The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

Well, I thought, I suppose it's not like it could make things any worse.

I reached out carefully and gingerly prodded the woman's shoulder, hoping this would be enough to rouse her. It was not. She continued to snore softly, only shifting slightly, like my hand had been an annoying breeze. After a moment had passed, I tried again, but this time got no response at all.

Guess she must be a deep sleeper...

Frowning slightly, I reached out with my hand, taking hold of her shoulder entirely and shaking it a little. "Uh, excuse me..."

With a loud snort, her eyes shot open abruptly, her muscles tensing and causing my hand to swiftly recoil. She jumped up in her seat, looking around in confusion for several moments before eventually fixing her gaze upon me. She stared for a second, then glanced around again, before leaping to her feet with such force that the chair fell backwards, clacking loudly against the stone.

"H-Halt!" she commanded, holding up a hand. She looked overwhelmed, and her voice cracked, sounding like the muscles in her throat hadn't woken up. "Access to the Manse is strictly forbidden, by order of the assembly! Step away from the threshold or face immediate banishment!"

The words were this time delivered in Inotian, and once again she sounded like a native speaker. This was a relief to me, not only because the fact she was speaking a normal language without seeming to think I was some sort of monster suggested this was a somewhat more sane situation, but also because I spoke it natively, so I could be more confident there wouldn't be any strange misunderstandings this time.

Of course, I didn't have the faintest clue what the hell she was talking about, and the fact I seemed to be doing something forbidden again wasn't a good sign. But, well, progress was progress.

"Uh, hold on," I said soothingly, holding up my hands. "I wasn't... trying to get access to anything. I just-- Could I just maybe ask you some questions? Where are we? What is this?"

Her face spoke puzzlement for a moment, then renewed conviction. "Don't try to trick me! Why would you be all the way out here if you weren't trying to access the Manse?!"

I bit my lip. I guess the 'Manse' is that big building behind her. Kind of a weird defense if they don't want people going in, though... She's not even armed.

"If I were trying to get in there, I wouldn't have woken you up," I stated, trying to seem calm and rational as to diffuse the situation.

She hesitated. "You woke me up? On purpose?"

"Y-Yeah," I said, nodding. "I said 'excuse me', and everything."

The woman blinked a few times, frowning, then managed to rally again, scowling at me with fierce suspicion. "How do I know you're telling the truth, and that you didn't just do it by accident trying to climb over to the door?"

"I mean... if that were true, I'd have been standing half-way behind your chair, wouldn't I?"

She opened her mouth as if to speak again, then stopped, seeming stumped for a moment.

"A-Anyway, I didn't come here on purpose," I continued, seizing the opening. "I-- I don't even know how I got here, or... Gods, it's hard to even explain, because I don't understand anything at all." I took a breath, trying to stay composed. "But I was just in this empty flat void a second ago, and I saw a bunch of people clustered together, and when I walked up to them, I suddenly ended up on this, uh, island." I glanced around uneasily. "Is that the right word for this? Island?"

She looked even more baffled, her thick brow furrowing. "Wait, are you talking about the Stage?"

I blinked.

"Is... that what this island is called?" I asked.

"No, I meant the 'flat void'," she clarified, seeming taken aback that I'd even asked the question. "The space between Domains. Is that what you meant?"

'Stage', I processed. That had been what that place had looked like initially, all the way back then. Maybe that's sort of like the default, then?

"I... think so?" I spoke hesitantly.

The woman gave an extremely funny look. seemingly so baffled that she was offended by the fact I existed at all. Her upper lip curled asymmetrically into a peculiar sneer.

"This has got to be some weird trick," she decided. "Even if I don't get it, it's got to be some fucky strategy so you can get me to move. You probably want to embarrass the Waywatch by sneaking into the Manse. Or maybe just embarrass me." She grimaced accusatorially. "Is this a hazing? If it's a hazing, it's not funny. Don't think I won't quit."

"It's not-- I'm not lying," I insisted. "Seriously. I don't even know what's in there." I don't know what the Waywatch is, either, or about a million other things. But let's try to keep things focused.

She gaped at me. "That's impossible! There's no way you don't know what's inside the Manse! Everybody knows!"

"I-I thought you said it was off limits?"

"That doesn't--" She pushed her lips together, making a flat expression. "You apparated here directly, coming in from the Stage?"

"Uh, well, technically it was the other side of the island," I told her, pointing accordingly. "I didn't realize you were here at first."

"So... You've never been to the Crossroads before. Ever?"

"I don't know what 'crossroads' you mean," I told her, feeling increasingly like this interaction was only managing to make me more confused. "Is that a place in the Stage?"

She stared at me in confounded silence for another few moments. Then, she reached under her cloak and produced a small pocketbook made of black leather, which she flipped through quickly, then spent a whole minute peering at once she'd found the correct page. Then, twisting her lip, she stuffed it back in place and looked at me suspiciously.

"It says that you came here from the Magilum Domain," she said in an accusatory tone. "Are you some kind of weird spy trying to pass yourself off as a dreamer? Is that your game?"

"I don't know what that means, either!" I hesitated. "I mean, I guess I did come here from the Magilum, but--"

She squinted. "What were you doing there, huh? Your story doesn't stand up to scrutiny."

"I wasn't doing anything. I woke up in--" ...actually, better not to get into the sanctuary stuff right now. "I woke up in some weird building, and then when I went outside some people with spears started yelling at me in some Eme derivative and dragged me to this weird town that looked like it was from prehistory. They made me talk to some creepy council who called me a demon, and then they cut my fucking head off!" I couldn't help but get a little worked up. Once I laid it all out, it was so insane it felt hard to hold back. "I only know what the place was called because I got some notice after the fact saying they'd banned me from going back there! Like I hadn't just died!"

She looked skeptical. "And where were you before that? Before you woke up in the building?"

"I was in the Empyrean Bastion, looking at a weird mural!"

Her eyes widened. "The Empyrean Bastion?"

Oh, thank god. She knows what it is. "Yes! So... I don't even know what plane we're on right now." I looked at her pleadingly. "Could I please ask you some questions?"

"I..." She scratched her head, looking stressed out. "I need to contact my superior. I don't-- I haven't been told how to handle a situation like this." She looked at me sharply. "Don't try to move!"

Once again she reached into her cloak, but this time she produced a peculiar object that looked like a palm-sized, green-tinted glass jewel. She raised her hand and, seemingly without her even having done anything, it began to softly glow, a voice emanating from within.

"What is it, Rya?" The voice was extremely deep and resonant, almost having a foghorn-esque quality to it.

"Corporal," she said, her eyes darting back and forth between me and the object. "I have a, um. A situation, here."

"...a situation?" There was a note of incredulity in his voice, like the idea of such a thing was, while not shocking, extremely unlikely. "Is someone really trying to get into the Manse from inside the Crossroads?"

"No, sir, it's..." She wrinkled her nose as she tried to think. "There's a woman here who's making a bunch of weird claims. I think she's claiming to be a dreamer."

"A dreamer," he spoke, this time even less credulous still.

"Yes sir," the woman - Rya, apparently - said, nodding over-enthusiastically. "The record is showing that she just came here from the Magilum, but she claims no affiliation to them. She's saying she doesn't even understand where she is at all, to the point that she doesn't even know what the Stage is. She seems to think she just suddenly ended up here from the Reflection."

"Is she a Primary?"

She glanced at me for a moment. "Yes," she said, nodding. "The story seems ridiculous to me, but she at least appeared out here directly, so far as I can tell. If she's never been to the Crossroads before, I guess that at least supports the idea that she's been apart from reality for a really long time... though you never know with those shut-ins in the Ark. She could be one of the old guard high in the ranks on some weird mission."

What is she even saying?

"I see," whoever the man was said. He paused a moment. "Bring her in. I'll have someone check the records and wake the sergeant."

She looked at the building behind her anxiously. "B-But what about my watch? Someone could get in!"

A fatigued sigh. "...we'll send a temporary replacement in a few minutes."

"Oh. Okay." She gave a cautious nod. "Understood, sir. I'll bring her back right away."

"Good."

The crystal stopped glowing, and she packed it back under her cloak. What even was that thing? An artifice?

Was it even worth questioning something so inconsequential amidst everything else that was happening?

Rya turned back to face me. "I'm taking you back to the guardhouse in Raurica for now," she informed me. "They'll decide what to do with you there."

"Oh," I said, biting one of my nails. "Am I... under arrest?"

She hesitated, glancing to the side for a moment and lowering her brow slightly threateningly. "No, but if you don't come, you will be."

My expression flattened. Well, at least some things about this situation seem culturally recognizable.

Still, this was ultimately a positive development, because it meant there had to be a simple way off this creepy island, and even something that sounded adjacent to normal civilization here in... whatever this was. This lady - or apparently officer - hadn't exactly helped, but if that were the case it was only a matter of time until I got some answers.

I could only hope they'd let me leave after I got them. My best guess as to what I'd even stumbled into right now was some kind of demi-plane, and those were often some of the best kept secrets in the Remaining World on account of how they were free from the influence of any of the major governments. I'd heard of one in particular - people called it the Karak Magi - which was known for maintaining a community of arcanists alone, free to use their talents to maintain a lifestyle of fabulous excess without having to worry about supporting the general populace. No one left except people on missions of necessity. So if this was somehow related to that as well as the Order, I could be lucky to escape with my life.

...I'm sure hearing me speculate like this sounds pretty silly to you, considering how much had already happened that flew in the face of the idea that this place was anything so simple as some hidden pocket of the Remaining World. Again, I'd just come back from the dead. Obviously you couldn't do that no matter where you went.

But my mind was wildly afritter, and I was, in a word, coping. So you'll just have to bear with me for a bit.

"Hold on a moment," she said, turning to the side and holding up a hand. "I need to clean up here and open the gateway."

"Gateway?" I asked. "What do you--"

Suddenly - so suddenly the whole thing happened in less than a second - the chair that she'd been sitting on dissolved into a sort of grey soup, which then compressed itself into a small cube that the woman casually slid into her shirt pocket. It was just like it had been at my execution; she spoke no incantation and traced no runes, it just happened.

But that wasn't even marginally as impossible as what happened directly afterwards. She moved her hand to instead face the lily garden, and a hole opened in the world, enlarging from a single point to a width of about six feet. Beyond it was a completely different location; a rainy street where it looked like it was the middle of the night. This could be no illusion; I could hear the droplets of water as they struck the street, and some even fell through the portal, and as they did seemed to turn into motes of grey dust, before shooting leftwards at an immense speed.

Setting aside that last part, this should have been breaking the laws of physics-- Well, breaking them even more than the Power normally did, I mean. Never once had an incantation succeeded in creating a static portal between two locations beyond the microscopic level in all of history. Even if teleportation had become more commonplace, it was still extremely eris-intensive to send matter through the Higher Planes, and something like this was essentially doing it millions of times a second. This should have cost enough eris to power every incantation in the world.

And yet she'd just done it nonchalantly. If anything confirmed the unreality of this place, it was that.

"B-By the way, please don't tell anyone you saw me sitting in that chair and sleeping," she turned back to me and said, her expression suddenly insecure. "If you do, I'll, er..." She frowned. "Just don't say anything about it."

"Uh... no problem..." I said, my eyes fixed on what she'd just conjured. (In retrospect, she might have been an even less put-together person than me.)

"Seriously, you better not," she said, making a threatening expression. "Now follow me, please."

With that, she stepped nonchalantly through the strange portal, and I tailed close behind, awkwardly raising my skirt and ducking my head to fit, since she'd clearly made the thing for her size rather than mine.

With mystified eyes, I looked around at where we'd arrived.

It was peculiar to suddenly transition from such a surreal space to one that was on the surface so mundane. It was hard to say definitively since it was so dark, but the street we emerged in could have easily been an ordinary countryside town, - probably on the Inotian-Rhunbardic border, judging by the materials and style - which like the woman's clothes was slightly off but had generally recognizable motifs. Quaint, old-fashioned buildings of up to four floors tall were assembled fairly tightly, with the street itself divided into two slightly raised boardwalks covered by wooden awnings on either side. The middle of the street, where we were currently positioned, consisted of only a dirt road, with flowers and even trees growing along it intermittently. I felt the rain on my face as it fell from a normal, cloudy sky, and tasted the crisp and chilly air.

"What is this place...?" I said, not really meaning to speak out loud.

"It's Raurica. The capital of the Valley," Rya explained.

"What's the valley?" I asked.

She gave me an annoyed look, and then gestured in all directions.

I frowned. "I meant, doesn't it have an actual name?"

"It's the only valley in the Domain, so it doesn't really need one," she said, like this was a stupid question. "Come on-- The guardhouse is right here. You can save this stuff for the sergeant."

Indeed, the portal had led us directly in front of a stately building that, while still homely, had a slightly imposing character in the way one would expect for law enforcement-related. The stonework and windows - some of which were barred - had a slightly gothic flair, and it was one of the taller buildings on the street, as well as one of only a handful with light still emanating from within. A small green flag with the same 'X' emblem as the woman's cloak clasp hung from the side of the wooden double doors.

I blinked. ...actually, now that my eyes were adjusting, this whole place looked... Really nice. Less an 'ordinary' countryside town and more what you'd expect in a resort for rich people. But what exactly was giving that impression? It wasn't that it was especially clean or fresh-looking, and I didn't see any of the signs I normally associated with wealthy neighborhoods, like logic embedded into everything. There was just a sense of... quality to everything

This impression deepened as I stepped under the awning and followed her through the doors. The entirety of the guardhouse was-- Well, what you'd normally expect from a rural police station, more or less. The entrance had been at the right end of the building and so led directly to an intersection of corridors, one heading forward and the other to the left, with a small reception area consisting of a wooden desk, a few cabinets, and several seats to wait in. The ceiling had an exposed beam design which further contributed to the rustic atmosphere, and lamps hung from it that seemed to be lit by arcane energy, emanating a steady, warm glow. A clock hung on the wall which indicated that the time was 2:17 at night.

However... the more I looked at it, the stranger it all seemed. Not strange in a bad way, but...

Well, I'll put it like this. Normally, almost everything built by humans - even when it's not explicitly replicated or produced by a manufacturing line - has a certain uniformity to it, a underscore of utilitarian philosophy even when the intent is not utilitarian. As a general rule, people like to do things efficiently so as to not waste time, so most things are made according to pre-written specifications and blueprints which are at most tweaked based on whim or specific need. This applies so uniformly it can be easy to forget, from nails to floorboards to dressers to buildings, even to most forms of commercial artwork. And it's been the case since we invented writing at the end of the Primeval Era.

But here, that didn't seem to be the case. Everything, and I really do mean everything, had the sense of being custom-made, with little flairs and flourishes to the design that spoke of human time and effort having gone into them. The boards on the ceiling had been smoothed and aligned seemingly with intent based on the natural wood patterns on them. The desk had an elaborate trimming with streaks of spiraling glass that ran down the body of the structure in such a way that it couldn't have been assembled from discrete pieces. The chairs looked like their cushions had been individually hand-dyed. Even the brickwork of the walls seemed aesthetically considered, and there were tiny stone arches that jutted up where it met the ceiling, each slightly different, like they were living tendrils frozen in time.

It wasn't a breathtaking or confounding sight in the way all the other things I'd seen over the course of the night - I chose, now that I had a sense of the time, to conceptualize this all as having taken place over a 'night', even if I had no conception of how this place's temporality related to the mundane world - but it was deeply peculiar. As otherwise normal as my surroundings were, it triggered the same don't-touch-literally-anything instincts that were usually activated whenever I was visiting the house of someone phenomenally wealthy. I clasped my hands together tightly, like I needed to keep them busy.

Anyway, as we entered, a man was arriving from the left hallway, rubbing his eyes with visible fatigue. He was a tall and - though I guess I'm not the best to judge - honestly quite strikingly handsome Saoic man with a long face and stubble, and was clad in the same green cloak as Rya, though he seemed to be somewhat less casually dressed underneath, clad in a courtly black skirt that came down to his ankles.

He wasn't alone, however. The sight shocked me a little; striding close behind him and giving me a scrutinizing gaze was a large panther, with green eyes and a blue-tinted black coat. Domesticating big cats wasn't unheard of in places like Viraak, but it was still extremely unexpected, and what was even stranger was the cat was clad, again, in the same green cloak, buckled around its neck and hanging over its back. Like it was some kind of weird mascot.

My mind would likely have soon started to draw some quite radical conclusions from this, were it not for the fact that it only took about 15 seconds for the other shoe to drop.

Rya walked up stiffly to the man, saluting. "Sergeant, corporal! I've brought the intruder."

He smiled at her, but sighed through his nose with exasperation without much subtlety. "Thank you, Rya." His voice was smooth and suave. "Adam has briefed me on the basics of the situation, but I suppose I might as well hear the rest from the horse's mouth." He looked towards me. "Good morning, miss."

"Good... morning," I said, still eying the panther nervously.

"Let me welcome you to the Crossroads," he said politely. "I'm Sergeant Jun, head of the night watch here in Raurica and for the central Valley at large. This is Corporal Adam," he gestured towards the panther, "and you're already acquainted with Watchwoman Ryathe."

"Greetings," the panther said, in the same deep voice that came from the gem earlier.

My eyes went wide enough to strain the muscles. What the fuck? It can talk?!

I desperately suppressed my instinct to jump back in shock. It was starting to feel more and more like this was all some insane dream, rather than following any sort of internal logic whatsoever.

"My I ask your name?" Sergeant Jun continued, wearing a concerned frown.

"Uhh." I blinked, forcing myself to look at him and make my expression relatively ordinary. "Sorry-- My name's, uh, Utsushikome... Utsushikome of Fusai."

Him and the panther exchanged a brief glance.

"Miss... Fusai," the man spoke carefully. "I am to understand that you just arrived from the Magilum Domain, and that you're confused about your present situation."

"Yes," I said, the word coming out more intensely than I'd meant it to. "Extremely."

"Well, hopefully we'll be able to clear things up." He smiled reassuringly. "Would you like anything to drink before we start? Maybe to take a seat?" He gestured towards the chairs.

My eyes followed his hand. Honestly, I kind of did want to sit down and have a drink, but somehow the very idea felt obscene. Like the situation was so deranged that indulging in anything so domestic would constitute a compromising of my guard, a concession to the insane reality that seemed to have swallowed me. It was not going to happen.

"I'm-- I'm... good, I think."

"Alright, if you're sure," he said. "To begin with, do you have a confident sense of your own memory, do you think? Who you are, where you live and your day-to-day life, that sort of thing?"

"She does, sir," Rya cut in. "She said--"

"Thank you, Rya," the sergeant interjected, giving her a firm nod. "But I'd rather hear from her, just so we're all on the same page. Alright?"

The woman hesitated, then frowned, looking a little put off. "Er... yes, sir."

He looked back to me. "Well, miss?"

"I... do," I said, though I honestly felt so completely at sea at this stage that I wasn't sure I had a 'confident sense' of anything whatsoever.

"Alright, then." He rested his hands against the desk, leaning back slightly. "Well, why don't you start by recounting your day to us. The last 24 hours, from whenever you woke up, or even from the last time you felt things were 'normal', if that seems easier." He gave a small smile. "Don't worry about whether or not we'll understand, just do your best to explain in your own words."

I nodded. He had a very casual, calming sort of demeanor. It was helping, to such an extent that things could be helped when I was standing next to a talking panther in a world that broke the laws of physics.

"Jun," the panther warned, its eyes narrowed. "We should make a pictographic. The captain will be upset if you fail to do so again."

"Oh, right," the man wrinkled his nose. "Is it alright if we record this, Miss Fusai?"

"Uh, no problem, I guess..."

He nodded to the panther, and a second glass gem floated out of its cloak, this one tinted a reddish-brown color. It started to glow as it came to stop at about the level of my chest.

"Please," Jun said, making a circular gesture. "Go ahead."

"O-Okay," I said, clasping my hands together and clearing my throat. What should I tell them?

Again, there's no point getting into all the stuff about you having an internal crisis about your own death, my inner pragmatist said. Or your theories about this being connected to what happened 200 years ago. Just stick to the facts he asked for, and see what they say.

I gulped. This all felt so unreal. Even though my mind still felt surprisingly sharp, I had to fight the instinct to just start raving near-incoherently.

"So," I began, "some years ago now, an old teacher of mine died, but before she did she left me a message. It's a bit complicated, but the simple version is that it told me to find this old mural I knew was in a secret room in an abandoned part of the Empyrean Bastion." I remembered Rya's reaction, and looked at him hopefully. "You know what the Empyrean Bastion is, right?"

"...I do," he said, giving me an odd expression, "but like I said, don't worry about how much I understand. We can go over that when you're done."

"Okay," I said, not able to help myself exhaling in relief. "So it's been quite a few years since then, but this morning I decided to finally go. I'd, uh, called in a favor from an old friend in the Ikkaryon Aetheromancer's Guild, and he'd arranged for a ship to pick me up from the port in Rinheu - near where I live in Deshur - and ferry me there. I went in the morning, and we spent most of the day traveling... I think we got there about six." I swallowed the air, trying to come to terms with the fact that this had only been three or four hours ago."Nowadays, they've shut off the air to most of the Empyrean Bastion, so I had to come up with this stupid plan to sneak in the right part alongside a tour-- Well, that doesn't matter. The point is, I eventually found my way to the mural. And that's, uh, where things started to get strange."

So far, the sergeant seemed surprisingly nonchalant, nodding along with my words with an attentive expression. "What happened?"

"So, uh, this mural was like a weird surrealist rendition of the Epic of Gilgamesh, where the narrative went in a circle," I explained. "And you sort of have to spin your head around to look at it, right? While I was doing that, I suddenly started to feel like... Like my thoughts were splitting in two. Like I was thinking one thing, but there was also another 'me' thinking different stuff."

"Sounds like the autospective dreamer accounts I've heard before," the man muttered to the panther, who nodded with a slightly skeptical look. He turned back towards me. "Sorry, go on."

"R-Right," I said, with another small nod. "After that, I had this weird vision of myself walking through my old school in the middle of the night during winter, then suddenly woke up in this stone coffin, suddenly in different clothes and with my hair longer and in a different style. I got out of the coffin, and was in some flooded and overgrown building that I thought was some ancient ruin, but when I got outside I realized... Uh...."

Oh god, how do I even talk about this part? And why am I even worried about sounding like the insane person in a room with a fucking talking animal?

"...well, I was at least pretty sure that the ruin was actually a place I'd visited when I was much younger, preserved against the elements somehow." I eventually settled on. "Anyway, the important part is that the surroundings were completely different. I was on this ringworld like the Diakos, except much smaller and with a bunch of holes in it, and while I was trying to get my bearings I got ambushed by this group of people with spears and leather armor that looked like they were from the dawn of civilization." I scratched my head nervously. "One of them spoke Ysaran, and she kept calling me a demon and said I had to be taken to see their 'elders'. So they marched me to this town that also looked like it was from the dawn of civilization, and to this circular structure where a bunch of ancient-looking people told me I needed to choose from 'purification' and 'banishment'."

"Yes, that certainly sounds like the Magilum nowadays," the sergeant said. "I assume they expelled you?"

"Well, they somehow raised me into the air and cut me into like 20 pieces... or, well, made some kind of illusion that convinced me they had... but yeah, I think so." I looked down uncomfortably. "Though, I don't know if I even fully understand what I was expelled from, or how anything in this place works, or what it even is, or..." I hesitated, reaching up to adjust my glasses before realizing I wasn't presently wearing any. "S-Sorry, you told me to finish recounting first."

"That's quite alright, Miss Fusai," he said, squinting at me thoughtfully. "But yes, please continue."

"There's not much left to say. I ended up some kind of liminal realm, I guess, that she--" I pointed to Rya, "--said was called the Stage, then found my way here because... I don't know, I could somehow tell it was where the most people were. Then I was suddenly standing by some weird building she was guarding, and after I wo-- Rather, when I approached her, she yelled at me for trying to get inside and accused me of being a spy." I glanced at the watchwoman's face, which looked tense. "That's the whole story, I think."

"Alright, then," he said softly, giving another tired smile. "I apologize if Ryathe was a little brusque with you. I'm afraid she only joined us recently, and this is quite an abnormal development. Usually the Manse posting is considered something light for beginners."

"Oh." I bit my lip. "It's fine."

Rya's face flushed with embarrassment, and she gave me another small scowl. What is this girl's problem?

"Would you mind if I asked you some basic questions, as well?" he asked. "Just about yourself."

"Sure, I guess."

He nodded. "Firstly, when and where were you born?"

"In 1376, in Oreskios," I told him.

His eyes flickered for a moment, like he was drawing some internal conclusion. "And what do you understand the current date to be?"

What do I 'understand' it to be? That's not a fucking good sign. "June 14th, 1608."

He nodded. "Finally, are you an arcanist?"

"Yes," I said, with a firm nod back.

He looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes turning downwards. "Alright, thank you. That should be enough."

"What do you think, Jun?" The panther asked.

He sighed, looking over to... him. "Well, again, she certainly seems like the couple of autospective dreamers we had when I was working in the City, at least as far as I can remember." He sighed. "The odds are long, though. If it weren't for the fact that the Magilum has such strict entrance standards and doesn't normally send saboteurs, I'd be more suspicious."

The panther gave a small nod. "We're fortunate it was you on duty when this happened. Most of the station would likely consider occurrences such as these to be fairy tales."

"You think so?" He snorted. "Took long enough, but maybe experience is finally starting to make up for my total deficit of talent."

The panther narrowed his eyes. "So, you're leaning towards accepting the story?"

"With that, combined with the fact she's not in the records, yeah, more or less. It seems even less likely to me that those creeps have been training some super agent from among their oldest stock." He shook his head. "I don't know. What's your opinion?"

"Mm. Normally, I would say that it would be prudent to expel her on a temporary basis so we can conduct a proper investigation," the panther said, running a paw over his mouth in contemplation. "...but there was that fiasco a few years ago where we expelled that solitary on such a basis, and he ended up taking his prop to the Keep instead. The assembly wasn't happy about that."

"Good point," the sergeant said. "At the very least, we should wait for the captain in the morning. I doubt she's going to burn the Domain down in one night."

Rya seemed to have been made further anxious by the latest direction of the conversation. "Am I, er, going to be in trouble, sir?" She glanced at me nervously. "I really thought she was an intruder. It's been so long since I left the Crossroads that I forgot the rule about the Manse always being the default, and she seemed really suspicious--"

"It's fine, Rya," he told her soothingly. "This sort of thing happens once in a blue moon, and everyone makes mistakes. She really doesn't seem that suspicious to me, though."

She fidgeted. "But she's so nervous! It's sketchy!"

"If she speaks the truth, anyone would be nervous in such a circumstance, I would think," the panther said.

The watchwoman went quiet again, curling her lip.

"It's, uh, kind of rude to talk about someone like they're not here," I said, in a small voice.

The sergeant turned back to me. "Sorry, we don't really get a lot of action or visitors here at the night's watch, if you can't tell," he said with a smirk. "All a bit too used to each other."

"If you believe my story, would you mind if I asked you some questions?" I frowned almost pleadingly.

The man exhaled heavily, averting his eyes from mine. "Honestly, Miss Fusai, assuming what you've told us is true, I feel like I can predict most of the questions you're going to ask... but I'm not entirely confident in my ability to answer them properly." He rubbed his eyes. "It should really be someone with experience in psychology. There are probably experts in the City who have made a study about how to handle this sort of thing."

"In... psychology," I said, my face paling a bit. Oh god, what the hell does that mean? I've seriously been fucking copied after all, haven't I?!

He sucked air through his teeth, which were perfect. "Alright, should have thought a little more before letting that one out of my mouth." He leveled his gaze, giving me a serious look that was probably supposed to be reassuring. "Look, what's most important for you to understand is that you're not in any danger whatsoever, and that the situation you're in... well, not normal, but entirely explainable. You haven't been separated from your loved ones, and even if it turns out you won't be allowed to stay here, you'll be fine. You can relax."

"What is this place? Where are we?" I asked, the words quick and stiff. "And what's a 'dreamer'?"

"Going right for the throat, it would seem," the panther said flatly.

Jun nodded to him, wearing a troubled expression. He glanced to the side. "Rya, thank you for helping handle this matter, but why don't you head back to the Manse for now? I sent Lu to relieve you, but she still has paperwork to finish about that incident at Xiaori, and I'm sure she'd like to get back to it."

Rya looked surprised, then disappointed. "Oh... I thought I'd be done for the night."

The sergeant smiled patiently. "A shift's a shift, Rya."

"I... I understand, sir," she replied, in a 'this is unfair but I'll go along with it because I'm just that mature' sort of tone. "I'll let you know if there are any more abnormalities." She saluted, then left back out the way we came.

The panther watched her leave. "I give it another month or so before she gets bored and resigns," he said, as the door slammed shut."

"Mm," Jun hummed cynically. He looked back to me. "Let's... focus on those first two questions for now, Miss Fusai." He reached into his front pocket. "You mind if I smoke?"

"Uh, not really."

He nodded as he withdrew a wooden pipe, placing it gingerly between his lips. He waved his land slightly, and the contents ignited, filling the room with the smell of tobacco. "To start from the very basics... So, the place you're in right now is made up of Domains, which are sort of artificial worlds that people come together to build. As I said, this one is called the Crossroads, and it has the largest population of any. More than a million people, uh, assuming certain definitions of the term. That's why it appeared the way it did to you on your way here."

"How are you doing that?" I asked as I pointed at the pipe. "Using the Power without casting anything? I saw both the elders and your subordinate do it, too."

He clicked his tongue, glancing to the side. "This is gonna be really tricky, huh."

"Is it not actually the Power?" I asked.

"No, it... well, at least in the terms you're operating under, it is," he affirmed. "I'm casting by the same means you would. It's just that it's, well, easier here."

"How do you mean, easier?"

"Try invoking something yourself," he suggested. "I know you don't have a scepter, but just don't bother thinking about the eris at all. Pretend it's not a factor."

"But the incantation would just fail," I stated, somehow not seeing where this was obviously going.

"Just try it," he insisted.

I hesitated for a moment, then spoke the words to the Heat-Radiating Arcana, which was just about the simplest and most straightforward incantation that existed, targeting it in the open space above my palm. Sure enough, gentle heat started to emanate from the area.

...even though I hadn't spent any eris.

I blinked. Suddenly, the fact I escaped from that coffin so easily was starting to make a lot more sense. Not to mention that portal.

Before I could ask how this was possible, the sergeant continued. "Now, there are lots of different Domains, all built with different purposes in mind. A few of them, including the Crossroads, are... let's say generalist. But most of them are pretty specific." He exhaled smoke. "To cut a long story very short, the one you say you came here from is devoted to living a very simplistic sort of life. The people who found you probably didn't understand where you'd come from, and the leaders they took you to considered you a sort of ideological threat."

"Well, yeah, I figured that much on my own," I told him. "But I mean, how did they kill me without killing me? What even is this reality? How did I get here from the normal world?"

"How you 'got here' is... maybe not quite the right question." Again, the sergeant looked troubled. "I really do think it would be better to focus on the ground level stuff, until you can talk to somebody who knows what they're doing. If the captain waves you through, I'm sure the capitol will send somebody in the morning."

"'Ground level'? Okay, I guess I can do ground level," I said, getting a little flustered with all these non-explanations. "For one thing, how is your friend a cat?" I gestured frantically at the panther.

The creature closed its eyes and chuckled, clearly deeply amused by this development. "I was wondering when that was coming."

I hesitated, suddenly feeling strangely embarrassed. "...uh, sorry. I didn't mean to be rude."

The sergeant rubbed his eyes, exasperated. "...on second thought, the ground level stuff might not be a whole lot easier. Was sort of hoping you might ask something that wouldn't raise anything fundamental, like maybe what the Waywatch is... But I guess if I were in your position, I'd be the same way." He sighed to himself, peering at me. "Actually, if you don't mind, could I ask you another question, instead? Something is nagging at me a little bit."

I stared at him, frustration probably visible on my features.

"During your explanation, you said that you recognized the building you woke up in," he said. "That it looked like a ruin of a place you'd visited before. But the thing is, that's a really odd thing to have found within the Magilum-- Like you saw, from what I know, they don't really build normal buildings there." He furrowed his brow inquisitively. "So what exactly did you see?"

It threw me off a little bit to be asked about the one thing I'd decided it would be best to gloss over. "Oh. Well... it was a medical facility I was invited to when I was a child. Or rather, a part of it-- The rest didn't seem to be there." I swallowed. "Actually, to tell the truth, I feel like that might be connected to whatever is happening to me right now. I had an almost paranormal experience back then, where I experienced sort of an... alternative reality, I guess. Like this. Though I was never quite sure if it was all just some psychotic break I'd had." I glanced at them both nervously. "Uh, not to accuse you guys of being delusions, or anything."

"No offense taken," the panther said.

A moment passed as the sergeant processed this information, a curious frown growing on his face."...I see," he said. He leaned towards me slightly. "Could you describe it more specifically? This building."

"It was a boarding house, basically, like you'd find in the, uh, countryside." I told him, glancing around as I remembered this maybe was the countryside. This is so fucking bizarre. "It had a proper name and everything. 'Abbey House'."

"The Landmark they retained from their hegemony," the panther said, glancing downward and licking his paw. "I suspected as much from the story. I've heard the tribes stay well away, and of course their stasis and neutrality make them perfect places for dreamers who for some reason don't do it in their own Domains."

The sergeant's eyes widened slightly, and he turned to the panther as it spoke. "Adam... do you remember that story the captain told when he was drunk, that one time? When he claimed--"

"I remember," the panther said, not looking to face him, but instead staring at me carefully with his feline eyes.

Jun looked back to regard me too, and for the first time in our conversation, looked genuinely surprised and confused.

"What is it...?" I asked, then slowly frowned. "And what does 'landmark' mean, in this context?"

He kept looking at me for another few moments, then coughed, clearing his throat. "Miss Fusai," he spoke with a hint of wariness, "why don't I show you to our guest lounge?"