The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Fang

"Phew!" I said, as the smoke from the shot still hung in the air. "I was kinda second-guessing myself for a click there!"

The moment was pretty drawn out, with Annie looking at me with this expression of total horror, like I'd just pressed the trigger on a pile of live explosives-- Actually, that's basically what happened? So it's not a very good simile. Eh, I'm not a storyteller, I'm a math nerd.

Down waaaay below, to the side of Vijana's corpse, there was now a little smoking hole you could just about make out if you squinted. I was pretty relieved I hadn't hit the thing, honestly. I'll tell you, I wasn't kidding around when I said that I'm a shitty shot!

"...why," she said slowly and quietly, like she was still worried something was about to happen, "did you do that?"

"Had kinda a hunch, so I figured I'd test it," I said, putting the pistol back on the shelf. I laughed nervously. "Sorry, was probably a little reckless... Sometimes I get so wrapped upby an idea, I kinda forget about the consequences if I'm wrong? I work at this horticultural lab in Saoyu sometimes, and it's always pissing them off, I'll tell you. But hey, all's well that ends well, right?"

"We smelled gas," she said, more forcefully. "You could have killed us. You could have destroyed the entire building."

"Nah, I was pretty sure there wasn't gas," I said, giving her a big ol' grin. "And if there was, I figured I could slam the hatch real quick and we could maybe go for one of the windows. But it worked out!"

"That was insane," she objected.

"I'm gonna test something real quick," I said, sliding over to the ladder. "You can sit tight up here, or follow me down, if you want. No biggie."

I didn't wait to see what she did - my mind had started firing off, and it felt like I was getting into a groove. I put my boots at the side of the ladder and loosened my grip, letting gravity do most of the work on the three story trip towards the ground. As I did, both the smell of death and the 'gas' smell got thicker and thicker, to the point I sorta wished I had a free hand to cover my nose. But I'm used to that sort of thing, so I sucked it up.

Pretty soon, I made it to the bottom, stepping carefully to avoid stepping on the body, which was now looking pretty gross; starting to go just a bit squishy. I took a look around. There wasn't a lot to see - just a little circular chamber and a short hall leading to a metal doorway. I'd been getting a sense of the layout of the underground over the run of the night, and felt preeeeettty sure this was a side room pretty close to the convention furnace; now that I was down here, I could even make out the humming sound.

I could've used the Moment-Emulating Arcana to confirm it, but decided it wasn't worth the resources, since I was still pretty low on eris after what had happened in the fight with Hamilcar. I could've used pretty much just a drop of eris for what I did next, too, but figured I'd do things the old fashioned way so I'd have something to take with me.

With one hand covering my nose, I started rummaging through my bags. My original training is in alchemy, so I always carry some chemicals around whenever I'm doing, y'know, work stuff. So I got some parchment out alongside some sodium dichromate, then sprayed the second on the first. I let that sit for a bit, holding it out in the open air, and took a quick look at the body.

First, I wanted to confirm the stuff that Yantho - RIP - had said earlier. He was right. There wasn't any blood scattered around the shaft, or on the chest. That pretty much confirmed that she hadn't simply shot herself and fallen down here. The shot would have to have been made when she was already down here. I leaned down to take a looksie the body-- Yantho had said he wasn't qualified to do an examination, but I had a feeling most of the core facts here wouldn't take a coroner to figure out.

First stop: The neck. It seemed to have been broken from the fall. That narrowed things down even more, and I got a suspicion. I'm not usually in the habit of looking up people's skirts, but I decided to give it a shot.

You wanna know what really grinds my gears? Easy answers.When you go for the low-hanging fruit and it's just, like, right there! It's like being cock-blocked by reality itself!

So I was a little annoyed when I discovered another few refractor rifle wounds, these ones in the gut and chest area. It looked like they'd been superficially cleaned up and bandaged, with all the recent bleeding having come from the exit wound. And somehow - probably because I don't know shit about fashion! - I'd managed to miss that the clothes had obviously been re-folded to disguise a couple of burn holes.

Ah, shit, I thought to myself. It's all just so pretty, isn't it? So damn pretty.

"What on earth are you thinking?" Anna said from a little bit above, having followed me down after all.

"Looks they murdered her up above, they cleaned the area and dumped her down here, then shot her in the head after that," I said. "Since they messed with the clothes, they must have walked all the way down to do it. Then the water they conjured must've just been to clean up the mess. Sloppy as heck, sloppier than the sloppiest school meal that ever slopped--"

"We are past the point where the specifics of Vijana's death are of any concern," she hissed at me harshly. "That creature could be back down here! We're not far from where it first appeared!"

"Just a sec," I said, and glanced upwards. "Ooh, it's done."

"What is done?"

I stood up, and showed her the parchment I'd been holding aloft. It was stained green.

"Not gas," I explained. "Plain ol' sulphur."

Seth

"This is taking forever," I said, pacing up and down the room.

"Yeah, well, you complaining ain't gonna make it go any faster!" Ema said, over the noisy whine of the surgical saw. "It's nearly done! I only see a bit more blockin' my light!" She grunted, grumbling to herself. "I can't believe they just glued it shut. What kinda spooky monster uses glue?"

"The kind that's just some asshole and not a spooky monster," I said flatly, turning my head downwards. "Monsters don't set up projectors, either."

"But we saw that thing," Ptolema said. "It was right up close."

"Maybe it was an illusion," I said, but in the back of my mind I really doubted it. There was a ton of stuff we'd seen over the course of the night that felt like smoke and mirrors - either conjured with arcana or made the old-fashioned way - but that thing... I was no Neuromancer, but there was only so dynamic a trick of the senses could be. Like, at the end of the day, every aspect of the deception had to be managed by a person in real time. How it moved, the smell, the sounds...

For some reason, though, Ema seemed more convinced than I'd expected, going silent for a moment and nodding to herself. "...yeah, something did seem kinda weird about it... It moved more like a puppet then a living thing." She paused her sawing for a moment, looking to me. "But I've never seen an illusion like that, even at an arcane fair. Do you think it could've been a golem?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I barely know anything about--"

Suddenly, there was a thunk from the door frame as something gave. Ema's eyes went wide.

"It's done!" she declared.

I quickly ran over to the handle and twisted it. Sure enough, the door slid open with only a bit of awkward resistance.

"Thank fuck," I said, despite not being altogether that relieved considering, well, everything. "I could kiss you, Ema."

"That's kinda gay," she said, looking at me skeptically.

"Still, we gotta be careful," I told her. "It still feels really weird that nothing happened while we were stuck here. I feel like they might jump us the second we step out the door."

"What are you saying we should do?" Ema asked.

I took up my pistol, clicking off the safety.

She frowned. "Are you crazy? There's enough gas I can even smell it here now. If we fire, the whole place will probably blow up!"

"We'll take 'em with us," I declared, feeling about 5% of the confidence I was trying to broadcast. "Just that threat might be enough to scare 'em off. Better than nothing." I looked to the door. "I'll take a peek first."

I turned the handle and slowly pushed the door forward until there was a slim gap through which I could see the hall beyond, and proceeded to peek through it. I half expected to get stabbed in the eye or some shit, but the hallway seemed empty, so I cautiously widened it until I could fit my whole head through. I craned my neck in both directions...

And spotted someone I didn't expect, framed in the light of their own lamp, by the door Ptolema and I had originally arrived through - the one leading to the main hall. And I might've seen something else move further down the corridor... I'm not sure.

"Theo?" I called out.

I'll tell you, if the guy had jumped any higher than he did, his head might've hit the ceiling.

"S-Seth?" he replied, sounding anxious as hell.

"Guess so." I stepped out into the hall, Ema following behind me. I found myself smiling with relief a bit - I'd been trying not to think about it, but I half-believed him and Zeke to die back down there. (Not that I'd shed too many tears for one of those.) "Are you okay? What happened?"

"I--" he cleared his throat. "Sorry, ah. Did you see that?" He pointed towards the other end of the hall.

"See what?" I asked, my smile quickly fading.

"It-- It..." He bit his lip, and his finger shook a bit as he pointed.

I didn't need it spelled out to know what he was afraid of. I ran down the hall, past where he was standing - Ptolema went that far after me and then stopped, I think - and continued towards the corner, an eel in one of the wall-tanks quickly swishing away at the light I brought. Holding my pistol tightly, I turned the corner...

And saw nothing. Just shadows.

I looked over my shoulder, where Theo was watching, still looking scared as hell. "...there's nothing there, Theo."

"A-Are you sure?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "If there was, it must've got away. Ran into one of the other rooms."

I looked again. I really could see, and hear, nothing.

After this, we quickly got each other caught up. I told Theo about how I'd ended up running like hell all the way back to the main hall and how I'd met up with Ema, while he told me about how he'd ended up in the servants quarters, hiding in fear of what had surprised us in the hall. After this, we discussed our next move.

"You still think we should head upstairs to try and find Fang and Anna...?" Ema asked. "I mean, gettin' grenades is gonna be pointless now with the gas everywhere."

I sighed to myself a little. To be honest, I didn't have a fucking clue what to do. Every idea had its downsides. If we went back downstairs and tried to find a workable exit, it felt like we'd just be ambushed again, and we'd be in the worst possible place if the culprit - or anybody else - lit the gas. If we tried to climb out a window instead, we could trip the sanctuary security system and get our faces melted by golems breaking it, and even if we actually found one that opened, climbing down would be a pain in the ass that'd leave us open to an attack. Looking for the others had its own risks and rewards too, especially with a traitor still among our group.

Sometimes, I really hated being tall and having a heroic-sounding kinda voice. People were always trusting me to make calls I had no business making.

"Okay, uh," I said. "Here's what we'll do. We'll go upstairs real quick and see if we can meet up with the others-- Reunite our group. Then, whether we find them or not, we'll head to the theater. I think I remember seeing a ladder backstage that we could use to climb down to the ground floor."

Emphasis on thought. I had no damn idea if it'd even be halfway tall enough.

"W-What if that thing shows up again...?" Theo asked.

"Now that I'm a little removed from it," I said, "I'm pretty sure that smaller one we saw was just some prick in a costume. So we'll, I dunno-- We'll try to find some improvised weapons on the way that we can actually use without killing ourselves."

"But that flash of light--"

"Anybody can make a really bright light," I said, as much for myself as for him. "That doesn't mean they have a supernatural power."

Theo looked hesitant, but at least Ptolema appeared rallied, pulling in her chest.

"Okay," I said. "Let's go."

We didn't do great at finding weapons - I pulled the candles off a three-headed candlestick we found on a cabinet on our way through the hall, which worked as a kinda impromptu short trident, and Ptolema found what seemed to be a broken chair leg inside the same cabinet which worked as a club, but there was overall a conspicuous absence of suits of armor holding weapons, which I was pretty sure I'd spied down below.

Still, beggars can't be choosers, and we did find something which could, depending on how you looked at it, be considered lucky.

Lying face-down in the middle of the hallway, near the western stairway, was Ezekiel.

"What the hell...?" I said, and sprinted over to him, Ema and Theo following close behind.

He made a drawn-out, groggy groan as we got close, like he was barely awake. I asked Ema to keep watch while I leaned down to take a look at him. Close inspection revealed that he seemingly wasn't wounded, but there was unarguably something wrong with him. His pupils were dilated, and didn't focus even when I waved my lamp right in front of his eyes.

"W-What's wrong with him?" Theo asked, frowning.

"Beats the hell out of me," I said, totally confused. "Drugged, I guess...?"

"Why would the culprit drug him?" Ena asked, confused.

I shrugged, completely at a loss.

Ezekiel's head rolled, and it looked like he was trying to mutter something, his lips moving softly. I couldn't make out a damn thing, though.

"Maybe we should leave him," she said, though I could tell by her tone she wasn't being completely serious.

I snorted. "I'm tempted, but I dunno if even Ezekiel deserves to die over all this." I shook my head. "We'll just have to carry him, I guess."

Theo looked like he wasn't completely on board with this idea. "Couldn't this be, er. Some sort of trick...?"

I looked to him. "You mean, he's faking it? Wait 'till we have our guard down, then stab us in the back, that kinda deal?"

He scratched the side of his head. "Well, I didn't have any ideas that specific," he said. "It just seems suspicious for him to be out here like this."

"What happened to him after we got separated?" I asked. "Did you see?"

Theo frowned hesitantly. "N-No. I thought the-- The creature had got him."

Maybe the creature is him, I thought privately. That would explain what you caught a glimpse of a minute ago.

I grunted. "Nothing for it," I said, hauling him over my shoulders. He was surprisingly heavy for a scrawny little fucker.

"Alright," I said, refocusing and turning towards the door to the stairway. "Upstairs."

We stepped forward, and then--

𒊹

Inner Sanctum Exterior | 3:34 PM | Third Day

I wasn't sure if I could be called lucky. Is it lucky if, whenever something really bad is about to happen to you, something differently bad happens instead?

The second everyone in the room heard those sounds, attention obviously shifted sharply away from me. For a moment, everyone was silent, staring in the direction of the door.

But only for a moment.

First, the logic engine communicated a message to me unprompted - though I'd dismissed the recording with Samium, I hadn't broken the connection completely. Understand that a threat has been detected to the structure of the sanctuary, it conveyed. Understand that the threat originates from the first floor. Understand that the threat entails uncontrolled fire and smoke. Understand that you should remain calm and avoid the affected area while countermeasures are employed.

No one else seemed to notice this, presumably because they weren't attuned.

Linos's reaction was interesting because it went through multiple stages. At first, when Theo had cried out, he'd looked frantically anxious and protectively fearful; like he was about to call out to him. But when that sound followed, the look in his eye changed to a different sort of dread. Something more raw and personal.

"No," I heard him mutter quietly. "It can't be."

Anna, for her part, looked strangely resigned at the sound, her eyes going towards the floor.

"Right," Kam said, her teeth clenched as she clapped her hands together. "That's quite enough of that. Time to go!"

Linos looked towards her, seemingly about to say something, but she moved before he had the chance. She rushed towards the window, obviously with the intent to climb out immediately, and damn everything that might stand in her way. But a moment after she arrived and peered over the rim, she slammed a fist against the wall in frustration.

"Oh, for fuck's sake...!" she hissed.

"What is it?" Ran asked grimly, stepping over to look as well.

"It looks like there's a fire in the main building. There's smoke coming out of the walls." She pointed to something outside, though I couldn't see from where I was sitting. "And there are golems swarming all over the place down below!"

"S-Someone must have set off the gas..." Ophelia said, eyes wide. Fang, off to the side, seemed to be taking all these developments in stride, scratching their head in easy-going contemplation.

"Then climbing down is impossible," Anna declared. "Without being able to get a clear view of your mask, they'll interpret such an unusual action - especially in proximity to an event like this - as a threat. At best, they'll try to apprehend you non-lethally, which considering our time limit..."

"Oh no," Kam said, shaking her head with a wild-eyed-look. "Hell no. I'm not dying in this little box." She lifted up her rifle. "If it's them or the gas fire, we should make for the exit. Fang, you said you got some grenades, didn't you? If we go now, we'll have a better chance than if we hesitate--"

"Wait," Ran said, as she peered out the window too. "Something isn't right. The smoke is only coming from the first floor."

Kam frowned. "What?"

"The gas is all over the building by now," Ran continued. "If that's really what happened, hell, there should have been an explosion--"

Suddenly, I heard footsteps rapidly approaching the door - obviously someone else running towards us. Kam spun around and flipped her rifle in preparation to shoot, but they moved a lot faster than Fang and Anna had earlier. Before I could so much as blink, they burst open again.

I genuinely believe it was a coinflip in that moment whether or not someone ended up dead. Fortunately, it came up heads, largely because the second Theodoros threw himself into the room, he immediately collapsed to the floor, giving Kam's brain the precious second to recognize him and not shoot him dead on the spot.

"I-It's me!" he cried out at Kam, holding up his hands desperately.

"Theo!?" she exclaimed, her expression oscillating between relief, confusion and suspicion.

Linos jerked up at once, wheeling himself quickly forward. "Thank the gods you're alright," he said as he lowered a hand, looking like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders."

Theo looked almost as terrified as when he'd stumbled out of the kitchen with Bardiya, but this time it was more of an expression of pure fear than the one of horror I'd seen on his face back then. His whole body was tense, and his face was red and covered in sweat. He was breathing heavily, but not gasping - he'd probably run very fast to get here, but not far.

"More like-- More like thank the gods you were in here," Theo said, as he took his father's hand and rose shakily to his feet. "I thought I heard voices, but... I wasn't-- Even though it..." He blinked several times, seeming shaken.

"What happened?" Kam demanded, before repeating the obvious question that had already been fielded to Fang and Anna earlier. "Where are the others?"

Theo hesitated. "I--!..."

"Theodoros," she said sternly. "This building is on fire. This is not the time for you to stammer like a dimwit!"

"Have some compassion, miss Tuon!" Linos reprimanded her, frowning. "He's obviously been shaken up by something!"

"N-No, I do need to explain," Theo said, shaking his head. He swallowed the air, glancing at his father anxiously. "The others have... They've been taken."

Kam narrowed her eyes. "'Taken'"?

He looked downwards, shuddering slightly. "We were on the second floor. Myself, Ptolema, Seth... We'd just found Ezekiel lying in the hallway, unconscious. We'd planned to go up to the third floor, since we'd heard that Anna and Fang had gone to the armory to find something to fight the monster--"

"Hey," Fang said casually, holding up a hand.

He jerked his head in surprise towards them, then blinked. "...oh. Well, that's good to know, I suppose..."

Kam eyed Fang. "Don't derail things."

"Oop, sorry." They tightened their lips.

Theo exhaled, hesitating for a moment before he continued. "When we went out to the stairs... There was-- Fire, and..." He rubbed his eyes. "The monster, that thing from underground, it came up from below. It took us completely by surprise. Seth and Ezekiel, ah, fell, so we couldn't run, and it grabbed, or... It took them-- Got closer then it ever had in the underground. And there was this strange light."

"Light?" Ran asked, an eyebrow raised.

He shook his head. "It's hard to remember... I'm not sure if I'm just frightened out of my mind, or if it did something to me. But when I try to picture what happened, it's all jumbled up."

Wait, I thought. It affected his memory? Then...

"But... I do remember two things," he said. "It dragged-- Took the others back downstairs. To the second floor. And it, uh." He cleared his throat.

"What?" Anna asked. She seemed strangely perturbed by this, and glanced at Linos for a moment.

"It... Spoke," he said.

Kam made an incredulous expression. "It spoke."

He nodded. "Yes."

Out of all the insane elements of this scenario, this, for some reason, seemed to be what crossed a line for her. "That's absurd." She looked to Fang. "Did this thing even have a face?"

Fang scratched their cheek. "I'm not sure, actually? I mean, there was kinda a thing sticking out of the front of it, but it looked like it might've been made of metal--"

"It's one thing," Kam interjected (despite asking the original question), "to expect me to believe that a physically impossible creature has somehow manifested in a plane with rules that prohibit such ridiculous biology from even functioning. It's quite another to tell me it's intelligent." She shook her head.

Theo looked at her anxious, his brow contorted. "I-I might be wrong," he said. "I only heard one word, and it might've been a sound I mistook for something else."

"What do you think it said?" Linos asked.

"I... It was after Ptolema shouted at it, after it grabbed her and the others," he explained. "She was something like... 'What the hell do you want'? And it sounded like it replied-- That it replied 'penitence'."

Kam scoffed, but her gaze quickly drifted to the side, towards Linos.

His reaction was... Strange. His eyes went glassy for a moment, like he was trying to mentally swallow something which didn't quite fit in his mouth. Eventually, he took on a perturbed expression, exhaling softly and subtly gripping the arms of his wheelchair.

A moment of silence passed. I noticed Anna was looking towards the ceiling.

"...Theo," Linos said. "I know you said you found it hard to remember, but when you said it 'took' the other children... Were they hurt?" He narrowed his eyes. "Rather, did it look like it was trying to kill them? Or did you mean that literally?"

Theo considered this for a moment, then cautiously shook his head. "I meant it literally... I think. It was strange. It was like an animal dragging away its prey. Really was, uh, sort of like an actual spider, I suppose..."

Linos nodded passively, like this was the answer he was already expecting.

Ran and Kam were both watching him closely. It felt obvious this was building to something, though Fang, as usual, seemed more in their own head. They were tapping their foot, almost like they were waiting for something to happen.

"...we're running out of time," Linos eventually said. "If we don't break for the exits soon, we'll miss our window."

"Tell us something we don't know," Kam said flatly. "We need to--"

"I will," Linos interjected. "Tell you something you don't know, I mean."

She frowned. "Pardon?"

"The truth is," he said, "I have been lying to you. ...or rather, we have."