Partial Draft Update 30/07/23 (Patreon)

(Fell a day behind last week, but it couldn't be helped. Had an almost four-day long stint of migraines. Still kind of having them, but they've calmed down a bit, so we'll see.

This chapter is a little intense. Kinda hard to write.)

Kamrusepa, despite Ptolema's error, still panics at the unexpected escalation. She casts the Time-Decelerating Arcana,and despite her lack of specialization, quickly proves why Chronomancers are the most feared combat discipline in the Remaining World. Her form blurs and, moving at several times normal speed, circles the periphery of the area, getting away from the smoke.

Seth, panicking with his inability to raise a proper barrier, rips a chunk of the building and creates a crude one with the Object-Manipulating Arcana. He shouts something to try and get Kamrusepa to calm down, and for a moment she seems to hesitate, holding up her rifle and shouting back, demanding he and Ptolema stand down.

But before anything can come of it, Theodoros, apparently misunderstanding the situation or else trying to retaliate for the death of his father, uses the Matter-Liquefying Arcana to turn the air over her head into freezing liquid, sending it raining down over Kamrusepa and obfuscating her view of the area in front of the building. She curses in Rhunbardic, using some manner of force incantation to repulse the downpour on her barrier, while quickly retreating away from the cold, staying close to ground level and falling back to the edge of the bioenclosure.

The liquid doesn't stay near Kamrusepa, however, and flows over in the direction of Ran, still in the process of trying to tend to Utsushikome. She shouts in alarm, not having seen the origin, her flesh burned by the razor cold. She grabs Su and leaps into the air, pushing it away with a violent blast of the simple Wind-Striking Arcana.

But Ezekiel, just now recovering and getting to his feet, misinterprets this as attack. He fires his gun (badly) at Ran, causing her to scream. Utsushikome, eyes going wide even as she fights back pain, starts to wince out the words to the Entropy-Denying Arcana, conjuring a barrier to shield the two of them.

Kamrusepa, moving at a terrible speed, already has skirted around the arena to attack Theodoros from behind. But Seth gets in between them, using tremendous eris on a massive blast from the Flame-Summoning Arcana,hoping to stop her by any means he can, and fires his pistol over and over at the highest setting possible.

Kamrusepa doesn't stop in her advance, however, summoning a razor of condensed matter in front of her with the Air-Compressing Arcana, aiming to quickly disarm the three of them - possibly literally. But Ptolema, assuming her intent is lethal, goes in for a bolder attack, trying to break her barrier with her own resistances.

But something else goes wrong. Seth uses the Voice-Carrying Arcana to speak with incredible volume, still hoping to calm the situation. But he bungles the math in his haste, and instead creates a terrible, piercing wall of noise, throwing everyone off what they were doing at once.

That's when tragedy strikes.

𒊹

I'd like to tell you a joke, though maybe it would be better to call it a story with a funny ending. It might be a little familiar, so I apologize for being repetitive.

There is a girl who despises her life. Though unfair, it's not like her situation is hopeless; she has a few people there for her, and there are things she could conceivably do to improve her lot. But something in her has broken; turned rotten. She doesn't want to try any more. So she decides to summon a demon.

She performs the proper rituals and sacrifices. She debases herself, and becomes coated in blood and irredeemable sin against the gods. She draws the summoning circle. But instead of one demon, she summons four by mistake! Whoops!

The first is a demon of power; its head is adorned with sharp horns and fur covers its thick, pulsing muscles. A crown of flame encircles its head, like a god of the old world. It is a being that represents pure freedom. It can do what it likes; tell people what to do, be respected even when it puts in no effort to earn that respect. Skill without effort. Fearlessness without experience.

It offers to share his power with the girl. She considers it, and for now moves on to the second demon.

The second is a demon of wealth. Its skin is white gold and its eyes are gemstones. False iron runs through its veins like liquid. It wants for nothing. Luxuries surround it in grotesque abundance; the finest and most unique clothes, the most delicious foods, invitations to all the most fabulous places in the plane. It embodies security, both for itself and the subjects of its patronage. It lives knowing its comfort is assured and its mistakes ephemeral-- A monster of second chances.

It, too, offers to share its power with the girl. But again she hesitates. Maybe she has a problem with commitment? She moves on to the third demon.

The third is a demon of love... Or perhaps it would be better to call it a demon of being loved. It is beautiful; it has perfect, symmetrical features and moves like a dancer, broadcasting grace and virtue of spirit. Everything it wears is a gift from one of its many companions, but at the same time it does not need those companions to live. After all, in theory, a perfect being requires no comfort from others. All it needs is a mirror.

This offer feels like the most appealing yet; she almost accepts. But then she thinks, 'better not to jump the gun,' and decides to hear the fourth demon out.

The fourth demon is different from the others - a little goblin that only wants to cause suffering and pain. It represents... Suffering and pain! Being miserable. Being sick, being impotent, having no one who cares about you. Everything awful about living, everything that makes you just want to smother yourself to death with your pillow when life expects you to drag your shambling mess of a body out of bed to another day of joyless labor.

Eternal. Inescapable.

At this point, her...

Oh, shit, did I forget the framing device where the main character is talking to their friend after the fact? Or was that something that only came in at the end anyway...? Ugh, and I definitely forgot the part about the four curses.

Gods, my memory really has gone down the toilet.

Whatever. She picks the last one. Because she realizes that her suffering might stem from something more fundamental about her, and is terrified of discovering that when she finally has what she wants, there's still no relief; no end to her wretched nature.

It's funny, right?

It's funny because it subverts your expectations.

PLAYWRIGHT: It's awful, actually.

Everyone's a critic.

PLAYWRIGHT: <agitated> And you tell it right at the start, every single time!

I told that joke to Ran because of two contradictory impulses. I desperately wanted to confess the truth, even if Samium confirmed there was no hope to bring back the real Utsushikome. Especially if that was the case. Because through all our years together, she was the only qualified to judge me. The law wouldn't do it, and a stranger would never understand. And I... well, I was the least qualified of all.

But I also desperately wanted to keep the truth a secret. For no one to ever know, right up until my dying breath.

It's no wonder she didn't understand, because the joke doesn't really make any sense if you think about it. It's backwards. After all, why would you be terrified of the idea of having everything you want and realizing you're still unhappy, before you even knew what it was like to have everything you want? That's not realistic. Who would do something as abominable as summon a demon, just to go from being miserable to being even more miserable?

No. The fourth demon isn't something you'd choose initially. It's a coping mechanism. A way of denying the gravity of your own mistake.

Here's how the joke should actually go. The demons are the same, but instead, they summon only the initial three. And instead of having to pick one, they make a bargain with all of them at once.

The price the demons demand is universal, and the same as the mechanism by which her wish shall be granted. They become one with her. Each one devours and overwrites an undesirable part of her self, erasing and replacing it forever... And for a while, that's exactly what she desires.

But then something happens. That happiness shatters. And that's when she summons the fourth demon.

I committed two sins, though the second was equally an act of self-harm. I'll talk about that one first, because I want to correct any misconception you might have about me.

By now, you'll have noticed several contradictions in the story of my past. When Ran confronted me on the way home from school that first time so long ago, she told me she'd noticed me acting strangely for the past few weeks-- Picking foods I wasn't supposed to like, having different habits, depending on others for strange things I ought to have been practiced at. And once she'd squeezed a confession out of me, I told her that I was only slowly gaining access to Utsushikome's memories over time, which was why I was so confused.

But if you've been paying attention to the dates and context clues, you already know that by the time that happened, my grandfather was already dead. And I'd already lived as Utsushikome for a whole year prior to that point. I deliberately presented the timing of events in a confusing way to conceal this reality for as long as possible; I apologize for that. Again, I warned you from the start that I am a liar and a coward.

Ran deserves great credit, because she truly is an incredibly perceptive person - frighteningly so, at times. She not only noticed that something was seriously wrong with me while no one else did, even Shiko's family and her close friends like Iwa, but she more or less figured out specifically what had happened despite even knowing what Induction was. What an incredible leap of faith, into something that must have seemed impossible, utterly ridiculous! She's always watching, observing, thinking so deeply and without restraint. She likes to act like she's the only person in our class who isn't a genius, but in my opinion, she could outsmart even Fang. She surprises me almost every day, even after so many years.

But... She's still just a person. And like I keep saying; people cannot really see into the hearts of others. No matter how much they pay attention. Samium might have been misled Shiko's grandfather in terms of what was possible in terms of reviving his beloved. But I'll say this: He was no fraud when it came to Egomancy.

From almost the moment I became Utsushikome of Fusai, being her was as natural as breathing. I remembered everything from her life, and could imitate her original self absolutely flawlessly. And I did so for months, even at school-- Even in front of Ran when we were at math club together, the most I got from her was a raised eyebrow or two when I was still having trouble controlling my emotions early on.

"Alright everyone," Yu, who was the head of the math club, digressed as she rose from her seat. "We need to think of a new presentation to do for the open event this year."

"You really call it an 'open event' in this country?" Nhi, a transfer student from Lan Satt, asked.

"For the last time, yes," Yu told her, in her typical authoritarian tone. "Not a festival. An open event."

"That's so boring," the other girl lamented.

"What's going to be boring is our presentation," Eukleides, one of the older boys, said. "No one ever cares about a math club presentation."

"Um, I came up with an idea," I said, holding up my notebook. "I thought maybe we could make some puzzles for people to solve? Maybe a math crossword?"

Eukleides snorted. "That's such a you idea, Shiko. Trying to add music at a death march."

"I don't think it's bad," Ran said, with a shrug her shoulders.

I smiled at her. "T-Thanks."

She nodded slightly, glancing at me for only a moment. It was my third day at Shiko's school.

It was only after my grandfather had died that I begun to act strange. Because I wanted to be caught, for the fact that something was wrong to be witnessed. Just like I'd wanted to be caught when I told her that joke, but yet at the same time, hadn't.

Do you remember the acclimation journal that I keep? The day number I wrote in it was 4412. If you count backwards from the first day of the conclave, that leads to the end of March in the year 1397, a little while after my first meeting with Doctor Cheng Gue at the assimilation clinic. But as far as he knows, I only first reported symptoms of assimilation failure in April. How was that possible?

Well, it's because the circumstances of my Induction were almost completely falsified. Obviously it had never even been necessary; when my pneuma had been attached to Shiko's, it 'fixed' it just as much as any Induction did. So around the time of my grandfather's death, Samium had simply arranged for me to have my paperwork fabricated with the help of a colleague at the pneumenorium, so that I'd have a legal explanation when it was time to attach my index. When the day came, all I did was sit in a waiting area outside the Induction chamber while the forms were drawn up to make sure it wasn't too obvious.

What had shocked me during my first visit to Cheng Gue's office - a day prior to that - wasn't that Induction involved pinning someone's ghost to your brain, although he probably had taken it that way. What shocked me was hearing that for the overwhelming majority of people, the process was so inconspicuous. At the time, I thought that all arcanists were like Samium, my grandfather and I, that all normal arcanists were tricked in some nefarious fashion. It was, in part, how I'd justified my decisions up until that point.

Oh, speaking of that meeting... I'm afraid I misled you then, too. I phrased things in a way that were intended to give you the impression that it had taken place when Utsushikome was still herself, and that I was narrating from her perspective. You remember what I said, right?

'Truthfully, I was pretty disturbed. Just hearing the concept in abstract should have been enough to make me consider abandoning the plans I'd had for the past four years and re-imagining my entire future-- Perhaps I'd go to an art academy, or look into becoming a logic engineer.'

'Should'. It should have been enough to make me change my plans. But it wasn't, because the plans I'd had weren't the plans I'd had, and hadn't been for an entire year. That's a dirty trick, I know.

I had the log before I told Cheng Gue about the problem because that, too, had been a formality. Obviously I hadn't wanted the staff at the clinic to realize that something was wrong (like if they could probe my mind to see when my Induction had happened, or something) so I'd looked into the concept on my own beforehand with the help of Samium's contact. As shown by the fact that I had a pile of them well exceeding the scope of my treatment plan, the log books are something you can pick up from the clinic no questions asked. The secrecy surrounding the process means that almost nothing is on the record.

So when had Ran first confronted me on that street? Well, in February 1397, not long afterwards. My grandfather had died in December, which is why my-- why Shiko's parents had been on holiday at a resort. To get away from the cold during my father's time off, before coming back for the new year. I'd seen Samium for the last time in late January.

...in other words, though some of the superficial details had been true - that I was learning about the nature of Induction under normal circumstances for the first time, that my grandfather had died relatively recently, and that I wanted to bring Shiko back - most of the 'journey' I took with Ran in those early months was a complete fabrication. None of the events I was going through were remotely what I reported to her.

When she thought we were researching Induction in mutual ignorance during those first weeks, scouring old books and the logic sea for information, I was just working up the courage to talk to Samium's contact. When I told her I discovered my original body was dead, that was no revelation at all; Samium had informed me in advance exactly what the process was going to entail and how it'd be disposed of, and I even lied to her about the details, saying that it had been physically discovered rather than the truth, which was that Samium took it somewhere far away from the city and discreetly disintegrated it.

And, most pressingly, I was never under any illusions about what had happened to Shiko being something which could be easily reversed. I didn't know if it was impossible - and I tremendously regretted not having a discussion about it with Samium when I had the chance in the years that followed - but I'd heard nothing to suggest it was anything but permanent. There was no moment of shared horror at the revelation, just information that I'd withheld with cold, tactical intent.

I had only learned about assimilation therapy at the same time as her, but even that was under a wildly different context, because I'd known from the start was probably a lost cause. There was a reason for the strict, three-year timetable of rapidly escalating treatments in the program; it was delicate, and finely tuned for how integrated the new pneuma would be with the subject's brain at particular point in the process. And I'd been a whole year behind from the start without the doctor even knowing.The entire thing was built on false hope and denial - for her in ignorance, and for me in delusion.

So why did I do it? Why did I lie, not just in terms of the extent of my crimes, but about a bunch of stupid minutia, too? Enough to invent a whole fake narrative to layer on top of the truth, like icing over the corpse of a dead animal?

It was because I wanted to employ her as a tool to soothe my guilt.

"You fucked up in class today," Ran scolded me as we rode the tram back from school.

"S-Sorry," I said meekly, looking at my foot.

"Don't be sorry," she said, "be better. Shiko would never in a million years screw up a trigonometry question. I'd say that we're lucky people didn't suspect anything if it weren't for the fact that you're trashing her reputation."

"I did my best..." I told her. "I was just really tired today. I spent a lot of last night reading through her old notes at home."

She glanced at me. "Did you find anything?"

"Uh, a little," I told her. "About her plans for after the Induction. There weren't any details, but I only got through some of it."

She sniffed. "Well, that's something, I guess. You'll have to show me later. ...but you can't fuck up her life before we have a chance to fix this. That comes first."

"Right," I said, nodding. "Of course."

"Don't think I didn't notice that you were having something weird for lunch today, by the way," she went on. "Don't do things like that. You're a parasite. You shouldn't be indulging yourself."

I saw in her a chance to make a fantasy version of the situation I'd found myself in, one where I was a also a victim and where there was a meaningful possibility of fixing my mistake, real. I laid bait, and she bit.

Our shared quest was nothing but a scam. I'd wanted someone to judge me, but only to the degree I was comfortable with; to tell me I was scum, but only for my nature and not for my actions. I'd wanted a companion to join me in a nigh-hopeless death march where I could avoid confronting the fact that I'd done, of my own free will and purely out of self-interest, something irreversibly abominable. I used her, conscripted her, cast for a role of my own selfish design.

The fourth demon referred to that choice when I told the joke, for all intents and purposes it was her; my second savior, violent and unwilling. I turned her love for Shiko into a coping mechanism. And when her edge softened and she started to genuinely care for me as a person, I had the audacity to resent her for it.

Maybe at some point over those 12 years, our struggle together became something partially genuine-- And I'd wanted her to know that, at the very end. But that changes nothing of the selfishness of the foundations. I had a genuine chance to atone with her, or at least to try.

But instead, I twisted the puzzle pieces of the truth concealed in my heart, and shredded them into pieces. All to assemble them into just another story.

Do you see the sort of person I am, now?

I deceived you in this way because I wanted you to see me as a victim, as well. I wanted you to draw sympathetic conclusions about the truth at first, and then by the time what had really happened became obvious, be too entrenched in your perceptions of me to re-evaluate them. Even now I'm still wielding my self-loathing two-facedly, using it to implicitly beg for piteous affection even as I ostensibly condemn myself.

Because what I want, what I truly desire at my absolute core, hasn't changed in all these years.

I want to be seen as graceful. Just like her.

...so.

Now that you understand how false and empty my pursuit of redemption really was, we can get to what's really important: The first three demons. Or rather, myself. My murder of Utsushikome of Fusai.

We'll start with the 'whydunnit'.

"Oh, hi, Kuroka," Shiko said over the logic bridge, distracted.

"Hey!" I said, my voice trembling with anticipation a little.

"What did you need?" she asked.

"Uh, I was wondering if you wanted to meet up on Saturday?" I hesitated. "Like usual."

She frowned slightly. "Sorry, I can't. I'm busy with that scripting project I told you about. We're having a meeting..."

"...oh," I said, obviously dejected. "Uh, okay."

"Again, sorry," she repeated. "It's been taking up more time than I thought."

"I-It's okay," I said, with a nervous laugh. "This is the second time in a row, though."

"I know, Kuroka."

"Er, sorry," I said. "I didn't mean for that to sound like nagging."

"I just don't know what you want me to say," she said, sounding tired.

Honestly, separated from it all by so many years, it's so pitifully banal that it almost makes me want to laugh. It's a story you'll know already, because you've probably already seen it happen. The kind of sequence of events that happens to people every day, especially kids.

I lost her. I spoiled everything.

There was no great melodramatic event that started it all, no grave misunderstanding or faux pas on my part. It all happened very, very slowly, and if anything was more about changes in Shiko's life than my own. As she got older, she became more ambitious and successful. She won a contest held by the League for children developing echo protocols - it was designed to test when food would expire based off the salting and temperature of the pithos - and garnered a tiny bit of media attention. She started getting invited to contests and little mathematical events. She got busier, and was always working on or involved with something or another.

Maybe a normal and well-adjusted person would respond to that by cheering her on and wishing her the best. But I was most certainly not that, and so reacted as you'd expect someone hopelessly dependent on another person to: I became neurotic and possessive. Our weekly days together disappeared, and I didn't know what to do. It felt like she was slipping away from me, ascending somewhere higher and wondrous that I couldn't follow any more.

And whenever we spoke, those feelings came through in what I said. I tried to subtly plead with her to make time for me like she always had, to realize what I was feeling and descend, like she always had, to say 'it's going to be alright'. But for the first time, that didn't happen. Instead, it felt like I was becoming increasingly boring to her, someone who she didn't even care about.

"H-Hi, Shiko..." I said, over the logic bridge, trying to smile.

"Hi, Kuroka," she said. "Listen, I don't really have time to talk right now. I told you, I'm really busy."

"Yeah! I know," I said, swallowing as I felt a pain rising from the depths of my gut. "I'm sorry, I just... Some really rough stuff happened this week, so I thought we could talk just a little bit... Since it's our day, I mean."

"I really can't, Kuroka," she said, tiredly and sadly. "Maybe you could see if Yohani is free."

"He's out with his family today, I think..." This was a half-truth. I vaguely remembered hearing something like that, but I hadn't even checked.

"Well, I'm sorry," she said. "But I really can't. I need to focus."

"Oh.... Okay, yeah..." My voice cracked. "M-Maybe tomorrow, then?"

"I don't know," she said, frowning.

Please, see me. Please, respond to my pain.

Why can't you see me any more? Why don't you care?

I thought... I thought...

I don't really know how to talk about it in a way that won't make me sound ridiculous, but it felt horrible. Like all my worst fears about our relationship were coming fruition, and it had all just been some fleeting dream. And I felt so, so weak. Like the energy that had made me believe I could forge into the world and flourish into someone wonderful was starting to leave me. That a light was dimming, never to return.

It's all so stupid when I think about it knowing the things that I do now. My fears weren't in anything rational. Shiko wasn't getting bored of me, she really had just taken on too much work. Her family had been thrilled for her when she'd won the contest, and her father especially had taken it as an invitation to start pressuring her towards extreme academic success, bringing up ways she should be pushing herself at almost every call. What I perceived as indifference was just stress.

She really did want to help, even in the midst of it. To get me to depend on the people I'd met through our friendship instead of just her. She didn't understand why I didn't. She couldn't know how superficial those connections still were in comparison, because I'd let myself rely on her instead of reaching out when I had the chance.

If I'd just had a bit more sense... If I'd thought about her feelings for a second, things could have been different.

But...