Arboretum | 6:49 PM | First Day

Her scepter was very similar to mine, with an inverted ankh at its head. But it was longer, golden instead of silver, and the symbol was crowned with a metallic laurel - all symbols of her higher status, in different regards, with one exception that was purely personal choice. Embedded at the top of the shaft was a diamond of near-black metal: False iron.

She spoke, quietly and slowly, but with precision.

"...𒊬𒃶𒋾𒄿𒄿,𒀀𒄀...."

I knew those words. It was the start of the Anatomy-Beguiling Arcana, one of the most common used in combat.

A rudimentary lesson for both war-arcanists and healers was that there were three types of natural resistance that individuals possessed against offensive applications of arcana. When the Ironworkers created the Power, they explicitly designed it to be 'kind'; that is, to resist being used in acts of violence against other human beings. Though this didn't offer protection against indirect methods like summoning fireballs or telekinetically chucking rocks at people, if you tried to use it to, say, command someone's skin to fall off, it simply wouldn't work. The incantation would default, venting its eris to the Higher Planes.

However, if you stop and think about it critically for a second, there's obviously no absolute way to define what a 'human' is. People don't have some kind of self-evident essence that inherently distinguishes them from any other animal or object in the eyes of the cosmos. So the early arcanists of the Mourning Period quickly realized that there had to be some criteria by which the Power was checking if its target was a human or not.

When they consulted the records of the Ironworkers regarding the matter, they learned that they'd struggled to devise one single 'test' that could reliably identify all, or even the vast majority of people. Any they'd tried had either been too narrow in scope and exclusionary towards some individuals, or too broad and subsequently encompassed animals or entities that resembled living humans - such as mannequins and cadavers. In the end, they'd instead devised three fairly strict tests to be applied in tandem, but with the qualification that only one had to be passed. The idea was that even in the unlikely event that someone might be physically the norm enough that they'd fail one test, almost no one would fail all three.

And thus, what were now called the arcane resistances were born.

The first was the anatomical test. 'Is the target shaped like a person, externally and, to a lesser extent, internally?' It was considered the most common to fail. Missing or damaged limbs and organs, or even just especially odd proportions, could get you.

The second was the motion test. 'Are the fluids and soft tissue of the target moving like that of a person?' This was harder to fail - only people with circulatory conditions or those native to the Lower Planes tended to do so naturally - but the easiest to subvert in combat. Once someone loses a pint of blood and their pulse is going bananas, any motion taking place within their body is going to be very different from the average person.

The third and final was the neurological test, which is self-explanatory. It was the least likely to fail of all; only people with dementia, severe head wounds, or very rare developmental disorders tended to be misidentified.

Having all of your resistances be perfect had become an incredibly important factor for war-arcanists, or soldiers in general. Most modern militaries wouldn't recruit you if you had even one that was defunct. It was also a key element in arcane healing; the Power had no means to draw a distinction between restorative and destructive use of itself on a person, and so having more could actually be a disadvantage for civilians. If someone with no resistances fell from a rooftop and shattered their spine, the state healers could likely act in time to save their life. But if they had all three? Much less certain.

Thus, a simple way of conveying them had evolved, which one now saw on most medical documentation: They were marked AMN, with any missing conveyed by an absence of that letter, or any unreliable or conditional ones marked with the corresponding letter being bracketed. For example, my resistances were "AM(N)".

But I digress. Mankind being as mankind is, once scholars had obtained this information, they quickly began devising ways to undermine this protection, both arcane and mundane. The Anatomy-Beguiling Arcana, currently being cast at me, was one such example. It was designed to undermine the anatomic resistance by fooling the Power into seeing a funhouse mirror version of ones proportions.

...well, actually, that's not really how it worked at all. But there's no real way to explain it that won't hold this up for several more minutes, so please accept it as an explanation for the time being.

It wasn't a complicated incantation; an accomplished war-arcanist with part of it inscribed could get it done in under two seconds. The woman in front of me wasn't an accomplished war-arcanist, she didn't have it inscribed, and I knew for a fact that she wasn't even trying to speak the words as fast as she could. But she was still better than most by a wide margin. I didn't have long to act.

Though the Power itself was largely rigid and mathematical in nature, it utilized the abstract focus of the caster to determine its target. As a result, the easiest way to stop an incantation in progress was to simply break that focus. I grasped my scepter, pointed towards the earth in front of me, performed the math--

1 cm3 = planck 2.441e+98 planck length, 100 cm3 area x incantation base cost of 32 x 4.096e-99 = 1.31072e-95, increase base incantation power by 20, 1.31072e-95 x 20 = 2.62144e-94

--and began speaking the words of the Matter-Shifting Arcana, designed to simply move a block of space, and everything in it, from one position to another. My hope was to bring up a cube of the earth in front of me with such speed that it would blast out into the air, making it impossible for her to focus on me amongst the grit.

It was a crude approach, to say the least. Any arcanist was inherently limited by the amount of complex incantations that could reasonably be inscribed on their scepter, their only options beyond that being either incredibly simple ones - like what I was doing - or performing more advanced ones entirely manually, which required incredibly lengthy castings as well as expert memory and pronunciation throughout. The Entropy-Denying Arcana, for example, was a complicated incantation which I used often and, thus, had inscribed. I knew all the formulae by heart and was probably better at casting it than 90% of people who'd learned it, and could do it in about six to eight seconds.

If I was to try and cast it without my scepter, on the other hand, it would take me at least a solid three, maybe even four minutes. It made a huge difference.

I spoke swiftly. ".... 𒄭𒅗𒈣𒈣𒁹𒁺...."

...But as soon as the words left my mouth, the woman in front of me suddenly increased the speed at which she was speaking, too, the words flowing much faster. A subtle smile appeared at the corners of her mouth.

Oh, hell! I thought. She wasn't going easy on me, it was bait!

She finished hers just before I did, the pulse of the defense being stripped running subtly through me. She immediately started speaking another. But it was too late for me to stop my incantation and counter it instead-- I'd already committed the eris in the incantation. If I changed course now, it would discharge and probably blow my face off.

Cursing to myself, I finished it.

M a t t e r - S h i f t i n g

"....𒉈𒆠𒆷𒉌𒍣, 𒊹."

The eris dial on my scepter sunk by about 5%, and a box of earth and grass a few meters in front of me shot up from the ground violently with an impossible sound, before scattering into the air in a dense cloud of dirt. But before it could get far, she finished her second incantation, idly tipping her scepter upwards to face the air.

M a t t e r - A n n i h i l a t i n g

"....𒉈𒆠𒍥𒆤, 𒀉𒌍𒌍𒀭𒌓. 𒊹.

With a brief, high-pitched screeching noise, a large rectangular area of the falling dirt - comprising the vast majority of it - disappeared instantly, removed from existence. Without so much as taking a breath, she segued into the words of initiation for another, which I quickly recognized as the Air-Thrusting Arcana, another very simple incantation. But I'd already started my own, and spoke as fast as my tongue would allow, tracing the final component in my hand to save time.

Arcana could be invoked both verbally or non-verbally, by tracing the runes on a surface, or some combination of both at once. My skills were still very limited in that regard, confined to the techniques I knew well. Even then, my efforts were often slow and awkward. (A lack of polychronicity was maybe my weakest point as an arcanist.) But the true masters of arcane combat could flow between one and the other with ease, or even trace multiple components at the same time with different fingers.

There was still a little dirt left in the air. I dashed over to it, rendering myself a moving target and hopefully worsening her focus, and managed to finish my incantation in what must have been a quarter of a second before she did.

E n t r o p y - D e n y i n g

"...(𒌍𒌷𒀭)(𒌍𒁁𒀭)𒅥𒌈𒆜𒈣𒂠, 𒋢𒀀𒅆𒌫𒃶,𒈬𒊹."

An invisible barrier formed in front of me, and my eris dial sunk considerably, by about 15-20%. The result of the lousy, embarrassingly simplified math I'd used to get it done first.

A i r - T h r u s t i n g

"...𒁺𒂷𒉘𒄴, 𒊌𒀾𒅇𒄿, 𒊹."

The blast cracked the air like rolling thunder, and was strong enough to throw me off my feet - or it would have been, were it not for the barrier. The wind roared in my ears, and the grass bent sharply backwards, the remnants of the dirt flying back wildly until it pushed up against the glass walling.

She raised her eyebrows slightly. "That was very quick," she said. "You've improved."

I didn't waste time offering a retort. Instead, I took the opportunity she'd given me by spending a moment doing something other than casting, and sharply brought my scepter up to face her. I began reciting the Anatomy-Beguiling Arcana myself - because I was a less experienced healer than her, I had all three inscribed on my scepter in full. It took me just shy of 5 seconds, and sunk my eris dial by another 5 or so percent.

"...𒀭𒂗𒊬𒃶𒋾𒄿𒄿,𒀀𒄀...."

She didn't try to stop me, and instead merely smiled, amused. "More pragmatic, too!"

I began casting the next, the Motion-Beguiling Arcana, without hesitation. But this time, she didn't allow it to happen so easily. Her scepter shot up and pointed towards herself, and she spoke an incantation quickly - one that I didn't recognize until it had already happened.

L i g h t - W a r p i n g

" ...𒀀𒊌𒋛𒊬𒆕𒆠𒄩, 𒌈𒀊𒂠𒄭, 𒊹."

The Light-Warping Arcana, the favourite of illusionists and, allegedly, assassins. She vanished in a fleeting patchwork of multi-coloured light, completely breaking my focus on her. I could hear her move, just a bit, and see the shifting of the grass beneath her feet, but this made it impossible to cast anything direct.

Were I a war-arcanist - who usually had some degree of physical training - the logical counter would be to tackle her. But I expected the result of me trying that would just be making a total ass of myself. However, that wasn't to say it was some perfect coup de grace that would end our duel on the spot. In fact, I had several counters inscribed on my scepter. With what she must have known - or at least suspected - it was, actually, a pretty terrible tactical move.

But testing the extent of her skills against mine wasn't the point of this. Rather, this was a dance. To see if I knew the moves, and could act in concert with the music.

I had no sense of when the next attack would come, since she'd most likely either whisper or trace the incantation, so I made the next move right away, and began speaking the Death-Sensing Arcana, another staple technique of Thanatomancy. Though life-sensing would probably be a name which better conveyed its practical application - it was a divination technique that granted the caster knowledge of everything, at least everything in the target radius, that was dying.

...but of course, as even many children could tell you, most everything that's alive is dying; cells all through the body, dropping like countless millions of flies. The actually dead, so long as it was recent, burned brightest of all in its perceptions, but it could pick up everything more physically complicated than bacteria.

However, even inscribed, it was a relatively lengthy incantation. Long before I could finish, I heard the fleeting whisper of the word of termination - probably deliberate, she could have done it in total silence if she'd wanted - and felt another arcana take effect, accompanied by a low, base tone at the bottom of the range of human hearing.

W o r l d - D e a f e n i n g

"...𒀉𒈾𒄿𒄿, 𒄷𒈾𒀀𒇉𒅋𒀝𒅈𒋜𒆕𒊹.

The World-Deafening Arcana, which suppressed all sound waves, rendering an area utterly silent. As well as its applications in stealth, it was an excellent way to make an otherwise proficient vocal caster completely flub their incantation. When one can't hear the sounds coming off of one's own tongue, it becomes incredibly difficult to say anything reliably.

And, no doubt, she'd remembered that the Life-Sensing Arcana was the one from my repertoire that I was least skilled at casting.

I had to stop at once before I committed any eris and put myself at risk of a discharge. Having frustrated my attempts at a counteroffensive, her next move would most likely be to strip me of my motion defense. She was probably already in the process of speaking the words.

But this time, she was the one who had fallen for my bluff.

While I'd been casting the Life-Sensing Arcana vocally, I'd been subtly tracing the beginnings of the Entropy-Accelerating Arcana in my palm - it was one of the only few I knew well for the option to even be viable. I waited a moment, until she had probably committed the eris, then finished the rest vocally with as much swiftness as I could muster, coming precariously close to tripping over my words in the process. As I finished, a painful groaning sound filled the air, like metal grinding against rock.

E n t r o p y - A c c e l e r a t i n g

"....𒋜,𒌅𒋫,𒅥𒌈𒆜𒈣𒂠, 𒋢𒀀𒅆𒌫𒃶,𒈬𒊹!"

The Entropy-Accelerating Arcana, like its cousin, was an abstract application of the Power rather than a single-use one. In crude terms, its function was to accelerate the loss of energy and coherency from a system. You could use it to do things like partially emulate the effects of rapid aging on tissue (which I know sounds extremely sinister, but it really does have some medical applications) or, though it was a horrifically inefficient way of doing it, make a stone wall crumble to dust.

But it could also be applied, rather than on a physical target, to the higher planar-level on which the Power operated, disrupting its ability to hold energy thus rendering any arcana within range much less efficient, causing almost all in progress to fail at once, and any cast from that point forward to expend far more eris than normal.

The downside was that it would also affect the caster-- Well, unless you had an incredibly developed understanding of how eris moved through the Higher Planes. But that wouldn't matter much in this case, because I only used enough eris to make it last for a few seconds. Regardless, it was still intensive and rushed, and my dial sunk by about another 10%.

As soon as it took effect, she appeared again - a few meters off to the left of me and, as I'd hoped, in the process of speaking her next incantation. Now that the numbers for it would be insufficient, she'd have no choice but to finish it and let it fail due to an eris deficiency. And that gave me at least a few seconds to make my next move. I spun my scepter in her direction and started casting the Motion-Beguiling-Arcana, before she could start it again herself--

...except, she didn't stop. And, as she raised her voice to speak more loudly, I could hear that wasn't the arcana she was casting, either. And the numbers she was speaking were much larger than what they should have been.

No way, I thought to myself. She saw it coming?!

Of course she saw it coming, another part replied. You're trying to beat the master with their own tools.

I started casting at once regardless, but she finished quickly, her lips turning upward into a gentle smile.

E n t r o p y - R e v e r s i n g

"...𒆠𒈪,𒌷𒌷,𒀭𒊩𒌆𒅅,𒋢𒀀𒅆𒌫𒃶,𒈬,𒊹."

Suddenly, the dirt that had been displaced or else blown around a little earlier reappeared and shot back to its original position, reassembling itself in back roughly into the shape it had held earlier - grass included - and blasting everything in its path in the process. Which, due to the manner in which our positions had changed earlier, included me. Because I'd broken my own shield by stopping any active arcana a moment ago, it flooded me, pushing me off balance. I stumbled forward, losing my balance and, a moment later, my progress in the incantation as I had to gasp for air.

If I'd been far enough in when that had happened, the discharge might have seriously hurt me. That she'd gone ahead with it anyway was testament to the faith she had in my abilities.

Well, that, or she was sincerely trying to kill me. That was also a possibility.

I tried to start again, but some of the dirt got in my throat, and I ended up coughing violently instead.

Damn, damn!

I couldn't do anything for the next several seconds, trying desperately to clear my throat, hacking and coughing with my mouth on my fist. By the time I'd finally recovered, she'd already finished another.

M o t i o n - B e g u i l i n g

"...𒄴𒄠/𒂔𒄴𒋤𒅆𒍣𒃶𒄖𒐊𒐊. 𒂵𒀀𒊹."

...and right away, started on the third and final.

Of my three resistances, my neurological resistance was the only one that was slightly compromised. It phased in and out intermittently, on a roughly 50/50 basis. There were ways to capitalize on that weakness much faster than using a beguilement.

So in other words, this was it. If the words finished coming out of her mouth, then I'd lost.

Unhelpfully, I found myself panicking a bit, trying to think of my next move within the few seconds I had. Could I use something to try and create another distraction, or maybe knock her off balance? No, it was too late for any incantation I didn't both have inscribed and know front to back. Could I get behind something? There was nothing in sight. Could I shout something or do something physically to try and distract her? We hadn't exactly agreed on any rules in advance, but that wouldn't be following any dueling conventions I'd ever heard of... And even if it worked, it would only buy me a second.

But then I noticed it.

At the upper end of one of her exposed arms, close to where it met the elbow, she'd been grazed a little bit - it might've happened when I'd pulled the ground up, since there'd probably been some sharper pebbles scattered around... or maybe somehow when she'd been concealed by the Light-Warping Arcana. It didn't matter. Since we were relatively close, I could just about see a hint of blood.

This was the chance I needed, and the one I was willing to take in my desperate state of mind. Without hesitation, and in a manner that was incredibly uncharacteristic, I kicked a sandal into the dirt and all but threw myself towards her, taking up one of my fingers and biting it while I aimed my scepter with the other.

There was another way to get around peoples resistances that didn't involve using the three beguilements, or for that matter, any other arcana at all. There was one exception to the rule on using the Power on humans: oneself. After all, if one couldn't, it would be impossible to do things like create shields or to use any type of divination arcana - since they involved feeding information directly into the mind.

This had been examined during the Mourning Period, too, and a loophole had been discovered as a result. Compared to the strictness of the resistance, the mechanism by which the Power judged the caster to be, well, the caster was pretty liberal in nature. It had to be, otherwise it could lead to making some people being functionally unable to use the Power at all. Thus, anything part of the same unbroken bloodstream was perceived as the same individual.

As a result, if you happened to have access to your opponent's bloodstream, and shared a blood type so that, even in just one little spot, it would be hard to distinguish where one ended and the other began... Which in this case, I happened to know I did...

Well, you see where I'm going with this.

I didn't have much time - if she realized what I was doing, she'd be just as able to take advantage of it as I was. I half-lept on top of her, thrusting my left forefinger at the wound with the hope that I'd drawn enough blood, and spun my scepter upwards to face her head. She didn't seem too surprised, but raised an eyebrow, just finishing her own incantation--

She hasn't realized! Now, quickly!

---and, having it on my scepter and knowing it by heart, I rushed out the first half of the Life-Slaying Arcana.

L i f e - S l a y i n g

"...𒋤𒋛𒄭𒂗𒌷𒈿𒇲𒄴! Heed my grace, in the name of those lost!" I shouted, saying the ceremonial words. "SUBMIT!"

She stopped her incantation, and looked down at me - my head was a little lower, because of the awkward way in which I'd grabbed her arm - with a curious expression. A moment passed in silence, the last of the dirt still in the air settling into place.

Eventually, she cracked a small smile. "Unorthodox, to be certain," she said, "but cunning, all the same. You've become much better at improvising."

I hesitated, not sure what to do with the compliment.

Up close, like this, her age became more evident. At a distance she didn't look much older than I was, but here, I could see the subtle stiff, pulled-back quality to her skin, the thinness and lack of colour. The hardness of the veins in her eyes, and the deep-set fatigue beneath them.

Regardless, she was beautiful, in a way. High cheekbones, a nobility and strength in her eyes...

Suddenly, I became aware of the awkwardness of the moment, with me still pressed up close to her, panting from the adrenaline rush, and my forefinger - which was now starting to feel quite sore - pushing hard into her arm. I sharply disengaged, lowering my scepter and turning my eyes toward the ground.

"U-Uh. Forgive me, grandmaster." I hesitated. "That wasn't appropriate conduct for a duel."

"Considering I ambushed you without explanation, I'm not sure 'appropriate conduct' applies." She shook her head slightly, closing her eyes. "I just praised you for your quick thinking, and you're still apologizing."

"Oh," I said. "I'm sorry."

Her smile widened slightly. "You haven't changed." She let out a small sigh. "But, in any event. I accept your mercy and surrender this duel to you, Utsushikome of Fusai. Well done."

Yes! I thought to myself. Somehow, I managed to impress her!

Wow, another part said. It's a little embarrassing how pleased you are about that.

"Uh, thank you, grandmaster," I said, still not looking up. "You honor me."

"However," she added, curling her brow. "I will note that you pronounced the character '𒂗' in your final incantation incorrectly. So if this would have been a real fight, it would have failed, and I would have disintegrated you, since you'd disabled both our defenses." She made the kind of sad smile one might give to a baby that had just managed to make a mess all over their crib, but in a way that was at least cute. "Assuming we weren't both set aflame by the discharge, that is."

Damn it!

I cursed to myself. Why had I tried a physical tactic? I knew physical tactics made me tense up and slur my speech. Stupid, stupid.

I should probably provide some context for all this.

This woman who I was speaking to was Neferuaten of Amat, another of the members of the order's inner circle. She was best known as the second of the two founders of the school of entropic Thanatomancy, and the first to teach it practically, rather than in theory. In scholarly circles, she was renowed for her creativity and unorthodox methods which had resulted in the first major shakeup in what was widely considered the most stagnant discipline in hundreds of years. An achievement for which she was loved by foreign scholars and loathed by many local to her, especially her superiors.

She was also the only other member of the order, besides Linos and my grandfather, whom I knew personally. I'd studied under her in Tem-Aphat. As both an arcanist and an individual, I had a great amount of respect for her.

...alright, that might be understating it a bit. Of all the people I'd ever met, she was probably the most intelligent, both intellectually and emotionally. In years past, I'd often found myself shocked by the kind of observations she made, by the way she perceived the whole world in a manner that felt revolutionary.

Most people, for all their superficial differences, tend to think along very similar lines. They parrot the same pieces of conventional wisdom over and over, regurgitate outlooks they read in books that are themselves regurgitated from other, older books. But when she spoke, this ferocious novelty came through, an unwillingness to accept any pre-packaged understanding. Not out of blind skepticism, in the way some people are, but rather out of a kind of unceasing inquisitiveness. It was striking.

I owed a lot to her, for many reasons.

I'd learned that she was part of the order years and years ago, before I'd ever even considered studying Thanatomancy. A couple months ago, though, I would never have expected to be meeting with her in this context. But it was funny how these things turned out.

I wondered if maybe she'd somehow planned it all, from the very beginning. I wouldn't put it past her.

"Still, though," she said, her fingers twitching subtly as she invoked a healing arcana over the wound. "I really am impressed that you noticed the wound, You're as perceptive a pupil as ever."

I blinked. "You knew it was there?"

She gave a small nod. "I made it myself, before I approached you."

"You mean, you planned all of that in advance?" I asked, taken aback. "You wanted me to try that tactic?"

"A little test," she said, with a nod. "I told you as much when you left the House of Resurrection, did I not?" The edge of her smile twitched into just a very slight smirk. "Just because you graduated, doesn't mean the lessons have come to an end."

I scratched at the back of my neck. "I'd sort of got the impression you meant that in terms of life," I said. "Not literally."

She chuckled slightly. "Perhaps it was a somewhat indulgent act of me." She paused, her expression growing a little more serious. "But there are some things that can only be understood first hand. And I wanted to see for myself if you'd kept yourself sharp these past few years."

"I've still been doing all of the exercises," I said. "The focus training, the conscious tongue movements, the meditation..."

"The physical training?" she asked, an eyebrow raised.

I hesitated, glancing downward. "I've sometimes been doing the physical training."

She chuckled. "Well, your diligence is coming through, either way."

"Thank you, grandmaster," I said, bowing my head again. A little disappointment came into my expression. "I really did think I'd caught you off guard, though."

"Oh, come now. Don't look so dejected." She crossed her arms. "I have been doing this for quite a long time. There's no shame in winning through taking a small chance I offered you." Her smile became more mischievous. "Or perhaps you did win, and I'm merely saying this to save face at having got overconfident and lost to a novitiate less than two decades from her induction."

I smiled, raising my head a little bit. I very much doubted that was the case, but it was nice of her to say it, all the same.

I opened my mouth as if to speak.

I've missed you, I wanted to say.

I didn't, though, in the end. It felt too awkward, for the context. I pulled my mouth back shut.

"Really, though! You should be proud." She continued. "Your weakness was always in dealing with surprises, and you handled that one remarkably well." She gestured towards the glass behind us. "Especially since I caught you already taken rather aback by one of our experiments."

Oh, right. With the fight, I'd almost forgotten about the towering abomination in the foreground.

I turned my eyes back towards the the towering plant behind us. "I was sort of wondering about that."

She turned her eyes up towards it. "It's quite breathtaking, isn't it?" She stepped a little closer towards the glass, with me following in turn. "It's an old project, started by a member of the order who is sadly no longer with us. I play a small part in its maintenance, though Durvasa is its primary caretaker at this point, bless him."

"I've never seen anything like it," I said. "Is it a plant?"

"In a manner of speaking," she said. "The biomatter is akin to a fungus, but it's far more dense, which is the reason its even able to stand in the face of the enormous pressure-- The consistency is closer to limestone than wood. In addition, rather than grown, it's development could probably be better described as construction..."

"Construction." I took a second to process what exactly she'd meant. "You mean, someone put it together manually? Like a sculpture."

"Not far from the truth," she said, nodding. "The components, though biological, were all fabricated and assembled with the Power. Although make no mistake. At this point, it is very much alive."

"I see," I said, and then asked the obvious question. "Why... do something like this?"

"That's a bit more of difficult a question to answer." She pursed her lips. "As I understand it, the original purpose was one part proof of concept and one part ideological symbol, but I fear it's become subject to a certain amount of ambition creep." She approached the glass a little closer, coming right up to the edge. "It was intended to be a life form that could survive both indefinitely and under any circumstances, even in the most hostile of environments... And that was able to recover from almost any damage, regardless of its nature."

"Is that why it's underwater? Um-- More directly underwater than us, rather."

She nodded. "Yes, that's right. At this many fathoms, the bottom of the ocean is arguably the most hostile environment in the world, possibly even more so than outer space. There's no better place to test the strength of a lifeform than it unless you can find yourself the inside of a black hole."

For some reason, there was a funny look in her eyes when she said that last bit. Like she was making an inside joke.

"The idea," she continued, "was to demonstrate that, even if it might be eons until its achieved for us, a pure, true immortality - not the fragile sort that we aspire to as human beings presently, but that of a divine, truly unkillable creature - could theoretically be possessed by a biological life form." She looked back in my direction and smiled slightly. "All carbon-based life, however alien in appearance it may seem, is close kin to mankind in relative terms. If it can be done for it, then..."

"It could be done for us," I finished. "For people."

"That is the theory," she said, with a small nod.

I scratched behind my ear. "But, something like that... Something meant to be able to survive in any place, to be hard to kill... Wouldn't be... Like this, would it? It would be a mold, or something. A hyper-simplistic life form."

"Well, I did say it was subject to ambition creep," she said. "You're quite correct - a colony of microorganisms would be the best candidate for the goal-as-written, and that was how this begun in a laboratory dish some decades past. Many incredibly resilient ones even evolved naturally, such as the infamous tardigrade, which can sometimes survive in a state of stasis even in a vacuum." She clicked her tongue. "However, even the most simple forms of life ultimately require energy and some degree of base materials in order to survive. At some point down the line, someone got the fool idea in their head that, for something living to be truly classed as undying, it would have to possess the ability to obtain or synthesize these independent of its material circumstances."

"But that's physically impossible," I stated.

She raised an eyebrow. "Is it?"

"It must be," I said, with a moderate amount of confidence. "A living being can't thrive with more than a handful of ways of collecting nutrition, or the maintenance the inactive ones require will surpass what's brought in by those that are active. It's why more complex life tends to have fewer. Plants photosynthesize, extract from the soil and water... Wheras we just put everything in our mouth."

She nodded a few times, looking vaguely pleased with the answer. "That's a fair explanation for the energy problem. What about base materials?"

I hesitated. "Well, isn't that obvious? Because you can't get base materials from nowhere," I said. "Life can only thrive in places in which its base components are abundant."

She tutted. "Not quite approaching the issue from the mindset of an entropist." She looked back up at the tree, gesturing towards its trunk. "Technically speaking, organisms only require new base materials because of imperfections in their operation. Human beings only thirst because we haven't evolved better ways of cooling ourselves than sweating and disposing of waste materials than urination, and we only need to dispose of those waste materials because we have no means of making good of use of them. These are flaws in our design; were there an engineer, I'd call it shoddy work." She looked back to me. "A perfect being, however, would be - aside from energy - a closed system. Nothing would go in or out."

"Is that what you've been trying to accomplish with this...?" I asked. "It doesn't really look like much of a perfect being."

I stared at the entity once again. At the massive, bulging structure, like some deformed bees nest, and the jagged outcroppings that seemed to have no concern for the laws of physics. The strange colours danced in front of my eyes. It hurt to look at, like the part of my brain meant to conceptualize objects didn't know how to file it properly.

"Looks can be deceiving," she said.

Well, she was right about that, at the very least.

"Does it work?" I asked.

"To a limited extent," she said. "It is, at this point, far more theoretically efficient than any naturally-evolved form of life in the world, even those cultivated by the Ironworkers during the long silence. It barely produces any waste whatsoever - never sheds biomatter save for a tiny amount from the outer shell, the reabsorbtion of which should become possible with a new component I am presently designing."

I scanned the interior of the glass chamber. Sure enough, I could see a small measure of detritus - resembling chunks of crystal - at the foot of the trunk, among the ocean sands.

"It is, however, very much a work in progress," she continued. "The mechanism I have designed to reintegrate waste is overactive, and slowly damages itself inadvertently. As it stands, it still requires twice-yearly maintenance to prevent imbalance and decay." She snorted, laughing a little to herself. "More a monument to our failures than a symbol to our success as things stand, I suppose. A being intended to live under its own power forever, and it can't even last as long as the average garden plant."

"It's still sounds pretty amazing to me. I mean, even for something that's just a concept," I said. "That it's able to do even that much, under so much strain-- Most people would call it practically a miracle."

"You're very kind, Utsushikome." She ran a hand through her hair idly, letting out a relaxed sigh. "But alas, there are no miracles, save for the ones we make for ourselves. I would wager I'll be working on this for a very long time indeed, should I be fortunate enough to live to do so."

"Fortunate?" I blinked, then looked to her with sudden concern. "Have you been ill?"

"Not at all. I've simply been - and continue to be - old." She gave a wry smile. "But that is why we are all here, after all, and why I'm set upon this mad endeavor to begin with. So in that respect, you needn't fret for my sake."

I wasn't quite sure what to say to that, and it sounded like she wanted me to change the subject. So, I did.

"What about the energy supply?" I asked. "That explains one of the two, but..."

"Ah, right," she said, with a nod. "That part is Durvasa's purview, and also the reason for its... Somewhat unorthodox appearance. You see--"

"Utsu? You still out here...?"

The voice had come from off to the left, so both of us turned in that direction. Theodoros, it seemed, had just returned to the bioenclosure, the seal sliding shut behind him. I held up my hand, and he spotted us after a few moments and began sprinting over. I saw some anxiety in his expression; he probably hadn't mentally prepared himself to speak with another conclave member just yet.

Fortunately for him, that anxiety would, in about, five seconds, be replaced with a far stronger expression.

"Um, hello!" he said. "Pardon me, I wasn't expecting someone else. Utsu, would you mind introdu--Oh my goodness." His cut himself off as his gaze turned towards the entity in the foreground.

"Ah, you must be Linos's son," Neferuaten said, with a warm expression. She glanced in my direction. "The two of were out here on a romp together, I presume?"

I nodded. "That's right."

She looked back towards him. "It speaks well of you both to be curious about this place, beyond what's required of you. You'd be surprised how many people just sit in the guest house for almost their whole stay, as if they're terrified something peculiar is going to gobble them up."

I can't imagine how they might get that impression, part of me thought.

"But, in any event!" she said, cheerfully. "Let's make introductions. I'm Neferuaten of Amat, grandmaster of entropic Thanatomancy, and second Magi at the House of Resurrection." She smiled. "I've heard many great things about you from your father."

"O-oh... Oh, yes, pardon me." He turned to her and sharply bowed. "It's a great honor to meet you. I've always greatly admired your work in the, ah..." His eyes flicked back to the glass nervously. "I'm terribly sorry, but can we talk about the-- Rather, I'm not the only one seeing this thing, am I...?"

"Uh, no, Theo," I said, trying to sound reassuring. "It's definitely there. Though, if it's any consolation, I had the same reaction."

He nodded, not looking particularly soothed by this. "That's... A small relief?" He gawked at it. "What is it?"

"In fact, you caught me in the middle of an explanation about the very subject," Neferuaten said. "Perhaps I ought to start over?"

"That might be for the best," I said, looking at Theodoros, who's eyes were so wide they looked on the verge of popping out of his skull.

"Very well," she said, with a gentle nod. "Incidentally, to make discussing this a little more convenient, the name of the project is the Nittaimalaru."

"I'm not much of a linguist," I said. "Is that Viraaki?"

"Old Viraaki," she corrected.

"What's the translation?"

"Everblossom," she said.