The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

When the Ironworkers - or more accurately the last of them, the title having been an umbrella term equivalent to 'arcanist' in the Imperial Era - attempted to reconstruct reality, they encountered certain difficulties.

As the name would indicate, true iron, the substance upon which humankind's prior civilization had been built, played the foremost role in this process. The ancients had wrought most everything out of iron or some alloy of it since the beginning of the New Kingdoms era, from buildings to accessories to weapons. Even their version of logic engines used it, utilizing a complex system of electromagnetic pulses that was no longer possible in the present day. At some point, it had become understood that sufficiently condensed, sharpened and charged with energy, it would begin to bend the world at strange angles around it, like a heavy object placed on a sheet of suspended cloth.

Even back then, it was already known that the naturally observable universe (or the birth plane of human beings, as it was conceptualized in the present) was, in truth, only one intersection of 4 discreet dimensions in a true world that contained at least 11; a single perspective on a grander reality that was vastly more complex then could be conceived of. What were once thought of as elementary particles were in reality just one face of a many-sided die, and what looked like a tree, or a mountain, or a star to us, could in another plane be...

Well, something impossible to even conceptualize. A piece of an otherworld where things worked so differently on an essential level that trying to visualize it would be as alien as a stick figure trying to understand the concept of 'sideways'.

I'm getting off-topic. My point is that iron, in that special state, was found to physically transcend, or at least influence, dimensions beyond the four native to humanity, warping other planes, which then warped our own in turn. In the following centuries, this evolved into a very exact science, enabling things that had once been thought impossible, like travel between the stars, or even their own efforts towards immortality and the transformation of the human condition, now half-lost as a byproduct of divided and secretive sects of scholars.

At the time the collapse arrived, scholarly understanding of the cosmos, though comprehensive, was still far from complete, and even this power had no hope of stopping it outright. It was, however, advanced enough to allow the creation of an cross-planar edifice of iron that was not dependent on 4-dimensional reality, and which it could not reach. There, what human beings had the luxury to be sufficiently prepared could continue to exist (after a fashion), and the edifice could be expanded to construct new planes in which they might eventually live.

There's a term which comes up in many forms of scholarship: 'Substrate'. It essentially means the foundation of something which also, to some extent, defines its format and nature. For example, a canvas is the substrate for a painting, and a brain is a substrate for the human mind.

A substrate cannot exist within itself. That sounds awkward when I put it so directly, but it's not too hard to understand if you think about it in abstract-- A foundation obviously can't support another foundation of equal weight and nature, because... Well, it would make nonsense of the whole premise. A book is a device for storing information, but it cannot contain within its letters everything about itself and what it contains, because that is already more than it contains. A box cannot hold another box of equal size, unless it is bent or otherwise changed. A mind cannot hold another mind...

Iron, or more specifically that edifice, the Tower of Asphodel, became the substrate for the mortal planes. Which meant that true iron could not exist within it.

Broadly speaking, this wasn't the end of the world. As a mundane element, iron can be replaced in most of its roles in geology and nature by copper, titanium, and various alloys or artificed elements, and the Ironworkers eventually discovered how to hide its absence altogether at a cosmetic level. But biologically, human beings also contain iron, and one of the paramount goals in the reconstruction was to preserve what it was to be and feel human for those who had 'survived'. It probably wasn't until those days that people really understood how delicate a thing that really is. The strange balance of chemistry, electromagnetic crackling, and sensory pulses that, when you're alive, feels so absolute...

A few less-than-logical beliefs around the topic played a role, too. With all the impact that iron had on human civilization, some, even among the Ironworkers, had begun to see it as almost an inseparable aspect of human existence, like it was a part of the soul. I suppose it goes to show that nobody is completely immune to superstition and magical thinking.

But, in any case. The result of this was that the human body was rendered a sort of impossible object; something that could not exist by the very laws of reality itself.

At least, not conventionally.

Some human bodies, or at least the impression of them and the iron within, had been preserved as part of the Tower, frozen in a timeless place. And because of that, it was eventually discovered it was possible for them to exist in the artificed planes as a sort of stable paradox. After all, while a book can't exist within itself, it can still reference other stuff it does contain internally, even if it makes for somewhat awkward reading. A few tweaks and workarounds solved the problem of the iron associated with that human body staying a part of it, and just like that, human beings were walking something at least akin to the earth once again.

However, this only permitted replicas of those bodies within the Tower to exist. The creation of new ones remained impossible, and births not incubated by anima taken by the same mechanism would inevitably fail. And there were far fewer preserved bodies than minds; scarcely more than ten thousand or so for each party.

And though multiple copies of the same body were able to exist at the same time by utilizing this method, it was an existence that was fundamentally unstable. If you have a single egg, and reach through time to grab it from a day in the future, you do not now have two eggs, but rather the same egg twice. And should you try to mix the two together into an omelette...

Well.

There were... Some disagreements that had happened, after that.

It wasn't so bad, most of the time. If everyone could afford high-quality distinction treatment, it wouldn't even be a problem at all except for touching, and that could be easily avoided just by keeping covered and making sure your numbers didn't overlap. Even as it was, you could forget about it most of the time, other than the occasional disaster like this.

Thinking about it directly was, of course, really, really unsettling. Another reminder that the Ironworkers hadn't made things quite as they ought to be, but had merely established a convincing simulacrum. But it was convincing, at least, so if it were the only way in which they'd struggled, it would be okay.

But if you've ever been part of any sort of technical project, one thing I'm sure you'll understand is that sidestepping one problem tends to create, or exacerbate, another.

𒊹

Abbey Gardens | 8:30 AM | Second Day

We didn't stop when we got outside the door. Sacnicte dragged him all the way through the gardens, to the wooded area around the periphery of the building. It was only there that I instructed her to put him down, against the side of a big tree in spring bloom facing the edge of the bioenclosure.

I'd been starting to feel like nothing could sway her from her calm, distant affect, but it seemed I was mistaken, because this had shaken her up a lot. Half way through the trip, she'd started muttering what I was pretty sure was 'fuck' in Lluateci over and over and over again under her breath. His blood, still dripping down from his nose and a little from his mouth, was getting all over her shoulders and running down to one of her sleeves, and she kept looking at it and flinching.

When she'd dumped him down, she took off the top half of her grey uniform-dress immediately, revealing a plain white undershirt, and almost lurched back away from him, still muttering to herself. It was only when I started approaching him with my scepter that she spoke up.

"I-Is he gonna be okay?" She asked, the words frantically quick in a way that still managed to surprise me. "Can you fix it?"

"Uh, it doesn't look like a serious case," I said, noting that he still seemed to be to some degree conscious, trying to lift his hand to his face again. "Thanatomancy's not... The best, though, when it comes to first aid. P-Please stand back?"

She practically lurched away as I started casting the beguilements, leveling my scepter at his forehead.

"Shit, shit," she said to herself, pacing up and down. "If the others think... If they think I didn't..."

The primary symptoms of a prosognostic event aren't physical, but mental, though the fundamental nature of the cause is still the subject of some debate. 'Prosognostic' is an Inotian term that basically translates to 'face understanding'. For some reason, the mind becoming aware of the paradox of ones physical body existing simultaneously in two places at once, combined with the instability to reality brought by the two being in close proximity, causes the electrochemistry to react violently. Executive functions become erratic or shut down, and the lower parts of the brain swell rapidly, damaging blood vessels and, without a fast response, neural tissue.

Most of the time, if people who hadn't undergone distinction treatment got more than few moments worth of a good look at each other, it didn't matter what you did - you could treat the physical symptoms as much as you liked, but their consciousness would likely have already cracked and spilled all over the the metaphorical pavement. But if one or more parties had some degree of distinction treatment, which either involved changing the anima script before birth or going through quite a lot of surgery later in life, then you'd at the very least be spared the worst of it.

In those cases, what was most important was to stop the swelling and heal the ruptured veins as quickly as possible. It wasn't as elegant as a Biomancer could manage, let alone a Chronomancer, but I'd been trained specifically how to do this at the House of Resurrection. Most Thanatomancy first aid, except for dealing with infections, involve animating dead cells using the Flesh-Animating Arcana and manipulating them to close wounds and redirect excess fluid, then using the Life-Slaying Arcana to kill any white blood cells that think they're helping, but are actually making everything a thousand times more complicated.

All of this was supplemented by a couple of Divination incantations: The Death-Sensing Arcana, which I described earlier, and the Hive-Conceptualizing Arcana, which fed information to the mind in such a way that allowed you to understand a group of things as one collective thing intuitively, so that they could be directed organically rather than as a cumbersome mess.

I wasn't that good at any of this. Well-- I suppose I was better than most people my age, but I wasn't especially gifted in the way you'd expect for someone the class. I was much better at higher-level incantations that were very conceptually complicated, but didn't require much micromanagement once they were going.

Still. In this case, it ended up being easier than I'd expected. Within a minute I'd completely stopped the bleeding, and the swelling died down dramatically. I could hear his breathing becoming more regular. Sacnicte seemed to pick up on this, and started to calm down herself, stopping her pacing and watching the scene carefully.

I'd started checking him for secondary symptoms - respiratory and bowl problems, mostly - when he suddenly spoke, his voice quiet and slurred.

"I... I felt it, I... I see, I..."

"He's talking!" Sacnicte said, eyes widening a bit.

"Yeah," I said, relieved. "That's a good sign." I knelt before him. "Can you see my hand? How many fingers am I holding up?"

He stared at it for a moment, seeming to struggle, his eyes losing focus and slipping repeatedly. "I... T-Three."

"Can you tell me your name? Can you remember where you are-- The date?"

This wasn't how you were supposed to do it. My anxiety was making the questions all come out too soon.

His eyes lulled to the side a little, his head tilting away from me. "The Sanctuary... Apsu." He coughed out a little splurt of blood that must've still been in his throat." April Twenty... Twenty, uh..."

"Cognition seems a little impaired," I said, biting my lip.

"Is that normal?" She asked, frowning.

"It's too early to say," I said. Though truthfully, I just didn't know. This was a topic I'd barely studied in any serious depth.

It better damn well be, I thought to myself. If someone dies, this whole thing might be cancelled.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of footsteps jogging over to us on the grass, from the direction of the exits to the bioenclosure. I turned my head sharply.

It was Durvasa, moving at a speed that seemed dissonant for a man of his advanced age, clutching his own scepter tightly and clearly having been caught unprepared - his hair was a mess, and he hadn't shaved, his chin and lip coated with stubble that had been absent the night before.

He looked furious. Not at me, but at something. I'd thought I'd seen him angry at dinner, but now his face was curled into a look of barely-restrained rage that made his earlier demeanor seem like little more than passing irritation.

Sacnicte looked to him deferentially. "Sir, I--"

"What's his condition?" he asked me urgently, not seeming to even knowledge her presence.

How had he known this was happening? There was no time for the question. "He seems stable for now," I said. "Mild initial symptoms, and I stopped the blood loss and most of the swelling. He's conscious, but doesn't seem quite lucid."

"April..." Balthazar said again, before trailing off into unintelligible mutterings.

"And Ophelia?" he asked.

"Worse," I said, the gravity of the situation somehow hitting me more as the word escaped my lips. "She--She collapsed, lost consciousness. All the others are with her, but I left right afterwards."

Thinking about it now that I had a moment to actually think, the disparity in their reactions was odd. Ophelia had evidently been the one to have more substantial, probably pre-natal distinction treatment, but the severity of symptoms was usually based on how much you associated the other face as akin to your own.

So why would she...?

He grit his teeth, scowling. "This should never have been allowed to happen." He reached into his dress robe and removed a small octahedron, then pointed his scepter. It was distinctly Viraaki, and much less ornate than I would have expected for a man of his status. Most of it was unpainted steelwood, with the head in the rough shape of a lotus, the symbol of their comprehensive Biomancy tradition.

His casting was, by my reckoning, a bit slower then Neferuaten at her best, but still vastly superior to anyone in our class, with the possible exception of Fang.

M a t t e r - U n f u r l i n g

"...𒅆𒅆𒊑𒃶𒈿,𒌍𒌍,𒀸𒍣𒊺𒄷𒊹."

In an instant, the octahedron unfolded, becoming a simple stretcher which, in turn, revealed itself to be an artifice as Durvasa spoke the words of activation and it rose above the ground. I'd seen this sort of thing before, but it was rare outside of specific military contexts in which space was a concern and arcanists were readily available, so I was a little surprised for a moment that he'd have something like that on him in a place like this.

"Miss Ic'Nal, please move him," he said tersely. "We need to get him as far from here as possible."

"Right, yeah," she said, and raised him from his feet before directing him on to the stretcher. He offered no resistance.

"Well done, miss Fusai," he said, though the words were preoccupied to the point of offering no earnest congratulation. "I will take it from here and perform a further assessment at the temple building. Someone else will be along to see to Ophelia in moments."

"I-I understand," I said.

He offered a curt not then turned to depart swiftly, Sacnicte and the strecher following in his wake.

I almost turned away at that moment to rush back to the abbey house right away, but instead my gaze lingered on them for a just moment. If it hadn't, I might not have seen what happened next.

Just before view of him was blocked by the angle of Sacnicte's body, Balthazar raised his head just a little. I wasn't sure if he was trying to face me or just positioning himself so that air could escape his lungs; he didn't try to make eye contact, and I wasn't even sure he could. But then he mouthed something very softly, before sliding right back down.

The sound didn't carry, and even watching his lips, I couldn't be certain what he saying, or if it was even something coherent.

But what it looked like was the words, "I kept my promise".

After that, I ended up standing at that spot for about another half minute, until it was just me, the tree, and its gently falling blossoms. I didn't know what to make of that. And somehow, I wasn't sure I wanted to make anything of it at all.

𒊹

By the time I made it back, everything was more or less over already. Kam had managed to cast the Time-Reversing Arcana before it'd been too late, reversing her body to the state it was in before the physical symptoms had appeared, and though they'd flared up again afterwards, it was to a much lesser extent. That left her mental condition the only open question, for which the sole expert we had was Ezekiel - who once again seemed nowhere to be found.

Still, we moved her back upstairs to her bed, and after a few minutes did briefly regain consciousness and display some limited signs of lucidity, which, while not ideal, meant she was not dead. It was rare for a prosognostic event to leave permanent but ultimately survivable damage - what tended to happen was that either the shock would kill you fast, or your mind's defenses would rally and simply block it out completely.

Occasionally, you'd get people who remembered the event, and would occasionally have 'attacks' where it would return to focus, causing a recurrence, albeit a much milder one than the original event. This required lifetime management and tended to increase the risk of early-onset dementia, but that was a rare outcome. So chances were she'd be fine.

Neferuaten had arrived a little after that, though all told, there wasn't much left for her to do. Instead, she seemed to be focusing more on trying to calm us all down and apologizing repeatedly for the fact this had taken place to begin with.

There were five of us in the room: Her, myself, Kam, Theo, and Ptolema. Seth had left to take a shower, while Ptolema had apparently heard the commotion and shown up during the treatment itself, and though she hadn't been able to help (being a surgeon), had stuck around out of concern for her friend. We largely crowded around Ophelia's bed, watching her now-sleeping, cleaned up form with weary eyes.

"All else aside," Neferuaten said, looking down with a tired expression, "she was incredibly fortunate. If you all hadn't been here to stop it from going further, there's a very good chance she would be dead."

Kam simply nodded at the words, her eyes distant. She'd been very quiet since we'd brought Ophelia upstairs.

"But how could it have happened?" I asked. "I thought the order checked everyone's seed keys. It was on the paperwork we had to fill out, and everything."

"I have no explanation. Or at least, no justifiable one." She crossed her arms, letting out a sigh. "So far as I'm aware, Sacnicte verified everyone from your class, and of course us and the other staff. I was under the impression that all other guests had been checked, and most have been on our registry for months, but..."

"But not Balthazar," I said.

"Apparently not." She made a solemn smile. "Zeno wanted him added to the guest list only two weeks ago, so our normal protocols were sidestepped. He confirmed in his paperwork that the usual checks were done anyway, but... But to be frank, he is often tremendously flippant about small risks and what he sees as errata when it comes to the accommodation of his requests." She shook her head. "He loves to make little messes, then expect others to clean up for him."

"It is... Quite spectacularly poor luck, though," Theodoros said. "I mean-- What are the chances? One in a thousand, at most?"

"Several thousand," I said, mutedly.

"Right, yes," he replied, nodding. "Freakishly bad."

"Whatever the probability, that it occurred at all can only be attributed to the most grave incompetence on our part," Neferuaten said, her eyes narrowed. "When something as small and low-security as a restaurant botches things and lets two people in with the same key without veils, that's very likely the end of their business, assuming the owners aren't outright arrested for endangering public health. For it to happen here, right under our noses, despite all our ostensible defenses..." She snorted. "I expect you could all but destroy our reputation as a serious organization of scholars, if you so wished."

There wasn't much I could think to say to that. Apparently everyone else felt the same way, because the room fell into an uncomfortable silence for a few moments.

I watched Ophelia's chest rise and fall, her lips shift subtly as she breathed. Despite what it happened, it was honestly remarkable how little she really resembled Balthazar. Her cheekbones were different. Her nose was really different. Hell, even their skin tones weren't even similar. You could only see the similarities when you stopped looking at the individual features and looked at their faces in totality, the way everything slotted together.

"Uh... So, I am sorta confused about something," Ptolema said, scratching the side of her head.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I guess I'm wondering how there could have been overlap at all," she said, her brow furrowed. "It only happens if two people have the same seed, right? Not if, uh, whoever it came from were... Related, or something."

Neferuaten idly glanced out the window. A subtle gesture to signal disengagement from the conversational moment.

"But... Her and, uh. What did you say his name was, Su?"

"Balthazar," I said.

"Right," she nodded. "I mean. Him and Ophelia, they're different--"

"Ptolema," Kamrusepa suddenly interjected, her tone stiff. "If you would permit me to offer a piece of advice."

The other girl blinked. "What kinda advice?"

"Something I find helpful when it comes to pursuing lines of conversation," Kam replied, "is to get into the habit of asking oneself, 'does what I'm about to say lead to an incredibly personal matter that is, frankly, none of my business?' And if the answer happens to be 'yes', then to stop." She looked over to regard her. "That is, assuming you do value Ophelia's privacy whatsoever."

"Oh." Ptolema's face flushed a bit. "Y-Yeah. Right."

Something about hearing this from Kam felt... Odd, though she'd certainly said it with conviction enough.

"I mean, there are, ah, other explanations for that sort of thing," Theo said, with a informative tone that indicated he truly did, in his heart, believe that he was being genuinely helpful. "Some people alter the sex of the seed very early in natal development, just to get even further away from the template--"

"Yes, Theo, very informative," Kamrusepa said, the words dry to the point of being brittle. "As you say, there many explanations."

His face flushed too, and he cleared his throat hoarsely. "Yes, well. Indeed."

Another, longer uncomfortable silence came after that, the only noise the ticking of the clock and distant chatter from those of us who had missed all this and were now having breakfast in the dining room. I could make out Mehit and Bardiya chatting about something in a manner that was surprisingly lively, though I wasn't able to make any of it out.

I eventually breached the conversational gulf myself, looking to Neferuaten. "What do you think will happen with Zeno, after all this?"

"Hah, well, it's certainly not going to win him points with anyone. I'm probably the councillor with the least investment in this all going well, and I confess even I was entertaining thoughts of strangling him when I recieved the news." She sighed to herself, looking downward. "I wish I could tell you he'd be harshly reprimanded for his appalling lack of professionalism... But truth be told, save for Anna, he's probably the most above punishment here. Both incredibly valuable, and willing to take his ball home with him out of spite if he feels remotely slighted or spoken down to."

This made sense. Out of everyone in the order, Zeno of Apocyrion was by far the most prestigious in reputation, renowned as one of the greatest minds of the entire age. He'd been the founder of an entire discipline, something less than a hundred people all through history could claim.

"It sounds like you find him sort of insufferable," I said.

"Oh, most certainly," she said, a smile now on her lips. "If you will forgive a little casual misandry, Zeno is much like most gifted men who also have the good fortune to be born into high station-- Which is to say, he can go years without someone telling him he is wrong about anything, and has become quite comfortable with that status-quo. Despite his age, you could almost mistake him for a child. Though considerably less cute."

"If you'll forgive me for saying so, grandmaster," Kam said, starting to frown, "I'm a little surprised to learn that such animosity exists among the upper the ranks of the order. I would have imagined that having to spend so long operating in secrecy would have fostered a sense of camaraderie in pursuit of the cause."

At this, Neferuaten laughed quite loudy, to Kam's surprise. She might have even shed a couple of tears.

"Ah... pardon me," she said, when she finally calmed down. "No, I'm afraid not. For some, perhaps, but I fear our over-familiarity has bred no small amount of contempt."

Kam nodded, then looked down, seeming conflicted. Perhaps her idealized image of the order was finally starting to show cracks.

"In any case," Neferuaten went on. "I expect the full outcome will really depend on her recovery. If she wakes again in a few hours and everyone here agrees to keep quiet about matter - I wouldn't be surprised if there was some paperwork and incentives to that effect - then I imagine they'll be no appetite for further action beyond compensating miss..." She clicked her tongue. "Oh, hell, she doesn't have a birthplace name, does she...?" She coughed. "Beyond compensating Ophelia. But, if this does end up rendering our reputation as a legitimate organization stillborn or worse, there might be something of a reckoning. We'll see."

"I hope somethin' happens because of all this," Ptolema said, frowning. "Ophelia going through all that, nearly dying, and everybody just carrying on... That wouldn't feel right at all."

I nodded along in agreement with the words.

"Er... Incidentally, has my dad heard about it all this yet?" Theo asked. "I'm a little worried about how he'll take it. This work, ah." He bit his lip, looking downward. "It does all mean rather a lot to thim."

Neferuaten made a sympathetic expression. "He was still in bed when I heard about all this, but word might've reached him by this point. I'm not certain."

"Actually, I was sort of curious earlier," I said. "How exactly did you know something had happened, over there? I didn't see anyone leave before Durvasa found me outside the abbey."

"Aha, good catch, Utsushikome." She gave me a sly look. "On that point, I'm afraid I must make a small confession. How to put this..." She raised a finger to her mouth, almost biting a nail. "Because this is a building intended to house guests and prospective members, the broad-strokes assumption of its residents is not one of... Absolute trust. As a result, it's subject to a little more surveillance than the rest of the sanctuary."

"Wait, hold up," Ptolema said, starting to frown a bit. "You're not saying you've been spying on us, are you? 'cause, uh, I've been doing some kinda personal stuff."

'Personal stuff?' What did that mean?

"It's nothing extensive, miss Rheeds," Neferuaten said reassuringly. "Just three arcane lenses to watch both main hallways and the garden, and an enchantment to report any extra-dimensional anomalies - either uses of the Power or prosognostic events. Or I suppose contact paradoxes, gods forbid. Whenever it fires, there's an alert both in the main hall and our center of security, the former of which Durvasa was fortunately present at this morning."

I noticed Kam look a little embarrassed and glance off to the side, and I hesitated a bit, too. That meant someone could have seen both her shenanigans floating around the balcony, and our attempt to analyze the letter.

Don't fret too much, now, I thought to myself. That was much earlier in the morning. It's unlikely anyone noticed it.

Well, unless they kept logs. Did they keep logs? I didn't know how to ask without it coming across as peculiar.

"There's nothing specific to any of the other rooms, especially not the bedrooms or the bathhouse, and the lenses don't even pick up sound. So unless you were revealing something personal in arcane code, then there's no reason to fear for your privacy."

"Well..." Ptolema said, hesitantly. "I guess that doesn't sound too bad, then..."

"Speaking of your father, Theo," Neferuaten continued, "that does bring me around to something else." She glanced in my direction as well. "I'm not even sure it's appropriate for me to bring up in light of everything else that's happened, but would the two of you still be interested in finishing up the tour from yesterday? I expect this incident will at best cause something of a delay to the conclave, If the whole organization is to go up in flames, it might be the last chance anyone gets to see it." She smiled dourly. "While were there, we could stop by to see how Linos is doing."

Theo furrowed his brow for a few moments, then looked towards me. "What do you think, Utsu?"

I hesitated. "Well... I don't really want to leave Ophelia... but Seth will be back soon, and there's not really anything else we can do. And it sounds like you did want to check in with your dad." I glanced to the side. "And to be honest, if we could meet some more members of the order, I think it would help with feeling more comfortable with my presentation. Uh, assuming that's still happening."

Plus, if you don't, you won't be able to test the letter like you'd planned.

Gods. What priorities.

He nodded. "Alright, then. I suppose there's no point staying here. And, well." He laughed, his eyes turning downward. "I could stand to get a little more comfortable with all this myself."

"Well, let's not rush into it," Neferuaten said. "In fact, it would probably be better if we had some breakfast first."

I could agree with that much unambiguously, at least. Despite how much I'd eaten the previous night, my lack of sleep and my stress from all this had made me hungry. If nothing else, I wanted a strong cup of coffee.

I noticed Kamrusepa seemed to be giving me a suggestive look. She inclined her head towards Neferuaten, her lips flattening into a bit of an impatient look.

Oh, right.

"Um, actually," I said, "I was talking with Kam a little earlier, and we spoke about the tour. She was wondering if she could come along, too?"

Before I even finished speaking, Kamrusepa nodded emphatically. "Mm-hmm, I'm very interested in the order's history, as I'm sure you might've noticed. It felt a little vulgar to invite myself, though."

Theo hesitated for a moment, then frowned, though he didn't say anything.

"I don't see why not," Neferuaten said, with a small shrug. "It was just happenstance that we had the group we did yesterday, after all."

Kam smiled at that, for the first time in a little while, and nodded.

It's silly to spend time entertaining 'What If's. But I can't help but wonder at this point, if, had she refused, everything could have been avoided. If that stupid choice had just been taken away from us, then our fates could have changed.

It's probably wishful thinking. But I'm a slave to myself. Even now, I can't help dwelling on the past.