The hospital wing was just as sterile as ever. Although at least they’d begun to add a bit of color to the walls and the beds. Nothing too outrageous, of course, but it didn’t have that lingering sense of death Quinn associated with the human hospitals she’d grown up around.

  The sensation made her pause. She’d deliberately described them as human and wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about that. She slotted it away so she could overanalyze it later.

  She walked through the halls with Malakai trailing behind her, Aradie perched on her shoulder. He finally jogged a few steps to catch up.

  Just before they reached the door she wanted, Malakai put a hand on her wrist, making her pause. “You’ve gone into super serious mode. Are you doing okay?”

  Quinn watched him for a few seconds, rapidly cataloguing her massive to-do list, before finally nodding. “I am. Just trying to stay on task.” She wasn’t sure she could explain the urgency she felt to sort all of this out. Or the trepidation that kept gnawing at her gut like there was still something huge she was missing.

  Malakai nodded and removed his hand. “I just wanted to check. Sometimes I feel like you don’t know when to reach out, that you don’t understand that not everything is up to you.”

  She cocked her head to one side, studying him. “You’re right, you know? Sometimes I feel like it is just me, but that’s only because before I came here, I didn’t have anyone but me. I’m getting better, and trust me, if I figure something out and need help, you’ll be the first to know.” She tried to give him a reassuring smile, but wasn’t sure she was successful. Just about to put her hand on the door handle, she turned back to him. “Wait. Can you use your magic again?”

  He chuckled and waved a hand up and down his torso as if he was showing something off. “As of yesterday. All cleared.”

  “Perfect. That means I’ll be safe for a while again.” She grinned and opened the door, feeling less off kilter now, as if things were right with her current world. That, and she had been tightly wound. His pointing that out truly helped.

  The room was dark and warm and if Quinn hadn’t known better, she’d have thought they were back in Halschius. It took several seconds for her eyes to adjust completely. Even with dragon vision, the difference between the white and bright hall and the dim and rumbling room was shocking.

  There was a shifting in the room, and the floor over nearest the far wall rippled.

  Squinting, Quinn approached, taking careful steps toward it. Unable to suppress the gasp completely when she identified the ripple, Quinn stopped moving and waited.

  There, just along the wall, was a long, sleek dragon. Except she was only about ten feet long, and much smaller than Quinn would have expected. Her sleek lines reflected the red glow of the lava that appeared to permeate the room, and her flanks rose and fell gently.

  Drukala was about 20% of the size she’d been when she’d leant down and asked Quinn why she smelled like her sibling. There was a melancholy air to her breathing and huffing that made Quinn’s heart ache and yearn to reach out and scratch her eyebrow ridges. Idly, she wondered just what made her think of doing that. Maybe some cosmicisodracus knowledge was innate.

  “I know you’re there...” Drukala’s voice was soft and breathed with warmth through the room.

  The room, which, now Quinn really gave it some thought, was quite massive. Not cavern like massive, but probably around twenty by thirty feet. Technically, no room in the hospital should have been like that. But sometimes the Library, physics, and its dimensional manipulation capabilities didn’t make any sense whatsoever.

  “How are you feeling?” Quinn asked, keeping her voice down as well. While what she really wanted to ask was why Drukala had reverted to a dragon form, and not taken the full form either... so many questions.

  “Has anyone ever told you,” Drukala opened one moon-like eye lazily... on the left-hand side of her face where she hadn’t been burned, and studied Quinn. “That you think far too loudly?”

  Quinn had the good grace to blush. “Actually, yes.”

  “Color me not surprised.” The dragon shifted ever so slightly, causing the air around them to sizzle, and the ground to move ever so slightly. “I’m in dragon form because I heal faster and more thoroughly this way. It’ll keep the scarring to a minimum.”

  Quinn nodded. It made sense, after all. “I sort of wanted to ask you if you had your own interpretation of anything that happened. You know, with the book?”

  Drukala sighed, causing a brief spark of fire to light around her. It was gone as soon as it arrived, just a brief fraction of a second of molten light, plunging them back into semi darkness. “I only remember my conversation with Drev. The Library summoned me, which is, by the way, not something it can do often. Or again, perhaps? It certainly didn’t summon me this time while I was hibernating and I almost feel like right now would have been more import...”

  Quinn cleared her throat. “I know... It kept saying that it couldn’t reach you, and so the Library just kept prodding, hoping that you’d realize.”

  “Well... I did, sort of. Made me half awake, not in a deep slumber, so that when you arrived smelling deliciously like one of us and yet not quite, it was all I needed for my sub consciousness to wake me up.” They fell silent for a few seconds before Drukala spoke again. “It seemed highly important that I take the book. Take it and keep it away from anyone who isn’t me. That’s precisely what Drev said. And so, since I was due for hibernation and also since I didn’t exactly have anything else to do, I figured the don’t look at me spells and the concealment of most of my potential lairs would help keep it and me safe. And I mean, I was right, right?”

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  “What else did you talk about?”

  Drukala huffed out a breath of air again and blinked that eye ever so slowly. “Ah, yes. Do not return to anyone but the Library, or a new Librarian. I did wonder just why Drev specified a new Librarian. I figured something had happened to Kor, but I wasn’t about to ask. I’ve never been much into the politics of the entire universe. All too sticky for me.”

  “What changed?” The question was practically spat out by Malakai, and Quinn made a note to talk to him about it later.

  “Why... they tried to hurt Drev. There’s politics with rampant meeting and boring agendas, and then there’s dangerous politics. Drev sacrificed her body... her person, and all of her personal power in order to create a solution to chaos magic’s devouring rampage. There is no way I would ever let anyone undo that, or belittle it, disregard it, disrespect it.” Dru didn’t need to be a dragon to have heat behind those words.

  Quinn could tell their sincerity from where she stood. “Does anything else come to mind? Any sort of clues or giveaways?”

  Drukala shifted again and her shrug was almost liquid in movement. “Lynx wasn’t... right.” She paused. “It was like he was somewhere else. His attention span was sporadic and almost staccato. Just when it came to interactions with me, which I found odd, because we’d usually gotten on so damned well. The hum of the Library was different too. Like an occasional sputtering.” Her eyes were both closed now, as if she was trying to recall the exact sensations she’d gone through. “But that’s about it. After all, it was a long time ago, and I was in one of my moods since my sibling had decided to make demands of me.”

  Quinn chuckled. “You don’t like people telling you what to do?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then what changed your mind enough to help hide the books, to help us now?” Quinn’s eyes were adjusting again, and Drukala’s breathtaking details were starting to become visible. The ridges down her spines were almost like gemstone rocks.

  “Because, despite everything, Drev has never, not even once, asked me for something before.” Dru sounded so contemplative. “And now... well, I’m not overly fond of anyone trying to disfigure me, or kill me, or whatever my blasted sister was trying to do. I work very well with spite. I’m nothing like Drev. So just tell me what I need to do to help.”

  Quinn decided she adored her auntie and grinned openly for the first time since Jasper had passed. “We still have one more book to locate. Do you think the Library might have given it to your other sibling... the only one we haven’t been able to track yet?”

  “Dri...” It sounded like Drukala was about to say the whole name, but barely stopped herself. She pursed up her dragon lips in deep thought and took quite a bit to eek around to an answer. “You know... he’s never been very fond of our oldest brother. I don’t know what he thinks about the whole fiasco, nor do I know if he got a book from Drev like I do, but I am fairly certain that if he knew what was going on, he’d be pissed. You don’t know how much work went into making the Library, how much we poured all of our power into this. The filtration system? Wouldn’t even exist without Dri... sooooo.” She shrugged.

  A wave of relief rushed through Quinn. At least it sounded like there were two dragons, at least not against them if not on their side completely. She could work with that. Since the Library no longer technically counted as a dragon. “Do you have any way of contacting him?”

  “Nothing that Drev won’t have already tried.” She sounded genuinely sorry, but then she hesitated before continuing. “So you’re like my niece?”

  Quinn balked a bit. “Yeah, I guess so. You’d have to ask Milaro how that precisely works.”

  “Are there more of you?” the curiosity in Dru’s voice was practically alive.

  Quinn shook her head. “Nope. Just me. And I don’t believe they would have been able to make another.” How strange it sounded to talk about herself having been made, like an object or machine. Even though she guessed kids were made in a way too.

  “Shame. If we could just pop out another one of you, then we’d have even more power on our side.”

  This time, Quinn laughed. “They didn’t pop me out fully formed. I had to grow into this.”

  One of Drukala’s very gemstone ridged eyebrows raised ever so slightly.

  “I lived in a human world until, like, six months ago.”

  The surprise that dropped Dru’s mouth open was worth it. “I’m guessing that’s a very long story you’ll tell me later?”

  “Got it in one.”

  There was a moment’s silence among them while Quinn tried to apply what she’d learned to all the other facts they had. Apparently two of the five original cosmicisodracus ended up with buyers remorse after creating the Library. But they’d had hundred of millions, if not billions, of years to figure their crap out, so why was it only coming to head now? Not that she thought Drevicia would know, but she did seem to be fairly knowledgeable about things, and might have picked up some stuff unknowingly.

  “Say, can you think of anything like ten thousand years ago,” which sounded absurd in Quinn’s head, “that might have happened to trigger this strange turn of - let’s allow chaos magic to run free again?”

  Drukala actually appeared to be pondering the question. Not just for a few seconds, either. Like she was giving it serious thought. “Not really,” she started and then it was like a lightbulb moment for her, where her eyes flashed an outstanding pearl before settling back into the moon like appearance. “That’s around when Korradine became Librarian, right? You should probably go and ask the Unusceros the same question... if you can find them, that is.”

  Quinn blinked as she quickly leafed through everything she knew. Korradine’s species weren’t extinct. There wasn’t a heap of them lying around, but... Quinn had no idea why the idea hadn’t occurred to any of them before this. “Thanks.” She said, surprised by her own sincerity.

  Drukala preened a little. “I’m not just a pretty face.”

  Quinn smiled and nodded, and got ready to figure out how to contact the Unusceros. “Thank you so much again, but I know you need your rest. I’ll stop bugging you.”

  All Drukala did in return was whuff some smoke out of a nostril before closing her eye again.

  They left the room and Malakai nudged her. “I have no idea why we didn’t think of that.”

  “Staring us in the face. Couldn’t see the forest for the trees.“ Quinn tapped her nose. “Outside perspective and all. Always helps.”

  Malakai chuckled. “Yeah. I think sometimes it just takes someone else to see what’s right under our noses.”

  Quinn flashed him a somewhat confused smile, but she wasn’t digging any deeper on anything until they got the Library out of danger. And right then, she felt good about the direction they were headed. So many leads, so many options to find out exactly how to diffuse the whole damned situation. How to get revenge, and how to make the bastards pay for everything they’d done, and everyone they’d hurt.

  And as if to punctuate it. Her stomach growled. She groaned while Malakai laughed.

  He took her shoulders gently and steered her toward the culinary branch.

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