Author: Lurina

108: Until Nothing Remains (𒐁) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum | 4:55 PM | Third Day

It was strange how the mind (or at least my mind - I don't want to try and speak universally without warrant, though I do think it's probably most minds) worked sometimes. Conclusions that on paper ought to have required multiple leaps of logic could be snapped up in seconds if one happened to be of the right temperament, while things that should have been obvious could go unnoticed.

Once again, it came back to the brain's love of narratives, and how they could be used to trick it, intentionally or otherwise. If you painted a plaster wall with a shiny bronze sheen and insisted it was metal, and got everyone around you to agree it was metal, then nine times out of ten, a stranger would accept that without even thinking to question it; without realizing they'd 'accepted' anything at all. And then if you decided to kick that 'metal' in with your foot, their first reaction probably wouldn't even be that they'd been wrong. It would be pure shock; a few seconds where they felt like the universe itself had somehow broken.

New ideas are like clay. They're shaped into a form, and then they go hard. For all our pretenses of logic, we'll often sooner question reality itself than our own assumptions.

"I think it's absurd too, Kam," Linos said, his gaze flickering uneasily. "I mean-- It's impossible. Obviously."

"This, ah, really does seem like the way Fang writes, though," Theo stated correctly.

"That doesn't mean anything," Kam insisted. "It's not even handwritten! Anyone can ape a style!"

"You'd be surprised," Ran said. She, the only other person who had the full context, had now taken the sheet from Kam's hands, and was staring at it intensely.

"I'm, uh, forced to admit, though..." Linos said, rubbing his eyes. "I don't really know why someone would bother to type all this out. I mean, if it is a distraction, there's got to be a simpler way to put us off-guard."

"Kam," Seth said, looking towards her. "You saw the pantry, right? Weren't you part of the tour?"

She hesitated. "No, that was on the first evening. I only went along in the morning. Seriously, we shouldn't be mucking about--"

"I saw it," Theo admitted. His eyes were getting wider.

"What was there?" Seth inquired, his tone serious. "Does it match what they said in this letter?"

"Er, well." He adjusted his glasses. "It... did seem rather peculiar... The room looked like it had been abandoned for years, to be honest. There was food that looked practically ancient, a lot of dust and wear-and-tear, that sort of thing. To be honest, the thought did cross my mind that it seemed almost out of time, and the story Sacnicte told us later about it being some sort of equipment failure seemed, well, odd..." He bit his lip. "And I did see those scratchings on the wall they mentioned..."

Ezekiel ran a hand over his face, making a low grunt. He muttered something under his breath.

"They obviously went there and built the story around it," Kam said, gritting her teeth. "Listen! I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm something of an expert in this topic, and it's just not possible! If it'll put you at ease I'll run this test, but what they're talking about in this letter is a technological feat a thousand times more advanced than what we're capable of! We can't even fully isolate a temporal point-particle in a laboratory!"

"That's not the attitude you had back earlier," Ptolema said. "You were all like, 'could they really have accomplished it?' and were getting all flustered!"

"That was different!" Kam retorted. "That was just about solving the information loss problem. This is about cutting time into little ribbons and stitching it back together. It's the difference between, I don't know - metalworking and splitting the bloody atom! It's bonkers!"

"It sounds more like you just don't want it to be true," Ezekiel observed. He seemed strangely resigned, like he'd already accepted the idea, though I couldn't say why that was the case.

Kam gaped at him with some strange combination of outage and incredulity, briefly opening her mouth widely before snapping it shut, shaking her head.

"And seriously," Ezekiel looked to Linos. "Why the hell would you lie to us about the component? 'True iron' my fucking ass--"

"We're really getting ahead of ourselves here," Linos said, deliberately speaking over Ezekiel as best he could. "There's no evidence for this being the truth. Theo, look, I don't know what exactly miss Ic'Nal said to you, but I was at the meeting where this was discussed, and it really was just an equipment failure. We hadn't used the sanctuary this year so far, and I believe the stewards just conjure their food directly and use the smaller kitchen in their quarters, so it's completely reasonable that, assuming the preservation system failed, the room would look like that." He crossed his arms uneasily. "I mean, it's not exactly a strict adherence to their duties, but I can't imagine they much bother to keep it clean when there's no one around to appreciate it. Look, miss Tuon is right, I really think we ought to keep moving..."

"Did this look like it had only been abandoned for a few months, Theo?" Seth asked. It sounded like he already had a strong suspicion of the answer.

"N-Not exactly..." Theo said. "I mean, you know. I can be a bit of a slob, so sometimes I leave food lying around in the kitchen for a lot longer than I should. But, well, the stuff in there seemed ancient. Like, you know, you'd find in an abandoned building."

"Well, it might not have just been natural decay," Linos suggested. "Stasis incantations run on Chronomancy, after all. Sometimes that can result in a faux-accelerating effect when they break down unexpectedly."

"That's true," Kam said, though even her confidence was wavering a bit.

"Er, well, Neferuaten did say something about that at the time, I think," Theo admitted. "Look, Utsu was there, too. She might remember some of this better than me. She went deeper in, too."

Seth looked to me. "Su, do you remember?"

"Uhh," I said, indicating my hand vaguely in the direction of the graveyard, which was at this point roughly parallel to where we were standing in the bioenclosure.

Seth blinked. "Su...?"

It was so obvious, in retrospect, that I felt stupid not for having picked up on it sooner. It's like the saying goes: 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.'

When I'd seen the creature at the bottom of the ocean, my logic had, in retrospect, been wrongheaded from the start. I'd been so taken in by the mystical strangeness of the scenario - the apparent inhuman nature of the figure, the impossibility of their location, the sudden gap in my memory following - that I'd forgotten to ask that most essential question.

'What do I know, beyond any doubt?'

What I knew beyond any doubt was that I'd seen something moving on the seabed. And I knew that I existed in a world governed, broadly, by a particular set of physical rules, with a particular set of exceptions. This left three possibilities.

The first possibility was that what I'd seen was an illusion created by the Power, or someone or something using the Power to avoid being crushed by the immense pressure of the water.

"Ran," I said. "Can you cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana?"

She looked at me, her eyes slowly narrowing. "With what scope?"

"Hey, Su, are you listening?" Seth asked, slightly put off.

"The outdoor area of this bioenclosure and a bit beyond it," I told her, not registering what he was saying. "For yesterday afternoon. While we were talking at the edge of the shielding, and a little after that... So like, 5:00 to 5:20, I guess."

She blinked. "Okay. Sure."

She lifted her scepter and I took her hand. She cast the incantation. There was nothing; no use of the Power beyond the same ambient super-incantation run by the system itself that had remained completely unchanged for the first two days of our visit.

The second possibility, which wasn't so easy to refute, was that something had been going wrong with my brain. Considering what had happened next, that was still entirely possible. This was what made this the 'shame on you' part of the exercise.

And the third possibility...

The 'shame on me' part, inversely, was when the 'goddess' had appeared. Looking back, it was so brazen it was practically outrageous. They might as well have screamed what the trick was at the top of their lungs.

Actually, the 'shame on you' part probably came a lot earlier, the logical part of my mind said, egged on a little by the self-loathing part. From your first visit, hasn't that area been sort of a hot spot? Bardiya was lingering around on the first day, before you arrived with Neferuaten. And then on the second, the duel was in the same area, too. How had Kam put it? It was so straightforward. They'd used such simple incantations. Mostly the Object-Manipulating Arcana and the Air-Thrusting Arcana. What could they have possibly been doing?

Unless what they were casting wasn't the point at all.

Hey, there's even more than that! my visual memory chimed in. Durvasa's mask, remember? You saw it in the mask room on your first visit, and then on the second, you had every reason to associate it with the culprit. And now it's turned up again! Boy, you're really dumb, aren't you?

I gulped. Even though I was 95% sure I was right, this felt like a dangerous idea.

But if time really was looping, and Fang really had happily died just to test something, then, well, fuck it. What did it even matter?

What did it even matter.

"Uh, the pantry was like Theo said," I said as my brain caught up on its backlog, but didn't take my eyes off the horizon. "Linos..."

He quirked her brow, looking up at me. "Yes?"

I glanced over to him. "Is there a secret passage under the pond leading to another bioenclosure you haven't told us about?"

Like the pebbles Ezekiel had been throwing into said pond, it took a moment for these words to ripple out. When they did, people's reactions were interesting. I'd expected Seth and Ezekiel to flinch - and they did, the latter with explicit shock and the former with a complicated expression of surprise and sharply flustered anxiety and regret that I can only compare to one I'd seen on my little brother the one time I'd walked in on him masturbating - but several of the others responded surprisingly viscerally too. Kam's eyes quickly widened, and Theo flinched like he'd just got an electric shock. Only Ptolema and Ran seemed bemused, the latter slowly raising her eyebrow and opening her mouth in an expression of skeptical curiosity.

For Linos's part, he opened his mouth and just stared blankly for several moments, like some animal having a torch shone in its face. "Um," he said. "What?"

I repeated the question. "Is there a secret passage under the pond leading to another bioenclosure you haven't told us about?"

"Oh," he said, and stared for another several moments. Then, with a hopelessness in his tone like he was being held at gunpoint, continued. "Y-es. There is."

"What?" Kam responded, looking at him with fiery intent.

"What the fuck?!" Seth asked too, but it was too late. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't completely banish the anxiety from his eyes.

Beyond this admission, Linos seemed utterly paralyzed. His eyes jerked in all directions, as if desperate for some sort of salvation which would never come.

"Fuck. The fifth bioenclosure," Ran whispered as she raised a hand to her mouth. She was catching on quick.

There were a lot of questions to ask here - a lot of questions - but I felt I needed to grab the bull by its horns, while he was still off-balance. "I'd like to take a quick detour there, please," I said. "I think if we go there, we'll be able to discover the identity of the killer."

Kamrusepa seemed to understand what I was doing, and all but leapt on him herself. "Circumstances being what they are, I am in firm agreement. Let's go."

"Uhh," Linos said, and then seemed to deflate slightly, like a trapped animal realizing there's no longer any point in struggling. "Okay."

PLAYWRIGHT: What?! You can't just say 'okay'! <gesticulating wildly at Linos> You're supposed to be the evasive one! Make with the excuses!

DIRECTOR: <raising an eyebrow> This development is not what you had in mind?

PLAYWRIGHT: Of course it's not what I had in mind! <sharply> Are you a simpleton?! This is a fucking catastrophe!

DIRECTOR: I'd presumed this was part of your alteration to the script. Some aspect of the contrivance to reach that outcome--

PLAYWRIGHT: <interjecting> No! They were just supposed to make it back to the guest house, get into a stupid argument, split up and get ambushed again, and the two of them were supposed to hole up together in a bedroom and run out the clock! <fuming> This has ruined everything! How did that note even get there?!

DIRECTOR: Is that a rhetorical question?

PLAYWRIGHT: Like hell it is! <fuming> Go and check, if you haven't been doing your damn job properly!

DIRECTOR: They can still hear us, you know. <gesturing towards OFFSTAGE>

PLAYWRIGHT: Just spit it out!

DIRECTOR: <sighing, rubbing brow> It's not particularly difficult to figure out. Obviously Fang wrote it and placed it there when everyone was separated prior to the last murder. That's the only time they were recently unobserved.

PLAYWRIGHT: Why wouldn't you say something about this sooner?!

DIRECTOR: Perhaps you haven't noticed, but we don't exactly have an excess of resources at the moment. It's taking most of my attention just to keep things stable; it's a small miracle we haven't experienced any actual causal errors or contradictions to completely disrupt the production.

PLAYWRIGHT: As if this is better! Now that they've discovered the mechanism behind this, it'll derail the scenario, just like the last bunch! And this was supposed to be the grand finale--

DIRECTOR: <interjecting> Would you please stop shouting? It's extraordinarily unhelpful.

PLAYWRIGHT: How in heaven's name did they even find the notes? You know I can't even see that little shitbox, and you told me you'd wiped the place virtually clean! I swear,I covered your last fuck-up with that 'emergent behavior' bullshit, but...

DIRECTOR: <frowning, looking at notepad> I don't know. It shouldn't have been there. I checked the room quite comprehensively.

PLAYWRIGHT: Ugh, never mind! <jabbing finger at DIRECTOR in frustration> The point is that you need to do something! Create a distraction! Give someone a heart attack!

DIRECTOR: Don't be ridiculous. You know we can't interfere directly at this point without collapsing the entire production. And besides, we'd be harshly reprimanded.

PLAYWRIGHT: As if we won't already be reprimanded for this! Let alone what they'll find once they actually go through there--

"H-Hey, hold on a sec," Seth said, lifting a hand. "Aren't we kinda rushing into this?"

"Yeah," Ptolema said, nodding. "I feel lost. How did you even know about this, Su?"

"It's in Fang's note, Ptolema," Kam said, pointing at the line in question.

"I-- I got that part!" she said, though her tone made me doubt this a little bit. "I mean the other stuff! How would she know where this new bioenclosure is?"

"Ptolema," Ran said, quiet and anxious.

Seth spoke up again before Ran could elaborate on her thought. "Like, I have a million questions too, and I'm pissed the Order was still keeping stuff from us," he said, eying Linos. "But we still have to put getting out of here first, you know? I mean, I kinda wanna see too... It's frustrating--"

"I think we ought to go," Theo said, with surprising firmness. "Rather, we can't leave a hole like that in our knowledge. If there's another bioenclosure that isn't tracked by the system, there could be multiple culprits that we have no way of even knowing about. We could be overwhelmed even if we did-- Even if we, ah, did get to safety." He swallowed. "And even if that's not the case... I don't know. Doesn't what we're doing right now feel too predictable? Like we're being, er, led by our noses again?"

Seth looked a little shocked at him speaking up like this. "Theo, that's not..."

"That wouldn't have been a problem," Linos spoke, overly quickly, as he tried to get his bearings. "The tracking system doesn't exempt people there, it just considers them-- Well..."

"Well what, sir?" Kam asked, an eyebrow raised so high it looked like a raised knife.

I flickered my eyes to the left. Ezekiel had gone stiffly silent, staring into space.

There was no time to hesitate. Again, if I let us get caught up in the weeds, this chance could vanish.

"I'll make my own barrier and go on ahead if you don't want to," I said, lifting up my scepter and speaking the Entropy-Denying Arcana.

Seth flinched. "Su, that's fucking crazy! We can't split up right now, you could get killed! And you could-- We still don't know if there's an accomplice with us!"

I finished, and started walking. Ran moved with me, and then Kamrusepa behind her. Theo pushed his father, who still seemed too taken aback to properly make a stand on the issue.

As I'd hoped, the others had no choice but to follow after us. I set a quick pace, trying to stifle my own anxiety. I'd felt almost in a fugue for a moment as I'd been overtaken by the conclusion I'd reached and the curiosity borne from it, but now that was quickly giving way to a more logical understanding of the situation I was actually in. But following the original plan would be no safer; it's not as though I was certain who - if anyone - was the murderer, but at the very least, I had enough doubt about people's intentions to not want to commit to yet another plan where we huddled together in a tight space, especially now that using the Power was on the table again.

I hurried towards the back of the graveyard - passing the hole we'd dug earlier - which fortunately was only about fifteen seconds away. From there, it was an even shorter walk to the pond.

I'd thought a moment ago that the purpose of the duel hadn't been the incantations, but now that I considered it a little more, it might not have been so simple. After all, a lot of the incantations they'd used had been simple ones based around moving things around. The Anomaly-Divining Arcana made it easy to see what techniques someone had used, but knowing exactly what they'd used them for could be a little more complicated, especially when there was an excess of data. It would be easy to disguise something like, say, shifting things around to get a better idea of the terrain.

You shouldn't jump to conclusions.

Right. I could have made undue assumptions already. Better to stay focused.

Once again: The pond was small and just behind the entrance to the conference hall, encircled by a ring of stones. The surface was murky; dark water swirled beneath some lily pads, moss and flowers, though there didn't seem to be any fish.

My barrier did most of the work, repulsing the water as I approached, leaving only the muddy surface below. Still, it was a bit of a drop and I wasn't exactly wearing appropriate shoes, so I invoked the Form-Levitating Arcana and stayed a few inches above the ground. Then, I descended, not looking back.

As I predicted, the underground space extended a little beyond the superficial size of the pond, over to what I presumed was the perimeter of the bioenclosure. The next part was easier than I'd imagined it would be. I'd expected that the entrance would be concealed and I'd have to urge Linos to open it before he could invent an excuse not to, and it was obviously meant to be sealed. But it seemed that whoever had used it most recently had left it open. A false-wall of rough stone had been left swung open like a cupboard, behind which was a similar looking sealed gateway to the others dividing the bioenclosures.

I looked over my shoulder just once. Ran was close behind, staring intensely ahead, followed by Kamrusepa, who was clutching her scepter tightly. Theo, wearing an ambiguously anxious expression, followed, with Linos looking flushed - probably desperate to speak up but still unsure what to say. Ptolema looked bemused, Seth fretful but also taken aback. Ezekiel was actively avoiding my gaze.

I pushed ahead. As with the others, there was a plainly-displayed 'RELEASE SEAL' lever to the side of the round, bronze doorway. I pulled it, and it slowly slid open with a grind of metal on stone.

There was a surprise right out the gate: Even as I floated back a little and water rushed back in to fill the empty space, it went no further than the threshold; an enchantment must have been in place to hold it back. Further, when I advanced forward again, I could feel a subtle resistance to the expansion of my barrier, and a change in the feeling of the air. It seemed some kind of subtle effect was in place to prevent cross-contamination with the rest of the sanctuary, even with the gate open. Not enough to keep people out, but enough to keep out something.

My back stiffened. This had been my spur-of-the-moment idea, and now I was starting to get the sense that I might've bit off more than I could chew. A shiver of unease ran down my back.

U𒊹bi𒊹ici𒊹n 𒊹io𒊹nclo𒊹u𒊹e | 4:59 PM | 𒊹5,535th Day

Beyond the gateway was a short stone tunnel, with a stairwell off in the distance. I lowered myself to the ground and began walking. I noticed quickly that we'd returned to the total darkness that had been inescapable for the rest of the night, which once I considered it for a moment was only logical - after all, for this place to be largely invisible from elsewhere, it would have to not only use light-shielding materials, but also to be without any widespread internal light source itself. I muttered a simple incantation to produce an abundance of illumination; I could have fired my lantern back up instead, but I was sick of having to squint and jump at shadows.

What was more peculiar, though, was the quality of the air. We'd been conjuring our own oxygen since we made it to the eris pool - at which point we'd already been noticing an increasing thinness - but I decided to take a sniff of the stuff here out of curiosity.

I'd called the stuff we'd been breathing earlier in the night 'stale', but this was on another level completely. It felt like I'd just stepped into an abandoned library. There were visible flakes of dust in the air.

I obviously wasn't the only one who noticed. Behind me, Ptolema coughed. "Ugh, yuck."

Visible flakes of dust. With that thought, I turned my eyes toward the ground. I noticed that the floor was covered in the stuff, too, like this place had been abandoned for at least a number of years... Except not completely abandoned. Someone - or multiple someones - had clearly passed through recently, though had gone out of their way to cover their tracks. Dust was smeared from side-to side along the center of the path.

I crept forward through the tunnel. The walls were unmarked stone; this was clearly one of the older parts of the sanctuary, though it didn't look as rough as some of the underground components we'd crept through earlier. Soon I reached the end and ascended the staircase.

I wasn't sure what it was I expected to see in the next moment, but...

Well. This wasn't it.

Have you ever had one of those moments that make you question if you're in a dream? Where you see something that disagrees with your mind's sense of reality, and you suddenly question yourself frantically, like you're trying to grab on to something hard while slipping into quicksand?

The best example I can think of is something that happened to me during my first year in university. I'd been living in my grandfather's apartment, but some idiot a couple floors above me had gone on holiday with their stove still on and caused a small fire, so everyone had to leave for a couple months while the building was assessed and repaired by the management company. So I temporarily moved into the dorms. Oreskios University was designed during the utilitarian architectural movement of the Second Resurrection - all the buildings of the same purpose have similar faces and floor plans. It can get a little disorienting.

One night, I'd come back late after having been up in the hills for a family dinner. I told you before that the only times I normally had alcohol were during social events, and this was one such occasion. While not exactly drunk, I was definitely a little off-kilter, on top of being tired. I'd taken a carriage back to the darkened expanse of the campus grounds, and had stumbled through the dimly-lit halls back to my room on the second floor.

But when I opened the door, it wasn't my room. It had other people's things in it; band posters, a guitar, dark bedsheets I didn't own. I checked the number. It was right. But it wasn't my room.

It only took me about 10 seconds to reach the obvious conclusion. But in those 10 seconds, it was like a hinge had come off my mind. I wondered if my memories were fake. If I were a ghost that had died years ago. If I even existed.

What greeted my eyes was normal at first. It looked like a garden, similar to the arboretum bioenclosure insofar as the foliage was the green typical to the Mimikos rather than the blue of the Lower Planes. A winding path led past a well-curated flowerbed flanked by carefully placed trees, before arriving at an old-looking building designed in Rhunbardic style, the walls overgrown with vines, bearing above the door the symbol of the Order of the Universal Panacea.

On its right side it looked like there was some manner of outdoor pool under an overhang. Have you noticed yet?

Other than the nature of the foliage and some small details like the color of the brickwork, the space we were now in looked almost identical to the guest bioenclosure. The little cobblestone road was the same. The flowerbed was the same. The building was... Well, mostly the same, though I wouldn't process what exactly was different for another few moments. It felt like I'd somehow been turned around - that the passage had somehow led back to our original destination.

This idea, though, was quickly contradicted by the second observation I made, though, which was that something was deeply fucking strange about the entire environment.

Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust. And I mean everything. It lined the path, the trees. It lined the blooms of the flowers and the tips of every blade of grass. In noticing this, it took me another moment to process the reason this could even be possible.

Everything was still. Utterly and completely still. The grass did not waft even as I stepped along the path.

"What the fuck...?" Ran muttered quietly, as she approached behind me.

"Ow!" I heard Ptolema cry out.

I turned. She was hopping on one foot with a pained expression, like she'd stubbed one of her toes. Except that Theo and Seth were staring at her with looks of bafflement.

Kam, who had also missed it, spoke up. "What happened, Ptolema?"

Her expression was slowly shifting from one of pain to one closer to shock and befuddlement. At first it looked like she was about to explain, but instead she simply gestured at the grass surrounding the path, her eyes wide.

I looked down at it, having a feeling I already knew what was going to happen next, then brought my right sandal down on it.

It was like trying to stand on an actual pit of spikes. There was no give whatsoever. Every blade pointed upwards pushed hard against the leather of my heel, and I had a strong sense that, were I to properly step forward and put my body weight, I could end up doing some serious damage to my feet.

Kamrusepa had the same thought from a more severe angle, pointing her scepter at the dirt and casting the Energy-Piercing Arcana, sending a bolt of electricity at the earth which made several of the others jump. It struck the grass, but did nothing.

"'What the fuck' is right," she muttered to herself, biting her lip. She turned to Linos. "Mister Melanthos, just what on earth is this place?"

Linos said nothing, avoiding her gaze. His eyes were still frantic. I could see that he was scrambling for a way to handle the situation even as it spiraled increasingly out of his hands.

But a theory had come to mind, because the characteristics of the environment were starting to distinctly remind me of something. I decided to try casting the Entropy-Accelerating Arcana on the grass, taking care only to target a small area in order to save eris. I spoke the words, and my eyes widened slightly at the result.

"It's like it's removed from time..." I murmured to myself.

"Mister Melanthos, please answer my fucking question," Kamrusepa hissed, approaching him confrontationally.

Linos's head snapped upwards. "U-Um, forgive me, miss Tuon," he said, running a finger across his brow. "As you can see, this is an out-of-use bioenclosure... One constructed during the early days of the sanctuary. There's some important equipment here that can't easily be moved, so we maintained it along with an emergency access tunnel, but otherwise it's disconnected from the rest of the facility. I'm, uh, a little at a loss as to how Utsu deduced it was here, to be frank."

"This is getting pathetic," Ezekiel said, crossing his arms.

"Mm-hmm," Kam hummed, in a tone for which the word 'skeptical' would be a grotesque understatement.

"Hey Kam," Seth said flatly. "Now that we're off track anyway, why don't you cast that incantation?"

She glanced at him, irritated. "In a moment."

"Why didn't you bring this up sooner?" Ran asked, eyes narrow.

Linos crossed his arms uneasily, narrowing his eyes in turn. "To be forward, miss Hoa-Trinh, there's some quite-- Some quite sensitive items left here, some of which are still potentially incriminating for the Order even today. So I wasn't exactly in a rush to give you a tour, especially since, as I said, it's still indirectly tracked by our security scripts. It's not as if you knowing about it would have made much difference. Even if the culprit has been in here, it wouldn't grant them any particular advantage they didn't already have--"

While they'd been talking, I'd cast my eyes around for the thing I'd expected to initially find here. Sure enough, there it was, off in - well, more like on - the grass to our right. I used the Object-Manipulating Arcana and levitated it over.

Linos jumped a bit as I clunked it down in front of him mid-sentence. Though currently inactive, it was a very large arcane light, the sort of thing that you'd see in a concert hall; a great chunk of bronze and glass half the size of a person.

At present, it had a filter on it shaped like a woman holding a scythe.

"...oh," Linos said.