just want to curl up in a soft XXL tee shirt that’s been through the wash for twenty years and eat ravioli and Oreos. Sometimes it is comfort over style, and I was insanely relieved that this librarian hadn’t caught me out. Because if there were a time that I really wanted comfort and normalcy and to forget the people who would hunt me and my friends down and destroy us, it was right then.
She was a Bastform, which means she looked rather like a four-foot-tall Siamese cat. This one was a blue point, which gave her the air of a stern librarian who was on the lookout to hush anyone who dared to talk. The (cat’s eye, naturally) reading glasses that hung around her neck on a beaded cord added to her air. Her silk robin’s-egg-blue robe looked like it came from the wardrobe of one of the Harry Potter movies, and it flowed around her elegantly elongated form as if she were Professor of Akashic at Hogwarts. Tree of life designs wandered around the collar and down the front rendered in raised silver embroidery and adorned with a scattering of pearls. Either she was high in the Library hierarchy or had been outfitted with some thought to my rank and reputation for elegance.
When I turned my attention to her, she waited for a long moment before acknowledging my presence with a slight nod.
That’s the problem with Bastform demons. They have the personality of cats along with the looks, which means that they think they are superior. And this one was a librarian, which meant she really did have some very specialized abilities. Damn.
“Welcome, Librarian,” I said formally and in Akkadian. “Your aid is most valuable and we are grateful.” I hate hate hate having to flatter and play humble, but if you want anything out of a Bastform you have no choice. And if you act like you’re equals they’ll make you wait forever.
She deigned to blink in acknowledgment and immediately took up the Thinkpad, which had booted and displayed a welcome screen that I’d never seen before. Pale blue just the shade of her robe, trees and vines in ghostly echos of pastels twined themselves through the usual log-in boxes. It was quite an elegant piece of programming, no doubt about it.
“I didn’t know you used the Internet in the Akashic,” I commented.
“Only for the first pass or so, to eliminate the most obvious dead ends. We’ve been working on going fully computerized for decades now.” Her tone was bored and just as superior as I had anticipated.
The Akashic record is the Great Book of All Things. All events, all Fate, everything a person has ever done or thought or tried and failed, all of it is recorded in his or her Akashic file. And not just people, either. No, everything that lives is in the Book. Every ant, every tree, every milkweed and luna moth and feral tabby cat, every tomato plant and pigeon is in the Book.
Which in itself is just a metaphor, since it’s not a book in any sense of the word at all. It’s more like a database, only it encompasses a magical space larger than New York and London and Tokyo combined. It is possibly the hugest thing in existence.
Magicians, human, Underworld or Upperworld, had to undergo years and years of training and privations to be accorded access. And once admitted, they had to study for years and years longer to learn how to locate the information they sought.
Those with particular talent learned to call upon the Demon Librarians, like Azoked, or the Angelic Librarians, who were simply out of reach for any of the Underworld.
I knew little about the Akashic other than the few courses offered in Advanced Demonic Skills. The Librarians, of either the Demonic or Angelic Hosts, were highly specialized professionals who were always in short supply. My last interaction had been before the use of electricity, let alone computers. So I ended up asking the only question that came immediately to my mind.
“Windows?”
Azoked sighed. “I prefer Oracle myself. The Angelics use it, of
She was a Bastform, which means she looked rather like a four-foot-tall Siamese cat. This one was a blue point, which gave her the air of a stern librarian who was on the lookout to hush anyone who dared to talk. The (cat’s eye, naturally) reading glasses that hung around her neck on a beaded cord added to her air. Her silk robin’s-egg-blue robe looked like it came from the wardrobe of one of the Harry Potter movies, and it flowed around her elegantly elongated form as if she were Professor of Akashic at Hogwarts. Tree of life designs wandered around the collar and down the front rendered in raised silver embroidery and adorned with a scattering of pearls. Either she was high in the Library hierarchy or had been outfitted with some thought to my rank and reputation for elegance.
When I turned my attention to her, she waited for a long moment before acknowledging my presence with a slight nod.
That’s the problem with Bastform demons. They have the personality of cats along with the looks, which means that they think they are superior. And this one was a librarian, which meant she really did have some very specialized abilities. Damn.
“Welcome, Librarian,” I said formally and in Akkadian. “Your aid is most valuable and we are grateful.” I hate hate hate having to flatter and play humble, but if you want anything out of a Bastform you have no choice. And if you act like you’re equals they’ll make you wait forever.
She deigned to blink in acknowledgment and immediately took up the Thinkpad, which had booted and displayed a welcome screen that I’d never seen before. Pale blue just the shade of her robe, trees and vines in ghostly echos of pastels twined themselves through the usual log-in boxes. It was quite an elegant piece of programming, no doubt about it.
“I didn’t know you used the Internet in the Akashic,” I commented.
“Only for the first pass or so, to eliminate the most obvious dead ends. We’ve been working on going fully computerized for decades now.” Her tone was bored and just as superior as I had anticipated.
The Akashic record is the Great Book of All Things. All events, all Fate, everything a person has ever done or thought or tried and failed, all of it is recorded in his or her Akashic file. And not just people, either. No, everything that lives is in the Book. Every ant, every tree, every milkweed and luna moth and feral tabby cat, every tomato plant and pigeon is in the Book.
Which in itself is just a metaphor, since it’s not a book in any sense of the word at all. It’s more like a database, only it encompasses a magical space larger than New York and London and Tokyo combined. It is possibly the hugest thing in existence.
Magicians, human, Underworld or Upperworld, had to undergo years and years of training and privations to be accorded access. And once admitted, they had to study for years and years longer to learn how to locate the information they sought.
Those with particular talent learned to call upon the Demon Librarians, like Azoked, or the Angelic Librarians, who were simply out of reach for any of the Underworld.
I knew little about the Akashic other than the few courses offered in Advanced Demonic Skills. The Librarians, of either the Demonic or Angelic Hosts, were highly specialized professionals who were always in short supply. My last interaction had been before the use of electricity, let alone computers. So I ended up asking the only question that came immediately to my mind.
“Windows?”
Azoked sighed. “I prefer Oracle myself. The Angelics use it, of
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