Mephisto's Twilight

[Wilhelm Bosche]

This is a topic relevant to current and future posts by both Wilhelm and Visla. It was originally published on Althanas several years ago as Goodbye, Farewell, Amen. I am re-posting it with some minor edits as a reference. The initial post is a preface included in the document I found the story

The principle character, Arius Mephisto, is a Eudaemonian. The Eudaemonians are a society of scientists, engineers, and philosophers which originated in 22nd century Earth and formed their own state in a pocket dimension known as Beta Space. The Earth itself (Alpha Space) was ravaged by war and continued to deteriorate after the exodus of the Eudaemonians. They themselves, however, flourished greatly in their new city of Architelos. Two of their leading scientists, Reiter Mephisto and Hanaka Otani bore a child, Arius, who was selected on the 50th anniversary of the Exodus to return to Alpha space and bring the enlightenment of Eudaemonia to the troubled people.

Arius met harsh trials on Earth that changed him from the idealistic and innocent young man he had arrived as. After nearly a year of nothing but guilt, pain, and loss, he saves a woman named Linnea Valkyrie from the deadly force of Eudaemonian justice. Having defied the will of his leader, Director Bosche (not Nijin Bosche Otani, Bosche is a fairly common Eudaemonian surname), Arius and Linnea flee through the damaged dimensional portal that links Architelos with Earth. They find themselves, along with a few other refugees from Eudaemonia, in a world more primitive than Earth, Althanas. They called it, appropriately, Gamma Space.

During his time in Gamma Space, Arius becomes cynical about the ideals of his people and fosters and strong relationship with Linnea. Eventually, seeing that the two may not have much time together, Arius proposes to Linnea and swears that the two will not be married until they can do so in peace in Architelos’ square. The trials for the two do not end as they are eventually captured and nearly executed by the Eudaemonians. After a long struggle, they find themselves both gravely injured in the small university town of Uiria in Gamma Space. Together, they see their dreams of a peaceful Eudaemonia tumble into oblivion as the city of Architelos falls to ruins and collapses into the sea along with most of its people. Arius refuses to fight any longer and marries Linnea shortly thereafter. However, survivors from Architelos, now embroiled in a bitter civil war, interrupt their wedding and drag the couple into one final battle.

It is thirty years after that battle (two years before the events in current threads) and Arius and Linnea seem to have finally been left to their peaceful lives. They live in a small house on the outskirts of the town of Uiria and have two children, Belial and Elanore.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

“This chamber here is then used for—“

A small wooden clock on the wall chimed with three melodic bells and interrupted the man. He smiled and cut his explanation short, swiftly snapping a book in his right hand closed and placing the chalk in his left in his pocket. There was always a dreadful shortage of chalk and this professor would not tolerate being deprived.

“Our time is up for today.”

Sighs of disappointment were heard from a few pupils but most did as students usually do at the end of classes. They snatched up their things and headed straight for the door. The teacher shook his head bemusedly at both groups.

“Try to catch up on the reading I know you all are neglecting. You never know when I might quiz you.”

More accurately, they knew he might never quiz them. Having made that same threat at the end of every class, he had yet to test them at all on anything but the words that came out of his mouth. He thought it only fair and perhaps with a bit of ego considered himself to be more important than the text, even if it was his book.

“Professor Mephisto.” A woman of about twenty stepped up to the lectern at the head of the class where her teacher was standing, collecting his notes. He looked up at her and tilted his head a bit, signaling for her to continue. “Does the place where all this knowledge comes from really exist? I mean, I don’t doubt you. It’s just…” She paused and looked down at the comfortable sandals she wore, rubbing them against one another nervously. “You know people tell a lot of stories to explain things. It’s like in my philosophy class. Plato would tell myths so his points would be understood.”

Mephisto huffed and shoved his book and papers into the satchel slung over his shoulder. He brushed off the all too traditional tweed jacket he wore and looked back at his pupil. “They are no myths, I assure you. Though the stories I tell you all may be fantastic in nature, they are as grounded in reality as…” He laughed to himself. “…as dragons.”

The girl smirked too, though she didn’t quite get his joke. Unlike her professor, she was raised here, where dragons were perfectly reasonable as an example of something fantastic that exists, and that was precisely what he found so amusing.

“So, our next test is only one class away?” she continued anxiously.

“Yes, Miss Carmichael” he answered, beginning to head toward the door. Scarcely a class had gone by where he had not been questioned about one thing or another by this student. He didn’t find it disagreeable so much as a bit repetitive, and he had found the best way of dealing with it was simply to start walking until he was going sufficiently far from where she needed to be next.

“Well, I don’t quite understand the sections on dimensional flux,” she added as they both walked out from the large oaken lecture hall smelling of chalk and dust into a hallway bustling with the changing of classes. As they walked, their shoes made the same memorable rhythm as always, her quick clapping sandal steps punctuated by the metronomic clicking of her professor’s long strides in his dress loafers.

“No one understands that section, so you needn’t worry about it,” he replied dismissively.

“How can you say that? You’re the teacher,” she shouted, half amused and half repulsed by her instructor’s apathy toward her learning.

“The best scientists of Architelos spent their whole lives devoted to it, having been born with a talent solely focused on that endeavor. And they, these pillars of brilliance, understood flux only well enough to build the machine and be done with it. Your friend Plato may believe that striving for knowledge, even fruitlessly, is worthwhile, but I do not.” His tone at this point was nearly as matter-of-fact as when he lectured, as he found himself increasingly frustrated.

“So you don’t think I can handle it?” she said sheepishly.

He sighed, “Very well. Come see me at my next set of office hours and I’ll try to explain it to you.”

“Professor, your next set is after the test.”

“Then come to my damned house! If you’re so possessed by this quest for knowledge, I’m sure there’s nothing that will stop you, though I warn you my wife has a fiendish talent for swordsmanship and very much likes to practice on guests with whom she is not acquainted.”

The young Miss Carmichael gulped. “Well then I’ll see you tonight, Arius,” she laughed and waved as she ran across the quad toward her dormitory.

Arius Mephisto shook his head. He would never quite get that girl. Either she had some sort of inexplicable crush on him or she just had a talent for being obnoxious. Regardless of which it happened to be, he knew he wasn’t very fond of her.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

The sword came rushing toward Linnea’s temple, its bearer’s arms spurring it on with a terrible force. Swinging herself back, she felt the rush of air that trailed behind the brutal but clumsy strike. Her own blade came forward swiftly and precisely and stationed itself a mere centimeter from the throat of her opponent.

“You are beaten,” she stated calmly. It had all become a matter of routine.

She had just begun to relax her sword arm when a grin came across her foe’s face and she found her shimmering blue longsword knocked aside by the blunt force of a wooden practice sword which within instants was positioned at her own throat. Her eyes narrowed to a glare that was normally reserved only for her husband’s most vile and arrogant statements.

“Now you are beaten, Klingelehrer,” her enemy scoffed.

The maneuver had displaced her blade but not disarmed her. For a moment she simply glared at the prideful face looking back at her and then all at once she sprung into action. Her weapon shone a bright white and swung with an unnatural speed toward the offending piece of wood. She sliced cleanly through it, leaving only the hilt smoldering and blackened at the end. The shaft fell harmlessly to the ground with a clunk and Linnea exhaled, her sword fading back to a placid blue.

“Do not toy with me, boy. A real enemy would not have given you a chance to pull your little trick. Your style is full of impulse and vanity and like impure steel it is easily shattered,” she lectured.

Her pupil looked down in shame and collected the piece of his sword that had fallen to the ground, walking sorrowfully back to the lines where his fellow students stood. They were aligned in a small dusty clearing a few yards from a handsome little house. There was little more scenery except for the trees which lay off on one horizon and the town on the other. The silhouette of that town was rimmed by the orange glow of the setting sun, and noting this, Linnea spoke once more.

“That is enough for today. For next class, remember to bring your blades and leave your pride at home. That goes for all of you. Brendon’s little display was not an individual act. It is an example of the kind of thinking I see in many of you. Unless you wish me to shame you all in the same manner, you will learn from his mistake.”

Looking back toward the setting sun, she saw another shadow on the western horizon. Tall and gaunt, carrying a small bag at his side, her husband walked the old brick path from the university. She happily set her sword aside and went to meet him
The two met at a small stone archway in front of the little house they shared. It was humble, but not without charm. Fashioned mostly from the same red brick that laid out the path extending westward to the university, it had an archaic elegance that even Arius could appreciate. Linnea and he had built it together years ago, so long ago in fact that it no longer appeared as a construct of man but rather like a part of the landscape, as natural of a patch of grass or an old weather-smoothed stone.

The couple embraced and the tired professor stepped in front of his wife and opened the door for her as he had every day since they lived there. She stepped into the little foyer and he followed shortly behind. There was a wall a few feet in front of them with a mirror and above it was a photograph, not very large, but even with his somewhat waning eyesight, it was still clear to Arius. The image was a reflection, just like that on the mirror. It was taken when they first finished the house on the day after their wedding. Arius stood just where he did now, dressed in a fine suit, beaming proudly with Linnea at his side. She too was just in the place where she had been that day, formerly cloaked in a dress of the purest white.

The ravages of time were clear. Arius’ eyes were not as sharp as they were that day, nor were his features. His chin that was once noble and pronounced now sunk somewhat into his neck. His cheeks had always been somewhat hollow, but they seemed even more cavernous as he looked at them in the reflection. His hair was thinner and greyer, no longer falling elegantly to either side of his face, it comprised a frosty puff that crowned his head. The frame of his body had never been particularly strong so it had little to lose. All the same, it was probably more fragile under his pale skin.

Linnea was not spared the indignity of time’s march any more than her husband, though she seemed to bear it more delicately. Her smile was no longer strong and bright, it had been reduced to a warm maternal grin. The dark locks that fell freely to her waist under the white veil were now closer to the color of her dress than their original pigment. Now silvered, they were bound in a silken bow and pulled back out of her way. Her chest was no longer so firm, as Arius was sure to point out if she ever dared mock his own deterioration. Her limbs were just as strong and precise at striking him as they had been so long ago, though it would not appear so to an onlooker.

The one thing that hadn’t changed was the happiness captured in the photo. Though a thousand other things had dulled or weakened as the pair aged, the physical decay, verbal barbs, and confrontational glares could never obscure the love that still shone just as brightly as ever in their hearts.

All these things were in the forefront of Arius’ mind as he glanced at the mirror and then turned to kiss his wife on the cheek before continuing into the den and having a seat in a comfortable black leather easy chair.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

“That damned girl bothered me again today,” he said with a sigh as he relaxed and looked across the room. It was all done in rich walnut wood, dark but still warm and inviting with its intricate grain patterns stretching across the floor and walls. They were interrupted only by silver-framed paintings. The bright reflective silver clashed horribly with the wood; gold would have been far more suitable, but Arius’ disdain for the appearance of the metal had not dulled. Linnea had suggested a compromise of bronze or brass, but Arius had stood firm that if silver was good enough for the ring that expressed their love, it was good enough for their picture frames.

The images themselves were mildly stylized paintings of various scenes in the couple’s life. The styles themselves varied, the product of a number of different artists. The largest hung over the fireplace. It had a stark rushed nature to it, crafted by Arius’ own hand. It depicted he and his wife huddled together on the roof of his old headquarters painted all in greys and blues with a horrifying streak of red straight down the middle trailing from the man’s hand.

Linnea stepped over near to it and placed a precisely split pine log into the iron grate in the fireplace. “Is that so? What has she done this time?” She took a few scraps of paper that sat in a bin on the mantle. Rejected sketches of hers or Arius’, old notes from research papers, various kinds of kindling all tossed into the brick alcove and sparked alight by a small flintbox.

“You’ll get to find out for yourself soon enough. She’s coming over to learn about dimensional flux,” he grumbled and picked up a glass off a small table beside his chair, handing it over toward his wife. “And if we’re going to have company of that sort, I think it’s cause enough to break out some of the spirits I have stored in the cellar.”

Linnea grinned and snatched the glass from his hand. “For celebration or to dull your senses?”

“Why not a little bit of both? Don’t deny an old man a little bit of comfort during trying times.”

She walked away into the kitchen. When she returned the held the glass filled with hot tea wrapped in a small hand towel. The smell was soothing, especially considering Arius’ request. It smelled of rum and vanilla and he smiled as she handed it to him.

“I suppose that’ll do.”
As Arius sipped his tea and watched the fire flicker and grow, Linnea walked back into the foyer and through the other door there. It lead to a red carpeted stairwell with unlit candles along the side. It was getting darker outside and the stairs were difficult to see already. She walked up slowly, lighting the candles as she went until she reached the hallway at the top. A large wooden door just in front of her already sat open with the master bedroom laid out on the other side. Hand-made comforters were laid out across the bed where she began laying her clothes as she took them off.

Once her training outfit was all set down on the bed, she opened the silver-handled doors of the armoire and picked out a black silk dress with a fine lace trim. Humming as she put it on, she looked over at the bedside table where a few pieces of Arius’ work were still laid out. Half-finished gadgets were dispersed throughout the house despite her constant insistence that he keep them in the basement. Once she was fully dressed, she snatched them up, walked over to the window and thought.

“I’d throw them right out, but then he’d just have them sitting around for twice as long while he fixed the damage,” she mused to herself. The sun had already fallen so close to the horizon that shadows stretched out almost forever. The only light was a soft halo of red along the tops of the buildings and trees in the distance. Another thing caught her eye, a figure walking down the path. It was too far off to recognize for certain in the night’s shadow, but she thought it was likely Elanore. “Who else would walk alone to our house at this time of day.”

She hurried back down the stairs and shouted into the den to Arius, “Dear, our daughter is here.”

“Lovely, more company,” Arius said and pulled himself to his feet, setting the nearly empty glass of tea that was now merely lukewarm on the small table and meeting his wife at the door.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

The two composed themselves into eager smiles and awaited the knock that came a few moments later. Linnea reached forward and opened the door to reveal the visitor. The woman was indeed their daughter, Elanore. Twenty-two, short, cute, with her father’s sharp features and her mother’s calm smile and wit in equal amount to either of them. She was wearing a simple black shirt and knee-length skirt that matched well with her raven hair and black rimmed glasses. The glasses perched high on her somewhat long nose, a trait she got from her mother. They made her look erudite, a trait she didn’t need much help exemplifying. Most of her life had been spent studying and as such it wasn’t surprising that she would arrive alone.

Arius had never really understood her even when they lived together, much less now when she visited so rarely. He smiled and stepped back, allowing her in as her mother reached down and gave her a warm hug.
“It’s been a while, Elanore,” Arius smiled and placed a hand gently on his daughter’s shoulder.

“It has,” she said quietly and started to walk inside, politely shrugging off his hand and heading with Linnea toward the den. “I’ve been really busy.”

Things between them weren’t hostile, but they weren’t warm either. Busy was Elanore’s watchword. When she was a young child she was always playing this or that by herself or asking Linnea to teach her new things. As a schoolgirl she fell completely into studies. Her coursework was barely enough to hold her attention for an hour a day. It wasn’t that but her own little projects that ended up consuming most of her life. She had grown up speaking Eudaemonian and learned German from her mother at a young age, but that wasn’t enough. She was partially fluent in at least a dozen languages from both this world and Old Earth. It was a passion her father could never share. He stood firmly by his translator and he said that if he ever needed to speak a new language he would build something to solve the problem. She didn’t really disdain technology so much as she simply wasn’t interested.

There was very little she had in common with her father, but at the same time they were very much the same person. Beyond preoccupations and circumstances, they were truly father and daughter. Though she rarely said much, when she did it showed the razor wit her father spent most of his time sharpening. She ultimately valued the same things he did, progress and stability. They just took different paths to that end. On paths that were parallel but distant, they looked at each other from afar and that was how it always seemed to be.

As Elanore settled into a chair across from Arius, Linnea went to the kitchen and began the preparations for the swift approaching dinner.

“How many people are going to be here for dinner, dear?” she called in to her husband.

“Well, the three of us, that girl from my class I imagine, and shouldn’t Belial be home by now?” he replied.

“It is getting rather late but you know how he lingers in town sometimes,” she mused. “I suppose I’ll go ahead and fix enough for five just in case. I would rather have too much than leave him starving whenever he gets in.”

Elanore smiled a bit at the mention of her brother. Though they had even less in common than she and her father did, they always got along well. They were both rather reserved people and so they shared that one thing: that they shared nothing at all with others. Belial was certainly the less severe of the two. He was outwardly social with a number of friends and had public interests in gadgetry. The people in the town knew and liked him, and yet really they didn’t know a thing about him. Privately, he yearned for something more than was provided for in the peaceful surroundings ensured by his father. Arius had fought long and hard to settle down, but Belial had been given all this as a birthright and to a degree he resented it. He wanted a struggle, something to live for and something to fight for. More than something, it seemed he wanted someone.

Every day of his life he saw his mother and father together happily and wondered what the odds of such a match really were. A Eudaemonian and a Rhinelander settling down in a world that was home to neither and yet it all seemed so natural. It seemed like he would never find such happiness. This is where he and his sister ultimately differed. She had inherited her father’s passion for self improvement. He had inherited his need for companionship and it seemed a very dubious legacy.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

“How is he doing these days? When I last saw him he was just an angsty little teen dissatisfied with the small town life,” the young woman inquired.

“Heh, now he’s an angsty man dissatisfied with the small town life. Or at least that’s what he tells me. I can’t help but still see him as a boy,” Arius joked.

“That’s rather cruel, father. He’s… eighteen by now isn’t he?”

“And two months, but that doesn’t mean he’s a man.”

“Give Belial a break, Arius. You weren’t a man even when I married you. Sometimes I still wonder…” Linnea interjected from the other room.

Elanore’s grin blossomed into a full smile. She always enjoyed hearing her mother land a firm hit on Arius’ ego. Before she got a chance to add insult to the injury just delivered by Linnea, a knock came at the door.

“I’d get that, but I guess I’m just not man enough,” Arius shrugged and leaned back in his chair.

Elanore pulled herself up from her seat and walked across the polished wood floor, her hard soled shoes clicking against its cold surface. She reached the door, turned the handle and opened it to find a young woman bearing a book and a grin. Her face was round and sweet, but with a definite hint of deviousness. Her dark brown hair fell past her bust, clearly visible in the black low v necked shirt she was wearing. There were a number of other details about her Elanore could have caught, but she had already judged the visitor.

“May I help you?” she said derisively to the uncouth girl.

Before the girl could say anything another form jumped out from behind her with a laugh and a smile.

“Sister!” Belial shouted.

Elanore simply rolled her eyes and shook her head. “And who is this that you’ve brought home?”

“Oh,” he stumbled a bit. “This is Andrea Carmichael. I ran into her in town after I finished fixing this guy’s generator. You wouldn’t believe what he was –“

“Why don’t you tell us about it over dinner,” Elanore interrupted, narrowly averting a very boring story for the time being. “It’s almost ready. Please, come in.”

Arius and Linnea peeked into the foyer from the den.

“Who was it dear—Oh! Belial. And who is this fine young lady you’ve brought with you?” Linnea smiled, looking over Andrea with a mother’s careful eye.

“Miss Carmichael,” Arius sneered. “What are you doing with my son?”

The five people stood in very close quarters in the foyer, the awkward scene reflecting in the mirror that had not so long ago shown the peaceful afternoon meeting of husband and wife. Elanore stepped back a bit to the stairs and look a seat, preferring to end her involvement in the affair right then and there.

“Well,” Andrea began with a pleased and impetuous tone. “As Lialy was about to explain to your daughter, we met in town after I finished the last of my classes for the day. I saw him leaving old man Pritchett’s house and recognized him.”

“She said she was headed here to meet with you about something, father,” Belial added, blushing a bit at how he was referred to. “She asked if I could go with her so she wouldn’t get lost.”

Arius crossed his arms. “Lost indeed,” he said as his eyes pierced straight through the girl’s mind. “Only Miss Carmichael could get lost on the single straight path from the university town to here.”

“Oh, Arius,” Linnea said as she laid a light but genuine slap on her husband’s back. “You know how dark it gets on the road at night. I think it was very noble of Belial to walk the girl here.”

Elanore grimaced as she folded her arms over her bent knees and hunched over on the steps. It was times like this when her way of life seemed most questionable. She’d never suffered these kinds of rebukes. From time to time she’d bring a research fellow or a foreign traveler home, but that was all part of her studies and despite her mother’s occasional prodding it would never amount to anything more.

A chime sounded in the distance like the ending bell of a boxing round and the combatants halted their advances for a moment.

“Let’s eat,” Linnea said with a smile.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

The table was laid out with a festive fall tablecloth Linnea had bought in town. She pulled the fine china dishes and silver utensils out of the maple cabinet across the room for the occasion. The dish itself was far from visually striking, piping hot noodles in a rich cream sauce with fresh baked sourdough bread in a basket and a bit of salad on each plate. What it lost in appearance it more than made up for in taste. If Arius had his way, he would eat nothing but pasta in white sauce from that moment till the day he died.

The seating around the oval table wasn’t arranged but arrived at naturally. Arius sat at one of the ends with his wife on his right and daughter on the left. Belial and Andrea sat close at the other end. The distance between everyone was really about even, but as Arius saw it there were clearly two groups, like a military tribunal convened against mutineers.

In Elanore’s mind, Arius and Linnea sat far on one side and Belial and Andrea at the other. Two couples at polar ends of the table with her alone in the middle. She shook her head and wondered where such thoughts came from. These things had never bothered her before.

To Belial and Andrea the rest of the table needn’t even exist. As far as the young acquaintances were concerned, it was a dinner for two that just happened to have a bit of an audience. Belial shot furtive grins at the young collegiate to his left as she inched her chair closer over the course of the meal and stretched her legs to the right with fair frequency.

Linnea just saw a dinner table, nothing more, and so she started the meal’s conversation.

“So, Andrea, was it? You were coming here to brush up a bit on your studies for my husband’s Field Dynamics course?”

“Well,” the girl said before eating another forkful of the creamy dish. She took a moment to savor it, then gulped it down and continued. “I was, but your son was nice enough to explain it all to me on the way. He convinced me I should still come, though, just to taste this delicious dinner of yours.”

“Ah,” Linnea said smiling and placing a hand to her chest humbly, “well anyone who appreciates my cooking is welcome any time.”

Arius bit fiercely into a piece of bread and dropped it like the broken body of an enemy onto his plate. His tribunal against the insurgents was experiencing a mutiny of its own. He decided to put an end to the pleasantries swiftly.

“So, he explained the whole of dimensional flux to you between here in town?” he said, beginning the interrogation. “My son is brilliant, but you aren’t that good a student.”

Linnea looked over at her husband, always the prosecutor and shook her head.

“Nah, dad,” Belial said, stepping into the line of fire for Andrea. “We stopped for some coffee for a while and I set her straight. She’s actually a real sharp learner.”

“Yeah,” Andrea beamed, “and your son is an excellent teacher. He has a way of putting things in perspective and making them manageable.”

“Ah, so he dumbed it down for you,” Arius said invectively.

Linnea’s eyes narrowed and she stomped her heel down onto Arius’ loafer-clad foot. He winced but continued.

“So tell me then, Miss Carmichael, what happens when the flux of a rift goes beyond Dirac’s point?”

The targeted student looked over at her tutor with an appreciative and undeniably flirty smirk before addressing the professor’s query. “The rift loses its singular connectivity and ceases to be a reliable portal.”

“Aha! Not qui—“ Arius began, thinking he caught her.

“It then becomes linked with a number of different temporal-spatial coordinates which is exponentially related to the amount by which the flux had exceeded Dirac’s constant.”

“Hmph,” Arius huffed dejectedly. “Lucky guess.”

Shortly after his disheartening defeat at the hands of his young pupil, Arius retired from the dinner table full but ultimately unsatisfied. He took another mug of tea from the black marble counter that his wife had kindly set out, anticipating he might end up leaving the table a bit agitated. Sipping it as he climbed the steps to the bedroom he felt his racing pulse slow a bit.

He stationed himself in front of a window that looked out over the entryway to the house. There was little to see in the flickering light of the exterior house light he had yet to repair. Putting the problem on his every growing mental list for the following week, he sat hunched over on a cushioned stool and stared out and up at the sea of stars. When he was young he looked at the stars in Architelos and knew they were nothing but show, when he looked at them as an Executor on Earth he thought he might one day set foot on the planets that spun round them in the far reaches of space. Now as he stared up at the third and final set of stars in the catalogue of his life, he thought nothing. He simply stared up at the glimmering points and sipped his tea.

[Wilhelm Bosche]

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, the calm was shattered by a sharp and distinctive twang. Arius turned to see Elanore standing in the doorway with a small metallic object in her hands. When she was a child the one project she had undertaken that her father had shared an appreciation for was her interest in the harpsichord. Arius thought its tinny sharp sound had a power and majesty unrivaled in the musical world. He used to sit in the basement and listen to her practice on the antique piece the family had received as thanks from one of Linnea’s prized students. It was one of a kind and its sound was perfect. One day when she was practicing, a string snapped, b flat. Then the next, and the next, until after a cacophony of snaps and twangs, there was not a string left in the majestic old instrument.

She cried for days, until her father walked into her room one day and placed the metal object that she now held in her hands. It lacked the wooden artistry or the true aesthetic of the antique, but in all other respects it was perfect. Created from recordings Arius had kept of his daughter’s playing, its keys produced the exact same perfect sound with the same degree of control and variability provided by the real thing. At first, her tears continued. She said it could never be the same, but once she pressed the key and heard the pure sound come out from the little box, she smiled the biggest smile of her life and grabbed Arius in a tight embrace.

That had been ten years ago now and the love that she felt then had been covered over by work and her father’s growing frustrations. For a moment, though, as she tapped out an exalting melody in the doorway, he felt like he was back in that room again seeing his daughter’s tears turn from sorrow to joy.

He sat and listened for an eternity twice as long as the silence that had preceded it, not saying a word, not having to. When it all came to an end, Elanore’s fingers tingled with exhaustion and she simply bowed and took up her instrument under her arm.

“Goodnight, father.”

[Wilhelm Bosche]

When silence returned to the room, Arius once again stared out the window, but this time not at stars. Two figures were stepping out from the house, his son was the first and he dreaded the one that would follow. It was of course the girl he mockingly called his star pupil. The two stood close under the archway unaware of the critical but increasingly myopic eyes that glared out from the darkened window above.

Arius scrambled to grab his glasses from his shirt pocket. Vainly, he rarely used them, but this was something he refused to miss. Before he could reach them however, he clutched at his chest, feeling a sudden tightening that seemed to tear right through him. He sat there, paralyzed for a moment, and then let out a sigh. The pain passed and he unfolded his spectacles and placed them on his nose.

“Aren’t they cute, Arius?” came a voice from behind him.

“As cute as a rabbit and a fox,” he said, without turning around. He knew the sound of his wife’s voice and he soon felt her hand on his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on the girl,” Linnea said diplomatically.

“She’s irreverent, unrefined. She dresses like a tramp and flirts with everything in sight, calls me Arius and my son Lialy. No one’s ever called him that except Elanore,” Arius insisted.

“My point exactly,” she replied, and nothing more.

On the path below, the newly minted young couple was standing awkwardly. Belial was motionless with Andrea a few inches away with her hand on her hip. Arius had no doubt she was saying something saucy and tasteless, but before he or his son could do anything, she stepped forward into Belial’s arms. At first it looked innocent enough, but even in the flickering yellow light the watchful parents could see the expression on their son’s face as the young temptress’ lips met with his. Arius’ hand began to shake, still grasping the half full mug of increasingly cold tea.

The embrace finally broke and Belial handed the girl a lantern and smiled, waving as she walked with it off along the path. The lantern he gave her glowed a beautiful Eudaemonian cerulean, like the shields and weapons of the old Order. To Arius this offense was greater than anything that had come before. That light had been the first thing Belial ever constructed. Arius had watched when it first came to life and the only thing brighter than its shimmering core was the fire of pride in his son’s eyes. Now it was handed off carelessly to a Gamma Spacer harlot.

The quaking of his hand reached a peak and the ceramic cup fell to the floor with a crash and a splatter. He shot to his feet, but before his objection could be given voice, his trembling hand clutched once more at his chest. Linnea grabbed him in shock as the tremors filled his whole body.

His fingertips grew cold and then numb. The iciness drifted inward until even his face and chest fell victim to the frigid grasp. His vision darkened, eaten away around the edges until only a small circle in the center remained. Pale white and without feeling, his legs gave way and he tumbled to the floor.

All he could see above him was his wife’s face, but Elanore was soon there as well and Belial, who had finally stepped in. With the very life draining from his lips, he struggled to speak.

“Thank you… to my daughter. Goodbye… to my wife. And to my son… congratulations.”

Then even the tiny circle of light where his beloved Linnea looked down was snuffed out. His eyes fell shut as tears filled his family’s.