The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Abbey House | 9:21 AM | Second Day

We did, in the end, have breakfast, though only after Ophelia had woken a second time and disorientedly muttered a few fragmented but mostly coherent sentences. It wasn't much, but it set people's minds more at ease.

The food was fine - better quality than the previous night, even. Falafel, pita bread with various stuffings, steak and egg porridge, cheese salad; high quality Ysaran food, all well prepared by Yantho, who seemed much more in his element having overseen the whole process from the start. Still, it remained a somewhat somber affair, with no one really in the mood for extensive conversation. Not much about the event stood out, save for the fact that Lilith, who I saw only briefly as her and her mother were finishing up by the time we arrived, looked like she was in a good mood. As one might guess, this was a pretty rare thing for her. She was even smiling to herself.

Bardiya was there, too. True to her word, Kamrusepa did offer an apology to him, though he was so muted in demeanor it was hard to tell if he'd actually accepted it or not. (He did thank her, at least.) He turned down joining us for the rest of the tour, saying only that he had to focus on preparing for his presentation. I joked that I probably ought to be doing the same thing, though in truth I'd largely done all I could already, having memorized my script and practiced the practical elements several times over the course of the past couple of weeks. For all the ways I liked to shoot myself in the foot, I at least had the good habit of always trying to finish work as soon as I got it, rather than putting it off to the last minute.

...in marked contrast to Theo, who if I knew him, was probably going along with us again in part because he didn't want to think about at all.

A significant part of me did wonder why I'd put so much effort into it. After all, if the weekend went well, it wouldn't matter anyway. And if it didn't...

Well. That didn't bode thinking about right now.

It was probably coming up to 10 in the morning when we finally set off, back through the abbey gardens. This time, we took a different, more roundabout route which led us past a set of descending steps I hadn't seen before. I quickly realized this was probably the alternate entrance to the sanctuary which Seth had described the boys as having arrived through, and Theodoros confirmed it.

With Neferuaten's permission, Kamrusepa and I took a quick peek. There was no mural, just a statue of a man, young and clean-shaven, that I didn't recognize. Kam speculated that it could be depicting the founder of the order, but when we brought it up, Neferuaten just laughed and said that assumption was incorrect, and that it 'wasn't her place to say more'. But to not imagine the answer would be anything particularly compelling to us.

We passed through the gateway that led directly to the order headquarters, with Kam, who up until this point had never really left the abbey, looking impressed by just about everything (she even managed to find nice things to say about the building), while Neferuaten went over some of the same topics to her that we'd discussed yesterday.

As she repeated to her what she'd told us about having not actually supported our invitation to the conclave, nor even the decision of the order to go public to begin with, a question came to mind that had occurred to me during the conversation about Zeno an hour earlier, though really, we ought to have inquired about before we'd even come to the conclave at all.

"Grandmaster," I said, as we walked.

She turned her head away from Kam. "Yes, Utsushikome?"

"I was wondering earlier, when Balthazar talked about Zeno's support for this whole event having been conditional. If it's alright of me to ask, who did support it? And who opposed it?"

She pursed her lips, contemplating the question for a little while before coming to an answer. "We were originally deadlocked on the issue. Hamilcar was the one who proposed it, with Linos agreeing with him and Anna, to my surprise, coming around quickly... Usually, she's rather restrained on such matters, but in this case she seemed of a mind to make an exception. Myself and Durvasa, on the other hand, agreed it was far too soon for such a measure, and he brought Zeno around to our side-- Somehow, he's always had something of a way with the man." She chuckled to herself.

"But he changed his mind when they suggested he could invite a protégé, too?" I asked.

She clicked her tongue. "Protégé might be too strong a word. It's a little complicated... As I said, we had no idea who he even had in mind until a short time ago." Her tone became subtly more sardonic. "Without saying too much about what is really a rather personal matter for Zeno, Hamilcar suggested that he might use this event as an opportunity to pursue one his own projects partially-independent from our collective work, which enticed him enough to sway his vote."

"That's sort of underhanded," I said, furrowing my brow. "Exploiting a personal motive of his to influence of the overall group."

"Hah, well, I've seen far worse skullduggery in this organization." She gave a small shrug. "In any event, that boy is presumably a part of that, and though I could perhaps make a few educated guesses, even I am largely in the dark about the specifics."

A personal project. I was starting to wish I'd asked Balthazar more about the paper he'd written that had apparently caught Zeno's attention while I'd the chance. The gods alone knew where they'd spirited him off to now, after what had happened.

And his 'promise'? What could he have possibly been talking about...?

"Would you mind if I interjected, grandmaster?" Kam asked. Her sucking-up-to-authority voice was starting to recover after the tribulations of the morning. "There's something I rather can't help but notice, hearing that."

She smiled. "You hardly need to ask permission, miss Tuon. We're all adults here; consider the floor open."

"Thank you," she said, speaking with a little caution. "You say that you and master Durvasa were the only two to oppose this event, but... I can't help but observe that, aside from Linos, you're the only two who elected to have dinner with us yesterday evening."

"Mm, it is a little funny, isn't it?" Her eyes wandered upwards. "I'd honestly put it to mere happenstance that it turned out that way, more than anything. But... Perhaps we were both looking for some means to soothe ourselves about the outcome." She looked to her. "Not to say that there were any doubts about your capabilities as arcanists-- We trust the judgement of the academy in that capacity. But as I told Theodoros and Utsushikome yesterday, there are other capacities in which I wasn't sure you were ready."

Kam let out a small, embarrassed laugh. "I can't imagine it was particularly soothing, in that case."

Neferuaten smiled at her. "You're a more self-conscious girl than you let on."

She blinked, then averted her gaze in an awkward expression, her lips pressed tightly together.

"Ah, forgive me. I didn't mean to embarrass you." She turned back to face forward. "In any case, I wouldn't dwell on it overmuch. I've seen people ten times your age lose their composure to far greater extents over the same topics. And though Durvasa has always been ferociously political, he rarely lets it interfere in his professional judgement."

"Er, sorry..." Theodoros said, furrowing his brow. "I meant to ask when it came up earlier, but what exactly happened, last night? I feel a little out of the loop."

Oh, right. I'd completely forgotten he'd left the dinner before it had all played out.

There was a impulse in the back of my head that seemed to want me to dwell on this thought a little more for some reason, but it fizzled out as my focus shifted back to the conversation.

"Well, Theo," Kam said, with a sort of tired faux-cheerfulness, "simply put, you had the good fortune to miss out on a little spat between Bardiya and master Durvasa on the topic of the civil dispute, both of whom took the affair quite personally. And which I did an excellent job getting worked up over and making even worse."

"Come on, Kam," I said. "You don't need to be like this. Being self-deprecating is supposed to be my thing."

"I mean, it's the truth," she said, crossing her arms stubbornly. "I behaved very childishly. I'd rather be blunt about it and get the air clear than tip-toe around the facts."

I furrowed my brow. "You really are acting funny this morning."

"Who... started it, if you'll forgive me for asking?" Theo inquired. "The argument."

"I'm not sure anyone could quite be said to have started it," Neferuaten said thoughtfully. "I'd liken it to a collision between two celestial objects."

"Your dad was asking us questions about why we all became arcanists," I explained. "Bardiya told his story, but he made a comment about about the Administrators that Durvasa spoke up to try and counter. After that, things just sort of... Escalated, between them. About who was at fault."

I decided not to mention the part about how Linos had basically caused the argument by bringing the topic up again after everyone else had been content to let it sit.

"Oh, I see." He frowned. "That's... Sort of surprising."

Kamrusepa raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "What makes you say that, Theo?"

"Well, father always described Durvasa as a very temperate man, during the few times he did talk about his work." He scratched his head. "Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the context of the situation a little."

Neferuaten chuckled to herself. "Well, your father has always been the type to see the best in everyone. And to be clear, I say that to his credit. ...honestly, though, it is largely true. He is only wont to lose his composure in very specific circumstances to do with his own background."

Participating in this conversation, I was starting to realize how little I actually knew about Durvasa. For all the other members of the order's inner circle, I was aware of at least a few rough details, but as I mentioned during the dinner, I didn't even know his birthplace name, let alone anything more advanced.

I asked a more ambitious question, in the hopes that the gaps would be filled in along the way. "What is his background, exactly? I'm only familiar with a little of his work."

"You don't know, Su?" Kamrusepa said, raising an eyebrow. "You mustn't of completely understood why I was so high strung about it all, then."

"My grandfather never talked about him," I said.

"That would make sense," Neferuaten said, nodding. "The two of them weren't exactly the best of friends." She hummed to herself wistfully. "To fill in some of the gaps for you, Durvasa was a volunteer medic in the Viraaki uprising, and then both of the great wars - quite prolifically, as a matter of fact. I wouldn't be surprised if he's among the most decorated healers in the Remaining World. After that, he held a number of lofty posts adjacent to politics. He was even physician to the First Administrator, though only for a few years."

For context, the 'great wars' referred to the Mnemonic War (itself, confusingly, only the final and most dramatic conflict in the era named the Tricenturial War), which the Viraaki uprising against the Empire of Rhunbard was considered to have instigated, and the Great Interplanar War around 200 years later. As for the First Administrator, they were the first-among-equals of the Old Yru Convention, making them them the effectively the most powerful person in the world.

...well, depending on your definition of 'powerful'. Nowadays, most executive decisions which weren't ferociously politicized were, in practice, made by the Sibyls and their logic engines. Not that this fact stopped the press obsessing every time there was an internal election.

"That's... wow," I said, a little surprised. "I had no idea he was someone so important."

"Well, this is all nearly two centuries past now," Neferuaten said. "And he's kept a fairly low profile since."

"Only to people who haven't been paying attention," Kamrusepa said, her enthusiasm getting the better of her for a bit. "His early essays on comparative metabolic function were quite fascinating, even if they weren't glamorous enough for many in the mainstream. And vindicated as wildly ahead of their time, with some of the recent advances."

"I'm quite impressed you got through them, to tell the truth," Neferuaten said slyly. "I was nigh-on three centuries old before I could push through texts as dry as his work."

Kam beamed at the compliment, despite its sardonic aspect.

We were circling the walls of the structure around to the door now - the front one, not the back entrance we'd used the previous day. The water of the pool at the back of the bioenclosure glittered in the simulated morning light.

"In any case," she went on, "now that you know that, Utsushikome, it's probably not difficult to understand why he has a great deal of investment in the present social order. He spent the better of his youth building it, after all." She smiled to herself. "As I hear it, he was a ferocious radical in his youth, filled with fire and anger at all the world and mankind's many cruelties. I would expect that him and Bardiya have more in common than either of them would like to admit."

"Well, I don't know about that," I said, frowning somewhat. "He was going pretty far to defend the Grand Alliance killing so many people, when they put down the riots. I've never seen Bardiya be..." I hesitated before saying the word, but it came out anyway. "...callous, in that way, about innocent human lives."

"Mm, sadly, 'innocent' might be the key word there . It is... A complicated thing, to grow old," she said. "The blessing of the young is to see the world with fresh eyes. To know injustice instinctively, just as one recoils from disease or rotten meat-- And to fight it, clear of head and heart." Her expression grew distant. "But as the years pass, you realize that to meaningfully combat those injustices, you must also fight for things. People. Institutions. Concepts. And as you do, you pour more and more of yourself into them... Until, without even truly realizing it's happened, they have replaced that clarity within your heart. And what guides you is no longer instinct, but faith; love for the merely specific."

I was surprised. "You think Durvasa was wrong."

She didn't respond at first, instead looking off to the side for a moment before continuing. "There is a tension within all people, I think, between the inherent justice of pursuing an ideal world, and the knowledge that one cannot exist. I believe Durvasa would be best served by admitting that, within himself, the battle was won in the latter's favor a long time ago." She looked back in my direction. "Though I do not know if I would call him wrong, per-se. One thing age can give you - though it's far from guaranteed - is perspective on how fragile the world truly is."

I bit my lip. "When you say, 'fragile'..."

"She means the social order, Su," Kamrusepa interjected, nodding along vehemently with Neferuaten's words. "Honestly, it's a very good point. Individuals with personal experiences like Bardiya aside, I get so frustrated sometimes with people our age. It's so fashionable to complain about every little flaw in the Grand Alliance and talk endlessly about tearing it down, as if something better and just as stable will magically pop out of the ground to take its place. As though we weren't all murdering each other for century upon century before it existed."

I frowned. "I mean, the world is incredibly different than it was before the Great Interplanar War. There's no resource scarcity, and arable land and copper mines were the cause of more than half the conflicts in the history of the Mimikos. I hardly think things would just go back to the way they used to be."

I said this, but I didn't feel completely confident in the argument.

Honestly, for as much as it was easy to bait me into political discourse, I felt like my actual opinions and reasoning were pretty shallow and undeveloped in a lot of ways - between everything that had happened in the past decade, I'd never had time to really give it the kind of thought it needed.

It was kind of as Neferuaten had said. I knew what felt wrong, what was obviously cruel and awful; the people who had to eke out an existence living under meritist governments, or who died from the incompetence or apathy of the Administration. But I didn't really have answers. If I were being truly honest, the deepest part of myself probably believed the world would always be sort of awful, no matter what, but that it was still important to call attention to the flaws anyway. Just to make sure everyone was on the same page, that we were all quietly resenting the same things together. That no one had the callousness not to resent them.

When I thought about that, it made me feel like kind of an awful person. Cynical only for the sake of not having to think at all. As an excuse to be self-indulgent.

"You wouldn't say that if you'd grown up in Rhunbard," Kam said dryly. "I'll tell you from first-hand experience that people never shut up about wanting to restore the old Empire, put the perfidious Ysarans, deviant Viraaki, and the backwards Mekhians in their place." She did the latter half in a caricature of an old man's voice. "They certainly don't care a hoot about resources."

"I think a common problem with inter-generational communication is an inability to really convey context and scope," Neferuaten said. I noted she didn't actually say whether Kam's understanding of her point had been correct or not. "Someone who lived through the Interluminary Strife might tell a young person from the modern day that they have no understanding of hunger, only for the latter to stubbornly retort that they lived through the Ikaryonic famine that preluded the civil dispute... Except that one was a catastrophe that lasted decades and killed tens of millions, while the other slew less than a thousand." She sighed. "People try to relate the experiences of others to their own lives in order to contextualize their understanding of the world and how it might be bettered, but those second-hand experiences inevitably become caricatures, conveying no useful truths. It makes me wonder if human beings, both young and old, are capable of learning from history at all."

Kamrusepa frowned. "That's rather a depressing conclusion to draw in regard to human nature," she said, hesitantly. "We've made some indisputable progress over the epochs, surely? There was never a peace this long before, even at the heights of the Imperial Era."

"Perhaps. Still. I do wonder if it will be enough to save us, in the end." She shook her head. "Forgive me. You did not come along to listen to an old woman's nihilistic rambling, I'm sure."

"I wouldn't say it was nihilistic," I said, feeling, somehow, like I ought to defend her from her own self-deprecation. "It would only be nihilistic if you said nothing could be done."

At these words, she looked at me for a moment, something strange and thoughtful in her eyes. Eventually, though, she broke into a smile. "You're a sweet girl, Utsushikome," she said. "And quite right. After all, changing the human condition is precisely what we're in the business of doing."

Kamrusepa smiled, but Theo looked strangely put-off. His eyes wandered towards the walls, and ocean's swirling murk.

Finally, the path led us to the front door, which was a lot larger than the one behind the statue, though also more modern-looking, with a proper handle. There was a little glass porch where it looked like various people had left coats and shoes.

Opposite, close by the point that it almost architecturally peculiar, was the greenhouse that I recalled Linos having mentioned yesterday. It was probably the most conventionally modern looking part of the sanctuary I'd seen. Largely glass within a bronze framework, rounded, and dense with shelves filled with various plants, half-visible through the green tint. I couldn't make out anything specific other than some round fruits which I was relatively sure were tomatoes.

"I could give you a tour of the greenhouse too, if you're curious," Neferuaten said, noticing the direction of my focus and stopping short of the door. "I'm afraid there's not very much to see, though."

"What, ah, sort of things do you grow there?" Theodoros asked.

"Nowadays? Very little-- Mostly emergency food stock, plus a few specialized herbs and molds for Durvasa's work. We used to use it for all manner of things, but now we have conjuration runesheets for most, so it's become a little neglected." She regarded him curiously. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no particular reason, I suppose," Theodoros said sheepishly. "Mother has one at home she uses for tea and coffee beans, so I thought father might've been involved."

She shrugged. "If he has a green thumb, I'm afraid I've never seen that side of him." She looked over in my direction. "Well?"

"Uh, I'll pass, I think," I said. "I'm not really the type to get excited about plants. Unless you want to, Kam?"

"Silly as it may be, I'm curious about almost every aspect of this place, so I want to say yes..." She bit her lip. "But, well, the condensation... And my hair..."

"Sounds like a no," Neferuaten said, opening the door. "Shall we get back to it, then?"

We followed her inside. The doorway led to an entry hall like you might see in a manor, with several corridors and a branching stairwell at the rear of a large, lightly decorated open area, the floors and walls tiled with varnished wood, save for a small section around the middle with a purple carpet. The only decor of special note was a large portrait of several people hanging over the stairwell, though I couldn't identify any of them at first glance.

Surprisingly, the chamber was not unoccupied. Talking by the side of the aforementioned stairs were two people, one of whom was Ran, who I suddenly realized had never returned for breakfast after her brief appearance earlier. The other was an old woman.

...well, I say 'old woman', but in truth, that doesn't really convey it properly. In the modern day, it was relatively rare to see people who looked old in the truest sense of the word. You saw a lot of people who were weathered and somewhat aged, like Neferuaten, Durvasa and Linos, and even some people who went further than that either through disinterest in cosmetic treatment or sheer stubbornly long lifespan, like the class coordinator. But bodies that were visibly at the end of their lives, with fully grey, half-gone hair, shrunken spines, and skin more wrinkled than not... The primary place you'd see that was in pictures and textbooks.

Dementia, accidents, or hyper-complex genetic mutations and cancers killed most far before that point, but very occasionally, you did see people with a strange resistance to all three. The oldest living human (well, or at least the person with the oldest human body, setting aside the more fringe and hyper-modern methods of life extension that had emerged since the revolution) had famously been Iahmesu of Gaozhi, an arcanist who had, through a combination of dedicated self-maintenance and sheer biological luck, managed to live to the ridiculous age of 902, having died only a few years before I was born. I'd seen pictures of him taken a few years before his death in school, and remembered being shocked that someone who looked like that could possibly be alive.

Amtu-hedu-anna, the most senior of the order and born so long ago her Ysaran name wasn't Inotianized, was not that old. But she was close, and seeing her provoked a similar response in me. Everything about her looked ancient. Her grey-ish skin, covered so densely in liver spots that it almost appeared a shade darker than it truly was, hung from extremities as if barely attached, and was inconsistent in texture and precise shade - the mark of the repeated excision and replacement of areas that inevitably came as dermis endured the final and most exotic conditions yet unconquered by modern medicine. Her frame was tiny - half a head below even Ran - and asymmetrically hunched over a wooden cane which she clasped with both hands. Some of the bones seemed not to quite fit or moved strangely, whole segments of her skeletal structure having likely been replaced wholesale.

And her face, only partially visible under the hood of her dark brown Runescribe's Guild robes, was unlike anyone's I'd seen before. It was shrunken and top-heavy in a way that almost made it vaguely reminiscent of an infant, except the skin made it impossible to draw that association. Her eyes added to this dissonance. They looked strikingly youthful, like they'd been recently replaced, and shone a vivid green.

I realized too late I was staring at her a bit, and her gaze flickered towards me specifically as the two of them turned towards our group. I averted my eyes in embarrassment at my lack of tact.

"Ah," Neferuaten said, smiling in an unsurprised way. "It seems we're not the only ones roaming about today." She bowed her head. "Good morning, your ladyship."

Your ladyship. A relic from the old days, when arcanists had openly governed most of the world as a pseudo-aristocratic class. Nowadays, such customs had disappeared in all nations save the Saoic Arcanocracy, phased out through war or slow reform. But some of the titles still circulated among the elderly, albeit long stripped of power.

Whatever the point of this gesture, Anna seemed more irritated by it than anything. "Oh, it's you, girl," she said, her voice quiet and creaky. "You've brought more of the children."

Kamrusepa stepped forward a bit, bowing her head lower and in a more deliberate motion than Neferuaten. "It is a pleasure to meet you, exalted mistress," she said, opting for her formal guild title instead. "I am Kamrusepa of Tuon--"

"Yes, I know who you are," she interjected, though the flatness of it made it feel more like impatience than irritation. Her gaze turned to Theo and myself. "Linos's son... And █ █ █ █ █ 's granddaughter, correct?"

T-That's right, ma'am," I said, a little intimidated.

She snorted. "Yes, I see the attempt the scriptwriters made to cultivate a resemblance now." She shifted her weight a little more in our direction. "I am Amtu-hedu-anna, as you already know. Obey the rules and conduct yourself with a professional competence that will not embarrass the order and yourselves, and I am certain your visit here will be pleasant."

"Yes, exalted mistress," Kamrusepa said, with practiced deference. I followed along with a more awkward version of the same line a moment later, while Theo appeared too stunned by the whole situation to respond except with an awkward muttering.

I was getting a little worried for him, this morning. Theo was always a bit stiff, but he seemed somehow not quite himself.

Anna snorted, glancing to the side. "God. I say that, as if we have not already embarrassed ourselves on a spectacular scale. Perhaps what I should truly be telling you is to burn and pillage this place as you see fit, and put us all out of our misery." Her eyes jerked towards Neferuaten. "Are these by any chance the ones who dealt with the situation this morning?"

"They are," she said, with a nod. "Though one is absent."

"Mm. And the girl's health?"

"Recovering quickly, it seems," Neferuaten said.

"I see." She sighed in a way that was short and sharp, and made me wonder if she had artificial lungs. "Well done to you all, then. Rest assured that there will be a decisive resolution to the matter, along with some manner of compensation."

Much stronger words on the subject than Neferuaten had, I thought.

"Thank you, exalted mistress," Kamrusepa said. "Um-- As I was saying earlier, it is an honor to meet you, by the way." She seemed a little star-struck.

Admittedly, Amtu-hedu-anna was probably the second most famous of the order's number. She was a well-known arcanist even outside of the sphere of healing, having for many years headed the Old Yru Runescribe's Guild, one of the oldest arcane extant arcane institutions in the world - though she'd resigned into an honorary post long ago at this point. She'd done tremendous amounts of prolific work in all manner of fields in which runecraft was involved, including, funnily enough, the restoration of the Empyrean Bastion. Though appropriately, her specialty had always been using them on the human body.

A long time ago, before the advent of artificed organs and biomancy-engineered viruses and bacteria, carving runes straight on to people's flesh and bones was about the only way to implant a permanent effect engineered by the Power onto a individual, and she'd been among the greatest masters of the technique.

Though those skills had become largely redundant, today, she was something of an elder stateswoman of the Ysaran arcane community, consulted by everyone from architects engaging in grand projects, to other healers, to politicians, always existing in the cultural background. It had been a surprise to the public that she'd been part of the order.

I wondered how it'd happened, myself.

"I see you've met miss Hoa-Trinh already," Neferuaten said, gesturing towards Ran, whom I looked towards properly for the first time. She looked surprisingly relaxed, and gave me a small nod of acknowledgement as we made eye contact.

"Yes, we were just discussing a few matters relating to the order's traditions and symbology," Anna replied. "She has an extremely good head on her shoulders. I was surprised to see it from the weakest of the group in terms of academic accomplishment."

If Ran was offended by this, she didn't show it.

"Mm, could we perhaps join in the conversation?" Neferuaten asked, a smile on her lips. "I'm actually giving these three a tour right now, so a discussion about some of the history could actually be rather appropriate."

There was something funny in her tone as she said this. It was a very subtle, but if I didn't know better, it was almost like she was... Teasing the older woman?

Come on, that's stupid, a part of me thought. The Grandmaster wouldn't do something like that.

Anna narrowed her eyes. "You are free to have a conversation on the matter among yourselves, but we were just finishing. I must make preparations in my chambers for the events of this afternoon." By the time she finished the sentence, she was already moving towards the stairwell.

"Ah, that's a pity," Neferuaten said. "Well, I'm glad everyone had a chance to introduce themselves, at least."

"Um, thank you for your time!" Kamrusepa stammered out.

The woman gave no further acknowledgement to either of them, slowly hobbling up the stairs with the aid of her cane. When she approached the doorway at the top, I saw her finger subtly twitch, and it swung open under the influence of the Power. She passed through it, and then it closed behind her.

Neferuaten let out a sigh a few moments later, turning to all of us with a cheerful expression. "I'm sorry about that. As I told you yesterday, Utsushikome, she's not our most amicable member."

"You don't suppose we did anything to offend her...?" Kam asked, looking a little dejected. "It seemed as though she didn't want to speak with us at all."

She shook her head. "No, I don't think so. She's just not much for larger groups." She turned to Ran. "Are you alright, miss Hoa-Trinh? I hope she wasn't too abrasive with you."

"I'm fine, ma'am," Ran said. "It's as she said, we were just talking about some of the customs of the order-- I approached her myself with a question."

"You approached her yourself?" She smirked a bit. "You're bolder than I might've expected. It's rather a coin-flip as to whether such things end well or poorly... Though, it seems to have landed on the right side, in your case." She hesitated for a moment, then furrowed her brow thoughtfully. "Actually, do people your age still say 'coin flip'? Since there aren't any, any more."

"Uh, I think so," I said. "I still hear it, at least."

"Mm, that's a relief," she said. "Well, Ran. As I said, we're just finishing a tour from yesterday at present. You're welcome to join us if you like-- Though, you might want to go back and have breakfast before they clean it all up, if you haven't? I didn't see you during the morning."

"I'm fine, ma'am. I made a sandwich here a little while ago." She glanced to the side. "I heard about what was happening when Durvasa and Sacnicte came back here with that guy. Since I don't have the right skills to be of any help, I decided it would be better to just stay out of the way. She pointed me in the direction of the kitchen, and since then... I've just been looking around."

"Well, then," Neferuaten said, her tone warm. "Would you like to join join us?"

Ran thought about this for a moment, then glanced over in my direction, a focus coming into her eyes. "Yeah," she said. "Might as well."

It wasn't hard for me to guess what that meant. I remembered what we'd agreed, the night before.

"Excellent!" Neferuaten said. "The more the merrier."

I didn't quite process it at the time, but Theodoros seemed to recede even more at these words, crossing his arms and looking towards the ground.

We quickly moved on from the entry-chamber, Neferuaten not seeming to want to linger there for whatever reason, and resumed the tour proper through the various chambers of the first floor - though there weren't that many left to see after the previous day. We visited a room with a big but somewhat-outdated printing press which Neferuaten informed us was once used for printing their research, back before the organization could do so publicly, and as an example, made up a little sheet from the template with a headline and a couple of paragraphs about our visit, before printing us all a copy. Kam looked like she was almost moved to tears by the gesture.

When I saw Ran reading the next time we took a break, I noticed she'd folded hers up and was using it as a bookmark, which said about everything you needed to know about her sentimentality towards all of this.

We went to some more mundane rooms after that. Another lounge with what looked like a card table, and a room with some exercise equipment that had clearly not seen much use. Eventually, Neferuaten told us we were heading towards the wine cellar because she 'something interesting to show us', which I found rather odd, since I'd never known her to be an enthusiast for drinks. While this was happening the others were talking, me and Ran shared a few quiet words at the back.

"So... What were you doing out here?" I said, in a hushed voice. "I mean, really."

"What do you think?" She looked at me with narrow eyes for a moment, then relaxed a bit, sighing. "...looking for Samium, obviously."

I gave her a confused look. "I thought you told me to wait and ask--"

"I know," she said, rubbing her brow. "But I just... I don't know. I needed to feel like I was doing something useful."

I frowned. "Are you... Alright? What was the matter this morning?"

"I'm fine," she said, her tone firm. "I was just--"

"Oh, so Ran," Kamrusepa turned and interjected, not seeming to realize we were speaking. "I meant to ask, what exactly were you talking with Amtu-hedu-anna about? In regard to the symbology and history, I mean."

She grunted. "I was asking her about the mural. Remember, Linos said she'd know about it."

"Ah, that's right!" She said, snapping her fingers. "I'll confess, I'd completely forgotten."

"Me too," I said. My worried frown was still held on her, even as it became obvious we weren't going to get a chance to finish the thought.

"It turns out that it's actually a reproduction," Ran explained. "Based on some artwork another member of the order did hundreds of years ago. Apparently it's nearly as old as the organization itself."

"Really? That's interesting." Kam hummed to herself, then looked to Neferuaten. "Do you know anything about that, grandmaster?

"Mm, I might," she said, with a touch of mischief in her tone. "I'm not sure how much I ought to say if it's a mystery that miss Hoa-Trinh is pursuing, though. I wouldn't want to spoil her fun."

"I wouldn't call it fun, ma'am," Ran said, her tone flat. "I'm just trying to get a stupid idea out of my head, that's all."

I looked to her. "Why are you so curious about it, Ran?"

She was quiet for a while, her eyes scrunched together-- Probably considering if she actually wanted to answer the question. "Promise me you won't call me an idiot for even indulging the thought."

"Of course," I said, nodding. "I mean. It would be pretty hypocritical of me if I did."

"I've certainly indulged my fair share of bizarre ones," Neferuaten said, with a smile. "You'll hear nothing from me."

"Ran, of all our class, you may be the last I'd call an idiot," Kam said. "Cross my heart and hope to die." She made the according motion.

Theo didn't say anything. He didn't even seem to be paying attention to the conversation, now.

Ran let a second, deeper sigh. "So there's this old story in... Well, I guess you'd call it the genre fiction community," she explained. "An urban myth, if you like. It's about these manuscripts that are supposed to never end. They don't have a cover or any binding other than rings, so there's no clear place to start them. And the text is circular, like that mural, so the story goes on forever and ever and ever. No one knows exactly where or when they first started showing up, and they're all completely different types of stories - the one I originally heard about was romance, but there's also a fantasy one people talk about a lot. They're supposed to all be unique, and the only places they ever show up in stories are in old collections or at auction."

"Sounds like something that would be rather easy to capitalize on," Kam said. "Make one of your own, then saddle someone in the mythos with a nice chunk of your luxury debt."

"You'd think so, but the stories for account for that," Ran said. "As they tell it, they're all written in the same handwriting. There are even photos that circulate around that are allegedly of some of the pages, so it'd be easy to spot a forgery."

"So one person would have to be behind all of them," I said.

"Sharp as ever, Su," she said, a little dryly.

I raised an eyebrow. "Why would someone make something like that, though?"

"Don't think too hard about it. Like I said, this is probably all a bunch of baseless rumors," she said. "But... The story goes that they were written by some Egomancer who, way back in the Mourning Period, was trying to understand the way the Ironworkers had reconstructed the human brain, and the protections they'd put on it. They supposedly learned that, by using divination to detect external impulses over a very long period of research, they could understand how it responded to certain... Feelings, stimuli."

I nodded along with this. It was a well-known fact that, almost without exception, the Power was unable to affect or read the human mind whatsoever, even if someone had none of their resistances. Some ascribed this to a deliberate choice in the part of the Ironworkers, since it was easy to imagine the world becoming deeply unpleasant if people had the ability to manipulate the psyches of others as easily as they could defy physics, while others said it was simply due to it being incompatible with the nature of the human brain as it now existed.

Regardless, the field of Egomancy had sprung up as a means to find backdoors to do this anyway, though it only ever achieved meager success even before the Grand Alliance had banned it. Nowadays, it was replaced by Neuromancy, which kept an even greater degree of separation, interfacing with the mind only by proxy via the rest of the nervous system.

"That sounds... A little implausible, from what I understand of the science," Neferuaten said. "Not I have much authority to speak on the matter. I know about as much about Egomancy as I do about animal husbandry."

"There's more to the explanation that I'm forgetting, and also the stories kind of vary," Ran said, rubbing her eyes. "It's all really vague bullshit. But the way it all ultimately goes is that he eventually made these manuscripts as an experiment in treating to create... I dunno what you'd even call it. Non-arcane Egomancy."

"This is starting to sound very esoteric," Kamrusepa said, obviously quite taken with the story. "I'm a little sad you missed out on our conversation about the supernatural earlier, Ran."

"This isn't supernatural," she said bluntly.

"I know, I know!" Kamrusepa said, holding up a hand. "But this sort of pulp-science mythology - it has a similar mystique, I think."

"I'm quite taken with it myself, I admit," Neferuaten said. "I'm surprised I've never come across the rumor before. In spite of my age, I do like to think of myself as still on the pulse of fringe scholarship." She smirked.

"Are you much of a reader, ma'am?" Ran asked. "Of fiction?"

Neferuaten shrugged. "I suppose not. I spend more time glued to a logic bridge these days, I'm afraid."

"Then it's not surprising. I haven't heard it discussed outside of those circles," she said. "Anyway. The gist of it is, they're written in some specific way that's supposed to tap into the fabric of the mind, when you read them over and over again. Into its core structure, by exploiting the flaws in the Ironworkers method, or maybe had always existed, even in the old world. And then change you."

I blinked. "What do you mean by 'change'?"

"Anything. Your personality. How you think. Fundamentals about how you're specialized as a human being, and what your mind is capable of doing" She ran her hand through her messy hair. "Some of the time it's even stuff like memories or skills, depending on who's telling it."

I found myself shuddering a bit. Somehow, the idea of just something you read doing that to you struck me as deeply creepy.

"And you think our mural might be one of these?" Neferuaten asked.

"No," Ran said, with no hesitation. "Obviously not. Even if the stories are true, they never speak about any being illustrated; it's always text." She frowned to herself. "I couldn't help making the connection and just... Thinking about it, though. I used to be kind of into this sort of thing."

Neferuaten shrugged. "Fair enough."

"If you'll forgive me saying so, Ran, I would never have imagined," Kamrusepa said. "You're about the most straight-laced person I think I know. Heads over even Su, and she's a terrible bore," she said, gesturing towards me.

"Hey!" I said.

"I don't know why everyone seems to have this idea of me as this hyper-rational person," Ran said, turning to face forward. "I spend half my time reading romance novels. Taking those stories at face value requires a hell of a lot more mental gymnastics than believing in some magic books."

Kamrusepa snorted, then chuckled to herself. Ran's expression, though, was as serious as ever.

And I found myself wondering, regardless of what she might've said, why she really would go out of her way to pursue such a minuscule lead on something like that.

We came to a set of steps at the back of the building, and headed down. As expected, they led into the wine cellar, which looked what you'd expect a wine cellar to look like - albeit with a bit less stock than many, since for all the comforts it had, I imagined working in the sanctuary over the long term got dull pretty quickly. The lamp came on automatically as we entered.

"Oh, this is charming," Kamrusepa said, smiling as we walked past the shelves. "Quite a lot of rare vintages."

Neferuaten chuckled. "I'll be sure to pass the compliment on to Hamilcar, since he's the one who largely procures the stock. I confess I didn't bring you here to look at wine, however." She turned a corner, and directed us towards a wooden door at the back.

Kamrusepa gasped. "There's a whole other floor, down here?"

"Indeed, miss Tuon, there is," she said with a nod, before turning to Theodoros. "I remember you saying you don't like being underground, Theodoros, so you can sit this part out if you like. It shouldn't be too long."

He stared at her mutedly for a moment, not seeming to have fully comprehended she was talking to him. Then he blinked, and nodded. "Uh, no. I'll come."

She smiled. "Very well, then. "

I gave her a puzzled look. "I thought you said there was nothing interesting, down here?"

"Not quite. I said there was nothing exciting, but there are still things... One might find worth seeing." She opened the door, revealing a grey, largely undercoated corridor. "I decided there would be. So. Shall we?"

Kamrusepa cheerfully advanced, and we followed in her wake.