Author: Lurina

067: Power of the Gods (𒐁) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Inner Sanctum First Floor | 10:04 AM | Third Day

It was strange how compatible fear and boredom were as emotional states. On the surface of it, one would assume they couldn't be more contradictory, but instead they went together like butter and flour, anxiety and banality blending seamlessly into a dull, oppressive dread. It was the kind of atmosphere you got in the waiting room of a dentist's office.

Well, except that this place had proper lounge chairs. That was a definite plus.

After the final revelation from the sanctuary's security system, another argument had broken out, but this one had been short lived. Now that Zeno and Anna were here - both of whom were pragmatists, albeit of very different sorts - and there were no longer any immediate plans to travel anywhere, the power dynamic of our group had shifted. Even though Linos had insisted it was an overreaction and there must've been another explanation we were overlooking, he could no longer completely shield his son from the reality that he was the only plausible suspect we had for Bardiya's murder.

In the end, he'd had his hands bound, 'just to be sure' as Kamrusepa had put it. It was a tame precaution in the grand scheme of things and Theo had accepted it without complaint (beyond the same muted despair he'd been demonstrating for hours), but it was unquestionable that even that had made the atmosphere even more tense. Seth and Linos had barely said a word to the rest of us since that point.

After that, Anna had set to work, though not before scavenging more of the bronze wristbands she'd given to Ran and I from Zeno's stockpile and divvying them up to the rest of the group.

"I don't get it," Ptolema had said. "What's the point if the arcane part can't even work?"

"As well as the sensor, the artifices also contain a mundane alarm that can be triggered, or activates automatically in the event of a ceased or highly irregular pulse. That is why I designed them as wristbands," she'd explained. "More besides, we do not know what the day has in store for us, or if the Power may become usable here again, so there is no point in not employing them. Just make sure you activate them properly if that does come to pass."

Since then, not much had happened. Most of us were in the lounge, where we could see Sacnicte, Ezekiel and Zeno over in the security center, who in turn could see Anna as she worked on the runework below. We'd shut the doors and barricaded the ones which Zeno had informed us the golems wouldn't try and travel through, and a few people were watching the remainder (and, more subtly the rest of us) with their rifles out... So theoretically, we were safe. She'd given us an estimate of about 4-5 hours to complete the work, which would be extensive.

Until then, all there was to do was wait. Even if one of us was the killer, so long as the sheep outnumbered the wolves, there was nothing they could realistically do. ...Well, if they didn't value their own life, they could probably manage a shot at Anna before being blown to pieces by the rest of us and then depend on whatever had been scripted into the administrative core to put us out of our misery. But that seemed unlikely.

People were doing their best to try and relax in one way or another, though no one was relaxed enough to literally try and make up for our lost sleep. Seth, Linos, Ptolema and Theo had dug up some board game from the library and were playing it at on a coffee table off to the left, while Ophelia, Yantho, and Fang had rifled through the collection of echo mazes and dug up some old romantic drama to watch over the logic bridge. Ran, Kamrusepa and I were also technically part of this latter group, seated on the sofas and chairs surrounding the towering orrery, though for various reasons we weren't paying much attention - Kam was focused on keeping watch, Ran was of course reading, and I...

...well, I was reading too, though not for pleasure. Instead, I was trying to make heads or tails of the copy of the seeming-Epic of Gilgamesh we'd discovered in my room. I was a fast reader and it wasn't exactly challenging, but it felt impossible to tell if I'd even made a dent. And that was because it was becoming clear it wasn't exactly a translation of the epic after all.

"In this part," I said to Ran, "Gilgamesh and Enkidu come across a brawl between a tavern owner and his landlord in Uruk, and he has to resolve the dispute they're having over refurbishing the building," I said. "It's been going on for about 10 pages now."

"That's not in the original epic, either," she said, not looking up from her book.

"Are you sure?" I asked, my brow furrowed.

"The story is mostly about them going on quests and fighting supernatural beings," she said. "I'm pretty sure I'd remember a lengthy digression about property rights."

"Huh," I said.

It's a bit of a blasé way to put it, but while the segment that it'd been left resting at when I'd discovered it had been a part of the original text, it was becoming increasingly obvious that the 'book' was, in the far greater part, a fan fiction. It was all written like the original epic, with short and simple declarations of events and a vaguely poetic structure, but the content was all over the place. It added extensions to many of Gilgamesh's and Enkidu's adventures, or invented new narratives about their day-to-day lives, many of which were utterly banal. Gilgamesh holds a dinner for the leaders of the city. Gilgamesh and Enkidu investigate missing livestock. Enkidu gets involved in a petty dispute between two gods, forcing him to go through a series of comedic trials. It was episodic, and went on and on and on with no clear point in sight.

It was - and keep in mind I spent years of my life predominantly studying math - possibly the most boring thing I'd ever read, to the point it was a genuine struggle to keep reading without my eyes starting to cross.

The only reason I was looking at it at all was because, a little after we'd sat down, I'd made a connection.

"So, do you think this could be one of the manuscripts you were talking about?" I asked. "The ones which never end?"

"I don't know," she said. "Maybe. I don't have a reference for what the guy's handwriting is supposed to look like."

"I mean, I really don't see what other explanation there could be for it," I said. "The binding specifically seems designed so that there's no clear start or end point. You can even slide the current pages inside if you push them a bit." I demonstrated, pushing the parchment upwards into the mechanism. "If you wanted to make something like that in a way where the materials would keep instead of just being exposed, this'd be the way to do it."

She shrugged. "It'd make sense, but like I said, I'm not sure."

"Why not?" I asked, a little irritated at her unwillingness to embrace the idea.

"Well, for one thing, the stories say that they were written in the Mourning Period," she explained. "But the parchment for that looks pretty fresh. Hell, it's clearly been replicated."

"Maybe somebody transcribed the original work," I suggested.

"Could be. The content is wrong, too, though. They're supposed to be spooky and weird - something that evokes strong emotional and intellectual responses, since that's what the premise of slowly warping the mind through a thousands is predicated on."

"This is kind of spooky and weird," I said. "Just... Not quite like that."

She shrugged for a second time, turning a page over.

"I was just thinking..." I went on, looking back down at the page. "Maybe I did see Samium, and he gave me this. He is an Egomancer, after all."

"I wouldn't get your hopes up, Su," she said. "The whole thing is an urban myth. Even if that really is one of the texts it's based on, and the mural was made as some weird tribute work... I'm pretty sure that you so much as pitched to the concept to a neurologist, they'd laugh their head off. It's like Neferuaten said. It's pop science."

I frowned. "But you were taking it seriously yesterday. You even went out of your way to ask Anna about it."

"Yeah, because it was a normal day I was curious about the mural, and was looking for something to do." She sighed. "Even if it did work, there's never been any rumors about the manuscripts for something as specific as... Your problem."

I opened my mouth, but hesitated, a bitter expression forming behind my mask.

"What're we gonna do if Samium is dead...?" I asked.

"You shouldn't be thinking about stuff like that right now," she replied bluntly. "With the way things are going, we'll be lucky if we get out of this alive."

"We had the meeting," I said, my eyes darkening, "and even though I can't remember it for some reason, he can't have done anything, because nothing fundamental has changed. And it doesn't look like I made any notes, so he probably didn't refer me to someone else or give me any instructions... All I have is this book."

"You lost your memory," she said. "Maybe he did do something. Or tested it, at least."

"But even if he did, if he's died without being able to finish, then it won't matter. He was the one who did it. No one else will know."

She didn't reply for a few moments. In the drama playing in the background, the two leads started making out for the first time, prompting Fang to make facetious 'ooo' noises.

"If it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out," she said, sounding a little tired. "Nobody could blame you for that, considering the circumstances."

"But what would I do then...?" I asked, my tone distant. "Afterwards."

"Anything you want," she replied.

It was more a product of my own imagination than her actual intent, but there was something in her delivery of those words that reminded me of what Neferuaten had described to us the previous morning. Of the feeling of a blank slate in the worst possible sense.

Anything you want. Like what you'd tell an athlete who'd just learned they'd never walk again when they asked what they could do next. Like the life-advice you'd hear from a friend after losing the love of their life. Like what the last survivor of a dead world would hear from the open sky, when they asked it what they should do now.

Anything you want. Words that made a gift of a wasteland.

Though in my case, a self-created one. There was only one thing I wanted to do, in the long run, if we returned home with nothing to show for it. I wondered if Ran knew that, too.

"I swear, Su," she said, glancing up at me after my prolonged introspective silence. "If you try to find some excuse to go off on your own and talk to the guy, I'm gonna grab Kam's gaudy scepter and use it to break your legs."

I smiled weakly.

At this point, there was a sudden clicking and clunking sound from the door to my right leading towards the dining hall. For a moment, I started to panic, but then I realized it had to finally be one of the combat golems which had now slowly begun to patrol the bioenclosure. Everyone glanced over, tensing up a bit.

"Here goes," Seth said pensively, adjusting his mask. "Let's hope these things work."

I adjusted my own, too, making sure it was resting properly on my brow. I still couldn't believe I'd ended up with my grandfather's stupid one. I'd have swapped with Ran, except that hers looked like it would be impossible to fit my glasses behind.

Finally, the double doors swung open, and the thing stepped through. Compared to the cute, beetle-like cleaning golems or the vaguely humanoid ones which seemed to be used for transporting things around or assisting with simple tasks, it looked both more sophisticated and more dangerous. It was more than twice the size of a person, and made of sleek, modern-looking ceramics and bronze. Its shape, though, was completely alien - the only thing I could compare it to would be a centipede. Five segments, each with tall, deer-like legs, were interlinked in front of one another by sets of complex machinery. Each supported platforms that in turn supported metallic pyramids, from which protruded both arcane lenses and artificed biological ones, snapping inorganically in various directions.

Oh, and also guns. They bore several refractor rifles, as well as what I suspected to be gas and pressure cannons. Fortunately, these were lowered. For now.

Finally, lining the sides of each segment were grey-colored, anatomically correct models of human infants, their limbs splayed outwards so that they covered as much surface area as possible. This was how golems defended against arcanists - the dummies were convincing enough to trigger the anatomical test and fool the Power.

I'd seen models like these before, but only in technology newsheets and magazines. They were Inner Saoic in design, and though I couldn't remember the formal name was, the informal one was Tui She - 'leg serpent'. The idea was that they had a huge range of capabilities when whole, but the individual segments could detach and still continue operating in a more limited capacity, or even perform complex acts of coordination while separate. They were incredibly cutting-edge technology - the order might have skimped a bit on the firearms and only bought high-end civilian stuff, but I was shocked to see they'd managed to get their hands on something like this.

With a gait that was both imperious and unsettlingly slithery, the thing began to advance through the room through what I assumed to be a pre-set patrol route. Its lenses focused on us, and there was a moment of horrible tension before they looked away approvingly. An androgynous, clearly automated voice hummed from within it: "This area is unsafe. Please seek shelter in the lower levels."

Then it moved on, though as it passed by, I noticed it wasn't alone. It was accompanied by two smaller and much freakier looking biomancy-produced golems. Their bodies were the shape of medium-sized, leggy cats - servals, maybe - but instead of heads, eyeless, upright serpents protruded from their heads, and their whole bodies were covered in chrome like scales. The only reason I could tell for certain that they were machines were that they moved in perfect concert, with the stiffness of automata in place of animal mannerisms.

These I'd never seen before. I could only presume they were an in-house creation.

"Oh, go-goodness..." Ophelia said as she leaned over the sofa, holding a hand to her mouth at the sight of them. Knowing her, it was more likely this was due to being impressed than horror.

"What the heck are those things?!" Ptolema asked, leaning over and accidentally knocking over some of the pieces on the gameboard in front of her. In the background, a hilarious misunderstanding was taking place in the drama where the protagonist had mistaken her boyfriend's sister's socks as evidence of infidelity.

"A reasonable question," Kamrusepa said, her eyes narrowed. "I'm not one to judge on aesthetics, but they do look rather like the sort of affair one discovers in the notebook of a teenage boy after he takes his father's rifle to school."

"Not much for Aegyptian culture, I take it?" Zeno called out in her usual condescending tone, stepping out into the main hall for a moment. "They're based on Serpopards, a creation of our late colleague presently 'hanging out' on the rooftop."

I scowled at her behind the mask. Linos put his face into his hands, rubbing his forehead.

"They're to complement our primary units - we couldn't get our hands on the equivalent from the high command, so we used our own skills to fill the gaps. While the Tui She engage the invaders at range, the Serpopards act as a suppressive force, closing the distance at rapid speed and sinking their teeth in at melee. I'm to understand it's very effective."

"I was given to understand," Kamrusepa replied, calling out herself, "that you were largely disarming, in the wake of the Summer Compromise?"

Zeno snorted. "We were, but this addition to our defenses had been in the works for decades." She looked at her nails idly. "The modern military-industrial complex moves at the speed of a constipated tortoise when it comes to developing new technology. A budget enough to fund a thousand universities, yet all the intellectual stamina of your average pub on quiz night. It's enough to make you wish the Empire had won." She yawned. "Well, at least until you remember how obsessed they were with what people did with their genitals."

"How many of them are there?" Ran asked.

"Eighteen sets of three," she replied.

Eighteen. Not an army, but enough to wipe us out if we screwed up somewhere where we couldn't use the Power. Our best bet would probably be to dive for the underground if it came to that. Since they'd be spread over the whole sanctuary, dealing with them one at a time would be... Manageable.

After the initial surprise and burst of conversations wore off, things got quiet again for a while. I went back to looking through the manuscript while Zeno distantly discussed the prospect of probing the underground for Hamilcar and the group.

Pretty soon, though, I realized that my progress was slowing to a crawl. Again, sleep felt impossible, but sitting on a comfortable sofa, I really did feel tired. I ended up staring at the high ceiling, where the shadows gathered, too distant for our lamps to fully reach.

"So," I asked Ran, not bothering to lower my voice in the way I was a little earlier. "how's your dragon book going?"

"I finished that already," she said. "This is a new one I just picked up from this library."

"Oh. What's it about?"

"It's about a woman who marries a guy when she's young, and they have a shitty, complicated relationship that lasts decades," she explained, again without looking up. "Eventually, they break up in this really awful way where he's basically abusive, and she tries to forget about him. But then, a few years later, he becomes an incredibly famous actor and novelist. So no matter where she goes, she can't escape his face being plastered all over the place, or people talking about how amazing he is without even knowing she exists-- Let alone caring about her side of the story." She turned a page. "So after a while, she goes crazy and creates an intricate plan to murder him."

"Huh," I said, my eyes tracing the circular pattern of the plaster on the ceiling. "That's pretty fucked up."

"I guess so," she said.

"Does she manage to do it?" I asked. "Kill him?"

"Yeah," she replied, with a small nod. "The book is told from the perspective of her defense attorney learning all this in retrospect and trying to build a case." She brushed a curl of hair away from her eyes. "You'd probably like it. The themes are stuff like how people's identities can get tied up in others, how the masses decide whose stories are worth telling and whose aren't. Who gets to be a hero and who has to be a monster."

"Heroes and monsters, hm..."

Something you hear a lot, especially in the context of politics, is that everyone views themselves as the hero of their own story - no one regards themselves as 'evil' no matter how abhorrent their actions or outlook. At most, they might think of their more controversial deeds as a necessary reaction to a world that is fundamentally harsh and unjust. That was what underlined a lot of more traditional mindsets.

I didn't know if I agreed with that idea. I had definitely lived periods of my life where I thought of myself as 'evil', and even if you could argue that was the product of an abnormal state of mind, a lot of people spend broad periods, or even the majority of their lives, deep in depression. So it didn't feel like the logic quite held up.

I wondered if whoever was doing this right now viewed themselves as virtuous. The sanctimonious messages they'd laid out for us would suggest as much, but Fang had pointed out that the language they used wasn't even consistent. Assuming there wasn't a more complicated explanation, flippancy about one's own justifying framework didn't exactly suggest much in the way of genuine passion.

What were they thinking, then? If you set aside all the supernatural stuff being waved in our faces and assumed this was the work of a human being, what could be going through their head?

"So," Ran said, as if she were reading my mind. "Who do you think is really behind this?"

I looked at her, blinking. "Why would you ask me? I've seen even less of what's going on here than you."

"You're the one who's supposed to have a giant brain," she said flatly. "Only reason I'm here at all is because I'm good at showing up for cram school."

I sat back in the chair.

To find the truth, you first need to fully understand what you don't know. But since 'not knowing' is a negative attribute, the only way to establish it is through its opposite. That's why I always begun with the mantra I'd learned so long ago. That my father, my actual father, had taught me in the few years I'd known him.

What do I know? What am I sure that I know?

On the 28th of April, I set out with the other female members of my class to attend a conclave of life extension research hosted by the Order of the Universal Panacea, and attended by its most public and highest-ranking members. We had been given instructions to travel to a specific street in the Empyrean Bastion, a stellar installation connected to the Grand Alliance capital of Old Yru. When we arrived, we were collected in a carriage in which we were prevented from seeing our surroundings during travel, and eventually led out into an abandoned residential area. We then descended deep 'underground' until we came to a strange chamber from which we were transported to the order's sanctuary by an unknown means.

Upon our arrival, we discovered the boys in our class had already arrived. Over the course of the next day, I visited four sections of the facility and interacted with a total of 20 people. My 10 classmates, 8 members or direct affiliates of the order, and 2 people who didn't fit either category - Mehit and Balthazar... Though speaking of him, I knew he shared the same Seed as Ophelia. On the night of the first day, I discovered a strange chamber in which time seemed to have behaved irregularly, and later a message in a book entrusted to me by our class coordinator informing me of a 'danger' and directing me to investigate the second floor of the 'main building'. Following these instructions, I observed the body of a woman, dead from a head wound, along with an apparent suicide note. Later, during our presentations, a message on Kamrusepa's logic engine ordering us to halt the conclave. Soon after, I witnessed a strange figure outside of one of the bioenclosures, and then remember nothing until the next morning.

The rest was probably fresh enough it didn't need revisiting.

When laid out like that, it was striking how little I really was certain of. Huge amounts of the information I 'had' was based on hearsay of varying levels of reliability - things that seemed probably true, but that I couldn't, or hadn't, confirmed. In rough chronological order:

I didn't know where we'd been taken by the carriage. I didn't know how we got to the sanctuary. I didn't know where or what the sanctuary was, or how almost anything in it actually worked. I didn't know how long the boys had actually been there. I didn't know what was wrong with the pantry. I didn't know why Balthazar had been invited. I didn't know the true purpose of the conclave. I didn't know why Seth had given Sacnicte a bribe, or why he'd seemed to give Ezekiel a thumbs up during the fight later. I didn't know what had caused me to black out or lose my memory, or what happened during that time.

I didn't know if Samium was even here.

Obviously, not all of the information I'd heard could be wrong... And subjective information could sometimes be as useful as objective fact. But bringing that clarity helped give some context to the situation. And more importantly, it helped draw attention to where things were overwhelmingly strange. Where the truth I had observed and the information I thought I had seemed to clash.

There were also a few things I didn't know and hadn't had any plausible explanation or justification for at all; the 'pure' mysteries. Things like the mural, and this thing in my hand now. Like the strange doorway beneath the research tower.

And of course, who was actually killing people.

When I let all this swill around my brain, there were four clusters (aside from the actual murders) in which the 'strangeness' was most prominent. I let them form in my mind's eye. I pictured myself drifting in a void, all the knowledge and half-knowledge and blank spaces drifting in front of me, like pieces of a puzzle. I let them drift towards each other, letting the deeper parts of my brain determine the gravity from all the tiny hunches and observations I was only half-aware I'd had.

The first, and most obvious, was the nature of the sanctuary itself. For that, we had Balthazar's bizarre testimony about time looping, which was potentially supported by the state of the pantry. We had the ocean seeming to disappear. We had the strange and unexplained means by which we'd traveled here in the first place.

Secondly - and only subtly distinguished from the former - was the purpose of the both the sanctuary and the conclave itself. Multiple things had pointed to this event being more than what it seemed at the surface level. What Zeno had told me. What Neferuaten had told me. Ran's observation about it being a perfect doomsday shelter.

Thirdly, and potentially linked to that previous one, the circumstances of Vijana's death. The letter seemingly pointing us to the site of her body, possibly from Nindar, or possibly planted by Sacnicte. Yantho's bout of unconsciousness after he'd seen her for the last time - that tied back into the pantry, too, potentially. The...

...the signature. That's what had been itching in the back of my mind earlier. The letter had been signed V.A, but the name Linos had given us was Vijana of Yamune. Shouldn't that have been 'V.Y.'?

I furrowed my brow, trying to consider this along with everything else. That called the entire premise, the identity of the person we'd seen at the bottom of that shaft, into question. But it also made Linos's reaction to the letter in the first place very strange. Had he missed the detail himself? Or was he lying - and if so, why did he think he could get away with, when the initials were right there, in plain text?

Focus. I couldn't get too hung up on a single detail. When facing a complicated problem, you had to be constantly attacking it from all angles. Probing, searching for a weak point in the tapestry where it'll all start to unravel...

Finally, there was whatever was happening with the boys in our class. Multiple things had happened which pointed to something strange taking place in the background among them, or them outright lying or concealing some piece of information. Seth first appears in the sanctuary with dirty clothes. Later, he talks about a fight with Ezekiel and how that led to him being extorted, and that originated in a broken promise to help with his work. But later, Seth fights with Bardiya, and it seems like they're working together. Theo asks to speak to me when he leaves early during dinner, but won't the next day, where he seems incredibly anxious. Ezekiel isn't seen at all until right before the conclave. Bardiya's room is strangely dirty. Bardiya is the second victim.

I felt a little frustrated, because of the four, this was the one I felt like I was the closest to understanding. But I couldn't quite get there. Something was missing...

The next stage would be to try to put myself, with the information I had, in the shoes of the culprit. But I realized that there was no point in trying to make a deduction when there were still things I could easily clear up during this respite. Addressing the mystery of the boy's group would be as simple as walking over to their table and laying my cards on, er, it. But trying to get clarification on the rest...

I had one idea, though I wasn't sure how much of a success it'd be. But there wasn't any harm in trying. First, though--

"Hey, Kam," I said, looking over to where she was sitting.

"Hm," she said distantly, her gaze focused on one of the doors.

"Since the last time you tried it, back in the abbey," I asked, "have you cast the Time-Inferring Arcana again, at all?"

This seemed to rouse her attention a little more, and she glanced towards me. "...no, I don't believe so. Why?"

That's what I was afraid of. "Just thinking about when Linos told us the sanctuary 'moved', and what that might mean. I'll talk to you more in a minute." I sat up from my chair, rising to my feet and tucking the manuscript into my bag.

"Where are you doing?" Ran asked, her brow furrowed.

"I'm going to try and talk with Anna a little," I said. "This might be the only chance, and there are some things I want to clear up."

"Alright, but she's not exactly talkative," Ran replied. "You want me to come with you?"

I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. "No, I feel like this'll be easier if I don't come across as badgering her."

"Suit yourself," she said. "When we talked, she seemed to like it more when I was just direct, so that's probably your best bet. Though if you're hoping to get any big secrets out of her, I wouldn't be optimistic."

"Mm," I said, biting my lip thoughtfully as I thought about how to approach this. "Well... I'll be right back."

"Sure," she said.

I moved away from the logic bridge - the image of the drama fizzling out - and headed down the hall towards the security center. As I was approaching, it sounded like Zeno was still having an intense discussion with Sacnicte about scouting the underground remotely. However, they turned their heads towards me as I approached. Ezekiel, who was in the corner reading something with an intense expression, didn't.

"Ah, it's you, little girl," Zeno said, with a sly grin, while Sacnicte merely looked at me cautiously. She still seemed incredibly tense. "That mask rather suits you."

I didn't respond to this. "I wanted to talk with Anna for a few minutes."

"About what?" she asked, raising an eyebrow, but then glanced to the side. "Actually, I suppose it's not really my business. Just don't distract her from the work, or get your hopes up for a riveting conversation. Believe me, I've been trying for about a century, and it's got me exactly nowhere. Perhaps the change in her body will have inspired a change of attitude, but I doubt it."

"I'll, uh, keep that in mind," I said.

I took a few steps towards the hatch before Zeno called out again. "Utsushikome," she said.

I turned my head.

"The gun," she said, holding out a hand. "She's our only way out of here right now, after all."

I frowned, but couldn't find a reason to argue, so I surrendered my pistol to her hands. It felt like a petty thing to fuss over, since I'd be able to use the Power once I descended. Maybe she felt confident she could spot me trying to cast, even from behind.

I descended the steps. Like Sacnicte had described the previous day, the room, similar in design to the one upstairs was packed with the sort of bare necessities you'd need to survive a siege. There was a set of bunks, an unspeakably uncomfortable looking shower, and a massive amount of tinned and dried food. I could probably live off just the cans of beans I spotted at a glance for an entire year; it was obscene.

Anna was within spitting distance of the entrance, having torn down part of the wall, exposing a tremendous number of vertical lines of runework. I'd been expecting her to be making extensive use of the Power throughout the process, but it seemed like it was mostly being done directly. In one hand she had a carving scalpel, in the other some sort of syringe that I assumed was for filling carvings in. Her handiwork was deft, and the pace of her work quick and relentless-- Though, I suppose that was only to be expected for a master of her craft.

For a moment, I'd thought she was so preoccupied she hadn't noticed me at all. But then, without turning to look at me, she abruptly said, "Well?"

"Um," I said, my tone a little stiff from the surprise. "I was hoping to ask you about something, if you had a minute?"

She snorted. "It's irritating."

I blinked. "Um, I'm sorry?"

"Being approached like this, with so little caution. This is the second time you've done it, and that's just you. It's become much more of a challenge to be alone with my thoughts." She sighed. "I suppose I have more of this to look forward to yet, if we escape this place, and probably far worse when it comes to young men."

"You're talking about being younger," I deduced.

"Obviously," she said. She reached over to her toolbox and withdrew a different type of tool - some kind of file - and started tweaking some minor portion of the lettering, rubbing it back and forth.

"You don't seem very happy about it."

"Should I be?"

"I... Suppose not necessarily." I said. How did this turn into you awkwardly making conversation? I knew you'd find some way to screw this up. "I just-- Well, I thought you'd be partly pleased to have so much longer to live. Or to have your body in a better condition."

"This is precisely what I'm talking about. Your tone has already become bizarrely personal. This never would have happened if I didn't have this appearance." She grunted. "In any case, it's unlikely that what has transpired will have any meaningful effect on my lifespan. My body might have been in poor 'condition', but it was reasonably stable. And █ █ █ █ █'s project, when applied to a human being, has no direct effect on the brain. What would likely have been the cause of my natural death, dementia in the medium-term, will likely still be the cause of my natural death."

"Oh," I said. "...but, you must miss some things about looking and feeling young, right?"

"Not particularly." She set the file back down. "Little I recall positively about my youth related to my being physically young, but what that entailed by association; my ignorance towards much of the cruelties of life, and the social circumstances of being a child. To overlook that, and turn back the clock on the body alone, simply creates a dissonance of identity." She paused for a moment. "It is humiliating. Youth without innocence."

My lips tightened a bit, and I made an awkward, flat expression.

What was it that Neferuaten had told me, about her? That she 'didn't believe in progress'. Either for people, or individuals?

I wished I'd had a chance to ask for some clarification on what that meant. I felt like I had possibly a worse read on her than anyone else in this place. Even Balthazar was open in his creepy passive-aggressiveness.

"Why did you volunteer to have the machine tested on you, if you didn't want this result?" I eventually asked.

"That should be obvious, shouldn't it?" She said, flicking a glance at me for the first time. "It was because I didn't expect to really work. 'True Iron', honestly. Taking everyone for fools." She snorted. "Your grandfather was never one to let things go when he ought to-- Everything happening right now is proof enough of that. Durvasa was right. We should have expelled him years sooner, instead of letting this turn into such a farce."

Once again, I wasn't sure what to say. I shuffled on the spot awkwardly.

"I hope this isn't what you wanted to ask me about, Utsushikome of Fusai," she said.

"N-No," I said. "I wanted to ask you some questions about the sanctuary, actually."

I didn't trust Linos, even at this point, to give me a straight answer regarding much of anything-- Or Zeno, though for very different reasons. Anna, though, seemed strangely honest. My hunch was that if I approached her privately and was straightforward and unreserved about what I wanted, she might surprise me.

Well, we were about to find out if theory would become practice.

"Be more specific," she said.

"Ran mentioned you were involved in the process of designing the gateways."

"Yes," she said. "I was the principal designer for most of the mechanisms of this facility, with your grandfather overseeing some of the later additions."

I nodded. "Then the first thing I wanted to know is where we are."

"The bottom of the ocean in the outer regions of the Atelikos," she replied. "Did you not already know as much?"

"But the ocean is gone," I said. "You can't even see it between the bioenclosures."

She was silent, for a moment, though she didn't cease her work. She scraped out another rune, he fingers moving like a chef cutting a piece of meat.

"Have you ever seen a shadow play, Utsushikome of Fusai?"

"Uh, not a professional one," I said, not even sure that such a thing existed. "But I know the concept, if that's what you mean."

"A shadow play takes place in two places at once," she explained. "Both directly, through the props and bodies of the performer, and on the stage, through the shadows they cast. One is a product of the other-- Actually, I've changed my mind," she said, cutting herself off in mid-sentence strangely. This was the longest I'd ever heard her speak 'casually' before, and her speech patterns were different than I would have thought. "Are you familar with the concept of a 'mirror'? In the context of logic engines."

I blinked. "You mean, a machine which hosts a copy of the information on another machine."

"'Copy' is a reductive way to put it," she said. "In more complex instances of data housing, there is not always a 'one true host' which contains the definitive version of the information, and which acts as despot to all others. Rather, it can be a situation where the instances are constantly comparing themselves to one another and adjusting accordingly - so that nothing is lost." She frowned, then applied her filling tool, obliterating one of the runes. "So it is in this case. There is Apsu, and then there is the mirror of Apsu."

My eyes widened. "You're saying there are two different sanctuaries?"

"Yes," she replied. "...and no. Much like the hemispheres of the brain, if two mirrors are in a state of synchronicity, then they become, for all intents and purposes, one. It is only when that synchronicity is broken that problems begin to arise." She dusted off her work. "As part of our defense mechanism, this functionality can be employed. Detachment."

I frowned, feeling utterly confused. "So-- Um, hold on. Do you mean there were versions of us, too? Are we just copies?"

"No," she said bluntly. "That's ridiculous. The Power cannot copy the human mind."

"Then what do you mean? I don't understand."

"It is very simple," she said. "Before, when you moved around this sanctuary, you were existing in two places at once. The 'mundane' version of Apsu at the bottom of the ocean, and where we are now."

I had so many questions I didn't know where to start, but as if afraid I'd trip and fall if I lost my momentum, I went straight for the most obvious one. "Then... Where are we, now?"

She turned to look at me with an impassive expression, her youthful green eyes shining even in the dim light of the underground.

"Nowhere," she said. "Or if you want something more poetic, then you could say we're in the land of the dead."