Empyrean Bastion, Nadir Gateway | 4:51 PM | First Day

"I can't help but notice," Kam continued, after a few moments had passed, "that we seem to still be breathing."

I stared down at the hole, squinting just to make sure there really was no faint, reflective sheen between where we were standing and the space beyond that might indicate a barrier, or if there were any anomalies with the view itself that might expose it as artificial. But, by every metric I could judge, it looked real.

"That... is funny, yes," I said.

Everyone stood there for a few moments, stunned by the situation. Eventually, Ptolema, with a look that straddled the line between curiosity and bafflement, stepped back into the area we'd just left for a moment, and retrieved a small chunk of debris from the ground. Then, stepping forward, she craned back her arm--

"H-Hold on," I said, turning in her direction. "What are you doing?"

She paused, seeming surprised by the interruption, and looked in my direction. "Uh, I was gonna throw a rock in there."

"Why?"

"Well, to see if it goes through, or stops, or whatever." She seemed confused by my line of questioning.

"But isn't that... Uh..."

Isn't that what? I thought to myself. Dangerous?

Well... Yes.

But why would it be dangerous, now that I was thinking about it? If there was something physical there after all that just happened to be almost invisible, then it was already holding steady in the face of a tremendous amount of pressure. It wouldn't be broken by little pebble. And if there really was nothing there... Then, well, there was nothing to break.

I couldn't think of a satisfying answer.

"Nevermind," I said. "Go ahead."

She shrugged, then flung her arm back again before, with characteristic athleticism, tossing the stone. Rather than hurling it straight down, she threw it horizontally, like you would if you were trying to skim a rock across the surface of a lake. It wasn't until the result that I understood why she'd done this. The object passed through the hole without issue, but then, instead of losing momentum and dropping straight down, it continued on sideways in perpetuity, eventually becoming an indistinguishable dot that vanished amidst the black void.

In other words, anything that passed that threshold no longer under the influence of the bastion's artificed gravity.

"Oh, wow," Ptolema said, "I wasn't expecting that to actually work."

"My goodness," Kamrusepa said, her voice becoming more excited now that she'd had a little time to process the situation. "If this is real, then... We must be right at the very bottom of the bastion. I had no idea we'd traveled that far down in the carriage and the elevator-- Look! You can see the Aetherbridge, there, too." She pointed.

My eyes followed her finger. Sure enough, off to the left, I could see the narrow, four-spined structure we'd left behind an hour earlier stretching downward towards the surface of the Mimikros. In fact, after a few moments had passed, I could make out one of the lifts descending, and then the area surrounding it blur before it flickered out of existence.

"Remarkable," Kam continued, wide-eyed. "How has no one noticed this place? It must be in plain sight."

"They could be using some kind of illusion to conceal it," I suggested. "I can't imagine people would be giving the area a close look very often."

"You might be surprised," Ran said. "A group of arcanists inspect the outer walls of the whole structure once a month, to make sure there isn't any damage or anyone smuggling goods in from the Duumvirate. They'd definitely have noticed something like this."

"In that case," Kam said, "the order must have permission for this from the bastion's administrators?" She clicked her tongue. "Well, that or they're paying off leagues of people-- Though of course I'm not suggesting something so untoward," she quickly added.

"They'd need to do more than just pay people off," Ran said. "If we really are at the absolute bottom of the bastion, then there shouldn't be any gravity in this whole area to begin with. The runes they use for it are built into the floor about two thirds of the way down from the surface-level. That means this whole area would have had to have been enchanted separately... And to accomplish that, you'd need to take half the floor apart and reinforce it with bronze, so it could serve as a foundation for the gravity without cracking under the strain."

"Good heavens," Kam said. "I knew their resources were considerable, but..."

"What if this place already existed, and they just appropriated it?" I speculated, interrupting her as she trailed off. "You said the hall we were just in was rumored to be made by one of the original builders, Ran. Couldn't they have been the ones responsible for the artificed gravity?"

"I thought of that," Ran said, "but anything done in the Mourning Period probably wouldn't feel this consistent. It's almost indistinguishable from the upper levels."

That was true. Back the Empyrean Bastion was constructed, Aetheromancy was still in its infancy, and primarily functioned by crudely imitating techniques that used iron from the Imperial Era. It wouldn't have been able to produce a result like this.

When the Ironworkers had rebuilt reality following the collapse, they hadn't been able to do so perfectly. Other than the absence of iron, other natural forces, such as gravity and electromagnetism in general, were replicated imperfectly. Evocative rather than imitative. This had caused many problems in the efforts to rebuild civilization, even up until the present day.

"Putting aside the gravity, how is any of this even possible?" Mehit asked, frowning at the sight. "What you said earlier... Can the Power do things like this? Keep the air in and stop us all from being pulled out into the void, even when there's nothing between us and it?"

"Nothing we're seeing is impossible," Kam said. "I'm no expert, but one could certainly create a shield that would contain air but allow the passage of solid objects. Another enchantment could preserve the pressure and atmosphere." She held the side of a finger to her mouth. "But it must be wasting an absurd amount of eris to keep it all together. Far more so than an enclosed environment. I confess I'm rather curious to the specifics. She looked behind her. "Ran, would you--"

"Yeah," she said, not waiting for her to finish. "Sure."

Ran reached for her waist and withdrew her scepter, which she'd received during her graduation from Saoyu University. Like most things from the Arcanocracy, the design avoided frivolity, largely just looking like a plain, ivory rod, with the exception of a violet ribbon tied to the head that denoted her status. She held it in front of her.

Ran always spoke the words to her incantations with a kind of methodical firmness that, though still swift, was distinctive to her among our class. It was a reminder to me that, unlike everyone else here, she was not a 'natural' when it came to using the Power, but rather it was a skill she had cultivated over years of hard work.

"How the hell do you do it?" she asked me, in the back garden of my parents estate, close to a decade ago. A birdbath that my mother had bought on an impulse and then left to be overtaken by moss floated in the air before us, a product of a demonstration I'd been giving her a moment earlier. "It's like you open your mouth and the words flow out like water. How do you never mess up the pronunciations?"

"It's not as though I never mess up," I said. " But it's just... Always been easy, for some reason."

She shook her head, looking at me almost resentfully. "For me, it's like my tongue is made out of lead. If I lose focus, even for a moment, it falls apart. It's miserable."

"Why do you want to do it, then...?"

She looked at me, with the same expression in her eyes as when she'd first learned the truth about me. "Isn't that obvious?"

A n o m a l y - D i v i n i n g

"...𒈣𒄀𒌈𒀭𒊍. (𒌍𒍣𒍥𒊒𒊬𒉌𒌫𒐼). 𒄭𒌋𒌋𒌋𒌋, 𒊹..."

From our perspective, nothing happened except that she twitched slightly, closing her eyes for a moment. Like most forms of divination, the Anomaly-Divining Arcana projected the information it harvested - which revealed the content of an incantation, as well as when and where it was cast from - directly into the mind of the caster. This made them dangerous, in their own way; you had to be careful not to overwhelm yourself.

"It looks like the rune work was done underneath the mural," she said after a moment, pointing towards it. "For some reason. The incantation is so complicated that I'm not sure I completely understand it, but it's very sophisticated Aetheromancy. It's a combination of multiple arcana - they've woven the barrier, pressure regulation and atmospheric control all into one single process. The only thing that's distinct is the gravity." She pointed back at the room we just left. "The root of that is around the big statue we passed."

"A completely customized incantation, at this scale?" Kamrusepa whistled. "How are they optimizing the eris expense?"

"They're not," Ran said. "This hasn't been in effect for long. Someone only activated the runes about an hour ago."

She raised an eyebrow. "Only an hour?"

"That, um, would make sense, would it not...?" Ophelia said hesitantly. "The members of the order have to travel to the sanctuary too, after all. Perhaps they left it active just for our sake."

"Y'think they use the same entrance?" Ptolema asked. "I would figure they'd have some secret way in that they wouldn't share with a bunch of random idiots like us."

"It's not a terrible theory. Occam's razor, after all," Kam said, before looking back in Ran's direction. "Where was the caster standing when it was activated?"

"Right here," she said, and pointed to the ground. "Not including the gravity. It looks like that's always active. It's probably tapped into the bastions eris bank."

"Very interesting," Kam said, nodding. "They obviously expended a great deal of effort to make this, ah, mm--"

"Hole in the floor," I said, interjecting.

"...yes," she finished, hesitantly. "The hole in the floor."

Silence fell for a couple moments. Once again, our eyes lingered on the pit.

"Yes, well, this speculation is all very well and good," Mehit said tensely, "but I confess I am unsure what exactly we are supposed to do now. How exactly is this supposed to take us to the conclave? We were told to take a seat, but I most certainly do not see any seats."

"Maybe they expect us to jump," I said grimly.

"That's not funny, Su," Ran said, her tone harsh all of a sudden.

"I didn't mean it like that," I said, looking at her with a defensive expression. "I mean, they want to abolish death. Maybe they expect us to prove our faith in their convictions by trying to, uh..."

"That would be unfathomably unprofessional," Mehit interrupted, coldly. "Not to mention cruel."

"Or maybe this is all an ideologial test, and the real answer is to walk away." Kam put a finger to her lips thoughtfully. "Thereby rejecting death, and the blind acceptance of the status quo in our culture that has led us to abet it for so long, and affirming the triumph of the human spirit over the callous forces of nature - in this case, the vacuum of space."

"Wow," Ophelia said. It was hard to infer from her tone if she meant this to mean this in a hearing-something-really-profound way or in a awestruck-by-the-sheer-pretentiousness way.

"You guys are being kinda dumb right now, I'm not gonna lie," Ptolema said, she stepped forward.

My eyes widened a bit. "Uh, P-Ptolema, I wasn't serious--"

As soon as she stepped on the first step down towards the hole, a series of black square tiles emerged from subtle recesses in the walling surrounding it, quickly and sharply moving alongside one another to form a rudimentary pathway along the void. They hovered there firmly, absolutely still.

"Oh-hoh," Kamrusepa said, looking absolutely thrilled by this development. "I love this. This is some Imperial Era-style high decadence if I've ever seen it." She stepped down to the path enthusiastically.

"How did you know that would happen, Ptolema?" I asked, a little warily.

"I dunno," she said, shrugging. "Gut feeling, I guess? They have something like this in the great library in Irenca. A bunch of platforms pop up and form stairs."

We carefully walked forward in single file, pulling our luggage behind us, Mehit going last - only after her own daughter advanced - and looking incredibly hesitant. As we did, more platforms appeared in front us, ultimately forming a square area in roughly the middle of the pit. A circular sitting area, formed of larger blocks, assembled itself in turn at the center.

"And there we go!" Kamrusepa said, taking her seat.

"This doesn't feel very safe," Mehit said, as she did the same. Her gaze was pinned downward.

"Not really, no," I assented.

"Come now, Mehit. You just said as much a moment ago-- I'm sure the order wouldn't be leading us into a death trap." She paused for thought. "In fact, I bet I've figured out how this is going to work, and the reason why they brought us up here to begin with."

"What's your theory, Kam?" I asked.

"Transpositioning, but on a tremendous scale," she said, smiling. "Think about it. We've just been brought to a place that has direct line of sight on the entire Mimikros. With a finely-calculated incantation and the proper timing, we could be sent to anywhere on the entire surface with zero foreknowledge of our destination. It's quite ingenious, frankly."

"Hold up," Ptolema said. "You're saying it's not gonna be a refuge, after all? That it's just some place on the ground?"

"It's precisely because the idea of it being an arcane refuge didn't add up earlier that I'm building this hypothesis," she explained. "It's also the perfect way to hide the location. In a pinch, the council members could travel to it directly on the ground, but if they normally only accessed it from here, there'd be no way they could be followed, assuming the proper precautions were taken." She smirked. "Gosh, it's genius. And here I was, presuming a place in the Empyrean was our destination, when it was just a bluff..."

I frowned to myself, wrinkling my brow. "I don't know," I said. "Something about this sounds off to me."

Kam clicked her tongue. "Gods, you're a moment-killer, Su."

"You're only saying that because I don't agree with you," I said.

"What's your theory, then?" She asked, leaning forward. By now, everyone had moved in and taken their seats, sitting in the circle facing one another. The platforms that had formed the path to this area had disappeared, leaving us 'stranded', and a flicker of anxiety ran through me.

"Well, for one thing, if they were going to do that, why would they bother with half of the stuff they've done over the whole journey?" I asked. "Why split us off from the boys? Why all the effort in making it so we couldn't see where we were going, back in the carriage?"

"Well, obviously they couldn't have us knowing the way down to this place," she said. "If we did, we could just come back later and cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana again, and figure out where exactly we'd been sent."

I curled my lip. "That might be true. But it only explains half of it. Why the subtlety about going up the Aetherbridge in the first place?"

"Probably just an additional layer of obfuscation," she said. "Make it even harder for outsiders to guess where to look."

I frowned. It made sense, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was missing something here. Like a loose tooth, nagging in the corner of my brain...

"You know," Ophelia said, craning her head back and forth, "seeing this mural from the center like this... It's really quite beautiful."

I looked around, imitating her own motion. As she said, in this position, there was something to the mural that I hadn't felt before, looking at it from the doorway. It played on the curves of the room, having a fluid quality that led your eyes from one element to another in a way that was almost a little hypnotic. The flowing nature of the design made it feel like the image was suspended on water, and your eyes were carried with it as it flowed, around and around...

In the strange atmosphere of this place, against the dark stone and the impossible view beneath our feet, it took on an almost otherworldly quality. Like I could almost fall into the rich, painted colours, just as I could tumble down to the continents and oceans below.

I shivered. It was cold, here. The enchantment must have been doing something to keep it warm, since we weren't all freezing to death from the utter frigidity of the void beyond the Great Lamp, but there was still a chill that cut even through the thick layers of my stola. It was a dry, piercing sort of coldness, like being in a desert after nightfall.

"What's it supposed to be of, exactly?" Kam said, looking herself. "I'm afraid I can't quite make sense of it. The designs are so abstract-- I think that's supposed to be a snake...?"

I couldn't quite figure it out, either. I could make out some scenes. A man weeping, someone diving into the water, a towering city on the horizon...

"I can't really understand it, either," I said. "I think it's trying to tell some kind of story, though."

"What makes you say that?" Kam asked, an eyebrow raised. "The scenes look all over the place to me."

I shook my head, slowly. "No, there's definitely some kind of narrative. There's a part where it looks like a man is getting out of some water... And then he's drying himself... Maybe?" I narrowed my eyes. "There's structure to it, at the very least. One thing leads to another."

"Interesting," Kam said, her expression becoming more curious. "Why would the order put something like that here?"

Because someone here felt the message was of paramount importance, a voice within me thought, one that I vaguely identified as lying at the intersection of logical and emotive reasoning. They believed it was something they needed to be reminded of every time they came to this place, every time they entered the sanctuary. A truth, more precious than any other...

No, that's not right.

I felt the chill strike me for a second time, along with another impulse. This one was the second quietest of all them; the one that saw things without even really understanding why, that lingered on edge of dream-logic. Maybe that's the superficial purpose, but that's as far as it goes. There is no real truth meant to be found here.

I saw, for just a moment, a sharpness in the brush-strokes. A subtle hatred in the contrast of the colours, simmering beneath the surface. I saw the person's hand as they painted it, wove the flowing lines of colour, and imagined the bitter sneer that must have been on their face as they calculated its design. The contempt, the creation of superficial beauty to hide a deeper ugliness. And for an even more fleeting moment - as the connections in my mind sparked, reaching out wildly - I saw the look of quiet disgust in my grandfathers eye, that day. When he went to the conclave for the final time...

Somehow, I knew it was true.

Whoever made this, made it with contempt. This a quiet joke.

Something to be mocked.

"It's hateful," I said, aloud.

Ran jerked her head in my direction for a moment, seemingly taken off-guard by the words. She blinked.

Kam looked, too. "What was that, Su?" She asked. "Did you just say it was hateful?"

"Um, I don't think it's hateful," Ophelia said, in a surprisingly defensive tone, seeing as she'd only become a fan of the mural about 30 seconds earlier. "It looks very pretty to me."

I frowned to myself, looking downward. Be logical. You have no basis for the conclusion you just drew. If you explained it to them, they'd just think you were nuts. I hesitated. Well, more nuts than they already do.

My words seemed to have reached Ran on some level, at least, even if she was no closer to actually understanding the content of the mural than any of us. Perhaps even less; she'd never had much of an artistic eye, being more comfortable with language than images, even having studied literature before she decided to become an arcanist. Still, she stared at it carefully, her expression furtive.

"Never mind," I said. "Just, um, thinking aloud. Anyway, maybe if we understood the story, it would make more sense why they'd put it here. Can you figure any of it out, Ophelia?"

"Hmm? Oh, no..." She shook her head. "I'm terrible with art... I just thought it was pretty, that's all."

"Ask Lilith!" Ptolema suggested enthusiastically. "She likes this kind of stuff."

What she meant by this was that Lilith read a lot of illustrated novels, and had taken at least one crack at drawing one, a year or so ago. It was the only thing that she seemed to like, in fact, outside of her logic engines. Sometimes she'd launch into spiels about the different styles, what was good and what was, as she'd phrase it, 'trash'.

Lilith didn't deny Ptolema's statement, although she didn't look up, either. "I am not here to function as your artistic interpreter, brainless woman."

"Lili!" Her mother said sharply. "I keep telling you to stop being so rude to your classmates!"

"I am not being rude," she replied, loudly and matter-of-factly. "Ptolema does not have a brain. It is well-documented reality, supported by a range of primary sources."

Ptolema scratched the back of her head, looking a combination of amused an uncomfortable. "Geez, Lilith."

"Do not persist in talking," she continued, her tone severe. "People without brains should NOT talk. Lest they debase themselves and the people around them."

"I am so, so sorry," Mehit said, seeming defeated by the situation, her face in her hands. "Lili..."

"Uh, it's okay, really!" Ptolema said. "It's like Kam said. We're kinda used to her being, well-- Like this, I guess."

"It is typical for a brainless person that you see my words as something to be endured," Lilith said. "rather than as an opportunity for self improvement."

This sort of outburst was pretty standard for Lilith. She usually got a lot more hostile when anyone except one of the professors imposed on her in some fashion. (For reference, "imposing" could mean anything from asking her for favours to petty requests like moving her chair so someone else could sit down.) It might've been the real reason that Kam had decided to go home and pick up her spare logic engine rather than trying to get her to fix it, back at the academy.

I'd always wondered, since I'd met Lilith, what kind of control her parents had over her, and I suppose I was getting my answer over the course of the afternoon. It was a bit of a grim sight - but I didn't envy Mehit. Having a child who was not only showered with far more accolades than you'd ever earned, but was also like, well, this, had to be tremendously difficult. To say the least.

"Come on, Lili," Kamrusepa said to her, in a more friendly tone. "I know you have a fantastic eye for visual concepts. Would you please give us your assessment? I'm incredibly curious."

"I see you trying to control my actions with flattery, manipulative harlot," she said gravely. "I see­ you." She pointed to her eyes and then gestured at Kam, still not looking up.

Mehit looked down with a despondent expression, seeming to be considering throwing herself towards the surface of the planet. It was hard to tell with her complexion, but she was probably flushed.

"Come ooooonnnn, Lili," Kam said, attempting to nail the combination of friendly non-condescension and imposition of authority that I assumed to be essential in compelling younger people to do things. "I promise I'll help you the next time you're trying to tune the internal clock for one of your projects."

Lilith glared at her for a few moments. Then, closing her eyes and sighing slowly and reluctantly, she pulled up her legs and stood atop her section of the seating. Turning in a circle, she carefully examined the mural.

"It is post-impressionist trash," she said, after a few moments. "But the quality is decent. They probably brought in a professional to do it."

"A professional?" Ptolema asked, confused. "Why would they do something like that for something no one is ever going to see?"

"How would you possibly expect me to know something like that, brainless idiot?" She said. "All I can do is analyze the content."

"Lili..." Mehit said weakly. "Please try to calm down... When we get there, you really need to behave yourself..."

"They're the ones demanding I do stupid things, mother," she said, imperious in spite of her high-pitched, obviously teenaged voice. "It's not my fault."

"Your father--"

"I know, mother," she said. She peered some more at the images. "...Okay. I think I understand it. It's difficult to describe, however."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because it doesn't seem to have been intended to be interpreted linearly." She peered at it with a critical expression, pushing a little of her curly, dark hair away from her eyes. "It does depict a series of events, but the narrative is circular. It loops."

"It... Loops?" Ptolema said.

"Yes," she said, in a tone that implied a lot about what she thought of Ptolema's intellect. "That is what I said, skull-cavity. As in, the events lead into each other forever. So there's no defined start and end point."

Ophelia's eyes widened a bit. "Oh, that sounds quite beautiful, actually... Ah, what's the word I'm looking for? Elegant, high-concept..."

"I don't think it's particularly original," I said. "I think I've seen that motif in religious art, back in Sao. Though, uh, not in this style." I turned back to Lilith. "Could you tell us what it depicts? Just pick a random starting point."

She sighed again. "Very well." She looked around for a moment, then pointed to a spot with her finger. "Here. A man is cutting down trees and using them to fashion a bridge. Then he crosses the bridge and meets an old man in his hut on an island." She slowly moved her finger from one scene to another as she explained, not pointing to a green-and-brown blur that I'd assumed to be some kind of cloud, but in retrospect probably was an island. "Then the man falls asleep. When he awakens, the old man scolds him, and they quarrel. A woman becomes involved in the fight too. Eventually, the man leaves, and after tying stones to his feet, walks into the ocean..."

To the side of me, I saw something subtle light up in Ran's eyes. Slowly, she bit her lip.

"...and travels to bottom to retrieve a plant growing there - a flower, it looks like. Then he's back at the surface, bathing, when a serpent appears and takes the flower. He's dejected. After that, he travels to a city, grows old, and dies." She paused briefly on a section of the mural that appeared to show an human form blurring into a more decrepit one as it fell to the ground. "Another man, younger, mourns him. This man leaves the city. He travels to the coast and speaks to a boatman. He starts cutting down trees to build a bridge..." She gestured to it, then sat back down. "There. That's the loop."

Kam nodded. "Thank you, Lilith."

The girl said nothing, looking back to her logic engine silently.

"Huh," Ptolema said. "The impression I got from the visuals was something grander, but that's actually... Pretty simple, really?"

"Indeed," Kam said, her brow furrowed. "What could it mean, though...?"

I looked at it for a few more moments, my expression cautious. Ran's gaze was still focused on it, though now her face had contorted in confusion.

"It's the Epic of Gilgamesh," she said, suddenly, her voice distant and quiet.

Oh. A few things clicked in my head, suddenly.

Ptolema blinked. "Uh, what?"

"Oh, my..." Kam said, looking at it all again for a more discerning look. "It is, isn't it? Well spotted, Ran."

"The Epic of Gilgamesh," she repeated for Ptolema's sake, louder this time. "Or the last part. It's an epic poem, arguably the oldest work of human literature, from early in the Old Kingdoms Era. That's what the mural seems to be depicting-- Well, sort of. It's a little odd..."

"Um, I'm afraid I'm not familar," Ophelia said, sounding a little embarrassed.

"Yeah, me neither," Ptolema said. "I mean, I think I've heard of it, maybe. But I don't really know anything about myths. Could you tell us about it, Ran?"

I was glad she asked. I had a very vague idea of the content from some half-remembered class in secondary school that felt like a lifetime ago, but the details were fuzzy in my head, and only half patched together into something coherent through little bits of cultural osmosis.

But I hadn't wanted to ask myself. That would have made me look stupid.

"I don't remember it all perfectly, but basically, it's about an ancient king named Gilgamesh having an existential crisis after the death of his friend, and trying to achieve immortality," she explained. "He seeks out this sage named Utnapishtim, who was granted eternal life by the gods. He lives on an island across an ocean called the Waters of the Dead, so Gilgamesh tries to contract a boatmen, but ends up in a fight with him and destroys the charms he uses to to stafe off the dark magic. So he has to build a bridge instead." She gestured to the corresponding part of the mural. "When he gets there, Utnapishtim has him try to stay awake for a week as a trial to prove he's worthy. But Gilgamesh messes it up and falls asleep almost right away."

"Geez, this guy sounds like kind of a screw-up," Ptolema said. "First he breaks the stuff he needs to get to the island, then he fails the trial right away...?"

"A lot of old myths are rather like that, Ptolema," Kam said. "The ancients loved their broken heroes, with all their human failings."

"What do you think changed?" Ptolema asked.

"Somebody invented the power fantasy and made a lot of money, probably," I said, my tone flat.

"Don't be such a cynic, Su," Kam said. "Personally, I think it's a consequence of progress. More hopeful, aspirational times breed more hopeful, aspirational narratives. What would one have to hope for, if one lived in an age of barbarity, like whomever came up with these stories...?"

"Um, please go on, Ran," Ophelia said, seeming quite engaged.

She nodded. "After that, Utnapishtim tells him to leave, but at the last moment his wife convinces him to tell Gilgamesh how to achieve immortality out of pity. So he tells him about a special flower that's the only of its type in the world, and blooms at the bottom of the ocean. And that if you eat it, you'll become forever young. So he ties rocks to his feet and walks into the sea, then finds where it's supposed to grow and plucks it."

"Wait, he walked into the sea? How does he not drown?" Ptolema asked. "Isn't this from before the Power existed?"

"Skull-cavity is asking stupid questions and ruining it for everyone," Lilith said. "Very typical."

"Hey, I'm just curious if I'm missing something," Ptolema said.

"No, I think it's just mythology logic, Ptolema," Ran said. "Anyway. He takes the flower back with him and plans to test it on an old man in the city he rules, but while he's traveling, he stops to take a bath, and leaves the flower out of sight. So a snake shows up and eats it - this is the mythological explanation for why they shed their skin, incidentally - and now there aren't any others left in the world. Then he goes back home dejected, and that's it."

"Is there no moral?" Ophelia asked.

"No, I guess there's sort of a moral," Ran said, adjusting the fabric of her robe a bit as she turned away from the mural. "When he returns home, and sees his city Uruk - and the massive walls he built for it, he realizes it will outlive him. And that even though he might die, it's sort of okay, because his legacy will still continue and have meaning."

"Ah, I see," she said, nodding. "That's a very traditional ending."

"I'm not sure you can call it that if it was the one to establish the tradition to begin with," I said. "It sounds like how most stories about immortality end, though. It's the sort of thing that Kam could call, uh..."

"Deathist nonsense?" she offered, with a small smirk.

"Something like that," I said. "Narratives about people finding ways to accept their fate or make sense of why people die, instead of defying it. You're always saying that sort of thing is irresponsible, whenever the topic comes up. Like this morning."

"I'm glad you pay some attention to my disjointed ramblings, Su," she said.

"I try my best," I said flatly.

"In this case, though, I probably would make something of an exception," she said, leaning back a little in her seat. "Since it was written so long ago, before the Power, before even iron, when people were just trying to make some sense out of the short and painful lives they had been born into, and find what coping mechanisms they could." She reached into one of her many bags and withdrew a small canister of water, taking a sip.

"Hey," Ran said. "Could I have some of that?"

"Mm? Oh, sure," Kam said, sliding it along the surface of our seating over to her. She drunk it rather greedily, for some reason. "But yes, you said as much this morning, Su, and in retrospect, you were right. People need narratives to make sense of that which they cannot chage."

"Yeah," I said.

"But the problem is that those coping mechanisms aren't discarded when they need to be. When even though we have the tools to work towards ending human mortality, people have narritivized it so much as something meaningful, beautiful, natural. Something that people ought to accept. Even though if such were done with any other affliction, the sentiment would righly be deemed abominable."

I opened my mouth, intending to speak the thought that had come to mind in response to this, but then hesitated, closing it again. Kam seemed to pick up on this, however, and smiled at me wryly.

"Don't be shy, Su. Say your piece."

"Well..." I looked downward, brushing one of my braids behind my shoulders. "Isn't that sort of a false equivalence?"

"How do you mean?" she inquired.

"Well, diseases and bodily problems can be treated as they come, but death... Or rather, things eventually breaking, is sort of a inevitability in physics." I furrowed my brow, trying to grasp the exact wording I needed to convey the concept in my mind. "How to put it... People have the potential to die every day. But they can only die once, and then they'll be dead forever. So no matter how long we pushed dying back, it would always happen, and human beings would always need stories to rationalize and cope with it. It's part of our nature as finite beings."

She thought about this for a moment, then gave a nod - but with skepticism, not acceptance. "That could be fair, after a fashion," she said, "If human beings were capable of truly separating their conceptualization of the world on a rational basis from their conceptualization on an emotional one. As it stands, even if they always will always be desired, their existence does more harm than good. Their existence led to the cultural circumstance that saw organizations like the order banned, that saw virtuous people--"

Mehit, still looking defeated, let out a strange grunt.

"--who wanted to save lives, proclaimed outlaws. Even if is is true that we can never win a final victory, people making up reasons for why we don't need to fight, means people don't fight." Her gaze was firm. "I said as much in the conference this morning. If we can claw our way to even a few more years, we have an obligation to do it."

"Geez, Kam," Ptolema said. "You get so passionate when you talk about this stuff."

"Thank you, Ptolema," Kam said, her mood instantly shifting to her standard, cheery one as she turned to her. "I do try."

"It's neat," she continued. "But, uh, also kinda scary."

"So what are you suggesting?" I said. "In place of that sort of narrativization."

"That people be forced to face reality, even if it's unpleasant," Kam said. "That there is nothing beautiful or meaningful about death."

"That's sort of cruel," I said.

That's unrealistic, I thought, as well. People value coping with life more than they value being alive.

"The world is cruel. No one ever promised otherwise." Her smile grew a little weaker, and she made a dismissive gesture. "Though of course, this is all hypothetical. It's not as if anyone could stop people telling stories. The most can do, in the end, is to try and tell a better one."

Try to tell a better one, huh...

My lip curled downward slightly.

"Why... Is it, that you're so passionate about this whole idea, Kamrusepa?" Ophelia asked. Though still meek, there was a strange undertone to her words, a weight.

"Why?" She raised an eyebrow. "My, what a queer question. I would have thought the appeal was rather universal." She quieted for a moment, gazing into the middle distance. "Because there are so many more things I want to experience than I have time for."

"But you're still so young. Don't you... Well, all of us... Have all the time in the world, at the moment? It just seems strange to me." Her expression was searching. "500 years is such a long time. I can't imagine feeling like there wasn't enough..."

She looked amused, and laughed a little, shaking her head. "Everyone thinks that time is infinite when they're young, in the same way that someone who has just stuffed their face with a grand meal can never imagine eating another-- That is, until a few hours later." She sighed, twiddling her thumbs together. "No, I'm afraid time escapes people remarkably fast. The noose is already tightening around my neck. I've lived this life for only a scant few decades, and already the world is a wall of closing doors, opportunities lost forever." She turned to look at the other woman. "What am I, Ophelia?"

"Um," she hesitated. "I'm not sure what you want me to say...? A woman, a redhead..."

"Keep trying," Kamrusepa said. Her eyes were narrowed, focused on her. "Think more vocational."

"...a Chronomancer?"

"A healing Chronomancer," she corrected. "A sub-profession, that is itself a sub-profession to arcanist in general." She looked forward again. "And mastering it, working my way up the ranks of the Order of Chronomancers, making the skill truly mine... Even with the incredible fortune I've had to be gifted in the art, it would likely take over a century; a quarter of the mean lifespan. Half of it, more likely, if I truly want to count myself among the best. That's half of my entire existence, 50% of the personal universe in which I reside and only I shall ever know, swallowed in a single pursuit, a minuscule thing, a grain of sand on the beach that is the range of human experience, and only human experience in this one era in which we were born." She shook her head. "And then what? Time for a handful more things, at best. I will never know what it's like to be a great artist, to explore that beautiful and nuanced world of thousands of judgements and subtle techniques. Or to be a singer, or a botanist, or a courtesean, or an accountant."

"I'm not sure I'd wanna be an accountant, even if I was gonna live for a zillion years," Ptolema said.

"That's the one you pick out...?" Ran muttered.

Kamrusepa continued, unresponsive to the interjection. "And alongside that, I will likely only ever love, ever truly know, a handful of people. And my whole life, the whole saga of my existence, will be marked irrevocably by the pure fortune or misfortune of how those handful of relationships will turn out."

I flinched a little. Kamrusepa certainly had a way with words, if nothing else.

"I don't want that. It makes me sorrowful even to consider. I want to love countless people, experience countless things, to bloom into a more complete version of myself that, right now, I can't even imagine." She looked downward, frowning. "That so many people, that everyone, disappears from the world before they ever have the chance to become who they have the potential to be is a tragedy so great that it's unspeakable."

"But..." Ophelia said, with an expression like she was trying to grasp something she couldn't quite reach. "Isn't that, mm..."

"What, Ophelia?" Kam asked. She leaned her head to the side, causing locks of curly ginger hair to flop down in sort of a silly-looking way. "What do you think it is?"

She looked hesitant about saying what she said next. "Well... Greedy? To want to experience all that, instead of what humans always have?"

"Greedy-- My goodness." Kam laughed again, though this time it was less sardonic; like she really did think she'd just told a funny joke. But when she spoke, the words came out with a severity that was absent before. "Ophelia, 'greedy' is what the lord calls the peasant who dares ask for a second loaf of bread. To smash the face of someone who has chanced to look up at the sun back into the mud below. You might as well ask, 'don't you think you should be accepting a little more suffering today?'"

Ophelia looked uncomfortable now, her expression indicating she regretted speaking up to begin with. She shifted in her seat, half looking away.

"When a human being acts to inflict misery on others, we condemn them rightly as a villain, and ostracize those who attempt to frame their victims as having been at fault," Kam said, her tone a little bitter, now, and more distant. "But when the cosmos does it, it finds so many defenders. So many who will call you immature for wanting something better than the unspeakable cruelty of the status quo." She crossed her arms. "But I know you are religious, Ophelia, so perhaps I'm speaking inappropriately. Let's leave it at that."

Silence fell over the room for a quite a while after that. Ophelia had turned away from her completely, at this point. I couldn't see her expression.

I looked to Ran, wanting to change the subject. Part of me wanted to speak up and address some of what Kam was saying myself, because there was a lot about how she was framing the topic that rung false, or naive, to me. But what good would that do?

Right now, with us surrounded by this creepy mural and a modest loss of balance away from falling to what would presumably be our death, I wasn't in the right frame of mind to even consider it.

"What did you mean earlier?" I asked Ran. "When you said it was a little odd?"

"Oh. Well... Obviously the real epic poem isn't circular," Ran said flatly. "The thing that sets Gilgamesh off on his quest is that the gods kill his friend, Enkidu."

"How come?" Ptolema asked.

"He kills a cow. It's not worth explaining," she said dismissively. "But in this version, the plot seems to... Double back on itself, instead. Gilgamesh still sets out on the quest in response to someone dying, but instead of Enkidu, it's... Himself? Dying of old age?" She frowned. "It's weird."

I looked up at the mural. The longer I sat here, the more something about it really did unsettle me. Some of the human figures in it had eyes drawn the strangest way, like they weren't looking at each other, but rather at the people in the center of room. Like this was a court, and they were arbitrating some manner of judgement on those below. The chill in the air seemed to slowly intensify, and I pulled up my woolen sleeves to cover part of my hands.

I hadn't realized it before, but it was very quiet, too. No ambient sound at all.

"Maybe it's not meant to literally be the same story," I said. "And the man isn't mean to literally be Gilgamesh. But rather, it's evocative of something-- Of the search for eternal life itself, maybe."

"What, you mean suggesting it's futile, circular?" Kam said. "That would be... A little inappropriate, given the context, to say the least."

I nodded. The explanation didn't quite fit for me, either.

"We're coming up to 5:06," Lilith suddenly said.

"Oh!" Kamrusepa said, almost jumping. "Goodness, I got so caught up in talking, I'd completely lost track."

"Yeah, sheesh," Ptolema said, stiffening and sitting up properly in her chair, as if concerned that if she didn't, whatever was about to happen might not work properly.

"I'm, um..." Ophelia lifted a finger up to her mouth, biting on a nail. "A little worried, not knowing how this will work..."

"It'll be fine, Ophelia," Kam said reassuringly, all traces of hostility towards her now seemingly vanished. "Just do as we did on the lift. Deep breaths."

"Frankly, I don't mind what happens, so long as this is about to be over," Mehit said, speaking up for the first time in a while. "I... should like some time alone with Lili, and to take a bath before whatever they serve us for dinner, I think."

After that, we fell into an apprehensive silence for a few moments. I tried to clear my head as best as I could for whatever was coming next, and checked my hair to make sure it hadn't fallen to pieces. If anyone was going to be waiting for us at wherever we arrived, I didn't want to look like a complete idiot.

But then I had a funny sense of deja vu - like I'd had back walking to lunch with Ran - and a peculiar idea entered my mind.

Hey, it said, abruptly. You should ask Kamrusepa to verify the time with the Power.

What? The rational part of me asked. Why?

Don't ask questions, it said. Time is short. Just do it.

"Uh, hey, Kam," I said, feeling stupid for following an arbitrary gut feeling. "Can you use the Time-Inferring Arcana?"

The technique I was referring to was probably the simplest arcana in the discipline of chronomancy, so simple that even a lot of the uninitiated knew it. It measured what was sometimes referred to as the "universal tick", the smallest possible measurement of time of time in the universe, and how many had passed since the dawn of time. Of course, the greater challenge was interpreting that number into useful information, which Kam was fortunately trained to do.

She turned in my direction. "Mm? Yes, of course I can use it."

"No, that's not what I meant," I said. "Can you use it now?"

"Now?" She looked puzzled. "Why? We're about to be transpositioned."

"I don't know," I said. "Just a gut feeling, I suppose-- C'mon, do it."

She thought about it for just a moment, then shrugged, and withdrew her scepter. It was gold, though not ostentatiously, and had a statuette of an hourglass at the top. She spoke the words, which only took a moment.

T i m e - I n f e r r i n g

"...𒇲𒉎𒅇, 𒍥𒀭, 𒀀𒀀, 𒊹."

She curled her lip in thought, then turned to me. "It's the 28th of April 1409, at 5:06, and 53 seconds. Satisfied?"

"Oh," I said, not sure what I'd expected. "Yeah, I gue--"