A rumble echoed deep within the bowels of the Library making Quinn stumble ever so slightly. The Library hadn't reacted this way when they opened the culinary branch. She heard a loud hoot and looked up to see Aradie sweeping toward the second level.

It was like a light-bulk moment as Quinn remembered the beginning portion of the alchemical and medicinal branch was up on the second level. Logically, that would be where the expanded branch emerged from. She grinned, activated flight, and pretty much jumped up, landing very lightly on the floor after clearing the banister.

She looked down and grinned. Malakai gaped up at her, laughed, and jumped up himself. Lynx was there momentarily, as well as Hal, Eric, and Geneva. It really helped when you were massive or you had wings. Or you could fly. Nobody had to use stairs. Magic was largely convenient.

Quinn grinned as the rumbling continued. "Where?"

Aradie gestured with a wing, which was an oddly comical gesture for an owl. Quinn and the others walked along the sections until they crossed over to the medicinal and alchemical wing. Right there, where there'd usually been cauldrons and several tables, the occasional mill, the terrariums, all that sort of stuff, the entire area was suffused with a subtle glow.

Quinn watched in fascination as the sheen over everything rippled making it feel like the whole area was made out of waves.

"Don't get too close," Lynx said. "The Library's pulling a lot of energy for this."

Quinn nodded and stepped back, just to be safe. She couldn't be certain, but was fairly sure stepping into that rippling area wasn't a good idea.

The Librarian hadn't known what to expect. Frankly, she'd assumed the Library would pop out a new annex from nothing, just create it on the spot. But now she thought about it, that didn't exactly make sense, because when the branches appeared, they were already fully stocked. Their systems needed to be reconnected, and all their books accounted for. It had amenities and supplies that required cataloging by the Library's greater system, too.

"So how exactly does this work?" Quinn asked as she watched the walls behind the books and the desks and the tables and the cauldrons begin to warp. She took another two steps back to be on the safe side.

Lynx answered her, his voice contemplative . "Well, the Library has to reaccess the sealed-off dimensional shift that it pops the branches into when they're in stasis."

"In stasis?" Quinn asked.

"Of course. It's so they don't use the energy and mana required to operate. They're sort of shrunk down and shifted..."

"Like a dollhouse?"

"Not really," Lynx said. "Just out of time with us. They're out of phase. They're there, but not there and thus don't require anything. They're just in stasis."

Quinn thought it over and felt the need to put it in her own words. To make sure it made sense to her. "So, the Library has to shift everything back into this specific pocket dimension so that it can realign with the power centers and begin calibrating and resetting so all the information between both the branch and the main branch line up." Lynx nodded and Quinn shrugged. "Okay, that's needlessly complex."

"No," Lynx said. "Not needlessly complex. Definitely needed fully complex."

Quinn laughed.

"He's right." Malakai was leaning against the banister, quizzically watching the way the walls warped.

They didn't just warp. Each of those walls had originally been bookcases, and now they split and distributed themselves. They began shifting to the side and elongating the entire section. Even the floor looked like it was warping out from under them. Quinn glanced downstairs, but apart from a few curious glances because of the noise that came from upstairs, nobody down in the main part seemed to, well, care.

The shifting continued, several slight jolts under Quinn's feet, and it slowly began to take form. Each of the bookcases shifted backward, multiplying, or at least seeming to, as it all came together to make an expanded collection around the exterior of the newly formed massive room. Columns rose up in several areas around the room with more bookcases rising up between some of them. They pushed the ceiling above them even higher. There were twelve columns altogether, six on each side of the room. More and more bookshelves began to appear, although they seemed incorporeal.

The change truly began to happen once all of the pillars were in place.

Tables with mills for, Quinn presumed, milling down ingredients. There were glass blowing stations for vials and bottles. Next to that was a plethora of cauldron tables. These were made out of stone, with furnaces built right into them, and enough room for several people to gather around if needed. Quinn lost count after about eight of each, because the room kept shifting.

Next came the terrariums for all the rare herbs, weeds, plants, and other ingredients for the plethora of medicinal uses they had.

But nothing seemed solid yet. Quinn blinked and rubbed her eyes. Everything had a sheen over it, a sort of translucent shell that made her think it wasn't quite in this dimension yet.

"Don't try and move forward yet," Lynx said.

"Nope, you would not want to move forward right now," Hal said, amusement in his words. "I mean, you could. I'm not sure how we'd be able to pull you out of that, but I'm sure we could. You're pretty well amalgamated to the Library. Want to try, Quinn?"

"Hal, no. Stop it." Lynx admonished him.

"Fine. Now at least I know where Eric gets it from," she said. Hal actually grinned, but she could see the fascination reflected in his eyes. Not even he could hide how impressed he was with the ability of the Library to contain everything it did.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Quinn continued to watch. As furniture pushed up, books pushed up, several tables that she didn't recognize the purpose for were also slotted into place. Lighting began to emerge and was very specific over the cauldrons and terrariums. And there were more books in locked cases. Quinn raised an eyebrow.

"Not all medicinal books are available to everyone," Lynx said. "There are certain legendary-level medicinal texts that will kill you if you look at it before you're ready."

"Oh," Quinn said. "Good to know."

She reveled in the process. Watching it as it moved, so slowly. Well, technically it wasn't so slow. This was an entire vast wing of the Library being drawn back into being, and so far it'd taken all of five minutes. That wasn't precisely slow. "So, it's dimensionally shifting, and if you get caught in the shift, you might get caught in between dimensions," Quinn said. She was pretty sure that was logical, right?

Lynx nodded slowly. "You'd get caught in between dimensions..." He frowned.

"Why do you sound... What's wrong? What isn't right?" Quinn asked, suddenly aware that Lynx was paying a different sort of attention to the new branch now.

"No, it's... it's re-establishing," Lynx said. "But...Just feel it, Quinn. You can feel it."

Quinn reached out her senses toward the Library and toward herself. She realized how much effort and concentration it took for the Library to retrieve this amazing section of its knowledge. But it wasn't that the Library was wrong. It was that there was something more difficult than expected about this retrieval.

"Okay, I can sense it, Lynx, but I don't know what that means. What does it mean that it's more difficult than it was supposed to be?"

Lynx shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure. That portion of my memories is fuzzy. I mean we haven't needed to open this specific branch for a few million years, I think. I know there was one time it was closed down for a reason or three, but I can't remember."

"A reason or three..." Eric scoffed. "You were probably redecorating. Spending good old fine energy."

"Eric..." Quinn said with a grin. "That's not helpful."

"Me? I'm awesome. I can at least leverage fines on people." Eric puffed his chest out a bit.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. "There's more to being a Librarian than leveraging fines."

"Yeah, but there's nothing more fun about it than leveraging fines," Eric corrected her.

Quinn laughed. And yet she still felt uneasy. There was something off about the undercurrent of power running to the new section.

"That's not right," she whispered, pushing out her senses to try and get a feel for what exactly was bugging her.

Malakai nudged her. "What's not right?"

"Can't you feel that?" she asked him.

He raised an eyebrow. "I can't access my mana right now. Remember? No magic, no mana. Dangerous. My life would be in ruins."

"Oh, yeah." Quinn remembered it now, but was too focused on her senses. It wasn't that the mana was infected or chaotic. It was this underlying mustiness, this strange sensation of lethargy and apathy all rolled into one, as if the Annex didn't want to be reestablished. Quinn frowned.

Geneva piped up. "Is it infected?"

"It's not." Quinn frowned, getting frustrated now.

"I thought it would go faster." Geneva pouted slightly, but it was obvious she was also trying to figure this out.

Quinn shook her head. "No, the culinary branch took longer than this."

"But the culinary branch is different," Lynx said. "It's always been different. It runs on other specifics and a slightly different plane than this one."

"A plane?" Quinn said. "Planes of existence now?"

Lynx shrugged. "You knew what you were getting into."

"No, really, Lynx, I did not."

"True, but you should have known what you were getting into," Hal flashed her a toothy grin.

Quinn glared at him. "It's not bad though, is it?"

Lynx shrugged. "I really can't answer that."

"You know," Dottie said, and Quinn realized that she'd finally made it up the stairs to them. "It's very fortuitous that we're opening this branch now, considering we just had the hospital expansion, to help all of the patients that we've got."

Quinn nodded slowly, watching the terrariums as the light adjusted, and the insides of them began to populate with copious plants, vines, shrubs, weeds. This was such a massive space, at least the size of a football field now. The scope of it, the fact that it was bigger than it architecturally had any physical right to be. She looked over it. "Is it supposed to be this large?"

Hal frowned. "Yes and no." He took a step forward and sniffed, definitively sniffed the air. He scowled. "You're right, it's not chaotic, it's not infected, but it's... Lazy?"

"Stubborn," Eric offered.

"You're not helping, Eric," Hal snapped. "No, it's... It's old, it's aged. I wonder if it didn't seal properly when the Library sealed it away initially."

Quinn shrugged. "What difference would that make?"

The Library intoned words in what she hoped was just the heads of the people standing around her. It is struggling, the Library said. We have the books, we have the energy, we have more than the energy that we need, but there's something missing. You did get all of the components right, Quinn? Everything?

"Yes, it flagged me! I didn't ask it."

The Library was silent for several seconds. Quinn didn't think it was going to say anything else. Suddenly, it was as if the Library sighed. The whole floor shifted beneath Quinn, sending her stumbling to one knee, and most of the others as well, except for Eric and Geneva who were flying.

"What was that?"

The Library sighed. Please tell me it looks okay.

Quinn didn't like what she saw in front of her. It had to be a mirage. She blinked again, and took a few tentative steps forward. "Is it supposed to be this dilapidated?"

Lynx moved with her, silently morphing into his lynx form, padding gently across the floor.

"None of this feels right..." Quinn said. It might have seemed okay to most people and just looked slightly untidy, but there was something off-center about most of the bookcases, and there were so many books spread all over the floor.

Tossed.

Bent.

Tattered.

If Quinn hadn't known better, she would have thought they'd been attacked by bookworms as well.

"What's, what's happened here?"

A strange suffocating uneasiness spread out from the new branch. Quinn took several steps closer, almost at its threshold. Alchemical and Medicinal Branch glowed in magical golden letters high above them all. It looked wonderful, but felt sort of melancholy. And that's when Quinn noticed something moving among the books.

"Um," Quinn said, "Please tell me the books aren't supposed to move like that. If there are engorged bookworms in there, I'm out. I've had it with engorged bookworms. Y'all can kill them."

"No, that's not an engorged bookworm. That's, oh," Hal actually took a step back.

Quinn blinked, trying to make her eyes focus, "What the hell is that?"

A growling creature streaked all the way to her, so fast she couldn't even catalog its appearance and leapt up toward her face.