Shivers ran down Quinn’s spine at the sight of the shadowy figure she slinking around beyond the ever evaporating veil. The blaring of the alarm shut off with a thought from Quinn, as she didn’t want to worry the patrons.
And the Alchemical and Medicinal branch suddenly clicked into place, becoming a complete part of the Library to her senses. She grimaced. Second branch opened — check. Shadowy creature of indeterminate origin — double check.
“Define what you mean by something crossed over,” Quinn said softly. In her mind, all the zombie and horror flicks she’d seen as a child and teen crossing over probably meant something entirely different from what Milaro intended. She believed in magic for obvious reasons, but stretching it to creatures crossing over from the beyond...
Milaro didn’t take his eyes off the shadowy back and forth in the room in front of them. “I meant a dimensional eel has crossed over with the branch. They’re not unfriendly, generally, but this one is a bit bigger than usual.”
Quinn frowned. “How did you realize that?”
“I’m dimensionally attuned. Comes with a lot of dimensional travel. You’ll get there,” Milaro said absently.
Hal actually laughed. “Seriously, it’s a dimensional eel? How did it even get in there?”
Milaro shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it was there before the Library sent this branch into its pocket.”
“Probably an experiment,” Lynx said with a groan. “This wing has always attempted crazy things to harness the energy of other creatures and hopefully use it in medicinal ways. I wouldn’t put it past them to have had one sequestered up here. Damn it.”
Hal patted Lynx on the shoulder. They were big pats, sort of shook the manifestation slightly. “It’s okay, Lynx. We’ll fix this up as well.”
“No need to sound so condescending,” Lynx said.
Hal shrugged, cracked his neck from side to side. “I didn’t mean it to. However, I do find wrestling with a dimensional eel to be somewhat tantalizing.”
“You know you can’t touch it, Hal,” Milaro said.
Quinn listened on in fascination and put tiny little Bell, the dog-ear, right next to Dottie. “You stay with Dottie. You two stay here,” she said. The rest of them, Lynx, Quinn, Malakai, Hal, Geneva, Aradie, and Eric, all approached the threshold of the new branch.
“So,” Quinn said, “anything specific we need to know? Perhaps a plan of attack?”
Hal laughed again.
Milaro glared at him. “You’re supposed to be the commander. Shouldn’t you have a plan of attack?”
“You’re a king. You’re supposed to know everything,” Hal taunted, but relented. “As Milaro and Lynx have mentioned, we can’t just run in and grab it. Dimensional eels devour dimensional output. All sub-dimensions, travel, outdoors, things like that, have a certain level of dimensional activity because of the way they function. And dimensional eels are often used to siphon off excess dimensional energy. And so we always have some around the Library. They were heavily monitored and only supposed to be used by somebody who is an expert.”
Lynx grimaced. “Have to admit I didn’t think of them when I shifted the Library. And since we don’t have any excess energy to speak of right now, they totally slipped my mind. Can’t remember enough anyway, but I do know we need to corner it.”
Quinn snapped her fingers. Although later, she wasn’t exactly sure why she snapped her fingers, because she could have just willed it into existence. But it popped a barrier up around the whole alchemical and medicinal section so that it wouldn’t overflow to the patrons below and harm anyone. She wasn’t about to let the patrons be subjected to what she was pretty sure was going to be a fight.
“Now,” she said, turning to Malakai, “should you be doing this? Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I won’t use mana skills. I’ll just use my bow and arrow,” he said.
She raised an eyebrow, but she knew him well enough to know telling him what to do wouldn’t go over well. So she simply nodded and listened to directions.
Hal spoke clearly. “It’s an oversized dimensional eel. It, as you can see, swims in and out of shadows. There’s dimensional energy left in this area. It’s currently trying to find that and devour it, which we don’t need right now considering the branch is still establishing itself, and the Library power levels aren’t at an overflow. Basically, we need to corner it and capture it. Let’s split up, shall we?”
“All lights to maximum,” Quinn said. “It’ll make the shadows stand out.”
The area lit up almost immediately, chasing many of the shadows away. “Excellent. See? Easier to see than when everything is a shadow.”
Hal reached over and ruffled her hair. Or he tried to, Quinn dodged. “Well, I guess it’s time to track it.”
They moved together. Geneva and Eric set off to one corner while Hal and Milaro went to another. Quinn and Malakai stayed together while Lynx and Aradie brought up the rear.
Off to the left, Geneva and Eric attempted to engage the overgrown eel, which was about 20 feet long, probably three feet high and about two feet thick. They attempted to bounce the eel back and forth between each other, buffeting it with. Quinn wasn’t entirely sure what Eric was using, but she knew Geneva used wind. The wind seemed to aggravate it more than what Eric was using and the eel kept twisting to snap at Geneva. She had to move out of the way, which allowed it to slip out past her and dash off to another set of the stacks.
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The thing was fast, but it didn’t appear to be violent.
Quinn watched it carefully, tracing it around to see if it was coming near her and Malakai. “How are you going to help me with the arrows?” she asked.
“I’ll get out my sword,” he said, although he didn’t sound enthused.
She nodded, not wanting to make him feel worse than he already did. “That’ll work. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t want to be cut in two,” she said. “Maybe it’ll just come quietly.”
Malakai actually laughed.
Next, the eel encountered Hal and Milaro. The two of them moved well together, as if they’d fought together often. Milaro utilized a force Quinn couldn’t see or quantify and guided the creature toward Hal. The commander’s fists were coated in something that looked like a transparent, hardened glove. The eel looked like it was about to take a pretty hefty punch to the nose when it suddenly appeared on the other side of Hal.
One of the things they’d forgotten to mention was eels, being dimensional creatures, could sometimes phase when they had enough charge and it avoided his punches completely.
That was pretty much when all hell broke loose. The eel had now noticed it was being cornered. It flared up, making itself somehow a little longer and bigger. Quinn could feel it tugging on every shred of dimensional energy left in the area. For just a second, the entire room felt like it warped ever so slightly.
Racking her brains for something to do, Quinn tried to figure out exactly how they could defeat this thing without touching. Getting drained of dimensional energy or getting dimensional sickness didn’t sound like fun times to Quinn.
But the runaway eel was fast and almost bowled Malakai over on its way to one of the farthest back corners.
Quinn, who was hovering, tried to lasso it with a rope of wind without giving it too much thought. Considering she’d never used a lasso before, and had only just come up with the idea, it was no surprise it didn’t work. Wind wasn’t Quinn’s best element. Consequently, she got pulled for about 20 yards before almost hitting a bookcase, only barely avoiding it by flying up over it and losing the thread she’d had attached to the eel.
Malakai snorted with laughter behind her.
“I didn’t see you doing any better,” Quinn said, trying not to laugh herself. Being indignant got her nowhere, anyway. She may as well laugh about it.
“This is ridiculous,” Had said. He seemed to be struggling with the fact that the creature got away from him. “It’s a dimension eel. It can’t dodge my punch.”
Quinn laughed again. This shouldn’t be so funny. This wasn’t a good thing. If the eel got out, it could drain people, it could drain their doors. It was way too big to control. Luckily, the barrier she’d put up around the area seemed to be holding.
Geneva and Eric chased the creature around, Aradie perched on a set of bookshelves and appeared to be laughing to herself, and Lynx got up on one of the tables as he tried to follow it, doing his best to snap a trap over it, only to have it phase again as he did so.
“If it can just phase out of our traps, how are we supposed to catch it?” Quinn half chuckled. She felt like this was one of those old black and white television shows that had everybody falling over themselves to catch some dog that was running away.
The Library spoke up to all of them. You have to shrink it down. It’s not like the engorged bookworms that you fought when you first arrived here, Quinn. It doesn’t need to be killed. It needs to be drained of the excess dimensional energy that it’s absorbed. It hasn’t digested it properly after having been locked in an actual dimensional pocket.
“You mean it’s like constipated?” Quinn asked incredulously.
In a manner of speaking, the Library said.
Quinn frowned.
Lynx perked up. “Oh, I know exactly what we need.” And he vanished.
Quinn sighed. “I’m glad he knows exactly what we need.”
“He’ll bring it back,” Milaro said, also hovering as the eel had hidden in one of the corners, curling in on itself, watching them all warily.
Quinn felt a bit sorry for it. It wasn’t its fault it had been forgotten about when the branch got pushed into its own side dimension. “Poor little thing,” she said.
“It’s not poor. If it gets its hands on you, it can dimensionally shift you.”
“Oh,” Quinn said, “that’s decidedly less cute. But I still feel sorry for it.”
For some reason, it was fun trying to catch this runaway thing with her friends.
Lynx popped back into view. “I’ve got it.”
Quinn looked at the long cylindrical item he had in his hand. “What is that?”
“Well, it’s a dimensional power trapper.”
A dimensional power trapper. To Quinn, it just looked like a long metal or some type of alloy poster tube.
“Okay. You need to distract it,” Lynx said. “Do something... distracting.”
“Well, I guess we can do that,” Quinn said, laughing. She aimed a gust of wind at it, startling it out of its hidey corner, and it raced toward her. This time, ready for it, she jumped up and over it, allowing it to barrel straight into Hal’s fist. She wasn’t going to ask how Hal, of all people, was able to punch the don’t-touch-the-dimensional eel even with his flashy magical glove. She was pretty sure it had to do with his species and the ability to apparently turn his body into a weapon.
This time, the eel reeled back and suddenly stopped, stuck in stasis as Milaro’s spell froze it in place.
Milaro grinned triumphantly.
Lynx, with the tube aimed at the eel, activated it. “Let’s do this.”
A low humming filled the air all around them. If she squinted, Quinn could see a tether, or perhaps a flow of thin golden power, entering the tube. Slowly, but surely, the eel began to shrink down. It writhed against it. It whimpered. It cried out in a strange alien-type sound. But Milaro’s spell held it in place. Quinn decided that was the next one she needed to add to her arsenal. They definitely needed to open the combat branch next.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, the eel was about the normal size Quinn would expect an eel to be. It was about two and a half feet long, very slender, but still smoky black. Lynx pulled out another box. This was huge in comparison to the new size of the eel. It was about five feet long and about three feet deep, massive glass encasement and Milaro maneuvered the now drained dimensional eel in it.
“There we go,” he said, “crisis averted.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Do we care how it happened in the first place?”
“I’ll look into it,” Lynx said, “because I’m pretty sure it’ll come back with the memories that I’m still trying to regain.”
Quinn smiled and noticed a very strange noise. She turned around, noting that the barrier had been dismissed, likely by the Library itself, but the noise still filled the air. She frowned, unsure exactly what the snuffling noise was.
And then she heard the first bark, followed by a cacophony of others.
“Oh no,” she said, and finally looked down at her feet, where at least 30 dog-ears sat, looking up at her with adorable eyes and wagging behinds.