Library System Reset: Damaged: A Magical Library LitRPG, page 40
Two thick curls fluttered down.
Quinn crouched down on the ground, watching the Furionas and trying desperately not to lose her temper. Even Malakai arrived a split second too late to help her against one of those damn daggers. She racked her brains for something to say, for anything to say or anything to do. She hadn’t expected to be attacked by Furionas when the Library itself was supposed to be on fantastic terms with them. The two who were now in the middle of their group, and the three who were still outside of it, were difficult for her to keep track of all at once.
Aradie squawked, hovering up above, keeping herself in place through magic and movement of wings. Somehow, the breeze from them managed to soothe Quinn and allowed her to think clearly, even as the other three of the Esposians started to move.
This time, they weren’t darting in; it was like they were coordinating efforts telepathically, which they very likely were. Quinn kicked herself for not having thought to do the same, which led to yet another thing on her list she had to master. That anger boiled in her gut, threatening to come up.
She was pissed off. What the hell? All she wanted to do was open the bloody culinary branch. How could anyone begrudge the opening of that section? She’d maybe understand it if it was combat or alchemy based.
Even as she had the thought, the Esposians began to lunge toward Quinn again.
Geneva recovered. It had maybe taken her twenty seconds, which was a long time when people wielding sharp bone knives were trying to kill you.
Geneva yelled and her voice encompassed them all. “That is enough. What has gotten into you?”
The Esposians dropped their knives to cover their ears and screamed for a second as soon as Geneva spoke in that loud, resonant voice. Aradie shot up to the canopy just before the fae Furionas spoke. Quinn spared a very fast glance at Malakai, who gave her an almost indiscriminate shrug in response. He had no idea what Geneva’s voice had done, but Quinn had an idea that it was a frequency that birds and, apparently, Esposian fae did not like.
The Esposians were pushing the heels of their hands against their ears, their weapons and grievance momentarily forgotten.
Finally, Varyn turned to Geneva. “We have to stop you.”
“What’s the matter?” Geneva asked again. She looked bewildered, lost almost, her eyes a little wild. “I don’t understand why you attacked us.”
Varyn scowled at her, baring his teeth. His eyes looked like they were almost on fire, with a yellow-orange tint to them. They were filled with fervor and desperation leaked out of his very pores. “We can’t let you go any further.”
The other four of the Esposians began to fidget. A couple of them went to retrieve their daggers, only to have Malakai loose an arrow right in front of their feet. They darted back, scowling at him.
“Why do you have to stop us from going further?” Quinn repeated, in a low and very menacing tone. Her patience had just run out.
The cantankerous little Esposian scowled at her, baring his teeth again. Three of them, completely disregarding Malakai’s loosed arrows, sat right in front of their daggers and darted in to fight, their fingers extended, their nails just like claws. This time, Quinn was ready. She cast two streams of ice at them, hitting one in the foot and one in the hand. They yelped and darted back, but the other three rushed toward the Librarian and Geneva.
The Library’s Furionas fought deftly, so fast that Quinn couldn’t keep track of her. Not that she had time to.
Aradie flew at them, pecking at the attackers madly, but one of the two approaching Quinn almost reached her. She shot out more ice at them, even as Malakai was taking care of the one Aradie pecked at.
“Don’t kill them. It’ll only make things worse,” Quinn called out.
They were coming in so close that Quinn almost touched them a couple of times while casting her ice. It was so cold she could practically hear it blister the almost translucent skin of the Esposians. But still, they only crept out to recover for a few seconds before darting back in.
A few scratches got through here and there, but Quinn kept her self-healing active and thanked Malakai and her lucky stars that she’d insisted on learning the self-healing book when she had. She got into a quick rhythm of dodging and casting ice shards, ice bullets, and a plethora of other ice waves. It was a lot more difficult to use her powers when she was deliberately trying to hurt her attackers the least.
Frankly, the ice had been harder to summon the last little while. She put that down to not practicing enough. She really needed to get on that.
Geneva let out a cry, and Quinn’s attention wavered only for a split-second, but it was enough for her ice blast to go slightly off target.
Her ice caught one of her attackers’ wings. The membrane froze so fast, Quinn could practically hear it crackle. The scream of pain emanating from the Esposian’s mouth almost shattered Quinn’s eardrums. She could feel fear and fury and this horrible, complete and utter sensation of despair.
“Damn it,” Quinn said. “I didn’t realize the wings would be that sensitive.”
“Have you not seen my wings?” Geneva said. “Do you not see how transparent they are and how fine they are? Can you imagine something like that? Freezing. Do you know how much ice . . .” But she stopped, dashing down to help as their attackers stepped back for a moment, concern and bewilderment in their expressions.
“I’m sorry, Librarian,” Geneva said as she landed. “I can just imagine how much pain she’s in.”
“Yeah, I get it. I get it.” Quinn acknowledged her assistant. The injured Esposian seemed almost doll-like. She was still and paler if that was possible as she lay on the ground. “Mal, can you hold her down just in case she wakes, and heal her?”
Malakai raised an eyebrow but did as he was told and held the little Esposian down gently at its feet and shoulders. They were so tiny. It wasn’t difficult for the six-and-a-half-foot man. Even as Malakai muttered his heal out, the tiny little Esposian didn’t wake up, but her breathing evened out. Quinn wasn’t surprised. Healing required energy from the body being healed as well and not just the healer.
Quinn brushed herself off as she stood up while the other four stared on, their faces still a little bit full of anger and fervor and a decided willingness to stab them if they could find an opening.
Quinn stood, hands on her hips, and gave them her own scowl. “That’s enough. Now I know I can hurt your wings. If you try and stab me again, I’m going to ice your wings. Okay? So how about we just stop this and you tell me why you decided to come and attack me and my group with a bunch of knives. I don’t get it. We didn’t hurt anything in the forest. I’ve just retrieved the Library’s property. That’s all we’ve . . .”
“You’ve retrieved the Library’s property?” Varyn asked, his voice high-pitched for once, almost in panic as he asked the question.
Quinn frowned. “Yes, I just retrieved Dire Consequences of Misusing Monster Parts: How to Avoid Pitfalls. Of course I’m taking it back. It’s one of the four books left so we can open the damn culinary branch. Why don’t you want us to open the food branch of the Library?”
All of the despair leaked out of the Esposian. “We didn’t realize that was the book you came for,” he said. Now his eyes darted around, not meeting her own. The fire was gone. The passion was gone.
Now he was being secretive.
Quinn liked that even less. “Okay, so you were just willing to kill me for taking a book with me. A book that isn’t the book that I went and retrieved. Why is that?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said, and made to fly away. But Geneva muttered under her breath. And he was stuck in place in midair.
“How dare you use one of the punishments on me,” he said, snapping at her, some of that fire returning to his gaze.
“I dare,” Geneva said. “You have given affront to the Library and its Librarian. I’m of a mind to report this behavior. You owe us answers, and you’re not going anywhere until we’ve got them.”
Panic flitted through his eyes. One of the Esposians made a run for it, but they didn’t get very far. Aradie swooped down, pecking the top of their wing. It would be easily healed. But the thing about wings is when one is injured, flying can become painful or impossible. Quinn didn’t like resorting to hurting somebody who was supposed to technically be an ally of the Library.
However, in this case, since they’d flown at her with sharp things, trying to stab and claw her to death, she figured she had the right to be just a little bit retaliatory.
“Malakai, you good with keeping an eye on the other three?” she asked him, her voice low.
“Oh, very. I’m sure Aradie will help me,” he said, focused on the others. They shrank back ever so slightly.
“Will they fly away?”
Geneva shook her head. “Oh, no, I have seen to the fact that they will not fly away.”
“Okay, Varyn? How about you tell me why you attacked me?” Quinn asked, trying to keep the angry tremor out of her voice. Involving emotions didn’t usually help things, but she didn’t like being ambushed by a supposed ally.
A sudden pulse rippled out from the center of an island like a stone dropped into a lake. Almost like a locating beacon. Varyn shuddered as it came into contact with him, and then he sighed. Two of the others fell down to the ground, wordlessly.
“Are they okay?” Quinn asked.
Malakai checked. “They’re breathing, just unconscious, I think.”
Quinn scowled and turned to Varyn. “Spill it, now.” She didn’t like the sensations crawling over her skin and up her spine. It felt like somebody was trying to intrude into her, through her, trying to read her mind, trying to figure out exactly why they were here and who they were.
And how it could devour them.
“You’ve got about sixty seconds, Varyn, before I really lose my temper and use some of the mind stuff that I’ve been learning from King Milaro.” It was sort of an empty threat, but he didn’t know that.
He trembled ever so slightly. “It’s not the cooking book. We don’t care if you open the culinary branch, but if you come and find the other book, they’ll kill all of us.”
Quinn perked up at that. Who the hell were they? “What do you mean they’ll kill all of you? Who are they?”
Varyn shook his head rapidly. “I can’t. I can’t tell you. I’ve said too much.”
His eyes darted wildly from side to side. He started shaking in the air, convulsing almost. Geneva lowered him down so that he could sit on the ground.
“Varyn, calm down. It’s okay. It’s okay. We just need to know what’s wrong. We can help.” Quinn attempted to soothe the Esposian.
“No,” Varyn said, “you can’t help. Nobody can help. That’s why there’s nobody here. They’ve been killing us off this whole time. Don’t you see? We’re sacrifices. And that book. They’re never going to let you go now,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Quinn asked.
But before he could answer, his mouth opened in a silent scream as he began to disintegrate from the hole that emerged in his throat outward. Spiraling around that point, the disintegration was almost hypnotizing.
Quinn looked around wildly to see the other four suffering the same fate.
Their bodies slowly turned into nothing. The smell of rotting flesh lingered for several seconds before it too had disappeared. Nothing but the dropped bone daggers on the ground left any trace behind that they’d been confronted at all.
Quinn gulped as uneasiness spread down her spine. Now she felt like she was being watched, and as Geneva and Malakai shifted uncomfortably, she knew they felt it too.
“Well. Shit,” she said and sighed, turning toward where the ripple had come from. It was very obvious and easy for her to track that magic. So much so, that she was fairly certain it was a trap. “I guess we have to go find out where that ripple came from now, don’t we?”
Malakai nodded, a grin spreading across his face. “Now this is much more interesting than a cooking book, don’t you think?”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “You and I have very different definitions of interesting.”
46
WATCHFUL EYE
Quinn couldn’t shake the image of Varyn and the other Esposians’ deaths from her mind.
The disintegration of each of them started with their vocal cords, as if the force behind it didn’t want them to speak, to give anything more away. Whatever executed them knew they’d been on the verge of revealing information they apparently weren’t supposed to have. That thought alone chilled her to the bone.
She felt guilty because part of her was relieved the executioner hadn’t been able to do the same to her party. Logically, this meant that whatever was responsible could only influence those it already had control over. Those it had already made some type of relevant contact with.
If it couldn’t reach her or her companions, at least that meant this wasn’t something already present within the Library. And that gave her even more resolve to figure out what had done this.
The group remained silent as they moved through the forest, now painfully aware they weren’t welcome for reasons other than they’d originally expected. Geneva, in particular, was distraught. Quinn could tell by the way she wrung her hands and her eyes darted from side to side as she clung to Malakai’s shadow. Her wings moved in an almost staccato rhythm, as if she was expending more energy than usual to stay afloat. Even her countenance, usually vibrant in gold, was paler than Quinn was used to.
Quinn kept a watchful eye on the Furionas and Malakai as Aradie shot off ahead to scout their way forward. She could still feel the powerful unease that permeated the air around them. There was a quietly malicious undercurrent to everything. It was more amplified than when they had first arrived, more noticeable. Before, it had tried to hide, as if camouflaging itself meant they wouldn’t notice anything. And, to be honest, a week or so ago, Quinn probably wouldn’t have noticed.
Sending Varyn to make sure Quinn and the others weren’t there for whatever book they were talking about had been a mistake. It gave Quinn pause, because she had lists of all the missing books. And any missing book that the system had given them information on would have been visible on the map if it was here. That meant it had to be a book that either didn’t belong to the Library, or else did, and the Library had lost recollection of.
The latter could only mean it was one of the missing tomes from the restricted vault.
Given the ominous energy leaking all around her, it seemed more and more likely as time went by.
As the group moved slowly and deliberately through the forest, Geneva eventually fluttered closer to Quinn.
“I am so sorry, Librarian,” she said, her usual vibrancy subdued.
“It really wasn’t your fault, Geneva. None of this is your fault,” Quinn said, speaking as softly as possible.
“But had I reacted faster, instead of freezing in place from shock at their actions, I could have held them in place so much sooner and maybe prevented—”
“No, Geneva, this wasn’t you. And hindsight is always twenty-twenty. You had nothing to do with what happened to them.” Quinn used her best quiet soothing voice, but it didn’t appear to work.
“But maybe I could have stopped them from attacking you. I’m just . . . I wasn’t raised to fight, Librarian,” Geneva said, looking down.
“You know,” Quinn said, “neither was I. How about we look forward, move past what just happened, don’t assign anybody blame. But we also don’t forget the individuals that were just lost, and we work on figuring out how and why it happened.”
Geneva held her gaze for a few seconds, which made navigating the underbrush vastly more difficult, and nodded ever so slightly, a small smile playing at her lips. “Thank you, Librarian. I forgot myself for a moment there. Let’s get this solved.”
They continued on in the eerily silent forest. Apart from the subtle pulse that echoed through the ground like a heartbeat, there was no movement, and no sound.
“I’ve got a feeling,” Quinn said, as they came upon a sturdy tree. She paused in front of it. “That we can’t go back to the Library just yet.”
“What do you mean?” Malakai asked, stopping and speaking low enough that his voice almost got carried away by the wind.
“This.” She placed her hand against the tree trunk and spoke. “Library, I need you.”
Nothing happened. There was no pulse, no recognition of her magic, no sign that the door could fit in this tree.
Nothing.
“See,” she said.
“Does that mean we’re trapped here?” Geneva asked, her voice higher pitched than usual.
“Well, I mean, you’ve got wings, so trapped is kind of subjective,” Quinn replied.
Malakai frowned. “I didn’t expect this. Even enabling my grandfather’s teleport token here isn’t guaranteed. It functions utilizing a portion of the Library magic too. Plus, if it does work, there’s no guarantee we can get back here. And, to be honest, I think we need to check this place out. We owe it to those Esposians.”
Quinn nodded, trying to run through everything logically in her head. She didn’t like the way fear crept up her spine. It always clouded her judgment. They couldn’t afford that right now.
“I guess the only way is forward,” she said, tamping down on the sensations threatening to engulf her and wrapping her logic and senses around her like a security blanket.
Aradie hooted.
“I know, I know,” Quinn said as the bird dived low and then up into the canopy again, scouting from the air. She intermittently sent Quinn back images, ones that showed no evident life, and yet even those exuded a sense of being watched constantly, as if something was observing them all.
Quinn, as they moved, extended her senses, honing in on the center of the foreboding sensation that pulsed like a heartbeat throughout the island. It emanated from somewhere past the area they’d first arrived in.
“We need to keep moving,” she said, glancing around. The silence was almost scary in its prevalence.
