Author: Lurina

226: Locked Universe Mystery (𒌋) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

"What do you think would have happened, if you could've controlled how it all ended?" I asked, still somehow hoping for more, feeling like some detail had to exist that would just make it all click into place. "If this were a novel, or something?"

"I dunno," Nahmi said. Her tone was growing increasingly indifferent and disinterested. I got the sense she was kind of done with the conversation. "The usual shit, I guess. Eirene would get everybody seated in the observation car, go over the evidence, and eventually figure it out. There were a lot of inconsistencies that'd have out if everyone was interrogated, or if anybody took a proper look at the body."

"I more meant thematically," I clarified. "Like, you said yourself that there was a focus on magical thinking-- On 'mythmaking', like you had Summiri say, whether it's about individuals or businesses or nations. And how living in the Crossroads got you thinking about how valuable 'truth' is as a concept."

"Uh-huh," she mumbled.

"The point you made about that in the story was interesting, actually," I continued. "When you were saying that having a truly critical perspective on reality, following the idea to its logical conclusion, would be like looking down a bottomless pit. Because, I mean, it is true. Causally the universe shouldn't exist at all, or even if you believe in the divine, God shouldn't. So at a certain point you have to give up and embrace some beliefs about reality arbitrarily, or fall into nihilism. It's something I think about a lot." I thought occurred me, and I hesitated. "Did Kam tell you that? That I think about this stuff a lot?"

"No, but I'm sure you're very deep," she replied flatly.

"I was just curious. It is partly about the conclave, and I know you had to rewrite things when I signed up, so it'd make sense if she was giving you, I dunno, direction to poke at me specifically."

"All she asked me to do was to change Kasua's role a little, so that she was less of a background character and might have a motive to commit murder," she said. "This may shock you to know, but existentialism is something that pretty much everyone in the world with more than two brain cells thinks about all the time. It's secondary school bullshit."

I opened my mouth to object, to say that I was talking about something more specific, but everything I thought to say felt like it was just going to make me look like self-obsessed pedant. I made what was probably an unusually huffy expression that she fortunately did not see.

"I just... what was your thesis, I guess I mean," I asked. "What were you trying to say with the story."

Despite her attested passion for meaningful writing, she seemed more put-off by this question than anything, her voice turning almost defensive. "I dunno if I have theses when I'm writing these. Like, I've done a fucking million of them at this point, and things never turn out in the way I want them to anyway. The players and actors I'm not directly controlling end up going off-script." She was quiet for a moment. "To be a bit of a pretentious bitch about it, I try to treat them more like explorations of questions at this point."

"I see," I said. "And what was the question, in this case?"

Another pause. "I'd say that it was meant to be, like, 'what happens when belief in something that seemed special is broken', I guess." She slurped her drink for a moment, then let out an indifferent sigh. "But who fucking knows. I've done so many of these, so many weird little stories circling around what's in those books in every setting under the sun, that it all kind of become a slurry. And I want to believe I'm doing something high-minded, but really it's just tropes and the obvious inferences from those tropes. Oh, we've got the dead wealthy character with the big inheritance people are fighting over. Oh, we've got the stubborn blowhard character, the flamboyant wine mom character, the deluded loyalist character. Oh, we've got this period setting, and of course it's about this great change overtaking the world, because there's always a great change fucking overtaking the world-- Everything's always dying and struggling to be born. And of course these murder mystery tricks where the culprit tries to present it as some supernatural thing, that's from the books too. How many stories can you tell with that? Or, fuck, with the entire genre? It's incestuous, ultimately, the same dozen blocks being stacked in different patterns. But then again, being here for a few years, you realize everything is incestuous, right? Humans aren't really that complicated . There's only so many stories we have to tell, only so many social situations we can have and types of people we can be. I've only been here for 3000 years or so and that's already been obvious for lifetimes. Just the same nested patterns, over and over again, the only thing that comes out of our shitty little brains. It's no wonder the people in this Domain act the way they do, turning even the most foundational parts of being a person into another lever to pull, another variable, another fruit to juice. You probably don't get it yet if you really were a Dreamer, but you'll see soon enough."

It was by far the longest answer she'd given, and by the time she was done, her voice was trailing off to a whisper, like she was falling asleep in the process of giving it. She sounded totally defeated all of a sudden.

"Are you... alright?" I asked, frowning.

"Oh yeah," she said. "Just peachy."

Kamrusepa chose this moment to return, manifesting a few feet to the left of me. "Sorry about that!" She said cheerfully. "Some of the boys in our office in the City made a bit of a mess! I swear, it's an absolute death march to find decent help out here. Would you believe it, the cross-section of people who inhabit a hedonistic Domain engineered for broad appeal and aren't utterly flakes when it comes to keeping schedules? Not particularly wide!" She smiled at me. "So, Su, are you content? Can we move this along?"

"Uh, I guess so," I said hesitantly. "I think I upset her, though."

"You didn't upset me," Nahmi said, back to sounding bored. "Not in the last 20 minutes, at least."

"Alright if we leave you here, Nahmi?" Kamrusepa asked with a smile. "Clean-up moving along well enough?"

"Uh-huh," she grunted. "Finished with the setting, just gotta take care of the actors for another hour."

Kam frowned. "You really need to stop going around Retrieval. It's ridiculously inefficient, not even to speak of the bloody ethics."

"You're the one who told me we need to moderate our prop budget. And that we're losing candidates because of shitty performances." She sighed. "I'm not a drama director. I can't coach these people."

"What's this about?" I asked, frowning.

"Nothing you need to worry about, Su," Kam spoke, turning back sharply to me. "Now then, shall we head to my Domain? I take you directly there. Just take my hand."

I almost did, but then hesitated. "I'm... not sure I can leave, actually."

She frowned. "What? Why not?"

My countenance turned embarrassed. "I sort of got in trouble with the law here," I said, scratching the back of my head. "I found the Domain before I really understood what was going on just by looking for the biggest group on the Stage, and then ended up hanging around the Manse since it was my first time until somebody from the Waywatch showed up and arrested me." I bit my lip. "And then a few days later I-- Well, the short version is that I ended up being suspected of leaving the Domain to go the you-know-what again."

"Pft, you needn't worry about that," Kamrusepa dismissed with a scoff. "They bloody well suspect thousands of people of breaking that absurd rule. It never goes anywhere so long as we're careful not to time it suspiciously."

"Uh," I said. "It might be a little more serious than that. They dragged me into the governor's office."

She furrowed her brow. "Which one?"

"Cyrene." I hadn't really thought about it, but I supposed a governor of the Valley also implied one of the Island and perhaps the City as well. "I think she realized who I was. She was also talking about some kind of cult groups keeping an eye on me." I blinked. "Wait-- This isn't a cult, is it?"

Kamrusepa was holding her chin with a serious expression. "I suppose it shouldn't be surprise that some members of the assembly might taken an interest in you. There's a great deal of fuss about the M-word recently on account of that debacle Isaac caused a few years ago."

"One of our other members," she explained. "Not the most subtle type." She clicked her tongue. "The average person doesn't give a hoot in this day and age, but whenever there's public concern, there's an uptick in awareness of our identities in relation to the conclave among interested parties. You picked a poor time to emerge from seclusion, especially since you used your real name for some reason."

"That's not my fault. I told you, I didn't even know what was happening."

She tapped her foot impatiently. "Well, personally I don't think it matters much if you're expelled from this Domain. There are much better places to be if you're not trying to recruit people with prop." She looked at me. "But I bet if I suggest that, you'll give some fear-of-missing-out spiel, so we'll just have to find somewhere more secure than here to continue the conversation."

"What's insecure about this place?" I asked, glancing around.

"The Waywatch already has some modest suspicion of what we're doing here. Not enough to monitor us on the regualar - yet - but still, it's better not chance it."

"Where will we go, then? If they can potentially spy on us anywhere."

"Safety in a crowd, Su," Kam said meaningfully. "Safety in a crowd."

She took me to the beach in the Valley. It was the kind that felt like it only existed in dramas, which made sense insofar as it was literally fake-- Well, manufactured, at least. Perfect golden sands were kissed by a perfect aquamarine sea tinged orange from the setting sun, which threw me off since my mental clock was still processing it as being night on account on the game. Corals were visible beneath the more distant water while an abundance of wildflowers sprung from the overhead hills, sandwiching the scene between two rainbows of color. It was idyllic even by Dilmun standards, the kind of thing an idiot imagines when they picture heaven.

As Kamrusepa had implied, it was probably the busiest part of the Valley I'd visited so far. Hundreds of figures lined the coast, walking, relaxing on towels, swimming, having barbecues. It was overstimulating, especially with how outrageously good-looking everyone who wasn't some kind of monster person was here. My face flushed, and I instantly felt overdressed and removed the shawl from my robes, despite it being the same comfortably neutral temperature that most places seemed to be.

Still, there was an odd feeling that nagged at me as I beheld the sight, and it took me a minute to realize what it was. The missing thing that it felt hard to imagine a place like this without.

It was children, of course. There were some younger-than-average looking people, and some people behaving in a bit of an immature way - laughing while building sandcastles and the like - but not a soul that was distinctly pre-pubescent.

It was... odd. Not good or bad, exactly. Just odd.

Kamrusepa returned from a nearby food stand with two popsicles. "Do you want the vanilla and cream, or the tropical fruit?"

"Uh, tropical fruit," I said, taking the yellow-pink stick of frozen sugar as it was offered to me. This was feeling awkwardly close to a date. "I would have thought they'd have some more adventurous flavors."

She snorted. "Here? In the Valley? Not bloody likely." She licked her popsicle, her free hand going to her hip as she surveyed the masses with regal contempt. "If the Crossroads in broad strokes appeals to the lowest common denominator, then the ilk that subside here exist at the very nadir of human imagination. The sum total of their dreams merely a comfortable misremembering of their bygone lives."

I frowned. "That seems a little harsh. Everyone has that little impulse in them that wants a simple life, to go live in the country or something."

"The transient ones I can forgive, but in my old life, I never would have believed there would be so many people content to live indefinitely in an earthly paradise. In their little fantasies of cottages and sheep and red-brick walls." She shook her head. "It reminds me of the worst people in my childhood."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, since it felt too soon to bring up the journal, and how much she expected me to know about said childhood.

"I really can't believe you've just been flying everywhere for the past month," she abruptly digressed. "You should learn the arcana for teleportation as soon as possible. You get by in this Domain without it, but there are others where everything is so spread apart it's absolutely vital."

"I'm not sure I could," I replied hesitantly. "I haven't learned a new incantation in nearly a century."

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"It's not half as complex as you'd expect. Since there's no concern for eris here, simplicity is the only form of efficiency that matters in casting." She frowned as I continued to look skeptical. "You should at least go pick an artifice that does it. There are numerous shops in town that could do that for you."

"Wouldn't it just vanish if it ever did leave the Domain?"

"No, anything you keep on your person when moving between Domains goes with you so long as it's made out of your own prop. You said you've been staying with Ptolema? She should have explained all this to you."

"We haven't really talked about the mechanics of life here much since my first day," I said, again stepping around the reason why we hadn't. "I've been more curious about the culture and, uh, metaphysics, that sort of thing." I liked my popsicle, which was mostly mango.

She snorted. "I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that you would neglect the fundamentals in favor of fixating on high concepts."

Fucking pot calling the kettle black, I thought.

"Is this a bad spot for you?" She asked. "You looked a little ill at ease when I was walking about."

"N-no, it's fine. I mean-- It doesn't exactly feel like the right tempo for a conversation like this, but if you think it's the safest method, then I'm not going to make a fuss." I looked out at the ocean again. "I have some baggage with beaches--"

"How can you have 'baggage' with the concept of a beach?" She interjected, baffled. "That's like saying you were traumatized by ruddy grass, what do you even mean?"

"--but mostly I was just thinking about the fact there aren't any kids here," I finished.

"That's no mystery," she said. Her gaze wandered back toward the crowd too. "The only way you can have a child here is if you make them a Tertiary, and there are heavy restrictions on their participation in society here. It was a nuisance to even get residency for Nahmi."

"I hadn't realized she was one." In retrospect, her saying she'd only been in Dilmun for a few thousand years should have tipped me off.

"Oh yes. You might have noticed she looks a little bit unusual in the face." She gestured a hand at her own illustratively. "That's because she doesn't have a baseline form, so the way she looks is always drifting and being meddled with. She can't even use the Power, so she has to rely on technology as well."

"Can they not use the Power? Tertiaries?"

"They can, but it's an abstruse process. Difficult to become accustomed to compared to us." She took a lick. "But as I was saying, most people who are interested in starting a family - who aren't put off by the inherent dynamics of the affair - go to Domains more interested in accommodating that. And there are rules in place that forbid taking the form of a child here, so you don't see that either."

I blinked. "Like, physical rules? The world won't let you do it?"

"No, moral rules. Here in the Crossroads." She flattened her brow. "You don't need me to paint you picture."

"N-No, I guess not."

A few moments passed. I stared at the sunset.

"Well," Kam said, putting a smile on her face. "Shall we get started?"

"I suppose," I replied. "I... don't really know what to say. Even though I've done this three times now, it still feels... I can't think of the right word. Somewhere between 'awkward' and 'inscrutable'."

"How about this," Kamrusepa began, as solution-oriented as ever. "You tell me what you remember our last meeting being, I'll tell you what I remember our last meeting being, and we'll proceed from there."

"Okay," I assented. I thought for a moment. "The last time we met was in the year 1413, a few months after we got our doctorates. Since they'd broken up our class and we'd ended up in different programs, we'd barely spoken in years. I ran into you in the quad while I was helping Ran clean out some of her stuff, and you told me that you were heading back to Xattusa for a couple years. And then I said that I hoped we could keep in touch, and you were, uh, kind of noncommittal about it." I frowned to myself. "I kind of got the impression you had something going on. You were acting odd."

"She was probably dreading the prospect of continuing to crawl from the bottom-up in the Order of Chronomancers," Kam mused. "She never spoke to you again after that?"

"Why are you talking in the third person?"

"I don't view the variant of myself that existed in the Remaining World after the conclave as part of my own identity, per-se," she explained ambivalently. "We're all in a state of constant evolution, after all. I can't rightly be held accountable for the actions of a version of me that could have been."

I squinted at her. "Are you fabricating up an entire philosophical outlook on the spot just so you don't have to apologize for ghosting me?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Su." She shook her head. "That being said-- I have viewed the experiences of my other self, if not autospectively, and I seem to recall us exchanging letters after that point."

"Oh." I hesitated. "...yeah, I guess you did send a couple."

I'd almost forgotten. After I'd finished school but before my first drastic life-pivot towards becoming an illustrator, there'd been a brief period where I'd been looking for a job as a researcher, and during that time I vaguely recalled exchanging a couple of generic postcards with former classmates. But by my standards the whole period was kind of a blur. I'd already been neck-deep in my second existential crisis since having to give up on saving Shiko, desperate to try to find some justification for my own existence.

In fact, thinking about it, it might have been me who ghosted Kam, not the other way around. I'd felt so embarrassed by what I was doing, discarding 15 years of training towards a vocation in which I was considered a prodigy to chase a childhood dream in which I had no real talent or even deep passion. It'd been obvious to everyone it was a mistake. My parents, even Ran.

"I thought we were only counting, you know, physical meetings, though," I continued, taking a lick. "Or at least talking."

"Fair, I suppose." She gave a measured nod, then twisted her popsicle to the side before running her tongue against it at an odd angle. "For my part, the last time I remember speaking to you was on the top of the bell tower in Order's headquarters, closing in on eight in the evening on our third day at the conclave."

This would be in Kamrusepa's version, then. "What we were talking about?"

"Well, this was after all of the others were dead or separated," she explained. "We already knew there was a good chance we weren't in-- Well, at the time, we called it the 'real world'. Before the killer got her, we'd set out with Neferuaten to confront Hamilcar in the underbelly of the sanctuary, whom at the time we'd believed to be the mastermind. But upon arriving, she'd inspected the equipment and concluded it'd already been activated, and then explained some of the technology and how it'd been intended to work, alongside much of the Order's original plans."

This was interesting. So there were some loops where Neferuaten didn't try to activate the Apega at the end of the second night? I wondered what could have happened to change things. Did something go wrong with Fang, or could the Order have seemed more receptive to her request in a way that wouldn't drive her to such a rash action? Or could there have been some more immediate reason she wasn't able to sneak off in the middle of the night?

I'll have to ask her more about this later.

"You are following me, yes? It occurs me that you might not have even learned the basics of the situation."

"N-No, I'm following you," I told her. "Like I said, I already talked To Neferuaten."

"Right, of course." She nodded. "So yes: Later, the two of us had been driven to the tower in search of a defensible position where we might ride out the night, if by chance Neferuaten was insane and the sanctuary was not, despite what we'd been told by the woman we believed to be Amtu-Heddu-Anna, going to explode. And we were talking about the Order, and life, and its many disappointments when I believe you blew us both up."

A pair of laughing girls ran alongside the water behind us, one throwing a clump of sand at the other.

"Oh," I said. "Are you sure?"

"Not entirely. I felt an incantation activate, but it's possible someone else breached our barrier." She gave a mixed smile. "But I have spoken to the others, so you could call it an educated guess."

"I... I see."

I went a little stiff, averting my eyes.

"Oh, come on, Su," Kam, flicking the head of her popsicle at me a few times. "Did I not tell you just a minute ago that I don't consider myself accountable for different potentialities of myself? I'd be a rather a hypocrite if I didn't extend that grace to others." She brought it back up, taking a lick. "Besides, it wasn't as if it was painful."

I swallowed the air. "You're not... suspicious, of me? For... for murdering you?"

"Well, I assume you didn't do it in your weekend, judging by the way you've been talking to me?"

"No," I told her, awkwardly defensive.

"And do you have any idea why you might have done it?"

"N-Not really. I mean, I've been thinking about it since I heard, but... no."

"Well, then there you go. It's not as if I actually died, so alls well that ends well." She furrowed her brow. "I have to confess, I wasn't expecting this reaction. I thought you'd have already anticipated this to some degree, or if not, then to be outright confused."

"E-Expected it."

"Since you've already talked to three of the others," she clarified. A beach ball flew over our heads.

It took me a moment to understand what she was getting at, and when I realized an uncomfortable feeling began to stir in my gut.

Basically, she was saying that it was essentially common knowledge among the participants in the conclave that I had, in many cases, been the murderer. But since I appeared to not understand why - to personally recall doing it - then I should have already been confronted by this fact by one of the others and been prepared for this moment.

But... none of them had. Ptolema had told me she didn't know her killer. Neferuaten had suggested she'd committed suicide in the same way as in my loop. And Bardiya had avoided the question altogether.

For a moment I wondered if this was some freak coincidence, that I'd just happened to end up interacting with the three people who had neither personal experience nor secondhand knowledge of what I'd done in the loops-- But this wasn't exactly Occam's razor. The more obvious conclusion was that they'd all known about the elephant in the room, and had just been being nice, or at the very least hoping to avoid an awkward conversation.

So I'd been spared a moment like this thus far, and - wanting to avoid thinking about the topic - hadn't really questioned why. But contrary to Kam's expectations for this scenario, I still knew what I'd done.

Because I'd heard it from my other self. And from the Lady.

"I... no, it's complicated, but I didn't hear about it from them," I said. I looked at her with concern. "So all the others-- All of you-- You all see me as, like, a murderer. The murderer."

"Su, for goodness sake." She sighed. "It's not like that. No one cares about back then any more--" She clicked her tongue, seeming to realize the hypocrisy in saying this when she was seemingly running what amounted to a conclave re-enactment society. "Well, cares about it emotionally, at the very least."

"I-- I've heard that the memories of our lives in the Remaining World up to then are the only ones seared into our brains forever," I told her. "You're telling me none of them are bothered? Even if they remember me, I don't know, stabbing them in the throat or something?"

She looked like she was about to give a completely affirming answer, but then hesitated and stopped herself, which made me feel even more embarrassed. ('Embarrassed'? For being a murderer? This was so weird. I didn't know what I was supposed to feel.) "Obviously some people are going to think about it," she finally said, "But look, it's not just you. We all one another doing absolute depraved things during that weekend, things we can't even explain our reasoning for. If we all viewed one another in that light, it'd be impossible to ever even talk about." She looked at me, pursing her lips. "Like, what do you remember me doing, Su? In your loop?"

"Uhh." I thought about how to phrase it. "I mean. You sort of shot Linos for indefinitive reasons - except it turned out it wasn't his real body for some reason - which turned into a fight that got almost everyone killed. Oh, and you convinced me we should pretend we didn't find a body in the shaft in the armory."

She looked a little puzzled for a moment, but nodded. "Alright, not my worst showing, but still, hardly sterling," she concluded. "My point is, we all killed one another in at least one version of that weekend. And though I can't deny that some people have chosen to isolate themselves from most of the rest of us in an attempt to avoid any uncomfortable feelings, they're the ones who are missing out on the ability to meaningfully reflect on those experiences." She licked. "And it's not just us, Su. Most Primaries have learned to look back on their old rivalries and pains as the ephemeral things they are. There's nothing that can hurt us here, we're past all that. A shared experience as enemies to reflect on together can be just as meaningful as a shared experience as friends."

Wow, I thought. I didn't think it was possible to be metaphysically centrist, but she's kind of pulling it off.

"Anyway, never mind that for now," Kam continued. "Let's roll that back instead to the last time we can mutually agree we saw one another, or rather that we both last saw the versions of ourselves that stand before one another now. The dinner of the second night, when we were talking about our presentations."

I nodded slowly. "...okay. Okay, I think I can do that."

"So, what do you want to say?"

I glanced around.

"I mean," I continued reluctantly. "I guess you were right. It actually was possible to become immortal."

She looked oddly at me for a moment, then burst out laughing, almost dropping the popsicle.

"It's not that funny," I protested, annoyed. "I mean, the stuff I was saying about narratives is still true for most people."

She looked back at me, even as she continued to giggle uncontrollably. "Su, I don't care about that! I'm not looking for you to concede a pedantic argument we had a lifetime ago." She leaned in closer, her eyes bright. "I want to know what you're feeling!"

I leaned backwards instinctively. "Feeling about what?"

"About everything!" She flung her arms outwardly. "Look at where we are, Su!"

"The beach?" I said, feeling like I needed to play into the bit even if I sort of saw where this was going.

"Not the bloody beach!" she replied with a scoff. "Elysium! The end of the universe! A place of infinite potential, infinite understanding, infinite everything, free from fear and misery!" Her eyes were wide, and even as she continued to smile widely she somehow started to look very serious.

No, 'serious' doesn't quite describe it. There was a vividness in her eyes I saw all of a sudden, almost the opposite of the quiet, tired ease that I'd first noticed in the City and now observed in almost everyone in Dilmun, or the outright nihilism I'd seen in Nahmi earlier and witnessed flickers of in Bardiya and Nora. It was a like a hunger, ravenous, that given space had only grown exponentially larger. She looked more her than I'd ever seen her, equal parts naively idealistic and carnivorously selfish.

It was kind of scary, honestly.

"Su, a few weeks ago - at least as you recall it - you were living a normal life, out there. Weren't you?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"What were you doing?"

"Uh." I wasn't sure how much of my embarrassing personal meltdown I wanted to reveal to Kam. "I was living on Deshur, between jobs. Mostly just playing a lot of echo games."

"And now you're here."

"I'm asking how that makes you feel," she pressed. "Of having been uplifted like this, to a state so much has become possible! You had a tiny taste of it today, even."

"The roleplay, you mean?"

"Yes!" She hesitated. "Well, somewhat. The sort of thing you can do in a day is rather limited, but-- Still, a different life! And that was only the tip-of-the-tip of the iceberg, the first grain of snow closest to the clouds."

"I mean, it was fun." I scratched my head. I didn't want to get into an argument about what I felt about 'different lives'. "But... I dunno. So far life here just seems like it was in the Remaining World, just with, I dunno, better technology and food. And a bunch of disturbing cultural practices." I frowned uncomfortably. "I still can't really believe I'm stuck here."

"Stuck here." Kamrusepa withdraw slightly, her brow twisting even as her lips remained upturned. "You've been here for how long?"

"Coming up on three weeks, I suppose."

"And what have you done, in that time? How much did you see before you came to the Crossroads?"

"Barely anything," I answered. "I woke up in the Magilum, which was weird, but they kicked me out almost right away. And since then I've mostly just been hanging out in Ptolema's house. I went to see Neferuaten at the, uh, artificial death place, went to this bookstore, went to a few restaurants--"

"Oh, no," she cut me off in a furtive tone, her arms crossed. "This is no bloody good."

"What's no bloody good?" I asked, confused.

"No one's trying to help you understand, Su! "

"Understand what?"

"What's happened to you! How far you're above what you used to be, how far we both are, in this moment!" She almost started shouting for a moment; a couple people passing by looked our way. "That there's-- That there's this banquet, this incredible thing laid out for you, bigger than you can possibly even imagine, and now there's nothing stopping you from reaching and taking it! They're just dragging you down into they're ridiculous little self-obsessed mires, just like everyone else in this ruddy pit!" She ran her free hands across her face. "Ugh, good God, I can't even put it all into words!"

"Uh, you're kind of freaking me out, Kam," I said nervously.

Her hand dropped, her gaze once again meeting mine sharply. "You can't move between Domains, but they can't stop you from Spectating," she said. She stood upright, composing herself. "Take my hand."

I reached out, and held it.

And then I saw everything.