Quinn hadn’t expected the process of learning about her affinity, or being able to dissect how she had used the new affinity, to be so damn enjoyable. It was also engrossing. She found herself digging deep and trying to understand exactly how using the technique from Swebbie’s book began to make things easier.

It allowed her to analyze not only the new affinity she’d created but also the previous affinities she’d already studied, absorbed, and utilized. There were several she didn’t use on a regular basis, especially the initial fighting ones, like the machete book. However, they were still activated and available for her to study. Which allowed her to get a broader spectrum of comparison.

She could zoom in on the affinity and understand just how it worked. It helped her understand how they were triggered and in which ways they intermeshed with or even against each other, was fascinating. When the system notified her about the new affinity, she simply thought, Oh, I guess I figured out a way to wield the magic differently. But upon further in-depth analysis, she realized that actually wasn’t how it worked. No, it really wasn’t just that simple. Affinities needed triggers, needed knowledge, and an actionable event or problem to direct it toward.

Someone could accidentally, perhaps, trigger fire, but only if they had the creation aspect. If they had the control aspect, and there was a fire lit somewhere close, they could potentially blow that up or minimize it so much it got put it out. But if they couldn’t create fire from scratch in the first place, then they weren’t as big a threat to other people.

Quinn had so many affinities, all of them, in fact. She didn’t think that she’d be able to learn something about every single one of them in her lifetime. Or, well, perhaps she was still thinking in human years. She was aware, albeit in the back of her mind, that she could potentially live a very long time. As long as nothing went super wrong.

But, for instance, she couldn’t ever see herself needing one of her harvesting affinities. Not that agriculture wasn’t important, and there was a whole branch of horticulture she still needed to open. But what was she going to do? Plant fields instead of tending to the Library? Although, maybe that could be quite relaxing. Perhaps she’d take a vacation or something.

Go fishing even! Perhaps she’d consider that at some stage. Maybe she’d take Bell and Aradie with her.

Bell was curled up at her feet, which, while very dog like, sort of felt weird for a dog-ear. She looked like somebody had crumpled paper into a ball and thrown it away. But the dog-ear was, in fact, sort of a dog, right? Quinn still hadn’t figured out the magical aspect of that, but she genuinely enjoyed the little creature’s company. So she didn’t look into it too deeply.

Anyway, maybe one day they’d go on a vacation to a fishing cabin or even a beach.

But before that she had to understand her own powers in more detail, so they stopped taking her by surprise and just doing things. Things like the powers she used more, like her ice power. She had multiple variations of it. Ice creation, ice unmaking, which... she frowned. Didn’t that need a better name? Ice melting perhaps... And then there was freezing projectiles, snow... So many affinity offshoots.

She understood those and how they worked and intermingled with each other. It allowed her, because she had all of them, to be able to manipulate ice in all ways. She could even melt it with fire, turn it into water, and use the result of that. There were so many options with so many affinities it was mind-boggling.

The gravity affinity was a great example. The powers she’d used so far were based around mainly activating the gravimetric pull. But there were multiple variations of the affinity and she’d really only been accessing manipulation, force, and hold when she utilized those abilities. Just like when she made the miasma drones crash down when they had been repairing the initial pillar.

Speaking of pillars, Quinn looked up from where she was still engrossed in her own research. Lynx sat on the couch. From his eyes, he appeared to be doing something with the system. It made her feel better that he wasn’t just waiting around for her.

She cleared her throat to grab his attention. “Hey, don’t we need to like activate another pillar soon?”

“Mm-hmm,” Lynx said, “Yes, soon, gradually, probably sooner than later. I’ll double-check everything for you.”

Quinn nodded and went back to her research. The ability gained from the Internal Redirection book accessed and combined several affinities all at once. It’d taken from her ability to mind read and her healing perception. She needed to be able to use those abilities so that the internal redirection was capable of activating.

So that should mean that not many people could use the book she’d just learned, which made sense because it was an advanced technique book. The internal redirection was even applicable for herself or other people as long as she had permission to intrude on their minds. It might help her understand other’s abilities and allow her to recreate results.

She could see how that a power like this could get inherently dangerous. While not exactly what she thought Kajaro used for his control purposes, she understood how someone could turn this specific skill to nefarious means. There she went, using the word Lynx had popped into her head.

Nefarious was a good word.

Even so, because of the combination of different affinities and different partitions of affinities she had to be able to access in order to make it work for her, it meant relatively few would have the affinity combination to even read or absorb this book. Which must be the case for a lot of the more advanced tomes in the Library.

That’s when she remembered that she was the only one who could actually absorb the information. That was a Librarian thing, maybe an assistant thing. It would make sense that assistants could absorb some knowledge, but it probably worked similar to how it did for Quinn. They also needed to process that information. Pity. Otherwise she’d be a super overpowered, untouchable Librarian already.

And that would just be silly.

She chuckled to herself, shaking her head. This wasn’t an anime after all.

The information she could take in and process now that she better understood the way affinities worked was astounding. The IR book, as she now called it, gave her time and space to analyze everything about the affinities which had been lacking before. Combining it with her skill at speeding up her own cognitive processing, and it was a game changer for her.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She stretched and moved a little, inciting a yip from Bell and a raised eyebrow from Lynx.

“You okay?” He asked.

“It’s a lot of information.” Her head felt a little foggy.

Lynx shrugged. “Well, you only absorbed it a few hours ago and you haven’t slept.”

“There’s too much to do to have a nap because I absorbed a book in the middle of the day and not nighttime.” Quinn pouted. “I want to go see my aunt and you won’t let me. I’d also like to understand the new affinity that I created.”

“Aha!” Lynx said. “I got you.”

“No, you didn’t get me. I just realized.”

“Realized what?” Lynx teased.

“Fine,” she said. “I just realized you were right.”

“I knew it,” Lynx said. “I was right.”

“Oh, stop gloating,” she said. “You know you’re right. You know a lot more about this than I do, and I’m still learning. I do have the grace to admit when I might not have been quite right.”

“You mean wrong,” Lynx said.

“Yes,” Quinn said begrudgingly, “when I might be wrong. Sometimes you can be insufferable.”

“I know,” Lynx said. “That’s one of my charms.”

“I don’t think the word ‘charm’ means what you think it means,” Quinn shot him a half glare.

“Well, for the sake of everything,” Lynx said, a little smugly, “it means what I want it to mean.”

Quinn laughed until a beep sounded through the room, and she looked up. “What was that?”

Lynx shrugged, and it beeped again. “Oh,” he said. “You asked about the pillar. I adjusted the system for an inquiry, and now we should probably go and activate it.”

“Can’t I just pull it up from the HUD here?”

“Well, I mean, yes, you can. It’s not like we need to go into the Library to do that.” He sounded vaguely disappointed.

“I know. What, you miss being in the Library?” she asked.

“You’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time here in your office,” Lynx said, just this side of a pout.

Quinn blinked at him. “Well, yes, it’s just more comfortable to sit in this chair than to wander around the Library check-in desk, that’s all.”

“Fine,” he said. “I get it.”

“Do you really, though?” She shrugged. “It’s not like you get uncomfortable, right? Aren’t you like a kind of hologram?”

He let out a long, suffering sigh. “I’m not a hologram. I’m a manifestation. We’ve been over this before.”

Quinn grinned at him, and finally it seemed to dawn on Lynx that she’d been making fun of him. “Oh, will you just do it already?” he said.

She’d activated enough pillars that it was pretty much second nature for her to do so. She brought up the interface, activated another pillar, and frowned as she did so because there were only two more to activate before. While she knew they could limp along without Ashiron for a while, she also knew they’d eventually need it to be back at full power. Considering they were only slightly closer to making Ashiron whole again, it irked her that they didn’t have it figured out yet. All they had to do was figure out the dimensional shift and how to dispose of the bomb without blowing up everything around it. Shouldn’t be too hard. Quinn sighed as she closed the HUD.

“What’s the matter?” Lynx said.

“I just... I feel like we’re not making as much progress as I’d like to make.”

He watched her for a few seconds and sounded serious when he spoke. “I promise soon you’ll be able to go meet your aunt. I just have several more things that we need to do before that can happen.”

“Okay.” Quinn suddenly felt a little melancholy. She knew without a shadow of a doubt they’d have to use protective gear for this next trip. Armor, provisions, whatever. But Misha usually took care of that and now Misha was, well, out of commission. She wondered if that joke would just fall as flat as it did in her head. “I... Do you think it would be okay to go and visit Harish and see how Misha’s progress is coming along?”

Lynx raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t you? It’s your Library.”

“Well, to be fair, it’s like everyone everywhere’s Library.”

“Touché,” Lynx said. “Come on, let’s go. He’s in the observation room, just like, you know, when he was watching over us.”

Quinn nodded slowly. It took them approximately 70 seconds to get there. Except when Quinn stepped inside, just like everything else in the Library all the time, things had changed. She glanced around. There was still the center console that held the sort of holographic informational. Harish was off at a side console, his head bowed over one of the screen projections. There was a sort of pod just beyond the center console area, near where the windows used to look out over the Library’s core, which they didn’t anymore. She wondered if that had been a specific Library request.

Yes, it was, the Library said in her head. The original viewing area was for that one specific reason. Now it’s no longer needed. I value my privacy.

I get it. Quinn chuckled. She should have known the Library would understand what she was thinking, even without the ability to read her mind. Anyway, the pod was like the one people used to use for sensory deprivation, or something like that. She swore she’d seen it on the internet back on Earth. However, it wasn’t quite the same. The lid was clear and filled with an almost gelatinous sort of liquid, and a vaguely humanoid body shape lay inside of it.

“What’s that?” She asked.

But it wasn’t Lynx who answered. It was Harish. “It’s an incubation pod for golems.”

“Is that what’s usually used to create them?” Quinn asked.

“In a way,” He sounded contemplative. Like he wasn’t sure he was expressing it correctly. “This one I have modified so that, well, hopefully, we won’t have any outside influence creeping into the core that I am reconstituting with what I hope is just Misha’s consciousness.”

Quinn nodded, sort of understanding what he meant. “So the extraction went okay?” She asked.

Harish grimaced. “I would not go so far as to say it went smoothly. There will be bumps. I do not believe Misha will be precisely the same. But I attempted to retain most of the memories she developed during this time. I haven’t done this before,” he said, by way of explanation. “This is purely experimental, and as Misha has helped all of us, I wanted to try to, well, preserve her. I just, I do not have my wife with me, and this is immediately important, as is Milaro’s health, and I want you to know I am doing my best.”

Quinn offered the somewhat concerned elf a smile. “I know, and I really appreciate it.”

“Well, it will take at least a few more days, maybe a week or so.”

Quinn nodded slowly. “Can I watch her for a little?”

“Of course, you’re always welcome, Librarian,” Harish said, and went back to some of the monitors he had been preoccupied with when they walked in.

Quinn looked down at the remains, at the beginnings of the new Misha, whatever it was, and felt the melancholy twist in her gut again.

“Quinn,” she turned to see Malakai rushing into the room. He wasn’t breathless. He rarely got breathless. “You’re needed in the hospital.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, the real Irias has woken up.”