All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone. Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without a passion, without business, without entertainment, without care.
–Blaise Pascal

Emil Benedetto was on the verge of a breakthrough. They all knew it. There was always a charged feeling in the air, a more purposeful intent in the stature of the researchers, the experimenters, the discoverers and innovators of the Torri degli Angeli. These moments of charged purpose had been coming more and more frequently, causing the men to move about in a constant state of anticipatory excitement, as if they knew there was something strange and wonderful just past the brink of their current understanding, and they were eager to get there. This, perhaps, was the great flaw of the Guild. They were never content to stay still, never satisfied with the extent of their knowledge, because for every question they answered there were hundreds more that remained. Indeed, some of the men seemed to take the existence of any unanswered question or unsolved mystery as a personal affront.

Emil Benedetto was not one of these men, but he was nevertheless plagued with the same curiosity, the same thirst for knowledge that infected the entire Guild. And yet, to Emil there was something beautiful about questions not yet solved (for that was how he thought of them, not as unanswered but merely as not yet solved). There was a proverb, it might have been Hellanese or it might have been from somewhere else, but Emil had heard it once and liked it: The usefulness of a bowl is in its emptiness, for only when it is empty can it be filled. None of the other Guild members had this philosophy, so it was Emil alone who did not rush ahead merely to see what the answer would be, Emil alone who realized that anticipation of the moment was a moment itself. He suspected that was another quote from someplace, but he didn't know where.

Emil knew he was close to a major discovery, but he worked the same way he had always worked: methodically, measuring the progress, taking notes. But sometimes he thought he was being more careful than usual, more hesitant in continuing with the experiment. Several times he had gone back, reperformed the steps to catch some imaginary error, and this worried him. He had a suspicion that he did not really understand what he was doing, and this was disconcerting for it had never happened before. He supposed he must understand on some basic, instinctual level, or why else did his guesses and suppositions keep turning out correctly? But he could not explain how he knew what he should do next, although after the fact he could usually construct some logical path and pretend he had followed that rather than relied completely on instinct.

For the first time he was anxious about a project, not because he was worried that it wasn't going properly or that it wouldn't be appreciated by the rest of the Guild, but because it was going just as it should, and he had no idea why. Of course, he did not ever admit this to himself, for he was also passionately curious about the outcome of the experiment and did not want to believe there could be something wrong with it. Emil was subject to the same flaw as the rest of the Guild after all, the only difference being that he was a bit more leisurely about it.

Emil's project had begun as a search for the sharpest blade in the world, something that would cut through anything presented to it. He had used iron for that, the purest iron he could find, tempered into the finest, keenest steel. That first part had been not so difficult, merely searching out the right type of heat and flame to make the steel as sharp as it could be. Once he had realized that the operation had to be done within a vacuum, so as not to weaken the blade, success had come easily. So he had his knife, but it was not enough.

Again, he did not know why it was not enough. Had he not accomplished his purpose? His knife had cut anything he wished it to. So why did he not present his success to the rest of the Guild? This question nagged at Emil, and eventually he realized why it did: He was content to leave problems alone, at least temporarily, because he knew he could always find the answers if he wished. But with this knife, he did not know the reasons behind the things that he did, and he would not be able to find the answers no matter how hard he searched. But still, he pushed these concerns to the back of his mind and ignored them as best he could.

For a few weeks after his project had ostensibly reached its end, Emil would absently pick up the knife whenever he was not working on anything else, twirling it in his hands, gazing at it, examining it, always feeling, somehow, that it was not quite finished. There was something more he needed to do with it. And so he began to play, to experiment, to tinker with the knife during his free hours, and soon his free hours had surpassed his working hours, and the knife had become his primary project again.

He was working with alloys, alloys that had never been created because they were impossible, and even if they weren't they were useless anyway. But they were important. They were necessary, somehow, there was a secret buried in the deepest ties between them, something, something that he needed, that the knife needed…

The Guild members were all required to submit written summaries of their work each week, so that each member would know the progress the others were making. Emil's summaries were short and vague, because he did not know how to explain what he was doing or why he was doing it. They had engendered several visits from his colleagues, curious about Emil's mysterious project. But they had never inquired too deeply, because they saw the feverish look in his eyes and heard the way he spoke to them, not rudely or impatiently, but as if he was longing to return to his work and only wished they would leave as quickly as possible. They had all felt this way at one time or another, and so they left, and Emil returned to the knife.

That day he was working with a new alloy, a particularly strange one, but it seemed promising enough. The difficulty was finding some way to discover its properties. There were tests, of course, for all the common ones; but it was not those he was looking for.

The alloy was only a shapeless blob of metal. There was little he could do with that. So he would make it into a different shape, a more useful shape. The shape of a knife.

He began to heat the kiln, opening the vents to let the steaming gases into the chamber beneath it.

But he went no farther than that, because he was no longer alone.

"It is a dangerous path you walk," said the angel.

It stood in the center of the room, in the laboratory made of dark gray stone, and it glowed with its own reflected luminescence. It was clearly visible, and it was solid; Emil could not see through it to the stone workbench on its other side. It was a surprising thing, to see an angel, but it was not unheard of. The Guild had long known of the existence of angels, long had held them up as the supreme of all beings. But this, this appearing of an angel (and such a powerful angel!) to give what seemed to be a warning, had this ever happened before? Emil did not know, or he had forgotten. He said nothing.

"It is a confusing thing, and we do not understand it, but it is dangerous," continued the angel. "The path is muddled, twisted, but you stand at the beginning. This knife that you are forging…it will have great power and it may be that it will be used for great good. But the consequences of its use will be such that even greater harm may come, if it is not used in the proper way. What we know about it, we cannot interpret, and we do not understand."

Emil trembled. This knife, his knife! "Tell me what you know," he said.

The angel's eyes half-closed and he chanted, as if reciting. "The knife may bring about the end of death or it may destroy all human life. It may kill people and angels, even up to God himself. It may bring about the triumph of the Kingdom of Heaven or the end of it. It will be called subtle one, Æsahættr, destroyer of divine life, and it will travel through many worlds in many times. It will be the downfall of your people, your city, and your world, but it may bring freedom to all."

Emil felt giddy, as if he were standing on a precipice and the drop was terrifyingly large, and part of him wanted to fall, wanted to leap into the exhilarating plunge. This knife! His knife! What a glorious creation, that it should have such a prophecy attached!

"I do not come to advise you against creating the knife, and I do not come to encourage you to complete it. Suffering lies down either path. If you continue as you are, with this alloy, and you affix it onto the blade you have already forged, then Æsahættr, the subtle one, it will be ready. Your own feet will be the first to tread its destiny."

He felt charged, electrified with power and knowledge. To think that he could set such things in motion…!

"I have warned you," the angel said, and it sounded half satisfied and half vaguely sad. It vanished, and Emil was left alone in the cold stone room, quivering in excitement.

Hardly hesitating, he raised the kiln to the highest heat possible and threw the alloy in. He formed it into the shape of a blade.