Long Ago

I sat, alone, on one of the benches of the Hierarch's Way tram station. It was so early in the morning that the world wouldn't really wake up for another thirty or so minutes, with only solitary individuals coming and going with the trams, the sounds of the city still muted and calm. A gentle chill hung in the air, just piercing enough to reach my skin.

It was Sunday, but I was going into school for a supplementary Ysaran class for the sake of my grades. Not that they weren't already good enough, but they weren't the very best they could have been, at the top percentile of the top percentile of the city. That wasn't something which really mattered to me, but that sort of thing had been incredibly important to-- Well, to the real Utsushikome. And it felt like if I didn't keep it up, then if things were fixed, she'd rightfully loathe me for having disrupting her life.

...well, obviously, she'd loathe me regardless. But it still, it felt like the appropriate thing to do.

I'd been out there for about 15 minutes already. Oreskios had a pretty efficient public transport system - the product of almost a century of mixed Humanist and Paritist government - so there'd been a tram or two that could've taken me to up to Klerouchos Tertiary Academy already, or at least to the transpositioning checkpoint, which was only fifteen minutes walk away.

But I wasn't to travel alone. As a tram pulled into the empty platform, I saw her behind one of the windows, her eyes already scanning for my presence. When they found it, her gaze locked with mine, and she stepped towards the wooden doors as they slid open, and advanced in my direction.

I looked at her. At this point, I'd still never seen her out of our school uniform, which she didn't seem to bother personalizing at all - she didn't even tuck its long black skirt upward a bit, as most other girls seemed to, and her hair was always in the same utilitarian style, like she was actively resisting conveying anything about herself in her appearance.

That day, though, I noticed something unusual. When she got up close and her veil wafted a little in the wind, I spotted what looked like a yellow-brown bruise on the side of her cheek.

"G-Good morning," I said, as she arrived.

"Yeah," she said coldly, breaking eye contact with me as soon as I started talking, and staring dead ahead as she seated herself by my side. "Morning."

This was, if you could believe it, a pretty profound leap in terms of emotional engagement. Up until a week or so ago, she hadn't even been responding my greetings, just getting straight into questioning. And prior to a couple weeks before that, she'd usually insulted me for even trying.

"Have you been alright...?" I asked.

She didn't reply, sliding her bag off her shoulder to pull out a novel that was on this year's supplementary list for literature class, then flicking through the pages to her bookmark about 2/3rds through. I noticed her hands looked a little hurt, too. Like she'd been gripping something really tightly.

"Did, um," I said, hesitating as I clasped my hands together, "did something happen to your face?"

"Yeah," she said neutrally, not looking up. "My dad punched me."

I blinked, my lips parting slightly, then hanging in that position.

Having now lived for several decades, most of which I've spent as an absolutely hopeless introvert, I've come to believe that the most critical flaw in human communication is how people respond to seeing pain in others. Because genuinely engaging with someone else's anguish is 1: Too complicated, difficult and exhausting, and 2: Too interpersonally risky if you make the wrong core assumptions or bungle what you're trying to say, we have collectively developed a series of cultural rituals to replace this engagement in 95% of circumstances. And though we all understand these rituals are fundamentally vapid and serve only to condemn us all to a wasteland of the spirit where achieving genuine catharsis in a conversation with another human being is like panning for gold in a river, we perpetuate them because the alternative - routine vulnerability on a societal level, and risk of asymmetrical humiliation and debasement that comes with it - repulses and frightens us, and because we have forgotten how, our ability to express raw and unabashed love smothered in the early-agrarian crib of our species.

Which, altogether, is an overly complicated justification for why, upon hearing this, my face went stiff, and I said: "O-Oh. ...I'm, uh, sorry. That's awful."

Ran snorted. "Sure. Awful."

We sat in awkward silence for a minute or so, the only sounds being the wind, the distant chirping of birds, and the occasional set of hoof-beats as a carriage passed nearby on the market street.

"Is-- Is there anything I can do?" I eventually asked, continuing to awkwardly follow the ritual.

This time, she did glance at me, a scowl forming on her face. "Don't try to act compassionate, you perverted fucking body-snatcher. You're not my friend."

My eyes turned sharply downwards. "U-Uh, sorry." I tensed up, my posture drawing inward as I felt the spike of embarrassment, shame and guilt. "Sorry, I shouldn't have..."

"Yeah, you shouldn't have," she said bitterly. "...gods. Hearing you say stuff like that in her voice... It's creepy as all hell."

My heart had started to race, and I felt sweat pooling in my palms as my hands gripped into fists. I tried to calm down by looking upwards. That's what I'd always done, when I was a child and didn't know how to cope with things. So long as you only saw the sky, you could be anywhere, in any situation, not just the one you were in. You could be outside at a party, surrounded by friends. You could be in a peaceful field where no one would bother you. You could be standing alone on the last sliver of land at the end of the world.

At least, until you looked down.

"You don't have her hair in braids, like it usually is," she pointed out, though was once again looking at her book.

"Oh... Yeah," I said, my voice coming out a little breathless as my gaze came back to the earth. I instinctively touched it at the comment, the strands loose and falling over my shoulders. "Her mother didn't wake me up on time, so... I didn't have time to tie it up."

She grunted. "Just be late next time. I don't want you messing with how she looks on your own impulse."

I nodded silently, looking downward.

"So," she digressed. "Did you manage to look into the stuff we talked about?"

"Some of it," I said, relieved to be back to the one topic in which productive conversation between us was actually possible, if only to an extent. "It's hard to find information about how the induction process is supposed to work in libraries, or even over the logic sea... But I'm starting to remember what happened around then more and more, and I think what you heard from the professor was probably right after all."

I hadn't been told the mechanics of how it all actually worked, back when I'd agreed. They probably hadn't viewed it as important. Nevertheless, once the two of us had started looking into the matter, it'd been easy for her to deduce it'd have to have been something to do with Utsushikome's induction, which I'd informed her had taken place just before 'I'd' appeared.

It was strange, us investigating it together like this. Even though I went along with it, acted repentantly, and had explained to her that the way things were weren't exactly my fault - that I'd been deceived at the premise of what I'd agreed to do - she wasn't willing to afford me much charity, but in a way, that was comforting. She was like a beacon of sharp reality in the dreamlike, dissociated existence I was now living.

Doing her classwork, spending time with her friends. Smiling every night as I ate dinner with her family, and her thoughts and feelings crackled through my mind regardless of whether I wanted them to or not. If I allowed myself to relax and only think shallow thoughts, I could forget what was even going on. I didn't even know if the word 'her' or 'my' was more appropriate. The more I lived like this, the more it felt like something within me was withering or being warped out of shape.

"But you're not from before the collapse," she said. "Well, unless you've lost your fucking mind and this is all some delusion, or something."

"I... don't think it's that," I said, frowning. "I mean, I remember my life in Itan really vividly... Even for years after she left. Or before we even met in the first place."

"So it doesn't make any sense, then," she said, seeming to stop reading for a moment, her eyes wandering off to the side. "Based on the explanation I heard, they can't do it with some random person. The whole idea is to fill in some 'hole' that gets created when they reset someone's pneuma, and they can only use one which hasn't gone through the process for that."

"Mm..." I said, and rubbed my eyes. "When they talked to me, they acted like the only reason they could-- They could do it, was because of some special quality I had. And it was that, combined with having known her before, that made it ideal."

She glanced at me. "You told me that already."

"Sorry," I said. "What I mean is, maybe there's some exception to that rule, which only a few people know about?"

Ran grunted, staring forward for a moment. "What did you say it was called? The place they do inductions."

"The pneumorium," I said. "I can remember that much."

"But do you remember where it is?"

I furrowed my brow for a few moments, staring into the middle distance. "Yeah... I think so. Or at least, I could find it, I think. It was somewhere near Panay Square-- Near the Jainist and Principist temples. I remember that it looked sort of like a temple, too - old, dome-shaped roof..."

She nodded, looking contemplative. "We can't rely on you getting good enough at snooping through her mind to figure this shit out by yourself. We have exams soon, and then it's going to be time to start picking out subjects for next year and looking at different universities. You can't be the one to make those decisions."

"Yeah," I said, weakly. "You're right."

"So we should just go there," she continued. "They'll probably recognize her face and have records of the induction, and maybe they can just undo it. You said on Friday you thought you remembered them giving some explanation about how these kinds of problems can happen, right? Of whatever they stick in your brain not playing nice with the shit that's already there."

I nodded. "Mm. I can't really recall what they said they do about it, though... I just remember getting some kind of warning."

A tram started to roll into the station. I hadn't bothered to attune to the logic bridge, so I didn't hear the announcement, but a glance at the line number displayed on its side was enough to know this would take us to the school. Ran seemed to notice, too, already shifting in preparation of standing back up.

"Right," Ran replied, eyes narrow. "Well, if it's something they know about, there's probably some kinda solution for it. So that's our next step. When's your next free night? I assume they won't be open today."

The tram pulled in, and we both stood up. "Well... You told me that I shouldn't miss any more theater club, and that's Monday. And then on Tuesday we have cram classes for Arcane Theory. So I suppose Wednesday would be best."

"Good," she said, with a firm nod. "We'll go then."

We boarded the tram, and after verifying ourselves with the logic bridge, headed to a quiet set of seats near the rear of the carriage. It was getting steadily more busy now. I could see some businessmen in formal chitons and ruqun, and spotted another student in our uniform. I sat by the window, and Ran by the aisle. The stops went by quickly, people coming and going.

"...there, uh, was something else," I eventually said, my voice wavering a bit. "That I looked into."

She glanced to me. "Yeah?"

I swallowed the air. "I decided to try contacting some public offices in Itan... To maybe try and find out more about what might've happened. Since he told me I'd go back to my body when this was over, I thought that by now, someone might've found wherever they put it..." I took a breath. "Well, it turned out they had found it."

Ran said nothing, only holding her gaze.

"But," I said, "it turned out that all that stuff they'd said, must have just been some lie to get me to go along with this." I looked down at my lap, a strange, stiff smile forming on my face. "Because it'd been dead for months. Since around the time it all happened."

At these words, something subtle shifted in Ran's expression. It wasn't sympathy that appeared, but more like discomfort or unease. She frowned, but it was one of awkwardness, not contempt.

"So..." I said. "There isn't anywhere for me to go back to, now."

"...this isn't you getting cold feet about trying to save her, is it?" she asked, suddenly suspicious. "Because you can't--"

"No," I replied, shaking my head. "It's not."

She hesitated, then fell silent. She looked away from me, such that I couldn't see her face, and a few moments passed. I looked at my hands.

"...maybe they can make another body for you, or something," she suggested, her voice quiet and tone reticent.

I didn't know how to respond to this, so I didn't say anything. It was an absurd suggestion, and she must have known so. Since the revolution lifted the ban, you sometimes heard about the very rich artificing new bodies for themselves and being transplanted in as experimental means of life extension, but that took phenomenal amounts of arcane expertise from multiple fields to the point that it was completely inaccessible to 99.999% of the population... And even then, they didn't know how to recreate the most pivotal parts - the brain and upper spine. And even then, if they did, how would that even work? Wouldn't that already be a complete person, and start thinking by themselves?

Ran must have realized the absurdity of the statement, because a few moments later she spoke up again-- Disgust having crept back into her tone, even if that hint of conflict still remained. "Don't act sorry for yourself," she said. "It's your own fault for going along with something so perverse for your own gain. Blame her grandfather for being such a fucking lunatic, if you want, but don't act like a victim. No one gives a shit about you."

I didn't know how to respond to that either, so once again, I just stared out the window, watching the lines of houses and shops fly by.

The tram reached the academy. We went to the cram class, which lasted about 3 hours, during which Ran didn't really speak to me at all. We went out with Utsushikome's friends, and she tagged along-- As she did with everything she could, just to keep track of the way I was behaving.

It was in the evening, when we were traveling back along the same route as the sun began to set, that she said it to me. I remember a lot, but that moment in particular I can recall down to the taste of the air. It was right as I'd finished peeling an orange I'd taken with me for the trip, and had put a piece it in my mouth.

"I need something to call you," she said, bluntly. "It's getting awkward to keep treading around it."

I blinked in surprise, then spoke cautiously, my mouth still full of juice. I remember the tingling of the citrus. "You... Want to know my real name...?"

"No," she said firmly. "I don't want to know anything about the person you were. That would just make having to hear you talk out of Utsushikome's mouth even more creepy and weird." She frowned. "But I don't want to accidentally start thinking of you as 'Shiko', either. Or even 'Utsu', since that's what her parents call her."

"Some of the friends from when she was a child call her that, too," I said.

"How would you know?" Ran asked, irritated, but then almost instantly twitched, grunting and rubbing her brow. "Never mind. Gods, this is never going to get any less weird. The sooner we can fix this, the better."

I nodded uncomfortably. "So... What are you thinking, then?"

"I guess a nickname would be best," she said. "Something I can call you in public without people getting confused, but doesn't have the same note to it."

I scratched my head. "What do you mean by 'note'?"

"Utsushikome is a really upper-class kind of name," she clarified, which I interpreted as being a diplomatic way of saying it was overwrought and pretentious. "Like for a noble lady. 'Shiko' and 'Utsu' both have some of that feel, too, even if they're more cutesy. You ought to have something more plain." She furrowed her brow. "How about just--"

𒊹

Inner Sanctum Loft | 8:52 AM | Third Day

"Su," Ran called out over her shoulder, as she carried a stepladder across the room. "Stop staring at the wall. You need to pick a mask."

I blinked. "S-Sorry," I said, stepping over. "I was just thinking about something."

Everyone else was in the process of trying to pluck masks from the grand display while carefully avoiding touching the human remains which had now been 'tastefully' covered by a series of sheets made of whatever non-absorbent materials could be salvaged from the backstage area of the theater. The result was still a deeply uncomfortable atmosphere and situation - like trying to do paperwork in the back room of a slaughterhouse. But we didn't have access to the Power, and it wasn't like we could just cart it away.

Still, there was nothing for it. I treaded carefully towards the back wall, trying carefully not to step on anything that was previously part of a person, and to breathe as little as possible.

"As well as our faces, the security protocols are designed to register the masks once regularly employed by our members as a means to disguise our identities for larger meetings as representative of their identities," Anna had explained to us, back downstairs. "In days past, members were expected to keep them as personal property and carefully guard them to avoid this particular loophole being utilized - but since our unveiling and the presumed redundancy of many of our security measures, we have begun amassing them in a collection on the third floor of this building."

"So if we wear these things," Seth had asked, "Then the sanctuary will treat us like we're members?"

"In some regards. At the very least, it should placate the golems," Anna had replied. "The sole complication is that the masks are not sorted according to rank, and only those of Companion-Legionary status or higher will suffice. For six of you, that can be sidestepped by simply pointing out our own. For the rest, however, we shall have to rely on our own memory of their owners."

I hadn't expected Neferuaten's comprehensive explanation of the gallery to end up being both useful and relevant, but from what we'd heard about how the sanctuary - and the order more broadly - worked, it made sense. And seemed like a surprisingly creative plan for Anna, based on the impression I had of her.

However, as has come up already, I'd read a lot of murder mystery novels, and I felt profoundly uneasy about creating a situation where it became possible to misidentify people, especially considering how dark it was in this undersea tomb. In the ideal version of the situation to come, we'd all stay together in one place until it was over, and in that scenario, there'd be no problem, but...

Well, there were already clouds starting to grow on that horizon.

"We need to take a mask for Lilith and her mom, too," Seth said, as he climbed up stepladder to try and retrieve Zeno's pretentious mask. (Contrary to Anna's original estimate, we were not down to five easily-identifiable ones, as no one wanted to don Durvasa's gore-soaked one.) "Last we saw them, they were on their way over here. If we do a sweep of the building, we'll probably find them and get everyone in one place again."

"They're dead, Mekhian," Ezekiel said, bluntly. "You think they would have missed us stomping around this place? The killer will probably have their insides assembled for us in a nice display when we get back downstairs."

"Shut the hell up, asshole," Ptolema said, filling in for what was normally Kamrusepa's territory, who was presently in the middle of trying to get down Neferuaten's mask alongside Ophelia. "We're not gonna leave anyone to die if we can help it."

"How fortunate our party is to be blessed with such wisdom," Ezekiel said acerbically, rolling his eyes. "At least if you go and get yourself killed, girl, it might increase our odds of survival."

"Come over here and say that to my face, you racist cave goblin," she replied threateningly.

"Let's... All try to stay calm, alright?" Linos interjected predictably, and Zeno's cheeks puffed up with suppressed laughter. "We can take masks for them, and then decide what we're going to do."

"In-fucking-spiring can kicking," Ezekiel replied flatly.

Anna hit the side of his head with her scepter, and he grunted, going silent. He hadn't lost his respect for her authority yet, at least.

"...I think it might've been an accident," I said warily, "but he did sort of raise a point in saying that stuff. Which is that the killer must've known we were going to make this plan and go up here, if they set all this up in advance."

"That wasn't an accident, Saoite," Ezekiel spat. "It's obvious we're being toyed with. Everything so far has probably played into the palm of their hands."

"L-Let's not jump to conclusions," Linos said.

"I mean. I guess there are kinda two options, here? No-- Three options," Fang said. They'd already retrieved a mask which didn't belong to any of the council members - it was shaped and colored to look like a stylized moon, complete with craters (even though the Mimikos's moon had no craters, so the visual was purely from art). "First option: It was a coincidence."

"Doesn't strike me as particularly likely," Kamrusepa said.

"Nah, but it's good to remember it's not impossible. Sometimes a crime scene is just a crime scene, y'know?" They flicked their hair out of their eyes. "Second option: They guessed we were going to go up here based on how they'd restricted our options using the circumstances. Thaaaat'd be my bet, I think. Pretty obvious answer to the problem they'd just thrust right in our face."

"And the third option?" I asked.

They clicked their tongue. "We~ll, this one's not exactly diplomatic. But the third option would be that the person who made the decision for us to go up here was in on it."

Anna frowned at them from under her hood. "Are you accusing me of being the culprit?"

"Hey, hey, I'm not accusing anybody of anything," Fang said, holding up a hand. "Like I said, the second feels like the most likely to me. I'm just laying out the possibilities, here."

Yantho furrowed his brow, then displayed his board to Kamrusepa, Ophelia and Zeno, who happened to be the nearest to them.

"What's he saying?" Seth asked.

"...um, it says, 'The real question would be if they predicted the plan to change the engravings leading to the security center. That seems like it would be harder to predict, but with more consequences if they did'," Ophelia transcribed.

Fang thought about this for a moment, then nodded. "Yeah. Checks out."

"Correct me should I happen to be mistaken," Kamrusepa said, "but one positive I can see in the current situation is that it seems unlikely that any of us are the culprit. After all, none of us could possibly have been the responsible party for what happened to the doctor."

"Ehh, making some assumptions there," Fang said. "You're right in terms of the blood trail we found before, and the weird ritual symbol. But this?" They clicked their tongue. "I bet no one's been up here since the tour you guys were talking about back at the baths. If this isn't Durvasa, it could've happened at any time. Not like it's impossible to heat up a corpse."

"But it does seem to be him," Kamrusepa said. "At the very least, it makes it more probable the culprit is an unknown party."

"That's, ah. Assuming there's only one culprit, though," Theo said, as he retrieved his father's mask from its place high up on the wall.

"Well... Yes," Kamrusepa said. "Assuming that much."

"If this truly is Durvasa, I hope it serves to help everyone trust each other a little more," Linos said. "I'd really like to clear this atmosphere of suspicion."

At this moment, Zeno laughed a little more, as if the very notion that such a thing was possible was absurd.

Still, it was something to go off of. If one took the assumption of 'no one currently present is the culprit', it only left a few possibilities, especially since it likely excluded Balthazar, since he couldn't have been the one to have abducted - or staged the abduction of - Durvasa due to him having been with Anna before retiring to Zeno's room. If we assumed both events were due to the same individual, it left Mehit, Lilith, Hamilcar, and Sacnicte as the only possibilities.

Mehit and Lilith didn't seem likely. So that left Hamilcar and Sacnicte feeling like the most probable culprits, at least on that speculative metric. I couldn't think of a motive for the latter, but based on the story Ran had given me, could Hamilcar have decided to destroy the order himself to conceal the success of my grandfather's project, based on how he'd apparently behaved?

I shook my head. That was way too many leaps to be useful.

"It looks as though we've run out of the masks you pointed out as belonging to the council..." Ophelia said, frowning. "Could any of you point out some more you remember...?"

Zeno snorted. "Well, I can think of one I certainly recall as being imparted with our highest degree of authority."

Slowly, we all ended up with masks, some of the others trading with one another to get ones they preferred. Theo got his dad's silly, possibly-ironic traditional theater mask, which was the obvious choice. Ezekiel got Anna's self-deprecating leather veil from her school days, possibly as an insult from Kamrusepa, who knew the context. Kamrusepa herself ended up with Zeno's demon mask, and Ran Neferuaten's blank slate which she had opened herself up so much to explain. Finally, Hamilcar's mask - which unlike Neferuaten, Anna and Zeno did remember - went to Seth. It was wooden, and carved into a strangely realistic visage of an elderly man, the expression slightly sorrowful.

Everyone else had to make do with what the council members could recall. Besides Fang, Ophelia got a floral-themed mask which was very appropriate for her, and Ptolema one which looked sort of like an owl's face, but only came down to the lips. Yantho's was also animal themed, though it was abstract and stylized in a manner that reminded me of traditional Saoic art, resembling a wolf.

As for me, Zeno picked it out himself.

"Here," she said, with an insufferably sly expression, reminding me of our first conversation. But this time, there was an even meaner edge to it. Like she was delivering the punchline to a mocking joke. "You ought to have this one, I think."

I looked down at the object they'd handed me. The design was primarily made up of crystal, and had a design that was evocative of both a dragon and a butterfly. A line of bronze ran down the center and ended with a serpentine head, and on either side were two broad 'wings' of vivid, many-shaded purple, with fracturing reminiscent of scales but also woven into circular patterns at points. Near the corners were the two eye holes.

I knew from seeing it, just from the aesthetic tastes it implied, who it must have belonged to, and it took a lot of willpower not to kick her square in the chest.