Author: Lurina

230: Love and Inventing Hell - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

Kamrusepa rubbed her eyes. "First she goes behind my back and does this again, and second she can't even manage it properly. Absolutely irredeemable."

"What's going on?" I asked, completely confused.

"Don't-- Just stay there, Su," she demanded. "I'll be back in a moment."

She dropped down into the play area, disappearing from sight.

Now, if I were a slightly stupider person, I would have followed her immediately. I'd had enough nasty surprises in Dilmun already to chase a mystery down the moment it appeared, so just obeying her instruction mindlessly was obviously out of the question. But there was obviously a better way to assess the situation.

I went over to Nahmi's workstation, which I felt like I'd developed a rudimentary understanding of during our conversation a little earlier, and looked at the display. As it turned out, I didn't even need to do anything - she'd left the view that probably prompted all this active when she'd left.

From overhead, I beheld a nevertheless recognizable setting: the front carriage-turned-airship of the Xerxes, most of the treasures still lined up around the side of the room. Four figures were visible inside, as I'd suspected: Nahmi, of course, but also Tuthal, Hildris and Bahram-- Though really I should say the people playing them, since they didn't actually exist. The first two were standing by the bed with their arms raised, faces turned away from the camera, while Nahmi was close to the entrance - currently open to empty sky - and seemed to be staring them down while saying something. Finally, Bahram was partially visible to the right, almost directly in front of the camera, standing near the other doorway, which I'd earlier deduced led into the pilot's cabin.

I frowned in confusion. What the hell was going on? Kamrusepa had said the characters who weren't controlled behind the scenes directly had been 'contractors'. Was there some kind of dispute about their pay? Or, well, I guess whatever they'd be getting instead of pay.

Shit, how do I hear what they're saying? I don't know how to work this thing.

Within moments they were joined by another figure, who I also expected to appear - Kamrusepa, flying in through the open door. Except she was dressed differently than she had been a few moments ago, now wearing a... gold trimmed red uniform with a dark brown cloak?

She landed and started saying something herself, drawing a scepter. It wasn't the one I associated with her, but a more generic design with a winged head. The shaft was quite a lot longer and thicker even than they'd been in those days, too.

Wait a minute.

I got out my resonator, bringing up one of the archives I'd been idly browsing earlier in the week, and searched for information and images from the era the game was supposed to have been set. It was as I'd thought: She was wearing the uniform of the Royal Order of Exemplars, the regiment used for military arcanists outside of the nobility during the early Rhunbardic Empire. The scepter matched, too.

This was getting way too weird. Was this part of the story, somehow, some kind of epilogue scene? No, that didn't make any sense.

A nasty feeling was coming over me, and I decided I would go out after all.

I mumbled the flight incantation and then jumped down the hole. The play area, to my surprise, wasn't just as we'd left it. The lights had gone back off and the effects back on, and once again it looked like the middle of the night in the steppe, the clouds still thick enough as to render the landscape as naught but subtly different shades of black. Although the train and the track beneath it seemed to be gone.

...wait, no, it was more than it just being gone. The entire landscape now appeared to be moving subtly. The only things that were completely still were me and the airship.

I flew towards the door, hearing voices as I approached.

"...no 'containment measure' I've ever seen," I heard Hildris say. "It was like being in the inside of a cavern. Even the air had stopped moving."

"Don't argue," Tuthal hissed. "This isn't the time for that."

"It's a new technique, currently being pioneered by the Geomancers of Mekhi," I heard Kam say confidently. "We have you completely surrounded. All of you need to drop your weapons, put your hands in the air, and line up-- Oh, for fuck's sake!"

This exclamation was caused by my arrival. I swooped in, landing just behind Kam and Nahmi. The room looked like it'd been put through the wringer since the last time I'd seen it; there was blood on the floor, several of the treasures were missing, and the Last Winter had been dumped haphazardly on the bed in spite of its supposed value. Rope was strewn around my feet.

Tuthal and Hildris' eyes turned sharply to me as I arrived. Both looked panicked in a way I hadn't seen during the game, the color completely gone from Tuthal's face especially. A rifle was lying at his feet, but Hildris still clutched a pistol firmly in both hands, pointed it at our group with clenched teeth.

Bahram, meanwhile, looked like his soul had been sucked out with an air cycler. He seemed only to barely acknowledge the scene unfolding around him, his eyes cast down in silent resignation.

"Shit," Nahmi mumbled at my arrival, running a hand over her face.

"W-What is this...?" I asked, though not fully sure I wanted to know.

"Su, get out of here!" Kam hissed over her shoulder.

"Another rather oddly dressed one," Hildris declared with suspicion and contempt and panic all at once. "Not quite benefiting His Majesty's service."

"Hildris, it doesn't matter who they are!" Tuthal half-screamed, looking at her like she'd gone completely insane. "They're arcanists!! Shut your fucking--"

"THIS IS A MULTI-NATIONAL OPERATION," Kam interjected louder still, with the conviction of someone who sincerely believed that fiction could become reality if it was simply spoken with sufficient volume. "We're cooperating with SOU of the Arcanocracy to secure the entire border area. Further reinforcements are en route as we speak!"

I tried to object and question her further, but I was too taken aback, stammering awkwardly.

"Doesn't look like any uniform I've ever seen from the west," Hildris said quickly. "And why are they all women?" She shook her head. "This isn't right at all. It's not right at all."

"Hildris--"

"This is your last warning," Kam said. "Drop your weapon."

"Kam, what are you doing? Are they actually--"

In the middle of the sentence, my throat suddenly hitched, and half of the room went completely dark, though I could see Kam turning to look at me with a rather alarmed expression. I tasted something intensely spicy on my tongue which I couldn't quite place. And then, suddenly, the world was gold again.

It took me a surprisingly long time, relative to when it'd happened earlier, to realize that I was dead, and when I did I was quite shocked. Inspecting the scene, I could see that Hildris had fired her gun and blown a hole clean through my left eye. Quite a lot of brain had splattered out of the back of my head.

Oh, I thought. Well, now I'm definitely going to have trouble sleeping.

It was a little disturbing how blase I'd got about this.

I reincarnated, which of course did not go well. As soon I appeared, Hildris lurched back in shock and confusion, firing another round. Kamrusepa jerked her head and somehow blocked the bullet, which went flying into the wall (damaging a avant-garde portrait of an Ysaran woman petting a cat) but Nahmi moved too, taking a far more severe course. She flicked some kind of device in her hand upward, and a snap of energy knocked the pistol right of Hildris' hand, maiming it in the process. She screamed.

"Hildris!" Tuthal yelled again as she fell back on the bed. "Oh, god, oh god--"

"What are you doing?" Kam cried at her subordinate angrily, then quickly lowered her voice. "You know what happens if you actually kill her!"

"I'm not gonna fuckin' kill her!" She shot back. "Anue, I know the protocol!"

"Just hold them!" Kam demanded, then scrunched up her face as she looked over the other woman again, snapping. "Gods above, how did you let this happen? You didn't even bother to change your shirt!"

"Oh, piss off." She rolled her eyes. "You're the one who told me to shut everything off, and then dragged me out to look at that weird hourglass. You know I'm dogshit at damage control."

"Be quiet! Be quiet. Just, just..."

Hildris was gasping in pain, clasping at her palm desperately, but still hadn't taken her eyes off me for even a second. "How did you... Your clothes, they..."

Even Bahram was looking alarmed and confused now, his mouth hanging slightly open.

At the time it'd felt odd that she focused on my attire, but later I would reflect on this moment and realize that she'd probably concluded that someone had used Chromomancy - which was well-known in Rhunbard even in this period - to undo her gunshot, which left the transformation of my outfit as the much greater mystery than coming back from the dead. It was funny, to think about how much culture and context determined our perception of the impossible.

Things were quickly clicking together, even if it was all happening too fast for my mind to draw definitive conclusions. Nahmi had turned off the environmental features of the game at my request during the post-mortem with Kam, but the airship had stayed in the sky, apparently with the three of them still inside. A few minutes ago, she'd left her workstation to help Kam and I, and while she was gone, Hildris had for some reason attempted to leave. She'd seen the real state of the game area, what Kam had been passing off as a 'containment measure'.

I thought back to what she'd said on our way. Finished with the setting. Just gotta take care of the actors for another hour.

As Nahmi held up her device, which this time pinned Tuthal and Hildris in place, while Kam wheeled on me sharply. "You need to leave," she said, this time with an almost manic sternness.

"Not until you tell m--"

Again, things moved faster than I could really process. I didn't see her move - well, maybe a brief flicker as she grabbed the front of my robes - but one minute I was inside the airship, and the next it was off in the distance, the two of us floating high above the ground. She was right up in my face, exasperated.

I let out a winded gasp, even though the shove hadn't really hurt. "Get off of me!"

"Su, I'm sorry you've had to see this, but you need to go back upstairs. I'll debrief you later."

"Absolutely not! What have I walked in on? I thought they were actors!" I looked over her shoulder, trying to get a view of what was going on in the airship. "Is this still part of the game?"

"I don't know how to explain this to you right now!"

"W-Well, you better figure it out!" I shouted, flustered. "Why are you dressed like that? Why are the effects back on? Why do they look terrified of us, even though the story is obviously over?"

Kam grimaced, then closed her eyes, taking a deep, unsteady breath.

"There is a custom here," she said, "where Tertiaries are sometimes created on a short-term basis to serve particular roles or functions, when volunteers are not available and Ghosts - what they call non-sapient artificial intelligences here - will not suffice."

"You're-- You're saying they were real people the whole time?" I asked, horrified. "You made-- You brought actual people from history for this?!"

"No! Rather-- Yes and no," she spoke quickly. "First of all, I didn't make them, Nahmi did. This the umpteenth time she's going behind my back regarding this matter. And secondly..." She hesitated, choosing her words more carefully. "I don't know how much you're heard, but Tertiaries don't need to be a one-to-one copy of a person from the mortal world, they just need to be configured like one. The specifics can be fudged. Or, no; are easily fudged, with a resonator."

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I raised a hand to my mouth. "T-That's... Oh my god..."

"So people who need them - for intellectual labor, to recreate a particular space, or for exercises like this - will do things like, well, Spectate a few individuals who meet roughly the criteria for what they're after, copy their data, and then sort of... Cobble them together into an identity, using technology to fill in the gaps," she explained. "Then they will be leased a small amount of prop with a very low contract duration - usually only a little more than the task requires, and kept in a contained environment until it expires."

"So they never realize their actual situation," I said, with dawning understanding. "That's why you said not to kill them. It'd be the only way to keep them here, with access to the Stage."

She nodded grimly.

"I-- That's fucking horrible!" I exclaimed, feeling sick.

"It's problematic, yes," Kam replied, her face flushed.

"Murder! Slavery!"

"I mean, yes. Sort of. But also no." She clicked her tongue anxiously, glancing over her shoulder. "Su, you have to understand that personhood has undergone some definitional drift here."

"Apparently!"

"L-Let me finish!" She took a sharp breath. "You've no doubt heard people throwing around the term 'Reflection', yes?"

"Of course--"

"That's a good example of what I'm talking about," she cut me off. "Living here in this world, eternal and irrevocably safe, with little to fundamentally do but indulge in hedonism and repeatedly observe the fleeting lives and comparatively tragic lives outside-- If one lacks imagination, it can easily lead to abnormal thinking about the nature of life and death. One can start to conceptualize people whose lives aren't infinite as, well, essentially circumstantial. Soup bubbling up and down the pot." I tried to interject, but she kept talking: "And so the length of their lives is considered unimportant - irrelevant even - compared to their perception of them, and the circumstance in which they exist. And that's especially true if they exist marooned from any actual past or present."

I scoffed in disbelief. "That's insane! Psychopathic levels of sophistry!"

"I agree!"

"So it's just-- It's just fine to make people and then sentence them to death when you're done with them? How does this place keep being even more fucked up?!"

"Su, I'm not arguing with you! I was just saying that it's magical thinking!"

"You're literally doing it!" I yelled, fists clenched.

"I'm not!" She exclaimed back, throwing out her hands. "I just told you, Nahmi keeps going behind my back on the issue whenever I put her under a little pressure!"

"Going behind your back?! Just going behind your back to do a little murder, no big deal, give her a little slap on the wrist? Kam, what the fuck are you saying right now?"

"Su, I empathize with your reaction - it's almost a relief to see it, even - but you have to appreciate the kind of cultural context we're operating within here," she said firmly. "You have to understand that this is an extremely entrenched mentality here in this world. When I try to make a fuss about it, it's seen the same way as, I don't know, the way serious animal advocacy was perceived in our old lives. Or golem advocacy, things like that."

I wanted to scream.

"And... this is the case everywhere?"

"Not everywhere," she said hesitantly. "But in most places, yes, regrettably including Nahmi and I's organization."

"Are you're okay wi--"

"Obviously I'm not 'okay' with it, but it's also not as if the concept of rehabilitative justice exists here. If someone offends your values, the most you can do is cut them off. And that's not pragmatic."

I shook my head in disbelief. All of the experiences I'd had over the past day, all my conversations with the three of them, were replaying in my mind. How many times had I rolled my eyes internally at something I'd thought of as 'bad acting'? How many times had I clinically criticized some aspect of their personalities or convictions like they were characters in a book?

I couldn't process it, that it'd all been real. That to them, it'd been really happening, even the little tropey sequences like the dinner party or the staged closed room towards the end. How much was done to facilitate that? How much had people here learned to engineer people's minds, souls?

And how had I not that spark of humanity? What did it say about me - as a person, and as a mystery fan - that even knowing this, I was still wondering if any more had been real, too?

(And, in the back of my mind, I felt guilt that I still wasn't quite as upset or outraged as when I'd learned about the multiple identities thing.)

A realization struck me. "Nahmi's a Tertiary herself, you said?"

"Yes," Kan confirmed.

"And she's just... doing this enthusiastically. When she's not even supposed to."

She took a breath. "She's become well-acclimated to this world."

"Don't people see her as not a person, too?"

"No." She seemed somewhat resigned at this line of questioning. "I mean, some do. Extremists. But to most people, if you've been here a long enough time and are well-integrated, it's different."

"I thought you just said that they didn't think length of life mattered?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Su. People are hypocrites. They don't have consistent values."

I couldn't get hung up on this right now. "Okay, fine," I said. "Even accepting all that, what the fuck is this?" I gestured at her uniform. "Why are you trying to trick them? That's what this is, right? Trying to get them to not think anything is wrong until they run out of prop and disappear."

Kam flinched. "Su--"

"Why didn't you try to help them the minute you found out what she did? Why are you just going along with it?! It's fucked!"

She rubbed her eyes, speaking slowly. "I have a finite amount of resources."

"You're a Primary. You have enough prop to help them a million times over."

"I appreciate that you've only been returned for a very short time, but you're lacking a sense of the scope of things here," she explained. "People need far more than the bare minimum amount of prop to have a reasonable quality of life in this world, and incidents like this one occur shockingly often. If I intervened in every single one of them, then within a few hundred years I'd have none left for anything else." She folded her arms. "There was an incident a long time ago, almost beyond living memory at this point, where culture embraced their creation and maintenance at colossal scale. At its peak, almost as many people lived in this world as they did in the solar system at the height of the Imperial Era."

That was a very big number. Well over a trillion.

"Can you guess what happened?" she asked.

I was frowning. This had always been the part of Kam I liked the least, this kind of selectively mercenary coldness. "I assume there was some kind of matter famine."

"'Die-off' might be the more apt term," she said. "As things built, the amount of prop needed for each individual felt so petty, most people assumed - as they do again, nowadays - that no Tertiary would ever need to truly fear dying, because there would always be a donor who could spare the bare minimum. But there is a limit to everything, and eventually the resources of even the most generous were utterly spent." Her eyes turned dark. "After that, it took only a few people refusing to renew their prop contracts for the entire thing to collapse catastrophically. Imagine billions begging desperately for their lives in competition with one another, trying to attract special attention from a relatively microscopic pool of individuals with every method under the sun, and the depravity it encouraged from those slim few, given such attentions. With the situation only cascading into greater and greater horror as the misery drove more Primaries and Secondaries away into wilful ignorance. It grieves me to say it, Su, truly, but that is the inevitable end this attitude begets."

This information was completely changing my perception of Dilmun, not just as a society, but as a place. I'd been thinking of it as this little pocket dimension the size of maybe a small country; certainly comfortable and a much better place to live than the oblivion of non-existence, but more a metaphysical curiosity than a serious continuation of human civilization, even compared to an enclave like the Remaining World. To hear it could support numbers like that completely overturned that perception. Like, how did they even have enough space?

In the moment, though, my emotions were in control, not my sense of intellectual curiosity. "So you're just going to let them die."

She glared. "That's not fair."

"It's what's happening!"

"Obviously I don't want them to die," she said uncomfortably. "I don't wish for anyone to, not truly. But... at the end of the day, they-- They were made to do this, Su. To play a part that's already over. Where do you think they would go from here if they knew the truth? That their memories are stolen from others or invented wholesale, that they're some combination of lobotomy and brainwashing victim and homunculus? And do they deserve to exist here, more than people who really did walk the earth, and suffer alongside the rest of us?" Her brow fell. "It's not just, but maybe the best thing is to make their world feel real until the last possible moment."

I stared downwards for a moment, and did what, for good or ill, I always did best.

"I'm saving them," I stated.

"I'm not angry at you," I said. "At least not right now. If this really is all how it is." I adjusted my glasses, which had been slipping off my nose flying out here. "But even if that's your conclusion, I don't have to just accept it. How do you loan people prop?"

She was wincing. "This isn't a good idea. We don't know how they'll react, and you're already under suspicion. Permanent Tertiaries aren't allowed in the Crossroads without being registered."

"I'm looking it up," I said, reaching for my resonator.

Kam's hands twitched, like her body wanted instinctively to do something, but she stifled it, clasping them together instead stiffly.

"It's an incantation," she said. "This universe has a mathematical concept called 'SC'."

I squinted. "For 'sanctuary'?"

"For 'source'," she corrected. "You just need an equation to subtract the volume you want, in planck weight, from your own body, then set the arcana duration as how long you want the loan to last. There's a formula for targeting, but you can bypass the need through physical contact. After that they'll just need to accept it. The rules will take care of the rest."

"But really, you shouldn't," she urged. "If you let something like this get to you now, you'll never--"

I ignored her, flying back towards the airship. I didn't know how much time they'd have left.

I flew back in through the door, Nahmi the one who was in the middle of a sentence this time. "...medical support before you're taken into custody," she said, her heart clearly not in the performance. (How was this the same person who'd played Summiri?) "Until then, just stay still. We have plenty of ground support en-route as well, so don't think-- Oh."

"Um, listen to me," I said to the three of them. Now I was actually doing this, all the confidence I had a moment ago was evaporating as I realized how absolutely weird it felt, but there was no choice but to forge ahead. "I'm going to cast an incantation upon you all, and you're going to feel a sense of something being thrust on you to accept or reject. You'll need to comply and accept it."

Playing into the bit was obviously the easiest path here. There'd be time to deal with the truth later. To my left, I could see Nahmi lull her head back as she understood the situation.

"Fine," Tuthal said, pinned in place on his knees beside a still-bleeding Hildris and obviously terrified. "Of course we'll comply."

I nodded, stepping forward. "I'm going to need to touch you."

Hildris looked confused, then alarmed. "Tuthal, that's--"

I reached down and pressed my fingers against the side of his wrist, assuming I probably needed skin-to-skin contact, then performed the incantation. I had to decide in the spur of the moment how much to commit - knowing what I did about how Dilmun worked, what someone would need to survive at the bare minimum. Obviously they wouldn't be able to live in the Crossroads (where would they be able to live?), since the tax was so exorbitant, but I knew there were ones anyone was supposed to be allowed to freely visit for a period. So you'd probably be able to live relatively normally so long as you had a home base of some sort.

I vaguely recalled that the volume of the average house, furniture included, was about 70 tons. Add a little more for an exterior space, and I could round it to 100 tons. Less than 0.01% of what I had, and I could always offer more later. As for the duration, well... 100 years was a good place to start, too.

I cast the arcana. Tuthal's eyes widened slightly in confusion, but then I felt the feedback as he accepted it.

"Okay," I said, turning towards Hildris. "Okay, now you--"

"Don't touch me!" She yelled. "You think I'm some nitwit?!"

"U-Uh, no--"

"You think I don't know Egomancy when I see it? What other kind of incantation needs touch? What other kind of incantation need you to accept anything?!" Her whole whole body tense, and I could tell she was pushing herself as far back as the arcana (or whatever it was that Nahmi's tool was doing) controlling her would allow. "You don't even have a scepter! Who are you people?!"

I was taken a little by surprise, trying to find the words to dismiss the notion but failing. It hadn't occurred to me, but this was the era in which Egomancy was still prominent. Not as the secret, delicate art Samium had practiced, but as a blunt instrument that was primarily used to break people's minds in an era in which Neuromancy hadn't yet been invented as a less permanent alternative.

"Hildris, I'm alright," Tuthal said, blinking. "I-- I think. Just do it. We don't have any other choice."

She ignored him, still screaming. "You can take the collection and kill me for all I care, but if you try to lobotomize me, I swear to the Holy Flame I'll bite your bloody fingers off!"

"I-- I'm not using Egomancy," I said weakly. "I swear. I don't know how to explain this, but I'm trying to help you!"

"Help me? Help me?" She laughed, still clutching her hand. "Just kill me! Just get it over with!"

"She doesn't know what she's saying," Tuthal said hastily. "Please, this is all-- This is all a misunderstanding. We were lured here against our will!" There were tears in his eyes, but his lips tightened as he tried to steel himself "L-Look, my father is in parliament. If you do anything regrettable to us, it could have grave repercussions for you. An international incident... There's no need for anything regrettable. We'll cooperate fully. We'll cooperate fully!"

I didn't know what to do. It felt like anything I could say would just make this worse.

Kamrusepa must have returned too, because I heard Nahmi speaking behind me. "What the hell is she doing?"

"That's obvious, isn't it?" she said, now resigned.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me." She gave an exasperated grunt. She raised her voice, no longer bothering with pretense. "They're the culprits, genius! Hand-picked to be inhumanly miserable and unstable! You're gonna put them through hell!"

Tuthal's whole body jerked at the word 'culprit', but Hildris seemed to be following a little closer. She frowned in confusion, even as her eyes remained wild."

"L-Look," I finally said to Hildris. "This situation isn't what you think it is. You're being set up. I can help you, but you have to trust me."

Wow, really bringing out the C-tier drama lines for this one, my inner critic said. Not sure heroism suits you.

"You've been--" I tried to think of a way to convey this with the slightest bit of honesty. "There's a kind of poison in you, and you need to let me get it out. If you don't, it'll kill you."

She scoffed sharply. "You really do think I'm stupid."

"Look, he's fine, isn't he?" I gestured at Tuthal. "Please, just-- I'm not with the government. I'm not trying to steal the art. I'm just trying to help."

She glanced at Tuthal, hesitating for a moment, but quickly rallied. "You honestly expect me to believe that? It's Egomancy! You could have done anything to him."

"She's telling the truth, for the record," Kamrusepa said, droningly deadpan. "We're not actually from the Royal Guard, and we don't want anything in particular from you. Here, we'll throw down our weapons." She threw her scepter out the window, then gestured at Nahmi, who frowned and lowered the device.

Tuthal and Hildris both gasped as they were freed, though the former looked more upset than relieved. The latter went straight for her gun, frantically grabbing it with her unwounded and clearly-untrained remaining hand, pointing it dead in my face.

"Who are you, then?" She demanded. "Have you been spying on us this whole time?!" She grimaced regretfully. "If you're here from the company, Summiri is already dead. Everyone's dead back there, except for the servant boy. It's all been burned to dust."

"We're..." I trailed off. Time travelers? Beings from a higher plane? "...from a place you're not capable of understanding right now. But we're friends." That was definitely a lie. "This place-- This moment in time... it's not what it seems, and you're caught up in it when you shouldn't have been. But we're trying to fix it. I'm trying to fix it."

The gun trembled in her hand. "What do you mean, a place we're not capable of understanding?"

"I... This world, it's..."

This felt like it was going nowhere. My breathing was growing heavy, and I felt like any second now Hildris and Bahram would suddenly blink out existence, searing this surreal nightmare of a situation into my actual nightmares for years to come.

Behind me, Kamrusepa sighed melodramatically. "Oh, what the hell. If we're doing this, we might as well make a scene of it." I saw her shadow move across the floor. "Let's open up the bloody roof."