Beleth drew her blade. “I didn’t expect you to take so long to return to me.”

“Other duties caught up to me, my human family saw a death just yesterday.”

“I understand the importance of grieving. Your absence from training is, of course, forgiven. Now, strike at me with what you came up with.”

Kate lunged and immediately opened with the magical arcs in her first swings. Beleth motioned for a pause.

“Intriguing.” The old demon reached to poke one. Upon touching it, she flinched back. “And quite painful. I assume you intend to use this as a way to force Apollyon to move where you want her?”

“That is the plan, yes.”

“You still have the ability to move these?”

“Uh…” Kate tried and slammed one of the arcs into the wall ahead of her. “Yes.”

“That definitely has potential. Do you know of any weaknesses of this ability yet?”

“I do. You can just cut these apart and I can only keep so many up at a time.”

“Cut them apart?”

“Like this.” Kate dissolved one of the remaining arcs by slicing through it.

 “That is still a significant hassle to do. You have developed something truly interesting here. Now we need to get you to use it instinctively. Let’s continue.” Beleth readied herself again.

Over the next hours, Beleth and Kate refined the new magical attack as much as possible in just one day. Eventually, Beleth motioned for a pause again.

“This will be enough for today. You have not yet inscribed this ability on your blades, correct?”

“No, I am just starting out with some minor inscriptions to learn the ropes. Might be a few weeks until I have the hang of it enough to use it on liquiform metal.”

“Good. Keep at that. Your ‘weeks’ are seven cycles, correct?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Then meet me again in one week. There is one more thing to teach before we work on turning this into instinct.”

“Ok?”

“You wield liquiform blades but you don’t use them.”

Kate took a second to think. “Oh, I see.”

Beleth smiled. “Good.”

 

Kate originally wanted to drag one of her friends out to have some food with her, but it was barely three in the afternoon. Instead, she was now standing in front of Eris’s front door. She didn’t even need to knock for the eccentrically dressed old Nightmare to open the door.

“Kate! Good, hello.”

“Yea, hi.”

“Come in. We have lots to talk about.”

“We do, but how do you know?”

Eris rolled her eyes. “Nightmare, cutie. You should know what we can do by now.”

“Right…” Kate followed Eris into a rather eclectically decorated home. Tiny knickknacks were everywhere, but all seemingly with a purpose. It was chaotic, but not messy. It was quite clear why Jolene would call her a virtuoso of such chaos. Outwardly, Eris’s mind was the same controlled chaos.

“Sit, sit. Want some tea?”

“Sure.”

“Good, I will heat up some water. I like doing it the old way, it’s more fun.”

“Understandable. There is something fun in doing certain things the long way.”

“Most definitely. But not the things you came to me for.”

“Sadly.”

“So, you want to help Apollyon. Your plan to pick out her negative side and shout that back at her.”

“Yes, pretty much.”

“A plan doomed to fail.”

“Okay?” Kate didn’t quite follow.

“It’s fun how openly you are sharing this information. Adorable. Your last attempted failed miserably but not because you were on the wrong path. You didn’t shout her bad side back at her, and if you try that you would fail again. She wants to reject that guilt, what she needs is emotional reinforcement of that.”

“But I have tried to encourage her.”

“Yes.”

“Then what am I even supposed to do?”

“Does a mirror shout?”

“Uh… no?”

“Indeed. In the basement of your library is a very interesting mirror, one that reflects not just what it sees but an altered image. Katie, you have peered into Apollyon’s mind and saw it is chaos when you bring her to the point where she can grow. If you simply push order onto her without unravelling that chaos, you do nothing. If you simply show her the chaos, you do nothing. You pull strands from that chaos, or guide her to doing that herself, and then you cut that strand.”

“Let me unravel that first. You want me to take her thoughts, whatever she throws at me to talk herself into her guilt, and pick that apart.”

“Remember to show it to her too. She needs to realize what you are picking apart. Let’s take you for example. You are scared of the Archive and the prospect of joining your library with it, but logically you know that it is the best solution for you, the librarians, and the Archive team.”

“Yea…” Kate frowned. Eris handed her a cup of tea before she as allowed to continue. “I just know what that mass of knowledge and stories will do to me.”

“Do you? And what has that mass of knowledge and stories right in your basement done to you?”

“I read stuff from there in my spare time.”

“Mhm. Every day that collection down there grows. Humans have quite the output. Every book added should tempt you more and more. But it doesn’t. Adding the Archive to that collection wouldn’t be any different. Why do you think you would act differently?”

“I… uhm… I don’t know.”

“Because you wouldn’t. Maybe instead of Atlantean cookbooks you might read about the fauna native to the Vaitarani and its surrounding swampland. You still think of yourself as limited by time, but you don’t act that way anymore. You realize what that means.”

Kate took a sip of tea. “I expect myself to rush into all those new books. But I won’t, I didn’t do so last time I was there and I won’t do it the next time. Sure, those books are calling, tempting me, but just like fine wine I can take one sip, one page at a time." After a second of realization, Kate finally had a pretty good idea of what she needed to do with Apollyon. "Fascinating.”

“Truly fascinating indeed. You see how this works.”

“I could even do this to myself, couldn’t I?”

Eris shook her head. “Not really. The mind enjoys circles and even now it will take a little while for what you just realized to sink in.”

“So, now I come back here every so often for you to teach me how to do that on the fly, right?” Kate deliberately avoided acknowledging that Eris was right about not being able to do this in her own that effectively.

“No. I only have one more piece of advice, after that you are on your own. Your abilities are more than sufficient, Azazel and Nirrti were effective teachers.”

“Okay. And what would that advice be?”

“Apollyon knows what you plan to do, she will let you into her head, just as you have been open with yours. Use that to prepare yourself.”

“Good idea, thank you.”

“Before you finish your tea and leave, I have a request.”

“Okay, sure.”

“One for your sake, because it makes me sad to watch you put this off. Have that meeting with your librarians and decide what to do about the Archive. No matter the outcome, right now that decision looms over your mind like shadow. The uncertainty is not good.”

“Yea, I will call in everyone right when I return, fuck it. You’re right, the uncertainty is bothering me more than just the idea of having the Archive at my fingertips. And you nudged my mind into the right place.”

Eris sipped some tea and smiled. “Good girl.”

 

Kate did as she had promised the old Nightmare and called the other three librarians and Adelina, on Eisheth’s request, to join her in the restaurant in the back of the library. It was dinner time by now and the library chef had cooked up a nice chili for everyone to enjoy. As everyone was slowly finishing their portions, Kate got straight to the point.  

“I think we are all clear on why we gathered, right?”

“Yes, but I want to add another thing to vote on while we are all here.” Eisheth seemed rather upbeat today.

“Of course. Want to do that first or the main thing first?”

“Let’s actually do my proposal first. I think you will find that only fair before we vote on the Archive.”

“Okay, go ahead then.”

“I wanted to talk to everyone about this beforehand, but Saraswati’s proposal makes me certain that we need to talk about this now. With Adelina helping out more and more, especially with the reading project in cooperation with the local schools, I would like to grant her proper librarian status.”

Adelina glanced around awkwardly. “Are you sure? I barely do anything besides supervise kids and put their books back.”

Apollyon decided to answer that. “I am sure. We will need more hands here if we are to join with the Archive, and even if we don’t, we can always use the help. You have proven yourself more than trustworthy and actually interested in the knowledge here. I think we just need to remind you that this is not a duty but a privilege, you don’t have to do any additional work, but you may. I vote yes.”

“I do too.” Nirrti added. “You have earned it.”

“I also vote yes.” With Kate, that decision passed.

Eisheth smiled. “Good. Now, if you accept, you are a full librarian now.” The succubus put a small wooden box on the table.

“I accept. Thank you. I honestly don’t know what to say. It’s quite sudden.” The vampire smiled shily.

“It is, but not without reason. That means that, first of all, you get this badge. You know already what it does to protect you.” Eisheth slid the box to Adelina. “And you get to vote on what is the most important decision in library history. Well, second most important right after including works written by humans.”

“Wait, that wasn’t the original purpose?”

“No, this library predates human writing by many millennia. Originally, this was meant to archive everything pertaining to this world, observational records, studies, correspondence with the angels about this place, that sort of stuff. When humans began writing, we decided to include that stuff too, and that became our main purpose.”

“I didn’t know that. Neat. So, to get the next thing, the Archive you are talking about is the Hell version of this place, right?”

“Yes. Their team mostly wants to retire. They have been at it far longer than any of us here. Saraswati had been there in the beginning, back when the Archive was first built about a hundred and twenty-nine thousand years ago. It’s no wonder she wants to do something new.”

“And we are supposed to join with that place? Will that make the library move to Hell?”

“We would be one venture and we would be able to access one place from the other, but this library stays here. There would in essence be another door that just so happens to lead into Hell, into the Archive.”

“Okay. So, it’s just a major extension of what you do already?”

Eisheth nodded. “Yes.”

Kate jumped in again. “And that’s why we need to vote. It’s a lot more stuff to manage. We will get support in the form of Amaterasu, who will join us from the Archive team, but that is a mass of books and stuff that’s a solid order of magnitude or two more than we have here. Humans might write a lot of crap all day, but the demons have hundreds of thousands of years of written history and whatever else was put to paper during that time. The vote needs to be unanimous because of that.”

“I see. What do you guys vote?”

Kate hesitated. “I… want to vote last, or second to last if Adelina wants to see what we all think first.”

“I would like that, yes.”

“Okay, good.”

“Then I will begin.” Apollyon took initiative. “I vote for joining the two libraries.”

“I was hesitant as first, but I vote yes as well.” Eisheth looked at Nirrti.

“I vote yes too.”

That just left Kate and Adelina. The young Nightmare took a moment. “I spoke to Eris earlier. She made me realize a few things and despite an irrational emotional part of me yelling to not give in to the siren call of the Archive, I vote yes.”

Adelina shrugged. “I don’t see why we shouldn’t join. I also vote yes.”

Kate forced a smile that rather quickly turned genuine. “Then it’s decided.”