Author: Lurina

031: In Fading Image (𒐆) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum Loft | 11:20 AM | Second Day

The walls were lined with masks.

There didn't appear to be much of a unifying theme, or even aesthetic, other than them all having distinct designs and being obviously made to last - there wasn't anything made out of papyrus, or any other disposable material. Some of them were simplistic, being little more than uniform pieces of material with eye holes, or even just distinctly colored balaclavas, while others were extremely ornate and specific. There were bejeweled ball masks, vivid recreations of animals, and historical ones from almost every culture. Saoic and Inotian theater masks, all bright colors and caricatured expressions. Mekhian death masks, sombre and eerie in their realism. Ysaran parade masks, lined with feathers.

Regardless of nature and quality, all were given equal footing in the display. Each was set on a oval wooden plaque about half a foot apart from the next, hanging from bronze hooks by lengths of silk string. They were labelled only by a four digit number, displayed above each, that seemed sequential rather than random, counting from left to right, from ceiling to floor.

You might be getting the wrong sense of scale here, so I feel it's important to emphasize that there were a lot of masks in this room. The chamber wasn't as big the private theater we'd just passed through a moment earlier, which Neferuaten had explained dominated nearly half of the third and final floor, but it was big enough for it to take a few moments to walk from one end to the other. And the ceiling was tall to the degree that I could see a ladder over in the corner to reach the higher parts of the display.

If you followed said display all the way to its terminus, they must've numbered a bit over a thousand. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a little creepy. There was only a single window, built into the slanted roof, which cast the entire scene in a peculiar, unbalanced light.

This time, Neferuaten had led us into the room completely without comment. She wore a cheerful expression in response to our immediate bemusement.

"Mmm," she hummed, after a few solid seconds of silence. "Yes, this is the reaction I was hoping for, I think."

None of us said anything at first, except for Kamrusepa, who might've mumbled something along the lines of 'my goodness'. My eyes wandered further up the wall. A mask that seemed to be intended to resemble some kind of lizard stared down imperiously, and I pressed my lips together in mild discomfort.

"Come on, then," she went on. "One of you ought to ask first. Grant an old woman her small pleasures."

"What," I asked in a deliberate tone, "is this place?"

"Ahah, I knew I could count on your curiosity, Utsushikome." She cleared her throat. "This is our mask room."

"Yep," Ran said flatly. "Might've picked up on that."

"It's actually an interesting bit of history, if not quite as dramatic as what I showed you earlier," Neferuaten continued, moving to ignite some of the lamps in the periphery of the chamber, rendering the atmosphere a little less eerie. "You see, back before we became a public organization, a lot of our members were actually anonymous even to each other - not the inner circle, mind, but many among the lower ranks."

"I thought a lot of them were still anonymous," I said.

She nodded. "To the outside world, yes, but we no longer grant that privilege within the order itself. It was decided that the benefits of increased trust and organizational coherence outweighed the loss of a few die-hards who wouldn't tolerate it." She leaned idly against a wall as she finished. "But as I was saying, back before then, the need would sometimes arise for in-person meetings that preserved anonymity. And so..."

And so they decided to do it in the most over the top way possible, I thought. Figures from what we've seen so far, I suppose.

"I think I might have heard about this before, now that my mind has been put to it," Kamrusepa chimed in predictably. "There was a leak from a reported ex-member about seventy years ago, I read, that mentioned meetings almost having the air of a masque ball..."

Neferuaten snorted. "That gives our capability as hosts more credit than it probably deserves, as dinner last night well illustrated," she said. "The only atmosphere we seem competent at cultivating here is the one people need to breathe, and even that's not been immune to the odd fuck-up over the years."

"So this is a sort of-- A museum, for that custom," Kamrusepa concluded.

"The better word would probably be 'gallery', but yes, more or less," she said, nodding. "We've never quite known what to do with the top floor. As I've been told, the theater was part of the old temple, and so got preserved along with the rest of the design - but we're about as far from an acting troupe as you can get. We use the stage and seating area for some of our larger larger meetings, but we never found a use for this backstage component until this. It was Hamilcar's idea, originally. He thought, since we had all these masks, and a thematically appropriate spot for them..." She shrugged. "Well, why not?"

'Why not' seemed increasingly like the basis for the majority of the design choices of the Sanctuary. Before this was all over, I really hoped I have a chance to ask just how this all got built.

"Er, to be honest, I'm not sure I really understand this," Theodoros said, wrinkling his brow. "Why would you bother with this idea at all? Couldn't everyone just wear their veils?"

"Because they wanted a system where you'd be able to distinguish individuals in spite of their anonymity, I should think," Kamrusepa said. "Is that right, grandmaster?"

"Mm? Oh, ye~es," Neferuaten replied. "It's definitely that, and not just that the people making the decision thought it would have more mystique."

Kamrusepa's expression deflated, but not into the disappointment of earlier. Instead, it was more of sardonic look. "Oh."

Neferuaten chuckled. "Actually, truth be told, I don't know the real reason. Once again, it predates my involvement." Her eyes wandered up to the window overhead, to the beam of lamplight. "It was a strict requirement that everyone's mask be clearly distinguishable from the others, however. Which is the reason for the rich variety here. Having one made and approved became quite a complicated process by the end, just to make sure there wasn't any overlap."

"Pretty strict," Theodoros said.

"Oh yes," she said, smiling. "We love being strict about the oddest things, here."

My eyes wandered some more over the display. A mask that looked like a sheet of solid stone. A mask that looked like the head of an ant. A mask that looked like a mess of bandages, barely recognizable as one at all save for the context.

A funny idea came into my head.

"Was there a rule against wearing someone else's mask, then?" I asked.

Neferuaten scrunched up her lip, thoughtful. "You'd rather think so, but no, I'm not aware of anything like that. I think it was all just taken more or less on trust. Or the idea that you'd probably be able to tell, regardless."

"Well, er, realistically, you probably could," Theo said, scratching the side of his cheek. He seemed more talkative now then he had, earlier. "It's not hard to tell who you're talking to behind a veil, so I can't imagine a mask would altogether much different. You might not know the face of the person wearing it, but you'd definitely know if they suddenly became someone else."

"Almost certainly," Neferuaten said. "That's why I'm not certain about the true intent of the rule." She looked thoughtful, for a moment. "Perhaps it wasn't about identity at all, but simply a way to declare oneself to your comrades, absent of a face."

"You'd think clothes would suffice, for something like that," Kamrusepa said.

Neferuaten snorted. "Well, if I might be a little crude, the lions share of our membership are male scholars, and pretty old ones at that. It's a sea of grey and black chitons, whenever we get enough people in one place."

A couple people chuckled, then the room fell silent again for a moment.

Eventually, Neferuaten idly raised her hand, pointing a finger. It was directed towards a mask on the left wall, a little over half way to the ceiling.

It was one of the Inotian theater masks I mentioned earlier, realistically styled, but with an over-the-top expression; in this case, a jolly smile that would've been unsettling if it wasn't so completely goofy, along with a thick, curly beard. It was unpainted save for what looked like a ruby set in the forehead.

I got the impression it was pretty old. Since replication arcana had destroyed the value of precious gems, they'd gone from being viewed as symbols of luxury and beauty to being seen as tacky unless they were utilized very carefully. This was certainly not an example of such tasteful usage.

"That one," she said, "is your father's, master Melanthos."

Theo adjusted his glasses, looking surprised only briefly before furrowing his brow. "Not particularly surprising," he said. "He's, uh, certainly a fan of traditional Inotian culture. Altaia, especially, and that looks Altaic."

"It's a little silly-looking," Kamrusepa said. "You might've thought he'd pick something with a bit more of an authoritative energy, considering his position."

"It's probably just him trying to be funny," Theo said. "He's always doing that sort of thing-- Picking out silly-looking furniture or clothes for the novelty of it, seeing if they'll make people laugh."

It was true. The Melanthos family manse was filled with curiosities that looked like they'd been placed there as an appeal to some complicated form of irony. I had a memory of playing hide-and-seek behind an incredibly janky-looking statue of a dog that some local restaurant had commissioned as a mascot, only to get rid of it a month later on account of it scaring off half of the younger customers.

"Sounds like you're not a fan of that side of them," Neferuaten said, looking mildly amused.

"I'm, er, not sure it's possible for a child to enjoy their parents sense of humor, ma'am."

"What about the other inner circle members?" Kamrusepa asked, her brow raised in curiosity.

Neferuaten took a breath. "Gods, let's see..." Her finger wandered idly in circles along with her gaze, until both focused on another target, much closer to the ceiling. "That one up there was Anna's, for a start."

I craned my neck to look.

It wasn't much of a 'mask' at all. Rather, it looked more like a veil that just happened to be made of leather rather than cloth, with a slit cut out for the eyes. There was a number in Eme stitched at front: 15.

It was ugly, in a way that I had to conclude was on purpose. The leather was raw-looking, with obvious vein lines and stitching that wound across the surface.

"Huh," I said.

"You're surprised?" Neferuaten asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sort of. I had a feeling it'd be simplistic, but.. Not quite like that? I mean, we only met briefly, but..."

"What you must keep in mind," she said, "is that masks were chosen upon the initiation of the member, and that changing them, though not forbidden, was something of a nuisance. So I suppose you could call them something of a snapshot in time-- More illuminating about the past than anything close to the present."

Snapshots of time. "Like the building itself."

Neferuaten didn't say anything, but she did smile a little to herself.

"I've seen one of those before," Ran said, looking up as well. "They use them at the Runesmith's Guild as a punishment." She hesitated. "Well, maybe not anymore. This was in a period play I saw a few years ago."

"What sort of punishment?" Kamrusepa asked.

"Humiliation, sort of like a dunce cap," Ran explained. "Pretty old-style educational custom. The people doing the worst in the whole year got stuck in a remedial class, and given veils like this so everyone would know about it, with the number being their academic ranking." She frowned. "I dunno the truth of it, but the drama made it seem like the intent was more to pressure them to wash out then actually get better."

"Hard to believe," Theo said. "U-Uh, that someone like her could have ever been in a position like that as a student, I mean. Considering who she is now."

"Well, you're rather jumping to conclusions there, Theo," Kamrusepa said. "It could simply be her using a prop she had access to in order to make some manner of statement." She made a curious frown. "Indeed, the better question is why she'd pick such a thing to represent herself at all, regardless as to if it bore personal relevance or not." She looked to Neferuaten. "Do you know, grandmaster?"

The woman looked contemplative for a moment. "I've known Anna for more than two centuries, and even now, she's still a bit of an enigma. I could make an educated guess, but I think it'd convey more to simply say that she's a deeply cynical person. In fact, you could say that she doesn't really believe in progress at all-- not for science, and certainly not for individuals."

Kam blinked. "That's... A little hard to believe, if I may say so." She tilted her head to the side. "Rather, how can you be in an organization like this and not believe in scientific progress?"

"Let me clarify," Neferuaten said. "When I say 'believe' I don't mean in the sense that she doesn't believe it's possible."

"You mean, she's opposed to it?" she asked.

"Not quite that, either. She has a... Funny way, of thinking about things," she replied, shaking her head. "Forgive me, I probably shouldn't have said anything." Her finger slid sideways, to the other side of the room.

This time, it pointed to a colorful mask, obviously styled after a bird, with bright blue, purple, pink and red feathers arranged in a pleasing contrast around a beak shape. It looked like something you'd expect to see at a masquerade party, if a little higher effort.

"Durvasa's," Neferuaten said. "Fairly by the numbers, as one would expect from him. I think he always felt the whole idea was a little silly."

"It's tasteful, though," Kamrusepa said. "Expressive, but not to the point of sticking out too an excess. I'd probably pick something like that, were it me."

I gave her a skeptical look. "I find it hard to believe you wouldn't want to stick out, Kam."

She clicked her tongue. "I like to think my choices in attire are very considered and understated. It's hardly my fault the rest of our class still dresses like they're in secondary school, miss wool-robes-and-braids."

I flattened my brow at her, and Neferuaten chuckled. She shifted her finger again, towards an ornate-looking metal mask - brass, but with some patina left to form and then polished, leaving it that distinctive mix of shining green and bronze - that seemed to depict some sort of demon, with warped, animalistic features, horns, and a gaping maw. It looked Saoic, probably from somewhere in the league.

"That one is Zeno's," she said. "Obviously, you haven't met him yet, but he's quite the fan of collecting foreign artifacts... Foreign from his perspective, at least. It's all very typically Inotian." She glanced to the side. "No offense intended, Theodoros."

"Uh, none taken," he said.

She spun her finger in the air a few times, looking put-off. "As for Hamilcar's, it sadly escapes me. He didn't wear the thing often. At the larger meetings, he usually was represented by proxy or attended only through a logic bridge, and the design itself was something forgettably traditional. I remember it was mostly wood..." She sighed. "You'll have to forgive me."

"What about your own, grandmaster?" Kam asked, with her inquisitive smile.

"Oh, right!" She let out a surprised burst of laughter, shaking her head. "Forgot to count myself." She stepped away from the wall, and then gestured up towards the area above where she'd been leaning.

It took me a moment to realize which mask she was pointing out, since it was so unremarkable. It was little more than an oval of silver, with holes cut for the two eyes and mouth, and a little dent to accommodate the nose.

"Honestly, I'm lucky I got away with it," she said. "We've rejected plenty of similar ones on the basis of them being too indistinct. I must have caught them on a lazy day."

"It's very... Utilitarian," Kamrusepa said, in a tone where you could tell she was straining to make it sound like a compliment. "I expect the metal was a bit uncomfortable to wear, though."

"There's a little cushioning on the other side," Neferuaten said, with a small smile. "I had to fix it up quickly after the first time I wore it and got a rash."

I stared at the thing with a funny expression. I wasn't sure why, but it produced a strangely somber feeling within me. An uneasy one, like sitting by the grave of someone you never knew.

She turned to regard me. "You look a little disappointed, Utsushikome."

"Oh, uhh-- Sorry," I said, hesitant. "It's just... Not what I would've expected from you."

She turned to look at it herself, her expression a little wistful. "What might you have expected, if I might ask?"

"W-Well, I don't know about that," I said, curling a length of hair around my finger and averting my eyes as I was put on the spot. "But you're an artist, and I know you have a lot of passion for older Mekhian culture... But then, I suppose this was a long time ago, so..."

"No, no, you're right," she said reassuringly, as I trailed off. "It was unlike me. Even all those years past."

She fell quiet, for a moment. I didn't interject, since it looked like she was still formulating her thoughts.

"It's hard to put it into words, really," she eventually said, something in her posture changing, becoming a little more uncertain. "As I said, these are more snapshots of the past than anything, and I was in a very particular state of mind, all of those years ago. I suppose I was thinking of the idea of... A clean slate, perhaps."

"A clean slate?" Kamrusepa frowned curiously. "Were you trying to make a fresh start, when you joined the order, grandmaster?"

I bit my lip. Suddenly, I was feeling like it might've been dumb for me to have said anything.

Neferuaten opened her mouth as to laugh, but instead only exhaled strangely, the corners of her eyes wrinkling. "That's a funny question. You're not wrong, but on the other hand, you've probably mistook my meaning completely."

"Oh," Kam replied, suddenly hesitant. "Pardon, I shouldn't have been making assumptions. Well-- That is to say, I ought not to have inquired about something personal at all."

"No, it's alright," she replied, shaking her head. "My own fault for being excessively cryptic."

Another moment passed, and as I saw Neferuaten lean her head towards the door, I expected she was about to say that we ought to move on.

But then, something different happened.

"It's probably a little much to me to say," she said, the tone strangely casual, "but when I was young, I lost almost my entire family. I'd married early - the two of us met in university - and in those days, there weren't the age requirements for child rearing that there are nowadays. By the time I was in in my late fifties, we already had three children. Two daughters, one of whom was coming up to adulthood herself, and a little boy who had only got to walking a year or so before." She ran her tongue along the upper rim of her mouth, the bulge visible. "Feels more like something I read in a book than something that happened to me, now."

My eyes widened, a little taken aback. I'd pieced together a lot from our conversations and simple context clues, but I'd never heard Neferuaten talk so forwardly about her early life before. Least of all around others.

"One day, I had some sudden obligation to do with work - I was a journalist back then, if you can believe it - and I had to miss a week-long trip my husband was taking to visit his parents, along with the children. Apparently, some group a few houses away got a little incautious." Her voice grew more distant. "I don't know how much they tell children nowadays, but when a contact paradox happens, there isn't very much left. The iron in people's bodies vanishes all at once. What's left is... Well, sort of a green-grey sludge."

Dead silence.

"I doubt it will make sense to you," Neferuaten continued, before anyone could gather themselves sufficiently to say anything. "But something about the fact that there was nothing left... That when I was looking at their coffins at the funeral, they were just tokens, fetishes... That was what stuck with me. How should I put it into words..." She exhaled. "I had never thought about how fragile a state it is to be the person you are. Back then, I'd poured almost all of myself into my family-- Into being a 'mother'. That word defined my place in the world. The love of my husband, the smiling faces of my children, were what filled my heart every morning when I opened my eyes... And then it was all gone, without anything but old pictures and papers to prove it had happened." She snapped her fingers. "Just like that."

The sound echoed in the quiet of the room. I could only see Kamrusepa from where I was standing, looking dumbstruck.

"It's a funny thing to say, I know, but I've come to believe that humans never truly grow up," she went on. "Rather, we mistake amassing things - skills, wealth, loved ones - for maturity, because they allow us to mask our inalterable weakness, and build adult identities around those masks. ... but such gains are rooted in the physical world, and if stripped from it, the rest will follow. Strike the fingers from an artist, they will cease to be an artist. Cut the tongue from a singer, they will cease to be a singer. Cut the legs from an athlete. The eyes from an investigator. Take the wise to a place where their wisdom is mocked, the proud to a place where none know them, the loving away from those they love." She smirked, but with a hint of pain. "It doesn't take much to return someone to their baseline state, in the end."

A few moments passed after that, with me staring ahead, speechless. Again, this wasn't anything I hadn't suspected, but for her to just... Come out and explain it, in this time and place, had taken me completely off guard.

Funnily, it was Theodoros who had the nerve to speak up first.

"That's, well..." He cleared his throat roughly, holding a fist to his mouth. "I'm so sorry, ma'am..."

Kamrusepa blinked a few times, then nodded along with vigor. "I-- That's terrible, grandmaster Amat," she said, with grave seriousness. "I can't even imagine how awful it must have been."

Neferuaten turned to regard the two of them, and after a few moments, smiled sardonically. "Ah, dear dear. There's nothing like a sob story to get smart people saying the most typical things..." She shook her head. "No, forgive me-- I do appreciate the sentiment, but there's no need for that. As I said, it was a very long time ago."

Kamrusepa let out a small, nervous laugh, then quickly shut her mouth and bit her lip, going silent altogether. Theodoros simply looked towards the ground.

On the other hand, Ran was wearing a strange expression. Like she was fully engaged with what Neferuaten was saying for the first time in a while. It reminded me of the look she sometimes got right at the end of one of her books.

What's she thinking?

Neferuaten turned her head upwards again, looking towards the rows of masks. "It's strange, the feeling of losing something so completely that there's no one to even grieve with who understands. It's almost like traveling through time, or waking from your own life as though it had all just been a happy dream." She stopped for a moment, as if questioning her own words, but then nodded to herself in approval. "I suppose that was what I'd meant the mask to represent. That sort of bitter new beginning."

Her gaze turned back to regard it again, and mine followed. I stared at the metal, reflective surface, the black holes within the eyes.

"Anyway," Neferuaten said, "I hope you'll forgive me for oversharing. You've humored me quite a lot this morning, so I thought you deserved better than a deflection."

"Ah-- You have nothing at all to apologize for, grandmaster," Kamrusepa replied. "Really, I'm flattered you felt comfortable."

It took a moment for her to reply. "If you say so," she said, with a hint of tired amusement.

"If you don't mind me asking..." Kam went on. "...and really, please do stop me if this is impertinent... But, is this why you became a healer?"

"Oh, no!" she replied, shaking her head. "Not remotely. Gods, if I were after some sort of vicarious catharsis, it would have been more appropriate to have sought a career in the the Chamber of Public Safety. It's not like all the metabolism-tweaking incantations I've been churning out for most of my career would have done the four of them much good, after all." She chuckled to herself again, though it was grimmer this time. "No, in fact, I originally trained as an Aetheromancer before I even thought of going back to my homeland and studying Thanatomancy. I like sailing, so I thought I might become an arcanist for a ship... Though really, I was probably looking for any excuse to leave the country."

"You weren't an arcanist, before you lost your family," Ran inferred.

She didn't respond as if it were any kind of deduction, only nodding slightly. "That's right. I was pushing 90 when I went through my ceremony. I suppose most people say the mind is too set in its ways to properly learn the conceptualization aspect of casting if you start so late nowadays, but it was never an obstacle for me." She shrugged. "It's self-flattery, but I've always had a fluid mode of thinking."

This part, I'd never heard before. I'd always assumed that Neferuaten had been like a more temperate version of Fang when she was young - already obviously brilliant, and upsetting authority figures with her theories.

It was hard to say exactly how, but it changed my impression of her, just slightly. Maybe because it was a less familiar narrative to me, having surrounded myself with so many people who had already experienced success at what was, really, a ridiculously young age. People who I really had no business being around.

"Though, if your intent was more to ask if it influenced my interest in longevity scholarship, miss Tuon," she said, "then I suppose it did. Because after a while, I realized that the only reason I was able to start again at all was because I had been born into this era. If it'd happened a few thousand years earlier..." She stopped herself, letting out a small sigh. "I suppose I came to believe that if the fundamental cruelties of the world cannot be changed, that at the very least, people should always have a chance to start anew."

At some point, without having realized it completely until that moment, I'd started to cry, just a little bit. I disguised it, shifting my hair so it fell to block the side of my face.

Come on, I thought. This isn't the time for self-pity.

"That's a beautiful sentiment," Kamrusepa said, sounding earnest.

"Is it?" Neferuaten raised an eyebrow. "Sometimes I wonder if I still really believe in it, or if somewhere along the way, my means became the ends." Her eyes flickered up the wall, for a moment. "That's life, I suppose. You do things because they stir something in your heart. Then you forget that feeling, but you keep doing them anyway." She let out another small chuckle. "All you can do is try to laugh about it all, in the end."

I didn't laugh. Instead, my eyes drifted back to her mask. Towards something which part of me still wished for, but I knew I could never receive.

Ran took out her camera, and took a photograph of the room, with Neferuaten insisting that we posed with some of the masks on a lark to lighten the mood. When Theodoros suggested this didn't seem appropriate, she assured us that she'd only pick ones out which belonged to people who deserved it. I got one which looked like an elephant.

After that, we went back through the theater, which in contrast to more contemporary architectural trends, was the only room in the entire facility with a glass roof. It only had one entrance, so we doubled back to the halls of the third floor, which was much more modest than the previous two, or even the guesthouse with its mural. Nothing funny about the walls, just tasteful wallpaper and the occasional landscape painting, some by Neferuaten, and some by other artists.

There wasn't much else to see. There was a room full of niche artifices the order had constructed over the years and hadn't found anywhere else to put, like a mirror that was supposed to show a much older version of the onlooker - though the result was a bit off, doing little more than greying the hair and adding some wrinkles, producing a dissonant outcome - and a doorway to the tower at the back of the building, which had an arcane lock and Neferuaten informed us was strictly off-limits. (Since it was technically a different structure, I doubted it would have counted for the instructions in the note, anyway.)

Soon, though, we exhausted anything remotely compelling, and Neferuaten steered us back towards the stairs. She took out her logic engine and checked the time.

"Well, it's a bit tighter than I'd like, but we still have some time to take a look around the research chambers, I think. Shall we be off?"

"Actually, if it's not too much of a bother," Kamrusepa interjected, "I was wondering if I take a moment to partake of the lavatory? I saw we passed one a little earlier." She gestured in the general direction.

"Oh! Go right ahead," Neferuaten said, nodding. "Foolish of me - ought to have offered, since I've been dragging you all about since breakfast."

Kamrusepa looked to me, her brow raised suggestively. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to take the hint.

"Ah, um." I bit my lip. "I'll go, too."

Neferuaten gave a dry smile. "You hardly need to announce it, Utsushikome."

I laughed nervously, scratching the side of my head.

Theodoros went with us, while Ran stayed behind and started asking some trivial questions, presumably having keyed in to what we were up to. When we made it back to the lavatory, Kam told Theo to go ahead and use it. When he quickly turned around and informed us there were actually several separate little toilets inside - probably on account of the theater-slash-conference hall we'd just passed through - she informed him we'd wait anyway, as two girls using a shared facility at the same time as a boy 'wouldn't be appropriate'.

After he'd gone inside, she quickly took hold of my arm and dragged me further down the hall.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're about as subtle as a cavalry parade, Su?"

"I think people might've mentioned it's not my strong suit," I said flatly. At the word parade, another thought suddenly intruded into into my head. "Oh, I'd almost forgot-- The double centennial parade will have started by now, won't it? And all the other celebrations."

"Don't change the subject," she chided me. "You know, I'm doing you quite an indulgence right now. The least you could do would be to try to pretend we're not doing something suspicious."

"Sorry," I said. "I'm, uh, not that experienced with lying."

This, in itself, was a lie of such titanic proportion that my voice ended up cracking a bit as the other shoe dropped mentally mid-sentence, resulting in me sounding like the platonic ideal of a suspicious person. Kamrusepa regarded me with a combination of profound skepticism and concern for a moment, then shook her head.

"Never mind," she said, then stopped us suddenly as we turned the corner, getting out the map she'd sketched out earlier. "Listen. I've found a spot where our hidden archive could be."

My eyes widened. "You have?"

She nodded. "Look here. Below us, at this point in the building, are two of the bedrooms." She pointed to the corresponding part of the sketch. "Assuming they're all the same size as Neferuaten's, they both extend ten meters from one side to the other. Now, this room we saw earlier here--" She pointed to a door to our left. "--corresponds to one of the bedrooms... But it's only about five meters long, and I haven't seen anything to explain the dead space." She narrowed her eyes. "So if there's a spot for a hidden chamber, this is it."

"You've thought about this a lot," I said, a little taken aback.

"Like I said, Su. If one is going to do something, however absurd, it behooves them to do it properly." She cleared her throat. "In any case. I'd suggest we duck in, give the room a quick inspection for hollow walls and the like, then try to get back before Theodoros finishes his business. Shall we?"

She didn't wait for me to respond before quickly proceeding towards the room. "What if we're too late?"

"I'm sure you can make something up," she replied, as she opened the door. "Theodoros would probably believe you if you told him we'd been attacked by giant snakes."

I glared at her. "Don't say peculiar things, Kam."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Su, you're not that imperceptive," she said, as I followed her into the lounge. There was barely anything notably about it; some chairs, a fireplace, a couple of bookshelves. "It's obvious that he has some sort of peculiar thing for you. If not a crush, than something adjacent. He always hangs off your every word."

"Between this and what you said about Ran earlier, I feel like you're developed some very strange ideas about my interpersonal relationships," I said flatly. "We're childhood friends. And I'm pretty certain he knows I'm not interested in men."

"The heart goes where the heart wilt, Su," she said, in a tone like she was conveying some profound wisdom.

I rolled my eyes back at her.

"Check around the back of the bookshelf, I'll move these chairs," she said, as we approached the wall adjacent to our absent space. "And don't get any ideas about using the Power to make this easier, by the way. We don't want people knowing we've been slinking about."

"I'm not stupid, Kam," I said, dryly.

"Just a reminder," she said, as she begun pushing one aside. "Say. Out of curiosity, what was it that he wanted from you, yesterday?"

I gave her a confused look as I moved around to the side of it. "What are you talking about?"

"At dinner, when he was going to bed, just before everything got so sour." She raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell you you forgot?"

I blinked, then widened my eyes. "I-- I did," stopping what I was doing completely for a moment at the realization. "I guess it got pushed out of my head after everything that happened."

"Goodness," Kamrusepa said, smirking a bit as she inspected the wall. "So much for your infallible memory, I suppose."

I frowned. "It's not like it's eidetic. I forget things all the time. And I've had a lot on my mind, this weekend."

"Alright, aright," she said. "Don't mean to pick excessive fun at you." She shifted a chair out of the way, tracing a finger down the side of the wallpaper. "I do rather wonder how it left Theo feeling, though."

Oh, hell, I thought, as my mind made some connections. "Gods..." I rubbed my eyes. "Maybe that's why he's been acting strange all morning."

"Could very well be," she said.

I crossed my arms uncomfortably, furrowing my brow for a moment, before shaking my head. I turned around, and started to shift the bookcase. "I'll have to ask him when we get back. Apologize."

"You sure you want to do that?" she asked. "Might've dodged a bullet if it was a love confession."

I glared at her. "Like I said, it's not like--"

And then I stopped, as my gaze was suddenly drawn to what I'd discovered.

Behind the bookcase, in a little enclave only visible when it was pulled a good foot away from its resting position was an open door, seemingly built to swing inward. And through that was another chamber, that looked to be about the same size as the one we were in.

Despite this being exactly what we were looking for, I still almost physically jumped in surprise at the sight. It was such a sudden transition between what felt like incredibly theoretical, abstract reasoning and clear reality that it felt like the world had turned upside down for a moment. The shock hit me in my gut, and I stepped backwards.

"Like what, Su?" Kam asked, clearly not paying the closest attention.

She looked up. "Hm?"

I held up a finger, and pointed. Her expression turning suddenly inquisitive, she got up, and looked too. And then similarly gawked.

"Good god," she said.

"Uh-huh," I said, staring.

"I can't believe I was right."

She blinked a few times, contextualizing the information. "I can't believe you were right."

"Y-Yeah." I hesitated. "Wait, what?"

"That there really was something up here!" She exclaimed. "A secret room, like the note said!"

"I thought your theory was that the note was real, too?" I asked, looking down at her (on account of the height difference). "Just from the order."

"Well, yes," she said, leaning forward. "But that was just-- Just musing. I didn't expect any of this to really come to anything. I was just trying to help you feel better to make up for yesterday."

"You were humoring me the whole time?" I asked, frowning.

"Yes, obviously!" She said. "The whole thing is absurd! We established that already."

"I... guess," I said, scratching my head.

We stared into the chamber ahead. It was dark, and seemed to be broken up into little sections by a stone barrier down the center, lined with white marble - like a bathroom, except this obviously wasn't a bathroom. There were a couple sets of shelves, but there didn't seem to be anything on them other than a few maintenance tools. A wrench. What looked like a box of screws.

"This, uh... This doesn't really look like an archive," I said, stating the obvious.

"No," Kamrusepa said. She slowly bit her lip. "Mm. Perhaps the note was fake, and we've simply, well. Stumbled on an unrelated secret room, using my method?"

I still couldn't believe Kamrusepa's 'method' had produced any result at all. The whole thing seemed so far-fetched, it being vindicated was honestly making me rethink a lot of aspects of reality. What else could Kamrusepa be right about? The usefulness of her over-the-top professional conduct? The near-term prospects of longevity scholarship? Politics? (No, definitely not politics.)

"It's... I mean, it's possible," I said, with a shrug. "Or maybe there are books in here, and they're just deeper inside."

"Not out of the question, no." She stared for few more moments, before turning to me with a strange eagerness. "Well, then. Let's take a look, shall we?"

My eyes widened in surprise for a moment. Then I hesitated, looking to the side. "Uh... Should we...?" I scratched the side of my neck. "I mean, I know this was my idea, and everything, but... This feels kind of serious."

"Su," she said, suddenly serious herself. "We've come this far. Propriety demands we look inside."

"Are you sure...?" Of course she's sure. If you don't want to do it, come up with something better than that.

"We'll just take a quick peek," she said, now in her speaking-with-authority voice. "See if there are any indications of some grave conspiracy at work as the note appeared to suggest, and then get back to the toilets."

'Toilets' instead of 'lavatory'. Kamrusepa always slipped out of her more upper-class language when the situation became serious.

I squirmed for another moment, then nodded, reluctant. "Alright," I said. "I guess I'll grab one of the lamps, then..."

When I turned back around, she'd already moved to head through the gap.

I bit my lip, and followed.