The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

I returned to Old Yru, and continued with the class for the time being, since Ran was there and I had no other ideas. Nothing revolutionary happened for the next several months, and by winter, I'd expected a quiet, unceremonious end to the year. We'd have another couple of weeks off for the solstice, though this time I'd stay behind since my mother was planning a big dinner with her mother - my other grandmother's - side of the family. It had felt like our studies had been even harder than normal, and I was looking forward to the break.

But there was one last surprise left. In early December, the class coordinator pulled us all into a meeting before lunch and announced that, in just two weeks, the Order's inner circle would be reciprocating our visit to the conclave. That is to say, they were coming to visit the academy. The headmaster's plans for a longer-term professional relationship with their group had, it seemed, borne fruit.

This time, though, we were barely going to be involved. The plan was for there to be a small ceremony where they'd gift the headmaster a few of their private, previously-unreleased texts for the academy library, after which there would be a joint press conference attended by the same sort of crowd as the last time. This would in turn be followed by a meet-and-greet with the academy staff. Altogether a more modest affair than the conclave by a long shot.

We weren't invited to the meet-and-greet; that was for the grown-ups. Instead, our role was purely informal - we were, alongside the headmaster, supposed to show them around the academy when they arrived. The whole thing was a little silly, since most of them had seen the place in a private capacity already, but Kam was all too happy to nod along as the 'class representative' in order to impress the man, regardless of her real feelings.

And so it came to pass that on the 17th of December, just two days before our winter break, I was forced to push myself out of bed at an unseemly hour, endure the bitter cold, and do something completely pointless.

"This sucks," I said to Ran, trying not to shiver too obviously under my thick cotton robes.

"Quit whining," she chided me tiredly, unsubtly reading her latest novel - some sort of spy romance thriller set in the Imperial Era - beneath a physics textbook.

They'd come in through a series of private carriages, and we'd met them in the atrium, a hall of pristine white stone which contained multiple floors worth of walkways and doorways into classrooms, alongside enough plants that you could almost mistake it for a garden. In almost every case, they came across differently than they had in the sanctuary. Linos wore a formal brown and red chiton and spoke in less casual tones, Anna wore a ultra-modest black dress, her hair tied sharply back and her aged features brought into stark relief. Zeno was in his older male body (gods know where his real one was) and seemed markedly more normal and polite, while Durvasa was outright friendly.

And at least physically, the impression Hamilcar gave was most different at all, his massive metal frame covered entirely in a loose black robe which gave no impression of what lay beneath. He almost looked like a monk. If it hadn't been for the state of his jaw, one might have thought him merely an extremely well-built man who had suffered some unfortunate facial scarring.

Only Neferuaten seemed unchanged in both appearance and manner, wearing one of her standard Thanatomancy robes, her demeanor as casual as ever. If anything, she seemed even more carefree than usual, peering around the academy with the curiosity of a schoolgirl, her hands held behind her back.

I'd never actually managed to contact her like I'd planned, though I admittedly hadn't tried particularly hard. It seemed as though she'd been busy for the first few weeks following the conclave, and as time passed, the whole thing had just felt more and more ridiculous. It wasn't that I didn't believe it had happened-- I still remembered the whole thing, clear as day. You couldn't just hallucinate something that complex and coherent. I'd experienced another reality. I believed that.

And I believed what the other me had said. That, in that reality, time had looped countless times, everyone forced to forget the previous iterations as the tragic events of the weekend repeated over and over. And that I'd been made a murderer more times than I could count.

I mean, don't me wrong, it was insane and impossible, but that didn't change the fact I'd experienced it. So there had to be some logical explanation. Maybe we'd all been cursed by the sentient concept of entropy like in the Order's fake mystery, or the whole thing had been a simulation inside the Apega. I don't know. The point was it was real. Some way or another.

...but the more time passed, the more it became harder to internalize that and take it seriously. And the more embarrassing the idea of bringing it up felt. I mean, come on! It was dumb!

Because there was no material proof or consequences, all the feelings of visceral horror had subsided over the weeks and months, and I ultimately couldn't stop my mind filing it in the same place as all my other weird fantasies. So without even really making a deliberate choice to do so, I just... Stopped thinking about it. It was a blip. An unsightly zit on my sense of reality that was better off covered up by foundation. That day was the first time I'd thought about it in what felt like forever.

Returning to the present-- After they'd arrived and Headmaster Ishkibal had spent the better part of 10 minutes shaking all of their hands and spouting platitudes about how incredible an honor this was, we'd set off around the academy. We toured the campus grounds, the library, the labs and classrooms, and of course our own special little practical room, where Seth and Theodoros had been frantically cleaning away the results of a cell replication experiment gone awry just the night before. We even visited the memorial site for when the place had basically burned down during the revolution; a sandstone obelisk in a grass circle outside the cafeteria.

None of this was very exciting, and it was made worse by the sheer size of our group. On top of the 10 of us (Fang, of course, wasn't around) the headmaster had also brought his assistant and the academy's head of outreach, while the inner circle had in turn brought two notaries. There were so many people that, lurking at the back of the entourage with Ran, I couldn't even make out what was happening up front except for when the headmaster stopped the group to give some puerile backstory to whatever humdrum broom closet we were standing in front of.

Honestly, I didn't even know why we were involved at all. We were supposed be answering their questions, but so far the headmaster seemed intent on monopolizing their attention as much as he could. It was stupid.

We were nearing the end of the tour, with all that remained being the two places which would actually be relevant later in the morning: The auditorium, where they'd be giving the press conference, and the gallery where they'd be hosting the aforementioned meet-and-greet. After which we'd presumably be let go, and I could go back to idling away in the library, since we'd effectively already finished the year's work.

"I hope our auditorium is to your tastes," I heard the headmaster say, as we passed under an archway and approached a set of heavy wooden doors. "Other than the western lecture building, it's the oldest part of the academy still standing, though we recently replaced the roof."

"I am familiar," Hamilcar, who over the course of the morning had seemed increasingly put-off by the asshole's excessive deference, replied. "I led a series of lectures on Golemancy prosthetics mid last century."

"My apologies, grandmaster," he replied automatically. "I didn't intend to condescend."

"Mm, and I've at least attended a few myself," Zeno said, holding a hand to his mouth as he yawned. "Hopefully you've at least replaced some of the decor. Those tapestries that were always up on the walls were the definition of bad taste."

"I'm happy to make any adjustments before the press conference according to your wishes, of course," the headmaster hastily added.

"I am certain it will be perfectly acceptable," Hamilcar said.

"Yes, I don't see the need for a fuss," Durvasa spoke plainly, his hands clasped together as he strode confidently forward in his multi-colored dress robe. "It is only a short event. We hardly need to make ourselves at home." He eyed Zeno, who smirked.

"Yes, well, whatever you prefer," the headmaster replied, with an unwavering, wide smile.

What a sniveling toady, I thought to myself scornfully.

He threw open the doors to the auditorium, which was more or less unchanged from how it had been back in the spring. The owl banners which Zeno apparently reviled still hung from the walls, with the stage once again decorated for a media event. The only difference was that there was no light coming from the ceiling-- It was snowing, and the glass roof had been completely frozen over, though someone would probably come and melt it before the event started.

Winters were always funny in Old Yru. Because the city was so vertical, one practically transitioned to a different climate altogether traveling from the ocean to the upper class district that hosted the academy. Near Ran's apartment the snow was practically turning to sludge upon contact with the ground, but up here it would stick around for months unless someone got rid of it on purpose. The amount of salt they had to conjure probably kept a couple of arcanists in full-time employment.

"I remember when they were first building this place after the war, when Yru was being resettled after the Empire's bombings," Durvasa mused, looking upwards. "Funny that it ended up being such a forerunner for modern architectural trends."

"Were you living in the area back then, Doctor Wayal?" the head of outreach - a much nicer woman than the headmaster who I also irrationally disliked on the basis that her voice was always overly cheerful and lispy - asked.

"No, I simply passed through with the rest of the Liberating Army when we were rallying for the last days of the war," he answered. "Back then it was an excellent area for staging troops. There's no other place on the continent where the mountains are so close to the Mmenomic."

"I've heard about your exceptional service back then, doctor." the headmaster commented. "If I may, I've always wondered-- Is it true that you were part of a cohort that fought Sara herself, during the offensive of the Yudal Highlands?"

Durvasa nodded, looking like he'd heard the question before. "Yes, it's true."

"What was it like, if I might ask?"

He considered the question, his eyes going distant for a moment. "I suppose I would say it was what it must be like to try and kill a god."

"Goodness." The headmaster blinked a few times. "Well, if you'll all follow me to the stage, we can talk a little bit about our plans for the conference itself." He cleared his throat. "Ah, and I also had some questions about your research..."

He advanced forward, and most of the council went with him, passing out of earshot and leaving the rest of us to dissipate around the seating area. At this point we'd pretty much uniformly realized we were here for essentially no reason other than to stand around and look pretty, and had broken into two cliques. Ran, Kamrusepa and I, formed one, and Ptolema, Seth and Ophelia formed another, with Bardiya and Theodoros drifting between the two intermittently and Lilith and Ezekiel off by themselves. I felt bad for Theo-- I hadn't been able to stop treating him weirdly after what had happened, and now we didn't hang out much.

Kam, despite being near the rear with us, had been smiling determinedly so long as it was still plausible that the headmaster might be watching. As soon as he was gone, though, her lips dropped like a rock.

I allowed myself to be a little awful. "But you're feeling great about your enthusiastic approval earlier, huh?"

Kam grimaced at me. "Don't start with me, Su." She faced forward, letting out a soft sigh. "Besides, Ran is right. It's really not that bad. Even if we scarcely get to even talk to them, it's still good to remind the Order that we do, in fact, exist."

I frowned. "I'm surprised you even care, after the way you were acting back after the conclave. It seemed as though you'd written their entire group as a dead end."

"Yes, well, I've come around to a bit more of a serene perspective, I suppose." She crossed her arms. "In retrospect, feel I probably let myself get a touch too worked up about matters that were ultimately circumstantial."

"You think so," I spoke, trying my best to sound completely unsarcastic.

"I was a little let down by some of the practices of the Order," she continued, "but all things considered, they're still a venerable organization with great devotion to an important cause, many substantial accomplishments, and most importantly some of the most resources and sophisticated technology in the field. And professor Zeno particularly, well, for whatever my feelings about him might be--"

"You mean about his female alter-ego," I cut in. "That you thought was 'disrespectful'--"

"Whatever my feelings might be," Kam pushed forward, "being the creator of an actual, fully-fledged discipline still makes him one of the greatest arcanists in the Remaining World, and someone absolutely worth knowing. Well-- Learning from, I mean. It was silly of me to take such a hard line."

"It kind of sounds like your opinion hasn't actually changed, but you just realized it's in your best interests to pretend to think highly of them, since they have a lot of funding and professional clout," I surmised.

She rolled her eyes in response.

Never change, Kam, I thought to myself.

As Theodoros stopped his father to talk to him about something while the rest of the inner circle proceeded up to the stage, Bardiya wandered over to our group. He seemed in good spirits unlike the rest of the class, though he always had been a morning person. ...not that he seemed to have trouble staying up late, either. Maybe he just didn't sleep much at all.

"Utsu, Ran, Kamrusepa," he said, with a series of nods.

"Bardiya," Kamrusepa replied. "How goes it?"

"Well enough, considering," he replied. He leaned his head in the direction of our other friends. "Ptolema and Seth have started a betting pool as to how many times the headmaster is going to apologize for something to the council."

"What's the count up to?" Ran asked, not looking up from her book.

"Eleven," Bardiya answered. "But we are almost out of rooms."

She snorted to herself.

"And you all?" he asked.

"Could altogether be worse," Kam said. "Su has been complaining rather a lot about the fact we don't seem to have anything to actually do through this whole rigmarole, but you know her. She complains about everything."

"That's a little rich, coming from you," I said flatly.

"I only take objection regarding important things," she replied. "You've spent half the morning moaning like a child about how cold it is."

"It is cold," I retorted. I shivered again at the reminder, clutching my arms together.

"I do have to agree with Su to an extent," Bardiya said, nodding. "Not about the cold, I mean-- Rather, the sheer size of our party does make this all feel somewhat redundant. We've certainly been getting our share of strange looks, just by virtue of the sheer number of us standing around." He glanced around the room. "Though it is curious that Professor Nindar has not joined us today, since he normally would for this manner of event."

"Going to a wedding, apparently," Ran told him.

I'd heard this story already, though I had to wonder if it was actually just an excuse. Since he had his past connection - or, well, fixation - on the Order, maybe he was avoiding them for some reason.

"Is that right?" Bardiya nodded. "Well, congratulations to the happy couple, whoever they may be. For my part, at least, I've been using this as a chance to finish up an essay." He tapped his logic engine.

"Wish I was that good at multi-tasking," I mumbled.

"You know, Bardiya, would you mind if I asked you something?" Kamrusepa inquired.

"Certainly," he replied. "Go right ahead."

"I've been wondering, what exactly do you think about the Order's mission, anyway?" Kamrusepa eyed him curiously. "You made it clear during our visit to the sanctuary that you have a dislike for the prioritization of life-extension research when there are, in your opinion, more important causes to champion-- But I've never actually heard you offer your feelings on the pursuit of immortality in concept."

"Here we go again," Ran said quietly.

Bardiya raised an eyebrow. "Unless I've missed a great deal of discourse on the topic, My impression was the majority of our classmates hadn't offered an opinion. Why single me out?"

"No particularly complex reason," she said, with a small shrug. "But you can't deny that - other than Su and myself - you are the most inclined to philosophy."

Bardiya furrowed his brow. "It's a difficult subject." He raised a finger to his lip thoughtfully, pausing for several moments. "I suppose my honest answer would be that the entire premise is flawed on a conceptual level."

Kam narrowed her eyes. "How do you mean, exactly?"

"Well, consider the nature of consciousness," Bardiya elaborated. "Because the human body - in fact all bodies, regardless of anima or natural vs. artificial nature - are constantly in the process of dying and being rebuilt, what all medicine can be said to seek to preserve is not anything strictly biological, but a more abstract 'self', created through conscious experience and memory." He narrowed his eyes. "However, consciousness is disrupted regularly, and memory itself is constantly overwritten, to the point that the overwriting act is itself a major part of what defines our sapience. To think is quite literally to destroy and rebuild. Life itself is arguably defined by the dying process; a truly immortal being, of which no component ever died, would be even more static than a slab of rock. What, then, are we seeking to preserve?"

She smiled to herself. "Ah, this argument."

Bardiya chuckled. "You've heard it before."

"I've heard them all before," she told him, her tone somewhere between weariness and pride; a tone that suggested a burden of wisdom in a world full of perceived fools. "In any case, the pivotal factor is obviously continuity. You're right that our nature is one of dynamism and change - death and rebirth - but consider that we are not any particular part of our bodies and minds, but rather something emergent from that process." She gestured towards him slightly. "If I lived for 5000 years, perhaps nothing of my present self would remain-- But a chain of causality would nevertheless link me to my past. And not all of the mind changes. There are patterns to a life, at both the micro and macro level, that will always persist, permuted differently as they are."

"But does that continuity truly exist, as firmly as you describe it?" Bardiya asked. "The mind goes almost inert almost every night, after all - not entirely, but enough that, during deep sleep, we cease to experience reality and form memory and exist only as a set of indistinct, disunified impulses. And we completely cease to be during events such as surgery. If we are not matter but continuity, then does this not slay us? What distinguishes us in such moments from other matter that could spontaneously form our thoughts?"

Ship of Theseus again, I thought to myself.

"Perhaps the fact that we exist beyond the hypothetical," Kam retorted dryly. "Honestly, you're over-intellectualizing the question. I'd turn it back around on you - if the idea of preserving the self is inherent, impossible folly, then surely all medicine is folly."

"You could interpret it that way," Bardiya told her, with an amused nod. "Though only if you assume the value in medicine is the preservation of life."

She scoffed, furrowing her brow. "What would you put forward as an alternative?"

"The prevention of pain," he told her. "Be it physical or emotional. Such that no one has to experience losing a loved one, or suffering in their own body." He considered something for a moment, looking upwards-- The process of cleaning the ceiling seemed to have started, with the sound of a golem skittering on the glass. "Hypothetically, were all humanity to simply cease to exist without warning, I would consider that a neutral event."

"Utilitarian absurdity," Kamrusepa said, with a click of her tongue. "Besides-- Even under that reasoning, immortality is still a worthy goal because short of that happening, it's the only way to prevent suffering. Anything else simply delays pain to a later date, at the very least on the interpersonal level."

"That is true," Bardiya replied, seeming to have expected this response. "In that regard, I must concede the point that, conceptually, immortality would be a net good." His smile fell slightly. "But to use your own language, I must confess that I don't fully see the value of indulging in hypotheticals, when life-extension research as it currently exists seems only to entrench inequality and suffering."

"I don't think that's--" Kam stopped herself, biting her lip. "Never mind. For once, I'm not in the mood for political discourse." She eyed him. "Even if you were right, progress isn't always pretty, but it's still progress. Humans are a messy species. Convention furnaces always come with convention bombs. But that doesn't mean it wouldn't be for the best, in the long run."

"Perhaps you're right, taking the very long term. ...but though you may accuse me of cynicism, I wonder how much a 'long-term' can be taken for granted." Bardiya's smile returned. "Mankind only has this single world - a single chance - left. We must get it right."

"Hm." Kan looked at him for a moment. "Well, I'm glad we could at least agree on something." She looked towards me. "How about you, Su? Feel like giving me your perspective this time on the core of the issue, or would you rather deflect again with more fatalism?"

I thought about it, and about what Bardiya had said, as I watched the first of the ice begin to trickle away as it was struck by a jet of hot water from the golem, still hidden behind its blurry surface.

I thought about other things, too.

"I think... Maybe I'd be okay with living forever, so long as it was something I could choose to do every day," I said, my voice quiet. "It's like Bardiya said. In the long term, even just continuing to live is almost a type of death. Slowly, no matter what you do, everything that feels beautiful to you will kind of just erode away... And that's scary to think about. Harrowing." I swallowed the air. "But if I could live in the moment, say to myself every morning, 'I could choose to die right now, for these reasons, before it gets any worse. Or I could choose to live one more day.' ...then you know, I could see myself keeping on picking the latter option forever. That even if it's contradictory, that would let me hold on to a certain sort of meaning, and find individual moments of happiness amidst the decay." I glanced between. "You know what I mean?"

They clearly did not know what I meant. Bardiya was looking at me with a frown of concern, while Ran's mouth was practically hanging open.

"...uh, well," Kamrusepa responded, also looking taken aback. She laughed nervously. "I think I sort of understand, but that's awfully morbid way too--"

"Alright, everyone!" The headmaster called out from the stage, clapping his hands together. "We're heading up to the fort! Let's gather up, mm?"

Our group looked to one another. Kamrusepa shrugged. "Well, back to it, I suppose," she said, walking briskly towards the group at large.

After a moment, Ran, Bardiya and I followed along, the former still looking at me with an exasperated expression.

The 'fort', as the headmaster had called it, was the colloquial name for the gallery hosting the meet-and-greet, or more accurately the structure that contained it. Frankly, the whole thing was rather ill-conceived, architecturally speaking-- It was a sort of modernist-looking diamond-shaped structure that had been built, somewhat awkwardly, jutting out of what had previously been a watchtower connected to the auditorium, resulting in an appearance akin to a box set on top of a toilet roll. The idea was that guests could lounge around in comfort while also watching what was going on down in the auditorium through the broad glass windows and roof respectively, complete with a system to broadcast sound from the stage as well.

Sometimes, when the day was clear and not too sunny or crisp as to fog up the glass, this worked okay. Other times, like today, it was completely worthless. Still, it was at least an impressively unorthodox room in which to host events.

We were gathered up and herded towards a set of double-doors backstage which were one of two entrances to the tower, the other leading directly out to the campus grounds. Aside from the gallery, the inside was not very exciting. Just a set of wide, shallow steps of pale grey stone, interspersed with the occasional painting. This was the only route up or down the structure - as far I knew, the windows at the top didn't even open, save for a few half-foot awnings to let in fresh air. It made redecorating the chamber a tremendous nuisance, since it all had to be lugged up and down every single time.

As we left the auditorium, I noticed the golem seemed to have stopped making progress on the ceiling. That was a little concerning for the press conference, though decidedly not my problem.

"I'm getting kind of hungry," Ran said as we climbed the steps.

"You're not the only one," Kamrusepa admitted. "I didn't want to fuss about it lest Su call me a hypocrite, but I skipped breakfast this morning."

"We could go out for brunch or something after they let us go," I suggested.

Ran looked at me skeptically. "Don't we have a lecture? Medical ethics?"

I snorted. "Fuck medical ethics."

"Fuck medical ethics!" Neferuaten, who had appeared beside me seemingly out of nowhere, echoed cheerfully.

"Aah!" I yelped in surprise, jumping a little.

"Aah!" Neferuaten repeated with a bright expression. "Hello, Utsushikome. And you, miss Tuon and Hoa-Trinh."

"G-Grandmaster," I said nervously, as Kamrusepa bowed her head respectfully and Ran gave a guarded look. "I thought you were at the front, with the others and the headmaster."

"I ought to be, but I'm sure they won't notice if I'm only gone for a minute." She smiled at me warmly. "I just wanted to dip back and say hello, since your headmaster seems intent on monopolizing our attention and I'm not altogether certain he'll even give us a moment to catch up once we're done." She shook her head, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Honestly, I don't know how you put up with that man. Any one of you could probably outcast him despite your age, and yet he seems intent on treating you like ornaments."

"Oh, don't even get me started, grandmaster," Kam said, with a playful laugh. "Frankly, I've no clue how he even came to his position.

I glared at her. Oh, NOW you're making hating him *your* thing. When it's advantageous.

"One must learn to grin and bear these things, miss Tuon," Neferuaten said smoothly. "Learning how to be ordered around by fools with fragile egos is just part and parcel with growing up." She turned back towards me. "Anyway, I can't chat, but I wanted to give you something, Utsushikome."

My eyes followed her hand as she reached into her robe. She produced a white envelope and passed it to me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"The patient you saw during your visit to the conclave sadly passed away recently," she explained, "but before he died, he asked me to pass this letter on to you."

"Oh," I said, feeling stunned by the information. "I see."

Samium's... dead?

Well... I guess that isn't a surprise, really. But, still...

"I also wrote a little one for you myself, since we haven't spoken in a while. Don't worry, I didn't peek-- His envelope is inside my envelope. That's why it probably feels a little thick." She chuckled. "Anyway, read it whenever you get a moment."

"Thank you," I said hesitantly. "I hope we do get a chance. To talk, I mean."

"Let's cross our fingers," she said mirthfully. "Well, I best hurry back."

She sprinted back up ahead, skirting gracefully past Seth and Ptolema and disappearing behind the curve of the tower as she reclaimed her spot with the rest of the council.

I looked down at the envelope in my hand, my brow slowly furrowing.

"I didn't know you met a patient of the Order during our visit, Su," Kam said curiously. "Rather, I didn't even know they had patients."

I flinched, squinting at her. "It's rude to eavesdrop, Kam."

"Oh, I see. This is something mysterious." She gave me a sly look, curving her lips. "I should have known you were up to something back then, when you produced that letter."

"It's nothing to do with that," I said, which was true.

"Something to do with your personal connection to the Order, perhaps? Your grandfather?"

"Seriously, Kam," I insisted. "It's none of your business."

"Alright, alright," she said, stepping back slightly. "Though I notice Ran is being conspicuously silent, so clearly she knows something about this affair."

"I'm reading," Ran said firmly. "Don't get me involved in anything weird."

"It was something to do with my grandfather," I 'clarified'. We were near the top of the tower now, and I heard the sound of a door thumping up ahead. "Just someone I knew when I was young."

"Vague, but something, I suppose," Kam said. "At the risk of indulging in sour grapes, I wish I had some famous relatives in the longevity scholarship community. I bet you don't even know how great an advantage it would be, had you a mind to get involved--"

"What the hell...?" I heard the head of outreach say from up ahead, their voice raised. I heard the sound of a door rattling. Ahead of us, the rest of the group came to stop.

"What is it?" Ezekiel, who had been near the front, asked sharply.

"The door, it--" Another rattling sound. "It won't open."

"What? But they just went through."

"It must have jammed, or..." They banged on the door. "Hello? Headmaster?"

"What's the hold up?" Seth called out. He advanced forward, the rest of the class following behind him.

I looked to Ran and Kamrusepa. Confusion was etched in both their faces. Wordlessly, we joined them.

Around the next bend, the stairwell of the tower terminated at another set of wooden double-doors; the entrance to the gallery, framed by two paintings of the founders of the academy; Mikael of Esurra and Sophia of Rathos. They were shut, and the rest of our class, as well as the two notaries the Order had brought alongside the outreach head, were packed tightly around it. The latter was trying with increasing desperation to get it open, banging on the wooden frame and jolting the doorknob.

"I-- It must be locked, or..." She banged on the frame again. "Headmaster! Is everything alright?!"

"What the hell is going on?" Kamrusepa asked, squeezing forward and speaking in her I'm-assuming-authority voice.

"W-When the council went in with Headmaster Ishkibal and his assistant, the doors suddenly slid shut before we could follow them," one of the notaries, a bald and slender Ysaran man dressed in a black and red robe, said. "Now the door is refusing to open."

What?

"Maybe they locked it behind them...?" Ptolema suggested. "To talk about something private?"

"They would have said so were that the case, idiot," Ezekiel snapped at her. "Something strange is obviously happening."

"Miss Ombrit, does the door have a physical lock?" Kamrusepa asked, addressing the outreach head.

"It does, but I would have heard it!" she insisted.

"I can see the latch in the door frame," Bardiya said. "It's definitely locked."

"What could have happened...?" Ophelia spoke worriedly. "Should we just wait? If they're doing something private, if we try to interfere..."

The world around me seemed to dim. I stared forward, an expression of fear slowly growing on my face.

No.

No, it can't be.

We were just... Literally seconds ago, we were--

"No, this is too peculiar," Kamrusepa said, shaking her head. "They won't answer the door, so either this is a truly bizarre and out-of-character prank on the part of the headmaster, or it's something potentially serious."

"Let's fucking well get to it, then," Ezekiel said, withdrawing his scepter and casting the Object-Manipulating Arcana. The latch slid back.

The outreach head tried again, but though the frame now rattled more substantially, it didn't yield. "It still won't open!"

"M-Maybe it's the Power," Theo spoke quickly, holding his arms together anxiously. "Ran--"

"Already on it." Her scepter was already in the air, and she quickly cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana."...nothing. It must be a physical blockage."

"It doesn't feel like one," miss Ombrit said, rattling the handle yet again. "There's no yield from the frame at all."

"Bugger it," Kamrusepa said, her expression going sharp. "We'll just have to knock it down."

"Woah, won't that get us in trouble?!" Ptolema protested.

"I think this is kinda gone beyond that level, Ema," Seth said in a low, anxious voice.

"I agree-- We would have been notified earlier if this was planned," the notary from earlier said. "Just get it open. I'll take responsibility if this turns out to be a misunderstanding."

"Who should do it?" Seth asked. "We can't just blow the thing off its hinges. Somebody could get hurt."

"I'll do it," I said. "The Entropy-Accelerating Arcana is perfect for dealing with inanimate objects. No matter what's there, it'll get rid of it."

"Don't talk about it, then," Ezekiel hissed, "just do it!"

A sense of overbearing dread in my heart, I raised my scepter and spoke the words, targeting the incantation at the door and the area immediately behind it. In an instant, the door frame decayed as if hundreds of years had passed, the wood cracking and bending under its own weight, the doorknob coming loose and tumbling to the floor. A few people stepped back, alarmed by the severity of the effect.

But not miss Ombrit. Without hesitating, she pushed forward against the wood. It tumbled back instantly, shattering into soft, brittle pieces as it struck the floor.

And then...

We saw.

We saw what was in that room.

What I, alone, had already known would be there in the back of my mind.

The gallery was a large room, nearly twenty steps from one end to the other, and most of it was empty space. There were a few long snack tables and a small seating area at the back where you were supposed to be able to see down to the auditorium - presently you could, the glass vividly clear - but otherwise its only notable features were part of the structure itself. The floor was covered in an elaborate mosaic depicting Nalo, the Dying God of healing (among other things), and the ceiling painted with a more understated floral pattern, almost like a ballroom. It was one of those places that felt smaller than they were because there was so little to see.

...yet, even so, almost no inch of the place remained untouched by the blood.

The bodies were strewn around the room, seemingly at random. The first, what drew the eye instantly, was Hamilcar's. He had been disrobed, and his mechanical frame had been shattered into pieces, with the torso pinned to the back wall with stakes of metal. Anna was beside him a few meters to the left, intact but also pinned; in her case crucified, the metal impaling her hands and legs. Linos laid further in that direction, crushed underneath seemingly all the tables and chairs which had once occupied the room, now piled together in one immense heap.

On the other side of the room, Zeno's bodies - all three of them, both his elderly male body and his youthful female one, plus a third which was limbless, withered, and strapped to a great quantity of mechanical equipment - lay strewn about in all directions, bearing violent wounds as if ravaged by a wild beast. But this sight was comparatively tame, for though there was no explicit sign of Durvasa, his absence carried heavy implication with the immense amount of unrecognizable human viscera spread all around the room; organs and flesh and splinters of bone, right up to our feet!

And at the center of it all, in a circle of blood, sitting in a chair with almost peaceful posture... Was Neferuaten.

She was headless. But not just her. All of the council members were headless. Unlike the other wounds, the cuts were perfectly smooth and clean, the angles perfect. As if they'd died by guillotine.

The others weren't. In the right corner, I could see the headmaster's assistant slumped against the wall, seemingly unharmed but unconscious.

The headmaster, though... Well, he wasn't so lucky.

I didn't recognize him at first. He was naked, sprawled out in front of Neferuaten. And he looked as if the life had been drained away from him by some kind of vampire. His skin was thin and leather-dry, his hair had fallen from his scalp, and his eyes were black craters, clouded and bloodshot. His flesh clung to spindly, broken bones.

As we gazed into the chamber, he gazed back at us. And he whispered, desperate and fearful, his throat sounding like it was failing him even as he spoke the words.

"I... I s-saw her!" he rasped through cracked lips, his eyes wide and filled with horror. "Death herself!"