White petals glowed in the dark, tiny particles of light floating in the air like stars in the blackened atrium. A timid finger reached out slowly, gently running a feathery touch across the silky petals.

He was tall, towering, muscled and powerful, but he had always preferred the finer, more delicate things. He’d always appreciated beauty and fragility, although he knew he couldn’t get too close to anything out of fear of damaging it. Often, he would think back to his past and wish that he’d never made that first diamond.

As he strolled through the atrium, he also noted how well preserved it was. Although the Stars Kingdom had been long abandoned for nearly two centuries, the completely machine operated indoor garden had kept running, kept protecting and raising the beautiful flowers that only grew in the dark. The Stars Kingdom was truly a marvel of ancient engineering—almost alien since the fall had rendered people’s opinions of technology negatively—such a shame that such magnificent technology was now regarded with such disdain by everyone.

Well, almost everyone.

In the corner of the room, cross-legged before a now defunct technological storage locker, was Savant. Ripping into the metal and carefully disassembling the circuit boards, the sorted pieces organized off to the side.

After roaming around, Armel returned to Savant, concern growing with each passing minute.

“Is this amount of darkness… normal?” Armal posed, sitting down to watch over Savant. The professor was hard focused on dismantling the machines, only responding after what felt like ages.

“No.” Savant leaned back, turning to look at Armel. His eyes fell to Armel’s hands, which twirled one of the glowing flowers between his fingers. “At least these flowers are giving us some light.”

“Yeah… I wonder what this is.” Armel raised the flower above his head, admiring the glowing pollen that drifted down.

“Lilium panaceam,” Savant stated curtly. “It’s a miracle drug that only grows in the dark. Of course… this much darkness is abnormal.”

“Oh?” Armel leaned forward, closing in on Savant. “How do you know so much about this?”

Savant averted his gaze as he continued taking apart the machine before him. “A long time ago, my entire family became… very sick. Myself included. Every day kept getting worse and worse for all of us, and my parents kept getting more and more contentious. I eventually ran away and found myself here. In the Stars Kingdom. I bypassed the atrium’s security—with relative ease, mind you—and found these flowers. As well as a giant storage filled with pills made from them, an incredibly advanced automatic farming system, and a guide on usage and regulations. The machines here were… incredible.”

“Is that why you brought us back here? For the machines?”

“In a way, yes. Anyways, I popped one of those pills in my mouth and I was almost instantly cured. I took some back to my family and healed them.”

Armel blinked. “Wait, so you just took a pill you knew nothing about?”

A smirk grew on Savant’s face. “Of course. Why do you think my hair is white?”

“What!?”

Savant burst out laughing, a rare sight for Armel to see from his normally uptight and egotistical companion. “I’m messing with you,” Savant chuckled. “But still…”

He turned around, sweeping his gaze over the countless rows of lilies. Sighing, Savant leaned his head back against the machine, exposing his throat. He laughed softly to himself, before looking back up at Armel.

“After I healed my family, I’d come back here all the time. I learned how to build machines like these, how to maintain them…” Savant sat up straight. “I even stuck some old inventions in a hidden compartment in the tallest spire! But those are old by now. Not my greatest of inventions either, so I don’t have much attachment to them. Although… the materials could be useful…”

“And… what would you consider your greatest work?” Armel said a little too smugly, raising his eyebrows up and down.

Savant rolled his eyes. “Shut up. I know what you want me to say.”

Armel smiled, looking down at his hands as he flexed them. Without the strength inhibiting cuffs on his wrists, he suddenly felt bare.

“I truly do think that they were your greatest invention,” Armel whispered. “They let me feel normal for once.”

Studying his face, Savant nodded curtly. “I see… I suppose I’ll have to make you some new ones. Better ones, this time.”

Perking up, Armel scooted even closer. He dared not try to pull Savant into a hug—especially because of how fragile the professor was—instead pressing his body against Savant’s. “Really? You’d do that for me?”

Savant leaned away, pressing his mouth into a thin line. “Of cou- ahem. Well, I can’t just have my assistant breaking my inventions now, can I?”

“Heh…” Back to normal, I see. “I suppose not.”

Savant opened his mouth to say more, but tensed at the sound of distant voices. Armel looked over at him, hearing them too.

Someone else was in the atrium.

The voices grew louder and clearer, several footsteps tapping lightly against the tiled floors.

“...beautiful flowers…” came a male voice. It was gentle and reverent, in awe of the lilies.

“Do we just need the petals?”

“Not quite, Ginger. These flowers are indeed incredible, but they lose all of their healing abilities and value if the head is separated from the stem. We need to carefully extract the entire plant down to the base of the roots like so-”

“Wait!” Savant suddenly shot to his feet, revealing himself to the strangers. 

Before him were three figures who all turned to stare at the sudden intrusion. They looked wary, unsure of what to say or do.

“Don’t… don’t pull the flowers out.” Savant’s voice softened. He walked towards them, their dimly lit faces becoming more and more clear as he drew near. His eyes widened as he locked eyes with the tallest one, the oni with crimson horns.

Pointing at him, Savant’s voice became drenched in ire. “You!” he spat.

Kintsugi let out a long, deep sigh. “Hello, Savant. Fancy seeing you here.”

“You left us to fend for ourselves! They were going to kill us!”

The oni shifted, squinting into the darkness at the other figure that approached. “Ah… Armel. I see you’re here as well.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Ah…” the other male, a scrawny young man that was barely taller than Savant with dark hair and a pointed cap rested on his hand, interjected. “You two know each other…?”

Sighing again, Kintsugi forced out a response through gritted teeth. “Yes… they were, ah… just former colleagues.”

Savant tilted his head to look over at Ignis, frowning. “So this is your new genius? The one you left me and Armel behind for?”

“Leave behind? I didn’t leave you guys behind! We weren’t friends!”

“Well not anymore, it seems,” Armel feigned dramatics. “I thought we were closer than this, Kintsugi. You guarded us so well all those years we were together, but apparently we’re “just colleagues” to you.”

Savant nodded, joining Armel in their verbal onslaught to the exasperated oni. “We got along, didn’t we? You bore your heart to us, we bore our hearts to you. You told us about your ancestral curse, about your family, and we made you whatever invention you asked for! It’s only fair you repay such kindness!”

Kintsugi cursed under his breath, turning around. “You guys figure out how to get the flowers. I’m going to wait outside.”

“Wait wait wait! Don’t go so soon.” Savant held up a hand, before turning and striding to the right wall of the atrium, the rest of them following. The wall was taken up mostly by a giant, metal door, with a glowing, cracked screen resting before it. An old, foreign language littered the screen. Savant tapped on the screen, his long, thin fingers typing quickly. The doors began to creak and groan, sliding open painstakingly slowly. He turned back to the others. “There are seeds and pills stored here.”

Ignis appeared at Savant’s side, eyes wide as he gazed into the giant warehouse. Hundreds—maybe even thousands—of luminescent, transparent, pale green cubes were stacked upon each other, ten high and several long, lining the giant room. The flowers had been turned into pills, pastes, oils, and seeds, and stored within.

“Incredible…” Ignis murmured. “What a beautiful storage room… it makes one wonder, how did the Stars Kingdom fall so quickly when its technology and healthcare was so advanced?”

Savant shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve heard stories that King Icarus was so greedy, he locked away all of the medicine here and decreed they could only be used on him and his family. But that was over a century ago. Not many mortals live that long, and most of the immortals don’t particularly care for mortal conflicts. I’ve also heard that Icarus himself became so powerful, he could only be struck down by the gods.”

Ignis reached a hand out to touch one of the transparent boxes, only for its side to flicker and dissipate. He quickly drew his hand back as if he’d touched something hot, staring in awe as the box’s wall flickered back on. He approached once more, this time committing to grabbing the small seed packet that was stored carefully inside.”

“Incredbile…” Ignis whispered. “If we can grow this flower, we’ll be able to cure anything.”

“Not everything.” A voice came from behind. Ignis and Savant whipped around to see a tall, young man with green skin and hair, carrying another man with red-and-blue two toned hair. Two Abyssrian looking people stood a little further behind, carrying a bag with an assortment of objects poking out. 

“My inventions!” Savant rushed forward. “You- you guys broke into my-”

He turned to look at the short man being carried on the shoulder of the towering man, his eyes widening in recognition and his face flushing.

“Oh- doc… Dr. Alde, it’s…” Savant stammered, face turning red. “It’s… you… I… and…”

“In the flesh.”

“How- how’d you get into my stash of inventions? And into the atrium?”

“Your passwords weren’t very hard to hack,” Dr. Alde replied flatly, causing Savant to grimace as if he were a student being scolded by a teacher for having bad grades. “And the atrium was already unlocked.”

“Ah… right. Yes, I… I see… did… did you… see anything I could improve…?”

Armel looked on from the distance, chuckling to himself. Kintsugi angled his body to him, cocking an eyebrow up. Noticing Kintsugi’s curiosity, Armel began speaking fondly of Savant. “The professor is usually pretty good at keeping up his egotistical act, but it’s funny to see him act like a desperate student when he’s around his idol.”

“Idol?” Kintsugi squinted. “Who, that guy?”

“Seriously? Haven’t you heard of Dr. Alde? He invented steam power when he was only 21.”

Looking away, eyebrows furrowing, Kintsugi huffed. “Well, I knew Dr. Alde invented steam power. I just, uh… never got around to knowing what his face looked like.”

Ginger sighed beside them, going to join Ignis who was still in the storage room. “Ignis, look, did you see? Dr. Alde, the inventor of-”

“Y-yes. I… I see him, Ginger…” Ignis swallowed. Ginger looked up to see the shock and horror etched onto her magister’s face. Ignis retreated further and further into the storage room, feigning nonchalance.

Tired of Savant’s rambling, Dr. Alde looked up at Frankie. “Frankie, please let me down now. I saw someone I’d like to talk to.”

Frankie obliged, carefully setting Dr. Alde on the floor, not removing the arm around his waist until both of Dr. Alde’s feet were firmly planted.

Taking two shaky steps to regain his rhythm, Dr. Alde excused himself from Savant and looked around the room as he slowly approached the storage unit. 

Impressive machinery… he thought to himself, before turning to catch a glimpse of the face peeking out from the storage room. They locked eyes for a split second, before Ignis disappeared back behind the wall.