The filtration chamber surrounded Quinn with a low level hum like a hug. She knew she had several moments down there before Malakai and Eric reached her. Unless the imp was racing the elf, but she doubted that’d happen.

  Seven pillars activated.

  Just a few more to go.

  The serene beauty of the gently flowing mana as it emptied into the lake after filtering lent a soft glow to the massive cavern. The only blip on the radar was the blackened appearance of the one filtration pillar that stood out more than the others. Despite not being powered up, it loomed.

  Quinn frowned at the odd vibrations emanating out from Ashiron. They were subtle, so much in fact that if she wasn’t so concentrated on all the new sensations funneling into her from the Library, she probably wouldn’t have noticed. But she did, just like she saw and felt so much more now.

  She wished she’d always been this attuned to the whole system before they came down to prevent the last imminent disaster. Because the pulsing from Ashiron somewhat terrifyingly mimicked a heartbeat.

  Even from this distance, she could feel it.

  Like a subtle undercurrent, pulsing up through the mana, through the energy all around them.

  dum-dum-d-dum-dum

  Quinn closed her eyes to feel the undercurrent in more detail. It was soft, thrumming like a silent guitar, but ever-present. And behind that constant buzz was the thump of a heartbeat.

  Is that you? She asked the Library, really hoping that it was.

  Is what me?

  Quinn wasn’t sure how to respond because if that beat wasn’t the Library, she wasn’t sure what she would do. Taking a deep breath, she worked up the courage to ask. That heartbeat. Is it yours?

  There was a long pause as she waited, as the Library sought out the sound Quinn had found. It feels almost like an echo. It’s not quite mine, and yet...

  But could it have belonged to Korradine? Is she somehow still alive in there and her heart is still beating? Quinn tried her best to keep the panic out of her voice. But on top of having obtained her more enhanced abilities, there were too many negative possibilities for this heart beat to be a good thing.

  Unlikely. The Library at least sounded convinced of that. But it is very subtle. On such a level that it almost blends with the filtration noise. It means I’ve missed this for a rather long time. And the Library sounds put out by that. Perhaps even concerned.

  Quinn nods and decides then and there that a visit to Harish is advisable and not just to see Misha. She wants to see the diagrams and readings that pour out of the Library’s information stream. Surely there should be relevant insights in there. Picking and choosing from the Library’s greatest hits for them to be able to piece together this stupid mystery. They’ve missed something. Very obviously. And she still thinks herself enough of an outsider that she can probably see something none of them are looking for, or expect to see.

  But again, that was later.

  Right now, they needed to focus on the heartbeat and whether it was connected to the soul bomb. Quinn was also quite curious to see if other people could sense it. Not to mention she wondered if it had only appeared or become loud enough to be detected once the energy levels in the whole Library had taken an uptick.

  Malakai and Eric arrived, and Quinn already felt like she’d been down there forever without them.

  The elf scowls at her ever so briefly. She can tell his heart isn’t in it. “That warping thing you can do is so not fair, do you know that?”

  “Hmm.” She wasn’t really paying attention to what he said. Not properly anyway. All the little sounds around them, the vibrations, the smells... it all blended together in a new way, a strange way. If she didn’t hyper-focus on a specific area, then she ran the danger of getting an overload. Especially down here.

  While she’d known the filtration chamber had to use and generate a lot of power, the sheer volume of it and how it thrummed had been lost on her.

  Now, however, it felt alive.

  A part of her understood now why a dragon had decided to become the Library. Short of creating another little world or something similar, how would they ever have gotten the concept of the Library off the ground? That Drevicia had basically sacrificed herself to become this - was both beautiful and oddly melancholy.

  “Quinn?” Eric sounded irritated. “You can’t keep spacing out like that.”

  She blinked at him, pulling herself out of running too many scenarios and thoughts through her mind. “Sorry, what?”

  Eric tapped his foot in mid air. Which was an accomplishment and a half. “I said you can’t keep spacing out like that. It’s rude!”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Well, you’d know, right?” She flashed him a grin and gave her attention toward Ashiron while Malakai tested his flight jumps a couple of times. She turned to him after a few seconds. “You’re able to use mana now, right?”

  He nodded. “Fully recovered. Only took me way too bloody long.”

  Quinn throws her head back and laughs, suddenly feeling rejuvenated and like they will solve all of this. And maybe, just maybe, like not all hope is lost. She wasn’t sure how long that feeling would last, but she’d take it while she had it. “Seems like there’s no time like the present, right?”

  “Obviously.” Malakai says and is about to speak further when Eric interrupts.

  “Except. What are we doing down here? Did you figure out how to fix it? I know you took Geneva last time, and Milaro - is this even something you can fix?” Then the imp got that smug look on his face. “You’re overestimating things again, aren’t you?”

  “Be nice.” Quinn muttered as she got her bearings.

  “I’m being practical.” Eric crossed his arms.

  Quinn sighed and turned to face him. “My abilities have increased, my magical awareness is growing and there are certain things I can pick up on now that I couldn’t a month or two ago. We are here because I can feel it every time it hiccups and, while extended, the time we have to shut this down and not blow up the magical filtration system of the universe is slowly running out. So we are here to see if I can see more, and if that helps us figure out how to shut this down without shutting everything down.”

  “Oh,” Eric’s hands fell to his sides, and he shrugged. “Why didn’t you just say so?”

  Quinn counted to three again.

  Malakai jumped out first, his flying steps rebounding him higher until he re-initiated them by dropping almost to the top of the lake. Quinn much preferred her own method of flying, which was more of a hovering through the air thing. Much less potential to fall into a lake of mana and probably drown. It looked a lot thicker than water, and she wasn’t about to test it out.

  The underlying thrum was so prominent when they arrived on Ashiron’s base that Quinn almost stumbled. She glanced over at the others... well, at Malakai since Eric was hovering and realized that the elf didn’t have any trouble. Did her newly deepened perception mean she was more affected by things, too?

  She frowned as she walked around the base of the pillar. That same black miasma didn’t emanate from it now, but she could feel it, just beyond the surface, waiting... perhaps even boiling up, rising until it could leak through the cracks again.

  Malakai spoke softly, as if worried he might startle her. “Did you even need us down here, then?”

  “For watching my back. Just in case.” Quinn gave him a small smile, but her attention was split three ways to Sunday and she had to focus on the pillar to make sure she understood what was just out of her reach.

  Tip of the tongue as it were.

  “Always got your back, Librarian.” Eric muttered from where he hovered to the left of her. He was watching out over the huge mana lake, while Malakai’s attention was more on the pillar and Quinn herself.

  “Let us know what you need then,” Malakai said.

  The thing was, Quinn wasn’t entirely sure why she brought them with her. They weren’t Milaro, they couldn’t guide her through any type of magic weaving or affinity combination. They were, however, people she could trust to get her out of there if something went wrong and her reactions were delayed. They were her chosen family.

  She closed her eyes and reached out a palm to place against the pillar.

  At first it did nothing. No recognition. Nothing but stone against her palm, filters pulsating with their weird red and black glow that told her she was lucky her scale armor warded her against pretty much everything.

  And then the heartbeat pulsed through her fingers.

  Gently, and so softly she thought she imagined it at first, that slow, faint drum of a beat echoed through to her.

  She focused on it, pulling all the power she’d gained, all the sensory details she didn’t need to have allocated to anything else and wrapped it around herself like a warm blanket fort. It allowed her to block out the rest of the world and home in on that beat.

  Once she’d caught it, it was easier to trace.

  Her mind whirled, creating a web of the runes Jasper had so lovingly shared with her, the things she’d only just begun to teach her... and mimicked the tracking circle in her mind.

  It was probably a dangerous thing, but they had less than two months to figure out exactly what this damned soul bomb was either meant to do, or else remove it, and Quinn didn’t have time to go around being overcautious.

  Besides, after the car explosion, she was reasonably sure she could protect the Library from complete destruction if something went wrong as long as she channeled all her power into her shielding.

  She followed the beat as it zoomed around, circles and circles that led her nowhere, coming back to settle right inside the Library.

  Quinn pulled back ever so slightly, blinking rapidly, a frown on her face. That didn’t feel right. There was something she wasn’t remembering about the runic circles Jasper had made. Surely.

  Walking around the pillar again, the beat accompanying her inside her head, she examined all the filtration modules at her level. Nothing seemed out of place.

  Or at least it didn’t for an overrun, mostly broken, totally sabotaged pillar of magic filtration.

  Because that was a sentence she’d expected to utter in her life.

  Just as she closed her eyes again, she got a glimmer.

  It wasn’t a big thing, and if she hadn’t been intent on focusing on her own shielding, she’d likely have missed it, because the spark ignited in her peripheral vision and was barely discernable. But she saw it, and she clung to the image as it dove back inside the pillar.

  Where they’d secured the bomb.

  Quinn’s outer awareness floated over the seal they’d performed, as if she were watching herself doing this from a great height. She examined it from all angles. Running it through a series of gentle tests for the validity of artifacts that had been in one of the books she’d absorbed recently.

  Something tugged at her mind all the while. As if she was missing something.

  Korradine tried to kill herself and take the entire Library with her. After years of deftly manipulating multiple key players, including the bloody owls, within the place. Lynx had thwarted her. In doing so, he’d sealed her away.

  She was gone. There was no essence of her around the bomb anymore at all. Nothing.

  But what if... what if the essence wasn’t around the bomb? What if there was something of her inside it? Buried so deeply, so far down, that only maximum power would draw it out again.

  Quinn didn’t like that thought, because she was fairly sure what maximum power drawing out something like that would mean.

  Taking a deep breath, she centered herself again and opened her eyes. “We have to get back up. I need to talk to Lynx and Milaro.”

  She warped, probably unwisely, from precisely where she stood. But not before she heard Malakai and Eric curse her for making them take the damned elevator.

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