Draft Update 28/02/24 (Patreon)

(You might not know it from the high wordcount, but I was kinda unable to get into the writing state of mind this week, so this chapter might have a higher volume of typos or abnormalities than normal. I apologize if any are particularly egregious - I'll try to remember to do a pass for this draft later, since I'm trying to improve the quality of the Patreon stuff now that many more people are reading the story this way.)

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

The 'guest lounge', which felt like another inappropriately domestic concept considering my situation, was apparently at the rear of the building, just down the hall I'd seen coming in. I was led there by Sergeant Jun and the panther, who I still felt unwilling to completely concede was a person. Like, it wasn't that logical explanations were unfindable - maybe it was just that the circumstances were connected, but Zeno's comment about giant lizards kept coming to mind - but something about it just pushed the situation over the line for me. It was a constant reminder that I'd wandered into a realm governed by the absurd, and that I still hadn't got any straight answers.

As it turned out, I wouldn't have to tolerate that for long, though not because things were about to get any clearer. The lounge was a surprisingly homely space, with the same strange sense of quality and deliberateness as the lobby. Painted mostly brown and red, it contained a window, a bookshelf, two sofas on either side of a coffee table, a grandfather clock beside a strange metal pedestal, and a fireplace that the sergeant set alight as we came in. No sooner had I sat down than he practically cut off my questioning on the spot, insisting, again, that this would all go smoother if I simply waited five and a half hours for morning to come.

My protests failed to move him, and he and the panther soon departed, his last words being to gesture to the aforementioned pedestal, calling it an 'assembler' and to 'use it if I need anything'.

"What's an 'assembler'?" I tried to ask him.

"Just mess with it a little. It's easy to figure out," he said soothingly. "Oh, and the toilets are at the first door on the left."

With that, he practically fled the room, clearly eager to wash his hands of my situation and its apparent complexity. And there was nothing for me to do but sit around and wait. The sofas were large and comfortable enough that I could have slept on one if I'd wanted, but again, I still felt surprisingly physically refreshed-- Not that I would have been able to relax if I wasn't. So, for the first time since I'd apparently departed reality, I was alone with my thoughts.

Honestly, it was maddening. It was one thing to feel lost in an incomprehensible situation because there were no clear answers, but it was quite another to feel lost in an incomprehensible situation while being told there were answers, but it was just too much trouble to tell you them. I couldn't get the tone of that last conversation out of my head. They said I needed to see a psychologist! They were talking like I was crazy!

Maybe I was crazy. That was what I got when I shaved down the situation with Occam's razor. That I'd gone mad 200 years ago, and I'd gone mad again now.

No, that's stupid, my inner rationalist said. We've been over this. You gleaned information from inside that alternate reality that turned out to be provably true. You're just defaulting to saying 'maybe I'm crazy' as a way to avoid thinking. Stop being lazy.

I frowned. You don't have to be so judgemental about it.

I leaned back on the sofa - it was really comfortable, actually, a complex design with multiple layers and materials that almost seemed to reshape themselves around the weakest of my muscles - and stared through the window. It was dark enough that I couldn't see much, and the rain was still falling ceaselessly, thrumming against the glass. Then, despite the fact that it was probably futile, I asked myself the usual question.

What am I sure I know? Specifically, about where I am?

Mostly, it boiled down to abstractions and surface-level observations, though that didn't make the exercise useless. Everything about how I'd actually arrived here was... well, either confoundingly ambiguous or existentially terrifying, but in setting that question aside for now, a lot could be inferred about the situation if I accepted what was in front of me without 'picking at the fundamentals'. Based on the 'Stage', I knew that this place was constructed by the same apparent means as the reality of the time loop, and that it contained structures from the sanctuary, and at the very least copies of the same type of book Samium had possessed, and which according to my other self had been used to wipe our memories at the end of each loop.

So, rather than there being two weird stage-based realities filled with shit related to the Order, it seemed more likely that this was simply the same place entirely. Since this world seemed to be broken up into smaller, isolated spaces called 'Domains', perhaps what had happened back then had taken place in one. Had the Order somehow carved their way into this place in mucking about with the Ironworker's tools, and now the remnants of whatever they'd wrought were still kicking around all these years later? Was this some other plane the Ironworkers had created?

But the panther had called the abbey a 'landmark', like it was somehow special. That didn't really square with them just being invaders. And the two of them seemed to have remembered something particular in hearing that part of my story.

Ugh, I was getting derailed already. I really was a shitty rationalist.

Anyway, despite them all having been quite obtuse, I'd been able to infer a fair bit about the society here and its connection to the rest of the Remaining World. Clearly, quite a lot of people lived here, just as I'd guessed when I'd been in the Stage. They had towns, law enforcement, some kind of central government. And they clearly weren't ignorant of the outside world-- Not one of them had seemed confused when I mentioned the Empyrean Bastion, or even Deshur, despite its creation having been a relatively recent development. Combined with the fact that the sergeant had reassured me I hadn't cut off from my loved ones, that seemed to imply this was somewhere it was possible to travel to and from.

Though I still didn't understand how they were doing it without any physical tells, Sergeant Jun's prompting had indicated pretty conclusively that the paranatural abilities people seemed to possess here were just the Power, with the absence of an energy requirement - assuming my Ironworker theory was correct, then maybe things were just wired differently here. So, since even seemingly low-ranking police possessed it here, perhaps this was some kind of secret society of arcanists, of which the Order had been just a handful of many?

...I wanted to believe that explanation, but it didn't really ring true. And neither did the idea of being able to leave simply. The way they'd be treating me, the term 'dreamer'... It seemed overwhelmingly clear that they thought I was somehow delusional.

Does it really matter if you can't go back? a voice reminded me. You were going to die anyway. At least here, in the unknown, there's theoretical hope.

I sighed deeply, rubbing my eyes. It wasn't like I'd expected to draw any particularly useful conclusions, but at least I'd managed to calm myself down a little in the process of trying.

I decided I'd take a look around the room-- If I was going to be here all night, there was no harm in taking the sergeant up on his suggestion to get comfortable. I put on my glasses and went to take a look at the books, hoping at first they'd offer some more information about whatever culture existed here, but as it turned out they were essentially all fiction, written uniformly in Inotian. I didn't recognize any of the titles, so I flipped through a dozen, but nothing about them struck me as particularly remarkable at a glance. A science fiction novel about a galaxy-spanning empire here, a hard-boiled detective fiction novel there.

The only one I found that seemed to be set here rather than the ordinary world or a fictional setting was a romance, and in its case it treated the bizarre traits of this plane so matter-of-factly that it was actually difficult to pick them out of the text. I was initially tipped off by a reference to the female lead visiting the male lead's Domain, and a close read of the relevant chapter had the characters reference an activity called 'sculpting' and several sports I'd never heard of (including 'kataff' and 'baseball'), as well as a casual reference to the fact the characters were in a place called 'Magilum', though it sounded nothing like the Magilum I'd been in a few hours ago. The book didn't seem to consider it worthwhile to explain much of the setting, but based on the locations they visited it sounded like just an ordinary city.

Other chapters were so strange as to be almost incomprehensible to me. One of them had - with no surrounding context - the two leads going on a date on what sounded like the surface of a gas giant, the woman telling the man that it was a place she always 'came to think'. Later it went into the man's past growing up in Rhunbard, but when they decided to go to his hometown, the story started using the worlds 'travel' and 'observe' almost interchangeably, calling it a 'Reflection', a term I recognized from the conversation between Rya and the panther outside the Manse. After that, there was an incoherent argument that revolved around his status as a 'Static' and hers as a 'Protean', which sounded like social castes, and a lot of drama about a relationship he'd had before a period of 'hibernation' and his estranged mother, referred to as an 'Echo'. It got so confusing I had to give up on the whole section.

But what was maybe even more striking than this was the ways in which the story wasn't strange. The lion's share of it could have been set anywhere. The characters dated, they had some early drama, they got over it, they dated some more, there was a reveal about the man's past relationship that cast him in a new light, they got over it again in a romantic climax, they got married-- Really standard stuff. All the weird stuff seemed totally peripheral. For however strange this place was, its inhabitants clearly had fairly standard fixations.

Another revealing element, though, was what was left unspoken altogether. I noticed the book never once mentioned children, and it seemed to take for granted that the characters lived here and always would, and this state of affairs was desirable. They spoke of the people in the Mimikos and the man's own past there as if it were something both exotic and frightening. Finally, as I'd guessed, all the characters seemed to use the Power very casually, confirming everyone here was an arcanist.

I frowned, not knowing what conclusion to draw.

That was about all there was to say about the books, save for the fact that they were handmade and ridiculously high-quality like everything else here; they even forsook printing in favor of professional-level calligraphy like it was the New Kingdoms era, as if the creators had been looking for an excuse to spend more time on the effort. I put them back on the shelf, then moved to investigate the metal pedestal, which looked like it was made of titanium. I think? I was pretty sure it was titanium.

It seemed like there was only one way to interface with it: A small square of crystal glass at the front. I pushed my finger into it, causing it to glow a soft orange shade. Nothing else happened.

"So much for this being easy to figure out," I mumbled.

Understand that the function of the assembler is to create objects for you, serving as a prop-shaping aid, it suddenly communicated to me. Understand that you should make a verbal request.

I blinked in surprise, releasing my hand. It was a logic bridge? But the color was wrong. I hadn't even noticed I'd attuned.

I frowned to myself. 'Create objects'? That was awfully broad.

"What kind of stuff can you make?" I asked it.

No response this time. I guess I had to be pressing the button.

I placed my finger back down. "What kind of stuff can you make?" I repeated.

Understand that the function of the assembler is to create objects of any type, but may be insufficient for ones of high deliberate complexity at a molecular level, such as living creatures and advanced computing tools, it informed me. Understand that it can also not create objects larger than the disc of its assembly area.

I stared at the thing, unsure what level of skepticism was appropriate. I'd seen Transmutation artifices built to manifest a wide range of objects to specification before, and even auto-crafting golems that could do it so long as they were supplied with precisely the correct materials. However, something this small and especially so ridiculously versatile was unheard of. Not theoretically impossible, but certainly far beyond present-day technology.

...however, if eris really wasn't a factor here... maybe such a thing could be done? Gods, I still couldn't believe I was accepting that idea. Ironworkers or no Ironworkers, getting energy from nothing was a flagrant violation of the laws of physics. Even with the iron used to create the Remaining World, they'd hardly been gods, as evident by how many abnormalities there were compared to the old world.

It felt like this all had to just be some simulation or other kind of delusion thrust upon my senses, but if that were the case, there was no point in thinking about anything.

I bit my lip. "Do you need anything to do this?"

Understand that the construction process will draw upon your prop, it explained. Understand that the assembler is a prop-shaping aid.

If I didn't know better, I would have taken that repetition as sarcasm.

"What is 'prop'?" I asked it.

Understand that 'prop' is shorthand for the matter under your dominion, it communicated. Understand that this interface is only designed to answer questions relating to the assembler.

I made a flat expression. 'Matter under my dominion'. Great. That explained everything.

I sighed a little to myself. "Okay. Make me..." I considered it for a moment. I felt a little thirsty; I'd been sweating a lot with everything going on. "Make me a glass of clean water, I guess?"

It happened so quickly that, if I hadn't seen it done with the chair outside the Manse earlier, I wouldn't have even been able to process it. In less than a second, a tiny grey lump had appeared on the surface of the pedestal, which then unfolded like it was a piece of origami, growing exponentially and taking on new characteristics until it had become, well, a medium-sized glass cup filled with water.

My eyes widened a bit. Hesitantly, I reached up and sipped it. It was indeed water, and within a couple seconds I'd drained it. I licked my lips; I still felt a little thirsty.

Okay, I thought. That's not *that* impressive.

Let's try something a little more complicated.

I set my glass back down on the pedestal as I pressed the button. Maybe doing it this way will confuse it? "I'd like another glass of water, but this time please make it the flavor you get in Oreskios. That sort of hard water from the mountains."

This time, the grey dot appeared within the glass itself, then unfolded even faster than the first time, the liquid sploshing in the glass. This time I didn't hesitate, taking hold of it and having a drink right away.

The flavor was perfect. Because the city was right next to the mountains - the closest of which were largely covered in deposits of soft rocks like chalk - water in Oreskios was hard and had a very particular rich, bitter flavor that a lot of people hated, but I'd been indoctrinated by on account of living there for so long. I'd never encountered quite the same quality elsewhere, yet this could have come right from my mother's kitchen. It was uncanny.

I drained the glass and set it back down, raising my eyebrow at the machine. So it could not only fulfill requests for tricky items like fluids, but even rather abstract ones that required very specific compositional makeup. Was it reading my mind? Was that somehow possible here, too?

"Make what I'm thinking of right now," I said, thinking of another glass of water.

Understand that this request cannot be fulfilled due to a lack of information.

I raised a finger to my mouth. It couldn't read my mind. So this was all just based on scripting and Divination? Or possibly even outright knowledge?

I was intrigued, feeling like a child with a new toy, and temporarily forgot all the other things I was worried about or ought to have been. I decided that I might as well test it with as complicated a request as possible.

"Make me a medium-sized five-layered laganon with heirloom tomato sauce, ricotta and mascarpone goat's cheese, wild and oyster mushrooms - but mostly wild - an even mix of mutton and beef mince, and a truffle and Uana pepper garnish. And goose egg dough for the sheets. Make it to the highest standard of quality you're able, filling out the recipe as appropriate according to fine dining standards and whatever information you can infer about my expectations, and distribute the herbs and ingredients such that the higher layers have a lighter flavor profile, with the lower ones getting successively richer. And have it still hot but comfortable to eat." I found myself giving the instructions in a strangely commanding, haughty voice, like I was some noble lady from antiquity ordering around one of my slaves. "Oh, and refill my water to the same specifications as last time. But make the glass bigger; this one is too small."

I'd expected the process to take at least a little longer, but once again it was almost instantaneous. A dot of matter once again appeared within the glass, expanding its dimensions and once again refilling it with water, while the existing glass partially dissolved and reshaped itself in seamless accord with the new shape. Meanwhile, a second dot ballooned out into a plate of freshly-cooked leganon, colored a perfect red, orange and white that evoked a sunset, warmth radiating from it along with just a little steam.

It smelled amazing. Rich and meaty and peppery and cheesy in all the right ways. I'd structured the request in part to test the machine's ability to modify existing objects and improvise based on context, but as soon as the scent hit my nose I didn't even care. I picked up and the plate and set it down on the coffee table, then ran back to the machine.

"Knife and fork," I instructed bluntly. It once again complied, generating the objects out of what looked like titanium for whatever reason. I took them and rushed back to the table, digging in.

Oh my god, I thought putting a hand to my mouth, this is fucking amazing.

I'd expected any food generated by the machine to feel generic or somehow off, but that wasn't the case at all; it might have been the best laganon I'd ever eaten in my life, easily at the level of quality of even the highest end restaurants I'd visited, some of which even had an arcanist assess your taste buds and gut makeup beforehand so the dish could be customized according to you specifically. Everything about it was almost perfect. The earthy, bittersweetness of the truffle dusting. The slightly-fibrous, slightly-crunchy quality of the cheese which gave way to a luxuriant, creamy sweetness. The salty, subtly sharp and bloody flavor of the red meat, with the lusciously fatty note of the marbling-- The tingling of pepper on my tongue, the unami flourish of the mushrooms--

As soon as I'd started eating, I lost track of myself. I wasn't even particularly hungry, but it was just that good, and there was no one around to judge me for acting like a pig. Despite feeling physically full two thirds of the way in, I wolfed the entire thing down against the protests of my gut, draining the glass again as I finished and letting out a rather ignoble belch.

I stared down at the empty plate, then back at the machine. The fact that such a device was sitting in the back room of a police station clearly meant it wasn't anything special. Just what sort of lives did people live here?

Suddenly, I heard the handle twist and the door open, followed by a familiar deep voice. "Judging by the smell, I take it you've managed to settle in."

I looked uneasily in the direction of the voice. Of course, it was the panther. He sauntered in smoothly, moving around the sofa.

"What are you doing here?" I asked.

"Checking in on you, of course," he answered, as he moved to sit in front of the fireplace, looking at me as he sat in a perched posture. "Jun went back to bed, but he asked me to make sure you're doing alright."

I frowned, glancing up at the clock. It was past four in the morning. I must have got more absorbed in reading than I'd thought.

"If you want to dispose of that, you can just put it back in the assembler," he said, inclining his head at my plate and cutlery. "Just tell it to return the prop. It'll know what to do."

I looked back at the pedestal. "That thing is incredible. Is it an artifice?"

He looked at me curiously. "...you mean a machine that utilizes the Power?" He hummed thoughtfully. "I would assume so, at least to some degree."

"I asked it to make a pasta dish for me, and it made maybe the best I've had in my entire life," I recounted, still somewhat in a state of disbelief. "I've never seen a device so advanced."

The panther seemed unsure what to say to this, simply nodding a few times in acknowledgement. "I'm pleased it's to your liking. Jun wished me to tell you that you should feel free to use it to make a blanket and pillow to sleep with, since he realized you might not be sure that would be appropriate. I could also constitute a bed for you, if you wish."

"That's... very kind," I said awkwardly. "I'm not really tired, though."

"As you say," the panther said. "Well then, was there anything else I could do for you?"

I narrowed my eyes. "I mean... I want the same thing that I wanted earlier," I told him. "I want to know what this place is. How I got here. What all that stuff about me being a dreamer meant."

He gave me a gently inquisitive look. "You're determined to ignore Jun's counsel about waiting to speak to an expert?"

"I mean, I don't really understand how waiting to talk to an expert would help," I told him. "Unless he was lying when he was saying there was nothing to worry about."

The panther considered this for a moment, craning his neck to half-look at the fireplace. "News can be shocking even when it's not, per-se, bad, don't you think?"

I sucked my teeth. I guess that's true. 

"...all the same, I'm not really the type of person who gets much from being told things delicately." I told him, thinking back to my diagnosis a few days ago. "So I'd rather just rip the bandage off so I'm not sitting here feeling like I've gone insane."

"I see," he said. He had a very stoic, flat tone that felt hard to read, though part of that might have been that he, well, didn't have a human face. "I suppose you'd know yourself better than we do. But if you're really that eager, you could have asked the assembler."

I hesitated. That idea hadn't even occurred to me as a possibility, but now that he'd said it, I felt stupid for not having thought it. I wasn't sure if it was sophisticated enough to produce original writing, but surely I could have just asked it for an existing text that would explain what this world was. If these people had romance novels, they surely had history books. Obsessing over the past was just as central a human tendency as getting horny over irrational subject matter.

"I can try to explain, if you really like," he said, sounding neutral about the idea. "But I don't think you'll accept it without seeing more of the wider world, and it would displease me if you reacted badly and Jun thought poorly of me for sidestepping his judgement."

"Try me," I told him. "I promise I won't overreact."

You can say what you want, my anxiety commented, but I'm making no commitments.

The panther was silent for several moments, apparently considering his phrasing. A vague impression of the flames were reflected on his sleek black fur. "...I will attempt to keep this simple, since I am not confident in my ability to explain the matter comprehensively," he started. "In truth, I cannot tell you how you came here, because I do not believe you have ever been elsewhere."

I frowned. "What do you mean, I've 'never been elsewhere'?"

Another pause, this one shorter. "Our world exists in a higher place than the one you believe you hail from," he elaborated. "From it, it is possible to observe - though not interact with - many others, though it is controversial if these worlds are fully real, or illusions of a sort brought through an intersection of physical principles. One of these worlds contains human beings, and for that relationship to our own reality it is called the Reflection."

Uh... what?

"Our world contains two - arguably three, but it is easier to say two - types of individual," he went on. "Primaries and Secondaries. There is a technique by which it is possible to discern at a glance which group an individual belongs to, so I can say with certainty you are a Primary." His words slowed, not quite with the condescension you'd use when talking to a child, but still with that same deliberation, like he was worried they wouldn't stick. "Primaries are distinguished by the fact that they possess a connection to a mirror of themselves within the Reflection, meaning they recall some of their memories."

"It is possible to observe the Reflection at incredibly high levels of fidelity, to the point that if enough time passes, one can become lost in it. We refer to those who have succumbed to this rare state as 'dreamers'." He watched my face carefully. "For a Primary, it is also possible to observe the world through the eyes of their mirror, reinforcing the memories they possess and even gaining ones they do not, to the point they might think of themselves as being their mirror, even when the trance is broken." He inclined his head. "This, I believe, summarizes your current state."

The room was silent. I stared at him, my face twisted in bemusement, while he looked back at me with, well, cat-like aloofness.

"That's insane," I said.

He offered no response, only shifting his shoulders slightly in a motion that might have been intended to be a shrug.

"Like... completely," I added. "I-I don't even know where to start."

"As I said," he spoke, "I did not expect you would believe me until you saw more of the wider world. I do not think I would myself. You have seen too little to have any sense of things." He shifted his body, his tail slithering along the carpet as he stretched his legs a little. "You will hear different interpretations of these ideas, but the underlying concept is the same. You are, but also are not, the person you believe yourself to be. Your body was likely inert in the Magilum because you began your observation when it was still the hegemonic Domain, and the new leadership simply left you there so they could continue to make use of your prop. Autospective dreaming in particular is uncommon, but similar cases aren't unheard of."

"To be clear, you're saying I'm just some person from this world who stalked some alternate reality version of myself so hard I forgot who I was?" I asked, barely processing the last few things he said. "And now I just suddenly woke up for some reason?"

"Yes," he replied with a nod. "More or less."

"That's ridiculous," I said.

"Again, I can see why you would think so," he said diplomatically. "I am a Primary myself, and I remember enough years of my other self's life to be certain he would have no framework to even comprehend such a thing, such is the difference between our worlds. Nevertheless, it is the truth."

"I-- Wait." I furrowed my brow. "You were a person?"

"I am a person," he said, lifting a paw and licking it.

"You're a cat."

He raised an eyebrow at me. Or at least he raised the part of his face where an eyebrow would have been, if not for his feline nature. "Can a person not be a cat?"

I opened my mouth to retort, then thought better of it, crossing my arms as I looked away for a moment. "How would this have happened?" I asked. "If what you're saying is true, how did this reality come to exist in relation to the real world?"

"You are making several assumptions that you might wish to re-examine with that statement," he said indifferently. "This world has always existed. Based on all our scientific understanding, it is even more real than the Reflection. And these are simply the tenants of our reality; it is what it is."

I shook my head in disbelief. I'd been prepared to accept some manner of earth-shattering revelation like this being some secret yet vast parallel society of arcanists that had hidden from the public eye since the Mourning Period, and even sorta-prepared to accept something existentially disturbing like having been copied. But this was just, well... confusing.

No, not confusing. Dumb. I couldn't just accept the existence of an alternate universe, with some special power to observe our own and filled with doppelganger clones - of which I was apparently one - without any sort of explanation at all. It was fucking metaphysically incoherent.

I mean, it would make sense with what we experienced, a voice said. Us suddenly disconnecting from our own thoughts like that. Now their reactions back when I was explaining make a lot more sense.

But no! I'd just reasoned how this was all connected to the Order and the time loop a couple hours ago! I got here by visiting the mural, and the definitely-not­-a-doppelganger-or-copy me had lived her life remembering those events for 200 years, which flew in the face of the idea that this was some wholly alien realm and always had been.

The panther sighed, apparently reading my face. "I apologize. I shouldn't have tried to tell you this myself after all. I can only repeat that this will feel clearer once you are permitted to leave and spend some time within the Domain's culture."

"Your friend said that I didn't need to worry about being separated from my loved ones. How does that figure, with what you've told me?" I narrowed my eyes, my tone skeptical. "Is it just because you'd say they aren't really my loved ones at all, since the whole experience was a delusion?"

"...no," he stated plainly, though the question seemed to have taken him slightly off-guard. "It's possible to bring people here from the Reflection, in a manner of speaking. Though they also cannot interact with the reality they came from."

A flicker of hope, coherence. "Couldn't that be what happened to me, then?"

"No," he repeated. "As I said, you're a Primary. Primaries are people who have always been part of the world."

My face fell, and I stared at him with frustrated confusion once more. If I'd been thinking straight and my mind wasn't busy turning itself into an ouroboros as I tried to make any sense of this bizarre explanation and how it contrasted with the facts as I understood them, I might have noticed that his phrasing, 'people have always been a part of the world', was a really odd way to describe someone being born in a place, and begun a line of questioning which would spare me some confusion a few hours later.

Really, there were a lot of questions I should have been asking, but I had so many at this stage that they almost cancelled one another out, like too many flushed sanitation products clogging a sewer.

As it was, the panther took my moment of silence as an opportunity. He stretched his body out, trotting away from the fireplace. "Again, I've spoken carelessly. If you want more answers, or another perspective on what I've told you, you can make use of the assembler. But I would suggest you simply rest for the remainder of the night." The door swung open again as he approached, but he turned his gaze to me one last time before departing. "However disturbed you may feel in this moment, you should take heart that you will not be unhappy here. This is a much kinder world than the one you remember." He glanced at the plate. "And not merely because of the food."

With that, he slipped away, the door closing behind him. I considered going to the assembler, but somehow, between the amount I'd eaten and the conversation, I felt fatigued. Not tired, strictly, but spent. I decided I wanted to just... stop thinking, for a bit.

A kinder world, huh, I thought to myself as my eyes drifted back to the plate, then to the window. I thought about everything that had happened in the past few decades. Wouldn't take much, honestly.

But the panther was right. Never mind his explanation, I still couldn't fully believe this was a world at all. A considerable portion of me still felt convinced I was insane, or this was all some test by Neferuaten, and none of it was truly real. Even if that idea was seeming less and less likely.

I laid down on the sofa, flat on my back. I couldn't sleep, but I managed to drift in and out of a daze of incoherent, shallow thought. Even without blankets, the room was plentifully warm, so I had no trouble getting comfortable. At some point the rain stopped, and the first hints of pale blue light began to peek through the curtains.

What do they even use for light here? I wondered. Do they have their own Great Lamp? I guess I'll find out soon, one way or the other.

At some point, I'd rolled onto my side, and I noticed there was something in my pocket other than my glasses. Confused as to what it could have been, I reached inside, only to find myself clasping a familiar object: An hourglass, the same one I'd somehow possessed in the Stage. In accord with its abstract nature, I'd been assuming nothing there was exactly a physical object, yet here it was all the same.

It was cold to the touch, and looked like it was made of a dark, ambiguous metal. And the sand behaved just as it had earlier, in contradiction of physics. Grains falling at an impossibly slow pace, yet always in the same direction, even if I turned it over or shook it violently. As things stood, only a few looked like they'd reached the bottom at all - the substance amassed almost entirely on one side - but it was only a matter of time until that changed.

On a whim, I cast the Anomaly-Divining Arcana, something I really should have done earlier. As it turned out, I should have done this earlier, because I realized instantly that I was surrounded by unthinkably complex incantations; over the assembler, over the building, over the very ground itself, all so much more elaborate and complicated than I'd ever seen before that it took me significantly off guard. I knew now with certainty that this was a place where arcane knowledge far eclipsed anything in the Mimikos, filling me with equal parts curiosity and foreboding.

...however, there was nothing arcane about this hourglass. It was like a blind spot in the world, existing beyond even the Power.

The more I stared at it, the more I felt a strange connection to the object, almost like it was a part of me. And then, after a while longer, an idea came into my mind, seemingly from nowhere at all. It felt, somehow, like an undeniable truth, even if I didn't know why.

When this hourglass empties, I thought, I will die.

I stared at it for several more minutes, unease building in my heart.

𒀭

Before I knew it, the next few hours had passed, and it was eight in the morning.

There was a knock on the door about twenty minutes later, and I heard Sergeant Jun's voice, his tone more uncertain than it had been when we'd first met. "Miss Fusai, are you up...?"

I sat up on the sofa, "Y-Yes," I said, putting my glasses back on.

"The, uh... The captain is here to see you," he explained, sounding embarrassed.

I raised an eyebrow as the door opened. The sergeant was the first to enter, wearing a somewhat awkward expression and avoiding eye contact. And behind him...

Was another man, who looked maybe a few inches taller than me. He was also wearing a green cloak - though unlike the rest I'd seen so far, his had a knotted gold stripe along the rim and what looked like an emerald fixed in the center of his cross emblem - and was otherwise dressed in plain, black clothing, including a pair of gloves that seemed of a slightly different style to the rest.

And... he was wearing a bag on his head. It was brown. Hemp, probably.

I stared at the pair of them for a few moments, my mouth slowly becoming agape. Sergeant Jun's face gradually flushed, and he cleared his throat.

"He, um." He stuck his thumb towards his commander. "He wants you to follow him."

𒀭

Raurica in daylight was kind of an incredible sight. The town obviously wasn't impressive in terms of scale, but it was visibly a profoundly cared-for place with a great depth of history. The best way I can think to describe it was that it was almost like the whole place was one continuous structure, but not in the sense that it was all just built on an excessively tight and regulated grid, like how they did things in Irenca. No, it was more like the whole thing was some elaborate model - overcomplicated and yet ordered with artistic intent.

No two buildings were identical in design in the way you'd usually expect, yet they were all interlinked, their architecture flowing into one another almost like they were different organs of the same body. The guardhouse shared part of its left wall with an even taller stone building, which was connected to another building across the street by skyway. This building had a bell tower suspended on an archway which connected several, terminating in a gate to what looked like a different district. Meanwhile, the guardhouse's garden was shared by a different structure, the two divided by a fence but connected at a gazebo in the center. Meanwhile, an alleyway directly in front of me as I left the building seemed to double up as an entrance to a tunnel, and the whole thing was covered by a glass overhang which itself linked neatly into the wooden awnings along the rest of the street.

A lot of the buildings were also follies (in the architectural sense, not in the sense they were bad ideas) in their own right. For example, the clock tower that rose from the center of town seemed to forgo conventional foundations in lieu of being supported by a cascade of smaller pillars, and the tower itself twisted along with its stairwell in its ascent, almost flirting with the surrealism. The people here certainly had an exhaustively artisanal culture, if nothing else.

Speaking of the people, the population of the town was also interesting. The streets were still a little sleepy as we left, but though I didn't see anyone as strange as the panther, they definitely had some... Peculiar characteristics. I saw a lot of strange fashion and unnatural hair colors - blues and greens and impossibly vivid reds - and even some odd features that looked like body modifications (a violation of the covenant, obviously) like horns. And no one was veiled whatsoever. Also, nobody really seemed to be in a rush to go anywhere-- Mostly they just seemed to be chatting in various spots along the road, though some turned to point and remark at the enbagged captain, proving it was not just me who thought this was peculiar. 

Anyway, I didn't get to make more than a 10 second assessment of the place, because as soon as we stepped off the walkway, the 'captain' sharply floated into the air. I cursed, hurriedly casting the Form-Levitating Arcana.

"Where are we going?" I asked, as we ascended.

The man didn't respond, leading me quickly into the air over the town and picking up speed.

"Who are you? Why won't you talk to me?"

Once again, there was no response. I sighed in irritation.

Ascending over the town gave me the first proper look I'd had at the surrounding landscape, and I found it both pleasant and surprisingly normal. Green, occasionally forested flatlands stretched miles ahead, surrounded by hillier and ultimately mountainous terrain further in the distance. It sort of reminded me of the countryside outside Oreskios, though the flora looked more like something you'd see on the Orphaned Continent, all fir and beech trees as far as the eye could see. I couldn't see any sort of curve on the horizon, so I had no idea what manner of structure we were on, nor could I discern at this distance the precise nature of the 'sun' overhead.

I followed the man through the air as we moved faster and faster, heading to the northwest-- If it hadn't been for the strange rules of this reality, I would have been worried about eris. We traveled at least 20 miles and over several more towns and villages, though at this height it was difficult to make out many details. One thing I did notice was that we passed a few fields being farmed,something almost unheard of in the modern era.

Since these people possessed the Power, I could only assume they were hobbyists. Was that a thing? Hobbyist farming?

Eventually, the man began to descend, once again asking in vain for some details about where the hell he was taking me. Ultimately, we descended down to a cabin at the side of a stretch of woodland, maybe a couple leagues from the mountains. The man landed at the nearby dirt road, which seemed so infrequently used it was barely discernible from the surrounding grass.

"You know, I was really starting to feel that maybe the people here were actually sane, and you're, uh, kinda spoiling that for me..." I protested. "Your sergeant said you'd sort out if I was allowed to stay here or not. Are you going to do that? Also, uh... at the risk of beating a dead horse, now that we're here, could you please tell me why you're wearing a sack on your head?"

The man gestured at the cabin, which was the first act of direct communication he'd performed since the beginning of our acquaintance. Then, immediately afterwards - at a speed which made it clear he wasn't eager to be followed - shot back into the air, returning the way he came.

"Hey!" I yelled. "Where the hell are you going?!"

But he was already gone, turning into a dot against the cloudy sky.

I stared at it for a moment, feeling both bemused and pissed off. Then I shook my head, turning to the cabin.

I guess it's not subtle what he expects me to do, at least.

Grumbling to myself, I approached the building. It was a humble, wooden structure - partially suspended by stilts - that couldn't have contained more than four rooms total, and judging by the plume of smoke coming from the chimney, the owner was in. I climbed the couple of steps to the door and hesitantly knocked, the frame rattling as I did. However, there was no response, even after I tried for a second time a few moments later.

I frowned. They just left the fire burning while they went out? Not very responsible.

But then I started to hear something, or rather, I started to pick up on sounds I hadn't been paying attention to until I'd spent a few moments standing in uncomfortable silence. Grunts, soft squeals, and the faint rustle of movement. It sounded like they were coming from behind the building.

I went around and, sure enough, there was a surprisingly large pig pen- of all things - directly out the back door. I could see ten, maybe twelve of the creatures in the fenced-off little area, which included troughs for water and feed and even a little sheltered stable for them to rest in. The whole area was grassless and pretty muddy, which I guess one would expect for a pig pen, and they were sitting around doing, well, pig stuff. Huddling together, lying in the mud, eating copious amounts of feed-- You get the idea.

It took me a moment to spot her, but there was one person with them. She was kneeling down, petting or tending one of the smaller pigs with a bag of feed at her side, having presumably just refilled the trough. She looked Viraaki, and had long, straight black hair, and was wearing a green dress that matched her eyes. She had... kind of a big nose...

Wait a minute.

Is that...

I opened my mouth slowly, an incredulous expression forming on my face. "...Ptolema?"

Her head shot up right away. She looked at me, and her eyes went wide.

"Oh my god," she exclaimed, sounding absolutely taken aback. "Su?"