Draft Update 21/08/24 (Patreon)

(Finally, a normal-length update at the correct time again. Positive sign, I guess, though this one is mostly just a bit of Dilmun worldbuilding and some light foreshadowing.

Like I mentioned, I've been increasingly tempted to write something with broader RR appeal as a side-hustle lately, and did some tentative drafting for that this week. I might end up posting it here if I end up seriously committing to it, though please don't ever be afraid of me dropping TFTBN or something. Even if I managed to refine it to the point where it didn't feel like slop, this would still be mostly for money in comparison.

Also, apologies to whoever typo checks this. I caught myself constantly making weird ones this week, so whatever part of my brain is supposed to be keeping coherent sentences in my stream of consciousness must be even more busted than normal. I'll try to do a proper look-over once I've slept.)

Maybe he was right, I thought to myself. Maybe I am just being fucked with.

I stared at the slab for... I don't know. A while. What? Seriously, why? And how would that even work?

Fuck this, I eventually thought. I'm too tired.

Bardiya had warned me about two things regarding time when visiting the Manse. The first was the peculiarity I'd been speculating about back when I was heading in site-- Peculiarity that was separate from the standard ways it fucked in Dilmun generally, I mean. Once you stepped in, time essentially stopped passing linearly, but even if you only spent a little while inside - as I had - you'd come out at a random amount of time no sooner than an hour later but up to a whole day. (Again, as if this world didn't have enough features seemingly engineered to fuck up your sleeping pattern.)

The second was that people in the Crossroads were so neurotic about people using the Manse that they actually kept track of this. If someone developed a habit of leaving and returning regularly for seemingly random yet strictly-within-24-hour periods, the Waywatch would be on their ass by third or fourth consistent trip.

According to Bardiya, the easiest way to avoid suspicion in this regard, at least for if you weren't too persistent in your visits, was to simply change the speed of time passage within your own Domain. The time range on visiting the Manse was in reference to the Domain in which it was based, so you could shorten the 24 hour period to as little as 2.4 hours or as much as 240 hours relative to the Crossroads, which sat at the default. Unfortunately, as I'd pointed out to him, this was one of those things that were only 'easy' if you were talking about an ordinary Dilmun resident, which is to say someone who could use hyper-complex incantations with the ease of a child blowing bubbles. Making the change required Chronomancy, which I knew next to nothing about.

So the next best option would be to just sit around the Domain until enough time had passed dynamically, but after hearing how little had so far, I didn't think I could stomach the 20-ish hours more I'd have to spend here to be sure I was out of the range. I wanted to eat real food. I wanted a bed on which to sleep.

He'd said it'd be fine as long as I broke the pattern next time, anyway.

I loosened my mind and left the Domain, crossing the Stage back to the mass of people that made up the Crossroads, returning to the spot out in the void I'd departed from after... meeting with Bardiya. I lowered myself down through the colored blur and clouds at the edge of the sphere containing the Valley, and saw that it was about mid-morning in the paradise below. ...which was frustrating, since this meant it would be even harder to reorient my sleep.

I'd left for the Manse late in the afternoon. Since time in the Loge seemed to have barely moved or not moved at all during my last visit, there was no way it had been long enough to have missed an entire day, so it had to have been about 20 hours here. I'd never updated Ptolema about my plan, so it was probably a good idea to head back to her place and let her know I was okay.

...at least, that was my initial thought. Unfortunately, as I began my descent, I realized I had no idea how to even find Ptolema's cabin. On my first trip to see the Lady, I'd left the Valley by flying straight upwards, but this time I'd gone to the City first. I'd figured I'd be able to just eyeball it, but even though the Valley didn't seem that big by the standards of real-world geography, it will still big. And a lot of it - at least high up enough to not drag the investigation process out forever - just seemed like the same forests, rolling green hills, and small towns repeated over and over. Even if I knew roughly where to look, I couldn't find the right angle to make it all click.

And though it was kind of fun to fly around, it was a little scary, too. I hadn't done this sort of thing since... god, it was at that retreat in Altaia with Sapanbal, wasn't it...? I didn't even want to think about that. The point was, even if I used a barrier to keep out the wind, I felt kind of sick and anxious every time I threw myself through the air.

Just use the resonator, you doofus, my common sense said. That's what she bought it for.

What, and have this be the third morning in a row where you let her babysit you? My social anxiety chimed back. You don't want to be burdensome when you're already living in her house. Have some self-respect.

I clicked my tongue. If I could get back to that town, Raurica, I was pretty sure I remembered the route I'd taken following the bag man well enough to make it back. Hadn't that lady - Rya - called it the 'capital of the valley'? Presumably that'd make it important enough to warrant the occasional sign. Or I could just ask someone.

After a few moments, this vaguely rational idea degraded into little more than an excuse to just wander around trying to feel normal for a while. I landed in a random stretch of seemingly sparsely inhabited country road and just... walked. With my mind tired but my body still energetic, letting myself be swept away in the gentle rhythm of my own footsteps felt surprisingly easy, and the Valley really was beautiful. Aside from the architecture and careful landscaping I've mentioned already, there was something ancient about it that felt striking.

In the real world, humans were always tearing things down for utilitarian or aesthetic purposes. Houses were demolished and rebuilt regularly for obvious reasons, but even trees near residential areas were usually chopped down before they had a chance to grow truly old for one reason or another. But here, everything ached with time. The eucalyptus trees that occasionally flanked the dirt road I wandered down were towering and venerable, and the buildings looked as though they'd partly broken down and been repaired over and over again, with sometimes contrasting brickwork with deep, uncleansable staining.

How were things coordinated here to reach this aesthetic? Surely there had to be a lot of people tempted to trash their entire plots and start over all the time, especially with how easy that was. Unless living for millennia imparted a sense of civic spirit normally absent in humans, there had to be neighborhood planning rules that'd make the ones my grandma was always complaining about look modest.

I frowned at the thought of my grandma instinctively. She'd passed a little shy of fifty years ago now - not of old age, exactly, since she'd only been of the early 12th generation, but just from general ill-health from a loss of place and purpose. The Itanese government had served her and most everyone else at the waterfront a compulsory purchase order for her house once development really skyrocketed, and though she'd moved to stay with us in Oreskios for a time, she'd never really found her feet again. And no small wonder. The people she loved were scattered to the winds, and the way of life she'd grown up with on the island eradicated.

Still, I never would have thought it. She'd always seemed so young. Right up until she wasn't.

Of course she'd never known the truth, but even so, I always felt like she understood a little more of me than the rest of my, or rather Shiko's, family. I remembered the last thing she'd said to me from her bed at the Katharsi Paramount Hospital. 'You'll figure it all some day, Su. I guarantee it. I guarantee it.'

It made me so viscerally sad I almost puked. Have you ever wondered if the entire concept of closure is fake? Sometimes I feel like we've been brainwashed my sappy media into ritually traumatizing ourselves by making upsetting events even more intense.

I'd come to despise that sort of sentiment, even more than when I had when I was young. Platitudes of possibility. False hope you didn't even choose. No answers, just 'It gets better!' Fuck off. No it doesn't. For some people the puzzle pieces bend; its shit and will always be shit, and being treated as though you're like everyone else is salt in the wound.

Since this was paradise, a peacock flew overhead at a break in the treeline, cawing.

I shook my head. And for those to be the last words she'd ever said to me. One of the only people who'd ever been kind to my old self, and they were wasted.

I frowned even more deeply. Every time I let my thoughts drift, they still rebelled against internalizing my situation. Because of course I could bring her back, now, pluck her right from that very moment. Knowing her, I bet she'd even laugh and agree with me. That it was sappy and vapid.

A world without endings is a world with only one type of story, some part of me mused. We've seen it before, haven't we?

I ignored it because it seemed stupid, though this observation, like the 'the world is wrong' one, would also turn out to be important.

At some point during my walk, I started to hear voices, and finally processed my environment beyond the broad strokes. The road I was on was intermittently flanked by what looked like country manors of varying shapes and sizes, some practically small castles while others were little bigger than Ptolema's cabin. The density slowly increased as the land inclined downwards towards what looked like a crossroad hamlet, with a few lines of smoke coming from chimneys.

Distantly, I could smell cooked meat on the wind.

I'm hungry, my stomach told me. Let's get something for breakfast.

I blinked, then shook my head. I was already forgetting what I was supposed to be doing. I looked around to see if I could spot anyone to speak with, but it sounded like the voices I'd heard were coming from someone's garden, and even though the social conventions here were often utterly deranged, it still felt like too much to knock on someone's door just to ask for directions.

Well, if I don't run into anyone first, I'm sure they'll be signs and people in the town.

Can grab something to eat while I'm there, too, if it's not too awkward.

I continued walking, keeping my eyes peeled. I spotted a plaque identifying the road I was on as a place called 'Penrith Way', but nothing to indicate and broader sense of place. I also noticed the the properties here didn't have street numbers, but rather names, like this really was some old demesne of aristocrats. 'Rumae Estate'. 'Kyrios House'. 'Bluebell Manor'. Despite the variance, they seemed to be unified by vaguely Inotian architectural theme, reminding me of my hometown.

Most of them had at least one odd thing about them, though, that hinted at the supernatural nature of the environment. A four story manor which an extension on the top floor jutting out unrealistically far. A villa that seemed so overgrown with vines and moss on the face that I'd have assumed it to be abandoned were it not for the fact that three men looked to be drinking around an open-fire grill in the garden. A front yard filled entirely with strange stone statues of a chiton-clad woman standing in different, strange poses, the owner of which I spied through a window; a curly-haired woman writing something at her desk with a pensive expression.

I sighed softly. The contrast between the mundane and the bizarre didn't even surprise me at this point.

What did surprise me was what I saw a couple houses further along. Out in the field surrounding a u-shaped manor that vaguely evoked a church - reminiscent of the Abbey House, I suppose - a small crowd of 6 or 7 were gathered around what I could only describe as a creature, immersed in some deep conversation like they were examining an exhibit at a museum. I'd been to Palaat before, so it wasn't like I was unfamiliar with bizarre, human engineered life created for utilitarian or even cultural purpose (like their stupid 'Dragons' that could barely fly and didn't even look right), but this was... well, not exactly on another level, but different. Stupider? Weirder, at least.

It was a-- I wanted to say a minotaur? At least its upper body was reminiscent of one, with a humanoid torso and a horned, cow-esque head, with thick flat teeth designed to chew grass but which just as easily chew a person. Its lower body, however, was a mass of... vines? Tentacles? Tendrils, colored dark green in such a way that suggested planthood but was insufficient to confirm it. They stood twice as tall - asymmetrically, strangely tall - as the minotaur half of its body, leaving it towering more than two stories high, enough to climb to the adjacent building.

On its back, though, was something even more peculiar. It was like a whole second creature, a parasitic twin that was no twin at all. A gaping, sharp-toothed mouth that ran the length of its spine, flanked by spindly, spider-like limbs, pointed like knives.

I think it was this that caused my fatigued mind to finally register that what it was seeing wasn't actually alive, or at least wasn't moving. It was probably some kind of bizarre, hyper-detailed statue that these people were working on. But why...?

Oh, shit. I realized I'd been staring so long that one of them had noticed me. A short haired man with a wide jaw and a dark complexion - Mekhian or maybe Ysaran - had broken off from the group and was approaching the waist-high wall I'd been looking over, wearing a friendly expression.

My lips tightened. That was worse than him being annoyed at me snooping, because at least then I would have had an excuse to run off. Only lunatics saw a stranger who couldn't mind their own business and thought, 'oh, I better say hello!' I couldn't handle a conversation in my current state, let alone with someone like that!

But it was no good. This was happening.

"Morning," he said, smiling cheerfully.

"G-Good morning," I replied stiffly. "Sorry, uh... I didn't mean to..."

"Pretty good, isn't it?" he asked, with boyish enthusiasm. "It's our entry for the Prism creation contest this season, for the monster category. The idea is that someone thinks the bull side is the real monster, and try to attack it from behind, then it goes limp and drops down right on them. What do you think?"

Absolutely none of these concepts cohered in my mind, but my mouth moved anyway, my expression turning to the same placidly pleasant one I found myself adopting whenever I gave university lectures. "It's uh-- It's really striking, at least," I said.

He raised an eyebrow curiously. "Striking in a good way, or striking in a bad way?"

"I mean, it stands out," my autopilot said. "It-- It definitely does draw your attention up and to the front, and away from your surroundings, if. If that's the idea. Or at least I think so."

"Gods, you think so?" He looked pleased, but at the same time a little skeptical. "Yang over there thinks its a bit much, but isn't the idea for the contest to be kind of pulpy? They never make the seasonal stuff permanent anyway." He gestured, presumably towards whoever 'Yang' was, but my eyes failed to follow.

Still, I nodded along. Didn't Ptolema say something about the 'Prism' when she was listing off all the major domains? I should have asked for more information.

"I'm Mark, by the way," he said, offering a hand.

"Oh, Utsu," I said, taking it absently.

"That's a pretty name!" he told me. "I don't think I've seen you before. Are you just visiting the central basin?"

"Uh, something like that," I told him.

"Well, if you're curious about your project, I can ask the others if you'd like to--"

"Utsushikome of Fusai," a voice behind me said, the tone somewhere between sternness and boredom.

I turned sharply. I had no idea how he'd got there - presumably he'd dropped out of the sky, I guess - but standing there, clad in the green cloak of the Waywatch, was an older looking man. He had a thick dark beard, a serious countenance, and was probably Viraaki. He was clutching a clipboard.

Oh, they must have noticed that I went to the Manse after all, sent someone to kick me out.

Thank goodness.

After I stared vacantly at him like some wild beast for several awkward moments, the man continued. "You've been summoned to the Valley registrar to be interviewed and have your visit processed, since you were incorrectly released from the guardhouse two days ago," he informed me. "Please follow me, or it may have consequences for your access to the Domain."

I blinked. Oh, right. Ptolema had said this was probably going to happen eventually, hadn't she?

"Oh, I see," I said. I glanced back to Mark - frowning perplexedly at this development - for just a moment. "Uh, sorry, I guess I have to go. Nice meeting you."

"Hell, I didn't realize you were completely fresh," he said. "Come back here when you're done! I'll show you around, too."

"Okay," I said, fully intending to never see him again.

The watchman did the same thing Rya had done the other day, holding up his hand and opening a portal straight to what looked like Raurica. Even if I barely lived long enough for it to matter, I had to learn how to do that.

Stepping through, it seemed like we'd been taken right to the center of town-- The town square area I'd only seen part of on my way outside of the guardhouse, around the clock tower in the center of town. Seeing it up close, it was even more striking than I'd originally thought. The entire structure seemed designed to appear to be growing out of the very ground, spiraling pillars of stone coming from every corner of the square to almost weave together in forming the building, the stonework twisting around the spire as if it were liquid frozen in a perfect moment. At the very top, it all finally convened to form a very ordinary-looking clock face; it was 11:07 AM.

The square looked quite busy at this time of day; there was some kind of market set up, with probably at least a hundred people crowded around wooden stalls buying one thing or another-- Once again I was struck by the smell of fresh meat and bread, causing me to groan softly at my situation. I could see dozens of people in the shadowed space directly underneath the clock tower's central shaft, too congregated around a fountain.

I squinted. There was a statue at the center of it. Was that... a woman in a dress? Could that be--

"If you'd follow me, miss," the man insisted.

"Uh, sorry."

There was no time for a closer look. I was ushered into one of the largest buildings in the square; a stately wooden one much like the guardhouse, but larger and crowned with an impressive, triangular turret jutting out overhead at the front.

I'd expected it to be busy in tandem with its obvious import, but in fact we passed through the central hallway - an imposing room with the second floor overlooking it from a long balcony on either side - only seeing one other soul, a meek and short Saoic girl who avoided eye contact. Once we came to the wooden double doors at the far end, the man turned to face me.

"You'll be meeting Governor Cyrene directly," he informed me. His voice was deep and without inflection, like a stereotype of a university professor. "She'll conduct both your interview and see to the details of your residency, however long you intend to say."

"Governor," I repeated. "As in, governor of the town?"

"The appointee of the assembly, yes."

I frowned. "Does... she see every new arrival?"

"No," he clarified. "She requested this meeting be arranged specifically."

I bit my lip. That doesn't feel like it bodes well.

He stepped forward and swung open the door. I thought I'd become immune to it, but entering the office I was once again struck by that nostalgic feeling of being somewhere so immaculately clean that it felt like being there at all was doing something illegal. In contrast to most of the Valley, which despite its flourishes leaned almost exclusively into that cozy countryside aesthetic, this place felt so cutting edge that it could slit your throat. Other than wooden floor that looked varnished to the point you could go ice skating on it, everything was made of metal. The desk was metal. The bookshelves, filled with slender tones so uniform I almost felt like I was back in the Manse again, was metal. The coffee table was partially metal. All of it had hard angles and was polished to the point I could see my reflection, and was colored dark silver.

Steel. It was still going to take me a while to get used to it. Iron could exist in this world, after all, so the material that had made human civilization was now back in center stage, not just in logic engines but just about everything else, too.

It was silly, but I couldn't help but find it unsettling. All through my life, the stuff had been talked about like it was some profane and lost magic that had torn the world asunder. And now here it was, in plain sight.

Other than that, there was some strange, abstract sculptures on stands (also made of steel) that looked like someone was trying ti depict animals - a wolf, a cat, maybe some kind of crab - in the simplest, sketch-like shapes possible, and a painting at the far end which I--

"Sit down, Miss Fusai," a cold voice instructed me.

The words came before I'd even finished taking the room in, barely a second or two after I'd stepped inside. Their origin was a woman - Governor Cyrene, evidently - in front of the painting. She had blonde hair tied into a choking knot, pretty yet strong features, and was tall; tall enough to make me, at 5'7, feel short. She wore a tight black vest and pants, and a cloak similar to Waywatch but red hung over her shoulder, its clasp displaying a golden cross with rubies laid between each line.

She wasn't even looking at me - instead regarding a brown file in her hand - but I could tell just from her manner and the look on her face that she regarded me as something barely above an insect. She gestured to the chair in front of her with severe expectancy.

In retrospect, I ought to have been upset by how rude she was doing, especially since I hadn't been brought here on any pretense of having done something wrong. Not even a 'please'? Or maybe a 'thank you for coming'?

But I guess whether it came to ostensible deities of government workers, I was still extremely easy to push around. I managed a frown, but otherwise stepped forward and sat in silence.

"You may go, Arbomer," she said to the man holding the door open, who I'd almost forgotten was there. He gave a small nod and shut it, trapping me inside with this scary woman. At the moment he was was gone, her eyes fixed on me. My back stiffened instinctively.

"My name is Cyrene," she told me curtly. "I'll be conducting this interview today."

"Yeah," I said. "I heard that from your guy already."

"We'll start from the top," she said, not cutting me off but speaking just quickly enough as to make it clear it she was utterly disinterested in whether I'd heard it or not. "According to my report, you first arrived in the Crossroads two nights ago from the Magilum Domain, appearing at the threshold of the Manse due to it being your first visit to the Domain. You were taken into custody by the attending Watchwoman Rya - now on leave - at approximately 2:10 AM, were held for six hours, then absconded from custody at 8:07 AM. Is that correct?"

"I-- What? I didn't abscond." I objected at once. "I was released."

She looked at me like my tertiary school calculus teacher used to look at students making excuses for being behind on homework. "You left without being properly processed. Regardless of the details, you should have been aware the situation was abnormal and waited to be directed by someone with proper authority."

Oh, god, I thought. This is going to be one of those sorts of interviews, isn't it?

Do they know about what I did after all? Is she just building up to it?

"I'd only just arrived in the Domain, and no one would explain anything," I nevertheless continued. "How was I supposed to know what it meant to be 'properly processed'?" I crossed my arms, though I wasn't sure whether the gesture came across as defiant or insecure. "And the man who released me was the captain I was already waiting for all night. I don't know what sort of authority figure I should have waited to listen to if not him."

She squinted, glancing down at the file for a moment. "Captain Naci, you mean."

"I don't know what his name was. He never spoke to me, and he was wearing a sack on his head."

Her icily serious expression didn't waver even at my mention of that absurd event. "His conduct in this case was peculiar, yes. He has built a reputation for himself as an exceptional member of the watch, but still, he will be appropriately reprimanded." Her eyes focused on me again. "But I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that ignorance of the law is no excuse. Still, I'm willing to overlook it assuming we can get some other points cleared up."

Willing to overlook it? This lady-- I'm too tired for fucking--

I sighed to myself sharply. Her saying that made it seem more like this wasn't about the Manse after all, but if that was the case, what could she even possibly want, to single me out like this?

"Let's keep moving. We'll come back to this point later," she said. "According to your file, you're claiming to be an autospective dreamer. Is that correct?"

"That's right," I told her. "At least as far as the term's been explained to me. My memories here only go up to when I woke up in the Magilum a few hours before all that happened."

"And before then?" she asked.

I frowned. "In the Remaining World?"

"Yes."

"I was in the Empyrean Bastion, looking into something personal," I told her. "It was June 14th, 1608. I told the sergeant at the guardhouse this already."

"What were you doing?"

I scoffed. "I--I mean, does that matter? It wasn't me anyway, right?" I shook my head. "I heard it probably only cut off then because the world started ending, anyway."

"I don't want to repeat any questions, Miss Fusai," she said sternly.

I tried not to grimace. What was her problem?

"...I was looking at a mural in a room deep underground. Or-- Rather, at the bottom of the Bastion," I told her. "Following an old lead someone had given me years ago."

Speaking of murals, the painting she happened to be standing in front of, which I hadn't had a chance to absorb initially, was proving really distracting. Not because I was ugly, but because I couldn't figure out what it was supposed to be depicting. It looked like a city skyline viewed from out in a nearby ocean, but the buildings were all wrong, like they were from some alien planet; the skyscrapers square and boxy instead of rounded, with windows laid out in a tight grid. Maybe there'd been ones like that during the Imperial Era? I'd never seen any like it.

"What sort of lead?" she asked.

Oh, come on-- "It was from my old professor," I told her, knowing she couldn't confirm it but seeing no reason to lie. "I was looking into some of her old research into life extension, based on a message she'd given me before she died."

"I see," she said. "And what was the content of the message?"

"I--What?"

"The message she wrote for you, Miss Fusai."

Why does she keep calling me 'Miss Fusai'? I thought people in this world barely even used last names.

"I... It won't even make any sense out of context, but it was, 'should you come to fear death, return to the gateway to the sanctuary. Here, you shall begin your journey, as Gilgamesh once did.'" I wrinkled my nose in exasperation. "It's a reference to an organization she was once a part of. The mural was where the gateway to their headquarters was. It's complicated."

Despite the line of inquiry going far deeper towards that information than I'd expected, I wasn't even going to bring up the stuff about how it was connected to the origin of this world unless she explicitly inquired in that direction. The last thing you wanted to do when talking to a cop was seem like a crackpot, and this lady was definitely a cop, if spirit if not in technicality.

But for some reason, she seemed satisfied by this information. For the first time, she flicked up a pen in her other hand and made a brief note in the file.

Why would she need to write that of all things down?

She paused for a moment, seeming to be considering something, then once again leveled her gaze at me. "Tell me about the Magilum. It says here you woke up in a coffin?"

"Uh, yes," I told her, relieved at the change of subject. "In a Landmark, I think. Or at least someone told me that was what it was called."

"Do you recall being on the Stage before awakening on that coffin? Or just going directly to it from the Remaining World, in your perception?"

"I'm not... certain?" I told her. "I-- Just from the Remaining World, I think. I had this strange moment where I was walking around my old university, but I'm not sure if that really happened or if it was some kind of hallucination."

"And as soon as you left the building, you were attacked by one of the locals."

"Well, they only threatened me, not attacked me," I clarified. "With a spear."

"But they were there as soon as you arrived."

"Uh, more or less," I told her. "I think they were guarding the place. They were talking about it like it was some sacred site."

"And then they took you to a settlement, and you were expelled."

"Well, I think they offered me a chance to brainwash myself, and then when I wouldn't take it they chopped my head off," I explained. "But yes. After that they expelled me. After that, I just came here because it was the biggest group of people I could see on the Stage, and didn't really know where I was yet."

She paused for a moment, glancing at the file. Her expression continued to hold, but a muscle on her brow might have twitched slightly.

Then, she asked me something I wasn't expecting at all.

"Have you noticed anyone following you, Miss Fusai?"