"Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious."

Stephen Hawking

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Walking away from Nero, Medea did her best to keep her stride even and smooth. Her face was schooled into an impassive frown and though her eyes were still red, they no longer glistened with tears. As she walked her stride became stronger and more firm as she calmed her emotions. Her impassive frown dissolved into a blank facade.

Sophia did not regret turning Augustus down all those years ago, he just hadn't been what she was looking for in a partner. He still wasn't, to be honest. Sophia Bartholomew was a woman who knew what she wanted and wouldn't settle for anything but the best. Her mother had raised her to love life with a passion, and she looked for that same passion in a partner.

Augustus had a lot of qualities, both good and bad, but he was not passionate in the least. He was calm, intelligent and could come up the most ridiculous plans at the drop of a hat and then make them work. But Gus was also arrogant when it came to that intelligence, not an arrogance that thought it was better than others but one that saw no point in other people's opinions about himself. He was also almost entirely unempathetic and sadistic. The closest he got to empathy with people he didn't care for was to yawn when they did. Apart from his sisters and herself, he showed a practically psychopathic disregard for others, often finding joy in their suffering.

At least he used to, back when he had felt some passion, small though it must have been.

His father's death had changed things. Gone was the teen who had an insatiable lust for learning and in its place was a robot, one she hardly recognized today. It hadn't been instantaneous, and it was only looking back that Medea saw the gradual change. Initially, things had seemed to go as well as they could have, Gus had processed his grief in as close to a healthy way that Sophia thought possible. He had been sad, cried a bit and made sure to be there for his distraught sisters. Then, with a calm logic that was frightening, he accepted that his father, the person he was closest to, would never be coming back.

Then he set about addressing all the problems he would face in the wake of this change. He dropped out of high school right away and took his equivalency exam to get his diploma. He got full marks and made it look so easy that Sophia often wondered what had been the point in him staying in high school in the first place. He then came to her, despite having been rejected the last time they met, and asked if she knew of any job openings that didn't require a degree. Those were almost extinct in the modern world, where almost everybody had a degree, but he had been lucky that one of the school janitors had decided to go into retirement for a few decades and had left a position open at the school.

Gus returned to the school not two weeks after he left, only two and a half after his father died, but as a janitor rather than a student. Within two months he had taken up a second job working as a laborer in construction. She had once asked him why he had taken two positions when he could have supported his sisters and himself with just one five hours a day job and gone to university on the side. Nero had said that he didn't want to sell his father's house, the only thing he had to remember him by, and he was trying to save money for when his sisters went to their own higher education. He fully intended to go to university later himself, once they had become self-sufficient.

In many ways, Gus had become a better person, at least in the eyes of society, with the death of his father. He worked hard to support his family, he never gave up on going to get his own degree, he still kept reading anything that caught his attention, and the casual arrogance that he once held was gone. Early on Sophia had been shocked to find him actually talking to his co-workers rather than disregarding them entirely. His psychopathic tendencies had almost wholly disappeared, replace with friendliness and charm.

And it was killing him.

It was a gradual thing, almost unnoticeable to all but those who spent the most time with him, but it was there. He smiled and chatted to those around him but the smile never reached his eyes, he never laughed, and when he was left alone he would hunch over and sigh. More and more he took to addressing situations with a dispassionate and uncaring shrug of the shoulders. Augustus's sisters had told her more than once about finding him with a book in his hands just staring into space with a blank look on his face. He still asserted that he would go to university one day, but he no longer talked about it with any desire, it was merely another step on the road.

This accident reaffirmed Medea's view that something was definitely wrong with her friend. It wasn't that he had saved her life at the risk of his own. She knew herself well enough to know she would have done the same if the opportunity had been there. She had been shaken up by it but not to the point she couldn't recover. What really made her sad, angry, worried, and a host of all other emotions was Augustus' casual acceptance of everything.

He didn't care.

Whether he was in the hospital or at work, healthy or paralyzed, he gave an uncaring shrug. So long as his sisters were alright and getting the education they deserved so they could do what they want in the future, he did not care. He wasn't suicidal, at least Medea didn't think he was, he was too practical and logical to take his own life. At this point, Medea didn't think he could even muster up the desire to do so. He wasn't living a bad life, and he had centuries ahead of him. The problem, Medea believed, is that he had nothing to live for, nothing to excite him. Once his sister did graduate from university, and he no longer had to take care of them, then what? He no longer displayed the passion for learning he once had, he read more out of habit than curiosity.

Sophia was worried that once his sisters had left the house to live their own lives, he would waste away. Like his father before him, he would eat, drink and do all that was necessary to stay alive and he would die anyway. Life just wouldn't interest him enough at that point to bother with the effort of keeping his heart pumping. Like so many before him, Gus would see the centuries he had left as too much a bother and become another of those known as the Stricken, those who died because long lives are not always a blessing.

Sophia did not want that, she did not want her first and best friend to waste away to death. So far, however, nothing she had tried worked to spark anything close to desire in her friend. She lent him books to try and re-spark his interest in learning, she wanted to introduce him to some other women, hoping that a lover might do the trick but he had smiled that fake smile, made some small talk and excused himself. She had once tried to get him try Gods' Nature once her uncle had released it but he had instead got his sisters interested in it, insisting he didn't have time to play.

It was hard to help somebody when they didn't think they needed help.

Sophia had thought about asking him out herself, she knew he still held slight feelings of romantic interest in her. She would have done so if she thought it would work, even if he wasn't what she had in mind for a romantic partner. The problem was that for all his dispassion, his lack of empathy, and general disinterest when it came to the human race, Augustus knew people. He knew how people worked, how to manipulate them, and what they desired. He would see through her in an instant, and she couldn't imagine the consequences to their relationship if that happened.

Now though, now she finally had some hope. It was a little thing, and she would have to spend some time verifying it, but Medea was feeling optimistic after meeting Nero.

He finally seemed interested in something. He wasn't learning about magic or Gods' Nature because it would be useful to him later in life, in fact, every minute he spent learning about lore was a minute he neglected to learn about real life topics. He was learning about them because he was curious. While she had briefly been teaching him in that bookstore, his eyes had been more focused and determined than she had seen them in years. This accident could be the chance she had been waiting for, the opportunity to nurture in him an ambition that went beyond his sisters. It would take some effort, and she would need to be careful not to be obvious lest he notice her plan, but by the time Augustus was released from the hospital Medea hoped that he would have recaptured some of his 'Joy de Vivre' that he had lost.

In a way, Medea could understand her friend's interest. When she had started playing Gods' Nature, almost as soon as it came out, she had been voracious in her appetite for knowledge about the world. Despite being the creator's niece, she knew exactly as much as the next person about the game, so she sought to rectify that with knowledge of the game itself. She had fallen in love with the lore, with magic and had ended up deleting her first character so she could become a Sage. She was far behind others when it came to levels, but she doubted anybody else on the planet knew as much about this world than she did. As soon as she was done with her current quest, she would leave to increase her level. Not because she was afraid of falling behind but because there were places that held the knowledge she wanted that were too difficult to get to at low level.

Before she did that, Medea would try and instill in her friend the same ambition, to go out and see the world.

But first, she had to complete this quest.

Her face was still blank as she walked into the mage's association. Nero would recognize it as where he came to get the stuffed snake animated. As Medea walked in she was assaulted by the sounds of hundreds of people talking, arguing, practicing magic in one of the practice rooms or fiddling with a variety of instruments. To the right of the building, she saw a young man in robes chasing pink chicken with a crocodile head. To the left, she spotted three people sitting at a table drinking tea on the ceiling.

A typical day at any mage association.

As Medea walked to the reception desk, she drew more than one appreciative glance, both because of her beauty and her rather flattering dress. She paid them no mind as she was used to such glances. The receptionist, a young mage with his nose buried in a book, didn't notice her right away, so she cleared her through to grab his attention.

"Can I help you." His eyes lit up at seeing her, but she didn't care.

"Tell Morin that Medea is here." It wasn't said softly so more than a few people heard what was unmistakably the order in her voice.

"I can send someone for the professor, but he usually has a class around this time, you might have to wait. Do you have an appointment?" The receptionist gave a signal to one of the other mages to go tell Morin of his guest.

"No." Medea just said and made no move from her position in front of the desk as if she was going to wait for the teacher right there.

"Ah," feeling a little out of sorts at the odd behavior of the woman in front of him, the receptionist tried a different tact. "If you want you could take a seat and give you some refreshments or we could schedule an appointment tomorrow?"

"He'll see me now." It wasn't an order, just a statement. Usually, Medea was not this rude, but she had a part to play, a facade to keep up, for this quest to be successful.

Sure enough, almost as if her words were prophetic, hurried footsteps were rushing towards them. An older gentleman rushed out from the back of the building, disheveled and breathing hard.

"Lady Medea," He gasped for breath from his short run. "We were not told you had arrived. We would have met you at the gate if we had." More than one confused and surprised look was sent towards the old man. Morin was a figure of some renown, a teacher of many of the mages here and had been invited to the castle to meet the king on more than few occasions. To see a mage with a level over three hundred so desperate to please this woman was a shock to many.

"No matter," Medea waved off the old man's words and paid no attention to the surprised, and curious looks sent her way. "I had things to do before coming here. I assume that everything is prepared?"

"Yes Ma'am!" The old man's head bobbed up and down quickly in answer, looking like a chicken pecking for grain. "No expense spared, you'll have the most exquisite quarters while you are here and we have set aside a personal lab for your use."

"Good," Medea nodded as if such difference was expected. "I assume the mornings are okay then? I have things to do in the afternoon, and I prefer to work on my experiments in the evenings."

"No problem, no problem. I'm sure the Arch-Mage will set things up accordingly. If you could please follow me, I'll take you to her now, and we can get everything all hammered out." There was a collective intake of breath from the room. The Arch-Mage was the idol of more than a few people here, despite never seeing her first hand you would have to be blind, deaf and stupid not to know of her. She was easily one of the strongest mages known and was famous for having an odd temper. To meet her could be considered luck, either good or bad, as not even the monarchs of the Keep or Selwe could talk to her unless she was in the mood to meet them. Would you anger somebody who was known to drop meteors on people who annoyed her?

Despite that Medea was not worried in the least. Right now she was a rare commodity, somebody who the Arch-Mage had begged to meet and teach at the association. She was being paid more than most players made in a year for a month of teaching. If Nero knew that every hour he spent learning personally from her was worth hundreds of thousands of gold coins, Medea wondered what kind of face he would make.

It wasn't even that this was an exaggeration, she hadn't been lying when she said that nobody in the world knew more about the lore and magic than she did. Right now Medea was too low level to actually use most of what she knew, Morin alone could kill her with an errant sneeze let alone the Arch-Mage, but they wouldn't risk doing that. They knew how valuable somebody with a knowledge stat of over a thousand was.