With Hela gone, Yosa dressed absently in a riotous floral wrap and sipped her tea, staring blankly at the sheet of glass embedded in the wall. “Pinax, system update,” she said, still feeling like she was wearing someone else’s shoes.

The screen fluttered to life, linking with the crystal at the heart of the library. It was surprisingly small, not much bigger than a fat, medium-sized cat, really. But data and magic and energy spiraled through it, in holographic fractal layers of pure information.

The Eternal Library, and the city that it encompassed, had been barely more than a shrine before they’d poured their very hearts into it. To create a place where humanity’s knowledge could grow and shine. To make war and hunger and hate things of a well-forgotten past.

They deep-dove into dreams, into the timestream, each night, researching and compiling what had come, what might happen, until the shelves of the library itself groaned with clay tablets, golden scrolls and heavy, illustrated manuscripts beside aetheric data constructs and crystal sheets.

Through the pinax, she could see Hela’s drones patrolling the aisles, and even the streets of the complex. The patrons and researchers gave them a wide berth, but everywhere she looked, there were also the daemons. Some were aiding guests while others were wrangling lesser creatures- she called them imps and goblins most days- that sometimes generated out of old or well-handled tomes.

She’d woven Caim out of just that, a bright-eyed mischievous gremlin born of ancient art. She’d spun him into gold and twilight feathers, coding the power of the library’s systems into the very ink of the book he still carried within. They all had been born in similar ways, but there were more, wandering the halls, that the seven of them had not coded. Imps learning from the older daemons and growing, maturing. Hela might have been right, she thought with a scowl.

None of them could exist outside of the library except as books. Their forms- daemon or imp- were dependent on the pinax for their survival. But seeing the life throughout the library, the colour and joy all of them brought…. Hela might have been right about them, but she was wrong too. The drones were a pale comparison.

The screens passed across the acres of the history section, and one of the daemons looked up, directly at her through the screen. His eyes were unnaturally green, light shifting in them like sunlight through leaves, and his hair was black enough to show the stars beyond. He tipped a little salute at the camera he could only feel and Yosa took a loud slurp of her tea. Grendel. He mouthed something, and she leaned forward.

(You’re not done here,) he was saying, one dark brow lifting on his sharp face. (Also, you’re late.)

Her eyes darted up to the corner of the screen, where the meeting reminder winked. When she looked back, Grendel was gone from her sights. That infuriating... Yosa grabbed a wrap of pale wool and threw it over her shoulders. This is what happens when you anthropomorphise data, Hela said in her brain. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Yosa was so lost in her thoughts that she barely noticed she’d arrived at the meeting room. The pinax sat, glowing softly, in the centre of a round table, made of glass and wood and stone and metal all melded in perfect harmony. The walls were grown from trees, with slabs of wafer-thin stone interspersed between them. A waterfall gently ran down the far wall, and into a burbling creek that circled the room.

Hela was at her seat, shaking her head with a smirk as Yosa dove for her own.

To her one side, Lord Stone lounged. He wore iridescent snake skin garments cut brazenly to show off the copper-brown of his long body, bit of fur across his shoulders and jewels and feathers braided into his long black hair. Fire sat beside him, looking unimpressed. His hair was thick red waves streaked in gold, pulled back to fall in a tail over the loose saffron-orange silks and black iron ornaments he wore.

To the other side, Lord Water and Lady Air chatted. His dark brown skin was resplendent with a net of pearls, and his white dreaded locks were beaded in pale, watery aquamarine. Lady Air’s golden hair hung loose over her bare, ruddy shoulders, and her thin pleated gown of rose gold-tinged lavender rippled with paler blue clouds.

At the head of the table sat Void. The oldest of them, Void was stark, pale white skin and hair so deep a purple it just barely missed black. They wore simple purple velvet trimmed in feathery layers of misty lilac.

“I didn’t realise it was fancy day,” Yosa muttered, sinking into her seat.

“Oh come on. Who else do we have to dress up for these days?” Stone put his feet up on the table.

“Remesh, Void…” A drone glided up to Yosa with a tray and she waved it away. “I keep meaning to ask. Grendel: he’s yours, isn’t he?”

“The daemon?” One very dark purple eyebrow lifted in the same way the daemon’s had. “Yes. It was my first one. I think it was the first one we had. What’s the matter?”

“I was just wondering how powerful it… he was.” Yosa waved her hand. “It’s nothing.”

“It actually is something,” Hela said. “The daemon are too anthropomorphic. What if they choose to behave outside of their parameters?” She shot Yosa a pointed look.

“They’re dependent on the pinax. They can’t do anything beyond their programming.” Reyo, Lord Water, said with a roll of his eyes.

“We nudged the shape of their information and rewrote it to give them shapes they weren’t meant to have.” Hela leaned forward.

Void’s dark eyes narrowed. “Hela,” they cautioned.

“The bigger question isn’t just about replacing outdated, tarted up gremlins with easier use drones.” Hela leaned her chin on her hand. “It’s why you insist on keeping us locked up like research interns when we have the power to reshape information into anything we want, Remesh.”

“Our mission is to collect knowledge.” Void’s hand tightened on their glass.

“Your mission is to collect knowledge. Our mission was to protect it in case idiot humanity blew itself up. Humans are stupid, Remesh. And they are going to blow themselves up again. We have stacks of records of wars that haven’t even happened yet. Stacks of horrors they inflict on each other. If we won’t go out there and fix them, at least let’s reduce the load on the library’s systems by upgrading the filing systems from the daemons to the drones. That way, if the world does start to fall apart again, we’ll be in a better place to survive it.”

“Humanity isn’t that stupid, Hela,” Yosa said, twisting the end of her scarf. “Our doors are open to all who find us. As long as they’re armed with the truth, they’ll make the right choices.”

“Truth. You act like truth is an unmalleable absolute,” Hela snorted.

“Isn’t it?”

“That all depends on who’s telling it, dear.” Hela leaned back in her seat.

A murmur ran through the rest of them as Yosa and Hela stared each other down.

“I don’t disagree that the daemons are old-fashioned,” Remesh said, just loud enough to make them all fall silent. “We can phase in the drones, see if it does make for a more efficient system. We’ll keep the daemons active in the meantime.”

“That’s all I ask, Lord Void,” Hela said sweetly. “That’s all I ask.”