Author: Lurina

192: Shadow of a Shadow - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Empyrean Bastion Depths | 4:41 PM | First Day

--int, 'CIVIL SERVICE IS SLAVERY'. Beneath, in somewhat smaller font, the author presumptive had also scrawled 'DEATH TO GERNTOCRATS' and 'FUCK THE RULING CLASS'. A call to political violence towards the powers-that-be so nice he wrote it twice! Presumably once would have remained too ambiguous. Though, frankly, the phrasing of the second felt a little on the nose; the phrase 'ruling class' in particular coming across as atonally clinical. D-, see me after class, etc.

Despite my objections, Ptolema arrived to appreciate great art in its time. "Yeah!" she roared. "Fuck the ruling class!"

"Ptolema, I'm pretty sure you're from the ruling class," Ran observed, characteristically acerbic.

"What?" the girl replied with aristocratic indignance. "No, I'm Irencan! We were on the good side during the revolution! My brother went and joined the Mekhian army, and everything."

I was inclined to make some sort of snarky remark at this, but was paralyzed by the abundance of questions the statement provoked. Was Ptolema not aware that her homeland of Irenca was characterized by its pacifistic foreign policy, and thus despite historical alliances could not be said to be on any 'side' in an armed conflict? That the Mekhian State Guard was, in fact, a professional army that did not allow foreigners to simply join on a whim? That the open military action between the revolutionary and Mekhian armies against the alliance peacekeeping force lasted less than five months in total, making the very concept of signing up specifically to participate in the conflict after it had already reached fever pitch was fundamentally contradictory? (To say nothing of the phrase 'good side', flattening the most complex geopolitical issue of the past century into an international game of cops and robbers.)

There were so many premises to be unraveled to even get to the heart of matter; better, I decided, to simply shift the subject away to something less liable to make me pop a blood vessel. "It's peculiar that such graffiti is down here at all," I remarked. "If this is supposed to be a secret location, I wouldn't expect something so modern."

"Mm," Ran said, not turning away from it to regard me. "I was thinking the same thing."

I rolled my eyes. Of course you were.

"What makes you think it's new, Kam?" Ptolema asked me curiously. "I mean, haven't people been mad about stuff like civil service since way before the revolution?"

Because I have working eyes, and it's clearly been painted recently, I thought, but didn't say because it was boring. "The term 'gerontocrat' is endemic to contemporary discourse," I argued. "Even if the term technically existed in the past, it's difficult to imagine it being employed so pointedly as here."

"I guess," Ptolema conceded.

"If there have been people down here recently, I don't really understand why the trip here had to be so secretive," Utsushikome observed, craning her neck around and tightening her brow."

"Very good question, Su," I replied. "I was wondering as much myself during the ride." My eyes turned to our masked escort, still standing by the veiled carriage as Ophelia and Lilith finished unpacking their luggage.

"I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to speculate on the masters' intentions, Miss Tuon," they spoke with enigmatic warmth. "If you're curious about any of the precautions being taken, you'll have to ask them yourself."

Suffice it to say, this response did little to satisfy me, so instead I speculated: "Knowing the Order I wouldn't be wholly surprised if the only function was to enhance the mystique of the affair, but if we do assume a practical purpose, it seems likely that the intent is to not obfuscate place alone, but also time."

Su seemed interested in this idea, surveying me consideringly. "What are you getting at?"

"Well, all things considered, the Empyrean Bastion is rather small, isn't it? You're going to need to play every trick in the book to avoid giving someone an accurate sense of where they are," I elaborated. "For example: Imagine that wherever we're being taken is actually rather close to the entrance. If we were led there directly, we'd realize that effectively instantly, whether the carriage was covered or not. But by obfuscating our route by having us trudge a mile on foot and then having the carriage circle the place a dozen times, we're not only liable to lose track of that, we're also - more importantly - going to assume the opposite. That wherever we are now must be very far from where we started." I put a hand on my hip. "That sort of approach is the only way to hide something in a small space - to not just obfuscate, but outright mislead."

She seemed skeptical. "I feel like you might be overthinking it. I mean, it's true that the Empyrean Bastion isn't very big, but it's still labyrinthine and samey-looking, with apparently an entire abandoned level down here." She glanced up at the ceiling, then across the road. "If it weren't for this graffiti, we could easily never find this place. It might have just been bad luck for the Order that somebody happened to write it."

"I'm surprised to hear you of all people say that, miss eidetic memory," I told her dryly. "I bet you could recall every bloody turn we took in that thing, if you had a mind to."

"My memory isn't that good," she said. "Maybe I could work out the general area, but that's it. And besides, there's a million ways you could fake that, considering we couldn't see out the windows. They could have driven us through a transposition gate or something."

"We'd feel it if the Power were used, surely."

"Well, it wouldn't even per-se need to be that sophisticated," Su further elaborated. "You could put the whole carriage on a treadmill, or something."

I snorted. "A treadmill!"

"You know what I mean," she persisted. "They could have done all sorts of things, if they'd really had a mind for it."

Ran muttered something to herself - or possibly to Su - and glanced back towards the carriage, but I didn't quite catch it. Something regarding the area's geography.

The former still fussing over the latter, Mehit and Lilith finally approached, our escort closing the carriage trunk behind them and following after. Ophelia, who had been preoccupied re-strapping her god-knows-what to the rest of her baggage during our exchange, spoke up at their approach.

"What happens now...?"

"Yes," Mehit echoed, looking rather taxed. "What happens now, indeed."

"As I mentioned earlier, we must make the final approach to our destination on foot," the deep-voiced man stated. "I apologize on behalf of the council for the inconvenience."

"This is all very strange," the woman continued. "I wasn't even aware there were such abandoned sections of the Bastion."

"They don't cover the entire structure," Ran informed her. "There was an effort to convert the cavity used for the old life support system into housing a few decades ago, apparently. It's supposed to be towards the center of the Bastion, I think." There was something in her tone-- A certain doubtful quality, though it may have been of my imagining.

"I'm afraid I cannot speak to the specifics of our location, but otherwise it is as she says," our escort affirmed. "I can only assume some youths found their way down here at some point, hence the graffiti."

Ran frowned. "Hmm."

"Well, I'd prefer not to linger here any further," Mehit stated stiffly. "I... have every confidence in the Order not to put us in danger, of course, but I cannot help but find the atmosphere here a little foreboding. In this darkness, I worry what would happen if said 'youths' were to come upon a group like ours."

"Heheh, you worried 'cause we're all girls, Mehit?" Ptolema asked. "Don't worry! We're all arcanists, right? We'd make short work of any goobers dumb enough to make trouble with us."

Mehit looked somewhat apprehensive at this. "I--"

"Mother is not worried about that, skull-cavity," Lilith, her head facing stiffly downwards towards her logic engine, said. "She was a soldier. She knows how to fight."

The woman instantly flinched as if stung by a wasp, but I couldn't help but feel intrigued. "You were in military, Miss Eshkalon?"

"I... was, yes," she admitted, rubbing her eyes. "In my youth. But that's not relevant to my concern. Forgive me-- I shouldn't have said anything."

Why was Mehit concerned? It wasn't particularly difficult to reason out-- Her protective posture towards her daughter had intensified sharply since their agent had joined us, and reading between the lines, her concern appeared to be more in regard to the dark than any tangible threat emerging from it. And she was obviously disquieted by the entire affair. Was she suspicious that they might try to separate her from the group? Bring Lilith unattended?

The idea seemed inscrutably paranoid, but she did not strike me as the type to act so for no reason. Perhaps it was something to do with her relationship with the girl's uncle. She clearly had some reservations concerning the Order.

I licked the inside of my lip. If I could, it would be interesting to have a word with her in private later.

"I, uh, think we're all ready to go," Utsushikome commented, evidently eager to end the awkward moment herself.

"Very well," our escort said, with a nod, then gestured with an open palm. "If you would follow me, please."

And so we did! Through several very narrow alleyways - or perhaps corridors, the definition certainly blurred here, down in this dank, dark space - and into a ruined structure, the door of which he unlocked with a key. Ptolema and him had a fleeting exchange where she suggested he could unmask if he wished, only for him to clarify that his guise was a mandate of his superiors rather than anything to do with prosognostic events, and finally we arrived at a concealed elevator!

Down, down, down we went, into the depths of the Empyrean Bastion, approaching our long anticipated goal. Like Orpheus in pursuit of Eurydice! Except not, because mythological references are passé. (Incidentally, don't take that as evidence for or against me being an assimilation failure - it just enhances one's rhetorical flourishes to know a lot of underworld lore if you're going to be arguing about death all the time.) We emerged, ultimately, in an extremely large chamber containing what appeared to be a Primeval Era ruin, with statues at at both our flanks and an especially large one dead in the middle of our path, carved in the vague shape of a man.

I would like to use some sort of grand adjective about how large the room was, but the truth was that it was actually rather difficult to tell. Certainly it was vast - the light from the agent's lantern reached none of the walls save for the one directly in front of us, and even then its width was elusive - but there was so little definition to the area that I couldn't easily ascertain how vast. Even the path before us was only really defined by the monuments, with little to differentiate the uniform surface we were walking upon from that which stretched ambiguously into the stygian murk.

Whilst considering this - and, admittedly, being a little taken by the strangeness of the spectacle - I must confess the early parts of the conversation around me went over my head. Nevertheless, I caught Ran in the midst of some explanation about our surroundings as we embarked towards the intermedial effigy.

"...the Sibyl's college, people used to say that the arcanists who first built the Bastion had their own sanctuaries on the lower levels," she exposited. "And that they used them to remake places from the old world that were important to them. Lost with everything else in the collapse, obviously."

"Y'ever think it's weird how people just say 'collapse'?" Ptolema remarked. "Like, we talk about the Imperial Civil War and everything, but we don't have the word for the thing itself. Just collapse."

"We do have a term for it," Ran told her bluntly. "The 'Winakhab Vacuum Decay Horizon', after the guy who discovered it."

Ptolema was surprised. "I've never heard of that!"

"Well, it's like the meteor that killed the dinosaurs. Or how we just say 'revolution'. When something is big enough, you don't really need to call it by its name."

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"How would they actually do something like that?" Su cut back in, ignoring Ptolema's digression. "Like, recreate a place from the old world?"

"If I remember right, during the project to create the Remaining World, the League of Empires made three-dimensional scans of the entire Earth before it was bombed to pieces," Ran explained. "Presumably the data is still in the Tower of Asphodel, so they'd just have to go looking for what matters to them and convert the data into a replication incantation."

Su seemed unsure, glancing around at the monoliths. "...if that were the case here, you'd think there'd be a little more here than just this. It seems less like a place and more just a few statues stuck in a row."

"It's just a theory," Ran offered, shrugging.

In all frankness, I wasn't particularly excited about the subject one way or the other, but I decided I might as well chime in as we made our way towards the door. "I believe I recall reading about this myself. If you're on the money, Ran, it seems self-evident that this must have been a ruin even on Earth," I remarked, inspecting one of the structures more closely. "This sort of stonework would be primitive even in the Old Kingdoms Era-- The designs are so basic I can't even discern what culture they might have belonged to. There might have simply not been much to replicate."

"Why would you wanna replicate something like this at all, though?" Ptolema questioned, picking at her hair. "Especially down here in the dark where nobody would ever see it anyway."

I raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, it was for their personal sanctuaries, Ptolema. I'd dare to say not seeing it is rather the point."

"It's not hard for me to imagine getting attached to a random place for a stupid reason, especially if you grew up around it or something," Utsushikome offered, "but if that were what this was, you'd think there'd be more, I dunno. Context. Little details, terrain, that sort of thing."

"Perhaps the Order cleared it out whenever they took possession of it," I speculated, though in my head I wondered if that hypothesis truly held water. I was no novice to the Order's lore, of course; I knew the organization's history dated back to the very dawning days of the Remaining World, with Ubar of Kane - a first-generation arcanist - assembling supporters informally even prior to the founding. Members of their number were, suffice it to say, involved in the construction of the Empyrean Bastion from its very earliest stages.

Ergo, Occam's razor would hold that there was no previous owner of this section of the Bastion to have taken possession from in the first place. It likely came from a historical member, with this 'decor' attributable to them. Not that this meant altogether much; they could have just moved it around when it was repurposed for... whereever it was we were going.

"Maybe," Su conceded. She looked towards our guide. "I, uh, don't suppose you can tell us anything about what we're looking at here?"

"I'm afraid the extent of my knowledge is that the central statue depicts an early image of Gula, the ancient Emegi goddess of healing," the man explained. "...beyond that, I could not say. My only duty is to escort guests of the masters to their destination."

I squinted in mild skepticism. Perhaps I had a warped perception of the cultures of antiquity - brought about by selective exposure to only the most impressive works of visual art of which references survived - but I had to say, it didn't look like a statue of Gula, who I understood was usually depicted sitting down and wearing a headdress. Rather, it looked like a statue of, well, as I said: A vague human shape. Four blobby limbs, standing upright.

On top of that, I felt - though it may have been just my imagination - an odd inflection in the man's voice for a moment, like he was a little worried about something, and had been speaking improvisationally.

Perhaps Ran felt something odd in the moment as well, because I spied her withdrawing her camera to take a photograph of the thing. It was only when I glanced back at her as we crossed the midpoint of the oversized that I noticed that Ophelia was gaping at the thing with a strangely unhappy, uncomfortable expression. As if she'd been made to swallow something rather sour.

Actually, the next part of the conversation was a little tedious - consisting largely of an elongated attempt to wring information out of our escort regarding the Order and how we'd be transported to the sanctuary, operating under the presumption it was an arcane refuge, in a manner that would ultimately prove redundant upon our arrival a few minutes later - so instead, let me tell you a story from my childhood.

I lived in the mountains when I was young, and the woodland at the periphery of our village, though largely free of wolves and the like, had a lot of dangerous terrain - thornbush, sharp pitfalls concealed by the snow and mud, even the occasional artifact left over from the war. And because the tree cover was thick and the wind often rather heavy, one didn't have to go far to become all but inaudible along all the pathways that cut through the settlement. Any time a child went missing was an ordeal at best and a tragedy at worst, and because there is not a lot to actually do in the ass-end of the Rhunbardic countryside, such occurrences were not infrequent matters.

It was for this reason, or so I assume, that a piece of local folklore emerged to encourage the young to stay within close proximity to the treeline. Adults told of a creature called the Nhangus, a variant of a regional hobgoblin/bogeyman adapted to local concerns. Living in the woods, it supposedly possessed a stark white coat, and would lie camouflaged in wait, discernible from the surrounding snow only by its two black, coal-like eyes which it was incapable of blinking.

The mythos went thus: The Nhangus, rather than a conventional child-eating predator, instead derived sustenance from watching others and being watched itself. It had a power over ice and cold that was interpreted poetically, granting it a certain control over time, the ability to 'freeze' things metaphysically. But like all creatures of fey character, the Nhangus was inherently at odds with civilization, and man's works undermined its power.

It worked like this. If you saw the Nhangus - made eye contact with it, whether close or at great remove, somewhere within the village or the surrounding foothills where it made its lair - you were already ensnared by its curse to an extent, the thread of its power binding you together. However, you had one hope of escape: If you immediately turned and laid eyes on something of the wider community, such as a house, road, or even just another human being, that connection would be severed and you would be safe, affirmed as already 'claimed' by the bonds of the mortal world. At least, so long as you didn't look back.

...however, if you turned and could find nothing but more wilderness... That meant you belonged to it. And that it would approach you, touch you, envelope you. Draw you into a world where only the two of you exist, where all you could feel was terror as you stared forever into those cold, black eyes...

Anyway, as these tales went, it was relatively clever. The conceit for why you couldn't venture too far afield was integrated well, and the purported appearance of the creature had good utility for its role. After all, if you've spent any time in a snowy, forested landscape, I expect you'll have already picked up on the fact that one sees ambiguous little dark dots against the snow literally all the time, with two paired in such a way that might be taken for eyes if one were looking for it being rather common. Thus, the Nhangus was everywhere! Children would 'see' it and reinforce the little ritual all the time. And all would be well, at least until they became teenagers and started getting themselves killed anyway trying to impress girls.

However, my elder brother, who even under the best circumstances was rather prone to taking things too far, made some more personal expansions on the mythology. You may not believe it now, but as a child I was highly superstitious. I had an vibrantly active imagination in a way that frequently got away from me, and it was common for me to be overwhelmed by an idea if it were delivered with sufficient gravitas. Every time I saw something that looked like a pair of eyes in the wilderness, I was terrified, and obeyed the ritual religiously. I had nightmares about the idea of being consumed by the thing (not too dissimilar to the more adult ones I'd have now), of the horror of turning and seeing only wilderness, feeling it creep upon me, touching me, swallowing my world, my eyes forced open and only able to meet those cold, black orbs...

It was little things at first. Strange and lumpy snowmen outside our house. Tales that added new rules and stipulations: That the Nhangus sometimes developed favorites, changed its tactics, broke its own rules. Perhaps when you turned around to look back home, it might already be right behind you, staring you dead in the face. Or maybe it wasn't always constrained to the wildness; maybe 'wildness' was a more abstract concept, representing anything outside of your control. The long path infrequently walked. The shed kept locked for the winter. The dark corners of the room.

Early on, the pranks were relatively bombastic. A length of string would be left hanging from my closest ceiling, and upon looking up, a white stuffed animal with felt dots for eyes would be there. A canvas would be laid beside my bed, such that it was the first thing I'd seen when I awoke. My door would creak open at an unseemly hour, revealing two little lights...

But as time passed and my paranoia entrenched, my mind riddled with select anxieties and concepts, things shifted. There is one instance in particular I recall most vividly. I avoided horror as a child for reasons I expect are abundantly clear, but on one occasion I'd ended up reading a pulp fantasy that, while not explicitly spooky, had an unsettling, surreal atmosphere, focused on a girl and her sickly sister as they attempted to solve the murder of their parents from within a comically neglectful orphanage, assailed by strange and pseudo-supernatural events. At the end, the villain was killed gruesomely, thrown into a meat grinder.

And on the closing page, blank save for a few words about the author, two small, simple shapes scrawled into the corner.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is that once you train someone's perceptions to orient towards a particular idea, you can invoke - and accordingly, make them blind to any other interpretations - rather easily.

But I digress. After giving us instructions to proceed into the chamber ahead and await being transpositioned in the seating area, our enigmatic escort left us, and I led the group as we proceeded inside.

The chamber within was, unlike the conspicuous one we were exiting, everything I was hoping for. Immediately, I was taken by the excess of the setup-- We were separated from space seemingly only by an arcane barrier, the seating platform suspended in the air directly over an expansive view of the Mimikos, with no discoloration or warped light to suggest a hint of glass. If it was an illusion, it was a convincing one. Moreover, the walling (if such a word is even apt when it does not connect to the floor) was adorned with an uncanny yet beautiful painting, the subject of which was a series of strange scenes and vistas rendered in sweeping brushstrokes that gave it the impression of something from a dream.

Seeing it took me back, somehow, to a different time. I felt briefly at a loss for words.

"Huh," Ran muttered quietly, looking down at the rift. "That's interesting."

"That's... one word for it," Su replied.

Mehit, who I saw in the corner of my eye already looked exhausted, muttered something dark to herself. It did, admittedly, take the wind a little out of my sails for one of our number to be having an observably bad time.

"Remarkable," I nevertheless said, finally composing my wits and remembering that I was supposed to be leading the group. "We must be at the very nadir of the Empyrean Bastion! That elevator must have taken us further than I thought."

"What are we looking at here, Kam," Ran inquired flatly. "You're the expert on the Order. Is this the part where the door slams behind us and we get dumped in the Empyrean?"

I scoffed. "Be serious, Ran."

"What's with this setup, then?" Her eyes were fixed on the rift.

"It's just theatrics," I said, making a dismissive gesture. "The Order loves these sort of grand displays of their arcane power; it's a key component of their popularity. They once did a dead drop through teleportation. It shouldn't be a surprise the entrance to their sanctuary would follow the same theme."

She was frowning. "Seems excessive."

"I agree," Su echoed grimly. "I'm not even afraid of heights or anything, and my knees are-- Are still going kind of weak." She shifted uncomfortably. "Since we're supposed to be their first real guests in centuries, you'd think they would take it a little easier on us."

"Oh, you two are such babies," I chided them. "We're here as ambassadors of the academic community, remember? Obviously they're going to try to create an impression, since we're going to be recounting this all to the press later." I shook my head. "Honestly, and the amount of arcane engineering it must have taken to set up this effect! Pearls before swine, I tell you."

"Be, ah, that all as it may... How do you suppose we're supposed to get across...?" Ophelia pondered, after a few moments of silence. "D-Do you think there's been some mistake? That maybe there's supposed to be a platform, and it hasn't appeared?"

"I have been wondering the same thing," Mehit spoke weakly."

"It's probably some sort of test," I speculated. "We just need to--"

Ptolema tossed a rock.

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

"Hey, Ptolema," I spoke up from her sofa as I was reading. She was at the edge of the garden, scrubbing one of the pigs with a brush just out of my line of sight.

"This is a bit of a random question," I began, "but do you remember that big room we walked through, right before we arrived at the mural chamber in the sanctuary?"

She considered. "You mean the one with all the old monuments lined up?"

"That's right," I affirmed. "Do you remember if it had a path?"

"Like... a defined road, leading through it."

A few moments passed in which I could only hear vigorous brushing and the occasional quiet squeal. "Honestly, I dunno if I was really payin' attention," she eventually admitted. "It was really dark, and I think I was mostly too focused on the guy they sent to lead us down there. Really wanted to know what was up with him-- Super strange vibes."

I frowned in disappointment. "Oh."

"Why d'ya ask?"

"Oh, it's just a minor discrepancy with what I remember and Kam's account here," I said, brushing my finger against the paper. "I remember it being more of a place, but she's talking about it like it was just a bunch of-- Well, like you said, a bunch of monuments lined up in a row leading to the door." I squinted. "Like, she specifically says there was no clear pathway to the door on the opposite side other than the statues encircling the area, but I swear I remember there being one." Or at least I think I do. It was really dark.

"Didn't you pass through there on your way to the mural, before you got here?" Ptolema asked. "Or, well, didn't you Dream doin' that, I mean?"

"I did, but I was barely in there for more than a couple of seconds. The elevator was broken, so I flew straight to the mural room. I didn't even have a proper light."

"Hmmmm." Again, she considered. "I mean, it could be a psychological thing, couldn't it?"

I quirked my brow. "How do you mean?"

"Well, yknow, like. Maybe your brain saw the line of statues leading up to the door, which would've been framed in the light of our torches and whatever in a way that made the divide seem pretty sharp, and just... drew in somethin' that wasn't there." She flipped the pig on to its back, causing it to make an objectionable grunt. "That sorta stuff happens all the time, right?"

A finger rose to my lips. Obviously, I found myself drawing a link between this idea and the bizarre anecdote Kamrusepa had inserted in the middle of the sequence about the power of suggestion. But considering she couldn't have known my perspective, she obviously hadn't intended that reading-- So just what was she talking about?

"...well, there's more to it than that," I added instead of addressing the point. "I remember there being collapsed pillars, too, but Kamrusepa doesn't even mention those." I clicked my tongue. "Actually, saying it like that makes the whole idea sound stupid. Obviously she's not going to mention every single detail I might recall of every single place she visits."

"Yeah, Kam was always the bigger picture type, wasn't she?" Ptolema mused wistfully, not quite seeming to grasp the point of what I was saying. "I wonder how she's doing nowadays."

I sighed to myself, looking back at the page as I leaned back against the arm rest. I had to keep reading; if I let myself get thrown on a tangent by every little detail, I'd never get through this.

My resonator hummed. I glanced at it, then wished I hadn't.

Neferuaten: Utsushikome. Is this the right number?