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“Can you understand me now?” Dewey asked.
“Yes!” Paige exclaimed, a grin crossing her lips. She lifted the purple crystal in her hand and eyed it. “Amazing.”
“Sorry about before,” Dewey said. “I thought you could understand me.”
“No, sorry. What language was that?”
“Drakken,” Dewey answered.
“Oh, right. I’ve never even heard of it.”
“It won’t matter anymore,” Ronnie chimed in. “You can now understand magical languages universally.”
Paige’s jaw dropped again, and she flicked her gaze to the pendant. “Because of this?”
“Yes. I have one, and most librarians use them to make things easier.”
“It certainly will be convenient. Gosh, I wish this worked on real languages. High school Spanish would have been a breeze.”
Ronnie chuckled. “That’s not the only thing around here that would have helped. Why don’t we get started with the basic tour, and then I’ll leave you to explore with Dewey.”
Paige side-eyed the little dragon, her nose wrinkling as she offered a half-hearted smile. She studied his small stature again before returning her attention to Ronnie who wandered to the bookshelves lining the nearby wall.
“Here is your reference section. You’ll find information on many, many things here from artifact descriptions to cultural information for the various supernatural societies that exist. Occasionally, you will need to add passages to these or update information.”
Paige nodded as she adjusted her glasses again and stared at the books. “By hand?”
“Pardon?” Ronnie inquired as she led her past the hundreds of books on the shelves.
“Do I add information by hand? Just write it in?”
“Oh, no,” Ronnie answered with a wave of her hand. “That’s where this little device comes in.”
She approached an odd-looking computer. Flashy brass encased it, and a keyboard sat in front of a screen that looked like a relic from the 1980s.
“This is the BookTron,” Ronnie said.
She snapped on the monitor. A green glow filled the area as it bloomed to life.
“You can access any book on the shelf,” Dewey explained, flitting over to the desk and hovering above it as he clacked around on the keyboard. “Here is the book that references the Crystal of Understanding.”
He entered the term into a search bar and slapped the enter key. A series of results populated the screen. Dewey tapped at the arrow keys before using enter to select one. A passage glowed in green.
He motioned to the top. “Here you can select to read, edit, delete–though you probably shouldn’t do that unless it’s really, really necessary which hardly ever happens. And the book will update for you.”
Paige stared at the machine for a moment. “So, if I type it on here, it will change the book physically there?” She pointed a finger toward the bookcase.
“Right,” Dewey said. “I’m pretty good with the BookTron, so I can help with the updates, as needed.”
“Great, thanks,” Paige said, inching her glasses upward.
“This is a great place to start research, but you’ll often find you need to piece things together bit by bit from multiple sources to make any progress,” Dewey added.
Paige nodded as Ronnie led them from the BookTron to another large station. The small monitor connected to another keyboard.
“This is the Locartifact. If you ever need to find anything in the warehouse, you can check for its location here.”
Paige studied it for a moment. “Why would I need to locate an artifact? Aren’t they stored here for the world’s protection?”
