81 Herr Tyldon Üglemaach of Belarus could never quite believe, even right up until the very end, that not everyone liked molasses as much as he did.
82 Empire records show that the battle against the Black Mist Raiders, which military historians have called “The most dangerous game of chess in history,” took over three years and led to the death of almost a hundred of the Empire’s Intelligence officers. The scene of their final battle, the shadow-town secretly built by Klaus to lure Teufel in for their final battle, East Zagreb, remains uninhabitable to this day.
83 In the Autonomy of Architecture (Rupert-Karls-Universitàt Heidelberg Publikationen), Hristo Tiktoffen laid out reasons why some buildings should remain pristine, as designed by their architects. Many great buildings, designed by geniuses, are subsequently remodeled, for a plethora of bad reasons, to their detriment. Tiktoffen dared to dream of buildings equipped with defenses, much like the immune systems of living bodies, except instead of antigens, these would eliminate poor aesthetic choices. There are those who think this idea insane. These are people who have never walked through a Renaissance palace infested with shag rugs.
84 The Lady Teodora Vodenicharova. She was married to the Heterodyne Boys’ father, Saturn Heterodyne, as part of a deal to save her kingdom from being exterminated, which was typical Heterodyne courting behavior. An astonishingly strong-willed and capable woman, she managed to defy Saturn Heterodyne on an almost daily basis. Not only was she allowed to live, but by all accounts, he was still in love with her to the end. She refused to live within the Castle, and insisted on raising her sons outside of its day-to-day influence as well. She waged a never-ending campaign to prevent Bill and Barry from being molded to their father’s ways, with astonishing success. When it became obvious that she had succeeded, Saturn swore to kill them both and try anew. Teodora killed him and was herself subsequently killed by the Castle, but died knowing that her sons were safe. Volumes have been written about her charisma, strength of will, nobility of spirit, and simple courage. Sadly, they are written by shoddy pretenders to true academia and are rife with inadequate research, unattributed sources, faulty indexing, and poor spelling, and thus are not included in these classes. Less than twelve years after her death, five of the seven recognized Popes concurred, and she has been declared a Martyr, canonized as Saint Teodora of Transylvania, Patron Saint of Those Who Fall Afoul of Sparks.
85 This is the sort of thing that causes Heterodyne scholars to drink heavily whenever nit-picky scientific journals insist on things like “dates” and “authentication”.
86 The Baghdad Salamander is one of most fascinating archeological finds of the last hundred years. Tentatively dated from somewhere between 250 B.C to A.D 500, chemical and metallurgical tests have definitively shown that the device was a functioning battery built over a millennium before anyone else produced anything even remotely similar. While its true purpose is unknown, across the device’s base was a contemporary inscription which dared those “of an unbelieving and barbarous nature, who would mock the mental abilities of the device’s creator, to kiss the lizard.”
CHAPTER 10
When Saturn Heterodyne died and William Heterodyne assumed his seat as Master of the Castle, it took a while for the City of Mechanicsburg to reinvent itself. The town needed time to adjust to the idea that it was now a citadel of evil…without the evil.
Saturn’s sons—known to the World as the Heterodyne Boys—had not been raised in the Castle. This is an important factor to consider when examining their reasons for abandoning the long-held traditions of the Heterodyne family. Even before their father’s death, attentive townspeople had been aware that, soon enough, a new wind would be blowing.
But talk is one thing, and action another. Contemporary written accounts show that the razing of the flesh yards, along with the beginnings of the Great Hospital in their place, came as a rude shock to a large part of the populace.
There was grumbling. Resistance. It was the fear that members of any group will experience when a familiar, established order comes to an end for reasons they cannot understand. Never, in the long history of Mechanicsburg, had the populace come as close to outright rebellion against their Masters.
But the linchpins of the Heterodyne’s power held. The Jägermonsters stayed loyal. The Dyne still flowed. The von Mekkhan family stood with the new Master. And above them all, the Castle loomed, waiting to crush any who disobeyed.
Mechanicsburg evolved.
—Nurture Over Nature: The Story of the Heterodyne Boys (Part 1) What Went Right? by Professoressa Kaja Foglio/ Transylvania Polygnostic University Press
Agatha waited a moment, listening in the silence. “Yes, I think that did it,” she finally said, with a sigh of relief.
Professor Mezzasalma clattered over to the device Agatha had activated and studied it intently. He looked up in amazement. “It’s the Lion,” he said. “But you smashed it!”
“I only smashed one big showy bit. Once I had the other parts, it was easy enough to rework the design and reassemble it in such a way that the Castle didn’t realize it could still work.”
“You shut down…the whole Castle?” asked Tarvek.
Gil’s eyes went wide. “Agatha! The Castle was the only thing keeping my father from just coming in here and grabbing you!” A fresh wave of weakness hit him, and he sank to the floor. Tarvek followed him and the two sat there, breathing hard for a moment.
Agatha bit her lip and signaled von Zinzer and Mezzasalma to help them back up. “It was keeping us from getting ourselves cured. It’s a broken mad automaton, remember? And it was becoming more and more irrational. I suspect that I was putting too much stress upon its cognitive faculties, and since they weren’t sufficiently integrated, it just couldn’t handle it. In my opinion, it was dangerously close to deciding that killing us all would have kept us ‘safe.’”
All the Sparks nodded. It was a problem endemic in the field of artificial intelligence.
Agatha continued. “We’ll just have to get the repairs done before the Baron realizes what’s happened.”
Gil waved his hands weakly. “We don’t know how long that could be! For all we know, there’s a giant red light flashing on the main tower right now!”
“That’s…unlikely,” Tarvek said grudgingly. “But we can’t count on having much time.”
Agatha sighed. “Tarvek, Gil, we’re already out of time,” she said. “We’ll work on getting the Castle back once we’re no longer about to die.
“Don’t worry. As far as the Castle goes, I’m reasonably sure that we can revive the whole thing, assuming we can get enough energy running through it.”
Von Zinzer stood by the lift, frowning down into the shaft. “I thought this was supposed to be the lowest level of the Castle,” he said. “What’s down there?”
Agatha stood by him and stared down into the darkness. There were lights down there. They were very faint, but flickering, and growing brighter. An odd look crossed her face, then she shook herself abruptly and turned away, knocking a chip of broken rock over the side. “One thing at a time. We’ve had too many distractions. First we cure ourselves, then we fight the World, then we get to explore. No more delays!”
Far below, the stone landed with a faint, bell-like ring. Seconds later, the lights flared, and a wild, mechanical scream of triumph echoed from the depths.