The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Empyrean Bastion, Outer Districts | 4:09 PM | First Day

Our trip in the carriage was much, much quieter than our one in the Aetherbridge, despite the presence of Mehit and Lilith. Perhaps it was the lack of scenery, or maybe it was because it was so crowded that it felt like trying to hold a conversation would make the atmosphere even more claustrophobic. The carriage might have been well-lit, but it wasn't as well-cooled as it could have been. The smell of sweat hung in the air, and I was starting to feel a sense of relief at the gender separation which I had previously been deriding.

We traveled for a long time. At first, I tried to keep a sense of where we could be within the bastion, feeling the turns and up and downhill movements and cross-referencing them with the vague mental map I'd formed. However, the complexity of the journey soon made this difficult. The only thing I felt certain of was that we were going down more often than we were going up.

Nobody looked exactly happy about the situation, but Mehit and Ran seemed the most discontent of all. The former had slumped deeper into an anxious mood, constantly readjusting her sitting posture and fiddling with her hands, while the latter appeared actively uneasy, staring downwards with her eyes narrow. It was how Ran often got when she didn't have a book on hand and was with a big group. Tense, uneasy.

Oh! And I was discontent too, of course. Anxiety had crept into me again, now that my mind had some time to itself; for unpleasant thoughts to once again rise to the surface. But I'm not counting myself, since, you know, I'm a perfectly composed liar-slash-general social performer and I'm positive that it didn't show on my face at all. Trust me, I'm absolutely confident about this.

"Um, are you alright, Utsushi?" Ophelia asked, hesitantly.

She was the only one who called me Utsushi. I didn't understand where it came from.

"What?" I turned to her, my voice accidentally coming out a little too loud and sharp. A couple other people in the carriage turned in my direction. "Yes, I'm fine. Why?"

"You're sort of..." She looked contemplative for a moment, seeming to be trying to figure out the right phrasing. "Well... Oscillating, a bit?"

'Oscillating'? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Big, stupid word. The impulse came from the animalistic, fight-or-flight part of my mind, usually suppressed but on guard as a result of the stress response I was feeling. This lady is trying to intellectually intimidate you. She wants to diminish your standing and usurp your access to the tribe's high-calorie food and desirable mates. Destroy her, quickly!

I tensed. Ophelia's brow wrinkled slightly in concern.

No, she means that you're shaking, a higher part of my consciousness corrected, a quarter of a second later. That's what oscillating means. You're shaking.

I looked down. Indeed, it appeared that my whole body was shivering slightly. Goosebumps had appeared all over my arms, despite the heat.

"Oh," I said. "Oh... Oscillating. Yeah..." I exhaled a bit. "Sorry, I'm just-- I'm feeling a little sick from all these twists and turns we're taking, since we can't look out the windows. That's all."

"Are you sure...?" She said, concerned. "You look a little pallid."

Of course I look pallid! That's completely consistent with my explanation that I'm feeling sick! Why are you questioning this?

I stared into space for a moment.

"Utsushi...?"

"Um." I rose my hand to my face, rubbing my eyes.

The first rule of lying to people - and trust me, I'm qualified for this - is to never lie wholesale. Creating a completely fictional narrative makes the act far more conscious and deliberate, heightening the risk of misspeaking or showing tells. The most effective lies are closer to rearranged truths, where the misinformation is only contextual, rather than essential.

"It's not really anything important," I lied. "I'm just sort of anxious about some of the things that might happen in the conclave. Rather-- My old master from the House of Resurrection will be there, and a lot of people will know me, uh... Because of my family, you know..."

"Oh, I see." She suddenly looked bashful. "Pardon-- I didn't mean to pry."

"No, it's okay," I said. "It's not even a completely bad sort of anxiety...? It's just, well, complicated."

I often felt an intense sense of gratitude towards whichever historical individual had invented the word (or, more broadly, the concept of) 'complicated', despite it being a cliche. If you used it right - to imply it stood in for something boring, or uncomfortably personal - it was like a bullet in the head of the conversation. You could use it to get away with lot.

"The depressing waif is worried she'll be involved in the mess her grandfather caused, most likely," Lilith said, her tone disinterested.

"Lili!" Her mother exclaimed. "That's incredibly rude!"

I tensed, thrown off by the interjection, but after a moments thought, was actually kind of relieved. This would derail any possible further questions on the subject, without a doubt..

"I am only saying what is already public knowledge," Lilith said.

Mehit frowned, though her expression betrayed a measure of insecurity at the same time. "That's..."

"It's alright," I said, holding up a hand disarmingly. "I mean... Everyone does know about it already. When we were planning the trip, everyone who had a connection to the order-- Uh, well, it came up pretty quickly."

The atmosphere in the carriage became a little awkward. Kam and Ran nodded in vague assent to my statement, while Ptolema looked to the side, biting her lip, and Ophelia looked down at her hands.

"That's no excuse to call you names. Or to make..." She glanced at her daughter for a moment. "Strange accusations. Lili, apologize to her."

Lilith did no such thing, simply looking down at her logic engine with a slightly deepening frown.

Let's take a moment to talk about Lilith as a person, since I sort of glossed over her somewhat earlier. Like I said, Lilith was a prodigy; she was an incredibly quick thinker and learner, and picked up new skills with frightening speed. Her specialization was golemancy, which in the context of medicine meant artificial limbs, organs, etcetera. More specifically, she focused more on the design of logic engines to serve as their intellects, which any non-biological prosthetic needed to regulate its behavior and interface with the mind at large. Without them, they were little more than blind automatons liable to damage themselves and the person they were attached to.

This was a much more technical subject compared to those of the rest of the class, and one that would probably go over most of our heads - even mine, and I had a head for numbers. And yet Lilith seemed to find it incredibly easy to grasp. She soared through piles of tomes and grasped techniques that would take normal arcanists years to fully comprehend. If she stayed the course, by the time she was an adult, she'd probably eclipse all of us completely. I could easily picture her becoming some world-renowned inventor of a new discipline, her face all over some international news sheet.

However... She was also, to say it bluntly, kind of a shitty little brat. Well-- No, that's not fair. It would probably be more accurate to say that she only seemed to care about her work and hobbies, and found anything that intruded upon those things unwelcome. She had terrible social skills, and didn't seem interested in developing better ones. Often, it was like she was actively trying to be unpleasant.

This could lead to some amount of friction with our group, which - if not mature - was generally at least able to hide our issues.

"Uh, that's alright," I said. "We're all used to her being outspoken, so--"

"No, it's not alright," Mehit said, shaking her head. "I'm always telling her not to say whatever awful thing comes to her mind when she's talking to someone." The frown on her face deepened. "Lili, apologize."

No response.

"Apologize to her," Mehit said, more firmly.

"I'm sorry," Lilith said. The words were devoid of any emotion except a small trace of annoyance.

"Lilith--"

"Really, it's alright..." I said.

Mehit shot me a look that was surprisingly sharp, then seemed to relax, her irritation giving way to kind of resigned fatigue. She shook her head. "I'm sorry about this," she said.

"You really needn't fret so much, Mehit," Kam said, in a soothing, friendly tone. "In a group like this, we all have our little quirks. Like Su said, we're all used to it."

"Yeah," I said, nodding vaguely. "That's right."

She seemed unhappy with this resolution, taking another hesitant glance at her daughter, but still fell silent.

Ophelia turned to me for a second after that, looking like she wanted to add something to our exchange, but hesitated instead, and simply looked back down, resting her wrists on the side of her dubious little box.

The rest of the journey passed with little conversation. Slowly, most sounds from outside - like other carriages or people moving around on the streets - ceased, and all that remained was silence and, occasionally, the distant sound of overhead thumping or the gears of machinery turning. We felt a few more lurches and subtle changes to the exterior light, and a continuing sense of us traveling downward. Then, after what felt like an inordinate amount of time, we finally felt the carriage pull over and come to a stop.

"Phew," Ptolema said. "Thank God."

A moment later, the door slid open, and the man from earlier once again stood before us, his face still veiled. He lowered his head respectfully.

"Thank you for your patience," he said. "I apologize for the trip being longer than I anticipated. I'm afraid there was some traffic."

"Quite alright!" Kam said, already standing and stepping forward. "Shall we collect our luggage, then?"

"Please, go ahead."

I climbed out of the carriage next, eager to get out of the stuffy air to faux-outdoors of the bastion. However, it wasn't much of improvement. We now seemed to be half 'underground', in an alleyway of an area that was completely deserted and barely lit. Behind the carriage, I could only make out the vague shapes of buildings and terminals that looked considerably more rundown than anything I observed during the walk earlier, some of which seemed to have succumbed to graffiti and general vandalism.

In fact, there was some of said graffiti on the wall right in front of us. Though a lot of it was just small tags or random scribbles, there was also a message spelled out in loud, red letters, reading 'CIVIL SERVICE IS SLAVERY', and slightly below that, 'DEATH TO GERNTOCRATS' (sic) and 'FUCK THE RULING CLASS'. Plus a surprisingly well-illustrated image of a penis and testicles, but that's less poignant.

I found myself surprised a place like this even existed in the bastion. I'd always assumed they'd have been incredibly economical about space, layout issues aside.

"Yeah!" Ptolema said, upon seeing the wall. "Fuck the ruling class!"

Mehit frowned uncomfortably at this as she pulled out her daughter's trunk from the carriage rear, shaking her head slightly.

"Ptolema," Ran said, with a slightly raised eyebrow, "I'm pretty sure you're from the ruling class."

"What?" She looked aghast at this revelation. "No, I'm Irencan! We were on the good side during the revolution! My brother went and joined the Mekhian army, and everything!"

Kamrusepa seemed to find this statement darkly amusing, smirking to herself while mouthing the phrase 'good side' as she pulled various items back onto her platform.

"That's not quite what 'ruling class' means," Ran said, her brow low. "You're in the ruling class if you're wealthy. And your family is pretty wealthy, even if they supported the reformists."

"But we don't rule anything," Ptolema protested. "My grandma just runs part of a shipping company."

I bit my tongue quietly.

"What, um, happens now...?" Ophelia asked, as she successfully strapped her bags back together.

"We have almost arrived at our destination," the man said. "If you would please follow me for a few minutes, I will take you to the point of entrance."

"From here? On foot?" Mehit looked around cautiously. "This is all very strange. I didn't even imagine slums like this existed in the bastion."

"There's no need to be anxious, madam. This is not a slum, but rather an abandoned development from the mid-century," he explained, his tone reassuring. "It was because it was uninhabited that it was selected for the purpose by the inner circle of the Order. Recently, it appears some youths have taken to lingering around the area, who I expect are responsible for this vandalism. But they are quite harmless. And besides, I should not think we will run into them."

"I just don't see how we're going to get from here to the conclave," she said.

"It's probably going to be an arcane refuge, Mehit," Kamrusepa said. "The purpose of all this was likely just to conceal the gateway from the hoi polloi, but you can put them anywhere, really."

"If that were the case, why have us come all the way up here...?" She hesitated, then shook her head. "Once again-- Forgive me. It's not my business to be questioning everything. And it's not as if anything untoward could possibly be done to us, since so many of us are already connected to the Order's membership."

I furrowed my brow a bit. Now that she mentioned it, it was a little peculiar.

Generally speaking, arcane refuges were created by using Aetheromancy to distort and enlarge an area of space - usually within something closed off, the stereotypical example being a closet - then compressing the area where mundane reality gives way to para-reality to only a small point, subsequently creating a 'bubble' where the universe sort of folded in on itself, with said point becoming the entrance to the refuge. Alternatively, if you had the eris stockpiles of a small country, you could create a pseudo-plane wholesale by flooding a extra-dimensional void with electromagnetic radiation, then anchor it to a specific spot in the mundane world, though this had only been done a handful of times in history.

But why bother doing either of those up here? It would have been just as easy to create one on the surface without sacrificing much in the way of subtlety, and much simpler to travel to, at that. In fact, having to make the members go up here for every single meeting sounded like it would make it less discreet, since the obvious choke point of the Aetherbridge would make it easier for a third party to track their comings and goings.

It was very odd.

"Come to think of it, where are the guys at this point?" Ptolema asked. "I would've figured we'd have met up with them by now."

"They will be taking a different route," the man said. "Do not worry. You will be swiftly reunited upon your arrival. Now then, if you would please follow me."

I turned to Ran, and muttered a bit. "This does feel kind of suspect."

"It'll be fine," she said.

The man gestured for us to follow, and we hefted up our bags. He led us through the alley, and then through several others that followed, the light getting progressively dimmer, until he eventually had to withdraw a lamp. Finally, after about 5 minutes, we came to a nondescript, weathered bronze doorway attached to the back of a partially collapsed structure, half of the outer wall lying in a heap. He reached into his robes and produced a set of keys.

"Y'know, uh," Ptolema said, as he fiddled with the lock. "We're the only ones here now, so you can probably take your veil off. We're all girls, so there's no chance of overlap for you."

"That is very kind of you," the man said, in a warm voice. "But I am not covering my face to avoid prosognostic events. Rather, I must keep my identity hidden. To do otherwise would interfere with my duties."

"Oh." She looked a little thrown off, scratching the back of her head.

The lock clicked open, and he led us inside the building, which was in almost complete darkness. We followed him through a few chambers that didn't appear to have ever been inhabited, the stone walls bare of even the faintest indication of decor. Soon, we arrived in a large, square room with a bronze floor that it quickly became obvious was an elevator. The man pulled the lever and our group descended in silence for close to a minute. Then we stepped out...

...into something wholly unexpected.

I mentioned before that a lot of the bastion looked ancient, and that was true. But I only meant it by the standards of the post-collapse era. An era where mankind, in spite of having fallen from such great heights, had still already grown extremely advanced in their understanding of natural philosophy and become the master of its environment - even if the Power had only come into existence relatively recently. What I was seeing now, however, was on an entirely different level of oldness. It was a grand hall, with towering, but half-collapsed pillars that seemed like little more than raw stone pushed upright, and primitive, eroded statues standing beside a weathered path of uneven stonework, save for one in a sort of square in the center, which was massive, it's vaguely defined arms and legs easily ten feet long each.

It looked truly primeval. Like something from the very beginnings of human history - probably the Old Kingdoms era, when people hadn't even discovered iron yet. When we hadn't even domesticated the horse. Or perhaps even before then, when the other hominid subspecies still walked the earth, and the closest thing to civilization was tents and, if you were lucky, pottery.

"Oh, good heavens," Kamrusepa said, putting a hand up to her mouth.

"Woah..." Ptolema said. Ophelia, who was standing beside her, stared wide-eyed, and even Lilith seemed to have briefly been distracted from her logic engine.

I could only stare in silence. I'd never seen anything that looked like this in my life. What was it doing here?

"Fuck," Ran said, looking upward. There was no sign of a ceiling - only a seemingly limitless darkness. "So it really was true..."

"True?" I said, looking to her. "You know what this place is?"

"Maybe," she said. "In the Sibyl's College, people used to say that the arcanists who first built the Bastion had their own sanctuaries in the lower levels." She squinted. "And that they used them to... Re-create places, from the old world, that were significant to them. Locations from the past, that they'd lost after what happened."

"How...?" I asked. "Just from their memories?"

She shook her head. "No. Even before the Power, people found some way to use iron to store the essence of a place, the information-- Like taking a photograph, but in three-dimensions. If you took something like that, then broke it down into the raw data and wrote it into an incantation..."

"Mm, I remember learning about that in school," Kamrusepa said, still taking in the view with a fascinated expression. "I think it was part of how the Mimikos was made, too, unless I'm getting my threads crossed."

"So this is like, what?" Ptolema said, looking around. "A copy of some ancient place? Is that why it all looks so run down?"

"It would have been a ruin even then, surely," Kam said. "They didn't even use this kind of raw stone in the days of the Imperial Era. Just iron and glass."

Ptolema looked puzzled. "Why would somebody wanna remake a place that was already in ruins?"

"Perhaps it had cultural value," Kam suggested. "Somewhere they considered worth preserving for historical reasons. Though this place looks long-abandoned, so if that's the case, they're doing a rather bad job of it, if I do say so myself."

That explanation felt off to me, and my devil's advocacy instincts kicked in. "It could have just been somewhere near where they grew up," I suggested. "Lots of people live in or around ruins even today. This whole place is a testament to that."

Even as the words left my mouth, this explanation felt sort of half-assed, too. I furrowed my brow, feeling a sense of disquiet as my eyes again flickered around the vast hall.

"That could be it, too," she conceded, then turned back to the sight, marveling. "Good heavens, though. This really is something else."

The man with us cleared his throat.

"Oh!" Kam said, letting out an embarrassed laugh. "Pardon; I almost forgot we were being escorted, for a second."

"That is quite alright," he said. "I'm afraid we are on something of a schedule, however. If you wouldn't mind?"

"Of course," she said, gesturing forward. "Please."

We resumed our walk, heading down the pathway. I looked carefully at the statues on either side of us. Some of them looked like fertility idols - with big hips and a bloated chest - and others, humanoid figures contorted into strange positions, as if dancing. Occasionally, we passed one that seemed to be an animal, except sculpted by someone who had no idea how to replicate the shape of one, leaving the result strange and warped, like something made by a child.

I touched the side of one. It was firm but coarse. Volcanic rock, most likely.

"Uh, so, do you know anything about this place?" Ptolema asked.

"I'm afraid not," the man said. "My duty for the conclave is only to escort visitors. Matters such as the placement of the entryways are above my station."

"Escorting people is your only duty? You mustn't have anything to do a lot of the time, then."

He chuckled, low and deep. "Forgive me, I misspoke. Of course, I have other duties. But that is the only one which concerns the entrances and exits, so I have never discussed them in any particular depth with my employers."

"What are your other duties?" I asked, out of curiosity.

"Recruitment, primarily. I reach out to prospective new members and conduct interviews," he said. "I also will sometimes acquire certain items that the inner circle requires, though this has become less common now that we interact openly with the outside world. In fact, I wonder if my position has become somewhat superfluous."

"That sucks," Ptolema said. "I hope they don't fire you."

He chuckled once again. "I should not think that would happen. Though, even if it did, I would not be offended. I am simply content to participate in the Great Work, for as long as I can be of some use to the cause."

She looked puzzled. "The 'Great Work'?"

"That's a euphemism for the search for immortality, Ptolema," I said. "The magnum opus."

"The greatest work!" Kam said. "Man's first and last desire, his most base and most divine; to simply not be killed."

"Very poetic, Kam," I said flatly.

"Why thank you, Su! That means a lot, coming from you."

We approached the massive statue in the center of the hallway. This one seemed to have a masculine body shape, and was posed more typically, with a hand reaching up towards the sky; perhaps once gripping a weapon that had fallen loose at some point in either of the two incarnations of the monument. I could make out vague facial features, weathered away to only vague blobs and indents on the stone, unrecognizable as imitating a human if not for the context.

"Don't stop for me," Ran said, pausing and laying her trunk down onto the stone before popping it open. "But I'm just going to take a quick picture of this."

"Ooh, you'll have to send me a copy when we get back," Kamrusepa told her enthusiastically.

"'Have to' is doing a lot of work there," I heard Ran reply.

The group kept moving, though I slowed down a little, looking over my shoulder. Behind us, I saw her take out her camera - a rectangular, bronze box about twice the size of her hand, with a lens running from the front to the back - and saw the bright flash a few moments later. In that fleeting moment, the chamber was briefly illuminated completely, and I could see that were were more statues, further away from the path, lined up in rows, intricate patterns flowing on the floor around them.

Gods, I thought. This place must be the width of the entire Bastion.

But I didn't have time to see much. She quickly stored her camera away again and hurried forward to catch up with us.

The room was so grand in scale that crossing it took close to 5 minutes, but eventually, we arrived at the far end, coming to a newer-looking bronze doorway, not dissimilar to the one we'd encountered a few minutes ago; my guess would be that they had both been installed at the same time, whenever the order had decided to use this place. The man withdrew another key, different from the first, and unlocked it. Then, he turned to face us.

"This is where we must part ways," he said.

"What? But we're not there yet." Mehit said, her voice cracking a little. She was the only one who seemed spooked rather than intrigued by the ruins. "It doesn't seem like we're anywhere right now."

"On the contrary, we have, in fact, arrived at our destination," he said. "Beyond this door is the antechamber of the Order's sanctuary. You will take a seat in the area provided, and then at 7 minutes past 5 o'clock, you will be transported using a mechanism within. From there, the servants of the inner circle will escort you to your accommodations."

That did not sound like an arcane refuge at all. Gateways to those were static - normally, you could just walk right in. Occasionally they'd be sealed, either by arcane means or with, well, a literal doorway built around it.

"Transported?" Mehit asked, suspicion in her tone. "You mean, transpositioned?"

"I'm afraid that I'm not informed regarding the specifics," the man said. "I understand it is by arcane means, but I am no practitioner myself. Perhaps it will become clear once you enter, since the majority of your group is trained."

She shifted uncomfortably, and crossed her arms tightly against the fabric of her dress.

I turned to her. "Uh, for whatever it's worth, I think it's uncomfortable, too. That we're still being kept in the dark, even at this point."

"You need have no fear, miss," he said to me. "I personally accompanied your grandfather down this route on many occasions. I can personally vouch that he returned on all such occasions completely unscathed."

I frowned, my attempt at comforting Mehit instantly derailed. "You knew my grandfather...?"

"Oh, yes," he said. "We all did-- He was a man with a kind heart, who liked to know all of those who worked under him. Though only in a formal capacity, of course." He bowed his head slightly. "We all still grieve for his loss. I cannot imagine how much it must have struck you, as one of his close family."

"T-There's no need for that," I said, my voice quiet. "It was ten years ago. And we weren't close."

"As you say, miss," he said.

Now that I thought about it, he'd been subtly more friendly to me back when we first found the carriage, hadn't he?

Shit. Now I didn't even want to be around the guy, despite him having done nothing wrong.

"Personally, I'm intrigued," Kam said, putting finger to her chin in a thoughtful manner. "Could it be teleportation? The eris expense would be tremendous, but... Or perhaps it's something more literal, like another elevator..."

"How come you're not gonna come with us?" Ptolema asked him. "Just to make sure we don't screw anything up, I mean."

"I'm afraid I cannot enter the chamber," he said, shaking his head. "It is forbidden by the traditions of the Order. Only those who are members or have had a formal invitation extended are permitted to cross the threshold, or look upon it."

"Why?" she asked.

"I believe it was originally as a measure against subterfuge, in the days when servants of the order were more abundant and those within our ranks less trusted. Though that has changed and I am trusted with far more intimate duties than many of my predecessors, the rule has remained in place nevertheless."

"Wow," she said. "That's kinda nuts, isn't it? It sounds really arbitrary."

"In accordance with human nature, it is important for all truly grand endeavors to stand atop a bedrock of tradition," the man said warmly, his patience seemingly unshaken by Ptolema's somewhat disrespectful line of questioning. "Even though individual practices may come to seem arbitrary with the passage of time, continuing to uphold them is important to hardening the integrity of a brotherhood. An order with ever-adapting, fluid rules quickly becomes an abstract, discordant thing in the minds of those within it, easily abandoned or subverted. For a goal so distant as those of the masters, that is something that must be avoided."

"Seems like the kind of thinking that puts arbitrary tradition before people's actual feelings," Ran said. I nodded.

But it's not quite that simple, a part of me thought. He sort of does have a point. All social structures that aren't enforced are ultimately fictions. The less you change the story, the easier it is to believe in...

"That's a little judgemental, Ran," Kam chimed in. "But... It's undeniable that too much tradition can curtail progress. Some rules become a dead weight, and if there's enough of that, it only serves to consign a group to only a more prolonged destruction."

"That, too, is true," the man said. "But it is ultimately not my place to make such judgements."

"So... You don't even know what's inside?" Ptolema asked, her expression curious. She craned her neck and peered around him, examining the unlocked door.

"That is correct," he said.

"Even though you bring people down here all the time?"

"Yes."

"Geez." Ptolema regarded the man with a sudden expression of intense sympathy. "Uh, y'know... We wouldn't tell anyone if you wanted to take a look. Just, if you're curious, I mean. Right, everybody...?"

"Um, I suppose I could keep it a secret," Ophelia said, sounding a little uneasy about the idea.

"I would absolutely tell everyone," Ran said sarcastically.

"Ran!" Ptolema exclaimed. "This is serious! I wanna help this guy!"

"Oh, my lips would be utterly sealed," Kam said, her expression suggesting that she did not, in fact, think this was particularly serious. "I'm always happy to violate tradition to appease one's curiosity, especially when the matter concerns an underdog."

"I'm pretty sure you wouldn't keep it a secret, Kam," I said. "You're a terrible gossip."

She looked shocked at this accusation. "I most certainly am not! I can be eminently discreet!"

The man chuckled to himself, still not seeming to find the situation at all awkward or offputting. "While I am flattered by your desire to champion my cause, I have no desire to see the inside of the chamber."

Ptolema blinked. "What, really?"

"Yes," he said, with a nod. "Any curiosity I had regarding the works of the masters was settled a long time ago. As of now, I am content only to serve my meager role." He put the keys back into the pocket of his robe. "But now, I am afraid, I must bid you farewell. Please proceed into the antechamber at once, as I believe the anointed hour is approaching, and it would be best to leave leeway for any possible misunderstandings."

Kamrusepa, still making a mildly huffy expression, turned back towards him. "Thank you for escorting us, sir."

"Of course," he said, bowing his head. "I bid you good afternoon, and pray your relationship with the masters becomes a fruitful one, such that your labours may serve the Great Work."

And with that, he left, heading back down the pathway. Without the presence of his lamp, the hallway appeared much darker, but not completely; I hadn't noticed it before, but there was a faint blue light coming from very far overhead, just enough to make out our surroundings. Like how things might be at the bottom of the ocean floor. I couldn't identify the source of it, even after I tried taking off my glasses and peering as hard as I could.

Meanwhile, Ptolema stared at the man as he departed, her expression one of bafflement.

"What a weird guy," she said.

"It's just a room, Ptolema," Kam said, a touch of condescension in her tone. "Is it really such a surprise that he wouldn't care?"

"Yeah, it is!" she said. "If I had to go to the same crazy weird underground ruin a hundred times and never got to see the place I was actually taking people to, I'd go nuts. My head's hurting just thinking about it." She rubbed her eyes.

"We should not be lingering out here," Lilith interjected, her words sharp and sudden. "It's 4:50. We need to go inside."

"Mm, yes, let's," Kam said, her tone becoming a little more serious "It would be rather dire if we came this far and then ended up having to go all the way back to the city."

Without waiting for anyone else's approval, Kam turned the handle and pulled open the doorway.

As soon as she did, light flooded out to our feet, as the inside was much better lit. But not because of a conventional light source. Instead, it was...

Actually, let me just start from the top.

The upper half of the room we were now looking into - that is to say, the ceiling and most of the walls - was similar to the hall; wrought of ancient stone that looked worn down by the passage of time. However, there was something that seemed relatively new on them, too: A mural, bright and colourful and painted in a close to contemporary art style, the design intensely creative and stylized, but also carefully considered, with humans, objects and animals all painted to correct scale. It was such a sharp change that it took me off guard, and for a moment, I didn't even realize what I was looking at.

However, there was a far more notable trait to the room present in its lower half.

...that is to say, outside of a set of steps directly in front of us, there was none. It had no floor. And there was nothing beneath that lack of floor, either. Instead, we could once again see the Mimikos below directly, the shimmering reflection of the Great Lamp on the surface filling the room with a radiant, blue and green light.

But this time, there was seemingly no glass separating us from it, or from the frigid cold and vacuum of the Empyrean. It was just a straight drop, right into the void.

"Oh." Kamrusepa said, looking downward. "Huh."