Inner Sanctum | 4:27 PM | Third Day

We departed the scene of the crime, and the inner sanctum of the Order, for the final time. The plan, again, was very straightforward: We would head back to where this tragedy had originally begun, the abbey guest house. We would bunker down next to the eris pool opposite the kitchen, where we could use the Power wantonly... And then, from within our bubble of life, we would attempt to endure whatever the last remnants of the day threw at us until we could finally depart.

And to be clear, we could probably endure most everything. The Power, as a tool, was limited only really by its appetite for energy. Almost everything that Linos had described the Sanctuary as being capable of could be negated so remained in wholly defensive posture and had it in abundance. And eris pools, being fonts of densely-packed energy, took a couple of hours to safely shut down, so it wasn't like our enemy could take such a route to hoist us by our own petards again.

So... In theory, the situation was extremely simple.

Much earlier, Anna had assured us that there was no way of cancelling a transposition out of the sanctuary once it was scheduled; the eris was already spent, the wheels of the hyper-complex arcana supporting this dreadful place churning. That meant that the culprit, whether or not they were part of our group, had only two more moves they could make:

1) They could attempt to destroy the gateways. In preparation for this possibility, the plan was to have at least two people on Divination-scouting duty at all times. While they could probably destroy one of them before we had a chance to respond if they moved with stealth, it was unlikely they'd be able to get both, especially as Linos intended to place some some defensive incantations on the way that would repel the most direct and catastrophic uses of the Power en-route. We'd have no choice but to move to intercept.

2) They could attack us, either directly or, if they were indeed one of us, from within the group.

In both cases, there was no room left for subversion; it would come down to a showdown, one which on a numbers basis would be extremely one sided. And yet, this knowledge did nothing to make me feel assured whatsoever.

Because if we stopped assuming that they cared about their own survival - which now that I thought about it, option 1 already implied, since they'd be just as trapped here as us if they succeeded in their goal - they could pull a scaled-up repetition of the same trick as they'd used to scupper our original plan, and just blow up the entire sanctuary. Even if that wasn't already scripted into the system, there was nothing stopping them from just going hog wild on one of the eris furnaces.

We had no way of countering such a thing; if this was chess, it was the equivalent of throwing the board in your opponent's face.

Still, as I'd considered earlier, the fact they hadn't done that already suggested that such an action wasn't within the bounds of their motive. It felt almost like an insult to the dead to say it, but in general, they'd been strangely restrained. I'd been thinking back when we'd come under from the sniper on the rooftop. We'd had no idea where they were there. If they'd wished, they could have easily aligned the scope properly and taken one of us out.

But they didn't. In fact, no one had been seriously wounded at all. It was pretty obvious they'd only intended to drive us inside--

But a contact paradox! It was hard to think of a method of killing with more collateral damage. How did that square up with this at all? And if it really had been Balthazar...

And what the hell had Ptolema, Seth and Ezekiel been doing, anyway? What had Fang been about to say, regarding this all being a performance? Why had there been a fake monster strung up on the ceiling, and who had put it there?

And why had the block on the Power disappeared when it had? Wasn't that the culprit basically doing us a favor?

Even through the haze of my exhausted mind, it felt like I was bursting with a desire for answers. It could have just been my endlessly accumulating fear, horror and anxiety demanding some kind of release, or another of my weird moments of inappropriate curiosity, but I found myself desperately looking forward to the conversation Kam had repeatedly put off. I wanted to understand.

I gripped my bag, still containing the intact echo maze, tightly.

We were cramped together in the small, windowless room hosting the eris pool, waiting for our scepters to finish charging. It was utterly featureless; blank white walls, grey tiled stone floor. We were supposed to be on our guard - this was the last time we could be attacked with more limited resources at our disposal, after all - but I couldn't seem to calm down.

In the absence of being able to find answers, I started to blame myself. Maybe if I hadn't been so distracted, I could have helped come up with a better plan. I could have talked Fang out of their idea, and left Linos behind like he'd seemed to want.

I could have looked back for Ophelia. I could have done something.

Time flowed like mud. Linos's scepter recharged, then Ptolema's, than mine.

Eventually, I gave up, and struck up another conversation with Ran.

"So, uh." I said. "What were you looking at back there?"

She glanced to me. "Eh?"

"When we were in the room with-- With the bath," I clarified. "You were staring at the wall."

She gave me a flat look. "That's what you're thinking about, at a time like this?" She snorted. "You never change, Su."

I blinked, glancing a bit around the room. I hadn't really processed it, but now that we had a moment of calm and things were sinking in, almost everyone around looked devastated. Ptolema looked as though she was almost fighting back tears, while Seth faced the wall, hiding his face - we weren't bothering with masks now, since we had the Power and a few of us had lost ours anyway. Linos stared at the floor with an expression of intense regret and shame, his son watching on with silent, distant grimness. Kamrusepa looked almost angry, biting her lip and intermittently mumbling to herself.

"S-Sorry," I said, my voice cracking a bit. "I don't mean to be tone deaf."

"It's okay," she said. "You are what you are, and you can't be anything else. Right?"

I was silent for a moment, staring at my sandals.

Ran let out a long sigh. "Fuck, I could go for a drink. Or some opium, or... Hell, just about anything at this point, really."

"Yeah, me too," I said, then hesitated. "Uh. Maybe not the opium part."

She snorted. "If this isn't enough to get you to try smoking, it's probably never gonna happen." She leaned her back against the wall. "If we get out of here alive, the first thing I'm gonna do - once I'm done sleeping - is get on a train to Oreskios, find that place we used to hit up on Fridays in college, and drink cocktails until I forget this entire experience."

I frowned. "What about the academy?"

"Fuck the academy," she said, squinting at me. "Fuck my whole education. Seth wasn't talking out of his ass when he said the media will try to eat us alive when they get wind of all this, you know. Except I doubt it's gonna be the nice kinda fame he had in mind. Better to find a place to lay low for like, a decade. Work from home, drop off the map."

"You really think it'll be that bad?" I asked, raising my brow.

"Oh, for sure," she said, flaring her eyes faux-dramatically. "Hell, I'm probably underselling it. They'll probably keep us in a watch house for a week before we can do shit."

I crossed my arms. "God, I don't even think about that..." I frowned, my expression pained. "I can't even get through interviews for normal stuff, let alone something like this..."

"Yeah, well," she said, with a roll of her shoulders. "Get used to the idea." She reached into her bag and retrieved her water bottle, taking a long drink. "It's that or we die here, anyway. Right now, it's looking like it could go either way."

"We're not gonna die here," I said, anxious.

Ran didn't say anything, her eyes glazing over for a moment.

"I recognized what the mosaic on the wall was," she said, digressing sharply. "It was another scene from Old Kingdoms era mythology, but this time an even older story than the Epic of Gilgamesh."

I blinked. "I thought the Epic of Gilgamesh was supposed to be the oldest story in human history."

"No, it's the oldest piece of literature," she clarified. "As in, the oldest story with a deliberate plot and arc, as opposed to random bits of folklore that someone's written down."

"Can you really make a concrete distinction between stuff like that...?" I asked, puzzled.

She eyed me. "We're not here for a debate about literary historiography, Su."

"Sorry," I said.

She took another drink, and I started to wonder if it actually was water. "Anyway, this myth is about the great flood-- You know, the one the old calendar was based around." She reached into her bag again, this time to withdraw her book. Sometimes, I really was impressed by her endurance. "So the Emegi - the people who first invented what we'd call civilization, who spoke the language we use for the Power - believed that they originally came from another, even older civilization further downriver, called Dilmun."

"Kinda a dinky name," I said.

"If you wanna submit a criticism to the editor, you're gonna need a hell of a shovel," Ran said dryly. "Regardless, they thought of this place as being basically a paradise on earth, where there was no hardship and the gods lived in harmony with mankind. How does it go-- 'In Dilmun, the wolves did not yet eat lambs, the dogs did not bark at children, the pigs did not steal grain... People did not fight, no one grew filthy, there was no disease. No one knew age or pain or death.'" She clicked her tongue. "Something like that."

"This is like, a fallen paradise myth, right?" I asked. "Where it sinks beneath the ocean?"

"I mean, I guess it's the fallen paradise myth, if you wanna start throwing labels around," she said. "Even if Atlantis is the only one that's in, like, the popular consciousness. Maybe Eden at a stretch."

I hummed, nodding along.

"Anyway," she went on. "The story is so old that it actually ends up sounding really basic compared to later stuff. There's not even a moral, really-- The flood only happens because one of the gods, Enlil, gets pissed off at humanity because they're too noisy and keeping him up at night. He calls a conclave of the gods and makes them all promise not to tell the humans that he's planning to drown their kingdom and kill them all."

I stared up at the ceiling, wrinkling my brow and flattening my lips thoughtfully.

Ran looked towards me. "You're making a weird expression."

"Mm... I was just thinking that sort of mentality feels kinda admirable to me, I guess." I bit my lip. "I mean, like you said, if it were a modern story - or even an only-kinda ancient story - they'd have come up with some complicated reason for what mankind had done wrong to deserve this happening, to give it all a sense of pathos and meaning," I said. "But that's not really how it works. Usually when bad things happen, it's either totally meaningless, or due to stupid bullshit that's not really even important. Being able to say that paradise was lost for no reason at all... In a way, it almost feels brave, you know?"

She peered at me. "Stop projecting on the 12,000 year old myth, Su," she chided. "It's not good for you to spread your internal world all over everything all the time."

I twisted my lip. "Sorry."

"So the gods agree, but Enlil's brother, Enki, decides to go behind their backs and try to save mankind. So he finds this guy he's buddies with - sometimes it's Utnapishtim, the old wise man from the Epic of Gilgamesh, while in other versions it's a different guy named Atra-Hasis - and tells him to build a giant boat and hoard a bunch of people on there, then sail away where Enlil won't find him."

"Wait..." I said. "I feel like I've heard this part of the story somewhere before. Isn't this in the Ba'alim Decrees?"

The Ba'alim Decrees were an ancient set of religious scriptures created during at the very end of the Old Kingdoms era, after the greater part of the civilized world had been unified by Kinanna - I think that's how you spell it - the dominant power of the era. They attempted to culturally unify the varying polytheistic pantheons under their rule in order to strengthen the authority of the state. These hodgepodge deities were the basis for the Dying Gods of the present day.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Nowadays, unless you lived in Asharom, they were mostly experienced second-hand as cultural references. Parables and old fables which had taken on almost universal quality, at least outside of the Duumvirate.

Ran shrugged. "It's old Mesopotamian stuff-- Same stomach it's all regurgitated out of. I mean, not that I've read the stuff."

I frowned. "You haven't read the decrees?"

"I did just say that, yeah."

"But you've read everything," I said, then hesitated. "Well-- At least everything famous."

"My one exception is for practiced scripture." She yawned, closing her eyes for a moment. "So. The people on the boat survive and repopulate the planet, but the other gods - especially Enlil - are pissed off at Enki for going behind their back. They decide they need to put measures in place to make sure humanity doesn't make a nuisance of itself again, so they give them finite lifespans and magic a bunch of dangerous shit like diseases into existence to keep people on their toes." She took a final sip, putting the bottle away. "That's the story."

"Oh," I said, and then a moment later, "...I feel like you kind of buried the lede."

She looked to me. "How do you mean?"

"Well, that part at the end makes the connection to the Order really obvious," I explained, scratching at my head lightly. "And the... Potential symbology of the room, I guess."

"You were thinking about how this was relevant to the murders?" She scoffed. "I could be completely wrong about this, you know. The only reason it caught my attention at all was because it looked like one of the designs on the wall was an artistic reference to the way Enki is depicted in the original tablets."

"We could ask Linos," I said. Anything to keep me from going back to thinking about the situation.

"Why?" she asked, furrowing her brow. "He'd probably just make some shit up anyway."

"Mister Melanthos," I said, raising my voice just a little.

He looked up, shaking off his vacant, regretful expression. "...what is it, Utsushikome?"

"Uh, this is a little out of nowhere, but do you know what the mosaic in the bathhouse that we saw is supposed to represent? Ran was saying that she thought it might've been a rendering of the Enlil drowning Dilmun, from Emegi myth." I pointed at Ran, who regarded me with the sort of expression one might make a bus ignoring ones outstretched hand to charge right past the stop.

He stared at me for a moment, his expression giving the impression that his brain was having to shift several gears just to meet me where I was standing. "Oh," he said, then shook his head. "I'm... Sorry, but I have no idea. I don't really like bathing in public, so I've never had cause to ask about it."

"Was it by the... Child, you told us about?" I asked. "You said they were an artist--"

"No," he said, seemingly keen to cut the idea off. "The mosaics - that one, and the one in the abbey - were both part of the original buildings, not post-replication additions. If I remember right, they date back to the original renovation of the temple, after the Order acquired it."

"Oh," I said, somehow disappointed despite none of this really mattering. "I see..."

We were silent for a moment. I looked towards the floor.

"I do know the story of DIlmun, though," Linos said, leaning forward a little and forcing a small smile. Maybe he sensed I was trying to preoccupy myself and was trying to help. "Or, well-- I suppose I know a lot about the flood myth generally, to be more accurate." He looked to Ran. "We talked a little bit about comparative mythology earlier, didn't we, miss Hoa-Trinh?"

"Yes, sir," she said, somewhat disinterestedly.

"Right, right." He nodded a few times, the motion a little stilted. "It is a fascinating archtype - it's another I find myself thinking of often when trying to motivate myself towards fresh research. We date the old calendar a single, regional flood that was probably at least pseudo-historical, but in truth it's an idea that cropped up in culture from all over the old world; of specifically a flood washing over and destroying civilization as we know it."

"Why is it always a flood?" I asked, more out of politeness in this case than because I was genuinely curious.

Idiot, my logical brain immediately scolded me. It's because--

"It's because they all sprang up in river valleys, right?" Seth suddenly cut into the conversation, apparently having overheard us now that we were speaking up a bit. "Comes with the territory when you rely on controlled flodding to grow your crops, I'd guess."

"That is indeed correct, master Ikkuret," Linos said, with a nod. "But that's not all there is to it. It's this persistent idea of an antediluvian before-time. Of the ills of the world, even death itself, not being something natural, but an aberration of a lost state of grace."

"It's not a particularly surprising thing," Kam said, speaking up in turn. She was sitting by the pool, waiting for her scepter to recharge. "For all that people decry the pursuit of indefinite lifespans as unnatural, they're unable to fully deny the obvious truth that death is abhorrent, and accepting it is inexcusable under any coherent moral system. Thus, in order to imagine a just world, one must perceive the status quo through a self-flagellating eye. One where death is some manner of punishment, both natural and unnatural at the same time." She folded one leg over the other. "Of course, religion in general--"

"Here we go," Seth said. Ptolema chuckled a little bit.

At a time like this, even hearing one of Kam's little lectures felt like a relief. Like for just a moment, we were back at the academy, and none of this had ever happened.

"--has a bizarre relationship with the concept, even beyond this. One could easily argue that the the whole concept of life after death is, when examined closely, spiritually transhumanist. In absence of a way to approach the problem through technology, primitive societies invented an illusory solution to square the circle. And then came to hate any approach as damaging to that illusion."

"Now you're just sayin' the same stuff you did when we came in," Ptolema commented.

"Am I?" Kam frowned. "Well, it's been a very long weekend."

I wondered how uncomfortable Ophelia would be if she were here, and then felt a bitter feeling in my chest. Then my mind wandered, and I thought about my childhood, the mistake that had come to define my entire life, and the quest I was now finally at the end of. And then I thought about something else.

"...I don't think it's just about death," I said, staring upwards. "The flood myth, I mean."

Kam looked at me curiously. "In what sense?"

"I don't know," I said. "I just feel like... It's almost human nature, to have this idea of a time in your head when things used to be different. Used to be better - even if it never actually happened." I squinted, trying to put what I was thinking into words. "I mean, it's awful that people die, obviously, but no one actually has any personal experience with death until it happens to them, so it's an abstract. What people experience is loss. Of stuff, of people... Death is just one way for things to be separated from you, and I think that's what really leaves a mark. Separation."

Kam looked at me thoughtfully, but unusually for her, didn't say anything. She strummed her fingers against the side of the eris pool.

"I guess you could call it innocence," I said, thinking back on Anna's words again, "but that feels like the wrong word. I mean, when I was a kid--"

I hesitated, and glanced to Theo. I'd almost said something unguarded - if unspecific - about my childhood, but then realized it would confuse him. I bit my tongue, and opted for something more vague.

"...well, I was never super happy, I guess," I spoke quietly. "But even so, when I look back on it now, it feels different. Like something about the world wasn't spoiled yet, and even though things were often bad in the moment, that I had this sense natural grace to my existence, where meaning poured from everything. That there was a story unfolding around me, a story I was a part of... That would eventually lead to a happy ending." I frowned. "But then one day, something happened, and it was gone. And all that was left was just-- I don't even know. A shadow of something. A better world where I'd become the person I wanted to, in the way I'd wanted to. A memory of a future which never actually happened."

Some of the others were just looking at me with confusion at this point, but Ran was giving me a look of concern. I wondered if it would be better to stop.

But at this stage, what was the point? Maybe this was the last chance I'd ever have to express any of this.

Surprisingly, it was Ptolema who spoke up. "Y'know, I think I know what you mean," she said. "Like. It's kinda hard for me to remember now, but... When I was a kid, it felt like things only moved in one direction, you know? It could be rough sometimes, but overall, they got better. Like a big tower you're stackin' more and more stuff on top of." She made a grabbing-and-dropping motion with her hands to illustrate. "That was the shape of the world." She wrinkled her lip. "When my mom died, it wasn't just that I was sad. It made the shape change. It was less like a tower and more like, I dunno--"

"A bowl?" I said, instinctively, not realizing this wouldn't make any sense bereft of context.

Ptolema quirked her brow at me in confusion. "That's... Close, but I was gonna say a toilet," she said.

"Just what is it with you and toilets, Ptolema?" Kam asked, her brow flat.

"You know what I mean!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands up. "Like, you know, stuff doesn't stick around! It piles up for a while and then it gets flushed!"

"So you're always doing damage control," Ran said.

"Yeah," Ptolema nodded. "And when you realize that, it feels harder to live. 'cause you're always on your guard."

"That's a good way to put it," I said, my tone a little distant.

"Thanks," she said.

The room was quiet for a moment. Ptolema coughed.

"I suppose I can't object to it as a broader theory," Kamrusepa eventually said idly, crossing her arms. "That most people misunderstand the nature of reality when they're children, and then when they first encounter genuine grief, mythologize those memories into the idea that it wasn't them that was different, but reality itself. I mean-- It's hardly abnormal for things a mind latches on to in youth to feel more real than the truth."

"Mm," I hummed, looking downward for a moment.

"I'm not naive, of course," she went on, in a relatively uncertain tone for her. "There's no such thing as a perfect world. Even if death ceased to exist, and we all possessed an infinity before us... Even if we conquered what remains of scarcity and let everyone realize themselves however they wished... Loss itself wouldn't magically cease to exist, just its most severe manifestations. Things would break, friends and lovers would still fall out. There would, will always be more sources of pain to be addressed. That's just the nature of material reality."

"Growing up means realizing you can't fix everything," Seth said. "I think my dad told me that once. You gotta roll with the punches."

"Not quite how I would phrase it myself," Kam replied, giving him a strangely harsh look. "More that a mature understanding of progress means knowing that few problems but be utterly solved, but trying ones best all the same. Not letting perfect be the enemy of good."

"Is it... Really that simple, though?" I asked, looking up at her.

She squinted. "In what sense?"

"Well, a while ago, I was thinking about something said back when we were waiting on the Empyrean Bastion," I explained. "You said that humanity needs to throw away the stories it's made up to cope with not being able to live forever if it wants to solve the problem, even if it's painful, and even if there will always be exceptions where people do die because of the nature of physics itself."

"I did say that," she said, nodding. "I was alluding to it a moment ago, too, I suppose."

"How far can you take that sort of thinking, when it comes to something wrong that you want to change?" I frowned at her. "To what degree does a problem have to be insurmountable before it's alright to give up? When does it become okay to just... Make up a nice story for yourself, instead?"

Even though it was her, I was surprised just how quickly and confidently she answered. "Never," she said. "Escapism is never the solution."

I flinched slightly. "That's cruel," I said.

"You said the same thing last time," she said, and stepped forward now that the dial on her scepter was full. "But it's the truth. Just as it may be impossible to ever realize a goal completely, so to is there no such thing as an utterly hopeless cause - only degrees of possibility. The only way to live without regret is to perpetually test the membrane." She snatched it up from the notch it sat in.

"That sounds like a philosophy that's only going to make you miserable," Ran said, turning a page of her book.

"One shouldn't confuse pain with misery, Ran," Kam retorted. "I'm not denying it's difficult. But struggle isn't misery. Misery is when people lie down and let themselves rot. Misery is when you wake up one day and realize that you've lived like a fallen leaf, flittering over the earth, changing nothing at all. Not of the world, nor even yourself."

"I gotta agree with Ran here," Ptolema said, undercutting the melodrama of Kam's statement with her nonplussed tone. "Like, no offense, but 'there's no such thing as a hopeless cause'? That's nuts. When my mom died, the first thing I thought of was if there was a way to bring her back from the dead. Can you imagine if I'd stuck with that?"

Kam opened her mouth as if to try and counter what she was saying, but hesitated (probably because it was going to be spectacularly insensitive), closing it and furrowing her brow.

"If you never let go of something, it'll twist you up," Ptolema continued. "That's just obvious." Seth nodded along from beside her.

In the wild, human beings were persistence hunters. We'd evolved differently from most other predators, focusing on superficially wounding our prey, then tracking it over a long period until it eventually collapsed or needed to rest. In a sense, obsession was, and is, a core part of our nature; our survival literally depended on our ability to hyper-fixate upon a single idea. This information flashed through my mind for just a moment, as a prelude to another thought:

Maybe the core of our minds cannot fundamentally distinguish between things that deny us happiness. The animal standing between us and our next meal. The rival tribesman stealing our grain. The disease rotting the bodies of our loved ones. Maybe it sees all of them the same - as things to be hunted.

Maybe people aren't capable of actually letting go of anything, and grief is just our souls crying out at an unfinished hunt. Maybe the only way we can make it stop it is by tricking it, making up stories to take the place of cold reality.

Maybe death is just the only source of despair we all have in common, and once we see it, the hunt never leaves us.

The first unvanquishable enemy for most. And for all of us the last.

I remembered the look in Shiko's grandfathers eyes as he fell to the ground. The sense that something was there that wasn't before. Something that had always been there, and I just hadn't seen.

"Maybe what really happens is a kind of split," I said quietly, after a brief gap in the conversation. "And it's the choice itself that changes things."

Ran eyed me curiously. "What do you mean, a split?"

"Where you're a child, your mind doesn't have to process this stuff at all, so you're kind of in a state of peace. You can stare dead ahead at the world and feel no pain, because you can't comprehend what you're looking at yet." I bit my lip as I attempted to explain. "But eventually, something happens to change that. And from then on, you're always choosing. Between chasing a way to 'fix' things, and letting yourself just... Look away. Between the story of the antediluvian world, and the reality of it being - of having always been - ugly."

Ran stared at me, her eyes tired. For some reason, my gaze was fixed on her, so I couldn't see how the others were reacting.

"And maybe it's having that choice... Knowing you have to make it, that the world feeling kind will never be natural again... Maybe that drains something away," I concluded. "Like when you learn how a machine works, and suddenly it isn't magical anymore, but just an object. Maybe that's what people really mean by losing your innocence--"

Suddenly, Linos started to laugh. It wasn't intentional; I could see he was pushing his lips together, trying to suppress it. But still, his throat vibrated, and the muffled sound came forth.

Kamrusepa looked over at him harshly, seemingly offended on my behalf. "Is something she's saying amusing, sir?"

"N-No," he said, holding up a hand and refusing to raise his gaze. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude."

Theodoros, who had largely opted out of the conversation so far, looked for the first time like he wanted to say something, but didn't seem to have the nerve.

"Kinda seems like you do," Seth said.

"No, it's just..." Linos rubbed his eyes. "You're all so young to be talking about something like this, don't you think? About the end of innocence?" He exhaled a little, and then looked to me. There was a subtly despairing look in his eyes, mixed with a little resentment. "Do you want to hear my opinion on all this, Utsushikome?"

I looked at him, not sure what to expect. "Sure."

"The truth," he said, smiling at me, "is that the first split isn't even the beginning."

I didn't know what to say to that.