Lillene

Enjoy!

Letter from Honoria Clearsight, Head Librarian of the Great Library of Asihanya to Serenity, Sovereign of Earth

Transported by Legion using a personal-only small-scale long distance teleportation Skill obtained by one of the bodies on Asihanya working as a Librarian at the Great Library of Asihanya

Takinat is recovering. The City Lord returned about a week ago. I am uncertain he will retain his position; he certainly will not if I have anything to say about it. It seems that I have more to say than I expected; now that things are more or less back to normal, the fact that I am not merely a Librarian but the Head Librarian matters. 

I was not Head Librarian before the attack. I was a senior Librarian but not in charge. Even so, I did not know that the Head Librarian is invited to every single official City Council meeting by the Voice “in accordance with the City Charter.” To the best of my knowledge, the previous Head Librarian never went. I am rather annoyed with him. 

After my first notification, I naturally located a copy of the City Charter. It was in the restricted section! That is not where a City Charter belongs, unless it is the original and being preserved, but there were seven copies as well as two originals in the restricted section.

I have Legion checking the copies to determine if they are identical to the original. She has already noticed several places that are not, but I will have to confirm with the Voice whether they are errors or official changes to the Charter. The changes all work to consolidate more power in the hands of the City Lord instead of the City Council, so either could be true. If these are different versions from different time periods, it would explain their presence in the restricted section but it would not explain why there is no copy that is available to the ordinary users of the Library.

In all of the versions, both original and copy, there are three powerful positions: City Lord, City Council Chief, and Head Librarian. The copies place the City Council Chief squarely under the City Lord but the Head Librarian is still independent. This has some interesting implications that I am still exploring.

The fact that the Library stayed open and was defended through the attacks has significantly raised my prestige. Even more important is the fact that the attacks that took down the attackers were coordinated from the Library. Even people who would not normally think about us much know who we are; this may be important in the near future.

On that topic, Old Man Rinsetti stopped by the Library yesterday. He openly asked me to pass along his well wishes and thanks to you; I told him that I would. More quietly, he expressed disdain for the current City Lord and support for the City Manager who tried to take care of things when the Lord fled. She has also been instrumental in the cleanup effort; from what I hear, her efforts have meant that Takinat is doing better than most Asihanyan cities. I believe I know which way the wind is blowing there and it seems like a direction I can support.

With that all said, I should answer your other request. It was far less pleasant; prying answers out of the Broken Mirror is even more annoying than you said it would be. I am convinced that it approaches the world from a different perspective; if nothing else, it does not understand emotions. I do not believe he understands ethics, either, at least not the ones I follow.

Despite the difficulties, I did manage to dig out the information you sought. The Broken Mirror does indeed know of the origin of demons, though he refuses to call them that. I do not believe that I would have found them if you had not mentioned that they were created from Suras or Asuras and four other species. 

The Broken Mirror calls them the “Children of Passion,” though he admits that obsession might be a better word. Each demon apparently has something that drives them, a passion or obsession that trumps everything else. 

There is apparently a base species, the Passions, that sounds almost exactly like what you and I know as Demons of Obsession. It seems that they are the root species for demons; all other demons come from Obsession. It’s a huge outward change to get to the other demon types but it explains why they are grouped together. I had always assumed that it was because they usually appeared together; apparently that was backwards.

The Children of Passion were developed by some of the researchers working for Order’s Council. The Broken Mirror says that “like most of the other monster development projects,” this one was sponsored and paid for by Councilor Phorus. I admit that I cannot bring myself to be surprised that the Doomclaw was behind the development of many monster species. The Broken Mirror does say that they were specifically developed to be a flexible species capable of filling many different niches but is unable to give examples; there are none stored in his archives.

There is not anything close to a complete list of the derivative species in the Broken Mirror; I suspect that many of them were developed after the Mirror broke. There is a list of the species that were used to create the Children of Passion: Asura, Maenad, Oni, Vrak, and Yaotzi. 

The most interesting information is unfortunately incomplete; there is a reference to a project that the Broken Mirror does not have any information on known as “the World Regulation and Repopulation Initiative.” I am certain that that piques your curiosity as much as it does mine, but all I know is that the Children of Passion were developed under that Initiative.

If you think of any more questions for the Broken mirror, please let Legion know; I’ll be happy to ask. It always responds to questions more easily when I can say that I’m asking for you instead of myself.

How are you and your family? 

Honoria

Death had Human wander the planet on her own for several weeks before she reappeared. Death knew from Human’s reaction that she knew nothing of Earth; this would give her a chance to find out about it. Money and language weren’t problems; Human had plenty of Etherium and the capacity to speak to any human in a language they knew. 

Death watched from afar periodically; there was never a shortage of death on Earth, so she had eyes everywhere. Human made her way across the globe quickly, never spending more than a few days in any city. It would have been an exhausting pace for a mortal; even for an immortal, it was too fast to really take in the local culture, which made Death curious.

When Human finally reached Serenity’s home city, Death decided it was time to be a little more intrusive. The best time was obviously when Human thought she was alone, so that she wouldn’t have to worry about what any of her beasts thought about what she said.

There might be other reasons for the way she was going to get Human’s attention. Human really ought to keep a better eye on things. “What do you think of Earth so far?”

“Bwah!” Human turned quickly, obviously completely surprised, and found Death standing almost directly behind her, only a little to the side. “Where did you come from?”

Death hid her inner glee at pulling off a perfect jumpscare and instead gave Human a slightly disappointed look. “Where do you think I came from?”

Human flushed and looked down. That was enough of an answer; Human must have realized just how silly the question was.

Death straightened fully and grinned. “So, what do you think of Earth so far? I’m really interested; this is my Incarnate’s homeworld. How do you think it compares to other human worlds, or worlds where humans live?”

Human blinked slowly. Death gave her a moment to gather her thoughts. Human wrinkled her brow before she finally answered slowly. “It’s weird.”

Death cocked her head. “Weird? What do you mean?”

“There are humans everywhere. There are even places that aren’t under threat with millions of humans crammed into only a few square miles! Humans didn’t live like that unless they had to; why did these humans choose that?” Human sounded both puzzled and incredulous. “They live everywhere, from places where they can’t walk outside when it’s cold out without massive amounts of protection to places where it’s impossible to stay cool enough. Who does that? More than that, who’s crazy enough to even try that without magic?”

Death frowned at that. “I know I’ve seen humans in those conditions on other worlds.”

“Yeah! Because they’re dead!” Human threw her arms up, clearly exasperated. “No one lives in those conditions unless they have to but I swear these people like it! Most of them don’t even have temperature related bloodlines!”

Death shrugged. She didn’t really understand what Human was upset about. “Is that really all you think about Earth?”

Human slumped forward, exaggeratedly dejected. “No. Despite their mixed blood, they’re humans; they’re my people. That means … well, it means a lot of things. The big one is that I should have been able to find them. I can’t see any reason why I didn’t know they existed.”

Death shrugged. “That one’s easy; they were veiled.” Before Human could interrupt, Death held up a hand to tell her to wait. “You’d likely have found them when the veil fully dropped; I thought I’d speed that up a bit. You’ll want to spend some time here before that happens. The Empire’s already interested in the planet; if you spend some time here, I think you’ll know why. You’ll also know just what will happen if the Empire decides Earth is weak enough to attack.”

Human flinched. Death wondered which side she thought would be the more damaged. Most of the Empire’s forces were human, after all, so no matter who won it was a loss for Human. Human would still likely support the Empire unless Death gave her a reason not to; she usually did. Death wasn’t certain if she had a fondness for the Empire, the Emperor, or simply thought it led to the best final result since it meant there was no more fighting.

Regardless of how Human thought of the Empire, the reason she shouldn’t support them couldn’t be Serenity. While the Empire wouldn’t be able to kill Death’s Incarnate, killing the people around him was possible. Imprisoning him was also possible. Either of those was a scenario to be avoided. Death wasn’t certain how well Serenity would handle them, but it wouldn’t be good. Death didn’t want to try to explain the consequences of pissing off Serenity that badly to Human; after all, who would believe that a Tier Eight could, with time, exterminate the entire Empire?

No, it was far better if Death made sure Human saw both sides of Earth: both the power it could offer her and the strength it had to make any assault bloody and inconclusive. There were some sections of Earth’s history that Death definitely wanted to be certain. Human knew about. They could come later, however; there were years before an assault was possible. Death probably wouldn’t have to do anything to make Human see the truth of Earth other than what she’d already done by bringing it to the Beast God’s attention.

Death did have an ulterior motive beyond protecting her Incarnate’s sanity, however. She was still new to having a humanlike form; spending time with Human seemed like a good way to get used to it. “Would you like to get some dinner? There’s this place my Incarnate liked …”

END OF ARC 10

Lillene

As usual, those of you who like to stay up late to read the chapter should probably not do that tomorrow; it’s going to be the usual between-chapter stuff.

With that said, we’re getting close(ish) to the end of this story. I’m currently projecting two more arcs, but I could be off by one either way. With that said, is there anything you’d particularly like to see or anywhere you think I dropped a story thread or character? Some of them were deliberate but I’m also confident I dropped some accidentally along the way.

Things you don’t need to list:

Apollyon

The Empire / Emperor / Lord C

The Solomon vases / Russ

The potential destruction of Earth / Gaia’s future

Serenity’s next Path

The guy trying to buy Becca and Carl (Legion)’s home

Rissa and Jenna

Russ & Phoebe

I’m not yet certain exactly how much screen time side characters like Raz, Aki, Blaze, or Desinka will get.

The history of Order’s Council / Coyote, Dragon, and Phorus plays fairly heavily into some of the background but I’m not sure how much will be appropriate to put on screen. I usually leave it off unless there’s some way for Serenity to find out about it (which can be tough since that results in huge infodumps …)