“Demons come in several forms, but each is defined by a different vice.”

“Hugh. Hugh Garston! Wake up, you lout!” Hugh Garston, hair a mess, beard needing a trim, stumbled out of bed, eyes bleary, and gruffly accepted a cup of coffee from the maidservant that had so rudely woke him. Of course, he wouldn’t have it any other way-- he rose at dawn every morning for a reason: it kept him focused. It meant he never wasted even one minute of daylight. Even on a summer day like today, he was up and at ‘em at six o’clock in the morning.

“Anything important on the agenda?” Hugh asked, turning away from his attendant as he got dressed.

“Your birthday, for one. I’d wish you a happy one, but it’d be a long bet.”

Hugh frowned sharply. “Damn. What is it, thirty-eight, thirty nine? I stopped counting a decade ago.”

“Forty, actually. You’re officially middle-aged.”

He cussed again. “Ridiculous. I’m not even level 15.”

“Most people don’t get much further then 10. I knew a very old man, lived a full life, who never made it past level 12.”

“Still.” He sighed. “I expected to be at least a couple levels higher than I am, when I was coming of age, imagining where I’d be in life in my middle years. Look at me now. My thirties behind me all of a sudden, and little to show for it.”

“You have two manservants and three maids, sir, noble title, and estates enough to secure generations of substantial wealth. Yes, you aren’t some kind of unique titan on the world stage, but you have a great deal. Can’t you just give up moping for a day and enjoy what you have?”

Hugh grunted noncommittally in response and went out the door, down the plushly carpeted stairs, and around to the dining room, calling out as he entered. “Grant! Serge!” The two manservants, Grant in his mid twenties, his skin tanned from the season’s sun and his shoulders broad, the other, Serge, in his fifties, balding, clothes as prim as could be, eyes taking everything in behind large spectacles.

“What level are you, Grant?” Hugh asked plainly.

Misreading the situation, Grant proudly puffed up and responded: “Level 15, sir. I just achieved my most recent level a few months back. I received for my efforts, which I’m quite happy with.”

Hugh’s eyes were dark as the rocky cliffs sailors crashed to their deaths against. “And how old are you, precisely?”

“Twenty-four, sir.”

Hugh went to sit down, hands shaking.

“Are you alright, sir?” Grant asked. “Did something I say upset you?”

“Get out.” He whispered hoarsely.

Grant exited the room swiftly, confusion written on his face.

“How does it feel to get old, Serge?” Hugh asked the quiet second manservant.

“Old, sir? I wouldn’t consider myself properly old for a few more years.”

“Of course, of course.” Hugh said, waving his hand in a kind of paper-thin amiability. “But you’re not in your prime anymore. You haven’t been in years. What was it like, waking up and realizing you passed your peak? That you wouldn’t level any more? That you’d hit the top of your abilities?”

“I haven’t leveled in years, it’s true. I might not be in my physical prime anymore, but I’m hardly ancient. I believe a reminder of your age is hitting you quite hard, sir, but I would remind you, humbly, that I have a good friend, who is a decade older than I, old enough to be your father, who to this day happily travels all around, telling and learning all kinds of tales. He leveled as recently as a year ago. He has not given up on himself, and that makes all the difference. My mother, bless her soul, passed away just a handful of years ago, at eighty-one, if you’d forgive my courtesy of mentioning a woman’s age. She was level nineteen, and hadn’t leveled in five years, maybe more. She was happy until her final breath. She did not give up on life just because time continued to march on.” His voice caught slightly, and Hugh’s eyes softened.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t get to meet her, Serge. I’m sure she was a wonderful woman.”

Serge froze, staring at him, mouth open, eyes tearing.

“Serge? What happened? Are you okay?” Hugh asked urgently, rising from his seat just as a globule of spit hit him in the face.

“You cist of pus! You heinous idiot!” Serge howled, stepping away, rage filling him. “You DID meet her! Every year, at the Unison Gala! You careless, rich fool! I quit! I can’t work under a roof with someone who can’t even bother to remember a person so kind!” Serge vanished.

Hugh, instead of guilty or moved to anger, simply picked up a napkin and wiped away the spittle. Eyes seeming blank, he stared at the napkin for some time, then called a bamboozled Grant back in, and said, softly, but firmly: “It seems I’ve made a fool of myself and acted like a brat of a man-child. I’m very sorry for my treatment of you. Serge, ever honest, has tendered his resignation. Have a month’s wages added on to his unpaid earnings, and have the accountant pay it all out to him swiftly. I’ll write a good reference for him, as he deserves. For that matter, take the morning shift off. I can tend to myself for half a day.”

Grant nodded and left briskly. Gazing at his hands for a few drawn out moments, his mind drifted again, his focus anchorless. “Do you ever wake up one day and feel like you don’t recognize yourself at all?” He said, to the empty room.