“Tae! Look what I can do!”

Tae was irritated and amused as his reverie was disrupted by his younger sister. He was meant to be studying but had volunteered to take care of his four-and-a-half-year-old sister so that their parents could have a date night.

Even as he looked up, he saw her execute a clumsy cartwheel.

“Very good, Dee!”

Tae knew that he was meant to be studying at that very moment so that he could one day become a runic archivist, charged with maintaining one of the rune libraries that the empire had funded the creation of in every galaxy they conquered.

The Rune Libraries of Alanesh contained copies of every rune ever discovered. Every one was the size of a small moon and needed thousands of experts to assist in restoring old runes and recording new runes. The ambient essentia affinities in each one were carefully controlled such that the main and subaffinities lent themselves towards preservation.

“It’s a cartwheel,” Dee exclaimed as she went for another.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Tae asked as he drew another rune on the practice tablet the empire provided all prospective archivists, “You’re very good at it.”

She kicked the ground, causing her pink shoes to light up.

“Preschool.”

“What’s wrong with preschool?“

“I’m not that good at cartwheels,” she responded.

“Why would you say that?”

“Melissa’s better than me. She taught me how and I don’t know how to do what she does.”

“Do you want me to help you?”

“No,” she exclaimed, stamping her foot, causing it to light up again.

“What are you doing? Dee asked, forgetting all about her frustration, “Playing with your filigree?”

“Runes, Dee. Runes,” Tae sighed, “Where did you even learn that word? I've never even heard anyone use it besides you.”

“Filigree, filigree,” she said, giggling, before running out of the room.

Tae sighed again. He’d been doing that a lot tonight. Dee was fine, but she was a lot of energy for him to deal with.

He returned to his practice. Runic archivism was essentially his calling, the empire having groomed him for it from the moment his excellent rune affinity was discovered. He was rather unusual, in that his affinity was purely natal, with nobody in his family having a previous affinity for runes or exposing him to runes from a young age.

Tae returned to his runes. Even after years of practice, he had only recently been allowed to move on to the lowest level of true runes. Before now, the runes he had been learning were weak enough that they were only used for basic computation, rather than the reality altering effects that true runes were used for.

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Of course, he thought, looking at the portfolio he had received, even these were barely fit to run a refrigerator, but he wouldn’t get anything greater until he had proven his mastery of them. He got back to work. Nearly there.

------

Justin cursed at his boss even as he hopped on one leg, trying to get his pants on. He had just been called up in the middle of the night to run up to the factory to take over some essential position.

“I swear, if they weren't paying my college tuition…” he growled to himself.

He left a note on the counter for his roommate, just in case the guy actually noticed he was gone. Gus wasn’t actually a bad guy, but he was painfully unobservant.

Retrieving a water bottle from the fridge, he ran out the door, then ran back inside when he realized he had forgotten his car keys. Grabbing them off the table, he ran back out, almost tripping down the stairs from his apartment.

Getting down to the parking lot, Justin got in his slightly beat-up 2009 Honda Accord. It wasn’t the freshest car, but it got him from here to there without complaining too much. And since he was working on his degree in automotive technology, he mostly knew how to do all his repairs by himself.

Navigating out of the apartment parking lot, he texted his boss when he reached a red light, letting him know that he was on the way.

A couple of lights later, he got on the highway and turned on the radio. He didn’t recognize what song was on, but after a couple minutes, Total Eclipse of the Heart came on.

Right as the titular lyric came over the speakers, the truck beside him suddenly began swerving out of control.

Justin frantically tried to recall his defensive driving courses but failed to accomplish anything before the semi slammed into him, sending his small Honda Accord into a sideways roll.

Justin never made it to the point where the car stopped rolling.

-----

Prince Elluvian sighed as he read over the reports that his retainer, Carsen, had placed on his desk. He had been doing that a lot, lately. Once, he had enjoyed the competition. Once, he felt ambition, as he and his siblings competed for who would become the inheritor to his family’s techniques, the same ones that had earned his great-grandfather the title of Prince of Life when he created them.

Now, his siblings had become ever more ruthless in their pursuit of the inheritance. He had built up a network to keep track of and manage their schemes. But now they had escalated even further, unto the point of assassination attempts.

“Carsen, I’m going to need you to put the men on interference duty in order to stop any of my power-mad siblings from killing each other.”

He flipped the page, then sighed, “...or sleeping with each other.”

“Your Highness,” Carsen acknowledged, stepping out of the room.

Once, the competition had been friendly, taking place with organized events arranged by his father. Then, sometime around his sixteenth birthday, his less talented siblings had started scheming to take out those above them in the competition.

Now, it was slightly before his twenty-first birthday, making it slightly less than five years for his siblings to escalate from friendly competition to murder.

-----

In a faraway corner of the multiverse, a child opened their eyes for the first time, and gazed upon their mother. He was far too young to see more than a fuzzy blob, and would never remember this moment, but he recognized safety in her.

“Hello, Devikan,” she gently cooed at him

He was then put through a whirlwind of tests which made no sense to his unformed mind, before finally being allowed to return to his mother to sleep.

The last thing he saw was a sight that was familiar to every resident of this world: the sun, in a state of partial eclipse.