Yosa wasn’t sure how long the sun had been sliding through the high windows of her lab, or even how many times it had. Time didn’t function in the depths of the research wing the way it did elsewhere in the library.

She took a swig of soma on a tray carried by a tottering paper golem, one of Cerberos’ innovations. They were not nearly as robust as Hela’s clay creatures, but she found them infinitely more endearing. And there were echoes, clawing at the back of her brain, of gross parodies of humanity, those same blank white faces, and she pinched the bridge of her nose.

She couldn’t even remember what she’d been working on. Nothing felt right, nothing fit right. The slanting sun struck the little glass enclosure in the corner and Yosa felt the strength leave her legs.

It might have been a thousand years ago, maybe less, maybe more. It was so strange that a bit of magic, a crystal no bigger than a largish housecat, had so much power in it. To give them the gifts that it had, to bend time and space like it did. The power of the crystal was in every molecule of the buildings, the daemons, and the Authors themselves.

Time didn’t work in the library the way it did in the rest of the world. But the books and scrolls and tablets they’d plucked from time and space, the research they’d pulled from their dreams had been long baking in the glow of the pinax, transforming abstractions into concrete reality.

And that concrete reality had bled forth in the form of the first imps.

Remesh had found Grendel, a tiny star-filled spider with big eyes, gnawing first on the history books- and then the Lord Void themselves. It had taken Katha days to find the hiding spot of the gremlin Amon- a roly-poly opalescent rock who’d taken to eating the utensils in their commissary and leaving sticks behind in their place. She’d spent a week on her own chasing a giggling, scrawny paintbrush defacing the walls with rainbows.

Looking back, those had been some of the best days of their long lives.

It had peered down from a shelf, wide diamond eyes goggling at her when she’d finally cornered it.

“Well aren’t you a pretty one,” she cooed. “Can I see your book? Where you live?” Those bright eyes had narrowed, then one tiny hand reached out, staining her fingertips in splotches of colour and sound.

It had been a manuscript, fantastic beasts in lapis and gold and scarlet gamboling across a score of music on one page. On another, portrayals of people, flowers and plants as long forgotten as the alphabet their descriptions had been written in. Caim tucked itself in between the pages, peeking out between the time-softened edges.

“We’re going to do amazing things, you and I.” She’d smiled at it. “I can’t wait to show you.”

She roused herself from the memory and squinted up at the sunlight playing through the narrow windows. It hadn’t moved at all. With a grunt, Yosa pushed herself out of her chair and forded the narrow paths through the stacks of research piled in unkempt mountains throughout the lab.

It was too quiet.

The halls of dark wood and glass were empty- none of Hela’s drones, no daemons, no lost and panicked interns. It smelled, distantly, of smoke. This wasn’t how she thought it should be. But everywhere she turned, there was simply more empty corridor.

“What the fuck?” Ruby said, and immediately clapped her hand over her mouth, running to the nearest polished wall. Short. Her long black hair dyed in fading green, and a little gold stud in her nose. The furry pink jacket that Berith had dissolved into the medicine to cure Alice, and green leggings under her flowery shirt.

She was Ruby Jones.

Ruby prodded at her face, and then screamed when she saw Grendel behind her.

Not the young Grendel who’d been in the library screens, with his bright green eyes, but craggy- faced and blindfolded, leaning on his cane. “I gotta hand you this, Author, you can compartmentalise like nobody’s business.”

“I was me. Like, old-me. And now I’m me-me,” Ruby grabbed Grendel's grey coat. “TALK,” she said, and the words came out as power.

The daemon quirked one dark eyebrow over the edge of his blindfold, then started to laugh.

“You don’t want this memory.” Grendel hooked his arm through hers and gave her a little yank, tapping his cane on the wooden floor. “You want to avoid this memory so much you forcibly redirected yourself around the Twins’ power and whistled me up to deal with it for you.”

“You’re not…” Ruby started, digging her hands into the soft wool of his sleeve. He felt real enough. As real as the sweet taste of the soma, and the smell of peach blossoms through the windows.

“Really here? It’s hard to say, and irrelevant, really. You feel intensely guilty about Caim, but you think I’m an asshole, so this is easier for you.” Grendel shrugged expansively, cane clicking on the door in front of them.

“So are you going to just force me into the memory I’m trying to avoid?” Ruby dragged her feet, rubber soles squeaking on the wood.

“Of course not, don’t be silly,” he said and pushed open the doors. “I’m going to show you mine.”

Ruby gasped. Seeing the screens through Yosa’s eyes had not done the library itself justice. It was a landscape- walls rising up for what seemed hundreds of yards, studded with books and scrolls. Clay tablets formed mountains and there were virtual lakes filled with media that might never exist. Pillars like trees glowed softly for light in the dark recesses, their canopies of glass spreading out over a sea of benches and tables.

And nothing moved. It was a moment, frozen. Full stop, she thought.

There were people of every kind, the variety of clothing speaking to a hundred different eras, all mingling with living rainbows in grey uniforms. Unnervingly, Hela’s blank-faced white drones prowled the stacks and loomed in the corners. Ruby’s guts clenched.

But then, there was Cerberos, the big engineer sitting in a circle of breathless children, showing them how a puppet was constructed. Amon seated between two men of vastly different garb, their hands frozen mid-point. A flash of frozen lightning as Fenix was caught mid-tackle on a gremlin.

And Caim, smiling, with his forehead pressed to Valefor’s.

There were so many others that she recognised, but didn’t - their names lost in the mists of countless overwrites. Amy. Kali. Raum, the echoes whispered.

Grendel was very still beside her, and she thought he might be shaking, just a bit. Then he turned to her and snapped his fingers, the whole of the scene springing to life.

“Welcome to the library, Author,” he said in a voice rougher than usual. “Welcome to our home.”