Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

  It is perhaps an inescapable truth that no story, no matter how well-conceived, can survive being laid out on an operating table and dissected into its base components. Without mystique to back them up, simple narratives can seem trite and complex ones contrived regardless of their quality. I wouldn't be the first to point out that the Odyssey, for example, is a story where about half the plot beats are oriented around people eating things they ought not to.

  Still, I couldn't help but feel all the magic of the day's experience seep away like blood out of hanging swine. It wasn't that it didn't make sense, but outside of the core reveals which I'd pretty much guessed already, the whole plot felt kind of perfunctory. Less puzzle pieces that snapped into place in a revelatory fashion, and more like a series of sensible conclusions that weren't always verifiable but could be mostly inferred with Occam's razor.

  Maybe that was true for most mysteries in the end, bereft of a parlor scene where it's all arranged like a beautiful bouquet, but... I don't know.

  The story Nahmi laid out went like this. 'Rastag' had originally been a woman - Phaidime - not from the steppe or anywhere thematically resonant, but just a backwater in the Rhunbardic Empire. Ambitious but faced with the challenges of both class in an extremely stratified society and the even more strict gender roles of two centuries prior, she fabricated an identity as a twin brother before moving inland and forging her (I'm going to say 'her', I guess, but obviously the point was kind of muddled) way into academia from the bottom-up.

  From there, things proceed as established with the various characters meeting and forming the Fellowship of Hinshelwood Hall, until we get to the part where Nikkala dies. The truth of what happened was a more banal version of the story given by Summiri and suggested by the detective. In an accident, after most of the others had left for the night, her and Mariya discover 'Rastag's' secret. While Mariya - a somewhat self-made woman herself - is amenable to keeping it under wraps, Nikkala is less so, and this leads to a confrontation which ends in her death.

  They cover it up. Invent the seance-gone-wrong story given by Summiri, and feed it to the others to get them in on it. Leo is dating Nikkala and so cuts ties, but that's the extent of his involvement; because of the no-Power rule and the lack of any proper foreshadowing, he can't be present in the actual story.

  "If they were in any way part of this conspiracy, I don't understand why anything Noah or Summiri said would be true," I questioned.

  "Noah told you what he did because it was possible you knew the basics of the story already. He wasn't sure what you'd been told by the others or learned in your own time," Nahmi explained. "As for what I said, it was just damage control to get you to accept some kind of fucking answer based on what you probably already knew. At least at first. By the end I figured she was probably lashing out on account of you being an insufferable tart."

  I almost got annoyed, but bit my tongue. I only needed to talk to her for like another 5 minutes. Her being insufferable wasn't that big a deal.

  Time passes, a lot of time, in which the rest of the backstory events play out. Eventually, Mariya has her falling out with Rastag that Kasua knew about from the very beginning.

  "Why, though," I asked.

  "Dunno, exactly," she said indifferently, looking at something on one of her screens.

  "How can you not know?" I asked. "You're supposed to have worked out the entire plot!"

  She glared at me. "Look, it's difficult, okay?" She sighed in annoyance. "When I had to shove the person playing Phaidime in at the last minute, I couldn't just treat them like another actor and feed them facts. I had to give them space for their own improv. And since the details of her and Mariya's intimate relationship wouldn't actually be known by any other character - just like, the result - it was a low hanging fruit." She spat out her gum and renewed it again; this felt like it grossed me out way more than it should have. "Not that she did anything with it, from what I saw. Worse than you."

  "So it was, what, just a big hole in the reality of the story?" I felt annoyed. "Even though it was supposed to be core to my character's background?"

  "I don't know what to tell you. That's the format." She looked over, turning her awkwardly perfect nose up at me. "But come the fuck on, it's not like you had some deeply thought-out idea of Kasua's relationship with her, did you?"

  "I," I hesitated. "I mean, I thought about it."

  "Really."

  I instantly regretted this conversational choice. "I mean, I figured they had a-- You know, a good relationship. You know, since Kasua wanted to avenge her."

  I realized how bland and shitty this sounded as the words were leaving my mouth. Really, there were lots of interesting things I could have done that would have added extra pathos to the character. Like, there could have been a contradictory element to their relationship. Maybe Kasua resented the secrets she'd kept from her over their life, and that was as much her reason for investigating the Hall as her murder. Maybe they were alienated in a complex way from one another due to the disparity in women's rights between the eras in which they'd grown up. Maybe they had been close, and Kasua had almost been dependent on her, with her marriage a result of being unable to cope with the stress. Shit, I never really did anything with the fiancee either, even when the stakes got really dire.

  "Riiight," she said, nodding skeptically, then turned back. "Look, babe, don't get me wrong. I sure wish I was writing a screenplay instead of this cat-herding bullshit. But either way, there are always going to be parts of a story that are kind of loose. No writer extrapolates their character's entire lives."

  "I suppose." I scratched the side of my head as I let my eyes wander, feeling put-off.

  "I can tell you the idea I had, if you want," she added.

  "Sure."

  "My initial thought was that she would have been disturbed by what was happening at the Lifeblood Foundation, what he was doing with Summiri. She was his closest confidant, so she'd be the only one in the know."

  "That's what I'd been kind of assuming," I said.

  "But then I thought that was kind of trite," she continued. "So instead I was having the idea of, like, what if Mariya was actually Rastag's biggest supporter? She'd have been the one complicit in the original murder, so it would make if she bought into the whole belief system completely. Including the whole idea for immortality."

  I bit my lip. "I... didn't really get why that was included at all, to be honest," I told her, choosing my words carefully. "I mean, up until that point, it'd kind of seemed like Rastag's beliefs were just, I don't know, a sort of glorified form of fortune-telling? And then suddenly you have this element where he's - uh, she's - all about the evolution of humanity and has all these radical beliefs about the nature of consciousness. And then in the end, it didn't even matter that much to the plot."

  "It was one of Kam's mandates," she said dismissively. "She decides the core beats, then I have to slap them together into something that makes any fucking sense whatsoever."

  I felt an uneasy stir in my gut.

  I mean, probably Summiri was just a riff on Zeno, right? She didn't get along with him, so she'd be more likely to contrive scenarios where he was the 'villain' of the story. Still--

  "It was meant to be a hint, too," Nahmi continued. "About their identity, since Summiri was a woman."

  I nodded hesitantly. "I... had that thought, but I guess it felt difficult to make a definitive judgement from it. I mean, I didn't know what you were trying to do with the story." I didn't want to introduce Nahmi to my gender twist methodology; that felt like a good way to get myself made fun of.

  "In what way?"

  "I don't know," I replied with a small shrug. "I didn't have a good sense of Rastag as a person. I mean, Tuthal made a big deal out of the fact that Summiri was a girl, but you barely addressed it at all. So there was a sense that he might have just been very open minded, I guess, or preferred the idea for some other reason."

  She turned around again. "Other reason?"

  "W-Well, you know." I rubbed my eyes. "It was a historical setting in a conservative time period, you said that yourself, and Rastag was relatively old for the era without it seeming like he was married. And it sounded like he was closer to the women in the group. I thought there was a chance he was like, well, that he felt a particular way about, uh, those matters."

  She spun her chair around to face me completely, breaking into a smirk that I would have described as a twinge sadistic. "What matters?"

  "About... the physical body, I mean." I covered my mouth, rubbing the bridge of my nose. I wished I'd had my glasses. "Their physical body. And, uh, other things."

  "What about their physical body?"

  My face flushed. "Come on. You know what I'm talking about."

  "I'm just not sure why you're being so vague," she replied, steepling her fingers. "It's very strange!"

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  I wrinkled my nose. "I'm saying I thought he might have been a, uh... You know, a..."

  She began to break into laughter for the first time. "Oh my god, you look like you're fucking dying, this is amazing."

  "A-- A transsexual," I finished. The word came out like a kidney stone.

  "Yaaaaay, you did it!" Nahmi started clapping.

  I felt irrationally awkward, fiddling with my hair.

  She let out a pleased sigh. "Dude, that was crazy. I know the Remaining World used to precious about this shit, but I didn't think people this sheltered existed outside of roleplay. What age were you while you were Dreaming, like 30? 25?"

  I glared at her silently.

  She spun her chair back around. "But yeah, that makes sense-- I think Kam might've brought that idea up when we were doing our last minute prep too. Guess there's not a lot of foreshadowing about someone's sex you can do that doesn't also point in that direction too. Gender essentialism cuts both ways, can't be fuckin' helped."

  I sighed. "You were telling me about Mariya and Rastag."

  "Right, right." She seemed a little bit more enthusiastic now that she'd made me look like an idiot. "So my thinking was that Rastag eventually has kind of a crisis of faith about their whole worldview. Tuthal pulls out his money and sends the expansion of their business into disaster, then Summiri comes out wrong - not a perfect little copy of them after all - and humiliates them in front of their company's board. It's all going to shit, none of the patterns they spent their whole life chasing meant anything, they were just lucky and ended up eating their own bullshit."

  "And then Mariya would catch wind of it and have a crisis of faith herself," I understood. "That makes sense."

  "I had this thought - and I was even less sure about putting this in, since it's kinda out there - that maybe Kasua was maybe meant as a kind of aborted Summiri for Mariya. And that could've been, like, a horrifying third act revelation for you, this twist that your mother you're trying to avenge only had you to further her own ambitions in this grotesque way. If you'd already killed someone over it at that stage, it could have been really good."

  "That... would have been pretty scary," I said vaguely.

  "But none of that really made it in." She took a drink. "Probably for the best, honestly. Narrative was too bloated as it was."

  Eventually, things escalate to the point that it's clear Rastag's secret is no longer safe with Mariya, at which point they have the clandestine meeting in the outskirts of Xattusa. ("Maybe Rastag promised to pay her off there," Nahmi suggests vaguely.) Rastag murders her and has the body dumped in the grain silo. Little do they know, though, that Mariya has already shared the truth with one other.

  "How was I supposed to figure that out?" I asked.

  "Well, it was Hildris," Nahmi told me, instantly ending the mystery. "I think there were a couple hints as to that. But I mean, you were kind of shit at pressing the characters for information."

  "So... she took the photographs?"

  "What? No, the photographs were faked." An image of a mountain lodge popped up on her screen - probably something for whatever came they were doing next. "Really surprised you didn't figure that one out in the game, felt like a softball."

  "You're making this up as you go along," I accused. "There was no evidence for any of this."

  "Think about it. Just for a minute."

  I thought about it for a minute.

  "Oh," I finally said. "It was supposed to be night and... the flash."

  "Yep."

  "You wouldn't be able to-- To take a photograph at night without both people--"

  "Yep."

  "So Rastag didn't have the evidence from the start, and..."

  "Yeah, you got it."

  At this point, 'Rastag', seeing the walls closing in - impending financial ruin, potentially being implicated in two murders - decides to cut her losses and return to her former identity, but is hamstrung by the former Fellows of Hinshelwood Hall and her other close associates, who know too much. Summiri explicitly knows her secret by her very nature, and many of the others have more than a hunch after so many years. But of course much of this goes the other way as well.

  In the end, she decides to stage a game. All her close confidants will attend a meeting in a remote location that is part-bribery, part-performance and, unbeknownst to them, part-test and potential punishment.

  Partaking in this event will be three groups. The first will consist of Phaidime and her trusted loyalists: Gaizarik, her loyal aide of over a century, and a private investigator who originally helped fabricate her identity.

  "So that part was true? After he tried to murder me, I kind of figured his entire background story was bullshit."

  "There's no reason it couldn't be bullshit," she said with a shrug. "Him basically being a plant working for Phaidime is the only part that was actually relevant to the plot. But I guess my philosophy with this kind of writing is like, if there's no strong reason for a character to lie about a particular detail, it's better to make them honest by default."

  "Seems a little subjective," I critiqued. "In fact, hearing all this makes me think the characters in the story were too good at lying in general. They should have been, I dunno, more subtly hostile to Phaidime. I'm not saying that's how it would work in real life, but for a story..."

  "Tuthal acted awkward at a couple points, but people expect some subtlety when it comes to these games."

  I shook my head. "Whatever. So what about his occult obsession? Was that real?"

  "In part," she said. "You missed pretty much all of this - on account of killing him, I mean - but my idea was that Rastag had kind of used his own framework for reality and their long-time relationship to twist him into this weird position. He was working for him, but also was afraid of him, viewed him as this kind of monster. He didn't even know he and Phaidime were the same person, just saw him as this kind of wraith. One of the main motifs of the story was supposed to be Rastag as this concept rather than a person, along with the broader theme of magical thinking, and it was meant to be an extension of that."

  "I see." Honestly, I felt too tired to really care about her high concepts. I just wanted information. "What about the imposter?"

  "That was just a guy Phaidime hired to pilot the airship. He wasn't even really loyal-- When he showed up at the end, once he realized what happened, he was just trying to blend in."

  I frowned a little. "I'm kind of disappointed."

  "Why?"

  "If there's a trick with moving the rooms in the rest car for him to be distracted by, it feels like it would have been more narratively economical for it to turn out that the imposter was Gaizarik. Since he went missing at the same time, and what we heard when Summiri came around was obviously a recording." Plus the beard. Having a big beard was only a couple of degrees removed from having a twin.

  "The recording thing is probably the most contrived part of the plot. Kinda a rush job I stuck in at the last minute," Nahmi admitted. "I have it in my notes that Summiri seduced Wiliya to make it happen, but there wasn't really time to do anything with that."

  "So, like, why do this?" I asked. "Why find a pilot who can also pretend to be this guy?"

  "Well, Noah was basically Phaidime's hired muscle," she explained. "There to do the killings if it came to that. So it'd be convenient to have him able to generate a constant alibi for keeping the situation under her control. But obviously that went off the rails."

  "And Gaizarik? Where did he go?"

  "To pilot the airship. It was just sitting there in the sky after the murder, but someone had to keep from drifting off."

  I nodded slowly. Again, all of this did make sense. It just felt... I don't know.

  I took a moment to think if there were still any outstanding questions on the point. "What about the Amulet of Sathar? What was that supposed to mean? I assume the handwave Summiri gave wasn't it, since he wasn't even a real participant in the game."

  "Just a red herring and a small clue as to Noah's actual role. The word 'amulet' refers to a kind of protective charm, and 'Sathar' is an anagram of Rastag, just with the last letter advanced by one, G > H. One step beyond Rastag."

  I scoffed. "Are you serious? An anagram?"

  "What's wrong with fucking anagrams?"

  I shook my head. "Just keep going."

  Finally, the third group are Rastag's former confidants. The primary purpose of the event is an elaborate loyalty and knowledge test, using the bait of the inheritance and the threat of the blackmail to determine who can be trusted and simply kill the rest. To a degree there is an element of aggrieved sadism: As the letter at dinner quietly implied, Phaidime perceives all three of them - Bahram being the only exception - as to varying degrees parasitic or, in the case of Tuthal, even traitorous. She knows the money on the table could be life-changing, and is treating them like mice in a trap.

  However, unbeknownst to her, Summiri, Hildris and Tuthal have all entered into a pact with one another to try and foil Phaidime's plan, using the elaborate setup she has contrived - with Kasua and Eirene as malleable witnesses - to simply steal all of the money. But Tuthal and Hildris, who have secretly re-ignited their relationship, are only allies of convenience with Summiri, who sees herself as the rightful heir to Rastag's fortune, or maybe even entire identity, and feels incredibly betrayed by what has happened.

  There was a lot to chew on there; despite the discomfort I felt with the whole thing, I think I ended up liking the idea of Summiri as a character more than anything else. There was a muddiness to the whole situation, where she paradoxically saw herself as the same as the person who had also done her the most harm, an unwanted sprout from the same branch, that captured something I found kind of relatable, even as it brought back unpleasant old feelings.

  I found myself replaying our conversation in my head, thinking of how in retrospect she had kind of shifted from this calculatedly false accounting of events - diverting from the truth only as much as she needed to to cover up her conspiracy and give me catharsis - to this outburst where she devolved into farce, but more of her feelings came through. I started to see how someone in her position could find the worldview she'd espoused, where only the end-result matters for the purposes of meaning and for the rest it's better to believe in the impossible, appealing. While also wondering how much she believed it, ought to believe it, whether it was healthy to believe it, and whether I had a right to even judge whether it was healthy.

  And the fact that Phaidime, who she was a copy of, had dispensed with this framework which was essentially responsible for her entire self-identity, leaving Summiri carrying this conceptual bucket-- There was something so bitterly sad about it. It made me feel bad for shooting her in the head, despite knowing she had been a fictitious being played by the annoying woman in front of me.

  "Why did the airship exist at all?" I asked.

  "To keep the art collection secure and give Phaidime an easy means of escape. And just as another symbolic flex, you know, with the transport motif." She went for a potato chip. "It's kinda extra, but, like, that's the genre."

  "Right," I said. "So the idea was supposed to be that it was in the interests of both groups to keep me in the dark about what was really going on? So they'd have someone to corroborate their story, and make it seem like something mystical really did happen?"

  "Basically."

  "And you said the big picture stuff was all Kam's idea."

  "I've said that several times." She paused for a moment. "If you're wondering if it's about what's in the books, then it is."

  I nodded a few times, thinking to myself.

  "So," she said after a period of silence. "Is there anything else you need me to spoon into your mouth? After this much, you should be able to figure out the last of it yourself."

  "Mm, Yeah, I suppose it makes all the murders relatively obvious. The ones which weren't already, I mean." My tone came out more weary and disinterested than I meant it to, almost like I was looking down on her. "I'm guessing with the horse one, it was something like... Phaidime decides that she's going to kill Tuthal, or at least create a situation where she's cornered and might kill him. She sets up the rigged drawing so that he'll be alone at the very end, after everyone else has already left the front carriages, and hides somewhere. And she already has everything set up in advance. Bahram is making the holes in the roof for her - that's why I caught him coming down from the ladder on my way out, though I feel like I don't understand his character well enough to say if he's really that loyal, or just doesn't understand what's going on - and the horse is under the bed." I frowned, my gaze wandering. "But then Hildris, whose turn came after mine, kills her instead, maybe tipped off by Bahram or Wiliya or something. And then, well-- Since Phaidime would have wanted to create an alibi for herself, it's probably a situation where the pilot is the one who physically dumps the horse. But since the piloting room is closed off from the gallery, he wouldn't be able to know who's really in there, and neither would Gaizarik, so both of them end up oblivious while the whole thing is usurped from right under their nose." I looked to her. "Something like that?"

  "Yeah, more or less."

  I nodded, feeling strangely empty.

  https://topwebfiction.com/listings/the-flower-that-bloomed-nowhere/