Author: Lurina

191: Death Masquerade (𒌋) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

"It's my fault," Ptolema said, looking at the road ahead. "I should've figured somethin' like this would happen sooner or later, and just laid it all out right at the start. Ripped the bandage off."

"Why didn't you?" I asked.

"I haven't got a high-minded reason for it or anything like that," she told me. "I just wasn't looking forward to trying to do it." She scratched the back of her head. "I mean, it's pretty weird."

I was silent for a moment. "That's kind of an understatement," I said.

We'd returned to the Valley, but once it had become clear to her that we had some things to discuss, Ptolema had altered our course from straight back to her doorstep to a nearby scenic road in the countryside, circling the hills on the descent from the mountains where I'd been egurgitating earlier. It was very quiet and still up here, the presumably-artificial winds growing stagnant where in reality they would have intensified. Only a low rush was audible.

"Though, like, to be fair," she continued, "I probably would've gone into it if you'd told me about that."

"Uh, what you saw with Bardiya, I mean."

"Oh, right." I looked to the side, scratching my head. "Well, it felt like bringing it up would either be shitty, or make me sound like a crazy person."

"Sometimes there are things you just can't talk about, I guess," she introspected. "What did she, uh... what did the person you saw look like, outta curiosity?"

I raised my eyebrow, wondering how many taboos she was breaking to even ask me this. "I didn't get a good look at them, but I remember they looked completely different to him. Black hair down to about their shoulders, somewhat darker skin..." I furrowed my brow. "That's why I doubted it was them, even considering the clothes."

Ptolema nodded, sucking on her teeth.

"You know something," I observed.

"I mean, sort of," she said. "I wasn't kiddin' when I said I don't know Bardiya that well. I dunno anything about his other selves. But... I guess I do have a hunch." She pushed her lips together, making a flat expression. "I shouldn't say, though."

I shrugged. Normally, I would have been curious about this sort of thing, but today I felt as though I'd touched a scab too many times. I didn't even want to think about the issue any more.

"You're avoidin' my eyes." Ptolema continued as we circled a large limestone protrusion.

My face flushed. "Sorry. I don't..." I scrunched up my face. "I don't want to drag you into any of my personal complexes."

"But you don't feel like you can trust me? Because I didn't tell you about it?"

"No, it's not about that at all," I explained, shaking my head. "It's..."

I trailed off.

Despite this, Ptolema seemed to understand what I was getting at, nodding sympathetically. "For whatever it's worth to you, I, uh, don't do that stuff myself."

I glanced at her. "You don't?"

"Nah," she stated. "Like. It's not as though I don't... get it, y'know? The stuff Nora told you - about something building up and up in you until you dunno what to do with it - that's all kinda true." She furrowed her brow. "But to be honest, I'm just really lousy at acting, let alone lying. No matter how much I try not to, I end up runnin' my mouth sooner or later and making a big mess. So when I feel hedged in, I just have to change things up the old fashioned way." She stuck her hands in her pockets. "It can be tough, sometimes. Neferuaten wasn't wrong with what she said earlier."

Somehow, I understood what she was referring to. "You mean when she accused you of 'leaking'."

"Yeah. Gods, though, that term really gets on my nerves," she moaned. "Like, you're not allowed to just be in a lousy mood, or act in a way you normally wouldn't. People think of it like you're breaking character." She sighed a little. "Sometimes I let myself forget how goofy this place is compared to, well, life before."

I felt a little reassured, glancing towards her. "You mean, you don't approve of it, either?"

"I dunno if I'd go that far," she said. "But... I think there is something to be said for people having to cobble together all their messy parts into one whole, even if it's a messy whole where bits are always falling off. When you can just partition everything off, I think it's easy to start overdoing it. Tryin' to make yourself too clean."

I nodded. "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

"Yeah, exactly," she affirmed. "It's like having a golem that writes letters for you. That's all well and good when you're just replying to work mail and stuff like that, but if you let it do everything for you, pretty soon you're gonna forget how to put things in your own words."

I thought of the conclave conference room. "...I'm inclined to agree, but it feels kind of ironic for you to be making an argument on the merits of doing things naturally, somehow."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing."

She looked at me in puzzlement for a moment, then shrugged, turning back towards the road. "Anyway, that's just my opinion. It obviously works out for most people, so." She kicked at the dirt. "But yeah, it's nice to have somebody in kinda the same boat, at least for the time being."

At least for the time being. So she's figuring I'll end up doing it too, eventually.

"...you know, in retrospect, it's funny how much I misunderstood this place when I first got here. Or I guess misunderstood the people, more accurately." I looked out over the countryside, realizing I could actually make out Ptolema's cabin way down in the distance. (There was actually another village in the woods nearby opposite the one we'd already visited. I wonder why she hadn't taken me there to eat?) "When I first met you and Bardiya, I remember being struck by how little the two of you had changed from when we were kids, and thinking to myself that maybe all Primaries were locked in some kind of mental stasis, compared to the real world. But now that I know about all this, it feels more likely that's just a result of everyone here being a master of social compartmentalization."

"What is Bardiya like out there, actually?" Ptolema asked curiously.

"He's a politician," I told her grimly. "Well, maybe a high level technocrat would be more accurate. He was only a few steps away from running the Office of Public Health a few years ago."

"Oh, that's cool."

"You wouldn't say that if you knew his politics," I replied. "I try to avoid this stuff, but from everything I've heard, he's practically a crypto-Iconist at this point. Thinks we should respond to discontent outside of the freeholds by breeding people to be more civically compliant."

Her eyes boggled. "What, you mean like. Mess with people's anima script to make them not wanna commit crimes?"

"From a certain definition of 'crime', I suppose."

"How the heck did that happen?" She asked, looking astonished. "He was always, y'know, so righteous about everything."

"I don't know. I try... tried to avoid following what you were all doing out there after a certain point, since it brought back weird memories. I heard he started off in the Grand Alliance bureaucracy because he wanted to reform the Humanist movement before they lost power, so I always assumed he just lost faith in people after that all fell apart." I shook my head. "Doesn't matter now, I guess."

"Geez, I shouldn't have asked." She frowned, and changed the subject. "Anyway, you're not totally wrong. Primaries do kinda go in circles sooner or later, just 'cause the fact your memories of your old life never stop feeling fresh. ...but you can change a whole lot before that happens. Got a lotta time to build new memories before they fade away, and they're just as much you."

I bit my lip. "Ptolema, have you been putting on an act for me?"

"You know," I said. "Behaving like the person you know I'd be comfortable, with instead of what's natural to you now."

She looked up at the sky. "Man, I don't really know how to answer that."

I hesitated, looking at my feet. "Sorry, I guess that wasn't really a fair question."

"It's okay," she said warily. "I mean, I guess I have and I haven't, y'know? I mean, like I said, I'm lousy at acting, so I'm not puttin' on a voice or something. But I mean-- I have worn a lotta hats here over the years. Like, you know I told you that I used to live in the Keep?"

"Yeah, you've mentioned that a few times."

"I was actually a headmistress there for a long time," she stated proudly, a small smile forming on her lips. "At a place called the Tourmaline Academy, focused on particle physics."

I balked. "You were the head of a physics academy?"

"Sounds nuts, right? It's not like me at all." She smiled wistfully. "But some friends of mine started working there, so I joined up too, and then I started studying, the years went by... And before I knew it, I was runnin' the place." She gave me a suggestive, almost faux-haughty look. "I don't wanna make you feel dumb, Su - since this kinda thing is your field - but compared to the stuff in the Remaining World, the kind of natural philosophy people do here is bonkers. We were runnin' interplanar experiments that would have made your head spin."

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My face flushed, and I looked at her with a combination of skepticism and curiosity. I couldn't help but feel a little indignant about the fact that this Ptolema was apparently more qualified than me in my own field.

"Anyway," Ptolema continued, "that was a while ago now. But my point is, it's not like I'm exactly the same person I was all that time ago. Even if you don't go as far as Nora was talking about, with enough time, you do kinda just end up doing different things and fillin' different molds." She looked at me. "And the way I talk with you is kinda a mold too, I guess. Just an old one. But that doesn't mean it's something I'm doing for you, it just... happens, you know? You see a screw, you pull out a screwdriver."

"No, I--- I get that," I said hesitantly. "I mean... that's no different to how it is in the real world, really." I looked away, rubbing one of my eyes. "I'm sorry. It's been a weird day. It's making me act neurotic."

She giggled as she hopped over a rock. "You're always neurotic, Su."

"I feel like I wasn't as much for a long time, if you can believe it," I stated, deadpan. "But I guess being here has fit me into a kind of mold, too."

Another few moments passed quietly as we walked. In the corner of my eye, I spotted a deer watching us before hopping away, and wondered if it was an animal or a person.

"So," Ptolema began, "what will you do now?"

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know if I can stay here. Even now, my mind keeps filling up with paranoid ideas."

"Like what?"

"Right now, I can't stop feeling like everything you've said is a little too convenient," I told her. "Like you're actually someone pretending to be Ptolema, telling me what I want to hear."

"Actually, there's a pretty easy way to check that sorta thing, at least if it's somebody you knew from the Reflection," she informed me. "You just gotta have them Spectate with you and show them a scene that would otherwise be blocked by the anonymity shield."

My eyebrows rose. "That's... clever, actually. I ought to have thought of that myself."

"I can do it for you when we get back, if you want. I'll just need a bit to find a memory that isn't embarrassing." She looked ahead. "I dunno what to suggest beyond that, though. I mean, there are fringe Domains where messin' with your identity is banned, but they're pretty small. Even the biggest one only has a few thousand people, not counting Tertiaries."

"It's good to know that's even an option," I said, my gaze hardening. "...but I want to stay here for now. Even if I end up being more or less a recluse."

"Whatever makes you comfortable, I guess."

"I-I do want to move out of your house, though," I told her quickly. "I'll figure something out in the next couple of days."

Ptolema just smiled.

She doesn't believe you'll actually do it, my social anxiety stated. She's probably written you off as a lost cause.

When we got back, I decided to finish reading the section of Kamrusepa's account. First, though - as the Lady had advised - I got it in my head that I wanted to revisit Bardiya's murder, even if only as an intellectual exercise. With all this, he was on my mind anyway, so... maybe I'd notice something, even if it didn't seem particularly likely.

Obviously, I still remembered everything that had happened quite well. After all, of all the murders that had taken place on that phantom day, it had easily been the most viscerally disturbing. ...well, perhaps aside from the one I did.

To recount in full: After making out plans in Bardiya's bedroom, seeing the announcement of the upcoming crime from Aruru (later revealed to be the work of the Order itself) and taking a brief trip to the second floor to retrieve a map of the sanctuary, we'd decided to head to abbey kitchen to gather some supplies. Linos has provided a barrier, and we'd made our way directly there. Once we'd arrived, the majority of us waited, standing, in the dining hall while a small group - Theo, Bardiya, Ptolema and Seth, volunteering in that order - went into the adjacent room to gather the supplies. Linos expanded his barrier to accommodate this, encompassing the dining hall, the kitchen, and extending just a little into the hall and the garden outside.

After this, all hell broke loose. A shot - which all evidence pointed to being fired from a pistol set up on the floor of Bardiya's bedroom, though now that I think about it this was never confirmed definitively - struck the barrier. As we all panicked and ran around senselessly, Ptolema and Seth ran back in from the kitchen. Multiple people cast Divination arcana to try and determine who was out there, but all reported nothing.

After about a minute and a half, we'd agreed on a hastily-conceived plan for four of us to go investigate the source of the 'attack': Myself, Kamrusepa, Ezekiel and Fang. I raised my own barrier to protect us, and Linos briefly lowered his own, allowing us to leave. We traveled to Bardiya's room, and Fang found the aforementioned pistol (Linos's, originally, according to him), the trigger held down by an elastic band.

A moment later, we heard Seth cry out from the dining hall that something was going on and ran back, Linos lowering his barrier for a second time; we weren't out of the room for more than about a minute. Upon arriving, we heard a sound - a rhythmic thumping, muted somewhat by what we would later learn was the World-Deafening Arcana - coming from the door to the kitchen, everyone staring at it.

After that, Ptolema cast the Object-Manipulating Arcana to unlock the door, and we saw Theo up and the adjacent wall, having some kind of panic attack. I peaked my head in, and... well, the rest doesn't need an explanation.

When it was all over, Ran had cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana, and the only other incantation used besides the ones we were aware of was the Object Manipulating Arcana, used to lock the door.

Finally, to outline the scene of the crime as a physical space (treating, in the absence of better information, the rear of the abbey as 'north'), the dining hall was a rectangular, oblong chamber, about twice as long as it was wide. It had two doors and one window. The first door led east into the hall, close to the stairs to the second floor. The second door led north into the kitchen. There was one large window in the center of the western wall.

Meanwhile, the kitchen was a much smaller, slim chamber, the same width as the dining hall but only about a fifth as tall. There was only one door - the one leading to the dining hall, southwards - and one window, also facing west. There was a small pantry in the southwestern corner.

As for the abbey itself, it was a two story building encircled by shrubbery.

...and that was everything that could be said effectively for certain. Beyond that, there were pieces of secondary evidence.

The first was Theo's final account - the one he'd given once only the two of us were left alive in the hidden bioenclosure, which I considered to effectively override his earlier one that Bardiya had been murdered by some kind of monster. Effectively, he'd said that Bardiya's death was a suicide. That he stood up and smashed his head into the barrier of his own volition until his face fell off.

While implausible, I struggled to think of a reason why he'd lie about such a thing in a moment where he was already heartfeltly confessing to several other murders, so I was inclined to believe that this was, at the very least, what he thought he witnessed. (He'd also said that Yantho told him the pistol going off was part of the Order's plan, but that felt like too many degrees removed from the source to take as seriously.)

The second was what we'd seen on the cameras later on, and that the Lady had just seemingly confirmed to me: That no one even approached the window as the crime was taking place. There was a bit of blood on the shrubbery adjacent to it, but that could have got there at any time.

This was, altogether, 'what I knew beyond any doubt'.

In other words, on the surface of it... aside from the possibility that Theo killed him and convinced himself he did, or that he really did kill himself... it was seemingly a perfect locked room. Or in other words, one of those two scenarios had to be the case.

...is what I'd say, if I'd never read a single mystery novel in my life.

In retrospect, the conversation we'd had back then was focused on all the wrong things. We'd spent a lot of time fixated on the specific mechanics of Linos' barrier, trying to find some hole in its protective nature, but ultimately not really discovering any-- At least assuming the culprit was a human was internal organs and not some kind of golem which had somehow escaped our attention. It was only at the last minute that Fang had raised the possibility that someone had snuck inside during one of the windows in which the barrier was inactive, and even then that was focused only on whether or not someone could have attacked from the exterior of the building, specifically in the context of whether Theo's stupid story about a monster tearing him apart from beyond the window was true or not.

Because we'd developed such tunnel vision surrounding that question, even once we'd received an answer in the form of the recording, we were still preoccupied on whether it was somehow faked. Even those who had accepted it had just gone 'oh okay, I guess that's that, then' and not asked any further questions.

...but in reality, if you were willing to dispense with reason and accept the answer as something ridiculous, there were a lot of ways I could think it might have happened that wouldn't contradict either the camera footage or Theo's ultimate confession.

The most pivotal detail - mentioned by both Ptolema and Theo - was that the kitchen was dark, illuminated only marginally from light in the dining hall. In other words, it would have been impossible to get a good look at what was actually happening to Bardiya; all Theo probably saw was that he was twisting and contorting while facing the window, with his mind filling in the blanks. That left room for a lot of different scenarios.

The first to come to mind was a variant of Fang's theory. While it might have been impossible for the culprit to take advantage of the windows in which the barrier was inactive from the gardens, one detail that had gone overlooked was that the barrier was three dimensional. In other words, it was possible that it also extended to the second floor of the building.

You could imagine a scenario like this: The culprit, situated just a little outside of the barrier's radius on the second floor, waits for the sound of us opening the door to investigate the source of the gunshot, inferring this will match the point where the barrier will be lowered. They quickly run forward and lie against the floor above the location of the kitchen. They lock the exit remotely using the Object-Manipulating Arcana, then use some sort of trick or Device X to commit the crime through the floorboards, probably using a pre-drilled hole or something.

Razor wire would do the trick, purely hypothetically. Wait until Bardiya is in the right position, lower it down around his neck, tighten and pull. Theo sees him jerking around at the edge of the room, easy peasy.

Of course, it was likely such a person would have been caught by one of the many attempts at Divination we did, but... well, it's a well-understood flaw in human cognition to not bother to look up, isn't it? I certainly didn't extend the scope of my incantations in that direction, only the surrounding area and the direction of the gunshot.

Or, hell, what about the reverse? Say someone buried themselves in the dirt outside beneath the shrubbery before we'd arrived, staying alive with an oxygen tank or something. They could have some kind of trap or device through the floor-- Or, if you didn't want to hypothesize something so silly, something capable of fitting through the tiny gap at the base of the window, since they were just regular windows and hardly airtight. (Razor wire again, maybe.) The bushes were thick enough to conceal such a thing from the relatively-distant camera. It could even explain the blood!

...okay, maybe those theories weren't exactly plausible. But the point was, it could be done.

A more plausible theory might not even involve the barrier at all. For example, another presumption our theorizing was based on was the idea that only Seth, Ptolema, Theo and Bardiya entered the kitchen. But this wasn't strictly a given either. For example, during the chaos following the gunshot, after Ptolema and Seth had fled - maybe as we were preparing to leave the room, with all eyes focused on that direction - someone else could have slipped back in while Theo was distracted, murdered Bardiya by smashing him into the barrier and holding their body against his such that Theo would have trouble telling their silhouettes apart, and then somehow slipped back out prior to our return, locking the door with the Power from the outside to create the illusion of a closed room after the fact.

Or maybe it was wrong to just dismiss the idea that it could have been a golem. I remembered learning at some point that the area had been searched after I'd passed out, but it was possible they'd missed something-- Some cupboard or hidden spot. And a lot of complications would be resolved by the fact that the barrier could pass over it harmlessly so long as it remained inactive, since it would mean it could have been in the kitchen from the very start.

That one especially felt like a stretch. But there was definitely something here, amidst these different ideas. Already I felt a sense that I was brushing against something that I hadn't quite grasped...

The pistol shot. Ptolema and Seth leaving the room. The camera. The use of the World-Deafening Arcana. The darkness...

It sometimes occurred to me that there was a vaguely existential about solving mysteries. The danger with a mystery novel - the way you ruined it for yourself - wasn't in getting it wrong, or even in struggling to produce any answer at all. The danger was in the thought that maybe the solution was stupid. That the author was a hack, and you were thinking about something that wasn't worth your time.

In a way, the same thing was true in reality. Once you abandon the idea that something could cohere together in a satisfying way, it becomes impossible to take seriously. And the world, more often than not, was worse than even a pretty terrible novel.

Considering that, I suppose I owed a lot to the Lady's encouragement. Because at some point, as I sat there, back on my little amidst all of Ptolema's junk, I began to feel something I never had in regard to the murders at the conclave I had never felt before.

I was starting, even if I didn't realize it, to have a little fun.