The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Abbey House Dining Hall | 5:23 AM | Third Day

In retrospect, several bad choices were made in succession following this moment. You must understand that this all happened very quickly - maybe 3 minutes passed at most, and none of us, even Linos, really knew what we were doing. It's easy to be rational when you're somewhere safe, alone and comfortable, with time to think... But human beings are creatures which are apes first and logic engines second. Unless you train yourself otherwise or have a strict plan in mind, if your fight-or-flight instincts kick in, it's already over.

"--oh, shit!" Ezekiel exclaimed, as he was cut off. Ophelia let out a gasp of shock, and Mehit practically lurched backwards, gripping Lilith by the shoulder, who screamed. I felt Ran grab my arm and pull me towards the table.

"S-Something hit the barrier!" Linos called out, his voice unsteady. His scepter shot up, held in both hands.

"Everyone get down!" Kamrusepa shouted. "Get out your scepters!"

Most people in the room followed the instruction, reaching for their belts and moving into some sort of defensive position. Ezekiel had the bright idea to turn the table upright, leaving Ran and I to take the long way around the room just to get behind something.

"Don't panic, it's still stable!" Linos declared. "Whatever that attack was, it wasn't much!"

"They must be scoping us out," Ezekiel hissed. He looked towards Ran. "Saoite girl, do something!"

She scowled at him. "Do what?"

"You're a Diviner!"

"For fucking health problems! Not for something like this!" she protested. Even when Ran shouted, it wasn't quite a shout. It was more like she just spoke up very, very aggressively.

The door to the kitchen swung openly suddenly, and Seth and Ptolema stepped back through, the latter carrying a linen bag full of tinned food.

"What the hell was that sound?!" Seth asked, his tone urgent.

"We're under attack," Ezekiel said, matter-of-factly. "Get into cover!"

I felt the soft twinge against my senses that came with someone using a non-trivial amount of the Power.

"Hmm, this is weird," Fang said. "I'm using the Moment-Emulating Arcana, but I'm not seeing anyone out there."

My eyes gaped a little at this statement. They cast something that complicated without even speaking? No way.

The Moment-Emulating Arcana was an advanced Divination technique that collected a large amount of information from the surrounding area in order to grant the caster a vision of a certain action they intended to take, though only for a few seconds into the future, as the eris cost became exponentially greater as the artificed scenario became more and more complicated. Still, it was incredibly advanced for people our age. The mathematics required not to instantly drain your scepter dry was intense even by my standards, and the conceptualization aspect in particular was tremendously difficult to master.

...and yet Fang, assuming they could be believed, had cast it like it was nothing. And traced the entire thing.

Over to my left, I heard Ophelia trying to cast beginnings of the Life-Sensing Arcana from memory, and suddenly I remembered that I had one that was suitable, too. Before anyone realized I was being an idiot, I started incanting.

D e a t h - S e n s i n g

"...𒍣𒍣𒁺𒋼𒉌𒌈𒀭𒋫𒂊𒌍𒁹𒐊𒐊𒐊𒊹!"

To keep the eris expense down, I narrowed the scope to only the rest of the building and the near exterior in the direction of the sound... But like Fang had said, I found nothing. There was no one there - not even the faint trail of dying cells that most people left just walking around.

"They're right," I confirmed. "I don't think there's anyone out there."

"I-I don't see anyone, either..." Ophelia said meekly, as she also finished.

"You three must be fucking it up, then!" Ezekiel accused. "You heard the sound! Widen your range!"

"Maybe it was something else?" Ptolema suggested from behind the set of shelves her and Seth had moved behind, her tone carrying some amount of wishfulness. "Maybe something fell over?"

"No, Ptolema." Kamrusepa said. "Linos said something hit the barrier."

"Actually, "Linos said hesitantly. "...I'm not so sure... The impact was so slight, it might've been something bumping into the surface." He looked towards Seth. "Master Ikkuret, were you moving any shelves about, looking for the supplies?"

He nodded. "Yeah, we were trying to find the switch for the gaslamp."

Linos sighed. "Perhaps I angled it slightly off--"

"Like hell! Things falling down don't make a bang and a flash like that," Ezekiel exclaimed, his cheeks growing red as he became flustered. "It was obviously an attack. Don't start relaxing-- They could be on us any second!"

But though he said that, 'they' weren't, even after another few moments had passed. Ophelia performed her incantation at a wider scope, but still didn't find anything. Even Linos made an attempt to no avail.

However, Ezekiel still had a point, which was that it was hard to form a mundane explanation for what had happened. So - in a decision which was pretty questionable, but was made over the space of a frantic twenty or so seconds - we decided that some of us would go out and look, just in case there was a massive attack being prepared we hadn't foreseen that could punch right through our defenses.

And of course, since I had the 'best barrier,' that party included me, along with Kam, Ezekiel, and Fang. In other words, the most accomplished other than Linos.

Linos took down his barrier for the briefest of moments, and we left the room. In the end, it didn't take us more than a second out of the door to find half of the answer, because we could smell it; the scent of burning. The only room adjacent to the dining room and kitchen other than the bedrooms past the stairs was a little conservatory-type chamber with a broad view of the garden. Peeking into it, there was a subtle but clearly smoking hole near the bottom of the wall, facing the lounge. And heading out to the lounge, there was another, more scorched-looking one at the wall bordering Bardiya's room.

"Aw, man, I feel like an idiot," Fang said, with dejected whistle, puffing out their cheeks. "I don't have smell down for that incantation yet, otherwise I'd have noticed this from the word go."

Ezekiel looked like he wanted to say something harsh in response to this, but hesitated. Again, he had trouble speaking sternly to Fang.

"Let's go," Kamrusepa said, all but ushering me back into the bedchamber.

Now that we had a hunch, it didn't take long to find what we were looking for. Under the bed, facing the direction the shot had fired, was a refractor pistol.

Linos's, probably, my brain reminded me. Remember, he said he had one on him.

Of course, there were much greater questions here than that.

"Well, that's certainly a thing," Fang muttered, fishing it out.

"The fuck...?" Ezekiel muttered. "How did it go off?"

But as soon as we all got a good look at it, that, too, was half self-evident. Though in this case, the 'half' part was felt a little more strongly.

As Fang turned the pistol around in their hand - taking care to make sure the barrel faced the ground at all time - I saw that, wrapped around the trigger and locking it down into the firing position, was what appeared to be... A tight elastic band.

I blinked, and tried to process this information.

What had hit Linos's barrier, what had set us all off just now... Was a shot from Linos's pistol at a high strength, left by someone on the floor, facing the dining hall... Triggered by an elastic band.

What?

Fang clicked their tongue softly, while the rest of us stared in momentary bafflement.

Kam, in particular, looked thrown off. "How would they... Wait--"

But before we could process this further, we heard Seth call out from back in the dining hall. "Guys, get back in here! Something's going on!"

There was no time to question or wait-- The tension of the circumstances had thrown me off so much that I didn't even think to cast the Death-Sensing Arcana to check if we were being tricked. Fang took the pistol with us, keeping it pointed well away from anyone, and we collectively shot back out the room and through the hallway. Linos and I lowered our barriers as we shot through the door, and he brought his back up in a flash.

"What's happening?" Kamrusepa asked.

"The kitchen," Linos said, his eyes filled with dread.

I turned towards the door, and instantly noticed.

The sound was... Off. No, off doesn't cover it; the Power was clearly at work, maybe the World-Deafening Arcana, or something more obscure. It was muted, and not in a manner that natural, like we were only hearing half of the resonance of what should of been there. It sounded as though it was coming from a broken set of speakers. (Well, I wasn't sure I'd ever actually heard sound from a broken set of speakers, since they'd been largely phased out by logic bridges since before I was born and lacked the nostalgic value of phonographs, but this was what I imagined that'd sound like.)

It was a thumping. Not rhythmic or regular, but frantic and desperate; the sound of someone who was willing to hurt themselves just to get your attention.

And that was when I realized. Or rather, when I noticed what I hadn't realized, amidst everything that taken place in the past couple of minutes.

Which was that there were still people unaccounted for who had gone inside.

I swallowed the air. No... This is impossible. His barrier had covered the whole area. Hadn't it?

I realized that everyone else who'd been in the room before we'd returned had their scepters raised towards the door, and the others were already moving to do the same. What was going on suddenly clicked; they'd been waiting for us to return, just in case this was a trick, and we were in for a fight.

Everyone looked afraid-- More afraid even then during the announcement. Ran was breathing deeply, and I could see the sweat rolling down her brow. The older woman had practically broken down in tears, and she was half-behind her scepter-brandishing daughter, clinging tightly to her. I couldn't tell if she was trying to protect or cowering in fear behind her.

"Alright," Linos said, his tone urgent. "Get the door open!"

Ptolema was the one to do it, incanting out the simple Object-Manipulating Arcana, sliding the lock back.

How had it got locked to begin with?

As soon as the door was open, Theodoros burst through, and I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that he looked in possibly a worse state than I'd ever seen someone in outside of the deathly ill. He was pale as a ghost, and his whole body shook violently, his pupils dilated almost to a point. He let out a whimper as he staggered forward and, though seemingly unwounded, began to fall.

"Theo!" Seth called out, moving to try and catch him. I found myself rushing forward too, despite something in my brain telling me this was incredibly insensible; I had old, old memories of him, and seeing him in such a vulnerable state brought them to the surface. Seth reached him just before he fell, grabbing hold of him by the chest, while I took hold on his shoulder.

"H-Hey, it's okay!" Seth said, panicking.

He opened his mouth to reply, gentle gasps escaping between his lips over and over again, but instead of speaking, he made a terrible wretching noise, and began to throw up. It wasn't much, but it sounded painful, like he was trying to cry out at the same time. Mercifully, it didn't hit either of us, but I still instinctively flinched backwards, ending up edging a little closer to the kitchen door.

However, that ended up being the more pleasant part of the experience. What was worse was the scream that he emitted as soon as his mouth was cleared.

It wasn't like you'd hear in a play - filled with melodramatic horror but even-toned, or sputtering with pathetic, overwrought panic. It was a sound closer to something you'd hear from a child, or perhaps a wounded animal. Ugly and erratic, but wrought with terrified, raw emotion, like it was a sob that had grown wrong in the womb.

"AAAAUUUGHHH! AHHH! AH...."

"Theo, it's okay, look at me!" Seth said, taking hold of his face. Some of the others begun to approach too, Ptolema looking taken aback.

"I-- I... IT'S..." His body heaved up and down, as he wanted to throw up again but there wasn't anything left for his guts to relinquish.

"E-Everyone back in position!" Linos called out. "Back in position!"

Suddenly, a surge of panic went through me as I heard these words and the other shoe dropped in my head. If Theo was in this state as a result of whatever was in the kitchen, then hadn't we just let our guard down tremendously? There could be someone right across from where we were standing, waiting to strike.

So, without even thinking about it, I jerked my head to look inside the kitchen.

...

...I wish I hadn't looked. If I'd just stopped and thought about the situation a moment, I probably could've inferred what I would've seen. Or I could've used the Power, and known without having to use my eyes.

I really wish I hadn't looked.

As Seth had indicated, the room was largely unlit, the gas lamp unignited. But still, it was a small room, with a lot of reflective metal surfaces, so the warm glow of the dining hall was enough to illuminate everything within, more or less.

There were a lot of things in the room. A stove, a mini-pantry, two different kinds of oven, a sink. A pile of spare chairs. The smell of spices struck me before anything - a product of a broken bottle on the floor, which drowned out the other smells.

However, these were peripheral details. There was only one thing I saw, and that was... Bardiya.

I recognized his blonde hair and thick-materialed outfit straight away, though a little of his shirt had been ripped. He was lying against the side of the wall, shoulders slumped at an awkward angle, as he'd been trying to turn around to face the door, but hadn't quite made it all the way. Likewise, his legs were crossed uncomfortably, and his hands lay at his sides. His scepter was still attached to his waist.

...but, no... That wasn't right. Something about the image I was seeing didn't compute in brain. Neurons were firing but not connecting. The situation didn't fit together. It felt as though I was trying to jam a jigsaw piece where it didn't fit, again.

That can't be Baridya, my mind told me.

After all,

Bardiya has a face.

The thing I was seeing... The object-that-wasn't-Bardiya... Something had happened to everything above its neck.

It didn't feel quite real, looking at it. Like it was a sculpture, or a picture in a book. The flesh, largely, just wasn't there, like it had been ripped away by a wild beast. In fact, it lay in pieces around the surrounding area, the floor soaked in blood and viscera. I could see muscle, and worse, raw bones beneath, in some places shattered. The jaw had cracked, and part of it had come loose, the teeth cracked through their structure and splintering out like chunks of wood in a sheet hit by a hammer. One crack ran up to the cheekbone, and above that, I could see the socket where an eyeball had once resided, with all that remained now being a crushed mess...

At least, on one side. On the other, it was still intact, and this was even worse. Because seeing it there, framed by the last lingering section of skin on the face, its dark brown iris staring emptily into nothingness, shattered any illusion that what I was seeing wasn't a face. And the feeling that ran through my body was like nothing I'd ever experienced.

I'd seen corpses before-- I'd see two today, even. But not like this. Not when I'd been standing alongside them just moments ago.

It was too much. After everything, it was too much.

I felt the world fall away from me, and I lost consciousness.

𒊹

Ever since the day my-- My grandfather died, I've often had very vivid dreams, especially when sleeping at times or places that I normally don't. Honestly, I'd expected to have nightmares every night I stayed in the sanctuary, so it'd been a pleasant surprise to have merely slept badly on the first day. Maybe that note had done me a favor, getting me so worked up that I couldn't drift back into the more shallow slumber that comes with trying to force your body to rest against it's impulses.

This time, though, it was more standard.

The random images and impulses of my consciousness coalesced into something familiar: A beach. Because of where I'd grown up, a lot of my dreams took place on beaches, especially in facsimiles of the one in which I'd experienced my most precious memories. Usually, something awful would be wrong with it. Sometimes, this would only manifest as an anxious feeling in the background, but other times there would be distinct visual components. Sometimes the sky would be black and starless, while on other occasions the ocean would be gone or strange somehow - clumpy, sometimes, like congealing blood, even though it was still blue. There were sometimes grotesque sights interspersed about, images taken from life or produced by my subconscious or childhood imagination. In this case, a mountainous version of Bardiya's face from a moment ago hung in the background, and I tried awkwardly not to look at it.

I think, since I'd gone out so unnaturally and suddenly, I was aware to some extent that I was dreaming. But I've never been able to lucid dream, so I didn't feel in control. So I just... Followed the script.

I walked down the beach, searching for something. Maybe my mind was guiding me somewhere, trying to resolve some tension I hadn't consciously become aware of.

As I did, someone or something followed behind me, though this, too, was standard. It carried with it the same impulse of dread and displacement that I felt looking at mirrors, and in another sense, it could be considered to embody the voice in my head which was the most prominent, the loudest. Though here, it was more raw then when it manifested in my waking mind.

Sometimes, I caught glimpses of it, with black hair the same as mine... And occasionally, it spoke.

"I hate you so much."

"Liar. Thief. Murderer."

"I wish I'd never even spoken to you. To think something like this could've happened... What a horrible mistake..."

"Stop walking on those feet. Stop feeling things with that skin. Stop breathing the air with that mouth."

"What makes you think you have the right to live like this? It's so cruel. It's revolting."

"Just die. Please, just die..."

I didn't turn to look at it, because that would have been impossible, for the same reason that it's impossible to look at the backside of your own eyeball. But the words did reach me. They hurt, filling me with a flicker of urgent despair... But compared to what it'd been in the past, it was nothing. Like someone trying to stab me with table knife through a duvet.

People's hearts respond to anguish - regret, guilt, grief - in different ways. Some feel them so ferociously and directly that they tear themselves into pieces, while others channel those feelings into more superficially manageable emotions, like anger. Some depend aggressively on others, with outcomes that differ depending on the nature of their social circle; if they're charismatic or talented, it might be fine, for but others it can condemn them to a lonely, pained existence.

Some still, the lucky few who have lived happy lives, followed the arc of growth and self-actualization that humans are supposed to, and became genuinely mature (as opposed to the broken facade of maturity that most adults are forced to make do with)... Can weigh them against the their happy memories and the wider context of a meaningful life, and find true, permanent acceptance, weaving the pain into a constructive part of themselves. Like the tale of the fairy who spun straw into gold.

...or so I assumed. It wasn't anything I had personally experienced, you understand.

You've heard enough to know this already, but for myself, my heart worked like a mill. Feelings that it couldn't bear, it crushed, over and over again. Breaking down intensity, meaning, relentlessly abstracting every component of reality until everything, good and bad, was numb and distant.

So even though this still happened after all this time, it felt less like real guilt, and more like a ritual my mind undertook because it didn't know what else to do. Maybe that was another reason why this place always looked like a beach. After all, if you strike anything in the world enough... Like the waves, pounding endlessly against the shore... Eventually, all that will remain is sand and dust.

A bowl in which all water has dripped out.

In a way, it was worse than pain. ...no, it was worse. What I feared more than anything was looking back at both those wonderful, shining memories... And the agony afterwards, and the awfulness of my sin... And not having any particular response. To try and call to mind either the beautiful, soaring hope and love I'd felt, and the crushing, unspeakable grief of its loss... And find only a vacuum.

And to be able to wave off that presence behind me, which 12 years ago had felt like a genuine monster stalking my every step, which had left me afraid to even leave my room, as if it were a fly buzzing in my ear. An imaginary friend which had been outgrown.

Just the thought of it made me feel something worse than despair.

At some point, the surroundings of the beach had changed, and thought it was still present, I was now also in an environment like my tertiary school, where I'd met Ran. The three main buildings - the old hall, which was Inotian and had a grand columned entrance, and the two newer ones, which were wooden and Saoic - stood at all sides of me, and there were students mulling about in veils.

The atmosphere gave the impression that it was the end of the day, with everyone seeming to be heading towards the gates. But I had the sense there was something I needed to do here, so I climbed up the exterior steps on one of the Saoic buildings which led to the math club. I wasn't a member, since Iwa had wanted me to join the school theater with her, but I still did some activities with them. Like I told you before, I love compliments, so meekly doing something I found easy and dispensing tips was a no-brainer when I needed a little boost.

However, by the time I neared the door, the world had shifted again, the wooden paneling reminding me of the small property my grandfather had purchased in Oreskios for the short period in which we spent time together. Suddenly I was approaching the chamber of his study. Instinctively, I lurched away, but it occurred to some part of me that my brain might've been trying to show me information pertinent to the situation at hand.

What was the situation at hand...? I couldn't quite recall. Still, it felt important.

I'd pushed many of the few memories I had of him into the back of my mind over the years. As a result, even though I recalled the broad strokes, some of the specifics had probably slipped away. It could be useful to revisit it.

So, I twisted the knob, and stepped inside, the entity following in my wake.

My grandfather's study had been a small room with little in it other than a single bookshelf, a bed, and a desk in front of the window, through which warm light was presently emanating. The furniture still looked new - he hadn't spent enough time there to break anything in, so it had almost the vibe of a model room that you'd see in a store. I think there'd been some other stuff at the right side of the chamber, but I'd never faced in that direction during our talks, so I'd managed to forget it completely. Within the dream, it was replaced intermittently by a wall from my own bedroom, and a black void leading to nothing.

He'd actually left me this place when he'd passed on, but I hadn't felt comfortable renting or managing tenants, so I'd given it to my little brother for free when he'd finally moved away from our parents home for the first time. ...I guess that was nepotism, huh? I really am a hypocrite.

My grandfather was sitting on the only chair, currently turned away from the desk. I don't feel like describing his face in any detail, but he was wearing a very casual tunic and trousers, giving him an unintimidating aura. He was smiling.

The me-from-the-past was smiling, too, from the spot I was sitting on the bed. I had always been smiling back then, regardless of how I actually felt, though it was how I actually felt more often than not. That, too, was a reason I didn't want to look. But still, I looked.

"I wanted to give you a gift, this time," my grandfather said warmly. He was gentle and soft-spoken in his speech, as always, though in a different manner to Linos, where it seemed like he was perpetually calm. He passed me a bundle wrapped in papyrus. "I'm not sure what you'll think about it, but it is the new year, so it seemed like I ought to make the effort."

The other me ran her finger underneath the glue and unfolded the wrapping. It contained a stack of heavy, old papers, bound together with string. They seemed to be covered in hurriedly-scrawled cursive, though the only text I picked up at a glance were the lines 'FOR THE VIEWING OF THE GAEN PUBLISHING COMPANY' and 'FINAL DRAFT'.

The other me looked at him. "What's this?" she asked.

"It's an old collectors item I've had for a while now," he explained. "I heard from your mother that you've taken a liking to mystery novels, and this is the original manuscript of a classic one - 'The Candlestick Killings', by Maniya of Arik." He scoffed hesitatingly, scratching behind his ear. "It might be a little too old for you, actually--"

"No, no, I've heard of it!" the other me said, with genuine enthusiasm. "I mean... I don't know what to say. It's a very thoughtful gift." She smiled wider, looking down at it. "Though, I don't think I could actually read something like this much. I mean, it's probably really valuable..."

"Well, sometimes it can be fun to be a little flippant with something valuable, don't you think?" He chuckled. "Don't tell Sun that I said that. Of course, if you'd rather, it would also be a good starting point for a collection."

"I don't really collect things," the other me said, also laughing softly.

"Believe me, you'll start before too long," he said. "Comes with getting older. You'd be surprised how quickly you run out of things to actually want that aren't obscenely expensive."

Come to think of it... This was the happiest memory I had with him, wasn't it? One of the last times we'd seen each other before he died, when enough time had passed for me to almost relax about it. And on one of the few days he'd seemed completely coherent.

Though he'd never been unkind.

At least, not to me.

I glanced at the window. I could see my garden outside. The tree with the broken branch.

The other me continued looking at the page. Eventually, she frowned, and flipped it over to show it to my grandfather. "What's this?" She pointed at a symbol that had been stamped in the corner, depicting an ouroboros curled around a staff.

"Ah," my grandfather said, adjusting his spectacles. "That's the symbol of the organization that we talked about last time-- The Order of the Universal Panacea. I, ah, may have pinched this from their library after they they saw fit to expel me from the organization. Along with a few other old books I'd grown attached to."

"That's kind of shady," the other me said.

He laughed. "Come now! Haven't you ever taken the odd thing or two from a lodging, on the day you're supposed to leave? Or grabbed an item or two from somewhere you've been working, when they sack you? ...Well, I suppose you'd be too young for that." He placed his old, wrinkled hands upon one of his legs. "My point is, one is owed a few mementos in a situation like that, I think."

"Would they have noticed?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, no. They have more old books then they know what to do with, even things like this. No restraint at all-- Half of it is just generations of wealthy people with too much time on their hands." He smiled to himself. "As if I have any right to talk..."

The other me nodded along, still looking at the book. She turned a page, and I remembered that the handwriting was even worse past the cover, and that I'd felt bad for whomever had been given the job of editing it. I tried to look at it, but of course you can't read in dreams because it's a different part of your brain, so it just looked like squiggles. I frowned in dissatisfaction.

"You never told me why they threw you out, when we talked about it," the other me said off-handedly.

Oh, that's right, I thought. I did ask him about it, didn't I...? But he gave me a vague answer, or something. And I wasn't really interested...

My grandfather hummed to himself. "Well, it's all rather complicated...They didn't exactly 'throw me out'. They held a vote, but... It was more that the atmosphere just became too cold to bear. You could say that I couldn't go to meetings without worrying that someone was going to push me down the stairs." He chuckled again, though a little more sadly. "As for why it happened, I suppose it was to do with a disagreement about the order's purpose."

The other me blinked. "Isn't it just about trying to help people live longer?"

I asked a lot of really dumb questions, back then.

"Oh, well, yes... I suppose so, broadly speaking," he said, nodding. "But then, when you really try to put a pin in it, that's rather a vague intent. In contemporary times, if you consider the whole world, more people die of accidents or negligence than a failing of technology. So, does the end of a task like that begin and end at healing the body?" He glanced towards the window. "Almost everyone in the order thought it should be something more. There's even a hint in the name itself."

She frowned, and let out a dissatisfied hum. "I don't think I get it."

"You see, if you take the phrase 'Order of the Universal Panacea' literally, it's linguistically redundant," he explained. "After all, the definition for 'panacea' is already 'a universal cure'. A treatment for every conceivable ailment of the body. ...however, 'universal' can be applied in another way than just 'in regard to everything'. If you use it as you would 'universe', it can instead be interpreted to mean 'pertaining to the world'."

The other me thought about this for a few moments. "So... The simple name for it would be something like, 'The Order of a Universal Cure for the Whole World'?"

"Well, if you put it that way, it sounds unspeakably silly," he said, looking amused. "But yes, you could say that. From the beginning, the members - the arcanists - aspired to not just to allow people able to live indefinitely, but to have a world in which that could be accommodated. After all, maintaining a civilization is just as important as maintaining a body when it comes to staying alive... As, well, we all learned the hard way, in the past."

"So... How did you differ from them?"

At this question, he seemed to struggle a bit. He furrowed his brow for a moment, and then his eyes begun to glaze over. But before the other me could say something, he snapped out of it, blinking.

"There were... Are, really... Differences in opinion about how far that idea should be carried. Or rather, you could say it was a diversion in thinking of if what should be advanced was the world, or human beings ourselves. It was a loaded issue - the order itself was founded in the wake of a very long conflict about the future of mankind, one now half-forgotten..." He shook his head. "To put in shortly, I believed the most ethical path to take was in the latter, while the prevailing opinion was in the former. So, as my main project neared its completion, things got a little out of hand..."

The other me frowned, tilting her head. "I don't understand."

My grandfather chuckled again. "Ah, it's hardly worth dwelling on," he said. "After all, I'd be happiest if you lived your life without ever having to think about the matter..." He smiled weakly. "Besides, I'm sure I'm over-intellectualizing it. Adults like to pretend we don't fall out over the same kind of silly spats and personal grudges as children, but we're talking about an organization that was, to say it in the kindest words, rather clique-ish to begin with. After all, they had to create a special title for me to sit in their meetings to begin with, just because I wasn't a trained arcanist." He sighed. "It was all a silly affair, in the end."

The other me didn't seem to know quite what to say. She just stared at him, her brow wrinkled.

"If I could tell you just one thing," he said, "It would be... That you should spend this life pursuing the things you love, that make you feel the most like yourself. Don't trick yourself into wasting away for some abstract ideal. If you do, even if you accomplish what you set out to do... It still won't really be worthwhile."

She scratched the side of her head, and glanced down to the manuscript, flipping another dusty page. "Yeah... Yeah, you're right." She looked up at him, and smiled. "...a-although, that's sort of generic advice, isn't it? It's funny to hear you say it with so much weight."

He laughed again. "Well, now... There's no such thing as hearing the right thing too much." He nodded to himself, looking at me fondly.

"So, if you disagreed with them so much," my other self went on, "How did you even end up joining? Did you know someone?"

He scoffed. "That's another story in its own right." He looked down thoughtfully. "Tell you what. Why don't we go out, and get something for lunch--"

Su... I heard.

At once, the image before me started to fall apart, becoming muddled. Both the figures were gone, and the room flickered between impressions of various others that reminded me of it. Logical thoughts started to intrude, getting into the dream like heated knives, bring parts of myself back under deliberate control.

C'mon Su.

I saw the beach again, and the induction chamber, and was standing at the airdock, and was crying looking for my logic engine, and--

𒊹

"Please, wake the hell up..." Ran muttered. "We're going to end up carrying you at this rate."

Groggily, still feeling faint, my eyes flickered open. Ran was sitting by my side, and I seemed to have been placed in one of the dining room chambers. She grunted in relief as soon as she saw me respond, rubbing her eyes.

As soon as I processed the situation, my mind shot straight back to the scene and the body, and for a moment I thought just the memory would make me pass out again. But without the shock and visceral horror, it instead just settled as painful lump in my gut, then slowly, began to fade.

"She's awake," Ran reported.

"...good," Linos said, very mutedly.

I glanced at my surroundings. Evidently, some amount of time had passed. Everyone was now seated around the table again, and the atmosphere seemed calm, if incredibly bleak. Most people weren't even making eye contact with one another. Ophelia was hiding her face. Seth's eyes looked empty. Ptolema was sobbing softly to herself, and Kamrusepa was glaring downward with such an intensity that it looked like she had murderous intent for the wood.

Theo's expression looked almost vacant. His eyes were wide, and his mouth hung, half-open.

"How--" I coughed. "How long was I...?"

"Twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes," Ran said. "Not long." She lowered her voice. "You haven't been keeping people waiting or anything. It's-- Everyone's been having kind of a moment."

I nodded. Trying to accept what had happened.

But it was hard. I hadn't been close friends with Bardiya, but still, we had been friends. We'd talked a lot, worked together often, even hung out every so often. And now he, like Neferuaten, was gone. And I knew that every time I thought of him again, I'd only be able to see that awful scene.

And what was worse, it felt terribly certain that he wouldn't be the last.