[center][img]https://www.pictorem.com/collection/900_12285946HighRes.jpg[/img]
[i][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FUxefT7WmA]Wo alle Straßen enden
Hört unser Weg nicht auf
Wohin wir uns auch wenden
Die Zeit nimmt ihren Lauf
Das Herz, verbrannt
Im Schmerz, verbannt
So ziehen wir verloren durch das graue Niemandsland
Vielleicht kehrt von uns keiner mehr zurück ins Heimatland[/url][/i]

[b][h1][color=FF0000]I. Teil
Die Letzte Tage des Friedens[/color][/h1][/b][/center]

The glittering lights of the chandelier in [url=https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Schloss_Schlobitten_Sammlung_Duncker.jpg/1280px-Schloss_Schlobitten_Sammlung_Duncker.jpg]Schloß Komturhof[/url] glimmered against the finely polished marble flooring. The family's host of servants - modest by most Junkers' standards - had been put hard to work for the first time in many years. It would be the first social gathering at the castle since Heinrich passed on in the arms of the Lord, and Freiherr Friedrich von der Austerwald was hard at work at making sure that everything was perfect. He wanted to make sure that they were impressed by him, that they could see that he finally made it and put his youthful transgressions behind him.

Or, at least, had improved from his state of ruin in Königsberg. After all, he had kept that apartment dreadfully untidy. Untidy was a light word for it, he mused to himself as he walked down the staircase in the entrance hall. It was a disaster zone, and he could hardly believe that he had fallen to such lows. How did he even graduate from Albertina at all, with the way he carried himself about? Truth be told, the degree in Philosophy had fallen upon the deaf ears of the rambunctious noble. And now with his time totally occupied by the estate, who had the energy to think about life and its struggles when one was embroiled in them?

The year and a half since he had been recalled from Königsberg following Georg's untimely death in the Rhineland had passed by like a train rustling by at top speed. Everything seemed like a blur, and he cursed his brother Florian every day before rising from his bed for leaving him with this affair. If he could get his hands on that wretched bastard, he would show him. Yes, he would indeed.

He wondered, briefly, how his friends were doing. Some of them, surely, were still studying in Königsberg's university that he had left behind. They had been behind him a year or two; while he was finishing up his studies they were just starting. It was a gift given from God that he was able to attain a degree at all, for if this nonsense had landed upon him while he was there he would've surely shot himself or drank himself to death.

Wearing a fine black dining jacket and matching trousers with a pearly-white shirt and similar-colored waistcoat, he was a model of the Prussian Junker in look - even if his attitude on life was totally antithetical to it all. Fritz, as his friends all knew him as, adjusted his bowtie and waited eagerly for the news that they were arriving.

As he reached the hall, a door opened along the left-side and out walked his only sister Marilena, who was six years his junior. The young beauty of Lötzen had not yet found a husband, and he knew that she would sooner or later have to leave the family castle or else she would become a useless old maid like her mother. But Fritz banished these thoughts and smiled brightly, wondering what in the hell she wanted.

"Fritz, Adi wanted me to tell you that all of the food preparations have been made, and all the drinks you requested have been set about throughout the castle," She embraced him with a cold side-hug, and held him by his right arm, "everything is in order, he said."

Ah, Adi! That faithful chief of the house staff! When had he ever failed him? But there was something else here...what did she want? "That is good news, Mari, but surely he could've told me himself?"

"Well..." She bit her lower lip and looked towards the large doors that led towards the outside, then back towards him, "...I just wanted to tell you not to drink too much...you know how you get..."

"Ah! Nonsense!" He pushed her off rather brusquely, "don't tell me these things! I can handle myself just fine!" Fritz then grew suspicious and backed a step away from her, "did Mutti put you up to this? Can't that infernal woman tell me herself?"

"What's the use with you?" Marilena's voice raised a tempo, which startled Fritz as he had rarely seen her temper grow, "you are a hopeless drunk! And you'll bring ruin to this family!" And with that, she rushed up the grand staircase with a huff.

"And you'll be a perpetual housemaid! Stuck on my dole forever and ever!" He shouted as she slammed the door behind her, his face turning to a grimace as he rubbed his temples.

I need a fucking drink, he thought to himself. No, no, not until they arrive...

Fritz walked towards the door and began to pace back and forth in the entrance hall, growing rather anxious as the minutes ticked by. He glanced as his watch, as time seemed to tick slower and slower until it seemed to grind to a halt. He said in the invitation to be here at half-past five, and it was already a quarter past. They should've been here by now, he grumbled, but he tried to put himself at ease knowing that most of them were the type to show up fashionably late.

His mood suddenly peaked up as he heard a roaring engine of one of the new-fangled cars churn down the road, and he knew exactly who it was. But he contained himself and tried to gain some composure, as he waited in the entrance hall for the servants to show them up into the house.