Lynx was definitely not the best teacher.

“You just need to retrieve the memory from the time you healed Eugea,” he said matter-of-factly as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “But I don’t remember what I did to heal Eugea.” She felt like she was repeating herself.

“But you did it,” Lynx said. “Yes, I get it. You don’t remember, but it’ll be in your memories somewhere, unless...”

Quinn held up a hand. “Don’t worry. It’s not gone like that. I’m just not sure how I can recall something I didn’t even realize I was doing in the first place.”

He sighed, frowned, and then morphed into a lynx, and began padding around the room.

Quinn watched him, fascinated. “Is that supposed to help?” she asked.

“Yes, yes, it does, actually,” Lynx said.

She shrugged. Aradie hopped onto her shoulder and poked her face with her beak. “You know, that actually hurts.”

Aradie hooted, sounding more like a chuckle.

“Look, I’m trying.” And Quinn really was. She closed her eyes, remembering traveling to Ishiposa Isle, finding Eugea, and feeling a sudden calmness and certainty wash over her as she looked at the Esposian Fae. She knew without a doubt what to do. There was something in there that didn’t belong. And so, Quinn made it disappear. Somehow, by doing that, she had created her own new affinity. But she didn’t know how she’d done it. No amount of wracking her brain seemed to help with that.

Aradie cooed low, sending her images.

“Exactly!” Quinn slapped her hand on the table for emphasis. “I have no idea how I did it.”

Lynx morphed back into his humanoid form, blinked away, and returned seconds later, placing a book onto the desk in front of Quinn. “You need this.”

She looked at him. “I need to absorb this book now?”

“Yes, you do.”

Humoring him, Quinn picked the book up. It was smaller than most of the big ones she’d had, probably about A5 in Earth terms. She turned it around and read the spine: Swebby’s Path of Cognizant Deliberate Memory Management.

“That’s a very pointed name for a book.” She looked at the book suspiciously. “Perhaps too pointed a name...”

“There’s a reason for that.,” Lynx seemed unperturbed. “This is precisely what you need right now.”

“Why haven’t Milaro or the Library given this to me before, or Nishpa?”

“Because it’s on the cusp of advanced,” he shrugged. “And, before now, you probably weren’t up to the contents of this specific book.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, “but are you really sure I’m up for it now?”

He nodded without hesitation.

She looked at it, running her hands over the smooth leather exterior.

Swebby’s Path of Cognizant Deliberate Memory Management.

Energy Requirement: 1295

Mana Requirement: 1050

She frowned at the cost. That seemed definitely in the advanced range. Not that it mattered. She could absorb three of them without it impacting her. She just wondered how other Librarians absorbed these. They didn’t have her level of energy or mana.

“I’m not trying to steer you wrong or anything.” Lynx said earnestly. “This is a way you can slow down and redirect memories as you examine them. I think this specific affinity is called internal redirection. This book requires a combination of perception, interpretation, and projection, so it’s complex. It waves all of those. If I’m understanding the way your affinities work, this should be an easy application for you.”

Quinn appreciated the effort, but couldn’t help teasing him. “You’re hinting at my needing to get this new affinity sorted, aren’t you? That’s why you’re telling me all the different affinities this one is and requires?”

“Well, sort of,” he admitted. “The breakdown is important, and how each variation of the affinity exists on its own and in conjunction with the others. It’s what you need to work on to make sure that all the affinity elements relevant to the initial one are opened up and included in the system.”

“Okay,” Quinn thought she had the concept sorted in her head. “I got it.”

“I know,” he hesitated before continuing. “This is important. Because I can’t help thinking that Seveshall’s Mind Capitulation Device is still out there, and I almost feel like this is exactly what we need to combat that, should somebody be using it nefariously.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Nefariously. It’s a good word. I like it. Did you recently discover it?” She needled him.

“Stop that. I think it just doesn’t get enough love.” Lynx sounded grumpy.

Quinn grinned. Sometimes, he was very much a Library manifestation.

“Anyway,” he said, “we could definitely use more defenses against the capitulation device and whatever it was that they inflicted on Eugea and the rest of the Esposians.”

Quinn nodded. He was right. And absorbing the book was the best way to go about it.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Fine.” She opened the book, splayed her hands, and absorbed it.

It tunneled into her mind, visions, images, ways to delve into someone else’s head, to slow down the memories, to turn them around, to examine them from every single angle. Pain shot through her head and she gasped as the information flooded her brain. But the pain was brief and began to settle as her proclivity for mind magic came to the fore. It seemed that Areiltháhnish distilled essence was paying dividends.

And all the information coalescing in her mind made sense in a strange, slow-motion captured video sort of way.

Her eyes flew open, and she fixated her gaze on Lynx. “You were right.” she couldn’t keep the excitement out of her voice. Along with her ability to compartmentalize, she could see how this could help her dissect most any situation.

With the information now flooding her mind and making her feel as if she understood mind attacks on a whole new level, Quinn closed her eyes again and sat cross-legged on her massive chair. Aradie lifted off her shoulder so as not to weigh one side of her down. Quinn appreciated the thought.

Quinn centered herself and analyzed her memories. She pulled out the memory of the day that they went to the Ishiposa Isle. The thing was, it was usually in fleeting staccato movements, but now, it was like in full 3D. As if she was outside of herself, watching herself, but able to zoom in as necessary. She could pause and remember and pull at the memory. She could see things that she’d only noticed in passing and had relegated to the back of her mind, elements that hadn’t stood out originally.

Things like the expression on a guard’s face as they looked at her. The way some of the people she’d assumed were children as they walked through the city had looked at her, the sneers, some of them aghast, some of them angry, and some of them fearful. All the way to the infirmary where Eugea had been. Quinn followed herself in, keeping an eye on everything, including the nurses who were supposed to be taking care of the victims, including everything.

Quinn paused. Something wasn’t right in the building. I might have to come and analyze that later, was her first thought. But then there was a flash just off to the corner of her perception. A sense of somebody watching them in a very subtle manner. It was a spell that if she hadn’t gone back into her memory like this to examine what had happened, she would never have known. The subtlety was refined. She would need Milaro or Nishpa to look at this part of her memory with her. The urge to not pay it attention made her brain tingle.

Pulling herself back from the revelation, Quinn dove into her perception of Eugea instead. Just like everybody else, Eugea radiated dejection. But unlike everyone else in the room, she hadn’t yet given in. That, perhaps, was the key. It got her thinking. Quinn analyzed her own perception, turning it around. She’d observed and honed in on a sensation, almost like a very subtle wave that emanated from Eugea’s mind. There was some type of disturbance with how her it should be.

As Quinn examined the entire room, pausing it in place, she realized every single patient in there had that same mind disturbance. Every single victim except Eugea stood out because she was still fighting it and had not yet given in.

Quinn pulled the emanating wave around, turned it upside down and around, looking at it from all different perspectives as she gazed into Eugea’s mind.

She used several of the techniques Milaro had taught her and was gentle. Even though she’d initially been unaware of it, Quinn realized she’d asked permission with a soft and questioning touch. Eugea had been so relieved to feel somebody helping her.

Quinn twisted the view around, double-checking it, and realized that there had been a dimensional separation of a thought loop in Eugea’s mind.

That was the best description she could think of. It was as if they had harnessed the task of processing thought, action, and ability separately from the actual brain. This left the victims helpless to fully operate their own bodies, stuck in this strange rigor of repeated memories and actions, as if they were reliving a certain artificial lie over and over again.

Quinn shuddered. The images were inserted over actual memories, making it a complex horror loop that never happened, but was inserted so seamlessly into previous memories that it seemed as if it did.

That was a type of hell she wouldn’t consign her worst enemy to, not even Kajaro.

This didn’t have the same feel as the mind bomb from her own mind. She didn’t think this was Kajaro’s work. She paused, walking around the sensation and the feeling, sorting through Eugea’s mind as she had seen it.

She’d found loops and holes and watched herself unclip it in fascination.

Quinn rewound that portion of the memory a little, trying to get a better handle on it.

It was more than that.

It was as if Quinn was undoing what had been done, reversing what was there, unstitching super fast. She began to break it down more, being careful to note everything in detail. Mental chaotic fortitude abolition wasn’t anything like Quinn had thought it would be. It wasn’t just a healing spell. She technically hadn’t healed Eugea at all. She’d created an affinity that could identify intrusion and coercion into somebody’s mind space and undo it.

As if it took all the frustration she’d had with the mind bomb and her, then still limited understanding of how the mind worked, and given her a more efficient alternative.

It was like picking a stitch with a seam ripper and watching it unravel super quick because somebody was pulling on either side of the fabric. She was fairly certain that once she got help from Nishpa and Milaro, she’d be able to create offshoots that could technically protect somebody, undo such an intrusion and fire abilities back. It led Quinn to examine what she’d done even closer, the stitches that held it together, the way the mind rebelled against them, wanting perhaps control over its own destiny.

She turned the ability around in her mind, or in the hands of her mind, over and over again, double-checking, retracing steps, and making sure that she was doing what she’d intended to do. In that moment, all Quinn had known was that she had to stop the obvious pain that Eugea had been in. And somehow, perhaps a figment of a memory of the past or an amalgamation of everything she’d read pulled into one. She had recognized the need to undo what had been done.

The thing that was the key to this was that Eugea had wanted it. She’d begged for it. She had been willing to sacrifice everything to be free of it.

Otherwise, Quinn couldn’t have entered. And to undo the damage in the minds of the other victims, Quinn needed them to want to be free. That was part, the only part that allowed her access into the mind to begin it in the first place.

Perhaps they could work around that, she wondered, making notes, scribbling furiously as she brought herself out of the trance.

“You’re doing pretty well there, then,” Lynx said, his voice sounding somewhat distant.

Quinn nodded, still distracted by her thoughts. “I think,” and she blinked as she came fully out of it, realizing belatedly that she had been scribbling notes the whole time. There were pages and pages.

“I placed a new page under you every time you filled.” Lynx spoke softly, and there was a definite hint of pride in his words.

She smiled up at him. “Thanks, Lynx.”

He looked away, but a smile crossed his face. “Anyway, do you feel like you made progress?”

“Some. I understand the affinity now. Mental chaotic fortitude abolition is more about learning to identify and undo coercion and intrusion into somebody’s mind than it is about healing a person of mind damage made through magic.”

“Hm,” He pondered that for a second. “I guess you did sort of unmake it. Kind of.”

Quinn nodded, still engrossed by the ultimate problem with it. “It didn’t take away all the damage though, but I wonder if I could refine it to reach that level where it would actually just take away everything that it caused in the first place. Like memories, painful experiences... completely wipe all the damage done or at least fade it into the background. Now that, that would be much more helpful, I think.”

Lynx smiled at her.

“What?” she said.

“You’re really settling into that librarian vibe, Quinn.”