The vines beneath Irias’ body thrashed as they practically devoured her. Quinn would have thought they were simply returning her to the earth if the violence inherent in the act wasn’t so explicitly obvious. What was left of the surrounding foliage pushed through the charred mess she’d left and was busy revitalizing itself through the energy dissipating from Irias’ body.
“Fire. Now.” Aradie snapped the words, and they sounded just like they did when her owl spoke to her through a mind connection, filled with impatience.
Quinn blinked and sent controlled flames out toward the root of the problem. That was just the thing with this undergrowth. It wasn’t about to cooperate if it didn’t have to. Thus, tightly controlled and aimed fire was the best thing for making it stop. She didn’t bother apologizing for not having acted faster. Instead, she got busy doing what she should have known to do instinctively.
The ground churned under them, writhed, in fact.
Irias’ body was mostly pulled underneath by the time the flames rose in intensity. Their level of heat increased so much that a high-pitched scream, barely discernable, began to permeate the air around them. The squeal reminded Quinn of the sound a balloon made that was highly inflated when you let it go and all the oxygen came whooshing out of it.
Loud, and ear piercing, but ultimately harmless.
She really hoped the book hadn’t been on the fake Irias corpse.
Without something to feed off, in fact, with the food source cut off, the vines and roots began to wither. They blackened, and not just from the fire that charred them. Instead, the power it fed from beneath them being cut off managed to damage them even more.
Quinn frowned. “There’s something wrong with the source of magic in the area. As in... the source of their mana.”
“Their nodes?” Aradie asked, her voice echoed strangely. Given the fact that she had a new form that Quinn still hadn’t quite wrapped her head around, it wasn’t that surprising she sounded different.
“Yeah it’s more like...” Quinn closed her eyes and reached out with her senses. The ground was repugnant, so much that she literally shirked away from it and had to force herself to keep diving, wrapping her shielding tightly around her mind. Letting that sort of infected power seep into her wouldn’t end well for anyone.
Because the power was corrupted in a way Quinn hadn’t seen before. Instead of chaos just sitting on top of the mana and sort of suffocating it, this was interwoven, a huge part of the power. There was something else in there, more than just chaos. Perhaps the intention of whoever wove the magic also counted.
She frowned, trying to piece together what happened from the ley line closest to her. It wasn’t just filled with sludge, they were combined in a strange stickier than normal version of mana mixed with chaotic energy.
Fascinating.
The power leaking off it felt heavy. There wasn’t a light way to wield it, and even just touching on it with her mind to test it gave her a feeling it would be cumbersome to wield. She frowned. Surely this wasn’t the way chaos usually intermingled with mana.
A message flashed across her sight.
Warning. Contaminated area.
Chaos levels rising. Shielding required.
And that’s when she noticed the node. It wasn’t as big as the bountiful and beautiful one had been back in the Jenishu portion of this world. No... this one was just like the veins here. Thick, unwieldy, and dangerous. It settled against her shields, like it was trying to gnaw its way through to her. Like an attack attempting to be subtle in all its obviousness. Quinn shuddered, but her scales just kicked it in, up a notch, strengthening and sealing her defenses against it, against everything.
Still, it felt slimy against her consciousness.
When she got back to the Library, she’d take one hell of a long and hot shower.
Coming back to herself above ground, Quinn winced as she burned off the residual mental infection she could feel from her brief encounter with the substance. “That’s nasty.”
Aradie raised an eyebrow, her wing arms out to the side of her as she leveraged what appeared to be some sort of healing ability out over the ground. Something to extinguish the very nature of the vines and roots that were trying to devour the whole forest. “That bad?”
Quinn nodded, glancing around. Even though the room they were standing in already felt better than it had, she was still skeptical. “Yes... this is deep-seated. We’re going to need to repair the node here or its root systems will just keep spreading no matter how much we fix the surface levels.”
Aradie nodded and shook herself, the feathers fluffing ever so slightly.
Quinn watched her, even as she tried to figure out exactly how to help purify the damned node down there. “So... are you going to talk to me about this whole, humanoid thing?” Quinn sort of waved her hands toward Aradie like she was tracing her body.
Aradie laughed, and it sounded like a softer version of kookaburra. “Sometimes it’s just easier to fight something, especially in a more enclosed space, when I take on a different form or a different type of stance. Irias... or whatever or whoever this was... couldn’t fly, and wasn’t out in the open. Dive bombing wouldn’t work.” Suddenly, Aradie looked very tired, her wings drooping ever so slightly. “But it does take its toll, as does speaking like this...”
She shrugged down as Quinn watched, reverting to her owl form. Those gorgeous black and iridescent feathers practically glowed with energy before she made herself small enough to sit back in her preferred spot on Quinn’s shoulder.
All felt right with the world for a split second before Quinn remembered she had to sanitize the damned mana node underneath them. “You’re not going to help me?”
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
I can help you just fine from here without having to expend excess energy on maintaining an unnatural, to me, form.
Quinn nodded. It did make sense, and she wasn’t about to argue and perhaps chase away any help at all.
But first... we need to find the root of this infection. This isn’t coming from the Library. We know that because the Jenishu section had a pristine root system, with a glorious almost full node.
It was unusual for Aradie to speak this much, so Quinn let her. It was nice to have her speaking instead of assaulting her mind with copious images.
This however... it runs deeper. It’s far more sinister than the sludge build up was back at the Library. It’s...
Quinn blanched as the answer came to her from one of the copious texts she’d devoured over the last few months. “It’s people, isn’t it?” She asked it softly, not wanting to say the words out loud, but realizing it needed to be tangible for her to appreciate the gravity of what was being discovered.
Aradie did one of those owl shrugs and Quinn sighed. She didn’t need the bird to answer the literally bleeding obvious.
It was a waste of energy trying to cleanse the node without first going to the source. Quinn ran her hand through her ponytail and tugged on it. She was beginning to wonder just how deep this whole sabotage thing went. “Are the others gone or will they be back? We might need Narilin.”
Aradie shook her head. She’s too damaged right now, injured. She’ll need healing. However... I did send a messenger, and I’d say they’re probably ready by now. We simply need people who can hover until we’ve cleansed the rot from the roots, and help us search and retrieve.
“What do you mean they’re ready by now?” Quinn was a tad suspicious, even though it sounded like a good thing.
For an answer, Aradie reached out with her magic to the doorway they’d walked through to get into this room. Nowhere in the place appeared to have actual doors, which was part of the problem with teleporting directly here instead of using the apeture from the Jenishu area.
In the blink of an eye, a door appeared, but it wasn’t a real door. No, it was more like it was superimposed over the archway to give the appearance of there being a door. But it seemed to be enough. No sooner had she done that, than the doors opened inward to reveal the Library.
It wasn’t the main part of the Library, but one that was farther back through the stacks.
There, waiting to walk through and hopefully assist them, were Geneva, Finn, and two people she’d never seen before. They stepped through the door, letting it close behind them.
Quinn raised an eyebrow at the appearance, but the relief that flooded through her on seeing Geneva was palpable.
Geneva inclined her head even as she scrunched up her nose. “I’ve left the Library in Lynx and Dottie’s hands. Everything should be relatively okay.” She didn’t sound a hundred percent sure about anything, but Quinn could live with that.
The Firionas Fae balked ever so slightly as she moved around, the frown on her face getting deeper by the second. “This is... This is not good. I’m not even a salosier, and I can tell how bad this is. Did you not notice the moment you stepped foot in here?”
She sounded so incredulous, Quinn felt a little foolish. But they’d had Narilin and Nishpa with them too... shouldn’t they all have noticed? “We didn’t... it...”
“Didn’t feel the same.” Nishpa said, coming into the room. She glanced around the meeting area and sighed. “This level of toxicity had been masked when we arrived initially. Sadly, that gave us little leeway to ensure just how deeply this corruption ran. We came here expecting some hostility because of perceived slights by the Library. But what we got was something that runs far deeper than anything we expected.”
She glanced at the newcomers and frowned ever so slightly. “I’m not sure this’ll be enough people. Will Aradie have the strength to open another portal if we need?”
Aradie hooted like that’d never be a problem, ever. And perhaps it wouldn’t in Owl kingdom.
“Excellent.” Except Nishpa didn’t sound like she thought anything was excellent currently or would ever be again. She’d obviously been more affected by all of this than she was letting on. Another thing to talk about later.
“Are Narilin and Karella okay?” Quinn asked, somewhat hesitantly. She’d just wanted to come and retrieve a book. That was all... one damned book.
Nishpa shook her head sadly. “Narilin will be fine. But something in Karella has broken and I’m not sure that’s something we can piece back together. After all, she just lost her daughter and her husband. And she remembers nothing.”
Quinn frowned. Something about that didn’t quite ring true. “But did she lose her daughter? I don’t think that was a body-snatcher or anything. Her appearance changed. Literally. If the other villagers are somewhere around here, then doesn’t it stand to reason that the real Irias could be here too?”
Nishpa paused. “Well, it could be possible, but you also have to realize that this has been going on a lot longer than the Library has been back online. While it’s a possibility, I’m not going to reach out and give Karella any form of hope until we find out one way or another.”
Quinn nodded slowly. “Then we should probably set out and attempt to find out just if and where these other people might be located, right?” Then she turned to the other two, who she’d never met before, but she swore were oddly familiar. “And just who might you two be?” she asked, barely keeping her temper at the lack of their introductions. None of them had thought to introduce themselves.
Then again, Geneva and Finn hadn’t introduced them either.
“Oh. We assumed you’d simply ask the system,” the shorter of the two elves said. He had fair hair, pulled back into a wispy ponytail. The one to the left of him had sharper features and stood ever so slightly taller, probably even taller than Milaro. His hair was a mixture of golden brown and blonde and he had a slight smirk on his face.
He stood almost seven feet tall, if Quinn had to guess, about the same as Milaro... She blinked. “Wait, a second...”
Pulling up information in front of her, Quinn blanched slightly, inspecting the one that spoke first.
Hilrick Seveshall
Age: 126
Species: Areiltháhnish
Direct Lineage to the Seveshall throne. 8th in line.
Cousin to Malakai
Nordon Seveshall
Age: 112
Species: Areiltháhnish
Direct Lineage to the Seveshall throne. 7th in line.
Cousin to Malakai
She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant, that the younger one was actually farther up in the line of succession, but it made much more sense that she sort of recognized them.
“Milaro couldn’t come himself, he was in the middle of helping our cousin.” Nordon said. He had the same light air to him that Quinn got from Milaro. Serious but not obvious about it. “So he sent us. We’re here to help you bring out the dead.”
Quinn wasn’t entirely sure what to say. Thanks seemed kind of... wrong. “Oh... I’m not sure...”
Nordon shook his head. “I am though. It’s what I do. I’m here to help you track down the missing inhabitants of this area. I can sense the dead.”
Well, that didn’t sound ominous at all.