Author: Lurina

084: Split Body (𒐀) - The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere | Royal Road

Sanctuary Nadir | 1:21 PM | Third Day

Depending on how the arcana that governed the barrier functioned, there was a good chance that Kamrusepa's plan might not have even worked. After all, when an executive incantation for a system like this was refreshed for the day, the eris was sometimes pre-committed in complicated and often wasteful ways, as we'd dealt with at the administrative core, and especially when they had an almost endless supply nearby - as was the case here.

However, we turned out to be in luck, as it only appeared to draw from one of the small tanks at a time, the scripting routing the eris into the incantation as required. Still, that didn't make this easy. There was always the risk of overlooking something in the engineering and causing a backlash. So over the course of a minute, Kam slowly disassembled a section of the support structure and pipework around our target. In the background, the battle between Hamilcar and Zeno continued to rage, lightning crashing in the background intermittently as the gray swarm continued to intensify, only to suddenly be devastated and deplete to almost nothing a few moments later.

"This should be it," Kam said, her tone serious. "I should be able to break the tank from the rest of the system in one motion. Su, can you get ready to shut off the barrier?"

"How do you shut it off?" I asked, confused.

"Just hit the switch Zeno showed to Seth earlier again," she told me. "That should do the trick."

"Should do the trick?"

"Don't be neurotic," she scolded me. "It's the same bloody button-- At worst it will do nothing. We're playing this by ear. Would you rather gamble on Zeno winning?"

I furrowed my brow. "You seemed pretty confident they'd win a second ago--"

"Just get ready to push the damn thing, Su," she said, irritated.

"Fine, I guess," I muttered.

She looked towards Seth and Fang. "And you two? Are you ready?"

Fang nodded, pulling Seth up into their arms in a princess-carry. "Ready as you can get when it comes to lugging somebody half-dead like a mile up into the air, I guess!"

"Could you not, just... Pull me up on your shoulder, or something?" Seth asked weakly. "I mean, we're gonna be flying, anyway."

"Ehh, better if you stay as relatively still as possible," they replied. "Plus, doesn't this feel more heroic?"

Seth groaned.

"Seriously, though," Fang went on, turning back to Kam. "We need to hurry. Things could take a turn for the worse fast."

"Right," she replied, with a firm nod. "On three, then,"

Kam counted down, then I hit the button, which fortunately did seem to disable the barrier, the faintly-visible field dispersing almost instantly. Then she hastily unscrewed the tank, using the Power to heft it into the air.

"I think this might be in heat form rather than light," she said, frowning. "But it'll have to do. Let's go-- And Su, don't forget the files! That's data that could be invaluable for the future of mankind!"

"You don't need to keep hyping it up, Kam," I said flatly. "I'm on it."

I took hold of the box, and our group soared back into the air, Fang still holding Seth in their arms. We passed out the door and back into the elevator shaft. Behind us, I could see that the Apega itself seemed to have finally taken some form of damage, a piece of it being hurled desperately through the air by one of the two combatants. Hamilcar's machines struck the periphery of our barrier in force like flies slamming into the windows of a moving train, but fortunately Zeno seemed to be keeping him too busy to attack us directly.

The fight was out of view, now, the two of them apparently having descended deeper below the machine, into the unknown depths of the cavern. Aside from the occasional projectile, all I could make out were bursts of intense light, with all the sound still muted by our barriers.

We ascended at speed, the room falling out of view far faster than it had appeared, the flashes becoming ever more distant. Hamilcar's swarm quickly died away to only a few scattered motes, then became absent completely.

"I think we're through the worst of it," Kamrusepa said, as her hair waved back and forth from the speed of our flight. "The storage in this thing isn't as efficient as a scepter, but there's at least one's worth, so just take the head of the tank if you need to re-cast your barriers. It's not too difficult to conceptualize."

"I've got about 10% left," I said, looking at my dial. "It should be enough."

She considered this. "Actually, it might be worthwhile to start transferring the eris regardless. We don't know if anything has happened while we're gone-- Even if it's unlikely, it would be foolish to allow ourselves to be caught generally defenseless."

"That's a good idea," I said, and shifted my hands awkwardly so that I was clutching the pseudo-weightless box in one, while placing the other - still clutching my scepter - against the valve of the tank. It was possible to manually recharge one's scepter using the Power, though this wasn't usually practical unless you had another source of eris already primed for transfer. There were conceptualization techniques that let you slowly fill it using ambient light, heat and wind, but those were gimmicks that took days; useful if you were stranded on a desert island, but otherwise not much.

"Good," she said, nodding. "Very well. We'll get back to the underground, then see to Seth's condition."

"Are we out of the woods, though?" I asked, glancing down with anxiety. "Hamilcar could come up for us. Should we try and seal the tunnel, like Zeno said?"

She frowned. "I feel like that was a flippant suggestion. With that much eris, I doubt a little stone would stop Hamilcar if he truly had a mind to kill us." She sighed. "I think our best bet is to simply rush back to the others, and hope that in the outside possibility that Zeno is defeated, that he can at least hold him off for a few more minutes. Once we're back on the ground floor, Hamilcar's advantage will disappear."

"Assuming the negation field is still active."

She gave me a dirty look. "You know, Su, it really would not kill you to be just a little less of a pessimist at a time like this."

"Sorry," I said.

"If things get real bad, we might wanna scatter," Fang said. "It seems like there are a lot of ways back to the surface, and he won't be able to follow all of us."

"I'm, uh," Seth said. "I'm not sure I'm in 'scattering' shape right now."

"Well, I'd carry you for that too," Fang told him matter-of-factly. "Duh."

We flew further upwards, the walls becoming flatter and more obviously constructed, until the hole leading back to the underground was plainly visible. Finally, we slowed down and levitated through, before lowering ourselves back down to the stone floor, lowering the intensity of our barriers somewhat now that the situation was less grave. Fang gently placed Seth there, kneeling down, while I dumped the box on the floor next to him, finally stopping to take a breath. Using the Power didn't tire your body out, but the stress of the situation had done the job well enough alone.

"Gimmie my scepter," Seth said, "I think I can focus."

"You're sure?" Fang said, an eyebrow raised. "If you botch it, you could make things worse."

He shook his head. "I can trace the incantation, and I think my head is clear enough to--" He coughed painfully again. "To do some basic stuff." He looked to Kam, who was the one still holding it. "C'mon, give it back."

She frowned at him for a moment with a tense expression, then placed the scepter in his hand. He quickly began tracing with his finger.

"Just keep an eye on me with your Divination," he told Fang. "Just in case I start giving myself super-cancer or something."

"Sure," they said. "Not a problem."

Suddenly, a familiar voice rang out from nowhere. "What the hell happened down there?" Ran said. "I was to keep track of you as best I could at range, but something started blocking all the Divination. Are you okay?"

I was wondering why we hadn't heard from her in a while, even if she had warned us her capabilities were going to become a lot more limited.

"Hamilcar must've counter-cast something," Kamrusepa deduced quietly, putting a hand to her mouth. "Probably just when we found him."

"We're okay," I told Ran, then hesitated as I glanced at Seth. "Sort of. When we confronted Hamilcar, he confessed, then attacked us and, uh, destroyed the facility."

"Are you kidding? He destroyed the whole fucking place?" She asked incredulously.

"Yeah," I said, and nodded, before realizing this was redundant. "He tapped into the convention furnace down there somehow and caused a huge mess, so Zeno went to fight him alone while the rest of us escaped. Seth got injured in the blast, but the rest are fine, and Fang's treating him right now--"

"There's someone coming up the tunnel," she said quickly. "Fast."

My eyes went wide, I gripped my scepter instinctively. "What?!"

Kamrusepa pointed as I began to hear a rushing sound emanating from the shaft. "Get back!" she shouted.

But within an instant, it happened. Traveling far faster than even we'd been, a figure shot into the air triumphantly, a barrier - dense to the point of overt visibility, emanating around them with a blue tint - surrounding their body.

For a moment, I felt pure panic, but then I realized that it was, in fact, Zeno. Her dress robe was visibly burned and half of her hair was gone, but she nevertheless wore a triumphant sneer as she elegantly descended to the ground. In her hand was clasped the sheath which Fang had arrived. She flipped it around between her fingers playfully before tossing it into the air, placing it at her own waist.

This wasn't what our eyes were drawn to, though. Kam raised her hand to cover her mouth, while Fang visibly cringed.

"I see that you had a lapse in faith," Zeno said, with a smirk. "But as I told you. He was no match for my skills."

I say 'said', but in fact this accounting represents more of an educated guess at what she seemed to be trying to communicate based on the movement of her lips, because no sound actually left them except for a sort of hoarse exhalation. She didn't seem to notice this herself, presumably caught up in the moment.

"Uh," Fang said, and made a sort of sideways point at Zeno.

She looked towards them, seeming irritated at this response. "What? What is it?" She seemed to try and gesture with her arms, and seemed surprised when she struggled to move them.

Once again, they pointed, this time more specifically craning their wrist to make it clear they were trying to indicate towards Zeno's back.

Frowning, she turned to look, also giving us a clearer look in the process.

Suffice it to say, the rear side of Zeno's body - visible even from the front on their left side - seemed to have taken a little damage in the fight alongside her robes.

And by 'a little', I mean that it looked like she'd tried to do a backstroke in an active volcano. The entire half of her body was just destroyed. The majority of her rear skull was missing, exposing an empty cavity where the brain would be in a normal person. The muscles of her back - clearly artificial in some way, now I was seeing them, with a pearl-like coloration and a semi-transparent white fluid I assumed to be some sort of stand-in for blood seeping everywhere - were in pieces, sections burned completely black, revealing her spinal cord. Her butt was, uh, also mostly absent, though I'll spare you the specifics. Where the burns reached her side, part of her small intestine, which was also white, seemed to be hanging out.

It was, to say the least, a once-in-a-lifetime sight. Too inhuman to be disturbing or even normal reality, but still disgusting in its own unique, special way. Like a flower with eyelids for petals.

"Oh," she mouthed, with an irritated expression. "Fuck."

And then, probably as a result of her craned neck, her unsupported spine abruptly bent out of its normal position in her body, and it collapsed instantly, literally a puppet with its strings cut. Her empty-eyed face slammed dead into the floor. The not-blood, among other things, quickly began seeping all over the stonework.

A moment passed as we stared at it in morbid silence. Kam slowly lowered her hand, her expression of shock giving way to one of mere displeasure. Fang, meanwhile, burst suddenly into rambunctious laughter, seeming almost unable to control themselves as they leaned to the side where they were sitting, holding themselves up by one hand.

Kam glanced at them with irritation. "Fang, please stop being ridiculous."

"S-Sorry, sorry," they said, stuttering the words out between pained heaves of laughter. "But you saw this shit, right?! She was just standing there, not even knowing what the hell was happening, and then she looked, and it all just went..." They made a flopping motion with their hands along with a 'wooop' sound effect, then continued laughing, practically in hysterics. "Dude, that was fucking amazing."

"It was grotesque," Kam replied flatly.

"I mean, yeah, it was gross, but..." They wiped tears away from their eyes. "God."

Kam gave a show of making a deep sigh, looking up towards the ceiling. "At least I can count on you to have a little taste among our group, Su."

"I mean," I said, scratching the side of my head. "It was a little funny."

She clicked her tongue, grimacing at me.

"Uh, hey," Seth cut in, sounding a little annoyed himself. His face had been turned away, so he'd missed the entire series of events. "Not trying to like. Shit on the vibe you guys have going right now? But you said you'd keep an eye on me while I'm doing this."

"Oh, shit. Right, right," Fang said, trying to get themselves together, but snickers still intermittently escaping their lips. "Sorry, I-- I'll get it together.

"What the hell even happened?" he asked. Looking at him, I noticed his Biomancy must've been at work, because the redness in his wounds was starting to level off, and a healthier color was slowly coming back to his skin.

"I wouldn't mind knowing that either," Ran said. "The life signature I saw coming for you guys a second ago is half-gone."

"It looks like Zeno managed to defeat Hamilcar, but the body they were using, uh, sustained some damage," I said, looking at the pitiful remains in front of me. "I don't think they'll be coming back us physically."

"Hm, alright," she said. "I guess that's a success as far as things like this go, then."

"Ran," Kam said, speaking up. "Can you check the security center controls to see if there's anyone still alive, down there? We can't rule out the possibility Zeno was mistaken."

"It only checks in pulses every few minutes, remember?" she answered, and then was silent for a moment. "Anna says that she'll do some divining herself just to be certain, so I'll let you know if there's anything. Did you find out anything about Hamilcar's motive? His accomplice?"

"I'm afraid not," Kam told her, narrowing her eyes. "It all got out of hand very quickly. Other than a few cryptic remarks, we didn't learn anything of substance." She glanced towards me. "But we did manage to recover the data about Su's grandfather's project, as well as the critical artifice Fang arrived with."

"That's not great, though," Ran replied. "I was hoping we could put an end to this now."

"We can," Kam said. "Like we discussed-- So long as everyone is kept firmly accounted for from now on, without an accomplice, the culprit won't be able to act." She glanced towards Seth for a moment, then towards Zeno's corpse. "Anyway, speaking of the artifice, let's get it in hand. And the professor's scepter, too - no point in leaving potent weapons lying about."

"R-Right," I said.

We stepped over to the body, Kamrusepa unhooking the device from its belt while I pulled the scepter from its hand, which fortunately hadn't been touched by any of the aforementioned fluids. The eris dial was at about 15%. Even if Zeno had won, the battle had obviously come further down the wire than they'd ever anticipated.

I couldn't help but take a closer look at the corpse, though I wasn't sure 'corpse' was even the right word for it. Maybe 'destroyed avatar' would have been more appropriate. Regardless, examining the remains of the skull, I could see that it had possessed something like a brainstem and what looked like a heavily-modified cerebellum, with only the cerebrum outright absent.

At first, I couldn't see any sign of the logic bridge I knew had to be there, after my conversation with Ran earlier, for this sort of remote control to even be possible. But then I noticed.

The 'spine' wasn't a spine at all. The entire central shaft had the distinctive dark hue of false iron. It was the logic bridge. No wonder it had fallen out so easily once the muscles were detached - it probably weighed twice as much as bone, if not more.

"What are looking at, Su?" Kamrusepa asked, noticing my delay.

I saw no reason to keep it a secret. "The spine," I said, pointing. "Look."

She blinked, then slowly bit her lip, staring at it. "That's how he's been controlling the body...?"

"Must be," I said, with a nod.

"Rather strange approach," she said. "One would think there would be enough space in the skull alone. Or one could simply use the Power, and not flirt with oathbreaking."

I nodded, thinking about the bigger question she was ignorant of, which was why he lied about the nature of this technology in the first place.

A logic bridge is a device for sending and receiving information, I thought. The bigger it is, the more information it can send and receive. It can be optimized for both of those roles...

"Okay," Seth said, slowly rising to his feet. "I think I'm good."

"You sure?" Fang asked. "You still, uh. Don't look great."

It was true. Even if the burns were no longer an angry red and looked a little closer to normal skin tone, he was still visibly burned, and his eye on that side of his face looked bloodshot. His gait seemed uneasy, too. With the Death-Sensing Arcana - which it belatedly occurred to me I probably should have disabled to save eris earlier - I could see that, though the worst of the internal damage had faded, some remained, especially around his chest and the side of his neck.

"I'm not gonna look pretty until we get back to the city and I can go to a proper clinic, where they're not short on eris," he said, his tone suggesting he was a little frustrated with the outcome himself. "But this is good enough for now. I got all the internal bleeding and basically all the radiation damage."

"'Basically' doing a lot of legwork there," Fang said, frowning.

"Look, I'm okay," Seth told them, a little snippily. "If nothing else, I can look at it again when we're back at the security center, alright? I'll hold together until then."

Fang wrinkled their lip. "Ehhh..."

"I do kinda wanna get moving," I said, glancing around. "Even if there's no one left to ambush us, I don't really feel comfortable being down here without anybody who knows what they're doing with the Power."

"That's giving us rather little credit, I should think," Kam said, but nodded all the same. "But I'd like to hurry back as well, all the same."

"Alright," Fang said, holding their hands up. "Guess I'm outvoted..."

"Don't forget to put your masks back on," Kamrusepa said. "It wouldn't do to get this far only to be butchered by a pack of those automatons."

"Mine got singed, but I think it's still okay," Seth said, pulling it back up from where it rested around his neck. "Though we might wanna duck around a corner if we see any of those things rather than test it."

Kam gave him a strange look as she placed her own back on her face, slowly pursing her lips.

"Ran," I asked. "Has anything happened while we've been gone?"

"Not really," she replied. "Other than everyone going stir-crazy in this room. Well, Mehit... Woke up, I guess."

I frowned. "Did anything happen?"

"Not yet. She's still only half awake," she explained. "We're gonna try to keep her away from Lilith, though. At least as much as we can, given the circumstances."

I nodded. "Alright. Can you get the golem to scout for us again?"

"Alright on it," she said, as it stirred from the position it'd been left in. "See you soon."

We set off back, this time at a brisker pace at first. However, with so many of the tunnels looking the same, we quickly slowed down as we arrived at the first intersection. To begin with, the others tried to get me to take the lead on account of my good memory, but after making it clear it had become strangely spotty this weekend, we instead decided to get directions from Ran, since the rest of us didn't have appropriate Divination for navigation.

This was... Fine, though quickly I became a little uneasy as the route Ran fed us turned out to be notably different from the one Zeno had led us down, leading through a series of tighter halls as opposed to what I assumed were the primary tunnels. She assured us that, being able to see everything, this was the most optimal, and - since the only reason Ran ever lied was when she was trying really hard to be nice - I believed her.

It didn't make it any less offputting. After what had just happened, I'd been hoping to cap off the adventure with a simple retracing of our steps, not going through somewhere even more creepy.

We walked in silence for a while, but in the midst of making our way down a tight, curved passage which I assumed probably fed back into the area under the Order's headquarters, Kamrusepa spoke up.

"How are you feeling now that you've been walking for a bit, Seth?" she inquired.

He craned his back and forth and little in response, and lifted his injured arm before letting it fall again. "My arm hurts like shit now that my nerves are working again and I kinda wanna take all the clothes on half of my body off, but I've been through worse." He paused for a minute. "I'll probably feel better when I have something to drink."

"Kinda was a dumb omission for this, in retrospect, huh?" Fang said. "Not bringing any bottled water."

"I'm, uh, not sure we could've predicted what happened," I said.

"Maybe not," Seth said. "But that's like, rule one of going anywhere dangerous or tiring."

"We could conjure some," I suggested.

He shook his head. "Nah, better not to waste the eris. There's plenty back at the security center."

"You've had rather a rough time of it this weekend, Seth," Kam said idly. "Physically, I mean. First your incident with Ezekiel on the way here, now this."

Oh, I realized. I see what she's doing.

I'd kind of assumed this plan would be off considering what had happened, or that she'd at least have signaled me when she was about to start, since it was for my sake. But she seemed to be acting odd since we'd found Seth in the observation chamber a few minutes ago.

Still, it remained a good chance.

"The only one's who've had it rough are Bardiya, Saci, and Yantho," Seth replied firmly. "Getting a little beat up is nothing compared to that."

"I suppose so," she said.

"You heard about what happened with Zeke?" he asked, glancing at me for a brief moment. My face flushed a little.

"Heard about it?" She gave him a convincingly confused look. "Bardiya mentioned when we first arrived in the sanctuary that there was some sort of fight with him, so I'd assumed that was the cause of your condition. Or am I misremembering?"

"Oh." He blinked. "N-no, I forgot about that. Sorry."

"It's alright. It's been rather a long weekend." She smiled slightly.

"Guess so," he said, turning to face forward.

Wow, my internal liar noted. That was pretty clever. She used the pretext of a misunderstanding to appear to arrive at the knowledge I'd already given her organically.

"Su and I argued a bit when we were in the Empyrean Bastion, as a matter of fact," she went on, idly running a hand through her hair. "Though we're not boys, of course, so it didn't come to blows in our case."

Fang whistled.

"Heh, we'd already made it here when it happened," Seth said, with an awkward laugh. "So at least it wasn't public."

Kam nodded thoughtfully. "What were you fighting about, in any case?" She asked.

Seth sighed. "I don't really wanna get into it. It's all kinda stupid." He glanced in my direction. "I went into it a little with Su a while ago, so you can ask her if you really wanna know. Not much worth keeping a secret at this point."

"Take a right here," Ran's voice rang out as we approached a turn. We did. The passage narrowed even further, to the point that my hands were brushing against the stonework.

"It's alright. I've no mind to pry." She paused for a moment. "I had thought I recalled Bardiya saying the fight happened just before your Aetherbridge ascension, though, not when you were already here."

"Mm, he was kinda covering for us," Seth said. "Like I said, I don't really wanna get into it."

"That is a bit of relief, in any case," she replied. "After all, making a scene at the Aetherbridge port could throw our class into disrepute."

He snorted. "I hate to break it to you, Kam, but if we get out this alive, I'm pretty sure our reputation as the 'serial murder victim's class' is gonna overwhelm anything else we've got going on." He idly stretched his arms. "When all's said and done, this gonna be a huge fucking deal. Leader of a reclusive arcane order turns on his own members and starts a massacre? That's the kinda story you get logic sea communities forming around."

"Ughh, that's a good point," Fang moaned. "Shit. They're probably gonna want me to do interviews for years."

"You're barely in the class, Fang," Seth commented, with amused dryness.

"Hey!" They said. "I like, show up! Sometimes! When I'm free!"

"An inspiring level of commitment, to be certain," Kam said flatly.

"Besides," they continued. "I don't wanna like, humblebrag or whatever? But you guys know I'm kinda more of a public figure. You're probably gonna get a lot easier a time of it than I am."

"Not much a consolation," Seth intoned. "I swear you're in like, six media things every month."

Fang sighed. "Honestly? It's more like ten. They scrap a shitload of that stuff. Usually because I said something weird."

"I hope no one tries to interview me about all this," I said grimly. "I'd probably have a nervous breakdown."

"You'll probably wanna brace yourself, Su," Seth told me, with an amused smile. "I bet we're gonna get crazy people making up scenarios for how we're all killers and sending us creepy letters for the rest of our lives. Especially if we don't catch Hamilcar's accomplice and the whole thing goes unsolved."

"Don't want it," I said stubbornly, drawing inward. "Gonna become a hermit, instead."

He laughed, in spite of the circumstances.

It was strange. Even though I knew this whole conversation had only even been started because of my own suspicions of Seth, and that was probably still where it was going, a strange atmosphere had set in. Like we were finally relaxing again, allowing ourselves a moment of triumph. I felt caught up in it, and found myself relaxing slightly.

"You're way too talented to be a hermit, Su," Fang told me. "You're even faster with figures than I am."

I blinked. "I am?"

"Yeah, totally!" they said. "You could probably have made it as a mathematical theorist even if you weren't an arcanist. You gotta put that to work in like, society. I wouldn't be surprised if you come up with something crazy with fundamental arcana eventually that changes the whole profession."

I wasn't sure what to do with this sort of compliment, so I just ended laughing awkwardly, my face flushed.

"Geez," Seth said. "High praise."

"You know, Fang, I've never heard you give me these sorts of compliments," Kam said, "despite my grades only being third to your own."

Fang made an indecisive 'ehhh' noise. "Honestly, Kam, I see you more as kinda an administrative type than one who invents stuff."

Kam frowned. "What, like in the Censors?"

They considered this. "Nah, more like somebody who seizes power in a small country for 50 years, only to be murdered in a bloody coup after a failed purge of your opponents in the oligarchy."

"So specific," she commented, looking irritated.

"That, or maybe headmistress of an academy. Something like that, y'know."

Kam snorted in response, turning her nose up.

"I'm not gonna ask," Seth said, crossing his arms idly. "I don't wanna know my future. I've got enough shit to think about in the present."

"Hey, that's a good attitude!" Fang said. "Live in the moment. I wish I could do that."

I sighed, rubbing my eyes.

"I can't claim Fang's presumed talent for premonition, but I could see you as a personal doctor to the elite, Seth," she said. "You're a very malleable thinker, and have an excellent bedside manner."

"Heh, I think Bardiya would roll over in his grave if I did that," he replied.

"You're very good at getting along with people, and always sense when people need support," she continued. "I think it's noble how you've been standing by Theo through all of this, even if I can't share your complete confidence in his innocence. I feel bad that he has to go through all of this, since I know he's somewhat of a delicate person."

Oh, I thought. Here it comes.

"Theo's tough," he said, his tone hardening a bit. "Just not in a way that's obvious."

"Well, you'd be the better judge," she said, shrugging. "Actually, he was singing your praises during the tour yesterday."

He raised an eyebrow. "Over what?"

"Your trip on the Aetherbridge," she said. "He mentioned--"

But then, at what might've been the the worst moment possible, we were interrupted by a grinding sound as the wall to our left suddenly moved.