The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Arboretum | 7:04 PM | First Day

Though we retread some ground and brought Theo largely up to speed on what we'd discussed, we never got back on the subject of the energy supply of the tree/construct/abomination... though the explanation would come back around to smack me in the face later.

After all was said and done, Neferuaten offered to give us something of a guided tour around the last of the three bioenclosures we were permitted to explore, the one which housed the Order's primary headquarters. Since there didn't seem to be anything else in the arboretum aside from greenery, we'd agreed. The original intent of this walk as a means to clear my head was already sorta spoiled by the presence of Theo, so at least this way I'd avoid any further weird surprises.

Plus, it was an excuse to spend time with Neferuaten, which I probably would have done no matter what. I'd been worried things would be awkward, but being around her made me feel really at ease.

As we passed through the inter-bioenclosure seal, I noticed something that I hadn't the previous time. Behind the lever, there was some kind of mechanism that was connected to, rather than door itself, what looked like a line of echoglass that ran underground.

"What's that for, exactly?" I asked, as the heavy doorway slid open.

"Hm?" Neferuaten looked over her shoulder at me with a curious expression, before it shifted into one of recognition as she followed my line of sight. "Ah, sharp eyes. That leads to our logic engines on the lower level - it keeps an accounting of whenever someone passes through one of these."

Why? I wanted to ask, but this was beaten out by what felt a more pressing question. "There's a lower level?"

"Indeed," she said. "Linos did not mention it?"

"We only talked about the layout for a minute as I was going out the door," I said.

She gave a thoughtful nod. "I suppose he might not have thought it of interest to a visitor," she said. "It plays host to a combination of administrative and research functions that require too much space to be viable on the upper levels. Much of this sanctuary requires the Power to operate properly, or at least pleasantly - air circulation being one such example - and such affairs are handled there, alongside keeping the different buildings supplied with eris."

"What about the research tower?" I asked.

"Mm, that's a little more complicated," she said, with a small smile. "It's honestly all little cramped and unpleasant, and not very exciting... Though I suppose there are a couple things that one might consider worth seeing. I'd offer to give you a tour to those as well, but I'm not sure we'll have the proper time before dinner."

"Uh, I think I'd rather pass on that anyway," Theo said. "I don't really like going underground."

I glanced upwards. "We're pretty close to underground already, technically speaking."

"Well, you know what I mean," he said, with an uneasy smile. "At least here we've got some space overhead."

Neferuaten chuckled. "You might be surprised, master Melanthos. Some of our subterranean spaces are surprisingly spacious."

We passed through the tunnel into the next bioenclosure, the pyramind-roofed one I had seen earlier. The grass was once again the blue skia of the one containing the abbey house, it and was the most modest so far in terms of the gardening that had apparently been done. There were only a handful of trees, and the grass was trimmed short - the only exception was what looked like a large pond, off to the left, and what appeared to be a greenhouse nearby, filled with various jarred herbs. It was almost domestic, like someone's back garden.

However, these were details I didn't process at once, because the bioenclosure was dominated by an extremely large structure in roughly the center.

The impression I got immediately was of a converted church. It was three stories tall, but those stories weren't of equal height, or even equally proportioned throughout the building; it looked like the ground floor had an incredibly tall roof, whereas the subsequent two were more standard, except for a part near the back where the uppermost floor rose abruptly in height and jutted out to the side slightly, with a series of sleek pillars holding it in place. There was also a bell tower - of all things - rising from a dome-like segment on the right that stood another two stories above the rest still, reaching almost to the roof of the bioenclosure itself.

As for the architectural style, it was if nothing else unique, which was saying something in the post-revolutionary period where you couldn't walk five steps in Old Yru without stumbling into some novice architect's bizarre-looking experiment. The stone was a featureless dark, muddy grey that gave a impression of antiquity that, more than anything, reminded me of the faux-ruins we'd seen back in the lower levels of bastion earlier. Except unlike them, it looked less primitive, and more like something that belonged in an entirely alternative history, where masonry had developed in a more grotesque and disquieting direction.

The building was curved, rounded in a fashion that went past merely imitating the organic, to looking like it was organic, as if it had been wrought out of the shell of some giant beetle; the whole thing even turned inward a bit at the far edges, like a dead insect curling in on itself. The surface of the stone had only a handful of discernible lines, and was so polished and reflective that I could see the forms of our own bodies staring back at us amidst the grey-brown edifice. Even the windows had an almost orifice-like quality to them; I couldn't see a single sharp edge.

Except for the bell tower. It, alone, looked sharp, and was wrought in a traditional Rhunbardic style - like a dagger jammed into the body of a beast.

The whole thing was, above all else, appallingly ugly, which lent it a kind of novelty in of itself. Things like this, in polite society, just didn't get built. You could go to the architectural commission of the most liberal city in Inotia with the concept and you'd be laughed out the door. If I had seen this in any other context, I would have sincerely wondered if it were some kind of landing craft for a race of trans-dimensional beings, such did it seem engineered to be offensive to human sensibilities on a gut-level.

More than just that, though, it was oppressive. Being in its presence alone was suffocating, and just looking at it made part of me want to give up on this whole idea and run off back to the guest house.

"Huh," Theodoros said. "That's, er, certainly quite the building."

"It's impressive, is it not?" Neferuaten asked. A slyness in her smile conveyed an awareness of how we were probably reacting to the sight.

"I'm not sure 'impressive' is quite the word I'd use," I said.

"Perhaps it's a little off-base, yes," she said. "What would you suggest, then?"

"I'd, hm-- I'd say 'unorthodox', I think," Theodoros said.

"Not unfair," she said, with a measured nod.

"Bad," I said, with Ran-esque bluntness. "It kind of looks... Bad."

"Not unreasonable, either," she said, not seeming inclined to any sort of sentimentality. "Honestly, your reactions are some of the more subdued I've seen."

"I think I've hit my limit for surprises today, between the trip here, the fact this sanctuary is literally in a bubble at the bottom of the ocean, and what we saw a moment ago," I said. "I could probably watch someone be murdered in front of me and still not feel anything."

"Let's hope that hypothesis isn't tested," she said, with some amusement. "For whatever it's worth, the interior is quite a lot more pleasant. And you do get used to it, eventually."

"How eventually is 'eventually'?" I asked.

"Hmm." She put a finger to her lips, considering the question. "I believe it took me something in the range of around fifty years. Give or take a few."

I snorted.

One thing that set Neferuaten apart from almost any other professor I'd had all through my over two decades of education - primary, secondary, tertiary, preliminary and higher university, at the House of Resurrection, and finally with the exemplary acolytes class - was how easy it was to talk to her, despite what must have been an immense age gap. I'd already begun falling back into the more casual dynamic we'd had when I was her disciple.

It was rare to really get on that well with someone more than a generation or two removed from you, which was probably a product of how much human longevity had been extended from what was 'natural'. Back in the Old and New Kingdoms eras, when people almost never even saw 100, it'd probably been easy for even individuals at the complete opposite extremes of age to get along well, considering how much smaller the disparity in time and formative experiences would have been. In the present, though, it could be striking how little you could relate to one another beyond the superficial.

It wasn't like Neferuaten was immune to that - there was still a sense of distance. But she was so patient, so laid-back in any situation that it wasn't as obvious. She was the kind of person who seemed to have unlimited emotional and mental resources, who'd have a conversation with a random stranger and somehow make it interesting enough to last hours. And there was a certain vigor, an essential childishness to her on some level, that almost transcended the passage of the years.

Theo still seemed a bit nervous talking to her, but even he'd probably feel at ease eventually.

"There are two entrances - aside from the kitchen, which has a little door around the back." She indicated with her finger. "One which goes directly into the main hall, and another which feeds directly into the area below the belltower, where we hold public conferences. As it stands, it's the more likely of the two to be unoccupied. Shall we start there?"

"Sounds fine to me," Theo said.

"Yeah, that's no problem," I said, nodding. "Are any of the other council members about, at the moment?"

She considered the question. "Everyone except Zeno has arrived, but at this time of the evening, they'll likely be either in their chambers or in the tower, rather than walking around the building. We're more likely to run into a servant. Of course, that's not a certainty-- But I assure you no one will bite, even if we do. Everyone has been eager to meet your group." She considered her words for a moment. "Well, I suppose Anna might bite a little bit. But I'm sure I'll be able to hold her at bay for you."

Theodoros frowned, a bit of anxiety creeping into his expression. "Er, what do you mean, exactly? Does she not want us to be here?"

"Oh, no, it's not like that," she said, with a shake of her head. "But she has a way of being a little abrasive with people, especially younger people. She's a woman with very high standards, even for the rest of us." She quirked her brow. "Your father never talked about her?"

He looked hesitant. "My father doesn't really like to talk about his work here."

"I see," she said, with a small frown. "But no. To be serious, I doubt we'll run into her. Even more than the others, she's rarely about on her own." She gestured forwards with the flat of her hand. "Shall we, then?"

We nodded.

We began to circle the structure, heading towards the rear door. The bell tower looked down on us from overhead, the bright bronze of it shimmering in the artificial light.

"So, Utsushikome," Neferuaten said, as we walked. "You mentioned some strange thoughts you'd been having, since your arrival?"

"Oh, uh, right," I said, feeling a little embarrassed. I'd mentioned the subject in passing earlier, around when she'd offered to give us the tour. "It's nothing, really. I think I'm just feeling stressed, from... Well, everything..."

"Humor me," she said, with a smile. "It's good to get these things out of your system. Unless you don't want to do it in front of Theodoros...?"

"I won't judge, Utsu," he said. "I mean-- I'm the last person in the world who could put someone down for feeling anxious about something silly."

I frowned, looking downward uncertainly. "I don't even really know how to explain it." I scratched at the side of my head. "I guess it's sort of like deja vu, but not quite...?"

"How do you mean, exactly?" she asked.

"Well, with deja vu, you have the sense of something having happened before. That what you're experiencing now is something that's happened in the past. You don't get any actual new information, just that vague sense of repetition. Whereas this is..." I took my glasses off for a moment, rubbing my eyes. "It's more like I'm getting flashes of a distorted version of what's happening. I get these feelings, like there's something I desperately need to be doing. But when I try to place why, it's like... Trying to remember a dream, except one that's happening tangential to right now instead of while I was sleeping. I just see these strange, nonsensical versions of the places and people I'm talking to, that aren't connected to reality at all."

She considered this for a few moments, her eyes wandering, before flicking back to face in my direction. "Do you know the science behind deja vu, Utsushikome? As a neurological phenomena?"

"Uh, no, I don't," I said, feeling strangely embarrassed, like this was an admission of a personal failing rather than not knowing a piece of trivia. "I think I might have read an article about it at some point, but I can't remember now."

"I'm actually being a little mean in asking that," she admitted, with a playful look. "Truthfully, one of the most popular hypotheses is that it is not a neurological phenomena at all, per-se, but rather the mind operating correctly. The result of a good long-term memory, doing its proper job, if perhaps with a little too much diligence."

"You mean," I said, furrowing my brow curiously, "...that whenever you have deja vu, you really have experienced that thing before?

"It's not so absurd an idea, is it?" she asked, with a slight tilt of her head. "Though we find it difficult to recall anything but notable events on impulse alone, over the course of our lives, human beings amass a quantity of experiences that is difficult to truly fathom; 15 hours a day, every day. Even much of our dreams is taken in unconsciously - filed away somewhere in the backs of our minds." She looked ahead, a thoughtful expression on her face. "And look at the world that we human beings have constructed. We are predictable creatures by nature, sharing similar standards of order and beauty, even across cultures. And that predictability has transferred into our cities, our arts, our words to one another. All filled with patterns, repeating over and over again."

She's so... precise, I thought to myself.

"Even if that's true..." I said. "I don't think I've ever seen a place like this before. Not a lot of underwater facilities around."

"Well, I'm not per-se saying this is what you're experiencing... Though, I wouldn't rule out the possibility that you've gone through something that evokes similar experiences, even if the specifics are not the same," she went on. "A good memory can be more astute than the conscious mind. It can perceive similarity, repetition of events where the other might fail, and drive you to act in accordance with that knowledge."

"Um, pardon my interjection..." Theodoros said. "But I thought that the cause of deja vu was, ah. Something to do with communication between the two sides of the mind being delayed? Not implicit memory, which seems to be what you're discussing."

Neferuaten looked at him with a slightly more exasperated, though by no means judgemental look. "That is an alternative theory, indeed. I confess that I'm framing it this respect more out of a desire to a make a point, than a complete devotion to scholarly accuracy."

"Oh," he said. "Er. Sorry, I was just trying to be part of a conversation."

She chuckled at these words. "There's no need to apologize."

"I think it's interesting, at least," I said, wanting to change the subject. "Point aside."

"Thank you, Utsushikome," she said, with a nod. "As for said point, what I suppose I'm trying to say is that if you feel that something is wrong, you shouldn't dismiss it, but rather trust in yourself. In yourself, and your own mind. For as human beings--"

"We have nothing else," I said, finishing the sentences. "But our minds."

She'd always said as much.

A small smile. "Now I'm the one that's being predictable, it seems." She sighed to herself. "But yes. Remember that, and you might surprise yourself."

It was simple advice, but it still felt helpful and reassuring to hear it, and this was a stupid non-problem to begin with. I nodded, smiling softly.

"Though, truthfully, what you're experiencing seems closer to presque vu, an adjacent phenomena," she said. "The sense of one being on the brink of a revelation." She smiled widely. "If you happen to stumble upon one, I hope you'll share it with me, Utsushikome."

"Yeah," I said. "I mean... Of course."

I turned my head upwards as we walked, facing the ceiling.

We soon came around the other side of the building, coming across a segment of it that was difficult to describe as either wholly indoors or outdoors. It was an extremely large, round overhang of about 20 meters across, wall-less but suspended by many pillars, and with an ornate mosaic flooring below that depicted a stylized map of the entire Mimikos, albeit with some of the ascendant islands shaved off the periphery. There was also a stone door which was presumably our destination, although that wasn't the first thing that caught my eye.

In the center of the circle was a statue, about 8 feet high, and of the kind of ornate-but-formulaic design that characterized art from the Second Resurrection. It depicted a tall, skinny woman, though her two sides, left and right, were very different in nature. The left was beautiful and youthful in a generic, almost ethnicity-less way, dressed in the most delicate of silk peploi, with long and unrealistically tidy curls falling elegantly over her shoulders. Her lip was curled into a gentle half-smile, kind but slightly mysterious, teasing. Her right...

Well, her right, to say the least, was very different.

On that side, she appeared to be skinless, although it was hard to tell with a statue; I recalled it being a matter of hot debate among the boys in my class back in secondary school. It was possible she was simply incredibly emaciated, or that there were supposed to be growths - like scales - erupting from her flesh. Her hair was made up of hateful, eyeless wyrms, biting and hissing at each other, and her flesh, which was naked sake for a tasteful rag covering one area in particular, was covered in numerous stab wounds, bleeding openly. As for her face, it was grim and wide eyed. Mournful and contemptful both.

I recognized the figure depicted at once; I passed one of her temples whenever I went to the distribution hall to pick up groceries. This was Phui, Dying Goddess of Love Given Way To Anguish, one of the eleven deities of the now largely defunct Ysaran-Inotian Pantheon.

At the foot of the statue, however, was a separate surprise. Bardiya, of all people, was standing there, examining it with a discretionary, thoughtful look.

"Bard...?" Theodoros said, his brow furrowed.

"Ah, it looks like one of your other companions has a curious nature, too," Neferuaten said, cheerfully, and called out. "Hello there!"

"Oh, good evening," Bardiya said, his head only half-turning. "Pardon me, I didn't hear your group approach. I was just examining the craftsmanship of this Phuic idol. 8th century, if I'm not mistaken? From Illykrios."

"You've a good eye," Neferuaten said, stepping forward. Theodoros and I both hesitated in concert, him presumably also feeling that this nascent conversation had skipped a step that conversations, especially first meetings, were not supposed to, and left us behind a bit. "It was one of the artifacts reclaimed from Rhunbard at the end of Tricenturial War. Or a reproduction, I couldn't really say for certain."

"No, I feel largely certain it's genuine," he said, his eyes squinting. "The texture doesn't show any of the signs of low-information duplication, though I suppose I'd need a magnifying lens to see for certain. But the indentures look natural enough, to me."

"You'd know better than I, most likely," she said. "To be honest, I barely keep up with what they use to decorate this place."

"It is a curious choice," he said, still not turning around to actually face her. "I would have expected Gia. Life, and all adjacent, would seem a better divine portfolio for the context."

"Ah, yet life is but a thing inflicted upon us, valueless in of itself," Neferuaten said. "Love is what gives it value, and drives us to seek more of it out."

Is this what it was like, when people without interpersonal complexes met each other? It was baffling to watch. It felt like cheating. They were already having a conversation, and they hadn't done any of the rituals they ought to have, like talking about how much they'd been looking forward to meeting the other, or how much of a pleasure it was.

This is disgusting, my social anxiety said. How do they know the other person isn't secretly forming a negative opinion of them? Don't they CARE?

"I'm Neferuaten of Amat, by the way," she continued, extending her hand as she finally reached him. "You must be Bardiya of Tuon?"

"Regrettably," he said, turning and taking it. "Thank you for your invitation."

"Of course," she said. "I read your paper on non-invasive liver repair, and the incantation you created with it. The method was quite novel - rare to see for a walk-in treatment."

"Thank you," he said, with a deferential nod. "We are in desperate need of restorative approaches to critical organs for tetra- and petra- centennials that do not require extensive arcanist attention. The approach of low-intervention maintenance to life extension has become synonymous with stagnation because of its accessibility to the common people, relative to the clone-and-replace methodology. One of my main aspirations is to contribute in some small way to remedying that."

"A noble cause indeed," she said. "A good thing to have, coming into the field."

"I would not flatter myself," he said solemnly. "A cause is noble when it produces results. Until that point, it is but vanity, and thus far all I have accomplished are an amateur's experiments - finding alternate methods to do that which has already been done."

"You shouldn't be so critical of yourself. For your age, it's still a great achievement."

"Perhaps," he said, reluctantly. He looked over her shoulder. "Ah, I see you have Theo and Su with you."

"Uh, hello again, Bardiya," I said. I edged forward a bit, hoping this would allow to assert myself as a conversational participant.

"Hello," he said, before shifting his attention back to Neferuaten. "I'm familiar with your work, as well, of course. But considering the circumstances, I expect there's no praise or observation I could offer that you wouldn't find tiresome."

I'm familiar with your work. He'd said that so casually, like he was talking to some other student, and not arguably one of the most respected Thanatomancers in the entire world.

Bardiya had always had the uncanny ability - or maybe it was a curse - of not seeming to respond to social divides at all in his interactions with others. Whether it was age, wealth, Party, sex or experience, he hopped right over that stuff like it was a puddle.

Sometimes this worked in his favor, though it could also cause problems. The amount of occasions I could recall where he'd got on to the bad side of a prominent scholar or academy patron because he didn't 'show enough respect' was well into the double digits. Kamrusepa had impressed on us an unofficial command to keep him contained at any social functions that involved our class.

"Oh, on the contrary!" she said, with a faint smirk. "I'm a glutton when it comes to flattery; age and experience have done nothing to dull my appetite for it. Gods know, if anything, I need it more than ever just to get through the days." She glanced over her shoulder. "But I promised I'd show these two around our main building, so I probably shouldn't indulge myself too much right now."

"Um... What are you out here for, anyway, Bard?" Theo asked, following in my wake. "I didn't really know you were interested in religious art."

"I'm not, especially," he said, with a shrug. "But I have a passing knowledge of the history from when I studied architecture, and my sister was a temple priestess, so I've picked up some knowledge through osmosis. And I was taken a little aback by seeing such a thing in this terrace."

"It's not so out of place, is it?" Neferuaten asked, turning to regard the statue herself. "This place is a temple, in many ways. If a godless one."

"Why is it here, exactly?" I asked, looking at the marble-wrought eyes of the thing. The imagery really was disturbing, even if I'd seen it so many times over the course of living in Oreskios and Old Yru that I'd become somewhat numb to it.

In the stories, Phui was the third-to-last of the gods to fall during the end of the world, who attempted to take her own life after the death of her lover. But the breaking of the heavens had left her unable to die, meaning that no matter how she much she cut into her flesh, how much she starved herself of food and drink, reprieve would never come. Only relentless, unceasing pain, and grief for that which she had lost.

Yeah, it was a real mystery why the pantheon wasn't popular any more.

Neferuaten turned to me with a curious air, raising a finger to her mouth. "Why don't you tell me, Utsushikome? You've been witness to our peculiar tastes for several hours, now. Can you form a hypothesis for why this statue would be here, in the courtyard of an irreligious organization, in a little glass box at the bottom of an otherworldly ocean?"

I furrowed my brow. "Is it something I could even guess?"

"Easily," she said, with a nod. "In fact, considering your sentimental nature, you may well be exceptionally qualified to do so."

Was that a hint?

I looked downward, thinking. I thought about everything I'd witnessed so far; the strange ruin in the trip, the mural, this whole place and the story behind it, the guest house and its strange name, and tried to reach a conclusion. I closed my eyes...

...and then, thinking back to the picture that'd been hanging in my room, I realized. She'd been right. It was, actually, pretty simple.

"It's a recreation," I said. "Like what we passed through to reach the gateway. This whole place is a recreation of somewhere else."

"Well done!" she said, and begun a little soft applause. "I knew you'd be able to figure it out."

"That's why there's so much that seems odd or impractical for its seeming purpose," I continued. "Why the guest house looks like it was transplanted from some pastoral countryside village in Rhunbard. And why this whole building is like this. The structure this was based on was probably some kind of temple originally - which is why there's a bell tower that looks like it doesn't belong there, and why the other building is called the 'Abbey House'. An abbey accompanies a church. They're in separate enclosures, but in the original structure, they must have been close by."

"Very astute, indeed," she said.

"S-Sorry," Theodoros interjected. "I think I've fallen behind, here. How are you drawing this conclusion, exactly...?"

"You didn't see the place we passed through on our way here, Theo," I said. "That was what planted the idea in my head to begin with. Ran told me that, in the Empyrean Bastion, there's a rumor that the fortress's original creators reconstructed places of significance to them from the old world at the base of the structure. We passed through an old ruin that looked like an example of that. This place must be something along the same lines."

"The more I hear about the stuff your group saw, the more I feel like we, er, got the short end the stick," he said, somehow reticent.

"Indeed," Bardiya said, looking between me and Neferuaten with what had evolved into an expression of relaxed curiosity. "It does feel as though we missed out on some important context."

"What I'm most curious about, though," I continued, "is why? Why do this?"

Neferuaten smiled thoughtfully, looking off to the side. "It's a story that I'm not sure I'm the best qualified to tell. Much of the details predate even my own membership. Hm, how much should I say..." She paused for a moment, her brow wrinkling just slightly. "Before this place was constructed in the aftermath of the Great Interplanar War, the Order of the Universal Panacea had another headquarters that was more mundane in character, built simply on land in the Mimikos. It is that upon which this place was based. As you speculated, I believe it was originally an abandoned temple, though much of the details are unknown to me."

"What, ah. What happened?" Theodoros asked, frowning. "My father's never mentioned this before."

"A great tragedy took place there," she said. "One in which many members of the organization lost their lives, and the original structures were destroyed. After all was said and done, it was decided it would be inappropriate - conceding defeat, so to speak - to simply move on and establish a new headquarters wholesale... But at the same time, it was not an option to simply remain and rebuild. Thus, we arrived at this." She turned back to face me. "A peculiar compromise, to say the least."

"Quite," Bardiya said. "Would it not have been better for everyone to simply let go of the past?"

At this, Neferuaten laughed openly and without restraint, which wasn't something that happened often. It was softer and more delicate than you'd expect; musical, almost.

"U-Um." Theodoros spoke up hesitantly. "I'm not sure I see why that's so funny."

It's because it's such an easy thing to say, I thought to myself. 'You should let go of the past.' That's the platitude; the one the world drums into you again and again.

But it's not so simple, is it?

"Forgive me," she said, shaking her head, a wide smile still on her lips. "That was untoward. No-- You're quite right, Bardiya. It was a profoundly awkward thing to do, going far beyond memorialization, and into the realms of outright fetishization. I would like to think I would have dissented against the idea, had I voice in the organization that, at the time, was of any consequence." She sighed. "In some ways, we human beings ought never to have been given a tool so awesome as the Power. For all the good it does us, it often enables our worse indulgences."

"It must have taken a tremendous effort, compared to something more practical," Bardiya said. "I saw little in the abbey or the gardens that looked as if it had been duplicated with the Power, either. Most everything must be a by-hand reconstruction. It must have had a tremendous cost - if not in wealth, than man-hours."

"A cost that I can, at least, say I didn't pay any of," Neferuaten said. "But we're skirting close to me gossiping about my colleagues behind my back, so I should probably stop there. Lest I get myself into trouble."

That was clever, a part of me noted. She's acting as though she just revealed more than she ought have, but really, she didn't say very much at all. But now everyone probably feels like she trusts them in some special way, and will be more liable to open up to her in the future.

What? That's stupid, another part objected. The grandmaster is a good, virtuous person, not like us. She wouldn't try to socially manipulate people. It paused for a moment. ...plus, even if she did, everyone manipulates others anyway, so it's fine. Now move the conversation along, you neurotic idiot.

"You don't have to answer this," I said, "but out of curiosity, when you said ' a great tragedy'..."

"Ah, I should have thought you would be curious, Utsushikome," she said, looking towards me. "Without saying too much, the secrecy of the Order was compromised, with the consequences one would expect. Though this was before the moderation that the Grand Alliance brought about, so the punishment imparted on those who violated the Covenant was even more severe."

That would explain the excessive caution. Old wounds...

"In any case," she went on. "Now you have your answer-- That is why there is a statue of a quasi-dead, largely historical goddess here. This was presumably a part of the original structure devoted to her worship specifically. As far as I'm aware, however, no true believers in the Old Pantheon have ever graced these halls, so she must be quite starved of attention, by now. Were she not a statue, I'd expect her to be grateful for our interest."

"Are you a woman of faith, madam?" Bardiya asked.

Neferuaten raised her eyebrows. "Me? Oh, goodness, no. I haven't a religious bone in my body." She snorted. "If anything, I'd consider defiance of the gods one of my foremost pastimes."

"The everblossom does seem to flirt with it a bit," I said.

"Only flirts?" She smiled. "I must do more to step up my efforts." She idly crossed her arms. "I've always found the Dying Gods uniquely unappealing, however; a product of Mourning Period-era fatalism more than a proper belief system. ...though, I suppose there is one concept that I like, from the mythology."

"What's that?" I asked.

"That the gods are condemned to suffering, as we are," she said, still smiling. "For in the unlikely event that there truly are some manner of divine beings, and they did create us and our inherent condition, no punishment for that act could possibly be sufficiently great." A certain severity entered her eyes. "If man's lot in the Remaining World is the one he is to bear for the rest of time, then I hope whatever realm they have found exile in is a thousand times worse."