Partial Draft Update 06/04/22 (Patreon)

(This week is gonna be a bit a trainwreck, I'm afraid. I ended up being overwhelmed with work this week - for those who aren't familiar, online writing freelancing tends to work on something on a grab bag model, where you're given a piece of work within a rough length category that you must complete or else jeopardize your chance of getting future work. Unfortunately, 'length' is judged largely at the discretion of the client, so if you get unlucky, it's easy to end up cornered with something way more intense than you wanted. 

That's why I never expanded the previous chapter in the way I wanted, but this was compounded by having much more difficulty finally writing Ezekiel's incantation list, which the end of this chapter necessitated. And on top of that, I couldn't find a good way to cut the previous chapter, so it all ended up spiraling into a mess. 

I'm not sure this is a great idea, but I'm going to do something I haven't since November and explicitly push out a chapter today alongside a partial draft, while aiming to finish it by tomorrow on a much firmer basis, like back last year. Every day I miss an update day completely my numbers suffer, and I think it leads to further spiralling. So I hope you guys are willing to bare with me. 

On a more positive note, I'm taking this coming week off work as a break to try and reduce my stress levels. This is the first time I've done that in over a year for reasons that weren't either cancer or holiday related, so I'll probably have a lot more time to work on the story.)

"You're back," Ran said as she stepped towards us, while Anna seemed not to acknowledge our renewed presence at all. I noticed that she was holding the scouting golem she'd been using to assist us in her arms. "I was half expecting you to get rushed by a golem and have your faces clawed off in the last few minutes."

"We're a little tougher to kill then that," Seth said, the last word slurring a bit.

"You look like shit," Ran said, frowning at him.

"I feel like shit," Seth replied. He glanced around the area.

I did too, and now that we were a little closer, noticed that a few more people seemed to have made their way to the downstairs portion of the security center. It made sense, since this was where most of the amenities for its secondary role as a bunker were located - the food, the beds - and even with the current commitment to stay firmly within each other's lines of sight, it wasn't like we could stay huddled in a little circle for hours.

Ezekiel was brooding on one of the few chairs in the corner, while Ophelia was resting in one of the little bunkbeds, seemingly asleep. Finally, Ptolema was sitting on the steps, but quickly stood and began approaching us as well.

One thing I noted was that Mehit, and the bodies of Yantho and Sacnicte brought down here earlier, were now absent. Ran had said the former had woken up, so...

"Oh. Oh god," Ptolema said, her eyes wide as she looked at Seth.

"Hey, Ema," he said weakly.

She walked over to him, her pace picking up as she went. At first I thought she was going to hug him, and judging by her posture that might've been her original intent. But instead, she stopped just in front of him, stared with a complicated, frustrated expression, then cautiously reached up a hand and slid the mask from his face. She looked at him like that for a moment, her expression shocked, then scowled suddenly, flinging her arm over his shoulder in a pseudo-affectionate gesture before thumping him in the chest.

"You--" Her voice cracked. "You fucking idiot!"

"U-uh, easy," he said, wincing a bit with an awkward smile. "I'm pretty fragile right now, y'know?"

"How the hell did you let this happen?" she demanded, looking up at him. "You had a million barriers! The whole thing was supposed to be safe! Did you run off and do something stupid?!"

"Actuuuually, it was sorta Zeno's fault?" Fang. "She split the group up so Seth could gather up all the records the machine's been spitting out, and some of the original documentation. But then we found Hamilcar and he started throwing out some really crazy arcana, and the whole place kinda blew up, and things got kinda nuts, and--"

This didn't seem to soothe Ptolema, and she interrupted gritting her teeth at Seth. "You almost died for some parchment?"

"Important parchment," Kamrusepa interjected, raising a finger. She set the crate on the ground, along with Zeno's scepter. "Significant on a civilizational scale."

Ptolema turned to her, her face twisted in anger and distress. "Who cares!? That's sick!"

"Hey, calm down, okay?" Seth told her, putting his hand on her shoulder in turn. "Almost or not-almost, the important part is that I didn't die. And this--" he gestured over himself, "--might look bad, but it's mostly superficial shit."

"'Bad' doesn't come close to covering it! Half of your face looks like you jammed it in a grill!" she half-shouted.

Seth glanced towards us, his brow lowered. "Is it really that bad?"

"It's... rough," I said, glancing to the side awkward.

He sighed. "Great. And my good looks were the one thing I had going for me, too." He looked to Ptolema. "Well, it doesn't matter. Anything surface-level can be fixed by Biomancy nowadays. And the point is I stopped the internal damage before anything serious could happen."

"You're barely even standing up straight," she said, stepping back a little.

"Yeah, well, getting cooked by radiation takes a lot out of you," he said, along with an awkward laugh. "But I just need to lie down and maybe patch myself up a little bit more with Biomancy. I'll be okay. And we got the guy!" He made a stiff smile. "We won."

Ptolema averted her eyes. "That's... I..." She shook her head. "Gods, you're such an moron."

She turned, looking flustered, and stormed off. Though this didn't amount to much, since the furthest she could go was the other side of the room.

Still, Seth went after her regardless. "Ema, wait," he said, his tone a little agitated.

They stepped away from our group. Fang looked amused, but Kam was still wearing a strangely serious expression.

"Wooh," Fang said, Fang said, after they were gone. "Those two are really straightforward, huh?"

"Not quite the term I would use, personally," Kam commented.

Ran looked to us. "Zeno gave us the cliff notes of what happened."

I frowned. "She is here, then? Zeno?"

"Yeah. Well, I'm pretty sure, at least. There's kind of a setup-- You'll see when you go upstairs." She looked over the three of us who remained once again, then stepped forward. "So. Want to give me the full story?"

Over the next few minutes, we gave a full accounting of what had happened since we'd set out, filling in the gaps from when she hadn't been listening to or observing us: Our initial detours to the eris tanks and the Order's induction chamber, our descent to the Apega and confrontation with Hamilcar, and finally our escape and discovery of the strange hidden chamber. She nodded along, listening closely.

"So," she said, as we approached the conclusion. "Can you show me the books you found in this room?"

Kam offered hers up first, and Ran flipped through it, her brow quickly furrowing. Occasionally she paused, peering at some specific page or image.

"So," Kam asked, her brow quirked curiously. "You're about the closest our class has to a linguist, Ran. Do you recognize the text?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "...but it doesn't seem to be nonsense, either. There are clear patterns assembled in ways that are obviously consistent words and phrases. Like-- Look here." She turned the textbook over, showing a segment that seemed to be explaining the concept of gravity, with the classic image of a falling apple. "This part under the illustration uses the same text twice. And then it appears here as a subheading."

"Oh yeah," Fang said, squinting at it. "Good eye. Good eye."

"There's more than that too-- I'm pretty sure I can make out what might be the pronoun framework," Ran continued, passing it back to Kam. "...but you'd probably need an actual professional to actually get any actual information out of it, and weeks of work."

"The one I found was a picture book," I said, holding it up. "Maybe it'll be easier to make some sense of?"

"I doubt it," she said. "But I'll take a look."

I passed it to her, and she paused for a moment, her eyes fixed on the front cover with an understandably uneasy expression. After a little while, though, she folded it open and began to slowly make her way through, taking her time to examine the illustrations. Meanwhile, Kam seemed to be taking another look at her 'own' book, probably trying to identify the patterns Ran had noted herself.

"This is kinda creepy," Ran said, after a few moments.

"Mm," I said, nodding. "I wasn't really sure what to make of the, uh. Imagery."

She squinted. "I'm pretty sure it's a mythological reference. Doesn't really seem appropriate for a kids book, though."

I blinked. "It's from mythology?"

"Yeah," she replied. "Or at least, it's the only place I've seen something like this depicted before - a person with double limbs and two heads, I mean." She continued looking through it as she spoke to me. "It's an Inotian story from late in the Old Kingdoms Era. It goes that originally, there weren't men and women, but just one unified type of human that were immortal and didn't need to to reproduce. But the king of the gods was afraid of this race, so he used lightning to split them down the middle. And so everyone spends their life in search of their other half, so they can be complete again."

"Huh," I said. "That's... Conceptually romantic, I guess."

I didn't actually think it was romantic. It just seemed weird.

"Rather lends to some grotesque implications," Kamrusepa chimed in. "Even putting aside the regressive historical applications of the concept of pre-ordained love, it would imply quite literally that every successful relationship is quite literally a case of-- Well, let's say autosexual behavior."

"Pfft, I knew you'd take it in some weird way, Kam," Fang said.

She gave a flat look in response.

"Like I said, it's a really old myth, and not even a popular one," Ran said. "I have less than no idea why someone would think to use it as the basis for a kids book. Though that's not even close to the biggest question here."

"You said we ought to ask Anna about this, didn't you?" I asked.

"Mm," she hummed, nodding, and turned. "Grandmaster, do you know anything about a hidden library in the underground near here?"

"No," she replied bluntly, even by her standards. "It's as I told your friend earlier; this sanctuary is filled with spaces belonging to specific members of our Order from over the decades. I am long past trying to keep an accounting of all of them."

I couldn't see her face as she spoke the words. She seemed intensely at work.

Ran exhaled softly. "...well, we can revisit this later." She looked back in our direction. "Now that you're back, you should all come upstairs. Some stuff has happened since you were gone, and Linos made some plans about what we might do next."

"What sort of plans?" I asked.

"It's to do with this thing," she said, holding up the small golem. "Since the concept's been proven, he was thinking of using it to try and scout out what happened to Samium."

I shifted uncomfortably.

"Since you told me that you couldn't get any information from Hamilcar, there was also talk of maybe gathering up everyone's weapons in one place."

"I'm not giving up my scepter," Kam said, strangely defensively.

Ran blinked, seeming a little taken aback by this. "I don't know if it includes scepters. He was only talking about rifles before-- Anyway, you should talk to him about it." She hesitated. "There's also... Another development you should probably see, too."

"Is this like, a mandatory thing?" Fang asked. "I was kinda wanting to sit and look over some things, now that we're back. If that's not gonna be, well. A problem."

Ran shrugged. "I mean, Seth is already kinda preoccupied and is probably going to end up resting anyway, so... It probably doesn't matter if you just stay down here and hear about what we're doing later."

"Great." They gave a thumbs up. "I'll catch you guys in a bit, then."

Kam and I turned to follow Ran up to the upper part of the security center. However, just as we approached the steps, a voice suddenly stopped us.

"Tell me," Anna spoke, not turning to look towards us. "Did Hamilcar say anything? Before you fought?"

I was too slow to process this, so Kamrusepa answered first. "Not anything of substance, exalted mistress. Merely some errata concerning his personal life, and a few vagaries about how he had come to realize the pursuit of eternal life was pointless. And his confession, of course."

She grunted, seeming dissatisfied with this response. "...and you, girl? Do you recall anything else?" she asked, obviously directing the question towards me. "I seem to recall that you are supposed to have something of a good memory."

I hesitated. "He, um... I remember he asked Zeno if he really wanted to 'continue this farce', even though we were being 'judged'."

Anna was silent for a moment. "...I see," she eventually said. "And you confirmed his death?"

"Well, Zeno did," I said. "...but I thought you heard about that already."

"Mm," she hummed furtively. "Get back to what you're doing."

With none of us really sure what to make of that, we continued up the stairs.

Linos and Theo were sitting by the logic bridge as I'd expected, with the former smiling warmly upon our arrival. But there was another sight in the room that took me a little more off guard.

Mehit, who true to Ran's description had woken up, was unexpectedly sitting next to her daughter, who was still in the same position as earlier, curled up against the wall. But this was the lesser of two surprises. More shocking was the fact that they were talking and, from what I could tell, seemed to be having a completely normal conversation. Mehit was holding a sketchbook in front of her daughter, a complicated smile upon her face.

She was still visibly drained looking, with a little blood still showing on the bandages around her stomach.

"I don't like that one," Lilith said, looking at  "It's bad."

"I think it's very pretty," Mehit said, her tone soothing.

"The color is bad. It's bad, it's all wrong," Lilith insisted. "A daffodil's yellow is supposed to be strongest and purest in any flower. It came out too orange, like a sunflower. I used-- I used too much white in the paint. And the color is too universal. It looks fake."

"It's striking," Mehit said. "I think you did a very good job with the shift in color towards the middle of the flower--"

"Stigma," Lilith interrupted.

"--and the details of the folds on the petals are incredible. I can't even begin to get my head around how you visualize it all."

"The proportions don't. They don't work at all. Look at the way the shadows on the right petals came out It's amateur art. Ugly." She grimaced. "I want to burn it."

They're having... A casual conversation?

"Ah, Utsu, Kam!" Linos called out with relief as we appeared from up the stairs. "I'm so glad to see you all back safely."

Theo smiled weakly at us from where he was sitting, but seemed in a subdued mood again.

"It was a little more touch and go than I might've liked, but yes," Kam said, "though it's a rather macabre affair. I dare say we do not deserve a hero's welcome for the death of a man, regardless of how grave a business he was party to."

Sadness crept into Linos's expression. "Yes. It truly is a terrible shame, and deeply strange." He looked towards the ground, his eyes troubled. "I can't say I was particularly close to Hamilcar, even professionally - we worked on very different projects - but still, I only ever knew him as a gentle, rationally-minded man... The opposite of the sort you'd expect to pass judgement on others, even in a casual context."

"It's always a shock, to realize someone you know is not as they seemed," Kam mused dourly, stepping further into the room and taking a seat. "The human mind is as a vault of stone. None of us may ever truly know what's going on in someone else's head."

I glanced at Ran briefly.

"I suppose that's true," Linos said, folding his hands in his lap idly. "Still, people have hidden sides and then they have hidden sides. Thinking about it, there were signs that Hamilcar might've been becoming disillusioned with our cause, but I never would have imagined in a thousand years that he'd be the mastermind behind something like this, especially when considering the level of premeditation that must have occurred." He shook his head. "Outside of family, I'm not sure I'll trust someone the same way ever again."

"You think that's what he was?" Rank asked, her eyes narrow. "The mastermind?"

"Well... Yes." Linos sighed, looking at her with a heavy frown. "Not to be overly blunt about it, but my alibi during miss Ic'Nal's vicious murder is probably the closest to foolproof, and Anna's directly helping in our escape. If there is another accomplice, then the only remaining candidates are from your class, and... Truthfully, I can't imagine anyone so young spearheading a plan such as this, let alone bringing Hamilcar on board."

"That's just an assumption," Ran said, her tone serious. "Without any clue to his fundamental motive, we can't consider anything out of the question."

"I agree," Kamrusepa said, with a severe nod. "Our priority should be absolute vigilance from this point forward. We shouldn't assume the guilty party was a mere helper for Hamilcar, and will simply resign just because we're all locked in a standoff here." She narrowed her eyes. "Were I them, I'd be too invested to drop the matter now, and would certainly try something. Perhaps something foolish, but something."

Absolute vigilance. What did that mean, exactly?

Obviously, the most straightforwardly 'logical' course of action would be for us to just sit in the circle and watch each other until it was time to leave. That would theoretically give the remaining culprit the least opportunity to potentially act. ...However, if you thought it for more than a few moments, then it clearly wasn't that simple. With the whole sanctuary turned against us, we still couldn't rule out an attack by something external, and any such event under those circumstances would be devastating, since we'd all be together in one place. There was also the question of where we would even sit. As things stood, it was possible to use the Power on the lower floor of the security center, and impossible on the upper floor. Both had their own advantages and disadvantages.

On the other hand, it we carefully guarded both entrances, we could offset that possibility - but would also give accomplice more opportunity to potentially try something in return. Not much opportunity, but...

Something I'd never really thought about until tonight was that being 'safe' as a concept had diminishing returns. Even in a dangerous situation, it wasn't hard to use a little thought and become more safe. But trying become completely safe felt increasingly impossible, especially when there was another human intellect actively working against you.

Linos nodded. "We've taken all due precautions. Anna has the lower floor warded, and I've set the defenses in here," he pointed to the refractor rifles mounted on the ceiling which I noted the previous day, "to fire disabling shots should anyone draw a weapon."

Kam frowned. "That seems like it could just as easily be used against us, if they play it right."

"Nothing we can do is foolproof," he admitted, echoing my thoughts. "But the more we discourage any potential accomplice to act, the more likely they'll be inclined to abandon the plan. Though only so long as we're in here." He furrowed his brow. "We're I them, I'd bide my time and wait for when we have to make for the entrance. That'll be when we're most vulnerable."

Kam nodded furtively, her eyes wandering back towards the stairs.

For my part, my gaze kept turning back to Lilith and Mehit, who were happily (well, so much as any interaction with Lilith could be characterized as 'happy') chatting along about art. I squinted at the scene anxiously.

"Um," I said, lowering my voice as I took a step towards Linos, ushering Ran forward with me at the same time. "Sorry to ask, but... What happened with those two?" I tried to gesture subtly, in a way the two of them wouldn't pick up on. "Why is Mehit talking to Lilith like nothing happened?"

"Mm, I was rather wondering that myself," Kam said, her voice lowered slightly.

Linos hesitated, glancing at the pair. "To be honest with you, I'm not entirely sure either. Mrs Eshkalon awoke a few minutes ago, and we tried to... Tell her about the situation, in case her memory was fuzzy." His lips tightened uncomfortably. "But she just kept asking to see her daughter."