years?”
“The one and the same,” Quinn tried to temper the information with a soft smile. After all, not everyone accepted it was back yet. Not everywhere. She was quite certain, even her limited experience with the dozens of species she encountered, wasn’t even a scratch on the surface.
“Wait. When did it reopen?” Karella’s face lit up. There was joy under the mild concern. She almost made to hop off the table, but Nishpa reacted with surprising speed.
Grasping Karella in a gust of wind, she gently placed the Balisor mother on the table again. “I wouldn’t advise you to touch the floor right now. There are some... issues with it.”
Karella turned to look at Nishpa and smiled. “Oh, you I recognize. You’re the sister of the Fae King!”
Quinn, who still hadn’t got around to double checking people’s ancestry, looked at Nishpa in a new light. Although, she should have put two and two together. She was Milaro’s childhood friend, she was Geneva’s aunt, and Geneva was one of the children of the Fae Crown. So, logically...
Nishpa smiled, but it was a tight expression and Quinn desperately wanted to know all the baggage that went with that. “The one and the same. This is the Librarian though. Tell me, Karella, what is the last thing you remember?”
Karella blinked and frowned. “I...” she started, but then she looked around the room. Like really looked this time, and what she saw seemed to shake her out of her own stupor. Her gaze fell on her husband, still prone on the table.
Quinn had her theory about why Haritan hadn’t yet woken back up, but she wasn’t about to espouse them now. For the time being, she was intently examining Karella. Some people were good actors. She had to make sure Karella wasn’t one of those.
The Balisor mom’s face had paled in that oddly green sick looking way that Salosier’s seemed to get. When her gaze finally fell on Irias, she gasped. “Irias? What... when did you grow up so much?” The words came out as a whisper, but Quinn could tell how much pain was behind them. As if Karella had missed a huge chunk of her daughter’s life or something.
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Which, if the picture Quinn was starting to pain together was right, was likely true.
Irias, on the other hand, didn’t seem amenable to the fact that her mother might not have been herself for the last while. She scowled at Karella. “I’m the same as I’ve always been, except, that is, when you wouldn’t let me be anything I am.”
Karella frowned, confusion flickering over her expression. “I’m sorry, I just don’t follow. How did I miss this much time.” A panicked look began to form in her eyes, and Quinn could practically feel it vibrating through her body.
Irias sighed, her reaction oddly offputting. “Mom, it is okay. I am going to be fine and so will you.” She moved over, hovering over a foot off the floor, not giving the vines a chance to get their roots back into her.
In the mean time, Quinn had finally figured out exactly what was wrong. It’s the vines. She said in her headspace, making sure it reached Narilin, Nishpa, and Aradie. It’s interwoven intricately and underlying the usual brush that should be present. In doing so, it’s almost strangled the natural undergrowth of this forest. I can’t tell how to unweave it, or stop the weird sort of poisonous presence it has when it connects to those who walk over it... but that’s what it is.
It all sounded so fantastical to her, but it also made a weird sort of sense. This was a weed. Something that had invaded the natural flora around this world and slowly but definitively encroached on the natural habitat of the Balisor. There was an inherent difference between that of the Balisor and the Jenishu, and it made Quinn think it made the former much easier prey.
There was a surprised intonation from Nishpa, like she hadn’t encountered this before. However, it was Narilin’s reaction that was the most telling. She paled, even worse than Karella had.
This is Bardocian Root. She practically whispered the words. This is not good. This is, in fact, quite bad. How far ingrained is it? How long has it been there?
The rising hysteria in her words did little to make Quinn feel any better. After all, she’d just thought it was like a weed, but from Narilin’s reaction, it was a veritable poison. Is there a treatment for this? She needed to get them thinking about solutions and not focusing so much on the problem itself.
There was nothing else they could do about the problem itself, except attempt to extract from it and fix what was broken. Or at least, Quinn hoped it was possible.
It can be healed... Narilin sort of came back into herself just a little. Yes, I can heal a part of it, but Irias has the stronger healing magic. While I can address certain aspects, I cannot cure people of the influence. Irias should be able to work on that while I take care of the root system itself.
She paled again, but nodded her head emphatically.
Quinn knew there was something the Salosier wasn’t telling her, but she left it at that. After all, it was a lot of information, and Quinn had the bad feeling that this weed... was doing a lot worse damage than she initially thought. Meanwhile, she gave her attention back to Irias, who was mid reasoning with her mother.
“...been poisoned, and you should know that, because you should be able to sense it.” She sounded impatient, and Quinn couldn’t blame her since Karella seemed to be adamantly shaking her head. Denial at its finest.
“She’s right.” Nispha stepped in before Quinn could. Good thing too, considering Karella knew Nishpa from some distant thing, and was more ready to listen to her than her daughter who’d suddenly aged.
Irias hovered over to stand with Quinn, right next to Narilin. “She is not usually this unreasonable. I apologize.”
Quinn glanced at the striking young Salosier. Although, sitting at almost two hundred years of age meant calling her young felt oddly out of place. “But how are you?”
Irias gave Quinn a seriously contemplative look. “I am better than my parents. I was away studying until a few months ago. I only got called home when the Library beacon activated. They wanted me to apply to be an assistant.”
“But that’s not what you want to do, is it?” Quinn asked, keeping her tone kind and patient. One thing she never wanted to do was lay parental expectations on someone and expect them to fulfill it against their own wishes. From her memories, her own parents had never asked that of her.
For several seconds, Irias didn’t answer. She watched her mother and Nishpa, myriad emotions passing over her face. “I would love to be an assistant to the Library of Nowhere, but I do not want to be a book doctor. I want to help people in all my capacity - as a healer. I want to learn how to heal the mind like Princess Nishpa over there. How to help people deal with trauma and misinformation. There are so many things I can do with my abilities that I’m stifled and restricted from here.”
Quinn could feel the passion in the young Balisor. There was so much eagerness to achieve something new, something positive, that it rubbed off on Quinn. “You are welcome anytime. And we can figure out whatever it is you wish to do, and see if we can’t help get you there somehow.
For several seconds, Irias searched Quinn’s expression for any signs of falsehood. “I would greatly appreciate that. But first, I do believe, I am going to need to help fix my parents. They are not who I remember, or are not themselves while they have contact with the ground.”
Quinn nodded. “Speaking of which, there seems to be some foreign matter in those roots. They’re Bardocian Root? That’s what Narilin said.”
If Irias noticed that Narilin had apparently spoken to Quinn without anyone else hearing, she didn’t let on that she gave a crap. Instead, she frowned. “That particular root subverts personality traits. It brings out those we try to suppress to the fore. I can see how it would have affected my parents, who are always worried they do not live up to the people’s expectations, or their own.”
Quinn mulled that over, stretching her senses even farther as she tried to pinpoint precisely what was bothering her. There was something off here… and it prickled at the back of her mind without telling her precisely what it was.
Nishpa still spoke to Karella as the latter woman had finally broken down in tears. She seemed exhausted from the waves of emotion rolling off her.
Irias cleared her throat ever so softly. “Is there anything I might be able to assist you with right now?” She asked Quinn, even though her eyes said she clearly wanted to go and help her mother.
Perhaps the fact that her father and mother’s more recent behaviour hadn’t been quite within their control made Irias more inclined to help them.
Quinn began to nod, and then a thought struck her. “Wait. Irias, why are you the only Balisors in this entire town.”
Irias frowned. “What are you talking about? There are several thousand of us in this area.”
Quinn paled this time. Not wanting to panic the girl, she forced a smile. “Go take care of your mom.”
Irias blinked and then shrugged, heading off to help Nishpa.
Frantically, Quinn searched and modified the sensory details she was trying to pick up. Life signs... modeled on the Salosier she personally knew. Other life signs. Variations in plants. Everything.
No matter who was supposed to be there.
The people in this room and the birds directly above it were the only life signs she could sense in the entire city.