A weapon only has one function: to do harm. At least that’s what Melody Valefor’s old history teacher had always said. She didn’t agree, and for good reason.

  What that history teacher, one mister Benford, didn’t know was the rest of history not told by humans. Many thousands of years ago, demons and angels had gone to war with each other. Three times in fact. Melody knew about one of those wars, the second one, and mister Benford didn’t. He wasn’t allowed to know. Melody technically wasn’t either, but she had a little advantage. She had a weapon from that war. A weapon that remembered every detail.

  Those details didn’t matter right now. It was six thirty in the morning on a Monday and Melody had just crawled out of bed and made her way to her very own bathroom.

  I told you that pushing your competitive rank until two in the morning was a bad idea.

  Melody grumbled a non-response and started brushing her teeth. The voice in her head had been a constant companion for the st ten years and had become a good friend.

  “You had fun too…”

  I did. And yes, I would have preferred to keep pying video games all night too but today is an important day.

  Melody’s strange friend wasn’t just some hallucination or another part of her own mind, it was a weapon. A weapon that had been impnted in her by accident.

  “Mel are you getting ready?” A voice shouted from downstairs. That was one of her adopted mothers, Aria Valefor.

  “I am! Just give me a few minutes!”

  “No rush, I’ll just get breakfast ready!”

  A quick shower, washing her waist long hair and getting properly dressed ter, Melody made her way to the kitchen downstairs. The sight waiting there no longer fazed her. Two tall demons, hooves, horns, tails, the whole package, were sitting at the kitchen table and preparing their croissants.

  Melody made a point of hugging them both. “Morning mum, morning Ma.” She yawned.

  “You were up te st night, weren’t you?” Mara Thrasir, her other mother, raised an eyebrow before biting into her croissant. The white-haired demon kept her entire left side covered, even that half of her face and her hand were hidden behind bck velvet.

  “Yea… sorry.”

  “You are old enough to make your own mistakes. Will you be fine today?”

  Melody nodded and grabbed some food for herself.

  “Oh Thrasir, it’s just the library they’re going to. There is no safer pce in this world.” Valefor smiled reassuringly. The two demons didn’t have first names, they were Valefor and Thrasir, but to blend in with the humans around them they picked something more normal seeming: Aria and Mara. When Melody was adopted, they decided that she needed to have one of their names as her st name, just to make the three appear more like a proper family. In time, they had actually become just that.

  “At least it will be fun.” Melody shrugged.

  “The library visit or the fact that they are letting you have fun in the city once your paper is done?”

  “Both, obviously. No amount of magically enhanced physiology will make me not a nerd.”

  Of course you will leave the work to me while you nap, right? I’ll make sure you actually write something down today.

  “I’m genuinely looking forward to doing this. I always wanted to write a scientific paper and this is the closest I can get.” The seventeen-year-old human had made a habit of never directly responding to the weapon while among others. No one knew that it actually had a personality and could talk to her, not even her mothers. They knew about the existence of the weapon, that’s why they had adopted her, but nothing more specific than that. At least as far as Melody knew.

  “Very good. I am sure your fellow students won’t be as happy about all this as you are.”

  “Their loss, not mine.”

  “True. Did you at least pack everything you need st night?”

  “I did, except the snacks.”

  “Good. Let’s eat up then and head out soon. You’re not the only one with pns for today.”

  “You’re going out too?”

  “Fury is in Dis today and we’ve been told that she has some new recipes to try. No way we are missing that.” Just one more thing Melody would never be allowed to tell anyone outside this family: the fact that her parents came from Hell and were going on a date in its capital city today. It made her almost sad to miss it, despite not wanting to be around when her parents got too cutesy. Fury and her travelling food cart always meant amazing treats were to be had.

  Thrasir took a sip of her tea. “Remember to get yourself something nice in the city. You should treat yourself while we are out doing the same.”

  Melody nodded. “I’ll see what I can find.”

  “Hey Mels!”

  Melody didn’t react. The voice in her head sighed. The human was napping while her body was wide awake and staring out the window of the bus.

  “Yes?” The weapon decided not to wake its host up and answer in her stead.

  “Have you heard what they say about that library we’re going to?” Karina was a nice girl. She appeared to have the personality of a paper bag, but she was nice and quite pleasant to be around.

  “I have heard many things about it. Care to be more specific?”

  “It’s supposed to have like all the books. You know, like every book ever.”

  “I have heard that, yes. Have you heard that the librarians are supposedly a cult and don’t age? They recruited someone new a few years ago and she vanished almost entirely from normal life. And their leader is supposedly thousands of years old.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you? That’s all just hocus-pocus. Immortal librarians… right.”

  “It’s not any more logistically unhinged than finding every book humanity as ever written.”

  “Yea… I guess that’s true. Still, they seem like have a lot of books other libraries don’t have.”

  “Something to make this trip worthwhile. Otherwise the college library would have sufficed.”

  “That gives me hope that it won’t be boring. I mean, what can they offer that the internet can’t?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “Yea, I guess so. But a librarian doesn’t have like the new shorts from my favourite vacation spots. I can’t stay up to date with the new drinks from Hawaii. That just sucks.”

  “But it contains culture. A library as supposedly complete as this one will have more than just information about the drinks from Hawaii. It will have written accounts of the lived experiences of the people there, their food, drinks, music, whatever you desire to know. Don’t underestimate a library, Karina.”

  “You don’t watch shorts anyway, I guess you don’t really understand. But that’s okay. You know things I don’t and I know things you don’t. That’s just life.”

  The weapon knew a lot more than Karina ever would. It also knew not to care what other people cimed to be very important. Short videos could be entertaining, but the weapon found them unfulfilling. Pointless even. It enjoyed things it could dig into, spending long nights reading or pying lengthy story driven video games while Melody was asleep. The more there was to something, the more the weapon enjoyed it.

  “Alright everyone.” A voice rang out from the back of the bus. It was miss Gven Geance, philosophy teacher. “We will arrive in a few minutes. It will be short walk up a hill to get to the library. Once we are there, the librarians will give a short introduction after which you will be expected to find your sources yourself and work on your own. When you are done, hand your finished papers to me or mister Carlile. Once you have done that, you are free to roam the city at your leisure. Just be back at the busses at six in the evening. Any questions?”

  Karina raised her hand.

  “Yes, Karina.”

  “What if we don’t finish in time?”

  “Then you will not get the feedback you are all here for. This little endeavour won’t influence your final grades but is a means to prepare you for the academic work that is ahead of you once you graduate. Anyone who hands a paper in will be rewarded with a one-time homework pass, anyone who doesn’t, doesn’t get one. You should know all this, it’s written on the pamphlets you and your parents had to sign.”

  There were no more questions but rummaging for the pamphlets.

  Karina quietly turned towards Melody. “I don’t think I have that pamphlet. Must be at home…”

  The weapon sighed. “Five pages, handwritten, sources on an extra page in the back, you get to choose the topic. If you hand everything in before six, you get to skip homework once and get feedback on your work. If it’s really good, you might get some bonus. No eating or drinking in the library, except in the room specifically marked for that. No online sources, you can only use your phone for spellchecking and grammar.”

  “Oh, so nothing that we didn’t discuss in css?”

  “No, nothing we didn’t discuss.”

  “That’s a relief. So, what are you writing about?”

  “A summary of the effects of special retivity on telecommunication.” Melody had picked that topic. The weapon would have preferred something about art.