13th of October 1904, Berlin, Germany

A boy is born, and does not cry. So quiet and pale he is, in fact, that his mother fears stillbirth.

But he lives. He does not cry because he never will, and the shadow of his future reaches back through time, into the past, seizing his voice and silencing it.

But the night cries. This is the first time it heralds his arrival. It will not be the last.

1920, Berlin, Germany

Emil Strauss has never been able to feel anything in his sixteen years of life. It upsets his mother Hilda almost as much as the country and empire getting chopped up does.

Emil does not understand her sadness at either fact. Neither is in her power to change.

His father Johann's reaction to his 'coldness' is mixed. The crippled soldier watches with quiet pride as his son shrugs off insults and bruises from the neighbours' children. But his detached reaction to all his attempts at bonding drives Johann mad, almost as much as his memories of the Great War they lost.

The War to End All Wars.

At the moment, these outbursts of violent panic, separated by periods of grim silence and distant stares, are known as shell shock.

Emil supposes it is fitting-his father certainly seems shocked-as he watches Johann stumble around the house on crutches, stubbornly refusing help while cursing his twisted legs.

And the English. And the French, and their Treaty. And the Americans, swooping in at the end to hog all the glory.

(Emil once remarked that the Kaiser riled them up, so the reaction was expected. Johann beat him, allegedly to teach him respect for fallen heroes. In reality, he was hoping his quiet son would show fear, or anger, anything.

Emil did not. Pain was a physical sensation, and the body was the slave of the mind.)

1922, Berlin, Germany

Johann dies of alcohol poisoning. The money for his service keeps coming, in concern for the widow, but it does not heal Hilda's heart.

Emil finds herself in the corner of her room she uses for weaving, arms covered in cuts. He cannot believe it.

"You should not have done this, mother." He explains, pulling on a pair of gloves. "You could have slashed the wrists. Just a little deeper, and it would have been enough."

Taking a knife in hand, the young man explains to his mother's corpse how she should have killed herself.

1933, Berlin, Germany

It is the eleventh anniversary of his parents' cremation, and Emil can only think of the National Socialists.

He supposes it is an ironic name. He, at least, cannot see the 'socialist' part. But this Hitler fellow is charismatic, in that way that ensnares people and leaves Emil baffled. He also supposes that they could have a worse leader.

Herr Doktor Strauss has been practicing for some years now, hoping to make himself feel something by satisfying his curiosity about living things.

It is not working. Dissection, vivisection, surgery, electric experiments...they all leave him just as apathetic as any other activity does. The data is correct, yes, and useful, but not enjoyable.

So, when the regime calls upon all folks with useful skills, Emil steps forward. Not like he has anything better to do.

1943, Auschwitz

'And you, Herr Doktor? Have your experiments revealed the secrets of the Aryan bloodline?'

Emil does not tell the Fuhrer he is delusional. There is no bloodline, save perhaps in the dreams lurking inside that brown-eyed, dark-haired head.

He is not silent out of fear, or even respect. The Thule Society does not need to lose funding right now, though. It is bad enough when Himmler's tattooed cretins drug themselves into thinking they are wizards. Digging through bodies, sometimes even dead ones, for magic is not enjoyable, but at least it gives Emil something to do.

'Not yet, my Fuhrer. It must be an elusive bloodline.'

Hitler frowns. 'I do not appreciate your sarcasm, Herr Strauss, nor your lack of conviction. Has this not been performed,' he gestures at the works he finds good. 'By our superior race?'

Emil nods. White, black, brown, yellow...I do not care, my Fuhrer. All people are red, if you cut deep enough, he thinks, but does not say.

1945, Berlin, Germany

The city is falling down around their ears as Hitler gives his most insane order yet. The gathered trivia and trinkets of the Thule Society, he believes, will change reality, and make their ideals into truth.

As Emil and his fellows perform what will later be called the Shattering, he thinks this is the first and last time in his life that hypocrite has been right.

1954, Greenland

It only took magic to make Emil feel a fraction of what most people could without any power.

Hunting down his former colleagues is entertaining, too.

He does not do it out of malice, for that is still out of his reach. Nor does he do it because he believes in the cause of the Global Gathering, who currently hold his leash.

Emil wonders if they will fare as well as the League of Nations did. He supposes the fact they kept down the fairytale monsters for nearly a decade, and repelled the invasion from Mars-Wells had been more right than he had thought- is a testament to their ability.

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He helped, too. Vapourising holes the size of Germany that tunneled through the red planet; the bluntest, least useful aspect of his magic.

Reversing time was more cerebral, more refined. The Martians might have been gone, fleeing the Solar System in impossible ships, but mankind still wanted Mars intact. They could use it.

As Emil closes in on Kruger's hideout, he muses that his former Society fellow is more original than the rest. They had all seemed in love with South America.

Kruger had been an eager, competent researcher, but he had also been infected with Hitler's nonsense. In truth, Emil had always found him annoying, inasmuch as he could.

As the little man raves and rants and shrieks, throwing his magic against him, Emil wonders how they had ever been able to work together.

Kruger had also become a mage in the wake of the Shattering, with dominion over the elements.

Emil's primary magic was making the worst happen. As such, it just happens that Kruger loses control over the environment, or stumbles into his own attacks. This is not a spell. It is his magic, passively protecting him.

Emil looks down at the half-broiled, half-frozen wretched in front of him, and taps into his power. The worst that could happen...

Emil screams, for the first and last time in his life, as the night reaches down into him, ripping him open at the joints. His tongue shrivels in his mouth, twisting like a maggot, and his eyes run down his face like bloody candle wax.

Then it gets worse.

Nacht, the being that binds itself to him, is darkness: the absence of light, and the darkness in the hearts of men. Every brutal, petty, twisted thought. It laughs in time with Emil's silent shrieks, filling his body and mind and soul, turning his flesh and hair white as chalk.

The worst happens. To whom?

1960, ???

'Don't be so sour, Kraut,' the thing on the table wheezes jokingly, something like a tortured grin peeking out from beneath mounds of tentacles, from between cancerous growths. 'The worst...is almost past. Let's beat me into shape, eh?'

As Hex seizes its essence, grasping its body with one aetheric hand, and its selves across the past and future with the other, Nacht reaches into the Outer Void, beyond the Gates, to grasp its archetype.

ARC's greatest weapon is forged in an accident labelled an experiment. It is hideous and awkward, briefly.

But Fixer never ceases being an eyesore.

1986, Hungary

Hex finds the rogue mages' bodies splattered over the road like discarded clothes. His mother used to scatter rags like that, when she got angry at something. The author of this spectacle, however, had worked with joy.

They had been petty criminals: bodyguards and leg-breakers, working magic without licences. Perhaps not deserving such a fate.

Hex, Nacht speaks in his mind, a grin in its shrieking storm of a voice. That one, do you see? Two for one. Practical...

As it trails off, snickering, Hex focuses his senses on the mangled, maggot-ridden woman. The fetus doesn't look much better.

He looks up at the grinning strigoi, blood trailing from his lips to his bristling beard.

'Why?' Hex signs, not caring to use his silent voice around the dead man.

'Cycle of life,' Loric Szabo speaks in a sing-song voice. 'The maggot I found had so many eggs, and nowhere to settle and feed! Do not worry, Herr Hex. The darling was already dying before I put the lucky tenant in her mouth. I'm sure she understood-a mother to another.'

Nacht laughs in approval, even as Hex clenches his fist. Something like disgust flares inside of him, something like when he first beheld the ovens. He contemplates trying to end the strigoi.

But the world can always use monsters. ARC was founded around those like him, gathering pliable freaks like the mundane agencies did with promising Nazi thinkers.

So, he opens his fist, and extends his hand to Szabo.

'You will never do such things again,' Hex signs, and Szabo laughs. They both know how true that statement is.

2001, ???

The Threefold's struggle with their human consciousness and the demonic pseudo-minds is inspiring to watch, in a way. Hex 'only' knows Nacht, but that is more than enough, he believes. Its tarlike abyss of a self is almost cloying to his sterile mind.

He does not show this. Beneath his white longcoat and slouch hat, his stitched-together lips, limbs and eyes are silent, unmoving, and watching.

Always watching.

2030, Norway

Hex inwardly sighs in exasperation as the einherjar touch down, descending to Earth on rainbow light. They are all powerful, far more powerful than the average human.

Far more flamboyant, too. How could they have once revered such blowhards? Immortal until fate decreed they were not, and fate had been cut loose and sent falling by Fragarach.

He is more powerful than them, completely discounting his magic and partner. With them, he is a match for any deity Scandinavia's legends could drum up.

As the sky shakes with thunder, and the air fills with the bleating of goats and the rolling of chariot wheels, Nacht laughs.

The universe just loves to challenge his assertions.