Quinn looked from the notification window that was still in front of her vision, to Hal, and back to the notification. She held up her hand to forestall any typically grandiose statement while she processed what he’d just said.
“You’ve got it now?” she asked, her voice laced with disbelief. “Which obviously means the Library has it now. How did you get it now?”
Uncle Hal laughed, that boisterous, overwhelming sound. He was in a frightfully good mood. Quinn wanted to smack the smug smile off his face, but she refrained.
Hal shrugged good-naturedly and shrunk himself down to just above the eight feet he’d been at his initial visit. “Quinn. Librarian, there’s no need to be so upset about it,” he said, his voice soothing.
“I’m not upset,” Quinn said, her voice defensive. “I’m shocked. I wasn’t expecting you to bring the last book home.” But the more she thought about it, the more obvious he’d been. He’d literally sent a message to her that she didn’t need to go out and get it right now because he’d seen that it would come back to her. Basically, that’s how she’d interpreted the information. “I just... I wasn’t expecting you to be the one returning it. That’s all.”
Hal grinned. “I know, and that was part of the fun. This surprise has been a delight.”
Quinn squinted at him. Yep, he was definitely up to something, but she wasn’t entirely sure if it was now, or up and coming. Eric was a lot like him, in a way. A complete and utter trouble maker. Uncle Hal watched her, an expectant look on his face. Quinn raised an eyebrow. “You’re just dying to tell me how you retrieved it, aren’t you?”
“How did you guess?” Hal said, clapping his hands together as he grinned toothily. “So, Lynx had given me the approximate location of the books. I knew Betty likely had one, and reached out to her. She’s always been... unique. And I gather she did pop in and give you the other one, right?” Hal didn’t wait for an answer. “Anyway, I made several sensory sweeps of the aforementioned area to find the book. I can’t see how enemies would have this. It’s not really an evil based sort of subject. I guess unless you’re studying the reversal of healing, which is its very own fork in those affinities...”
“Uncle Hal. Focus.” Quinn had never seen him quite so enthusiastic.
His grin widened, and his sharp teeth indented on his lips as he did so. “Sorry... I realized the approximation was quite close to a tiny Citrophosa delegation we have out in that sector. Now, they’re a fantastic, amazing species at assisting in every way. However, they’re not very conscientious of other people’s belongings, and, or dates and times. Ever. They lose track of everything not immediately in front of them. Anyway, it was actually much easier to retrieve than I’m letting on and not nearly as exciting as it probably would have been if you’d have gone there to retrieve it without me.” His eyes were twinkling by the time he finished his tale.
Quinn laughed. “Citrophosas. They’re the one who carried the prisoners when we got to Halschius, right?”
“Yes, you’re correct.”
Quinn frowned. “So they just didn’t want to return the books?”
“Not exactly. It’s more of an oversight. They wouldn’t have paid attention to your alerts.” He shrugged. “You’d probably have gotten it in two hundred years if I hadn’t fetched it for you.”
“This is awesome,” Quinn said. She began leafing through all the information in front of her to make sure they’d met all the requirements for opening the next branch. Shivers of excitement and expectation ran through her at the prospect of finally opening another branch.
“I also,” Hal said, in an effort to get her to refocus.
“Was there another book?” Quinn asked, perking up. She’d brought up the console to triple check that power levels and everything else was optimal.
“No,” he said. “However, I thought you might be interested in some Kajaro information.”
That piqued Quinn’s interest because when did she not want to figure out how he’d done so much damage?
Malakai frowned. “Is it information she can handle now?”
Quinn glared at him. “Of course it’s information I can handle now.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Malakai said. “I meant you’re trying to juggle opening a brand new branch of the Library while you’re half listening to Hal, which means you’re probably going to ask him to repeat himself. So if you want his information, it’s likely advisable to delay the opening by five minutes.”
Quinn sighed. She knew Malakai was right. Why did he have to be right as soon as he’d gotten well again? The Library had been closed for almost 500 years. Surely, a few minutes weren’t going to hurt the alchemical and medicinal branch. For some reason, she felt like the Library was glowering at her. I’ll make it up to you, she shot her thoughts at the Library. It did not seem mollified at all. “Well, what about Kajaro?”
A shiver shook the surrounding air, and Quinn realized Uncle Hal had erected a cone of silence so anyone not privy to the details of their current predicament wasn’t about to overhear anything.
“My doctors are making progress,” Uncle Hal said smugly. “We’ve been running tests to ascertain how Kajaro actually comes back to life. There are some genetic variances in his makeup that include Korradine’s species. The Uniceros have a, it’s not an immortality gene, but more of a prolonged lifespan gene. Generally, it’s triggered by their will to live, die, whatever. Although it’s usually very specific to that species, it has been spliced with numerous other genetic factors that we haven’t been able to identify yet. However, I do believe we’re getting closer.”
Quinn held up her hand to stop him. “Wait a second. Are you telling me that he performed scientific experiments on himself to allow himself to come back to life?”
“No,” Hal said. “He’s performing magical experiments on himself, with himself as the guinea pig, which you’ve got to have some level of respect for whether he’s evil or not.”
Quinn studied Hal for several seconds. She really wondered what his definitions of black and white were because it seemed to her that he lived perpetually in shades of grey as far as she could see. Not that that was always a bad thing. But it was something she’d become aware of.
“Anyway,” Hal continued, “the fascinating part is that this splicing is something that we can extract from him once we’ve figured out precisely what it entails. It might kill him to extract it, but then he’d stay dead because we’d have removed the splicing.”
“But he doesn’t rise from the corpse, right? Because we took that corpse, didn’t we?” Quinn couldn’t remember. So much had happened since that fight. She wasn’t even sure how she got back to the Library anymore.
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“We think it regenerates a body for him at a designated location.” Hal shrugged.
Quinn nodded very slowly, taking all the information in. “So you think, you think we might be able to eliminate him?” she asked, even though the words sounded foreign and sort of scary on her tongue.
Hal nodded slowly. “If that’s what you want us to do with the prisoner.”
“Well, what else would we do?” Quinn said. “
Uncle Hal shrugged. “Learn from him? Dissect him? We could do a lot of things.”
“The last few times you did stuff, one of them bubbled into a mess of Gods knows what, and I got sucked into a dome.” Quinn crossed her arms, eyeing the King of Halschius skeptically.
“You make very good points, Quinn,” Hal said, giving her a wink. “I’ll take them under advisement and endeavor to investigate what the other genetic makeups are in the splicing that leads to his nine lives, so to speak.”
“Do you think,” Quinn paused, ignoring his teasing with the thought that suddenly struck her, “and I know this is stupid and I could probably try to research this out myself, is there a species that is very feline-like that has nine lives?”
Hal paused, a frown on his face. “Actually, now you mention it, there is.”
Quinn balked. “What?”
“Well, yes and no,” Hal said.
Lynx started laughing. “Are you serious? Is that what he did?”
Quinn looked between them, with no clue why Lynx was laughing. “What did who do?”
Malakai sighed. “There’s a feline species with the ability to regenerate itself several times over. It’s a Chezishila cat.”
“No way,” Quinn said. “Are you seriously serious, or are you just both pulling my leg?”
Hal cocked his head to one side. “We’re definitely not pulling your leg, but I’m assuming that’s a saying of some sort, because it seems very awkward. Thank you for your question. I didn’t think of the Chezishila I should have. Is that a myth on your world, Quinn?”
“Cats have nine lives. That’s just a saying because cats tend to get into the weirdest stuff ever and still survive.”
Hal nodded. “I’ll endeavour to send that information to our doctors as soon as possible. I actually...” He frowned and his eyes shifted for several seconds. “Thank you, Quinn. That was most helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” she said and shook herself a bit. Initially, the idea had felt absurd beyond belief. But if they were talking about splicing different species’ abilities together like they had for her and that Kajaro had apparently managed himself, then what the hell was a cat with nine lives thrown in there? It all fit in the magical universe, right? Some days, Quinn really thought that she might be ever so slightly losing a bit of her mind.
Anyway, Malakai elbowed her. “Don’t you want to open the branch, Quinn?”
“Of course I do,” she said. She hadn’t forgotten. She was just fascinated by the fact that there was literally a cat out there with nine lives. Although it made sense, just like some of the species she’d encountered in the Library were present in mythology and fairy tales from Earth.
“I have another surprise for you later,” Hal said.
Quinn narrowed her eyes. “You’ve given me two surprises already. I’m not sure I can handle a third.”
“Oh no, you’ll love this one,” Hal said. “This is going to be great. It’s just not ready quite yet.”
Quinn frowned. She extended her senses as she couldn’t pick up anything akin to subterfuge, nor anybody waiting to try to play a trick on her. In fact, she couldn’t pick up anything negative in the Library at all right then. No bad connotations, lots of concentration. Some fiery arguments between patrons about subject matter contained in some of the books. But that was just an average day in the Library.
She shrugged. Dottie, Geneva, Eric and Hal were all with them, and they’d all have had to be in on the joke as well, if that’s what it was. Quinn just wasn’t the biggest prankster.
“Fine,” she said, “It just seems like you’re all in on whatever it is.”
“Oh, they’re not,” Hal said. “They’re just enjoying watching me.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. She stepped up into the actual check-in desk down the far end. More away from the throng of people that gathered around the active end. She leaned against the counter and picked the massive book up. She didn’t know what it was with these last alchemical books, but they were much larger tomes than most of the ones they’d had returned before. Many of those were sort of like letter size. These things were like A3. They were huge.
She frowned and shrugged. The leather binding was absolutely gorgeous. The Jezishian solution to Maladies of the Mana Pathways - a Beginner’s Guide, was in fact a beautiful book. It had blue veins practically running through it. They pulsated and glowed as if it would boost mana pathways just by being read.
Quinn glanced at Malakai and he shook his head. Which was a pity. She was really hoping maybe something like this would help him heal. She should have known a beginner book wasn’t enough to help him. But she sighed, placed her hand on top of it. It was like she was holding this massive final piece of a puzzle. One that would open the alchemical and medicinal wings.
She paused and looked around. Expectant faces looked back at her. Quinn, Dottie, Geneva, Eric, Hal, Lynx, and Malakai. She frowned.
“Where’s your grandfather?” She asked Malakai.
“I think he’s with Harish and Siliqua. They were discussing matters earlier. My mother’s already gone home, as far as I can tell.”
Quinn nodded, feeling like she was missing something. The Library spoke up in her mind. Are you going to open the damn branch or not?
Quinn chuckled to herself. Yeah, maybe that’s what she thought was missing. She willed the information to come back up in front of her. It all read out perfectly.
Alchemical and medicinal branch requirements
384/384 Books retrieved
1257/1257 varieties of plantlife, herblife, trees, flowers and weeds
Energy level required: medium
Mana requirement: 6,843
Energy requirement: 7,295
Patronage level required: fluid
Non-restrictive, all borrowing privileges established
Calibrating...
calculating...
Patronage level: met.
Librarian strength required: 12.
Assessing...
calibrating...
accepted...
Librarian strength: met.
All requirements pending fusion.
Medicinal and alchemical branches: intertwining.
The alchemical and medicinal branch has met all requirements to be opened.
Do you wish to proceed?
Yes, or No?
Or place this process on hold?
“Place this process on hold?” Quinn asked.
“No,” Lynx said vehemently. “Don’t do that!”
The Library echoed don’t do that in her head as well.
“Okay,” Quinn said. “I guess we’re opening the alchemical and medicinal branch,” and she selected ‘yes‘.