Lester took another sip of his wine as he waited for Sage to finish whatever he was working on. It was unlike his friend to be so distracted and it was not as if there was anything unusual or unexpected about Lester's visit today. At the same time it felt pointless to protest Sage's distraction. They had known each other too long to fall out over something so trivial. Yet even taking that into account it did not stop Lester feeling somewhat bored. Well; if Sage could get drunk before in advance as he had one year, so could he.

The novelty of drinking a whole bottle of wine by himself did not last long. Boredom soon returned; a familiar and virulent problem. It was not on the whole fun. Since Sage was eating into their drinking time, he needed something else to do.

The interior of the Yulyana Needleworks had not changed much over the years. Not quite true; in many ways it was nothing like it once was. Gradual repair-work kept it water-proof and in a fit state to live in. The ultimate effect of the process left both interior and exterior with a piece-meal, patchwork feel. What might have once been a quaint cottage now resembled several buildings overlaid on top of each other. How many times had Sage replaced each section? Lester smirked; Sage was the type to insist it was the same home despite the replacements. He had more or less moved house several times by staying where he was,

Lester sighed. No; he had seen all this so many times before. There were little changes each visit; maybe a new wall, new doors or new roof tiles but nothing sudden. Another gulp of wine and Sage seemed no closer to finishing his task. Something else then. Sage still had no books; just his parchment, his sewing materials and his clothing projects. The finished garments hung on racks along one wall. Revealing dresses and what looked like a few pieces of cloth linked by string shared space with a completed vestal garb. Also not new.

He leant back in his chair, his gaze drifting. He caught sight of a thick pile of yellowing parchment sticking out of a nearby chest. He stared at bundle for a moment before pulling on the visible corner. What he could see of the contents was unfamiliar.

"Sage, do you mind if I have a look at these drawings?" he asked.

"Go ahead," Sage replied, not looking up from his work. He put down his pencil and swiped an eraser across the page. Little fragments of rubber flicked to the floor as he scoured something from the page. "They might seem familiar though."

Familiar? Curiosity was enough to keep him going for now. Lester pulled the thick pile onto his lap and began leafing through the pages. The parchment appeared to contain costume designs; each sheet detailed a design for a male and a female version of the outfit. Some shared similar design aesthetics; others bore little resemblance to each other. The reverse of each parchment contained alchemical formulas and notes in Sage's cramped hand. It took a few moments for realization to dawn; these were asterisk designs.

The first few were well known, even familiar. Here was the monk, there was the Dark Knight. Was that what the female costume for the Vampire looked like? The Performer asterisk had a few extra pages attached to it's sheet. Lester frowned as he puzzled out the near illegible handwriting. Were these song lyrics? He had heard Praline perform a few times, and there was an alarming familiarity with the words here. Lester opened his mouth but the next sheet made him forget his question. It was not an asterisk he was familiar with; while he had not seen them all, he thought he at least knew what they all were. This one was so unlike any of the others, though much like Performer, this asterisk took up more than one sheet of paper. Lester stared at the notes for a long moment. The lyric sheet had been a surprise, but this?

"Sage. Is this an asterisk for..." It felt so silly to ask this. "...baking?" he said, blinking as his friend smirked.

Sage chuckled and looked over his shoulder. "Yes. You don't like it?"

"Well." Lester re-appraised the main sheet. "The design is certainly aesthetically pleasing. And I suppose if I still partook of human food, the confectionery this produced would be tempting based on the recipes. Did you make this one?"

Sage shook his head. "As tempting as it would have been."

"I take it the reason was its lack of combat applications? How did you even come up with this?"

"I was hungry," Sage replied as skimmed his pencil across the paper and he finished his line with a flourish. "And you know how far the nearest settlement is. Also for your information not all of the asterisks are intended purely for combat."

"Just most of them."

"Yes, yes, yes. There are a disproportionate number of aggressive uses. Even that one has a way to cause damage to an opponent." There was a glint in Sage's eye.

"I'm not surprised. I am still a little wary of the fact you could produce a white magic asterisk and even that allows someone to attac- Calculator?" Lester asked as he flipped to the next page. "You have an asterisk for advanced computation?"

"Advanced computational magic," the Sage said. "And yes."

Lester flipped the sheet over. "This one is blank. What does it even do?"

"Manipulate reality based on magically enhanced, mathematical principals," Sage said, peering closer at his work as he shaded something in.

"And yet there is nothing on how you plan to accomplish this," Lester observed.

Sage sat up and stretched. "Well. While I understand the base concepts of the idea, how to execute it's power proved rather beyond me. Creating asterisks takes a substantial amount of work; that one - like a few others - remains an interesting idea, if not one I feel I can implement."

"Along with these other ideas? A shame. You do seem to delight in your design work." Lester narrowed his eyes. "Or is the appeal purely the chance to design the female outfits?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you're implying, Lester." Sage glanced over his shoulder and winked. "There might be a touch of that. But Asterisks take time and effort to produce. And like my Calculator there, the actual mechanics of some of their abilities have defeated me; unless I undertake a great deal of extra study."

"But you have what look like complete plans for these others. Do you not want to try them?"

Sage stopped and stared into space. "There is some desire, yes. But you know as well as I that there is not much longer before the appointed time; when the evil one appears. Meddling with asterisks at this juncture is not a good use of my time." He returned to his scribbling. "And in any case; I rather thought we might ask them when they arrive."

Lester frowned. "Why would our guests know about them?"

"My dear Lester; all these years, all that knowledge and you have never attempted to think through the implications of the Harrowing and what it has done to Luxendarc? Try to imagine the logical possibilities of a series of divergent universes emanating out from a central fractured point in time, each reality offset by immaterial barriers, possibly even chronologically out of step with our own time."

Lester sipped at his drink again. "The concepts are not unfamiliar to me, I just do not understand your implication or how this is relevant."

"Each Luxendarc could diverge from the others in so many different ways. Every decision you or I make here may or may not be identical to another Luxendarc and how another Sage and Lester behave. So, if I throw this pencil to the floor." Sage flicked a pencil off of his desk. "I cannot be certain in which Luxendarcs I behaved the same way and in which I did not choose to push that pencil onto the floor. And as time moves on the differences and the consequences increase in complexity; each decision influences the next. I could leave the pencil on the floor and later slip on it, thus injuring myself. A different outcome to the one where I pick it up like so." He replaced the pencil with the others at the top of his desk. "It is also similar yet different to the Luxendarc where I did not throw the pencil at all. So, in one the of Luxendarcs where I did not throw that pencil, I potentially successfully designed and completed those elusive asterisks."

"And you wish to talk to our future guests about them?" Lester stared at the parchment again. "I suppose at least you will know your designs were plausible."

"Quite so. But when the duplication of an asterisk is so easy, I was rather hoping to acquire a copy of them myself. Why bother crafting the harder or more complex ones when I can clone them?"

Lester frowned. "But surely the other Sage would be just as lazy- Oh, I think I see what you mean."

Sage chuckled as he gulped from his own glass. "Quite so. So I am relying on the Sage who did not throw the pencil to be less lazy than I. I am also trusting he has completed more asterisks and that he puzzled out my Calculator asterisk. And that our guests will prove to be from that Luxendarc."

"When did you realise all this?" Lester said, trying not to smile.

"About half-way through the creation of my original set," Sage replied, staring down at his parchment.

"So when you abandoned the Calculator, you still made sure you completed the costume design, certain that the other Sage would think along similar lines for the look but would figure out the complexity of the particulars?"

"Correct; though there remains the possibility his design aesthetic will drift from my own. Nevertheless that will be easy to correct within the asterisk itself."

Lester stared at Sage's desk. "You're designing a new one right now aren't you?" He leant forward. "With the hope one of the four will just waltz through your door carrying it."

"Possibly," Sage said. He smiled as he heaved smiling himself up from his chair. "But there's no way I would object."

Lester just held his hand out and took the parchment as Sage passed it to him. A figure half-wearing a cat pillow stared up at him from the page. "The Cat Master," he said, reading the title.

"A very ferocious asterisk," Sage said as he poured another glass of wine and flopped beside his friend. "Gives control of ducks," he said. Lester raised an eyebrow. "Well it might; no telling what Sage who didn't throw the pencil will do." He sipped his drink. "I would have made it control cats though."