Kate and Apollyon were tending to the library alone. The other librarians had gone home after a nice but quiet shared dinner. Everyone had noticed how hurt Lilith was and worried that the well-meant gesture by Yushamin might make things worse. Humanity wasn’t exactly following demonic ideals.

“Polly?”

“Yes?”

“Do you ever wonder if you did the right thing?”

“I am sure you are asking about something specific, otherwise the answer is obviously yes.”

“With everything that happened after you started using synthetic souls. You started guiding humanity to be equals. Do you think that was the right choice?”

“We fought a war over that. Yes, even now I think it was the right thing to do. And it was the right thing to let go of humanity after the second war, after Atlantis. The only thing I regret is not forcing the angels to follow our choices. They influenced humanity so much in secret, we should have paid better attention. Humans all over the world were given everything they needed to survive and thrive. And they did, until God started to influence them too much and, well, you know where humanity is now and where it seems to be going.”

“Hm… I was thinking about what I would have done. What would the world look like if Kate got to dictate what happened.”

“Why dwell on that?” Apollyon seemed genuinely confused.

“I just never had to make these kinds of major decisions that change entire worlds. I suppose you did. Now, I’m in the position of having to make decisions that are more than I could have ever imagined. Letting comic powers shift the balance between them, doing diplomatic endeavours with an unknown ancient civilization… It just makes me wonder what I would have done if asked back then. If had been born a demon or had been Atlantean.”

“Do want me to play through those ideas with you?”

“I suppose so, yea.”

Apollyon walked away from the shelf she had been sorting and sat down at a nearby table, gesturing for Kate to do the same.

“Alright, High Inquisitor Kate, with the introduction of synthetic souls as our main source, what do we do with the humans?”

“What are those humans doing right now? We have observers in the field, what do they say?”

“Most non-magical communities have developed agricultural techniques, a few settlements even formed local governments. Armed conflicts are a rarity, but densely populated areas are starting to suffer from over-hunting. The four regions in which we applied the template are thriving and appear to avoid most issues. The two of those under our direct guidance are flourishing, one of the others has also achieved medium distance trade among settlements, the other will likely do the same within the decade. Harvesting efforts have been stopped but that had little effect on human habits or their expansion across the planet.”

“There is something in there I need to ask about later, but that’s not important for this. It appears that the humans are doing well, even without our assistance. What about their internal policies, traditions, that stuff?”

“Many of them are quite territorial but not expansionist. Those who do not have equality between sexes out of necessity have begun discriminating against those who do not fit arbitrary norms or are part of the non-dominant gender. Several non-magical tribes have begun worshiping made-up nature deities. They are building culture.”

Kate rubbed her forehead in thought. “We should negotiate with the angels if they are interested in shared guidance of the magical groups or if we should split them between us. We need to guide those groups, even if we don’t interfere with the others. I would want to unite everyone but that might not be possible.”

Apollyon smiled. “That is what we all agreed on back then. The angels insisted on zero interference, just abandoning humanity. We understood that as their decision that they wanted to not guide humanity and that we could do as we pleased. We were wrong and they attacked us. We ended the war with the compromise of shared guidance of the most successful group of humans, the Atlanteans, while merely observing the others and interfering when they sought us out for assistance. That’s how all those myths about us came to be.”

“Fascinating. I had a similar conversation with Oliver right before the festival on your birthday, we talked about what I would do if I had free reign over the fate of humanity now.”

Apollyon tilted her head slightly. “And what did you tell him?”

“That I would ideologically cleanse humanity, move them into controlled habitation zones with their needs met, putting them on a path to a managed version of our society. He compared it to humans being our pets and found that idea strangely appealing.”

“Drastic but fair.”

“What would you do?”

“I think I would follow your idea of ideological purification but instead of putting them into controlled habitats, I would let them choose their locations and lives more freely. While they would be under supervision, they would be able to choose if to shape their society after our model or create something new that we find tolerable.”

“Hm… I like that. Mine sounds almost tyrannical compared to yours.”

“I think many humans would view both of them as tyrannical. They aren’t fond of forceful ideological unification.”

“I suppose so. Anyway, you mentioned four groups with the human template and being able to use magic. What’s up with that? I only ever heard of Atlantis.”

“All but one befell a regrettable fate. Even the one left is inaccessible by human means. Cantre’r Gwaelod is the name humans gave to the remains of the one not far from here, now barely of the coast of Wales. They lived on the edge of the glaciers covering most of this place back then. They were nomads and when the glaciers vanished as Eisheth sunk Atlantis, unleashing massive amounts of energy into the environment and warming up this entire planet, they found themselves on small islands. They had ways to cope but their way of life was slowly lost. By the time non-magical humans came here, we had taken in the few who remained. The newcomers built settlements on top of the ruins of their cities until those islands vanished underneath the waves. The ancient magical people never even had a name for themselves…”

“That is remarkably sad.”

“Yes, but there are four of them alive as demons, including Uttu’s assistant bartender.”

Kate forced a smile. “That’s comforting, honestly. What about the other two civilizations?”

“The Asura wiped themselves out. They were one of the two we didn’t guide. Only a few millennia before Atlantis fell, they developed a source of energy to power their magical technology. It destroyed them. Their survivors met with the Atlantean refugees somewhere in what the humans of this region call the middle east and founded the City of Pillars. They had dreams of uniting humanity under them, we intended to strike them down if they tried but the angels were faster. The City of Pillars was ground to dust within minutes. The last one is the one that survived. The city of Wagadu. Its inhabitants proved to be beyond resilient. The city fell quickly after it was first established. It was rebuilt five times until they managed to make it last. When the first kings in what eventually became Egypt reached westward, the rulers of Wagadu, fearing the primitive non-magical humans would steal their powers and abuse them, decided to perform a dangerous and difficult spell. They laid an inscription around their lands, around the city and all they needed to survive, and created a barrier. For those without magical talent, the land was empty. They could build there, live there, do anything they wanted without affecting Wagadu. But those with a sense for magic could find an entrance into the magically shrouded realm. We tried to contact them after they withdrew but they wanted to be left alone for the time being. These days, some of their people visit this very library.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yes. They are still reclusive and won’t just allow any of us to walk into their city, but they are starting to slowly warm up to us. We are the only ones who are both friendly and remember what the world was like as they do. Even entire civilizations can get lonely after a while and the rest of humanity would be bad company, especially since they have become genetically incompatible.”

“What?”

“Simple evolution. They are ancient people with the template and developed differently than the rest of humanity. Without any form of crossbreeding for the last thirty-something thousand years, the template made them diverge from the human baseline so much that procreation is no longer possible between the two. They tried just a century ago. Even though they can have controlled contact with humanity, they choose not to because it makes them feel like they don’t belong anymore. They are outsiders to this world just like we are.”

“Fair enough. Maybe I will get to see their city someday. I would love to know what humans can be like with access to magic and an additional few thousand years of progress.”

“I would like that too.”

Kate made a thinking noise. “Does that mean we have written works from those cultures?”

“Not many. The Asura never invented writing, we didn’t give it to the locals here and Wagadu developed it only shortly before any non-magical humans did. Their records are publicly accessible. I remember that you stumbled over a quote on your first day here, something said by a stonemason six thousand years ago and dated precisely in the modern human calendar.”

“Yes, I remember that too.”

Apollyon smiled. “An observer from Wagadu wrote it down. The entire book you read that included that quote was written by one of their historians.”

“But why keep Atlantean texts secret while openly displaying theirs?”

“Because Atlantis turned against us. They managed to harm one of us. If the Asura had done the same, any mention of them would have been eradicated as well.”

“And because we have visitors from Wagadu we can’t just keep their literature from them.”

“Precisely.”

“Rest assured that they still don’t write a lot. We get three or four books from them every year.”

“That’s not a lot.”

“Indeed.”

Kate shrugged. “I still should read up on them. Well, after we solve our Gabriel problem.”

“It will be good to put an end to that.”

“Did Azazel tell you when the interrogation will be?”

“Not yet, no. I think she is still preparing. I should also make sure we remember warning Wagadu about the error in the template we didn’t know about during our last contact. They have a cure for the primary sabotage, but the mind control bit is something they are unprepared for. I will ask Azazel later if she has a vague idea when we will interrogate Gabriel and remind her to contact our potential future friends.”