Author: Lurina

237: Love and Inventing Hell (𒐆) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

The process Kam put forward went like this: First, we'd both leave, not to our personal Domains (going directly to your own Domain was apparently cause for, suspicion unless it was open to other people) but instead to separate third party Domains middling popularity, what were apparently referred to informally as "middle Domains". We would then spend a short time in each before proceeding to a third even less populated one, where we would then finally go together to Kam's Domain, and then to our destination.

To say I found the whole thing a little stressful would be a little understatement. The Domain Kam had me visit was another roleplay one with a weird premise, where the people with wiped memories tried to escape from elaborately-designed complexes filled with traps and special rules, while everyone else spectated from above through one-way glass and made bets on various aspects of the game's outcome. Sometimes they betted with prop (every time someone did this, everyone in the immediate vicinity would let out an 'oohhh!') but mostly it was just with a local funny money that let you change aspects of the setup for future games, including getting to be in one, which was seemingly highly in demand.

I didn't hate public dramas, and the whole thing seemed to be consensual and didn't involve any Tertiaries, so there was nothing deeply wrong with it, in principle. But it still felt a little gross and voyeuristic, with how much they really seemed to be genuinely suffering while we literally looked down on them through the floor. Plus, the atmosphere was abnormally social. People kept trying to talk to me, offering to walk me through how it all worked or give me some of the game currency to play with, and I felt pressured to act polite but kind of indifferent so it wouldn't seem weird when I suddenly left later. It was a rough couple hours.

The next Domain was fortunately quieter. A spartan and entirely indoor space - the majority of its business seeming to take place in a single cube-shaped hall with marbled, gold-etched walls - it was apparently a sort of bank. Because nothing in Dilmun was truly permanent, with prop loans and even memory eventually fading with the passage of time, it was apparently easy for things to get lost of the eons completely unintentionally. According to Kam, this place was one the oldest Domains, far predating any of the major ones even including the Keep. In exchange for a temporary prop loan, they would maintain anything for you in the form of raw data permanently, sealed in an account linked directly to your pneuma, so that even if you completely forgot you'd ever 'deposited' anything it would still be waiting for you after however long.

The entire premise only functioned based on one thing: Reputation. The belief that it would miraculously endure as all the Domains around it fell, its steward (apparently there was only one, it was all his prop aside from the loans) never succumbing to ennui or losing interest in the whole idea or deciding to act in bad faith.

But apparently it had lasted for almost 3 million years so far, so I guess it was justified.

Anyway, despite all the evidence to the contrary that has emerged at this point, I actually am pretty smart, so I understood that Kam routing us here was probably done in the unspoken expectation I'd check to see if I had an account, so I queued and had them scan me in this little silver booth. But there was no such luck.

After that, I went to a little lounge and bar that seemed there to entertain people waiting for an appointment, and Kam was already there. After that, we finally proceeded to her Domain.

I wasn't... sure what I was expecting, but it was definitely a lot more modest. It consisted of a pleasant, medium-sized Rhunbardic country house and a small area of glass enclosed in a glass dome, with an artificial sky that made it look like it was night.

"Huh," I said, a few moments after we arrived.

She quirked her brow. "Something on your mind?"

"No, I..." I scratched the side of my head. "I just figured it would be more, I don't know, urban."

"Rather difficult to have an urban environment for a single person, I should think."

"You know what I mean. The-- The quality of it, the vibe." I bit my lip. "I know you hated living in the countryside, and this looks, well, countryside-esque."

Kam snorted. "I'm not sure how you're imagining my childhood home, but I assure you, something like this has very little in common with it." She put her hands on her hips. "Besides, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. The is rather different."

"Are we..."

"Not today," she answered. "We shouldn't waste time. I already sent Nahmi on ahead, so we'll be expected. Before that, though, there's the little matter of your identity."

"My identity?"

A nod. "Since you don't want to make any commitments yet, it's an unnecessary risk to have you arrive as yourself," she explained. "The Manse doesn't have images, of course, and as you heard Nahmi confess, not everyone fully believes in the primacy of our class in all this. But there are certainly old photographs of you people have picked out that bypass the privacy shield about. If you just turn up, you'll have the whole place in an uproar. And you can bet your buttons the Crossroads has a few spies in our midst."

I frowned. "If that's true, how were you able to saunter about as yourself back there without getting in any trouble? Shouldn't these spies have reported you ages ago?"

"That's different," she explained. "I have a number of little arrangements in place to muddy the waters. My Crossroads paperwork is all technically under a different name and form, I have a contact in the Waywatch who makes some difficulties disappear. I even had some people make use of my image a while back. Though mostly I just try to avoid being in public unless I'm incognito, though I made an exception for you."

"I--" I hesitated, cutting myself off. "You had people 'use your image'? What do you mean?"

"Nothing too complicated," she explained. "I've just been paying a few people to go about looking like me for a couple weeks every decade or so."

"That's... Isn't that dangerous? Letting people impersonate you on purpose?"

"Well, the laws of this world don't permit people to make an exact copy of other's true forms. It stops you after-- I believe the number is 98%? Something of that ilk. So it doesn't really hold up if someone tries to push their luck."

I glanced away from a moment, clicking my tongue softly. This was obviously related to that vague-ass identity rule again. So not only could you not have copies of minds or move them around, but you couldn't have copies of bodies either? Did that count for any the inhabitants had ever had in the Remaining World like it apparently did for pneuma? Ugh, I'd have to go ask for clarification for the 3rd time when I had a minute.

"Mind you, hearing you put it that way strikes me as a tad bit concerning," Kam continued. "You understand they wouldn't need my permission to impersonate me, correct?"

"I mean..." I squinted uncomfortably. "I suppose that's true."

"Let me give you some friendly advice, Su," Kam said. "Unless you are extremely confident in either your perceptive abilities or your interpersonal knowledge of whomsoever you are speaking with, then if a conversation is important, you should make a habit of verifying they are who you who you believe them to be. Not once, but every single time."

"I... I guess that's a good point."

"Let's build the habit and do that now," she added.

We did it. I verified her, she verified me.

"Wonderful," she spoke after we were done, narrowing her eyes. "Now, getting back on topic, we're going to need a disguise for you."

I made an uncomfortable expression. "Somehow I feel like you're not talking about a hood and sunglasses or something."

"I am talking about bodily transmutation, yes." She gestured at me. "But since I know you find such things disquieting, I came up with a compromise solution while we were separated. Am I correct in assuming you wouldn't feel so ill at ease using a form you're already familiar with?"

"I think I see where you're going with this," I said, biting my lip.

She nodded, reaching into a pouch on the side of her wooly dress. "We'll use the one for Kasua from the game. I've brought the script with me."

What she withdrew, of course, looked nothing like a script at all, but a small slice of many-faceted crystal. The standard aesthetic for Dilmun technology.

"I don't know," I said warily. "In the game, I could kind of dissociate from the whole thing because it felt more like I was, I dunno, more directing or piloting her than being her. But it won't be like that this time, right?"

A hint of irritation flared on Kam's face. "It can be, if it must. But it would take more time to set up."

I hesitated, then shook my head. "No, it's alright. Even if I don't want to do this as a, uh, lifestyle, I'll probably have to keep dipping my toes in. Better to just rip the bandage off, I guess."

"As you'll have it." She flipped the glass up to rest between her forefinger and thumb. "Take down your defenses, if you please, and remove anything valuable from your pockets."

I did so, then gestured for her to go ahead. She waved a hand, and unlike before, there wasn't even a moment of darkness to add some ceremony to the event. My field of view just abruptly dropped, all my senses shifting like a switch had been flipped. I gasped.

"Oh, fuck," I hissed, and then lurched again at my own voice. It was eerie hearing Kasua speak with my accent. It was physically unpleasant too - without the sense of remove, it felt as though everything different about my body was some kind of physical defect sending my brain into a panic, like there was something stuck in my throat and on my nose, and that half of my bones had broken at once without my nervous system properly reporting the damage. It gave me a sense of vertigo, and I had to crouch half way towards the ground to avoiding falling on my stomach.

"Easy, Su," she said, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"It feels like-- Like there's something wrong with me," I rasped. Like it did back then, except without the mental pushback saying that everything was fine.

"Just try to accept it without thinking too hard about it," she suggested. "Or if that doesn't work, just pretend you've got a bad cold."

I managed to crane my neck to loop up at her incredulously. "What kind of bad cold makes you shorter?"

"Pretend the world got bigger," she offered flatly.

I sighed at her unhelpful suggestions. I looked down again, taking deep breaths, wriggling my toes and fingers, trying to get my brain to acknowledge that nothing was actually wrong. It didn't need to feel perfect. This was just a temporary measure, a necessary evil that will be over and done with in a few hours. It's fine. It's fine.

"Feeling better?" Kam eventually asked.

I tried to stand of straight, rubbing my eyes with the side of my sleeve. "Kind of. Close as it's going to get, I suppose." The voice was still messing with my head. Too high-pitched, too in the nose.

"Then we're all set," she said.

"Are we? Don't I need to come up with, like, a fake name?"

"To be quite frank, Su, I think it would be safer for you to minimize the amount of artifice you're employing in this endeavor," she stated.

I frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that, based on what I saw a couple weeks ago, you seem to struggle somewhat when it comes to staying in character."

"That's a completely different thing," I replied bluntly. "Not being good at slipping into a fictional personality doesn't mean I can't keep track of a name. I spent half my childhood on the logic sea, for fuck's sake."

Kam didn't look convinced. "Let's just stick with Su. Barely anyone there knows your nickname, since it's not in any of the documents, and even if they've heard rumors of your return, I haven't shared your interest in our group. So it should be fine. They'll just think we're saying Sue."

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"You know," she said. "Like, with more of an 'oo' sound. That's how people would say it in Rhunbard."

"I don't know how anyone would mishear that," I said skeptically. "It sounds completely different."

"I dare say you're overestimating the average Ysaran ear." She folded her arms. "If you're being fussy, shouldn't it be an affricate in the first place? That's how the sound is pronounced in the full name."

"Well, yeah, but in Oreskios people speak Inotian, and there's no..." I stopped myself, taking a breath. "Whatever. It's fine. Let's just go with that."

"You're ready?"

She nodded, then took my hand. We navigated through the Stage together, going further afield (well, insofar as distance exists in a metaphysical space) then I ever had before, ultimately approaching a tiny group of figures that had to number well less than 100. We moved to join them, and the world took shape.

It, too, was not quite what I was expecting. When I visualized the home of a group centered around solving the Manse, I imagined something like an expanded version of its interior space. A giant library, maybe, books sprawling upwards for tens of stories, the residents reading attentively along the walkways. Or perhaps something less austere and more in tune with the mystery genre - perhaps an elaborate recreation of the setting of one of the most famous stories, or just the kind of casual book club environment the name 'Coffee House' would suggest.

It was one of those things, actually. In a sense.

We appeared in a chamber that it took me a moment to recognize. It was stone and circular, with a single exit - a wide set of steps - in one direction, and the statue of a clean-shaven man in robes in the other. Surrounding us was a set of benches that formed a circle.

I had been here once before, and only very briefly. But the realization still sent a jolt through my spine.

"This is the boy's entrance to Apsu," I quickly said, scanning it again just to be sure.

Kamrusepa nodded. "Indeed."

I looked to her. "Is this a Landmark? A piece of the real sanctuary?"

"Good guess," she replied, "but no."

"Then..." I looked forwards the stairs.

She gestured towards them, and the two of us stepped forward.

Over the course of all this whole ordeal, I've described a lot of things as 'eerie', 'surreal' or 'dissonant' to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if those terms have started to lose all meaning to you. But just as there is a far head to the uncanny valley, so to is there is a point where something becomes so self-assuredly strange that it crosses the line twice and is rendered banal.

It's sort of like an open-casket funeral. On the face of it, the idea of someone taking a corpse, like an actual human fucking corpse belonging to someone you loved, and using a combination of chemicals and makeup to create a grisly simulacrum of their living self, and then putting it directly in front of you for an often multi-hour long event intended to be cathartic-- It's grotesque, right? What kind of psychopath would think that could possibly be a good idea? And yet through some complex alchemy of atmosphere and sheer audacity, it can work. Feel normal. Even sentimental.

It was this feeling that struck me as I reached the top of the stairs, and was confronted by an exact replica of the abbey gardens.

Everything about it was picture perfect, an identical recreation of how it had looked that weekend. The ocean beyond the glass. The deep blue field, the glade of trees, the kempt-yet-unkempt flower arrangements. And of course the abbey itself, not a crack in the stonework or vine crawling along the walls out of place. For a moment, my hindbrain was briefly convinced we were actually there.

And instantly, I accepted it. Of course it would be this. Obviously it would be this. It only made sense from both an aesthetic and pragmatic perspective. The real question was:

"How did you do this?"

"A mix of cheating and a rather anal measure of note-taking," she explained, a small smile on her lips. "We copied what we could from the Landmarks we had access to, and slowly pieced the rest together from a mix of our own recollections and those of lesser members of the Order who'd visited." She looked to me. "You might still notice a flaw here and there. Please do speak up should that happen."

I nodded distantly, looking in all directions. It wasn't just the one bioenclosure; I could see the distant lights of the Everblossom, the inner sanctum, all of it. "I guess... since the conclave was the last thing we all went through, your memories of it must be almost as vivid as mine."

"Almost as vivid?" She chuckled dourly. "You're not some higher species just because you're good with figures, Su."

"Mm." I pursed my lips, then turned to her. "So we don't get a welcoming party or anything, then?"

She shook her head. "I'm afraid not. The atmosphere we prefer to cultivate is somewhat solitary. I'm happy to play guide for you, though, if you like."

"Okay," I said. "Then where do we find the... Well, the people?"

"All over the place," she said. "Unlike the Crossroads, we keep the time here slowed to the lowest possible pace. It makes it easier to dip in and out of the Manse as required without growing it suddenly being years since you saw all your friends." She put a hand on her hip, looking upwards. "The downside is that time here can't be aligned to the norm of the major Domains. Right now, it's rather early in the morning." Which flipped out her resonator. "6:09 AM, to be specific. Lights must have come on just a few minutes ago."

"Where does everyone sleep...?"

"Where you'd expect, more or less. The interiors are just as high-fidelity as everything else, and the doors still have locks." She gestured outwardly. "Some people claim the bedrooms in the abbey or the headquarters, others chambers in the research tower. And there are a few permanent residences set up around the Manse."

"Oh, right. Where is it?"

She pointed off to our left. There, in the murky space between the diamond of bioenclosures (excepting the secret one), I could see it, an aberrance in the reconstruction, a boil on otherwise smooth skin. They'd set it up to blend into the setting in its own little pocket of air and grass, connected by new tunnels behind bronze seals.

It was too dark to make out the 'residences' Kam was talking about, though.

"Right in the center, all out in the open. Yeah, that checks out." I looked back to her. "What should we do, then?"

She shrugged. "You tell me. This whole venture was your idea."

I clicked my tongue softly. "If time here is out of sync, then people who go in out a lot must be out of sync too. And you said the others are only in here from time-to-time. Do you think any of them would be around?"

A thoughtful hum. "Ophelia doesn't sleep more than the absolute bare minimum. There's a good chance she'll be awake, assuming she hasn't left at some point in the past week or so. If she is, she'd be on the third floor in the main building... though we might run into a few other people in the process. It's probably the busiest part."

I nodded, but hesitated. "What about Yantho? He's the one I think I have the most questions for."

"He definitely wouldn't be up. He's a late-riser."

"Okay. Let's... go see Ophelia, then."

We set forth, heading along the path to the bioenclosure exit, following the same route we had along with our entire class when everything had gone to hell so long ago. It continued to all feel so mundane that it was kind of offputting. As if even though I'd only spent a few days here, this was my home in some esoteric way, and even after 200 years I hadn't meaningfully left.

At least I was starting to feel a little more comfortable with my body at this point, though some of what Kamrusepa had said was still kicking around my head.

"You know," I remarked, looking over myself as we walked, "this body could pass for a doppelganger of you, kind of."

She regarded me with seemingly-genuine bafflement. "What, you mean Kasua's?"

"That's ridiculous. You don't look anything like me."

"I mean, I look Rhunbardic. I have red hair, I'm shorter."

"Yes, because over 10% of Rhunbardi people have red hair, and the game you were playing was about 8th century Rhunbard," she spoke incredulously. "And you're not even short. You're 5'4. Above average."

"The hair doesn't even have anything in common with mine," she said, pinching a length of her own as if to demonstrate. "I have ginger curls. You're flat and sort of a burnt orange. Gods, we don't even have the same eye color."

"Okay, okay," I said soothingly. "Sorry, it was just a thought."

She peered at me judgmentally. "Su, how would you feel if I remarked that someone looked like you, purely on the basis of them being Saoic and having black hair?" She turned back to face the path ahead. "Give that some thought, why don't you."

My mouth was hanging open slightly. I had a vague sense that what had just happened was kind of unfair in a way that was possibly political, but couldn't figure out a way to vocalize it. So I just fell silent, continuing to walk.

Kam took the lead in opening the seals at the beginning and end of the tunnel, and we soon arrived in the central bioenclosure. Unlike around the abbey, here there were a few signs of life: Some tents were pitched in the fields off to the side of the greenhouse, and between the cemetery and the pond several lengths of colored rope criss-crossed the earth.

I pointed. "What's that?"

"The remnants of an attempt to reconstruct a scenario described in the books," she explained without stopping. "You'll see a lot of them about. They're the reason this place exists as it does, to apply the described scenarios to a physical space and extrapolate accordingly."

"How are people 'extrapolating' something so specific?" I asked. "I read through a few. There's barely any detail."

"Oh, on the contrary. There's an abundance of detail," she corrected. "It's just spread over a wide enough space to build a bloody hippodrome. The Manse expects you to intuitively understand certain recurring elements, and only lays them out explicitly once in a thousand volumes." She gestured at the graveyard without turning back. "For example, when describing a missed gunshot, there's a few different ways they describe it. They might simply say it 'missed'. Or that it went 'askew'. Or that a character's 'aim failed'-- Or numerous other phrases." She held up a finger. "And you might think those all mean the same thing, but they actually describe subtly different occurrences. 'Missed' means the target moved. 'Askew' means the gun itself misfired. And 'aim failed' means that the person who fired the gun couldn't keep a steady hand."

I frowned skeptically. "That's interesting, but how are they going from that to like, specific measurements?"

"These things all build up on one another, and people seize on anything. 'Across the graveyard' means something different to 'over the graveyard' and 'through the graveyard. Some books reference specific environmental features as well, which are rare treasures of inference." She glanced back at me. "Though frankly, there is still a fair bit of speculation involved. A lot of of what people do here does ultimately amount to wankery, even if there's method to the madness."

I nodded silently, my eyes wandering over the landscape for any other small details. This was where Mehit had pulled her gun on us, wasn't it? And where we were running from the rooftop sniper. Were those recurring events? I'd have to learn who put all this down.

We headed up towards the raised entryway with the statue of Phui. "This is where I died," I said, the words escaping my lips automatically. It was probably the second most vivid memory of my entire life. Even being here was making my spine tingle a little.

"Balthazar shot me from the bottom of the steps as I was heading out of the door," I said, omitting all the incriminating parts of the story. "I fell down right there, face-forward. Couldn't even find the strength to stop my face from slamming dead into the stone."

"Mm." She held a finger to her lips thoughtfully. "No offense, Su, but I'm sort of glad he got you."

"I hadn't even-- I mean. I wasn't the culprit!"

"Be that as it may, I do think you somewhat had it coming," she remarked as she pushed open the heavy doors. "You murdered me, after all. It's only fair."

I pushed my lips together into an uncomfortable expression that she didn't see.

There was more rope in the main building, which at first made me think something had happened here that was completely foreign to the weekend I remembered, until I remembered the figure Theo had pretended was rushing towards us in the lead-up to Sacnite and Yantho's deaths, causing us to blast into the darkness. Could this have been something similar to that?

No, there were lines running between the two sets of stands. Between the stands and the council round table, even. So... murders during the actual Conclave itself? Or were there times we reassembled after everything began?

As he headed towards the main hall, I began to hear voices. Some people were up, and they quickly came into view as we passed through the next set of doors.

Two of them were sitting at the side of the orrery, talking among themselves, though their gaze turned in our direction upon our arrival. The two contrasted one another extremely strikingly: The first, a man, was among the most average looking people I'd ever seen in my life, round-faced and only a little taller than me, with messy brown hair, a brown tunic and half-grown mustache.

The woman (if that's the right word) next to him, on the other hand, didn't even look human-- I actually wasn't sure if she was until a minute or so later. Her body wasn't even comparable to a golem; rather, she looked like a living doll. White 'skin', ball joints, green hair that was flat and lifeless. And a face with overly large features frozen forever in a state of neutrality. Even by Dilmun standards, the way she turned to me without actually looking at me was one of the creepiest things I'd seen.

As for the third figure, I couldn't get a good at them. They were up on the second floor, looking through the bookshelves for some reason, wearing a red cloak.

"Oh Gods." Kam quickly leaned to the side and spoke quietly out of the corner of her mouth. "These two are somewhat influential, but also completely insane. Don't take anything they say too literally."

I blinked. "Wha--"

The man rose to his feet first. "Kamrusepa! You've returned."

"Isaac!" She declared, her gregariousness in stark contrast to what she'd just said. "Good to see you up and about so early!"

He chuckled, moving towards us while the scary doll woman followed at about half pace. "Indeed. I'm quite over the little funk I was suffering from at our last meeting." He looked to the side. "And I see you've brought new blood, as well."

"That's my job!"

She gestured towards me as the man approached. "Uh, I'm Sue," I said awkwardly. "J-Just to be clear, I'm not committed to all this quite yet. I'm only taking a tour."

"Quite understandable," he said measuredly, extending his hand for me to shake. I took it wordlessly. "It's a commitment, of course. It's good to know what you're getting yourself into." He looked to Kam. "She's from one of the games, I take it?"

"No, she's a direct recruit. Nahmi discovered her through a mutual acquaintance, though of course I ran her through the usual tests."

She's good at this. Keeping the lie simple again to minimize the risks of later friction.

"I see. Well, either way, I trust in your judgement." He smiled. "Well, Sue, it's a pleasure to meet you. The Manse is a truly wondrous thing. I'm always happy to meet another enthusiast."

"Uh, thanks." What was I missing? He really didn't seem that peculiar.

"I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on it, but I would not wish to interrupt Kam while she's giving a tour. She can be quite testy about how we treat her invitees." He chuckled warmly at her, signalling this was in jest.

I was about to say something when the other woman finally caught up. She gave stopped about a meter and a half from me and gave a theatrical curtsy. "Greetings!" she said in an high and extremely chipper voice, her lips not moving whatsoever. "I'm Leuce, but you can call me Lucy! It's wonderful to meet you, Sue!"

"H-Hey," I said. There was a weird quality to the volume of her speech, like it was coming from a speaker and specific words were simply being amplified rather than her actually speaking them more strongly. (It could occurred to me that could be exactly what was happening.) "It's... nice to meet you too, Lucy..."

"Hehe. Are you feeling a little shy?" She tilted her unchanging head to the side. "Like Isaac said, we don't want to scare you off. It's just ever-so-rare for anyone new to come here. It's quite an event."

"No, it's, uh. I appreciate the warm welcome." I glanced briefly at Kam; her radiant smile could have belonged to a doll itself. "I'm just not really good at talking to new people."

"Oh, that's okay! We have plenty of people who have trouble with that sort of thing here, so I promise no one will be mean to you or try to make you do anything you don't want to. We're a motly band of misfits, isn't that right, Isaac?"

He smiled gently. "Indeed."

"But we support one another, even if we have to fight against the whole world." She inclined her head towards me. She barely even had any mannerisms with her hands-- It was absolutely impossible to tell what she was thinking. "I'm sorry. That probably sounded a little more scary than I meant."

I scratched the side of my head awkwardly. "W-Well, wanting to fight against the whole world is kind of the whole deal, isn't it...?"

She clapped her hands together, which made a rather inhuman clicking sound. "Yes, that's true! It's so good that you think of it that way. That's really promising." She inched a little closer. "Sue, would you mind if I asked you a question."

I shrugged. "Sure."

"What's your favorite mystery novel?"