The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Old Yru Upper Plaza, Aetherbridge Lift | 2:31 PM | First Day

I'll be a little more specific. The seating areas were broken up into little semi-separate segments, divided by wooden archways, each with the capacity for about 20 people. Half of them had windows while the other half didn't, so that the people who wanted to see the view could do so, while the people who didn't could open up the book and pretend that they were just on a busy tram with a peculiar capacity for three-dimensional movement.

The exception to this rule was the uppermost level, which also had a glass roof (well, technically it was reinforced crystal, but let's not get particular). Because we were early and it wasn't a particularly busy time of day, our group had been able to get a segment at the top mostly to ourselves, though we'd lost track of Lilith and her mother. Hopefully they'd made it inside and nothing had happened. We stored our luggage, then moved to sit.

Ran took a seat next to me, and Kamrusepa, Ophelia and Ptolema took ones nearby. Over the course of the following ten minutes, the lift slowly filled with people, until the sound of background chatter became dense enough that it melted into an omnipresent white noise. The lift had a capacity to ferry about around a thousand, which was a pretty obscene number if you stopped and thought about it, and that didn't even count the operators and engineers at the central level and the middle of each floor.

"You know," I mused idly, my eyes wandering. "I think this is actually the fourth glass ceiling I've run into today."

"Mm, it's true that you don't see a lot of women working in Aetheromancy," Kam said, partially distracted in an attempt to cram the last of her many bags, which hadn't fit into the cage, under her seat. "It's an institutional concern, I think. The educational culture is very masculine, lots of bravado--"

"That's not what I meant," I said, my brow flat. "I mean literally. There was the carriage me and Ran took, the ceiling they've had at the auditorium since they rebuilt it, the entrance hall, and now this." I pointed upwards. "Well, I guess in this context it's different, but..."

"Oh," Kamrusepa said, sounding a bit put off. "That's disappointing. I was looking forward to arguing about politics."

"It's probably just a coincidence," Ran said, turning a page of her book.

"Well, I don't know if I'd say that. The feature is something of a Ysaran post-revolutionary stylistic flair, I suppose," Kam said, before delivering a final blow that was at last able to awkwardly lodge the bag in place. "Open and optimistic, but cautious and conservative at the same time. It lets in a lot of light, without running the risk of prosognostic events you get from a regular window in a public place."

"I suppose that's true," I said. "You never see it in the Dai League, though."

"Mm, well, every culture is different," she said, finally settling into her seat. "They socialized distinction treatment, so I suppose there have been less drive for such gestures of compromise--"

Just then, the doors to the lift slammed shut, and a distinct, gentle-toned bell ran out from the center of the room. This was an all clear symbol, signalling that there was no prosognostic overlap among the passengers and that it was safe to uncover our faces.

"Speak of the devil," Kam said, taking her veil off. I saw everyone else in the segment follow suit, except for Ran, who seemed disinterested in doing so with any great haste.

"Phew, that's a relief," Ptolema said. "It would've been really lame if could only see the view through this thing. That used to happen all the time when I was a kid."

"That's poor luck," Kam said, frowning. "What would the odds be? A few hundred on board, probably half or so of them having undergone distinction treatment considering the demographics... Then the risk of overlap pulling from a pool of about seventy-thousand, though I suppose there would probably be more Ysarans than average--"

I was about to correct Kam on her math when the ground lurched. For a few moments, there was the sound of stone grinding against stone as the mechanism that locked the lift to the base of the Aetherbridge detached, the limestone bars sliding backwards out of their resting slots. This was followed by the rhythmic creaking of bronze as an elaborate mechanism of gears and pulleys repositioned the lift slightly, and then a satisfying metallic clunk as the hooks of the central chains found their purchase.

When the Aetherbridge had first been built, this whole process has supposedly taken close to a half-hour, but now the engineers had it down to a fine art. It was over in less than a minute. After this, there was a series of slight disturbances, shifts in the air that would likely have been indistinguishable to a non-arcanist, as several incantations were cast in succession from both the central chamber and the base of the lift. The Mass-Nullifying Arcana. The Friction-Denying Arcana. The Pressure-Manipulating Arcana.

In truth, though, it was remarkable how little energy and application of the Power was really required. A shocking amount of the ascension was enabled purely by conventional engineering. It was a testament to how far Covenant Era civilization had come, considering it involved no iron whatsoever.

...well, that's what I want to say, in an objective, enlightened-person-invested-in-civilization way. To be truthful, I couldn't really stand the thing. Even glamorous public transport was still public transport, and I didn't really like machines. I felt put off being at the mercy of something I didn't understand and couldn't control.

"I feel kinda dumb about how excited I am about this," Ptolema said sheepishly, obviously not sharing my opinion. "Like I'm almost back to being a kid."

"Ahah, it is quite thrilling, isn't it...?" Ophelia said. There was a slight tremble in her voice.

I looked to her, furrowing my brow. "Do you have trouble with heights, Ophelia?"

"Oh, no, not normally..." She smiled, looking downwards. "I thought it would be fine, but now that's it's about to happen, it is, ah... Rather a lot...?"

"Just try not to think about it too much," Kam said, in an attempt at a soothing tone. "It's not as though it's dangerous. And if worst comes to worst, just look down. You won't even know it's happening, for most of it."

"Ah... Y-Yes, thank you..." She said, already looking downward, smiling in a way that was very obviously meant to conceal anxiety.

I gave her a sympathetic look.

The final step was for the the main body of the lift to attach to the central spire itself. We could see this happening from our seats. A series of bronze arms extended from the base of each floor of the structure, becoming magnetically attached to - but not quite touching - the tower. Any trace amounts of unsteadiness in the structure disappeared quickly, leaving it completely motionless.

Then, without much ceremony, it happened. The ground lurched, just a little bit, and then, slowly at first but with increasing speed, the lift began to rise into the air.

Kam had spoken accurately a moment ago. Because of the arcana used and the way it was built, it really didn't feel like we were actually moving except for the slight sense of gravity being a tad off in a manner that was difficult to describe. I was no aetheromancer, but I understood this was due to the difficulty in mathematically balancing the forces at work perfectly in line with variations in the number of passengers, as well as the constant decrease in gravity as we moved further away from the earth.

I watched upper Old Yru slowly shrink beneath us as we ascended to the height of the nearby mountains. The lift wasn't particularly fast, so this took a long time. But then, the conventional movement was only a tiny minority of the distance traveled in the journey.

"Wow," Ptolema said, looking downward out of the window. "Seeing this all again is really nostalgic."

"It is... Quite something, seeing the city like this," Ophelia said, apparently having worked up the nerve to look outside after all. "Like a little toy playset, that a child left out on the table. Somehow, it's almost calming..."

"You should probably try to savour it while it lasts," I said, looking upward. "We'll be starting to hit the clouds soon. Then it'll all be a blurry white mess until the transpositioning."

"Ugh, I hadn't thought about that," Ptolema said. "That kind of sucks."

"If I remember right, the skies should be clear on the way back, at least?"

"Yeah, but that's going back down," she said, in a tone that suggested the inferiority of this experience was self-explanatory. "It's not the same." She glanced to my side. "Aren't you gonna look, Ran?"

"No," Ran said. "I've seen it too many times. It's not exciting."

"Ohh, I'd nearly forgotten about that," Kam chimed in. She was also looking out the window, though affecting a demeanor to suggest she was less impressed by the experience. "You used to ride the Aetherbridge all the time for that one course you did in the Sibyls College last year, right?"

"Mm-hmmm," she said, with a nod.

Ran's specialization was Divination (one of the only fields old enough, having been established right at the beginning of the Mourning Period, not to fall into the current nomenclature of everything being a something-mancy), or to use the broader term, analytical arcana; the application of the Power to gather information. Every school of arcane study involved this to some extent. Many arcana in my own field of Thanatomancy required some information about to target just in order to function properly. The Flesh-Animating Arcana, for example, was spectacularly unsafe if you didn't know everything about the flesh you were using it on.

Ran, though, was a rare specialist in the field, which our context of medicine meant that she used it for diagnostic purposes, deducing incredibly specific information about the body's components and contrasting that data together to build a picture of what, if anything, was going wrong - to a far greater level of detail and predictive capability than a conventional physician could ever manage.

Because it's human nature to get more obsessed with the means of how to fix a problem as opposed to learning more about the problem in abstract, you barely ever saw divination-specialized healers. There were so few that Ran hadn't been be able to get fully trained at the academy. They'd had to send her up here, where the Sibyls, the only diviners in the world who were truly accomplished, did their work monitoring the natural world.

Kam smiled, almost looking impressed. "I'd consider myself something of a futurist, but I confess even I can't imagine going up this thing as a matter of routine, just yet. Though, I suppose things like it must have been common in the Imperial Era..."

"I dunno if I can imagine ever getting tired of something like this," Ptolema said, the tinge of childish enthusiasm still audible in her voice. "Whatever book you're reading must be really good, Ran."

"It's passable," she said. "I'm almost finished with it, now. About six pages left to go."

"What's the ending like?" I asked, glancing over to her.

She looked at me, furrowing her brow. "What do you mean, 'what's the ending like'? You haven't read the rest of the plot. It won't make any sense."

"I mean, it's a romance novel," I said, suppressing the shitty expression that wanted to form on my face. "They all kind of follow one of a handful of outlines, don't they...? Girl meets man but can't be with him because of wealth disparity or family connections, girl meets two men and has to choose between a good and a bad one..."

Ran gave me the kind of look you might see on a military official who's eye had just been spat in by some disobedient rebel insurgent, and for a moment I was overcome by a very real-feeling sense that she was about to throw me out of the lift's window. "I know you're fucking with me, Su," she said. "I've seen even you read romance that isn't just a laundry list of stereotypes."

"Ahah, well." I scratched at the back of my head. "You are pretty easy to tease about this stuff..."

"For your information," she explained, with a slightly huffy expression, "This is a May-December romantic tragedy."

"Ohh, I know what that is!" Ptolema interjected, sounding strangely pleased with herself. "That's where one of the two is young and the other is super old, right?"

"It is a story where the disparity in the age of the two protagonists forms the basis of the dramatic tension, yes," she replied, with a flat look.

"I'm surprised you know much of anything about romance novels, Ptolema," Kam said idly. "You don't strike me as the type."

"Nah, I'm not," Ptolema said. "My brother used to read them all the time, though."

A couple of regressive thoughts bubbled up from the crude regions of my mind at these words, before being promptly stomped down by the parts that successfully advanced past primary school age in terms of maturity. Kam looked like she was having the same experience, glancing to the side.

"This story is about a modern-day student, who, having been just left by his first love, meets a woman from the 9th generation who has just begun to experience the first symptoms of dementia," Ran explained. "It's about them being surprised by how much they have in common, and developing a relationship even as she slowly deteriorates as a result of her condition, while trying to cope with the judgement of people who see it as unseemly or tragic. At the point I am in the story, she just passed away after a long sequence in which she had completely forgotten him and the time they spent together. The final scene, which it looks like I'm at now, is about him burying her while questioning what meaning the experiences had."

"Oh my god!" Ptolema exclaimed, with a horrified expression. "That's so fucking sad!"

"She did rather say that it was a tragedy, Ptolema," Kam said.

"I know, but... Geez!" She was so affected by this that it seemed to have torn her attention away from the window for a few moments. "Who'd wanna read something like that?!"

"That is more high-concept than I was expecting, at least," I said, a little hesitant. "It sounds like it might upset me, too."

"It's actually pretty standard," Ran said. "Tear-jerker premises are a lazy and reliable way to sell books-- I'm pretty sure I've seen this exact concept a couple times before. The only reason I was interested in it is because the woman is the old one, not the man." Her brow furrowed slightly. "It's usually the other way around."

"Stuff like this is popular?" Ptolema said, taken aback.

"Yeah, very much so," Ran said.

"Why?" She asked.

Ran shrugged.

"At the risk of usurping our dear Utsushikome's position as the class social analyst," Kam said, "I would expect it's because it provides a source of catharsis. People inevitably experience tragedy, and want to see it reflected in fiction as a form of second hand empathy." She looked in my direction. "How'd I do, Su?"

"Not bad," I said, "but even that might be reading too much into it. I think a lot of people just like to feel sad for the sake of feeling sad." I thought about how to frame it for a moment, "Like the nice feeling you get after throwing up."

She snorted. "That's likely true, too."

Ptolema, for her part, just shook her head. "People are so messed up."

"Um, would it be alright if I borrowed the book from you when you're done with it, Ran?" Ophelia said, speaking up for the first time in a while. "I didn't bring very much to read."

She raised an eyebrow. "Sure, if you want. In fact, you can keep it. It's not like I'm going to read it again."

"Oh, thank you!" Ophelia said, smiling warmly. "That's very generous."

"If you say so," she said, looking back to the book with a bemused expression.

The lift continued its climb upward, Old Yru becoming nothing more than a vague mass of shapes and tiny writhing points below. Then, rather abruptly, we hit cloud-level, and suddenly the entire world was white fluff. Thick droplets of water ran down the window above us, their impact silenced by the arcana. The storm, though not yet ripened to the point it would be when it raged tonight, was still thick enough that I doubted we'd break through into the pure, blue sky above before we reached the next stage.

"I suppose it can't be too long until the transpositioning, now," Kam said, echoing my thoughts, and then made a mischievous smile. "I wonder what would happen if lightning were to strike, right at the moment of truth? Would we be spread into a thousand little pieces between here and the stratosphere, I wonder?"

"I'm pretty sure that can't happen," I said. "Lightning is caused by a shift in pressure, and the Pressure-Denying Arcana--"

"Oh, I know, Su, I know," she said, rolling her eyes. "I'm just having a bit of fun. You're so serious, today."

"I think the hull of the lift is strengthened enough to take a pretty hefty impact, too," I went on. "It's supposed to be able to stay intact after a fall, even at terminal velocity."

"I bet the red stains that were once the passengers would appreciate it if that happened," Ran said, and then snapped her book shut.

"Finished?" I asked.

"Finished," she confirmed. "Heads up, Ophelia."

She tossed the book at the other girl, but she responded mutedly, only seeming to become aware of what was happening at the last minute, awkwardly catching it in her lap.

"Oh, uh..." She smiled in a way that seemed strange, brushing some hair out of her eyes. She seemed to be shaking slightly. "Thank you..."

Ran furrowed her brow at her. "You okay?"

"Y-es," she said, the word coming out stiff. "It's just, now that it's coming up, I think it's getting hard to get the anxiety out of my mind..."

"Ah, geez," Ptolema said. "You've gone and scared her with your weird hypotheticals, Kam."

"Oh, um." Kamrusepa, in a rare moment for her, actually blushed a little with embarrassment, seeming unsure what to say for a second. "I'm sorry, Ophelia. I'd forgotten what you said earlier-- That was thoughtless of me."

"No, it's alright!" She held up a hand reassuringly. "I just need to focus on something else. Keep my breathing regular..." She inhaled and exhaled deliberately, her face growing a little pale.

"Can we do something to keep your mind off it?" Kam asked.

"Oh, I don't know, really--"

"Su," Kamrusepa said, turning in my direction. "Tell one of your jokes."

"What?" I said, blinking. "What do you mean, 'my jokes'?"

"I've seen you telling Ran jokes all the time. I'm dreadful with them, but you must know a lot. Tell one!"

My eyes flicked over to Ran for a moment. She glanced at me in turn, her expression slightly wary.

"Uh. I don't actually know that many..." I said, scratching behind my ear. "I only try to think of ones to tell Ran, since it's, ah, sort of a running thing we have? It's hard to explain."

This was a half-truth. It was, at least at an essential level, incredibly easy to explain: I didn't want to tell a joke because all my jokes were awful and almost universally depressing. Ran only tolerated them because I'd successfully lowered the bar to around 100 feet below ground level over the course of our friendship.

Another chime ran out from the center of the lift. This was to signal that the transpositioning was to take place in 1 minute. Though it was difficult to judge the speed of the lift from within the cloud layer, it seemed to accelerate slightly, and Ophelia tensed up in a way that was subtly visible, gripping the side of her chair.

"Come on, Su," Kam said, frowning. "Don't be peculiar about this."

The peer pressure cut into me like a hot knife. I hesitated a little, biting my lip. "Well, uh, okay. I'll just tell a quick one." I swallowed, my mind quickly scrambling. "Okay, so, there's a woman who runs a dispensary for second hand goods. She sees a man come in who's a regular customer. He's kind of a mess-- Has a big beard, a bad complexion. He buys a razor, and tells her he needs it to clean himself up, because he has a date."

I could see that I now had Ophelia's attention and that Kam was looking pleased with herself, but Ran was watching me, too. I could see the look in her eyes. It screamed at me, with such vividity that it could be sold at an art gallery: You better not be telling a suicide joke right now, or we're going to have a talk.

But it was too late. The wheels were already in motion.

"About six months later, he comes back--"

The 30 second warning bell chimed. Ophelia was still breathing heavily, but she was also smiling, enjoying my attempt at helping. Ptolema, who was sitting near her, had shuffled over to her and put an arm around her shoulder for emotional support.

Internally, I was trying desperately to think of an alternate punchline. Why did I have to be so terrible at improvising...?

"--looking a lot happier," I went on. "This time, he buys a new tunic. 'For a special occasion,' he says. Another six months later, he comes back again. This time, he looks much better; practically a new man. He spends a long time browsing, and this time he picks up a diamond ring, and happily goes heavily into luxury debt for it. The woman, obviously, can put two and two together, so as he's leaving she tells him she's--"

The bell for the 10 second warning ran out. I continued. Kamrusepa, the perverse witch, seemed to have picked up on my discomfort to some extent and was evidently enjoying it, her lips wide with amusement. That she was responsible presumably either didn't occur to her, or enhanced the enjoyment.

"--very happy for him, and to tell her how it goes. Two days later, he comes back, and, uh..."

He says, 'So, I'm going to need another razor.'

"He, er," I hesitated, "he says, um... Rather, he browses--"

It didn't happen until a moment later, but the strength of the incantation was such that we could all feel it a second before the actual event. When enough eris is put to work all at once, you can almost hear the sound of reality giving way, like a wall of plaster in the path of a sledgehammer. Even laymen can sense it. It echoes across the skin, down to the bones.

W o r l d - B e n d i n g

"...𒉎𒁁𒅈𒆜𒆪𒊓𒆤𒂍,𒋫𒇲𒇻𒀀𒅋𒌫𒍑,𒍝𒍝𒍝,𒅥𒁲𒀩𒌋,𒌦𒊹"

It only lasted a few seconds, and wasn't painful, or even uncomfortable in a way that could be easily quantified. The best word for it would probably be "disquieting". My brain reported a sudden sense of vertigo, and then there was a feeling of what I can only describe as uncertainty - like none of my senses were quite trustworthy. Maybe I was still sitting in the lift with my classmates, botching this joke, being a part of reality like a normal person. Or maybe I was a cloud of atoms floating in the void, smashing into other clouds of atoms in a series of thermodynamic miracles that could, realistically, cease at any time. Maybe nothing was connected. Maybe nothing had ever been connected. Perhaps even the void and atoms didn't truly exist, and the real shape of the universe was just indescribable, placeless things, trying forever to touch, yet doomed to fail again and again and again.

Through the window, I could see the world twist into an impossible mess of shades and shapes it hurt to look at, for just a moment...

...and then it was over.

"--and, uh, he tries to buy some silverware for the wedding, but he accidentally spent too much on the ring, s-so, uh. It's really embarrassing," I finished, avoiding making eye contact with anyone.

However, the blessings of the gods appeared to have fallen on me, because it seemed like everyone had stopped paying attention. Even Ran didn't seem to have absorbed the punchline, blinking and touching the side of her head in disorientation.

A little blood rolled out of my nose, which I caught with my handkerchief. A couple of other people in the segment displayed similar symptoms, including Ptolema, who caught it on the side of her hand and then wiped it with a tissue. I glanced over to Ophelia. She wasn't listening, either, transfixed - not in fear, but amazement - by the sight that was now beyond the window.

I looked, too.

Directly ahead, the whiteness of cloud cover had now been replaced by the deep black of the Empyrean, dotted thickly with radiant, vividly-colored lights, untwinkling up here beyond the atmosphere. Some were close by enough that you could see their mechanical components - varying depending on the design - while the more distant ones formed a band supposedly reminiscent of the old world's galactic ring. It cut across the sky, gold and purple and white, like the scar from a long-healed wound, shining with an impossible purity that even here failed to fully betray its artifice.

These were the stellar lighthouses, informally called the star-lanterns or simply stars, which served to create the illusion of the celestial sphere from the ground, guide transit through the Empyrean, and mark the boundaries of the physical space of the plane using False Iron. Most of them were built by the Ironworkers, containing convention furnaces like much smaller versions of the Great Lamp, though some had been added by later arcanists, usually for navigation or scientific purposes. They surrounded us in all directions.

And below...

Was the Mimikos, now pretty much in its entirety. We weren't so far enough above it that I could see the blackness around or beneath it, but I could still see everything on the surface. Old Yru and the mess of clouds that presently covered it were now so far below that it was almost impossible to make them out; nothing but a speck beside the Bay of Ysara and in the shadow of the Akinesti Mountains, which dominated the region.

Of course, even these were only minor geographical features. If I'd been looking at a painting instead of a pane of glass, I'd be able to fit all of them between my fingers.

From above, the Mimikos was roughly the shape of a bowl (though somewhat more shallow than the image the word brings to mind), contained in a stone-and-metal superstructure of the same shape, but about 30% greater in scale and much thicker, which also suspended the arch which carried the Great Lamp from side to the other - currently tilted somewhat, since it was spring. However, these are descriptors that carry connotations of normal objects that one can hold in their hands, when in this case, nothing could be further from the truth. It was colossal in scale; literally an entire world, about 13,000 kilometers across. Directly below us was the crescent-shaped Elysian Pangaea, and out in the ocean ahead was the Inotian Archipelago, in turn giving way to stretched out oval of the Orphaned Continent, the rear curved as it approached the edge of the bowl.

From the perspective of a human being, it was difficult to process it as what it was, rather than a mass of shapes and colours. You could point to it and say, "oh, that big golden splodge there is the Asharomi Desert", or "that big green area must be the Viraak river valley" but you couldn't fully internalize those facts; really believe you were looking at those places, like this. People's minds aren't equipped to process reality in that fashion.

Still, it was beautiful.

This, though, was the sixth time I'd seen it, having rode the lift with Ran a few times in the past, and now - separated from it on every sensory level save for sight - it almost felt a little mundane, like looking at a painting. People really could get used to anything.

On the other hand, Ophelia and Ptolema were visibly taken by the sight, the latter holding a hand to her mouth.

"Oh, my goodness..." She stared, transfixed. " I didn't think it would be like this..."

"Yeah," Ptolema added, her voice uncharacteristically distant. "It really is incredible, huh?"

"I never realized how huge it would be," Ophelia went on. "How much empty land there is outside of the Mourning Realms. How the cities are just-- I can see Pallattaku, and it's just a dot. I've seen maps, but..."

"Maps label the things that people care about the most, and gloss over the rest," I said. "You don't get the sense of how small the places we spend our lives really are."

"Yes, I suppose that's true--Aah!" She looked embarrassed suddenly, looking in my direction. "I'm sorry, Utsushi."

I blinked. "For what?"

"For not laughing at your joke. That was very rude of me."

"Oh," I said, looking to the side. "Uh, that's okay. I got thrown off at the end anyway... Um, by the transposition, I mean."

She smiled and nodded kindly, either in genuine belief, or a convincing attempt at humoring me. I was content with either. Then we looked back down, staring in silence for a little while.

"It really is hard to believe that something like this was made by-- Well... By people," Ophelia eventually added, after about a minute had passed.

"You'd be surprised," Kam said, seeming to be enjoying her awe at it all. "From what I've read, most of it is actually fairly rudimentary in terms of the application of the Power involved. More a question of patience and eris than knowledge. Heavens, we could probably do the lions share just between us if had the resources. Make a giant dish, fill it with dirt, air and water, set it into motion, let the years go by..."

"Only you could act like making a whole planet is no big deal, Kam," Ptolema said, her tone dry.

"That is sort of oversimplifying it, I think," I said. "Even if it's simple in concept, there's about a million-and-one things that could go wrong with creating an environment friendly to life even in small scale experiments, let alone something like this. Balancing out all the different elements, the ecosystem..."

"I am being a little reductive for the sake of hyperbole, it's true." Kam conceded. "But frankly, I'm still inclined to believe making the structure was not the tricky part, relatively speaking."

I nodded. "That's probably true."

Making the space around it had supposedly been the greater problem, after all. It had taken the Ironworkers many attempts to reconstruct a reality that even worked like the old one on an essential level. Many still remained, having become known as the Lower Planes.

"I wish I could accomplish something even a fraction as magnificent," Ophelia said. "A fraction as timeless."

Picked the wrong discipline, then, a voice in my head said. The whole reason we're going to this thing is because the human body is the opposite of timeless.

Beyond even the Mimikos, much further in the distance, I could also see a iron grey line that rose from and ascended into the cosmos, seemingly of infinite length. From here, it was difficult to even make out against the void of space, but you could just about see it contrasting against the starlight. This was the Tower of Asphodel; the structure that the Ironworkers had built after the Imperial Era to literally hold the Remaining World together. It was on an entirely different scale even when compared to the Mimikos - closer in size to a star than a planet. A seam in reality itself.

Well, insofar as it had a scale at all. The Tower was just as much a metaphysical object as it was a conventional one. Although on paper it was approximately two or three million miles away from us, in practice, space became less and less conventional the further one traveled from the Mimikos, as one approached the boundaries of its defined ruleset. Actually reaching the structure required the use of the Power, and even then was so complex that it was rarely done. One of the reasons the Aetherbridge had been built, in fact, was to make the process marginally more simple; it was difficult enough to perform the transmigration at ground level with so much in the way.

The awkwardness of what remained of the cosmos's functionality was, needless to say, something that most people preferred not to think about. Many things in the modern era were like that. Human beings liked to get on with things, not fret about things beyond control, especially if that 'thing beyond their control' was how the reality they existed in was kind of a patchwork mess.

"Ah, look!" Kamrusepa pointed upwards. "We're almost there!"

I looked up, though it was more out of reflex than anything. I already knew what to expect from my previous trips.

Rapidly growing overhead was the structure to which the opposite end of the lift was attached. It was something akin to a fortress, sealed in a bubble of glass, octagonal in shape, and with eight arms. What stuck out the most about it was how archaic it appeared compared to the city far beneath. The stonework was raw, angular and heavy, the metal undecorated save for the most recent additions, and the arms appeared sharp, almost like protruding knives. All of it shone a dark silver.

This was our destination, and the end to the first half of our journey: The Empyrean Bastion.

"I could have sworn that was faster than normal," Kam said, before chuckling to herself, giving me a funny look. "Must be the pleasure of the company."

"Why are you singling me out?" I asked, suspiciously.

"Because you're uniquely charming, Utsu," she said. "And I enjoyed you completely pissing up the end of that joke."

Fuck, I thought. I guess she was paying attention. I furrowed my brow and looked down in embarrassment.

"How much time do you think we'll get to mess around, once we're inside?" Ptolema asked.

"Not very much at all, I don't think," Kamrusepa said. "The instructions were very explicit about proceeding directly to the destination. Say whatever else you will about the order, but it's obvious they like their ship run very tightly."

Ptolema frowned, looking kind of annoyed by the answer. "They sure could've made this more comfortable for us."

"Even a guest of honor has to play by the rules of the host," she said, with a shrug. "Can't be helped, I'm afraid."

Despite Kam's refutation, it was something of a good point. It really was peculiar, how much of a gamut the Order seemed intent on running us through.

While the others kept chatting, I let myself phase for a couple minutes, suddenly considering that there could be a lot more tiring travel to come before we actually got there. What would they have us do next, once we got there and followed their directions? Board a ship to a more remote installation? Those always gave me stomach cramps. I rolled my head back, looking straight up at the bastion through the ceiling as it grew closer and closer--

...and for a moment, thought I saw something very strange.

It was so small, it could have just been something caught on my glasses. But it looked, at least at this distance, like a bug. A dark-colored speck of a creature, clinging to the far edge of the bastion's underside, well away from the Aetherbridge and ship docks. I could barely make it out, but there was a suggestion of eight limbs, and a tiny spot of white that might have been a head oriented in our direction.

As though it were watching us approach.

But within a second of me having seen it, though, it suddenly disappeared. I blinked, frowning.

What the fuck was that?

Yet it had been so fleeting a sight, my mind easily dismissed it. Obviously, there was no such thing as a life-form that could survive in a vacuum, let alone one of the size it would have to have been to have seen it at this distance. It had probably just been an actual bug on the glass window itself, or failing that, a remote maintenance golem. My anxiety was making me overreact to random, unimportant details.

And yet. At the back of my mind, a small, irrational voice mused.

It was almost like it was waiting for us.