The day dragged on, and it was late at night before Quinn found herself sequestered in the restricted section. It wasn’t that she needed restricted tomes specifically, but she did want some blessed peace and quiet. And right now, her office seemed to have become a bit of a gathering place. Not that anyone had ill intentions. But a steady flow of visitors popping in and asking questions they didn’t actually need her to address grew old after a while.

  She knew they were all just checking on her.

  It didn’t make things feel any better.

  Irias, the Balisor Salosier they’d saved from the life sucking vines, was still healing, not to mention that Nishpa hadn’t fully recovered yet either. Then there was Drukala... The only saving grace about the hospital was that many of the Salosier they’d rescued those weeks ago had recovered enough to be released. Not back to their home yet, no. Narilin’s family were helping the Balisors, or what was left of them, fumigate their homes. Or something like that. At least, that’s how it sounded to Quinn.

  She wasn’t entirely sure what it entailed. But after Sarila’s demise and her obvious betrayal, after killing her own husband and admitting to helping with the slaughter of the Balisors — well it seemed like helping with the cleanup help by Narilin’s relatives was almost being treated like a penance.

  Quinn sighed and pulled the closest reference tome to her. Enough of mulling over the current situation and what she was waiting on. She needed to figure out precisely how to combine affinities.

  The tome was thick and dusty. Mjikj’s musings on affinity combination permutations.

  She had a definite feeling this was going to be dry reading. Informative, surely, but dry. Still, it was necessary.

  Sinking into the pages, she delved deep. Mixing affinities was best done when the types were related to one another. Earth and water were basic elemental affinities that fed off each other well because they were complimentary. Made sense and she knew she’d already utilized some of her abilities in that way. Then there were things like gravity and magnetic poles. Those two also worked together in a much more advanced way - one that made her fingers itch to get to practice.

  Fire and Air, Mental Acuity and Mental Fortification. And all of those had their little sub affinities underneath them. Creating, destroying, unmaking, manipulating, growth, expansion, conjuration... there were so many little variations to all of them. Each of them had the potential to work with other affinities. So even if someone chose to use the same as someone else, it didn’t necessarily mean the outcome would be the same. It had to do with direction and intention, with motivation and perception. All in all, combining affinities, as far as Quinn could tell, was supposed to take the caster weeks if not months to master, and depending on the complexity it could even take years.

  Except in Quinn’s case, she’d been casting things that combined multiple elements for a while now with no preparation at all.

  Which led her to realize that perhaps her cosmicisodracus heritage contributed to that. An instinctual knowledge of what she was doing. Or at least how to manipulate the affinities at her fingertips to most easily obtain the goal she aimed for.

  It sounded logical, but it really wasn’t. Not when she should be understanding how it worked before it could work.

  Then again - perhaps that was also on an instinctual level too.

  “I thought you might be hungry.” Lynx said, his tone soft so as not to disturb her while she was working.

  Quinn hadn’t precisely seen him pop into existence, but her connection to the Library had now reached such a level that she just knew.

  It extended to vaguely, in one of those compartmentalizations in her mind, letting her know exactly who was coming and going from her Library. In another area, she was fully aware of which staff members were present when, not to mention the fines ticking over, the overdue books being returned, and each and every species specific room that was requested and maintained.

  In her own mind, all of these things were there, separated out, marked, and yet would only come to the fore if there was an alert and she needed to give it a specific type of attention. Quinn couldn’t believe just how much the Library was dealing with all of this on a daily level not to mention the filtration and distribution of mana and energy throughout the universe, if Quinn already had the urge to be overwhelmed when she didn’t have nearly as much.

  She turned her attention to Lynx, grateful that he’d waited for her to have her total sidetracked thoughts take place before she responded to his kindness for bringing her food. “Thanks. I am hungry.”

  He pushed a plate with a sandwich on it toward her, his eyes knowing. “Cook says it’s a BLT? Said he thinks you like them this way - with the avocado and egg.”

  Quinn blinked and thanked her lucky stars that Cook was always this thoughtful. She hadn’t had one of these in what seemed like an age. Her grandmother made them when she was a kid. “Yeah, these are basically the only sandwich I really like. Never been the biggest fan of them otherwise. But this? It’s heavenly.”

  She could practically feel herself drooling over it. Idly, she cast a shield protection over the book so she could eat her sandwich and not lose reading time while she ate. She was all about multitasking. At least for today.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “What are you reading?” Lynx sidled up to her.

  She eyed him curiously. It wasn’t like him to stick around unless he had something to say. Or at least, he usually didn’t. “I’m really okay, you know?”

  He frowned at her. “I find that difficult to believe. You get very attached to people. And it’s okay to be attached to people. It’s also fine to want to and need to grieve for them.”

  Quinn nodded, chewing very slowly on her first bite of sandwich. She knew, on an instinctual level, that it tasted good, because it was Cook and this was what he did. But with the subject Lynx just brought up, she wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t just made out of cardboard. His words struck deep. And yet... “We all grieve differently. Right now mine is fueled by spite and revenge. In order to achieve those things, I need to understand certain things about my abilities before I can confidently use them. Thus, I am channeling my rage and grief into preparing to exact my revenge.”

  She watched Lynx as he took in her words, slowly nodding along with them. Frankly, she thought she’d reasoned that out very well.

  “That makes very logical sense.” Lynx said, his eyes flickering ever so briefly. Another tome, thinner than the first one and smaller, almost diary sized, landed on the table too. “There we go. That one should help too.”

  Quinn studied the spine. Meram’s Guilde to Affinity Collaboration - working past the blocks. She grinned up at him around her sandwich. “Thanks.”

  “You know. Sometimes you just need to rest too, Quinn. We’re still waiting for things right now. You could afford to actually get some goo sleep for once.” He sounded like he was desperately trying not to boss her around. As if he had specifically phrased it in a non demanding way.

  Quinn narrowed her eyes as she looked at him. “Okay, what gives, spill it?”

  He sighed. “We’re just a little worried. You’ve been expending huge amounts of energy over numerous incidents lately, and we just all think you could do with a good night’s sleep.”

  Concern.

  It was a rather novel thing.

  Not that no one had ever shown her concern in her past. Her family had, and even her foster mum had been pretty good about it. And then there was Hallee, in her own little way. But the concern of her Library and her new friends. That felt different. It felt oddly like family. Nice and warm. So instead of begging off or downplaying it, she chose to smile instead. “Fine. I have a few more pages to read through here. And then I’m just going to get an understanding of the one you just brought me. After that, I promise I’ll rest.”

  Aradie hooted as if she was saying she’d hold her to that, and Lynx actually looked relieved. “Excellent. Then I guess I’ll leave you to it.”

  He paused and stared back at her. “I’ll check on you, though. Make sure you’re actually doing what you say. You’ll sleep right? Not just rest?”

  Quinn laughed. “Fine. I’ll promise sleep instead of rest, as long as I can sleep.”

  Lynx nodded and popped out of view.

  She watched the empty space for the last couple of bites of her BLT and then returned to her books. He really needn’t have done that... she could already feel the fatigue setting in. She’d be useless with taking in any new information in no time flat.

  Lynx had got her a book. He didn’t usually do that. There was a part of her that found it encouraging. He’d been adjusting slowly, or at least his personality had been stabilising. Perhaps this was just something returning that he used to do, but it meant a lot that he’d paid attention to what she was researching and provided another book she could use.

  Meram’s Guilde to Affinity Collaboration - working past the blocks.

  This book was definitely older than the previous one. The language, even with her automatic interpreter, appeared to be archaic. It was hand written in loopy script as opposed to the affinity driven script that most of the other books in the Library were created with. It made Quinn wonder if perhaps this book had been a part of some ancient civilization’s collection.

  Affinity Collaboration was advanced level affinity magic. Which made perfect sense. They probably wouldn’t even want anyone to know affinities could be combined until they’d hit a certain level of control and depth. She could just imagine new young magic users getting all excited and obliterating themselves accidentally if they tried to combine and experiment with too much magic.

  Many of the chapters as she skimmed them had already been covered in the book she’d just gone through. But there was one chapter about half way through that gave a better overview of what blocks entailed. These were affinities that seemed to be in complete opposition to each other.

  Affinity blocks, at least at first, appeared to be specific combinations of affinities that created roadblocks for each other unless very specifically worked around. An odd feeling of dread rippled under her skin, making it itch like something was trying to get through to the other side. It was as if her blood didn’t agree with the information she read.

  Interesting enough.

  Perhaps what she needed was some of the books on cosmicisodracus history and their abilities. Hey do we have studies done on the magical abilities of you and your siblings?

  Not technically, no.

  Technically?

  It was like the Library let out a long-suffering sigh. There are notes on how our magic works, but it’s all more in a sort of diary entry manner. You’re very welcome to look through them if you want to. It is your heritage as well. And I did give you access to the space.

  Her skin rippled ever so slightly again. Yeah, that felt more right than it telling her blocked combinations were there for a reason. Is it just your contributions?

  No. There should be journals there from all of us. We were once very eager to understand ourselves, but that time has long since passed. As have most other things that started out with us. The Library sounded sort of sad. It made Quinn want to hug it. So she settled for patting the window sill instead.

  Forgetting all about her promise to Lynx, she snapped the book shut and stood up. “Well then. Looks like I have some more reading to do.”

  There are chapters on Patreon - are you surprised? I'm not.