If there was one thing Quinn didn’t exactly like about being a Librarian, it was that as long as she was in the Library, there was really nowhere for her to go to be alone with her thoughts. Especially since the Library had been branching out, so to speak. She didn’t intend the pun, but she chuckled to herself, anyway. A little dry humor never hurt anyone.

Since they’d expanded, there were so many more people in the Library. Some of the places that she used to go, like up to the Bardic section of the Library, were no longer as solitary or quiet. She understood that this Library was a little different. It wasn’t super boisterous or anything like that, but finding a nice quiet corner usually meant she either had to go to her room or sit in her office. Right now, she didn’t feel like doing either of those.

So, she took the next best option and dragged Malakai to the combat wing, determined to try out some of the new combat books and dummies.

“You really think the combat wing’s a good idea?” He asked.

“Yes. I would like to work out some minor aggression I’m starting to feel.”

“Minor aggression?”

“A lot of aggression,” she admitted, and didn’t add frustration, bewilderment, and melancholy to the list outside of her head. “Are you going to correct my form or what?”

“I’ll gladly correct your form, Librarian.” He paused as he studied her. “I think you should correct existing form and work at cushioning your hands while you punch the dummies. Would that help you work through some of your anger issues?”

Quinn flashed him a grin. “Yes, I do believe punching things is acceptable.”

The combat wing was fuller than Quinn expected, but most of the combat dummies were idle. She watched as the golems discussed books and techniques with several dozen patrons. The bustle in the Library had really begun to pick up. She shrugged and walked over to the dummy.

“Now don’t forget to coat your hands.” Malakai prompted her, pulling her out of her contemplations.

She nodded because she needed something to focus on. Something to help her get the image of the heavily injured Nishpa out of her head. She’d seemed so frail, almost see-through, thin, just nothing like the commanding and powerful Fae she was. It haunted Quinn in a way that she hadn’t been expecting. It took her by surprise, and it was precisely why she needed to get some of that aggression out of her system.

How Milaro had managed to mold her back into her proper form... That was some pretty hefty magic there. To be fair, she hadn’t been a glob of flesh. She’d just been severely disfigured and injured at the time.

Quinn decided she liked the combat branch, and while she wasn’t particularly good at hand-to-hand, with Malakai’s supervision and reminder that she shouldn’t include her thumb inside her fist, punching felt like a release. She modified her shielding and her scales flashed to the fore, but instead of willing them to disappear, she decided that today, right now, she really felt like having her dragon scales visible.

To keep her mind from wandering, she began, with every punch, to list out some of the things that she had to do. The things she had to focus on, to avoid the things her mind was pulled to dwell on.

“Locate the other three books and talk to Jasper.” She snapped out and jabbed at the dummy. “Milaro Mind Reinforcement. Wait, I did that already,” she mumbled to herself, and did an uppercut and a cross next — one-two. While she could sense Malakai watching her, she realized he studied her form. There was no judgement from him, just concentration. That made her feel oddly safe.

“Talk to Hal about Adrito and Kajaro,” she muttered as she jabbed twice in quick succession. The movements helped with the overt tension in her shoulders, easing it out, giving her a release.

“Get to my Aunt Dragon and the Parsneauvian book,” she spat out, pummeling the training dummy this time.

Malakai chuckled, and she glared at him, taking back all the nice thoughts she’d had previously. “What’s your problem?”

“I wasn’t laughing at you, just expressing a moment of happiness,” he said. “I kind of enjoy listening to you verbalize the sheer mountain of work you have ahead of you. It’s not what I expected, but I think it works. “

Quinn shrugged.

“Yep, do that in-between punches,” he said, “you’re really tense.”

She stopped and deadpanned him. “Are you seriously saying that right now?” Even though she was fully aware he was right.

“Yes. I am.” he said. “You’re tense, and you know it. We’re going to get through this.”

Quinn sucked in a deep breath and let it back out, and gave him a curt nod before she continued punching the defenseless dummy. Which was an important distinction, as some of those training dummies did indeed fight back. “Check with Siliqua and Harish,” and she punched it again. Doing jabs, uppercuts, and crosses were easy, even if they weren’t hard hits. Hooks, however? Those were beyond her. “Help with memory retrieval.”

Malakai interrupted her gently. “Quinn, you’re holding your wrist wrong. If that was actually a person or you were hitting any harder, you’d injure yourself.”

Quinn looked down and straightened it slightly. “Okay, gotcha...” But that was all she said before she got back to her list. “Work on my sensory net.”

“Isn’t your sensory net,-- “

“Shut up,” she sighed, punching the inoffensive dummy anyway. “You’re right, it’s pretty good and I can’t really push its power until I synchronize with the Library,” she said, grinning like a fool. She punched the dummy, “synchronize with the Library,” in time with the words, and she said it again. And a fourth time, for good measure.

By the time she was done, she was laughing, and Malakai was too. And she refused to admit that there might be an ever so slight hint of hysteria contained within that laugh, because it didn’t matter. It felt good to get the emotions out.

“So...” Malakai drawled. “What was that? I don’t think I got that last thing you listed.”

Quinn laughed. “I gotta synchronize with the Library.”

And just as she was about to punch, Lynx materialized directly in front of her. And she stumbled, falling through him, against the dummy, and ended up letting herself slide down and sit on the floor where she sat with her arms draped over each knee.

Lynx eyed her with a grin. “Exactly! Precisely! he said, his dark purple sclera eyes pulsing with violet light.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

She glanced up at him, still laughing. “What do you mean, ‘exactly, precisely’?”

“Synchronize with the Library.” he said, as if it were completely obvious. “That’s what you have to do, Quinn.”

Quinn stared at him blankly, all her mirth gone. She was very confused. She’d been so sure that the Library was supposed to tell her when it was time. “You mean right now?”

“Yes, right now.”

“Wait, wait, wait.” She waved the command away, trying to process. “Do we have enough pillars activated? Is this okay? Are we enough into this level of power to afford a synchronization?”

Yes, Quinn, the Library spoke up to reassure her. We are fine, or I wouldn’t have sent Lynx to get you.

“You could have just told me,” she muttered, not speaking to herself because from the look on Malakai and Lynx’s faces, they could hear the Library.

Yes, I could have just told you, but my manifestation is used to acting as a go-between between myself and the Librarian.

“Why?” Quinn asked, suddenly curious. The Library had talked to her a lot after all. “Why does Lynx need to do that? Can’t you just talk to me?”

There was a decently long pause before the Library responded with a sigh. Yes, Quinn, but I’ve not always been able to communicate so completely with the Librarian.

“Say what?” Quinn said.

Exactly, which you’ll learn more about when you get your butt down here and we synchronize.

Quinn grumbled, Lynx pouted. Malakai doubled over, laughing. “Your face,” he said. “You looked so surprised.”

Quinn point blankly ignored him.

“So it’s time to do the deed,” Quinn said, pushing herself up to which Malakai continued to laugh even more. And Quinn continued to ignore him.

Lynx glanced at Malakai and shrugged, turning his full attention to Quinn. “Look, it’s time.”

“Wait. What about Milaro?” Quinn asked, dusting herself off.

“He’s fine.”

Quinn raised an eyebrow. “I’m trying not to work the elf into an early grave,” she said, “so I’d really like to double check that he is definitely fine.”

Lynx nodded. “He will be. He’ll be there like he was in the middle of your first synchronization to check that everything is running according to plan. I will also be monitoring things while this proceeds.”

“Okay,” she started walking toward the door. “One of these days,” she was gonna learn to teleport properly. She still hated using the exercises in Watch Out for That Tree because she just didn’t trust them. It seemed much better for an open battlefield. She didn’t really have access to many of those. “Anyway, I thought you were supposed to wait for the memories.”

The Library tsked.

“Hey, what’s that for?” Quinn said.

“Sure, we wanted to have all the memories, but some of them are proving a lot harder to recalibrate with than we thought. We almost have a full report too, but I don’t think we should wait any longer for you to calibrate with me because we’ve been at this new power stage for too long now. Before you use your powers, you’ll need to acclimate to them again. And thus, we can’t put this off because you’re going to need the larger power base to pull from when you go and visit my sister.”

“Oh,” Quinn said, trying not to let her excitement at meeting another dragon on perhaps not kill you terms, go to her head, “that tracks.”

They were almost at the spiral staircase, and Malakai touched her shoulder very briefly. She turned, somewhat surprised to see him there, not having realized that he followed them out. “Mal, what is it?”

His brow was pinched, giving him a concerned expression. He looked her up and down and gave her shoulder a very tiny squeeze before letting his hand drop.

“Are you sure that you’re up for this?” he asked, looking her in the eyes, his own full of worry. Searching her for, she couldn’t tell what, but she appreciated it. She appreciated that he genuinely cared.

“Yeah,” she said, “I’ll be fine. I’m just, you know, a lot has happened.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll wait up here for you.”

She was about to say, ‘You don’t need to.’ Instead, she said, “You realize it’s gonna take a couple of days, right?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I know, I won’t be far.”

She smiled and squeezed his arm. “Thanks, Mal.”

Quinn turned and hovered down the stairs, a part of her feeling extremely relieved to know that even during the synchronization with the Library and where she’d be completely out of it and vulnerable, somebody was looking out for her just in case the Library got overrun by its enemies. Or other possible worst-case scenarios as per bloody usual. She thought she got rid of that habit, especially with the compartmentalization. Apparently, she had not.

She looked down at her hands as they began to walk across the padded floor surrounded by the starry leaves that tracked along the ceiling, all glimmering with information and processing whatever it was. And Quinn remembered how much she adored being in the core. Maybe she just needed to bring a picnic down here sometimes.

“Do you like picnics?” She asked the Library, who chuckled in response.

Yes, but I no longer partake of solid sustenance.

“That is such a shame. You would love cinnamon doughnuts,” Quinn said.

The Library laughed, and the ground rumbled ever so slightly. I believe I would. I do, however, have olfactory senses and I can smell that I would indeed love these things.

“It feels sad to be able to smell but not consume,” Quinn said softly, and looked down at her hands, somewhat sad that the scales weren’t there. She knew she’d release them up in the combat wing when she left, but the armor it made her feel safe. And she knew she’d have to dismiss all of it in order to synchronize. It took another layer away, heightened her vulnerability. The platform was already raised for her to lie down in, right next to the hollow where she usually sat, curled up against the trunk of the tree. She couldn’t believe how much of a memory that seemed, even though it hadn’t been that long since she arrived.

You’ve been here longer now than I think you realize, Quinn.

“What, almost six months?”

Yes. Almost six months.

“That is not a long time,” Quinn said.

Ah, it’s barely a blink of an eye for me, and yet, it is still about 2.5% of your life, I believe...

Quinn pondered that. There was a part of her that found it intriguing, fascinating, in fact. There was also a part of her that was terrified to live longer, to see people die. Well, that got melancholy fast. She shook herself out of it and sat down, shimmying herself into position. Calm radiated through her. She’d done this before.

“Oh, I forgot the food.” She stopped, irritated at herself.

It’s okay. Lynx has it.

Lynx grumbled and pulled out a bag. “Cook made them especially for you,”

Quinn grinned. “Well, I’d hope so since I think I’m the only one who gets to synchronize with the core.”

The Library’s shadow form coalesced right next to her. “Are you ready for this?”

Quinn mulled it over. “Do you have any more revelations for me? You know, mid-synchronization. I’m not really a dragon. I’m actually a primordial cosmic comet.”

The Library laughed. “Nothing like that, but you will learn things, aspects of the system and the Library’s functions that it’s simply easier to show you through this than to explain... The information will continue to run through you, and you’ll probably have questions when you’re done.”

“Yeah,” said Quinn, lying back as everything began connecting to her. She could feel the Library and its system begin to connect in a powerfully intricate way. Her mind grew foggy, but not in a drugged way, more of a preparing to drop through a cloud of information way. She smiled softly as her eyes closed and breathed out the words, almost as a subconscious thought. “I’ve got the feeling I’ll always have questions.”