Author: Lurina

240: What Killers Always Do (𒐀) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

There was a lot to think about with Kamrusepa's account. Three things sprung to mind right away.

Firstly, it was interesting, knowing what I'd already read from the more-complete version, that things proceeded so similarly for the first two days. That heavily suggested that everything going on at the beginning with Ophelia had been present in my loop as well, and not the product of some divergence as early as the morning... though that made me wonder even more how it had never come up. Had something else happened to derail their investigation? Or was it just that the absence of Neferuaten meant things never came to a head?

Secondly, there was now a sense of constants and variables that hadn't been there hearing Ptolema's wildly divergent accounting. The fact that Seth and Ptolema's murder had so closely resembled Bardiya's implied that the culprit - not just the Order, but the one who had been doing the real murders - had probably gone in with a specific plan from the start rather than simply improvising. That raised a vital question: What was it that derailed this plan? There was no assurance that what I experienced represented their ideal scenario; if anything, with how many anomalies had been, the opposite was true.

But if I could learn enough, maybe the common elements would start to cohere. Or, well, more seriously I could just ask Kam directly - obviously this would one of the first things you'd think about, with access to a range of detailed accounts.

Thirdly, I wondered if I really was the culprit.

Don't misunderstand. At this point, I wasn't imagining some grand deception where Balthazar and half the people I'd interacted with in Dilmun were lying. But in this case, there really didn't seem to be that much evidence for it other than the fact that I'd been one of the two survivors from the poisonings. Ophelia had survived to the end too. She could just as easily have been the culprit as me.

Though, I thought, the thing with the keys is such a quintessential murder mystery trick, I'd find it hard to believe whoever did it wouldn't have at least a passing familiarity with the genre.

There were other little things too, like the phantom Sacnicte claimed to have seen, and who could have been responsible for that if Hamilcar was indeed already dead. Maybe it'd been a setup by Yantho, if he really was, or was at least controlled by (literally or otherwise) the culprit. But it was hard to really pin any other thoughts down, primarily because--

"There's a lot you left out," I said.

"Well, obviously," Kam replied. "So did you. Aren't we just summarizing, until you come to a decision about if you want to go further?"

"I just meant, uh..." I hesitated, trying to figure how to word this. "I wasn't trying to get you to say anything personal, I just thought the sleuthing you were doing with the Order's secret project, well, it might have led to something separate than just finding out they were planning to fake their deaths."

She pursed her lips. "I suppose I did leave one thing out," she said. "When you showed me that note of yours, talking about the Order's archive, it gave me a lead I hadn't had before. Prior to that point, I'd been planning on trying to speak with the more of the Conclave members directly. Zeno in specific..." She hummed thoughtfully. "Because we didn't find anything, though, I did end up trying to talk to him after dinner. But I wasn't able to learn very much directly relevant to their plans."

"Directly relevant?"

"Rather, I was able to confirm something I already suspected about Zeno as an individual, but didn't relate directly to the murders," she explained. "So it falls into the more personal side of things."

For some reason, the image of Kamrusepa probing into the specifics of the professor's relationship with his own body popped into my head.

No, that probably isn't what she meant.

"When you said you'd only talk about yourself if I reciprocated," I told her, "I didn't think that also applied to other people."

"Well, this does apply to me." She hesitated. "Rather-- It does and it doesn't."

"Is this about the real reason you were going to the sanctuary?" I asked. "The person you seemed to be blackmailing you in your apartment, I mean."

Kam's expression softened, though more into a state of neutrality that with vulnerability or wistfulness. "Indirectly."

"So it's indirect relationship, to something that is itself indirect."

She snorted. "Good heavens, Su."

"Sorry." I frowned. "I don't mean to seem... Too impatient, or anything."

She cast her eyes over the field, leaning slightly back in her chair. "It's refreshing, in a sense. Probably my foremost frustration with life here on a day-to-day basis is how little anyone living here wants anything, even in a Domain like this. Even in matters interpersonal, scarcely anyone ever pursues a peer with the kind of fanaticism I remember from my former life. They just wait for everything to call into their hands."

I nodded. "I noticed that right away. Everything here is kind of... sedate. It feels like everything is so frivolous that, combined with the memory thing, people here aren't really able to grow-- At least not permanently." I gave her the side-eye. "Though, uh, I'm surprised you're willing to admit there are any problems with living forever."

"Oh, yes. Just pave over my entire worldview with bloody cement, why don't you." She rolled her eyes."You've got it all wrong. It's not a matter of lifespan, or people being unable to progress as individuals. On a fundamental level, there's not even anything really different about how things are here compared to life in a wealthy neighborhood in the Remaining World. Apathy and ennui are not novel concepts." She took a long sip from her cup of tea, which even after all this was still in her hands. "It's like I was trying to tell you earlier. The problem is that there's all these arbitrary limitations on everything."

I was skeptical. "You really think everyone would act differently if the world was growing, and they could just continually amass more stuff? I feel like it would feel just as empty."

"There was an experiment I heard about, once, where a group of scholars created a 'paradise' for a family of rats," Kamrusepa digressed. "They kept them in a large, comfortable environment, and gave them as much food as they desired. Supposedly, the person running it imagined that it would lead to massive overpopulation, but instead, the opposite happened. The rats developed strange, maladaptive behavior patterns, forming reclusive cliques and becoming arbitrarily hostile. Some developed strange sexual behaviors. If I recall, the study equated what happened with the advent of modernity - that too little strife leads to an empty human experience, leading people to embrace nihilism and self-loathing and sodomy; all the usual tropes." She glanced towards me. "Now, what about that experiment strikes you as an error, do you think?"

I squinted. "Well, you're trying to frame it as not an issue of overabundance, so presumably you're going to say it's that they were still in a captivity at all, or that the variety of food they had was too limited. That there was nothing to aspire to, something like that."

She looked away, musing for a few moments. "You're not incorrect," she eventually said. "Certainly the lack of novelty and space was an issue. It is the nature of all living things to try to expand their reach. When that impulse is denied, it leads to suffering." She snorted. "Still, we're talking about rats here. You could give a rodent all the Tigris as his domain, and he'd still do naught but scavenge a thousand different types of grain from a thousand different fields."

"So what are you saying, then?"

She pursed her lips. "What the experiment - if indeed it actually happened and isn't just one of those stories that float around - tells us isn't per-se anything about immortality or abundance, not even psychology in specific. Even if there was nothing they overlooked, it would still only amount to anecdotal evidence. But what it does remind us of is a more general truth: That animals are beings which have evolved around certain purposes, and cannot viscerally invest themselves in others without some form of self-trickery. Or to put it more directly, it's impossible for human beings as a group to not trend towards sloth when there needs are met. So the moral of the story isn't that Dilmun itself needs to change, nor is it some trite nonsense about suffering and scarcity conferring some inherent meaning - as if any meaning is truly inherent. No, the issue is that what nature has given is up here," she tapped the side of her head, "cannot rise to the occasion."

I raised an eyebrow. "I thought you believed it was wrong for people to want to use the Manse to mess with other people's minds."

"No, I said that I hated wireheading specifically. Not that the very idea is wrong in principle." She swirled the liquid in the cup with her forefinger. "I wouldn't do it nonconsensually, in any case-- Though even then it would need to be handled very delicately. We would need to find a way to expand the scope of our minds in a way that wouldn't replicate the folly of the Iron Princes. To dream of things unimaginable to apes, but without losing the essential quality that makes us human." She gave me a serious look. "Even now, we still haven't escaped the shadow of the end of the Imperial Era. The metaphysics of this world, of what the Order considered to be a paradise, sprung up themselves from the Covenant of the Mourning Realms and its own morality. A desire to birth an eternal stagnant normalcy, as the ancestors of the Mekhians once experienced before the rise of other civilizations. And endless ebb and flow of the tides."

"Unending stability." I thought of the Gilgamesh book again. The peace beyond narrative. Easy-going days with friends, an endless loop. That night sitting beside Shiko in her bed, the longing for it to last forever...

"You can do better than just rephrasing what I said to you, Su," Kamrusepa said, oblivious to my internal monologue. She took another sip. "Anyway, I obviously there are still specifics to iron out, and plenty of time to do so. For the time being, we should concern ourselves with matters more practical. Speaking of-- Feeling any more of a willingness to open up?"

I huffed the air. "Not really, to be honest. I don't know if I could. It's, uh." It was impossible to even describe the problem. "I don't know."

"That's rather melodramatic. Do you really think your personal baggage matters that much, one way or the other? They say that excessive self-consciousness is twin to narcissism."

"Who says that, exactly."

"Oh, you know." She gestured vaguely. "Psychologists."

I peered over at her for a few moments, then shook my head.

Kamrusepa sighed. "Well, if you're going to be like that," she waved a hand and banished the cup, "then I suppose we could take a look at something more practical. I certainly have a few more thoughts right off the bat, having heard all that from you. Unless you need some rest?"

I probably did, it having already been afternoon when I'd set off from the Crossroads, yet despite this I shook my head. "No, I'm fine."

"In that case, why don't I give you a more practical example of why this place is useful? I think the most immediately interesting place for us is probably going to be the kitchen in the abbey. With two perspectives on essentially the same event, and the ability to navigate the space freely, I think there's a good chance we'll be able to figure out the trick."

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

"Haven't you figured it out already? If it's something that happens regularly, shouldn't it be trivial?"

She made a slightly consternated smile. "I have a hunch I'd say I'm 90% confident in, yes." Her brows rose. "But this isn't just about me. It's getting you settled into the right mindset."

I frowned. "I wish people would stop trying to drip-feed me fucking information like I'm a little baby that needs to be weaned off my mother's milk. First Neferuaten, and now you."

"I'm not trying to hide anything from you, I quite promise," she assured. "I just don't want to predispose you to any conclusions, or overwhelm you."

"Are you feeling the same way Ptolema was?" I asked suspiciously. "Worried you might harrow me so much I slink back off to being a vegetable?"

To my surprise, instead of shooting back with another snarky dismissal, Kam's expression just turned mildly uncomfortable.

"...is this about--" I hesitated. "Is this about whatever motivates me to commit the murders? If you really believe I'd have killed Ran... you must also think - or know - that it's something pretty extraordinary."

Kamrusepa's smile returned, but it had a more brittle quality to it. "Would you believe me if I told you I had no idea one way or the other?"

"Not really."

She let out a dry laugh. "Well, I suppose that's fair. It's the truth, though. Even now I don't really understand what you were thinking, especially in terms of her specifically. It's just an assumption based on what I know you were capable of. There's a sense in which you are the greatest extant enigma in all of this." Her smile faded somewhat. "That's part of why I was so eager to being you here."

Hearing her phrase it like that, so soon after what happened with Ophelia, I finally felt like I could no longer really mentally navigate around it. I'd been thinking about the idea of Yantho as the mastermind and Theo as the accomplice, but any theory that didn't account for the reality that I was at least an accomplice under most circumstances was completely dead in the water.

"I'm noticing," I pointed out, "that's not a denial of knowing something that might drive me to kill other people."

Kam's eyes averted. "Well, I don't know if I'd even say that necessarily. I won't deny that there are things which are common knowledge among most of us now that would definitely upset you, and in the context of the conclave, might motivate anyone to kill in certain circumstances." She furrowed her brow. "But to motivate you, specifically, to perform a massacre? No; I can't see it."

I fidgeted. "Really, can't you just say it? Rip the fucking plaster off?"

She looked at me stiffly. "Again, if you were willing to open up yourself--"

"I know, I know." I waved her off. "Whatever. What about Theo? Do you think whatever drove us to kill could be the same thing, or somehow related?"

Her upper wrinkled, and her eyes darted out towards the side. It was obvious I was pushing this point to a degree she wasn't fully comfortable with. "It's somewhat difficult to say," she replied. "I've met with Theodoros a few times, but I haven't spoken with him about any of this. With that said, he was much closer to the Order than even you, so... well, I can't say."

So it's something to do with the Order in general, and not about myself or Ran.

I thought back to what Theo had been yelling at me shortly before I killed him. About not just the conclave, but the Exemplary Acolyte's Class itself being a setup from the very start. And that everyone had been part of the conspiracy save for the two of us.

Yantho had been the one to convince him or that, and I'd been considering that a matter of 'manipulating' him. But what if I'd been thinking about this all wrong? Could something so absurd actually be true?

I thought back to when I'd originally applied to the class. I think this came up at some point already, but joining it hadn't been a specific plan of Ran and I originally - we'd just hoped that becoming medical arcanists would necessarily lead to us connecting with former Egomancers, even if Samium himself was a bit of a long shot. We'd applied to the program not because we'd imagined it'd actually go anywhere, but because it was one of those opportunities that everyone signed up for if they met the criteria, like getting an internship at the Guild of Runecrafters.

I've been saying this from literally the very start, but obviously the premise of the whole class was stupid. We all had nearly perfect grades, but there was probably a pool of hundreds or even over a thousand students in the field back then who also had nearly perfect grades. Outside of celebrity geniuses like Fang, the concept of 'the smartest X students in the world' was unverifiable nonsense, and I'd known that, more or less, from the start.

And that would make it very easy, if you had a finger in academy's infrastructure, to decide who exactly got in.

Even not knowing the specifics, if that were really true, if a whole act of my life had just arranged by the Order just on account of my connection to my grandfather-- Well, Kam was right. It would be upsetting.

"If I may ask, Su," she added diplomatically, "can you think of something that might drive you to such an extreme? Even the most absurd hypothetical?"

I shook my head. "Not really. That's why the whole thing is so incomprehensible to me." Still, I sighed, trying to entertain the question seriously. "I would probably have killed someone to protect Ran, I guess, or if they'd killed her already." I glanced to the side. If you're going to admit to that much, what was even the point of leaving out that you murdered Theo in your account?

Kamrusepa frowned. "But can you see yourself going as far as a planned serial murder?"

"Probably not."

She hummed to herself. "Well. As I was trying to say, let's set this aside for now." She stood up, her summoned chair vanishing. "Come on. The kitchen awaits."

"What about Ophelia?"

"Oh, right. Since she's not back by now, she's probably being a little stubborn," Kam said grumpily, reaching into her pocket. "I'll leave her a message on her resonator."

We descended down from the roof and back to the field, crossing back to the guest bioenclosure. By now, there were a couple other people off on the other side of the gardens, but with our trip cut short the Domain still didn't seem to have completely woken up. We approached the door, the familiar sigil of the Order overhead.

Inside, a man was lounging by the side of the lit fireplace in the spot that Linos had once sat, a square-jawed fellow with pale skin and messy black hair, probably Inotian. He was reading a book, and glanced up as we entered with suspicion.

"Who's this?" he asked gruffly, shooting me a sharp look. I glanced away awkwardly.

"Prospective recruit," Kam answered succinctly, not stopping walking. "Not one of them. Nothing to worry about."

He grunted, looking back down.

We headed down the hall, and as approached the stairs and the entrance to the kitchen, Kam remarked: "That's Loukas. Don't mind him, he's just a bit of a grump who doesn't like strangers. He'd be eager to see you if he knew who you were."

"What did you mean by 'one of them'?"

She looked back at me as she opened the door. "I told you, the people Isaac keeps bringing to this bloody place. Zealots. Deviants." She stepped through, shaking her head. "We're starting to break into regionalized camps at this point. It's absurd."

Inside, the kitchen was - do I need to keep saying this? - exactly as I remembered it. A large wooden table sat oblong beside a window, with a few cabinets to the side used for cutlery and the like. Likewise, the kitchen: A slender chamber with cupboards, a counter and sink, and an oven on the right, and the back half of the room adjacent to the window narrowing to make space for a pantry on the left. The window, where Bardiya's ravaged corpse laid, let in a pleasant beam of light from the exterior.

"Well then," Kam said, putting her hands on her hips. "Here we are."

"This is still so weird," I said, adjusting my glasses as I looked over the chamber. "It feels almost gross, somehow."

"Like, I don't know, uncanny. Like digging up a corpse."

"You're the one who wanted to be here," she said, palms outward.

She was right, of course, but still I flattened my lips in discomfort. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to do."

"Look around. Speculate." She inclined her head. "Surely you've wished you could take another look at a place like this over the years?"

"I mean, yeah, but..."

"Then do it!" She gestured forward.

I stared at her for a moment, then sighed.

Firstly, I took a look inside the pantry, a room I'd never really had a chance to inspect properly. Far from the massive one in the main building, it was essentially a slightly-larger-than-average closet. Three sets of shelves lined the walls with food items and brands contemporary to the era (how would they have known exactly what the Order would have had in stock? Did they did up an old shopping list, or just make it up?) while a hatch leading to a cold locker sat at the back. It occurred to me that someone could have hid in it, but taking a look inside, you could probably barely a turkey inside.

There were a few minor enchantments on the shelves to make food keep a little longer, but other than that there was disappointingly little in the clues. Going back into the kitchen proper, I opened all the cupboards, the hinges of which were facing the window. None of them contained anything interesting - pots, pans, more canned food. The oven, which opened downwards, was bigger than it looked but still not large enough for anyone in our class except for Lilith - or maybe Ran if she really squeezed.

I glanced over my shoulder at Kamrusepa, who was watching expectantly. Great, put me on the spot again, why don't you.

Finally, the pivotal element: The window. I knelt down; it was the type that opened from the bottom and was split into two, with the lower half sliding upwards. An adult could fit through it, though it'd be a squeeze and without levitation (or a circus-level adeptness with acrobatics) would inevitably land one directly in the thorny bushes beyond. Still, there was a little ridge on the exterior that meant, if you had time, you could probably carefully up instead, edging across the side of the building until you reached one of the doors, where it would be possible to hop down without making a mess of yourself.

Though, it wouldn't have been possible for the culprit to have headed for the front door doing that, since they would have passed right by the window in front of all of us.

I shut the window again, taking my glasses off as I peered closely at the point where the movable part met the frame. There was a tiny, tiny gap in the seal, maybe enough for a thin piece of string.

"I'm surprised that I would go as far as trying to kill Linos at the end," Kamrusepa chimed in suddenly. "I can see why I would have surmised it was likely Theo, but taking a risk of that nature doesn't feel like me at all. I almost never instigate violence in the loops, you know." After letting this strange brag sit in the air for a moments, she added. "So, did you ever confirm the identity of the figure in the bird mask that chased you after you recovered Mehit?"

"Can we, like, keep to one thing at a time?" I replied, a little irritated. "I'm trying to focus."

Kam shrugged. "I was just curious. That motif is another element of this I find difficult to understand." I heard her move to lean against the side of the wall. "Apparently it originates from a more organic ghost story from the sanctuary, but no one's quite sure of the ultimate source. Linos is might have originated from your grandfather, though. He said he used to love extravagant tall tales."

"Can you replicate the barrier Linos summoned?" I asked her, not looking back.

"Mm? Oh, yes." She waved a hand. "Though I can't promise total fidelity. His work is a little inconsistent."

Despite her saying this, the membrane appeared in roughly the position I remembered it; arching down from the front and left, coming to a terminus in such a way that it extended a little beyond the window, but in such a way that it didn't cover the top right corner. I nodded in silent approval. Truthfully, nothing else really mattered - unless I could poke some kind of hole in this, then I couldn't see a way that it wasn't a true closed room.

Which was problematic if Kamrusepa's account was true. Because while Bardiya's death could be written off as a suicide-- Well, I guess Seth could have killed Ptolema, and then himself? But that felt even more outlandish.

The first thing to definitively confirm was whether the barrier would break on my resistances, or just repel me. I gave it a firm whack with the side of my first, which then felt like it was being violently pushed away by a magnet. It didn't budge.

I nodded to myself. The second thing to confirm was whether it could be used to hurt myself. Gritting my teeth, I thrust my forefinger hard against the repelling against, and once I really started putting effort into it, I could feel the skin being crushed as the force pushed in harder and harder from all directions. When I pulled it back, I was even bleeding a little bit. So that was a yes.

...which left only the third and final thing. That if this would still hold true when the barrier was in motion.

"Shrink it so it hits my arm," I instructed Kam.

"It's interesting to see you work through this," she said, smiling.

I grunted.

The barrier contracted slowly, and my arm was slowly pushed back in turn. For a moment, I thought this answered my question; the barrier could be used by Linos as a murder weapon.

But then, emerging through the years of high-concept academic arcana that had filled my brain for the past century, I recalled the specifics of how resistances worked, and applied that to the way Linos has described his barrier - the exterior lined with repelling force. In the same way that being hit with a conjured fireball or gust of wind wouldn't trigger them, obviously being merely pushed by a secondary effect like that wouldn't be enough to set it off.

But that wasn't what was in question, here. Bardiya hadn't been tapped by the barrier. And what triggered resistances was when an effect intersected directly with the human body as it was being applied. That required 1) that it was still being conjured in real time by the caster, which this was, and more importantly 2) that it either went directly on top of it... or moved so fast that the physics of it meant the body would have nowhere else to go.

Or to put it more simply, it wasn't enough to test it tapping me.

"Do it again," I instructed. "But a lot faster this time."

Kamrusepa chuckled. She didn't even ask for confirmation, which I suppose was a kind of answer in of itself.

The barrier moved almost faster than I could see it, hit my arm... and promptly disappeared.

I hesitated, narrowing my eyes. Okay, so Linos couldn't have been the culprit, then. The barrier could have been used as a weapon by someone inside, but the most he'd have been able to do would be to drive them towards the back of the room.

So... what then? Is it really a perfect closed room after all?

I raised my still-bloody finger to my mouth. What was I missing?