The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

CONTEXT: Autoscribed parchment produced by the recording transcription function of a security logic engine installed in a branch of PaeiuTa, an upscale fashion boutique popular in Ysara and the Dai League. Unread, preserved in store archive presumably by accident.

+++RECORD #0003874+++

TAKEN 14/1/1393 2:37PM

TRIGGERED BY: TONE SUGGESTING SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR DETECTED BY SYSTEM

SPEAKERS: (1) UNKNOWN (UNRECORDED CUSTOMER), (2) UTSUSHIKOME OF FUSAI (REPEAT CUSTOMER), - NO EMPLOYEES PRESENT - FOR DESCRIPTIONS SEE ECHO RECORD

LOG BEGINS

(1): Uh, hey!

(2): Oh... Hi.

(1): Sorry, I just, I saw you over from the side of the store, so... so I thought I would say hello.

(2): Ah, I see...

(1): Um, Sorry.

(2): It's okay. Hi.

(1): I hope I'm not interrupting you while you're doing something important.

(2): No, I was just looking to pick up a new homogi for a trip this weekend.

(1): Ahh you're going on a trip? I didn't know.

(2): It's with some of my friends... To collect our prize from the scripting competition.

(1): Oh, I didn't realize you'd, that you'd won it.

(2): Yep.

(1): That's really impressive! I knew you could-- That you could do it.

(2): Thanks...

(1): Where are you go... Uh, rather, where are they giving you the prize?

(1): Sorry.

(2): Well, the ceremony is in Daixue, but we're also going to Oreskios on the way back.

(1): I see... What for? For your entrance exams?

(2): No, uh, that's not for a couple months. This one is just a visit. To look at the schools.

(1): Oh, okay. That makes sense.

(2): Hey, I don't want to be rude, but I am in sort of a hurry. I need to pick something out soon and then meet up with one of my friends for cram lessons.

(1): You're doing that today, too?

(2): I guess, yeah.

(1): Ahaha, that's tough... Is this, is is this anyone I know?

(2): Uh, no, I don't think so. They're from my class.

(1): Right, I figured.

(1): It's a shame we're not together any more. It was really fun when we all studied together. Not that I'd want to hold you back, I mean...

(2): Yeah.

(1): I've been trying to keep up... I'm falling behind a bit again nowadays, though. I feel sort of out of place in my class sometimes.

(1): Maybe we could, could study a bit together sometime? Even if we're not doing the same stuff, we could try to help each other out, you know. Like we used to do a lot...

(2): Uh, I don't really know. I'm having a hard time keeping up with everything, to be honest. I don't know if I could really help you.

(1): Oh, no, um. I get it! I get it.

(1): Maybe I could just come hang around some time when you're cramming with your other friends?

(2): I mean, maybe, yeah.

(1): Yeah! I mean, sometimes it can help just to be around other people who are working hard, right? To get you in the right mindset, I mean... I remember you saying that.

(1): And that, you know, we'd always help, we'd we'd always be there for each other, or I mean, we'd help each other out with this kind of thing.

(1): Sorry, that came out kind of strange. I don't mean to to, um

(1): Shiko?

(2): It's okay... I'm just focused right now. Like I said, I need to pick out a whole outfit and get out of here pretty soon.

(1): Right, sorry. Would you like me to help...? I could try to, to judge them a bit.

(2): No, that's okay. I'm sorry, I'm really not feeling very talkative today.

(1): Right...

(1): Geez, uh, I'm sorry. I'm probably being really annoying, haha.

(2): No, it's not--

(1): It's just, you know, we haven't really been talking much, so--

(2): That's--

(1): I thought it would be good to catch up a bit... But I'm probably sort of forcing things. I'm sorry, I...

(2): Kuroka, we talked about this. I've been really busy with all kinds of stuff lately.

(1): ...yeah. I know. It's just, well. It's getting closer to when you'll move away, and it, you know, it feels like we're talking less and less, and I feel like, uh...

(2): I mean, I told you that I'll probably have some more free time in the next term.

(1): Well... You already did kind of say that for the holidays...

(2): Kuroka--

(1): I'm sorry, that wrong too

(2): need some space. I know you're probably having a hard time, but you can't, I mean, I can't always be there for you. We're both getting older...

(1): Yeah. I

(2): I mean, maybe you should try setting up a study group with the others in our class? Liu was always eager whenever we did ours. If we got it going again, I'm sure she'd--

(1): Liu moved back to the mainland a couple months ago. Since the war died down and she could go home.

(2): Oh. Well, I mean... You must still have--

(1): And it's not just my studies. I mean, to tell the truth, everything has been really weird lately. At home, I... I mean, has been awful most nights, and no one really seems to really care, and... No one seems to want me there at all, like taking me in at all was a mistake...

(2): Look, I really can't deal with this at the moment. I'm sorry. I just can't.

(1): I just. Even if it's just over the logic bridge, it'd help a lot to talk a bit... You know, we could talk about some books, or watch a drama. I you always have--

(2): Kuroka, did you come here looking for me?

(1): What?

(2): I know you don't have a proper luxury debt allowance... And this store doesn't have a distribution center.

(1): That's

(2): Look, you can't keep doing stuff like this. I'm not

(1): really not! I just wanted to be somewhere that I just can't

(2): not true. I know you but I really need

𒊹

Inner Sanctum Exterior | 3:36 PM | Third Day

"Oh, really? Is that right," Kamrusepa said angrily. "Tell us something we don't bloody know already!"

I didn't want to speak up and risk reminding everyone of the intense suspicion I was under prior to this distraction, but I had to agree strongly with the sentiment. The only really surprising part of this was that he was admitting it without any qualifiers.

"We're almost out of time!" she continued. "We don't need information, we need to get down there. I shouldn't even be letting myself distracted by all this--"

"Please wait just another minute, miss Tuon," Linos spoke firmly, an apprehensive tightness in his expression. "There's no reason for you to risk your life with the golems. I think I know how everyone can escape safely."

"Are you sure?" Ran asked. "She has a point. We don't even have 20 minutes left before the transposition."

Linos exhaled through his nose, then nodded a few times, though it wasn't clear to me whether this one in response to Ran, or him coming to some kind of internal resolution.

"Utsu... Theo," he said, looking at the both of us respectively. "Do you remember the story I told you, back in the main hall, before we found Lilith and her mother? About our work in trying to manipulate entropy." He glanced towards Kam. "I think you might've been listening in too, miss Tuon."

Kam frowned, her face flushing slightly.

"What about it...?" Theo asked, hesitant. I just nodded. I'd told Ran about it and I wouldn't have been surprised if Fang had caught snippets and figured the rest out too, but there was no reason to bring that up.

"I told you that our..." his eyes flickered anxiously towards the door for a moment, before turning downwards. "...experiment, was a failure. That the child we attempted to affix the connection to entropy to--"

"W-What...?" Ophelia said, eyes going wide.

"I'll explain later," Ran said to her quietly, holding up a hand.

"--had never gained consciousness after the gestation period was complete," Linos finished, and then hesitated. "And that was the truth. But what I said after the fact, to miss Rheeds especially... About that being the end of the matter... That was a lie."

"Linos," Anna said, with a severe look.

"Anna," he said, looking at her. "We can't worry about keeping secrets any more. It's time to accept that the Order, much less our careers, isn't going to survive this disaster. If any of us are to escape from this with our lives, we need to come clean about what might-- What might really be happening."

She lowered her face, such that her hood covered her eyes. "Have you really let yourself start believing--"

"I hadn't," he said, suddenly raising his voice. "But now that you saw that monster, how can you deny it? How much longer can we run from reality?"

Anna fell silent, becoming almost motionless.

Linos looked back between me, Kam and his son, with renewed resolve. "I told you that we ended those experiments and decided to pursue other avenues of research exploiting the connection this facility has to entropic phenomena and our unique knowledge of it... But I acted as though that had happened straight after the fact." He grunted uncomfortably. "However, that's not the case. The truth is, our current application of the machine you saw - that Fang managed to achieve functionality of - is relatively recent. We only began development in that direction about 60 years ago, 30 years before the project was effectively discontinued."

Kam's eyes widened with a peculiar mix of awe and annoyance. "You developed a working means of functionally reversing material entropy in only 30 years?"

"W-Well, we didn't actually get it working, remember," he said, gesturing towards Fang. "But regardless, it's not so straightforward. A lot of the work was effectively done already from our earlier research, so it was less innovation and more a process of iterative adaption-- But this isn't important," he said. "What matters is how we got to that point." He took a breath. "You see... Despite that first child being stillborn... Your grandfather, Utsushikome, insisted that we continue the project."

Ah. I had a feeling, hearing the story, that something like this had been the case.

What was it that Samium had said, back then? The second to last time we'd met?

"The girl her body was made in the image of was, and is - on the days he can still think clearly - someone precious to him. ...her grandfather, though in many ways that is the wrong word. I have never known anyone so dedicated to a single person, let alone a dead one. She was what gave him his passion, and I'm certain at his core was the reason he was so dedicated to the Great Work... Everything he did, he saw as a fight in her name. Preventing what he saw as a recurrence of the tragedy that had scarred him so deeply."

"...I don't get it," I said. "I mean, didn't she die in the collapse? What does living longer have to do with that?"

He shook his head. "She died prior to it, but there's no point in getting into the specifics." He looked at me, his eyes cold and grim. "In a way, you two seem alike. Some fires are too wild and hot to be bottled... Even when he tried to let go of the past, he could never commit himself to it. That's why even your mother resembles her." He shook his head. "Love truly is madness."

I was silent, looking across at him from where I was sitting.

"Listen closely," he said, in a tone of shame-laced firmness. "I'll go over some more details about her."

"There were nine attempts in total... One failure for each of the gods we were spitting in the face of, I remember someone joking," Linos continued, with a nervous laugh. "The second, third and fourth had the same result as the first-- No brain activity whatsoever. The fifth and sixth had... Erratic brain activity, but still never gained consciousness. The seventh was the most strange - it appeared to be a success at first, but after a month, began demonstrating erratic behavior--"

"What kinda erratic behavior?" Fang interjected curiously.

Linos made an uncomfortable throaty sound. "Uh, it would repeat the same movements over and over again, almost like a golem with faulty scripting. The same outreach of its hand, the same laugh... Identically, usually five to thirty times in a row. It was quite disturbing, to tell the truth." He appeared to shudder a bit, clasping his hands together. "Anyway, after three months, it suffered abrupt heart failure. In comparison, the eighth attempt appeared to be a setback. The child was nominally conscious, but was incredibly unresponsive and would slip in and out of comas, and was dead within a few weeks."

"This is horrible," Ophelia said, sounding horrified. "W-What could those children even be experiencing...?"

"Yes, well... " Linos rubbed his hands together.

"The ethics of this organization should come of no surprise to anyone at this point," Kam stated, her eyes narrow. "Get to the point, Linos. We're running out of time."

"Of course," he said quickly. "...finally, our ninth attempt was a success. The child was somewhat quiet, but seemingly healthy. They ate and slept normally, and reacted properly to stimuli, without any strange behaviors... It felt like a miracle - like we'd stumbled into the solution by accident rather than really iterating our way there."

"To be clear," Ran said, "you were part of this project yourself? Directly?"

Linos's face flushed, but he nodded. "I was. I was on the, uh, team responsible for optimizing the foetuses prior to the Induction, and then later moved into a monitoring role." He frowned. "I'm not denying my culpability in all this."

She nodded, her eyes narrowed.

"There's something I've been wondering about... Ever since you first told us about this," Theo said suddenly. "How did you manage to attach something like an Index without the, ah. ...the first stage of an Induction?"

I blinked. It felt like a weirdly technical question to bother asking at a time like this, if not per-se an unreasonable one. In a way, it felt characteristically Theo in a way he hadn't been for a while - setting aside the point of what was being said to instead fuss over some adjacent piece of errata. (When we were kids, he was always the type of person who'd poke holes in the plots of dramas that we were watching based on background fluff rather than pay attention to the story.)

But it was odd for it to suddenly come out now.

"Oh," Linos said, seeming surprised by the question. "...that's actually sort of its own can of worms."

"Theo, we don't have time for tangents," Kam said, agitated."

Linos shook his head. "No, this is simple-- To be technical, we did perform both stages, as in a standard initiation ceremony... But we used an experimental, artificial pneuma instead of one from the Tower of Asphodel."

"I didn't even know that sort of thing was possible," Theo spoke, looking alarmed.

"Ehh, there's been research for that kinda crap hanging around since the Great Interplanar War, I think?" Fang said, scratching the back of their head. "Growing fresh ones from scratch so we don't have to use ones scraped outta dead sucker's heads."

"That's rather a vulgar way to put it, M-- Uh, Fang," Linos said. Ophelia and Theo also seemed mildly shocked. It was rare for people to be so forward when it came to the topic.

"You wanna use my last name but dunno what title to use, right?" Fang suggested casually. "You could say Mx. Muuuuccckks."

"You were practicing Egomancy," Kam, who judging by her tone seemed to have strongly changed her tune on the subject of ethics and lawbreaking in the name of scholarly progress, said.

Linos was about to answer, but Fang did it for him instead. "Naaah, that stuff isn't Egomancy," they clarified. "Or at least, not necessarily. Like, I'm not an expert? But a pneuma is just matter, even if it's got its weird little tendrils in the higher planes. Get an electromagnetic setup close enough to a human brain and you can grow something like one."

Ophelia frowned. "If we know how to do this, why don't we, instead of...?"

"Too much controversy around this stuff to get the job done, even if it isn't technically Egomancy," Fang explained. "Plus, y'know, most people see it as something that ain't broke."

Ran snorted grimly.

"Fang has more or less the right of it, though their perception of the progress of research into this topic might be a little, well, generous," Linos said. "Besides, what we produced wasn't exactly a normal pneuma-- It would never have been able to hold an Index. We specialized it specifically for the role at hand." He glanced to the side. "It was an apparently complicated process, but I wasn't personally involved."

Theodoros nodded hesitantly.

"Anyway... As we'd originally planned, we raised the child in this sanctuary," Linos continued. "For a while, things went smoothly... Well, as smoothly as reasonably conceivable in such a circumstance. We tried to give them as normal a life as possible while monitoring their development closely. Many of our senior members spent whole seasons here acting as 'parents'. We kept them company, encouraged them to develop hobbies..."

"You never took them outside," I said, the words coming out more accusatory than I'd intended.

Linos shifted uncomfortably. "No. That would have been a threat to the project. ...of course, they did express curiosity about the outside world. As I suppose any child would. We..." he hesitated, cutting himself off and running his hand over his mouth with a troubled expression. "We had rough plans to allow them to leave eventually, under controlled circumstances."

It looked as though almost everyone here - Ran, Kam, Ophelia and myself, at the very least - wanted to interject in some capacity, but were holding back because we had so little time and just wanted him to get through this explanation. I, at least, had to actively bite my tongue and avoid making another accusatory remark like, 'you were keeping them as a slave'.

It was a little strange that I was having such an emotionally strong reaction to this, considering everything else that was going on. Maybe I was identifying with this kid a little because they didn't have parents, and were surrounded by people who probably looked at them more clinically than lovingly on some level... But when I thought about it more closely, that was about as far as the comparison went.

At least the food was good here.

"Don't misunderstand... There were members of the Order who were uncomfortable about the arrangement, and there were some concessions. We ended up cultivating quite a large community of people to bring the outside world to the sanctuary, to the point that it almost became like a small town for a while. They were even able to have a higher education... Well, more or less."

"What did they study?" Ran asked, raising an eyebrow like she already had some idea."

"Art," Linos answered. "Some of their work is-- Well, still around the sanctuary."

I blinked. The mural? Or rather, the painting it was based off?

"Anyway, I'm not trying to defend us. Especially not... Well." He sighed. "For most of their life, there weren't any signs of their -- Well, their nature. But when they were... Approaching adulthood, our regular tests began to report unusual results. In a closed environment, it appeared as though their mood was having a minor impact on entropic phenomena. Causing the rate of decay in an ordered system to accelerate or decelerate." He hunched downwards, looking uncomfortable. "Negative stimuli showed that it had a more profound result than positive stimuli. And at the time, for reasons that aren't worth getting into - politics, more or less - the Order was under pressure to produce a leap in our research. Some people saw such potential that they wanted to depart from our, well, more passive model of 'communication' with the entity, and--"

There was a sound out from the hall. The same sound, shrill and alien. Closer than before. I jumped, the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end.

"We don't have time for all this!" Kam hissed angrily.

Linos tensed up. "Look, miss Tuon, I just want to make sure everyone understands--"

"Apega," Fang said passively. "That's as in 'Apega of Nabis', right? Zeno said it was a reference."

Kam looked at them sharply. "What?"

"The Iron Apega," Fang repeated. "It's reeeeal old-timey torture device, one of the first in history, named after some asshole's wife. The first one was made to look like her. Its got these big arms covered in nails, all spread out like this--" They t-posed. "--and then when someone gets shoved into the chest, they start to close up, giving them a big hug, and then--"

"I don't think you need to spell out what happens when a bunch of nails get shoved into somebody's back," Ran said. Ophelia made a disgusted expression.

"Well, yeah," Fang said, shrugging. They looked to Linos. "It's a hint, right? What that thing was originally for."

"You're well-read," Linos said, his expression twisting. "Yes. The truth is that many people in the Order came to believe that our best route towards dominating entropy was to-- To cause it harm, through the means we had cultivated. It became theorized that such a being, so divorced from mundane reality, was in fact potentially prone to submissiveness when exposed to negative stimuli, which is alien to it. An animal's response, more or less."

"What did you do?" Kam asked.

"There was... Internal disagreement," Linos said. "Between whether to act, or to pursue further research. But while this was taking place, things took a turn for the worse. The child learned of what some of us had planned from a sympathetic member of the Order. They..." He shook his head. "I suppose the specifics aren't that important. To say the least, we did something unforgivable. The child was-- They were killed." He bit tongue. "Well, in a manner of speaking."

Oh, I realized. I see where this is going.

"They didn't... Die," he said. "Not completely."

Kam scoffed. "Oh, this is ridiculous--"

"We thought they were dead. Their vitals had ceased-- No breathing, no heartbeat. But their body was..." He gulped. "No matter how much time passed, it showed no signs of decay whatsoever. Even the temperature remained static, at the median for a healthy adult, even after it was observed for weeks. And even though they hadn't possessed any such ability in life, we found we were unable to damage the body in any way. Even when we tried to dispose of it outright, even using the Power to do so... We couldn't harm so much as a hair on its head."

"Gods above..." Ophelia murmured.

"If this is true," Ran said, sounding fairly skeptical, "then you're talking about something that's practically supernatural in nature. How have you sat on a discovery like that for a hundred years?"

Linos crossed his arms, looking uneasy. "We did try to investigate it further, determine what was rationally happening..." he said. "We devised several potential theories; the most promising was that the Apega had altered the higher planar characteristics of the matter that comprised the body in a way we didn't understand. But before we reached the truth, peculiar occurrences began to happen around members still involved in the project. People got hurt, died-- ...well, it doesn't matter now." He shook his head. "The important thing is how it ended. We decided to seal the body away in our vault at the base of the research. ...I believe you've seen the doors to it multiple times now."

The metal hatch beneath the floor. The one that looked as though it'd been ripped apart--

"You told us that led to a dock," Ran said flatly. "That was barely two hours ago."

"I'm afraid that was also a lie, miss Hoa-Trinh," Linos said regretfully. "I was trying to keep everyone calm... No, I was trying to deny the truth." He shook his head. "Throughout this whole ordeal, we - I - have been trying to dismiss all these suggestions of 'judgement' motivating the killer's actions, of a punishment being enacted upon the Order. But now that this has happened..."

This is insane, I thought. He can't seriously believe this, can he? That this is the work of some kind of vengeful ghost?

"Ever since that time," Linos resumed, "there have always been strange sightings in this sanctuary, intermittently. Monsters matching the description of the one we encountered. Markings. Portents of a reckoning... It's no accident that, even for a major event like this, only the inner circle was in attendance. That we only had two staff on hand..." He glanced about the room. "People don't like to come here. And it's not without reason."

"This is madness, professor Melanthos!" Kamrusepa proclaimed, eyes wide, echoing my thoughts. "We know the mastermind was Hamilcar, and we reasoned out that this must be the work of the one remaining accomplice!"

"Do we know that, miss Tuon?" he said, almost confrontationally. "Didn't he speak of our sins when you confronted him, too? What makes you certain that said accomplice is human?"

"You're abandoning what rationality you have left!" she accused him.

"What Mehit told you, out in the courtyard," he went on, "specifics aside, it was-- It was the truth."

She gaped at him, stepping backwards slightly.

"Hamilcar had every reason to despise us. ...as did your grandfather, in the end, Utsu. I wouldn't be surprised if both of them choosing a path of vengeance, one that placed them in alignment with whatever greater force we'd angered..."

"You, uh, think he sabotaged the system?" I asked, before my brain could get a reign on my mouth.

Linos nodded. "Yes." He smiled slightly. "And... If you are working with him somehow too - if that's what you were trying to hide a moment ago - then I don't blame you. What we've done is beyond contempt. Even though he was often the one to lead us to extremes in the first place, I... Well, there are some betrayals that are truly unforgivable."

I stared, too overwhelmed to know what to say. He had the completely wrong idea, but I couldn't even bring myself to correct him.

"In truth, how we arrived at this point isn't the result of one mistake," he said, "but many in succession. Whether or not this truly is divine judgement, we've absolutely let our pride blind us. And now it's too late."

Kam stared at him for a moment, then jerked her head towards Anna. "Your ladyship. Is all of this the truth?"

Anna looked resigned, like she was barely present in the room any more. Her mouth hung open listlessly, and her arms drooped to her side. "...I suppose so," she said.

Kam scowled. "What do you mean, you 'suppose so'?"

"I believe," Linos continued, "that whatever is out there - this 'divine beast', or however you'd venture to describe it - is trying to send a message to us by seemingly taking miss Rheeds, master Ikkuret, and master Iladbaat hostage, as opposed to killing them outright." He clenched his jaw. "And that is that, what happened to Bardiya aside, whatever we are facing has no rancor for the rest of you; you're bystanders. Its anger is reserved for those who have wronged it."

Wait, is he--

Theodoros suddenly got an idea as well, his eyes going wide. "Dad, where are you going with this?"

Linos paused for a moment, taking a breath. He looked up at Theodoros, and appeared to be steeling himself. He smiled slightly, and then turned to Anna. "Anna. You weren't involved in the project, so I think there's a chance you might be spared from all this." He turned back to regard the rest of us. "But for my part... At this point, I believe the best chance you have to survive is if I surrender myself."

Theo's eyes went wide, along with several other people in the room. "You can't!"

Linos smiled at his son. "Theo. I know... We've often had our differences lately. But I want you to know that I really am proud of you. You've done an admirable job of following in my footsteps, and I hope--" his voice cracked. "...I hope from now on, you'll be able to follow your own dreams."

"Dad," he said.

Linos looked around. "We should still be able to make it in good time if we go now. Once the path is clear, you can--"

"Ehhhhh," Fang intoned, cutting him off. "Nope. Nah, this isn't gonna work."

Linos blinked at the interjection, along with several other people. He turned towards them. "What?"

"Oh, sorry," Fang said. They cleared their throat. "I'm saying that I'm not buying this.”