The lecture hall was massive, and packed positively to the brim with students.

It was shaped in the rough approximation of a half-amphitheater, a relic from a far, far older time. An Ancient one, full of tall columns, wide arches, and ornate frescoes. In that sense, it fit well within the internally discordant theme of the Institute, half antiquated architecture, half cutting-edge Entropic technology. I still didn’t really understand why Europe’s elite clung so thoroughly to the trappings of gilding and marble, when neither material was particularly well-suited to enchanting load.

In lieu of chalkboards, a cluster of semi-transparent screens hung ethereally at the room’s very centerpoint, glowing a faint blue, suspended in midair. The same kind as Pylon employed in his own address, or similar enough as to make little difference.

Our entry was met, as per usual, with the ubiquitous roar of raucous conversation.

This was a large lecture, to be sure. From what I recalled glancing over the many enrolment boards it was the largest of them all, excepting, perhaps, the equally infamous Lord Bolemir’s BMM. And right now there looked to be near enough five hundred students frequenting it. Sequestering themselves amongst the lavish desks. Gossiping over the events of the morning’s convocation. Already self-separating into so many disparate factions I’d seen before.

I frowned. Naught but a hint of fraternization, not here. Not ever. So much for Europe’s vaunted unity.

Still, it made it easy enough for even a social ignoramus like myself to pick out faces in the crowd. The Novikov soldier. The twins from the technocracy. Prince Price was here, amidst his entourage, accompanied this time by an especially comely woman with cold, blue eyes and chestnut-brown hair. Not many representatives from the Faith, though.

And not a hint of the mysterious prodigy, Piotr.

Alyss and I took seats in the third row, my companion summarily and rather gracefully ignoring the few venomous glares shot her way by favor of our classmates. There was an unmissable angst permeating the air around us as we settled in, but I didn’t think that was because of her, too.

No, that was Pylon’s doing.

I heard them, the whispers all around me, Sensory Perception garbling the lot into a barely-palatable mush, the proto-Blessing too nascent to meaningfully discern between one voice and the next. But snippets of some conversation did grace my ears. Frattol, and Galencia, I picked out quickly, over and over and over again. Others, too, ones only faintly familiar to me.

Shodan, and precincts, and dimeritium, and loch. Roland, and beowulf, and honor, and lung. Raphael, and erasmus, and balmut, and crusade.

The Hand’s uncouth speech had sown its troublesome seeds in Europe’s youth, sown them deep and true. If indeed it was his, at all, and not his enigmatic master’s. The germ of ember had taken root in Bern’s cursed womb. The flames, soon enough, would quicken there, I felt sure.

I smelt blood. I smelt smoke.

I turned to Alyss to share with her my disposition, but was interrupted by a commotion in the great lecture hall’s left-hand side. Our twin professors emerged in perfect unison, striding in seamless lock-step with one another.

As they did, the classroom quickly quieted.

Circade, the eyeless fellow, nevertheless navigated his surroundings without any indication of difficulty, seemingly no less adroit than an Immortal Blessed would otherwise have been. Degrasi made no move to assist his partner, instead carrying with him a single, roughly half-filled glass of water.

Upon arriving at center stage, the shorter, mouthless man deposited this article delicately upon the wide, long table sat there, then turning about-face to man the many screens, his eyes narrowing as his fingers flew deftly about their insides.

And, as always, their twin song kept constant vigil from on high.

A mammoth ocean, on retainer. A majesty given immaterial form.

From this close, it took my breath away. It called to me, in a deeply fundamental fashion. I could scarcely keep myself from it, from reaching out with my own ethereal phalanges to caress it, perhaps even to contact it. Yet, I feared what attention such an attempt might draw. No other Blessing had, thus far, demonstrated cognisance of my own ADMINISTRATION’s abilities, but then, Entropokinesis seemed just about as proximal to Nobility as a Major Shard could conceivably become.

The room was silent as the grave when, at last, Circade spoke.

“Well, hello,” he said, anticlimactically. “Welcome, class. Welcome all.”

A faint smile danced across his lips.

“I am Circade, and this is Degrasi, though I’m sure you all already know that…” At this he paused, as if expecting laughter.

But no one laughed.

No one said a word.

I shifted, uncomfortably.

“Do attempt to contain your excitement,” Circade drawled wryly. “I will, after all, be here all year.”

This second attempt proved more effective than the first, finally drawing from the Dean’s audience a measure of uneasy tittering.

“Alright, then,” he sighed, raising a palm to rub at the back of his reddish scalp. “Fine. I see, ah, the issue. I suppose now’s as good a time as any.”

Circade spread his hands out wide, and took a number of steps forth, towards the audience, as if to entreat with us individually.

“For those of you new to the Institute, please do not take Lord Pylon’s words too much to heart,” he suggested, earnestly. “Ask around, instead. Your friends, your colleagues. I think you’ll find our Hand can be of an…eccentric, persuasion. Erratic, at times. And times,” Circade smiled wryly, once more, “times have been perhaps, particularly trying, of late.

He eyed us, seriously. Somehow. Even without eyes.

“I can assure you,” the Dean said, with utter sincerity, “there is no war in Bern.

“Nor Europe,” he went on. “Nor will there be. Our Assembly is strong, and grows only stronger by the day. Dangers come, dangers go. We remain.”

At last, the professor’s speech prompted its desired response.

A wash of noise passed over me as heirs and lords large and small gave their assent to his entreaty. There were no cheers outright, but rather a chorus of affirmation, a collective exhalation that escaped our student body as the tension saturating the lecture hall finally thawed. Even Alyss seemed set somewhat more at ease.

And yet, the Dean’s address made me only more uneasy.

Because, unlike my colleagues and classmates and my traveling companion, I could see its speaker’s song.

I could see it, grand and vast and terribly powerful, hanging high above the hall like Dainsleif’s titanic blade, roiling in a silent storm. I could see it, plain as day. Circade and Degrasi kept their song as composed as any I’d yet beheld.

Which made the distinct note of true anxiety hiding beneath its sea-green surface all the more alarming.

“Well then, let’s get started, shall we?” Circade suggested, bobbing his head up and downwards whilst he rubbed his palms together, demonstrating not a hint of that hidden panic. As he spoke, now, I noticed the many screens floating behind him echo his words, inscribing on themselves the Dean’s lecture even as he delivered it.

“Entropic Engineering 101. This will be an introductory course. For some of you. For others, I hope it’ll serve as partial review.” Circade paused, and licked his lips. “This will not be like your other courses. There are no tests, here, no exams. There is no mandatory assessment, nor attendance. Come and go as you please, complete whatsoever assignments you see fit. Obviously, it is my opinion that those of you who engage most with the course will, commensurately, get the most out of it. But, ultimately, the choice is yours. Here, your only task is to learn.”

He smiled broadly.

“I’ve run this lecture for a long time,” he grinned. “Many years. It’s a pleasure to teach, always a pleasure to teach. And today is my favorite. The first day. The best.” From beside him, Desgrasi nodded in agreement, more stoically. Or, at least, he seemed stoic enough to me. Without a mouth, it was kind of hard to tell.

Circade tutted, drumming stick-thin fingers across his chin before raising his pointer high into the air.

“Let us start with a simple question, hmm?” he proposed. “Or, it should be simple, at least. The most important question, perhaps.” The many screens behind him twirled eagerly about, mirroring his comportment, dictating his every word and phrase.

“What is Entropy?” Circade asked.

I leaned forward in an instant.

The three words appeared, bolded, suspended in the air behind him. None of my peers seemed overly eager to attempt Circade’s inquest. I certainly wasn’t. Though I’d my own theorems, aplenty, most of them came equally with the danger of a sudden and torturous death.

I had to wonder; was this a trick question? Could these highly-educated Blessed truly be so ignorant to the very power that was their own lifeblood?

“Well?” Our professor repeated, insistent. “Entropy? Anyone know?”

A hand raised itself up tentatively from the silent throng. Its bearer was small, slight, brown-haired and dainty. I recognized him well.

The Anglican Prince.

“Ah, Lord Price!” Circade correctly identified, eyes or no. He gestured encouragingly, with a downwards-facing palm. “Please, go ahead.”

“U–hm,” the Anglican youth stuttered, nervously. “Entropy is…everything. No? Chaos. Power. Energy. Creation. The source of all life.” Already, as he spoke, the many eyes of the student populace directed towards him. Some none too kindly. The Prince’s face reddened considerably, and he stiffly cleared his throat.

“Ande se Haele saye,” William recited, “‘Behealdan, far heore is min pith, min steamae. Indrincan, ande astigian.’”

Circade nodded, slowly, the skin far above his mouth shifting slightly, raising where eyebrows might once have been.

“Words of the Warrior,” he noted, pensively. “Decater, AC 221.”

The edges of his thin lips quirked themselves upwards.

“An Anglican author, eh?” He prodded, grinning. “What a surprise. Anglicans, quoting Anglicans. What a surprise.”

Then he chuckled.

“A religious text, too, quite,” Circade mused. “One wonders, I feel pressed to mention, how exactly Decater managed to extract such a quote. You know, what with our wrothful God being long banished, and all.”

There was a spattering of light laughter at this, largely amongst the upperclassman, and largely at Prince William’s expense. The rich flush infecting his visage purpled uncomfortably, and I noticed through my expanded senses how his comely seatmate’s face soured towards him. In anger, but mostly in disgust.

“Well, someone’s certainly read their classics,” Circade acknowledged, stroking his shaven chin as he continued. “Certainly, certainly. But then, reading is easy enough. What of analysis? Hmm? What of the content, Lord Price?

“And so the Hero said,” Circade repeated, translating the Prince’s quotation, “‘Behold, for here is my…’” He stopped, and regarded William curiously.

“My…what, exactly? Well? My lord?”

William frowned.

“I’m…unsure, Professor,” he admitted. “The translations, they differ on this. Blood, I imagine. Or, life. In Old Anglican, the two concepts are deeply intertwined. Some, I suppose, contest that pith is, to say, the very center of something. The heart of it. The heart of the matter.”

“Mmm,” Circade hummed, “the heart of the matter.” He pursed his lips. “Well. It’s a fine enough answer, Lord Price. But, I must admit, I was looking for something a touch more practical. In terms of a definition, that is. I mean, how am I to work with this?” He waved a hand about, dismissively.

“The old texts, the classics…” He shook his head. “Poetry is all well and good, my lord, but how might your accounting help me enchant a fortification? Animate a golem? Put, to a weapon, an unblemished edge? How do your words help me to better understand my own Blessing?”

The Prince offered no reply to Circade’s query, but then, it seemed as much rhetorical as anything, and so the Dean simply continued.

“This is what we do, here,” he declared, with a hint of pride. “At the Institute. This is why we are here. Our toil. Our labor. Like the scholars of old, we make the ethereal material. We render the incomprehensible into form.”

For a moment, I thought I saw Circade’s eyeless regard flicker left, towards where his silent partner stood stock-still.

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“No matter the cost,” he muttered.

“So, more practical definitions,” he went on, without missing a beat. “Anyone?”

From the corner of my eye, I noticed one of the Gothic twins raise their hand. The girl, it seemed, though I didn’t recall her name, and the two looked so alike besides that I couldn’t entirely be sure. There was a bored expression on her face.

Another heir, I realized. Are they the only ones who’ll speak?

“Yes, Bianca?” Circade accepted, readily recognizing the heir.

“Entropy,” the girl stood and spoke, in a clipped monotone. “A state of ultimate disorder, resulting from internal heat redistribution into the lowest possible energy configuration. An increase in entropy directly correlates to lower capacity of an isolated system to do thermodynamic work on its immediate surroundings.”

The Goth gave her definition perfectly, bereft hitch or stutter, pausing only to draw in a single breath.

“In an isolated system,” she concluded with a bizarre certainty, “entropy will always increase.”

I raised my eyebrows, impressed.

But Circade seemed frustrated.

“And there we have the scintillating Albrecht,” he said, tersely, rubbing at the place above where his eyes would otherwise have been. “Quite right, Lady Faust. Technically speaking, at least. But I’d prefer you not confuse my first-years.”

The Tinker twin simply shrugged, and sat.

“Well then, I suppose there’s no more avoiding it,” Circade sighed, frowning. “Bianca, here, has given us quite a compelling definition of classical entropy. And, she is entirely correct.” He raised a single finger in admonishment. “But this is not the manner of entropy mister Price describes. Please, observe.”

Circade took a couple of steps backwards, and two of the many boards floated out from behind him, taking dual place to his rear, each titling themselves with ‘entropy.’ But the one on the right was capitalized, and the one on the left was not.

“In the broadest of senses, and in classical physics,” the Dean explained, “We may represent entropy precisely as our Lady Faust describes it…”

The left-hand screen, labeled ‘entropy,’ began to fill with the Gothic heir’s definition, and augment itself with Circade’s words, to boot.

“The amount of randomness present in a given system. How chaotic it is. How disordered. It is possible, even likely, for this disorder to be the direct result of injected energy. In this sense, we may consider entropy to be the opposite of stored, potential, or enthalpic energy.”

Circade paused.

“But…how can this be?” He asked. “How can this be? Entropy, our Entropy…is energy. Quite as Prince Price describes, it is energy, it is power, and it is life. How can it be energy, and not? How can it be energy, and its opposite, in equal measure?”

Circade’s blank flesh regarded us all, and directed an incriminating finger towards, this time, the right-hand screen.

“Because, ‘Entropy’ and ‘entropy’ are not the same,” he stated. “That is to say, classical entropy, and modern Entropy, are not the same concept. They are not the same phenomenon. They are not the same idea.”

Circade nodded once, then turned about on his heel, directing his eyeless gaze towards the central table, and the sole object placed upon its surface.

“For example,” he said, “consider the following system.”

He pointed at the glass of water.

“What is it?” He asked.

From the cluster dressed predominantly in grey and black, I saw a hand emerge. For once, it wasn’t an heir’s.

“Yes, mister Legasov?” Circade prompted, apparently already familiar with the speaker’s identity.

“Glass of water,” the Slav replied, succinctly.

“Correct, mister Legasov,” Circade praised. “It’s a glass of water.”

“The water, in this glass, is not frozen,” Circade added, rather obviously. “It is, one might say, at rest. It has no stored energy to lose. No lower energy state, may it presently occupy, than this. Entropy, classical entropy, will always increase, but its entropy is as high as it might conceivably be.” He nodded, once more, then gestured towards his mouthless counterpart.

Degrasi, motionless this entire time, slowly raised his hand. Raised it towards the glass, palm facing outwards, fingers splayed wide. The classroom quieted, as if in anticipation of something gaudy.

The Dean’s outstretched fingers curled and twisted.

And I witnessed a miracle of the divine.

In the space between seconds, a patently incomprehensible breadth and depth of data was communicated, originating from somewhere in the mouthless man’s body, terminating at the massive, floating sea.

It was a blur of motion and burst of radiation, it was eldritch tongues and antediluvian choruses and unknowable wavelengths of not-quite-photonic light rendered comprehensible only to my superhuman sensory suite.

It was a great gong, a shiver in the fabric that made up us all, a gargantuan directive spelt out in purest song.

//S T I L L//

The monstrous pool of alien effluvia floating just above our heads reached out languidly, an inhuman goliath stretching muscles long-atrophied, extending a lazy tendril of pure sea-green from on high.

Just barely caressing the water in the glass.

Instantly freezing it solid.

And then it was over.

Degrasi withdrew his hand. Circade nodded again, satisfied. None around me reacted with any manner of surprise, or amazement.

But then, why should they have?

After all, all they’d done, all Entropokinesis had done, was freeze a simple glass of water. A poor showing, a power scarcely worth mentioning, certainly unworthy of any reverence.

It was Prince Price’s Shard, all over again. Worse, even, this time.

The quantity of data, of energy, communicated…it defied comprehension. It was a directive precise down to the very atom. I could’ve spent one hundred lifetimes transcribing the arcane mathematics and eldritch calculus the twin Deans’ Blessing received, collated, and acted upon in but an instant.

All to freeze a glass of water.

What a waste. What a waste. What an unconscionable waste. Clearly, the Deans, for all their song’s peerless composure, were no wiser in fact than Prince William to the true machinations of their own Shard. Nor, I realized, would they ever be.

This miracle, this marvel, this tragic misuse, would go forever unwitnessed by those around me. The sounds and chorus were in a tongue my fellows would never comprehend, the wondrous beauty occupying occult spectra they could never see.

In all the heavens and the earth, I alone could hear this song.

It called out to me, now, even in afterglow, stronger than ever before. So strong, indeed, I could no more deny it. It resonated with me, with a part of my soul not-quite-yet formed, yet budding, nascent. This was Prince William’s Shard, but better. Smoother. More appropriate, more fitting. It would not be easy to make active, but it would be worth it. It would be a thousand times worth it.

I felt it call to my Draconic Blood and knew I had to have it.

So I discarded the Prince’s Shard, reached out, and took it.

~~~

Save Slots:

5. Entropokinesis (Ma).

~~~

And nothing happened.

Nothing, save for the subtle shudder in my own inner sea, and the novel Major Blessing’s unattuned form taking majestic place among my other saved Shards. Neither Circade, nor Degrasi, nor their song, reacted. Not at all.

Instead, the Dean who’s power I’d stolen merely pointed at the frozen glass.

“What is it?” He asked us, once more. The lecture hall was quiet, once more. I watched, through Sensory Perception, the same hand from before raise itself up high.

“Mister Legasov?” He acknowledged, a second time.

“Glass of ice,” the Slav proposed, confidently.

“Correct, mister Legasov,” Circade confirmed. “It is a glass of ice.” The Dean entwined his hands together, pursed his lips, and began to stride back and forth before us as he spoke.

“We, through use of modern Entropy, can manipulate classical entropy. We can add it,” he explained. “We can remove it. In this case, we’ve removed it. We’ve removed it from the water, freezing it in place, rendering this…this small system more ordered. Less chaotic. Its classical entropy has decreased.” Circade paused, drumming once more with fingers upon his hairless chin. He stopped his march. He pointed, again, at the glass.

“So what’s the problem?” He asked, suddenly serious.

This time, no hands raised.

“What’s the problem?” He insisted.

Still, nothing.

No Slavs, no Francs, no Anglicans, and no Goths.

“What’s the problem with this?” He pressed on, regardless. “Hmm? What is it? Where is it?” He seemed strangely urgent. “Where’s the issue, in the system I just described? Come on. Think.”

Almost subconsciously, I felt my hand raise itself into the air. Alyss’s eyes snapped towards me in alarm, though, and hastily, I lowered it.

“Ah, a first-year!”

Not hastily enough.

“Oh, don’t be shy!” Circade exclaimed, pleasantly. “Please, don’t be shy!” Then he frowned.

“I…don’t recognize you, I’m afraid, my lord,” he muttered, “but, never mind that! You have a theorem? An answer? All are welcome here.” He spread his hands wide. “Please, share your thoughts.”

Suddenly, I felt all the eyes of Old Europe alight upon me.

They couldn’t compete with my companion, though. Alyss’s gaze was burning a hole in the side of my head. I didn’t need enhanced perception to know her anxiety, her mood.

I shut it all out, swallowed, and spoke.

“In an isolated system, entropy will always increase,” I recalled, slowly, from the Gothic heir’s prior words.

“That’s what Lady Faust said,” I went on, only hoping I chose the correct honorific. “In an isolated system, entropy will always increase. But, just now, you decreased it. You lowered it.” I shook my head. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Yes,” Circade smiled, pleased. “That’s right. You’re quite right, of course, Lord He–”

“Unless,” I went on, my brows beginning to furrow heavily. “Unless you expand the system.”

The world around me quieted, disparate songs and piercing eyes falling away as old memories subsumed them. Bits and pieces of errant academia, lessons Mom impressed upon me long ago suddenly starting to click into place.

“The system was isolated before, perhaps,” I reasoned, growing more and more confident as I spoke, “but not now. Not anymore. Lord Degrasi interacted with it,” I pointed out, gesturing at the mouthless man. “He’s a part of it, now. Isn’t he? He spent energy, reduced the entropy in the glass…but increased his own, in equal measure. No, more, I’d wager.”

I winced, considering the massive expenditure of unnecessary data. All that energy lost, becoming entropy unrecovered.

“It’s not an equivalent exchange,” I realized. And it wasn’t. Not even for me. ADMINISTRATION’s efficiency was second to none I knew, none I’d ever seen, but even it wasn’t perfect. Nothing was.

Nothing…

“Entropy,” I muttered, “will always…increase…”

My eyes widened.

My back straightened.

My words caught in my throat.

The disparate strings were connecting now, one after the other after the other. Altogether, slotting themselves into place. One final memory joined its siblings in the forefront of my mind, but it wasn’t a pleasant one. It was thick with pain, suffering, and cruelty. It was the iron tang of salt sweat, and spilt blood.

It was the final piece of the puzzle.

“Pitiful primitive,” a mouth filled with bloody, too-sharp teeth gnashed at me, “the Source is everything.”

Its grin was nauseating, a mockery of my species’ own.

“The infinite engine. The all-nurturing hearth. A dream of true eternity, King Abaddon’s last and most prescient wish. The object of our search.”

Its wretched, clot-crazed eyes darted about nervously, despite the fact that we were all alone in here.

It made some strange gesture with its hands, one palm held flat, upturned, whilst the other rested atop it, cupped as if cradling a humble, fluttering spark.

“The reward of our blasphemy, our sacrifice,” my primary Blessing breathed.

“Negentropy.”

“…Well, yes.”

Circade’s speech, just as genial as ever, if a bit more confused than usual, roused me from revelation.

“You are right. Quite right, in fact. Lord Hero,” he said, slowly. The skin far above his mouth furrowed itself in my direction, as if focusing more intently upon me. Then, he shrugged.

“Our delightful and considerate first year strikes precisely at, ah…at that which I was trying to get,” he smirked.

“The point of this experiment, thus, is twofold,” Circade explained, holding up a single finger. “Firstly, and most importantly; to demonstrate what exactly is the difference between these two types of entropy. As should be obvious by now, Entropy and entropy are very well connected. Intrinsically. Irreversibly. But, they are not the same.”

He sighed, and waved a palm.

“In effect, they will never be the same. They cannot be. Classical entropy, it is…concrete. Documented. Quite happily, and mathematically, defined. Modern Entropy, on the other hand, may not be capable of co-existing with our notion of physics, at all. Entropy is decidedly not a physical thing. It is a metaphysical thing. It may interact with systems in our material reality, exchanging properties and information, but it is not, itself, material.”

“Unlike true energy, kinetic or potential, we may only measure Entropy by proxy; by the changes it enacts in our environment. It is an energy…of sorts. But, it is more than that, as well. More flexible. It eats our energy, as a smithy eats its steel. It is extraspacial, extratemporal, capable of straddling multiple dimensions, simultaneously. Entropy is a difficult thing to quantify, a difficult concept to understand.”

“It is a simple question; ‘what is Entropy?’” Circade nodded. “Yet, the answer is anything but. Blessed scholars, the very best Thinkers, have grappled with this for decades, centuries. Even its etymological origin is fundamentally unknown, perhaps, a mistranslation dating back all the way to Pre-Collapse.

“The one thing we do know,” he said, raising a second digit into the air, “is, neatly, the other point of my little experiment, here.” He stuck the two fingers outward, waggling them at the glass of ice.

By now, it was half-melted.

“We are harvesting Entropy, here,” Circade claimed. “All of us. Collecting, converting, compressing it. Each Blessing has its own unique source, its own distinct method, and there are thousands of them all. Some gather it, ambiently. Kinetic energy from the wind, the air. Geothermal from the earth beneath our feet, biophotovoltaic from the sun above. Radioactive isotopes, either raw or condensed into crystallized form. Some generate it from matter itself, transmuting blood, or flesh, or precious metals, nuclear alchemy on an incomprehensible scale. We are walking, talking, shitting energy collectors.”

Circade smiled wryly.

“Or at least,” he said, “our Blessings are.” The Dean snapped his fingers, and his mouth twisted, and a miniscule portion of his overwhelmingly-massive sea flickered outwards, a sea-green tendril extending itself once more.

“Heat. Light. Matter,” Circade boomed, his voice echoing mightily about the half-Ancient amphitheater as minute explosions of a myriad disparate colors lit up the room. “I expend stored energy, and warp reality. Material existence prostrates before my will.”

We watched him, all seven-odd hundred of us, breathlessly.

Eventually, the little lights faded out, and the room was left dim.

“But when it ends,” Circade said, somberly, almost mournfully, “when all’s said and done, I leave reality lesser than it was.

“Each time we expend our Entropy,” the Dean murmured, “we increase the entropy around. Each time we flex these pretty powers of ours, the world gets just a little bit darker. A little bit emptier. A little bit more dead.

“So what happens, when it’s all gone?” He asked, suddenly.

“Eventually, our sun burns out,” he went on, nodding to himself, quite nonchalantly discussing our species’ abominable end. “Eventually, the earth grows cold. There’ll be no winds, then. No light. No heat. Those precious isotopes will decay to nothingness. There’ll be no more crystals left to go around.

“Nothing will drive our golems,” Circade said, “and nothing will light our homes.”

He smiled, but it could just as well have been a grimace.

“The only thing left to subsist upon will be our own flesh and blood,” Circade promised, eerily. “And eventually, even that wil–”

A shrill, grating klaxon pierced the air, shocking us all from our seats.

The bell had rung.

Class was over.

“Well, it seems that’s our time,” Circade smiled, genially, as if nothing at all had happened.

Degrasi nodded to no one in particular, reaching down to retrieve his invaluable water, now fully restored to its higher entropic state. He strode about the table and handed it to his partner, who downed it in a gulp, and sighed, refreshed.

“For your assignment this week,” our professor called, above the growing clamor of departing studentry, “if you so choose to complete it, a paragraph on potential energy sources, should our sun burn out tomorrow.”