The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

7:45 PM | The Ninsirsir, Deck 3 | December 31st | 1608 COVENANT

Gudrun asked the obvious conclusion. "What for?"

Lamu grit her teeth. "It's. Difficult to explain."

The other woman considered this for a few moments, her brow slowly dropping. "Yeeeeaaaah," she drawled. "See, in my experience, whenever I ask somebody why some asshole has it out for them and they say something like that, it means they did something like. Turbo-fucked. And that's usually when they don't feel pissed off enough to wanna smoke somebody's ass at a charity dinner, so..."

"It isn't like that," Lamu said, trying not to sound defensive but sounding defensive anyway. "I-- We haven't done anything wrong. It's a misunderstanding. It must be."

"But why would she be having that misunderstanding though."

"We..." Lamu trailed off, hesitating and taking a breath. "Have you ever heard of a group called the 'Order of the Universal Panacea'?"

"Uh, nope," Gudrun replied instantly. "What does 'panacea' mean?"

"It's a term from Gr-- Inotian mythology," Lamu explained. This had really thrown her off-kilter. "It means a medicine that can cure anything."

"Ohh, you meant, like, panahkia."

"No, it's pronounced pah-nuh-see-uh."

"That sounds wrong to me."

Lamu breathed. This wasn't important. "It was an organization that existed from the late 3rd to early 15th century. Their mission was to try to extend human lifespans."

"Extend huma-- Shit, wait, this kind of rings a bell," Gudrun cut herself off, looking to the side and pursing her lips. "Were they the ones that got offed in that famous murder? Like where the bodies were all fucked up and nobody could figure out what happened?"

"So you do know about it."

"Well, there was an episode about it on some historical true crime thing my mom used to watch, I think. So I don't like. Know know about it." She frowned. "I just remember saying that I wanted to live forever, and her saying it was only gonna be for rich people. Whatever-- What do they have to do with all this?"

"Our class was there that day, when they found the bodies."

Gudrun's eyebrows shot up. "Shit, for real?"

"For real. The murders happened at university. They were visiting for a reception with some of the staff and donors, and before that they were taking a tour around the grounds when it happened. And our class was invited along." She hesitated, still not entirely sure it was a good idea to be telling the woman in front of her any of this. "...and the reason we were invited along was because they were familiar with us already. We'd visited them in their headquarters earlier in the year."

"So this girl, what, had some connection to these assholes?" Her eyes suddenly widened. "Wait, are you saying you guys killed them?"

"No, I said it was a misunderstanding. And I meant it literally when I said it was difficult to explain." Though, Lamu thought, she's actually only a couple of degrees removed from the truth in guessing that. "When we went there, it was ostensibly a sort of outreach exercise. They'd been removed from the wider academic community for a long time, and the school was sending us there with the intent of it becoming their gateway, in a manner of speaking, and profiting accordingly." She glanced at the door before sharply refocusing her gaze on Gudrun, both being overheard and her misinterpreting something feeling like equally dangerous possibilities. "But that wasn't the real reason."

"What... was the real reason, then?"

Lamu sharpened her tone, hoping that if she seemed prickly enough, Gudrun might be disinclined to poke at the finer points of what she was about to reveal. "It was for an experiment."

"Experiment."

"Yes."

"Uh."

"I-- I can't get into it," Lamu said quickly, "but the Order was going to... do something with our class. Or, no-- With some of us. Most of us." She could see her own lip twitching sharply in the mirrors as she tried to forcefully calculate her expression; calming, indifferent, resolute, a hint of traumatized anxiety; what would cultivate sympathy? "It was consensual. Everyone who was part of it knew about what was really happening in advance, and everyone who didn't wasn't going to be involved."

"Okay, but what do you mean when you say 'experiment'," Gudrun pushed. "Are we talking like. Social experiment? Mad science shit?"

"I said I can't get into it."

"Yeah but like. You're talking about some old freaks 'doing something' to a bunch of kids. Secretively. In their hideout." She quirked her brow. "I'm not made of stone, man. I'm gonna draw conclusions."

"It wasn't..." Lamu paused. She didn't trust herself to say it wasn't anything inappropriate. "It wasn't anything sexual. As I said, it was consensual; we'd all agreed to it long before the event happened. I was one of those of us who were aware what was happening, and I was by far the youngest, so my saying that should... it should count for something."

"You don't even sound like you believe that."

She didn't, but that was beside the point. "They didn't even physically touch us. It was just to see if we could... If a process could be managed." Need to move past this. "In any event, the experiment was cancelled. And that's what led to the deaths of the Order's leaders on that day, and the eventual dissolution of the organization."

"Why would it being cancelled lead to--"

Lamu, without even really meaning to, lurched forward with bulging eyes like a lizard about to swallow its prey whole. "Gudrun, I'm not paying you to ask incessant questions."

"Ahhh!" The other woman yelped and leaned back in turn, her waist pressing against the sink. "Fine, shit, forget it!"

Lamu flinched, her body feeling like it was being overcome by rigor mortis. This wasn't going well; she tried to calm down. "The experiment was about a new technology," she explained sharply. "A politically dangerous one. The Order had a lot of enemies. There were people sympathetic to them among our class." All of this was technically true. "You're not stupid. Draw your own conclusions."

Gudrun nodded with theatrical nervousness. Lamu was not socially adept enough to discern whether this was sincere or some kind of bit. After a moment, she recovered enough to ask a question. "How did you even get, like, fuckin' scouted for something like this? For creepy top secret science, or whatever this is all a euphemism for?"

"It's generational. My-- My uncle was a member of the Order, too. The others had their own connections." She squinted. "That includes the woman we're dealing with now. A grandparent of hers was a member, but - for reasons that you don't need to know - she wasn't part of the experiment. She didn't even know about it. Not then, at least."

"You think she knows now."

"Yes, that's exactly the problem." She paused for a moment. "The experiment is... something she could have got the wrong idea about. Or, no, it would be more accurate to say that it's something you could think about in different ways, positive and negative. Depending on your sense of ethics. Perspective." Lamu cleared her throat roughly. "I don't know if it's about her friend--"

"Friend?"

"Another member of our class," Lamu clarified quickly. "Deceased. I don't know her circumstances well enough to judge whether it's about that or something more personal that I can't understand, but it's evident that she has the impression that what we did was not only extremely bad, but caused some deep harm or offense to her personally."

"That's an understatement," Gudrun said. "But you're being so vague I don't know whether to think it's crazy or not."

Lamu glared at her.

"Okay, okay, fine," Gudrun replied, throwing her hands into the air. "Opsec. I get it. You think that she thinks you all killed her friend or did something fucked up to her or some shit, and now she's gone psycho and wants you all dead. But wasn't this hundreds of years ago? Why would she suddenly wanna do this now? Couldn't it be something different?"

"She made her motives reasonably clear when we spoke. And it sounded as though she only learned the truth recently." If so, it's far too inconvenient to be a coincidence.

"Why didn't you just clear this up for her, then? If it's a misunderstanding."

"I tried to," Lamu said, which was another technical truth. More accurately, the 'misunderstanding' she tried to correct was that she had anything to do with the matter, as in truth she suspected giving the woman more information could only worsen the situation. "But she has no reason to trust me. It's at least true that we all conspired to deceive her about what was really happening. There are reasons for her to be angry, just... not to this extent." She tightened her lips, glancing towards the ground. "Obviously she's unstable to the point of being indifferent to minutia, otherwise she wouldn't be talking about killing all of us when only some were even involved. For all I know, she's in the midst of a psychotic break."

"Well, then I guess that brings us back to where we started," Gudrun said. "This girl's an arcanist too, right?"

"Obviously. She was one of the better ones in our class, and prolific in adulthood as well. She's definitionally far more dangerous than the average person."

"Dunno about that one. I've met plenty of arcanists who were ass at fighting." It wasn't much of a mystery what Gudrun meant by 'met'. "But anyway, so are you. And so are half the mooks on this fucking thing. So why are you freaking out like she stands a chance of pulling this off? She's probably just trying to psych you out, make you do something stupid. Unless you're burying the lede and she's richer than God or something."

Lamu hesitated. "...no, there's nothing like that. Or, rather, she is wealthy. But not to anywhere near the degree that some of the people here tonight are." Her gaze fell doubtfully for the first time in a while. "I must admit, there's not a completely rational basis to consider her threats credible. But something about the way she said it..." No, that's not the reason. "Us all happening to be on this ship at the same time - it's a statistical impossibility. Some of us aren't even particularly successful. The only way it could ever possibly happen is if it were arranged, and the only way she would know about it if she were part of, or at least in the know regarding, that process."

"Couldn't she just be bullshitting about that too?" Gudrun speculated.

"It's not impossible, but I doubt it. While we were talking, she pointed out another member of our class nearby. Even that much is incredibly unlikely to have happened by accident." Lamu shook her head. "I don't know how, but she has some kind of control here, or at least knowledge of something that's going to happen that I lack. If her goal was just to capitalize on some of us being here to enact her 'vengeance', then objectively the best tactic would have been to assassinate us discreetly, capitalizing on the element of surprise. The fact that she didn't do so, that she chose instead to openly announce her intentions, speaks to a frightening confidence. Even if her goal is ultimately impossible, I'm extremely concerned about what she's going to try and do."

Gudrun turned away herself, looking contemplative. "Yeah, she's got in your head for sure. This is some game theory shit." She furrowed her brow for a moment, then looked back. "Let's work backwards, here. Who actually decides the guest list for this thing?"

Lamu considered. "...the ship is owned and the event hosted by Tar-Isgansar of Sem, the former First Administrator. But based on what they said during the opening speech, it's done under the umbrella of a group called the 'Laodike Foundation'... I doubt he does everything himself, so it's probably someone employed by or associated with them."

Gudrun clicked her tongue. "Haven't heard of any 'Laodike Foundation'. Not really tuned into the old-money-giving-shit-away scene." Her eyes flickered. "The lady who set this up for you-- What did you say her name was?"

"I didn't. But it's 'Nhi'." Lamu hadn't heard of the Laodike Foundation either, which now that she was thinking about it struck her as odd, because there were very few elements of the high society of the Mourning Realms of which she had no knowledge. Did they always host this event, or did it have a rotating sponsor?

"She's the one who hooked us up with tickets to this in the first place, right? So she'd definitely know who was making those calls."

"It's not that simple. Utsushikome knew about the deal I made with her somehow, too, and the meeting we're supposed to have tomorrow afternoon. That's another reason her threats feel like they have weight."

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"But did she know about the meeting you told me she'd called for tonight?"

Now that she thought about it, she hadn't. She'd mentioned the one they'd planned for tomorrow at noon when attempting to impart her apparent omniscience of the situation, but the absence of that detail actually suggested a limit. She probably had some connection to the planning process, but wasn't aware of everything that was happening. That felt somehow reassuring...

...unless it was the exact opposite. Nhi had said there was a 'complication'. What if this was the complication? Or worse, what if the message itself was bait?

"I'm guessing that's a no," Gudrun concluded after she failed to reply.

"She... didn't mention it, but I'm not sure what to take from that," Lamu explained. "You're not wrong in thinking the most direct way to get to the bottom of this would be to talk to Nhi. She was definitely involved in the organization of this event. But that's still hours away, and what's more, it's possible the two of them have been working together since the beginning. It would make sense, if she's lured all of us into one place."

Gudrun nodded a few times, then rubbed her chin in thought. There'd been a subtle shift in her posture over the last few moments of conversation, like she now considered herself the authority of the pair and Lamu as some hysterical waif. This was a dynamic shift that Lamu did not feel would end well if allowed to fester, and would need to be corrected.

"Okay Lamu," she eventually declared casually. "Here's how we're gonna play this."

"Okay."

"So. Plan A. This slut's maybe pulling the strings of some grand murder plot here, or maybe she's just a psycho. But either way, she's just flesh and blood. One fucko in a big-ass crowd. We'll go back out there--" Gudrun pointed to the door illustratively. "--and I'll just talk to her."

Lamu lowered her brow. "You'll talk to her."

"Yeah," Gudrun affirmed. "Well. Maybe more than talk. I'll pull up at her table, be like 'Oh, my god, Mei, I didn't see you there babe, it's been so long'! And then we'll work this shit out. Why she'd threaten my bud, how she knows all the stuff, and what her game is. And if she tries any shit, I'll break one of her fuckin' fingers on the down-low faster."

"Gudrun, did you miss when I told you she was a grafted arcanist?"

"So what? I bet they've got this place warded harder than the First Administrator's kiddie den. She wouldn't dare, not in the middle of the ballroom. Even if she managed to get a cast off, the battlemagi would scry-and-die her ass faster than old world light." She inclined her head. "And I even heard the first syllable of the initiating word I'd bite her lips off."

"Is... that a euphemism?"

"No, I mean I'd bite her fucking lips off her face with my teeth so she wouldn't be able to talk."

No matter how often it happened, Lamu wasn't sure she'd ever get used to how casually Gudrun could transition into threats of extreme violence.

"Seriously, you can't pussyfoot around when it comes to problems with this," the woman went on. "I've fucked with a lot of arcanists and a lot of big thinkers - well, same thing a lot of the time - and they always expect you to be super cautious whenever they're pulling some crap, 'cause that's the way they think. Comes from having your lunch stolen when you're a kid or not getting laid until you're in your 30s or whatever. So they always shit themselves when you get up in their face and bring the big dick energy. It's basic evopsych, animal kingdom shit. You gotta lock in and ass dom."

"Ass... dom."

"Assert dominance, dude," Gudrun clarified. "Trust me. I know this stuff."

"I-- What's Plan B."

Gudrun sounded significantly less enthusiastic about Plan B. "Well, if we can't do that because her table fills up or you think it's too much of a risk, the fallback is that we focus on meeting this Nhi chick. There are a few ways we could do it. I could shadow Utsu-whatever, make sure she can't do anything with the meeting-- But I guess that might not be any good if there are other people in on it. Better bet might be to stay out in public until the meeting so she can't do anything, then stake it out early in the halls. There's a lot of traffic, even there, so nobody would be able to do shit to us. Then when Nhi showed up, we could make her talk somewhere more public."

Lamu found herself nodding slightly. Even though her phrasing was typically deranged, there was actually merit to both of Gudrun's ideas. Using the public nature of the event to force a more explicit confrontation - or alternatively, to guard them from harm more passively - were good ideas. No-- They were obvious ideas. The only reason she hadn't thought of them herself was because this had knocked her off kilter.

She needed to be rational. Just making grand threats didn't make someone all-powerful. Yes, the fact it was her in particular - descendant of the person the Order had betrayed when all this was being set in motion - lent her words a certain mythic gravitas. But it was just that: Mythic. Blood was just blood. And the Utsushikome of Fusai she'd known when she was young was little more than a gloomily-awkward idiot savant whose skills beyond the elementary laid almost singularly in refining arcane formula. As a caster-combatant, her style had always been rigid and traditionalist to a fault. Nothing she'd seen from her in the years since indicated that had fundamentally changed. Lamu was rusty, but if she didn't hold herself back...

But it couldn't come to that. The more she thought about it, the more expedient Gudrun's first plan actually felt. It was probably stupid to think of the woman as some mastermind who had accomplices. No-- It was more likely someone was pulling her strings. They must have fed her the information about what had happened at the conclave.

A dark thought crossed her mind. Could it have been the Brotherhood...?

Now that she considered it, it felt almost too obvious. They had to have people on the inside of Nhi's organization. They must have learned of her double betrayal - first trying to cut ties after fulfilling their last request, and now this attempt to sell them out - and set this up to try and derail it by any means necessary, or maybe even to clean up all loose ends from 200 years ago. That was the only logical explanation. And who could know what else they'd have waiting for her.

This was bad. This was very very bad. The more she thought about it, the worse it was. They needed to get to the truth of all this and warn those on ship with actual power fast.

Lamu swallowed. "Alright. We'll do it."

"Which one?"

"Both of them," she answered quickly. "We'll go back to the ballroom, and on the way back to our seats you'll 'notice' her identity. You'll whisper something to me when we're sitting down to make this clear. Then, when I signal you, you'll get up and confront her in the way you said."

Gudrun seemed surprised. "Wasn't expecting you to agree so fast."

"Well, I am. Hopefully that will be enough to get some idea about what's going on, but either way we should try to meet Nhi as soon as possible afterwards. After dinner we'll make some excuse to leave for another few minutes and head up to the garden on the level above. If she's in any public area of the ship other than the ballroom, it'll be around there, and you can use those eyes of yours to look down through the ceiling to see if she's anywhere closer to the stage. That'll be the most discreet way to go about it, and if it doesn't work we can fall back on the plan of waiting outside the room well in advance." She exhaled sharply.

The other woman was silent for a moment, but then nodded casually. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Yeah, sounds good to me. I mean, I suggested most of it, and your ideas are fine too, so sure."

Lamu hesitated. Somehow, Gudrun accepting this without any further feedback made her worried rather than reassured. The already-noticeable smell of alcohol on her breath didn't help. "Are you... certain? You can't see any way the situation could be complicated?"

"I mean, sure. Anything could happen. Maybe she's a martial arts guru now or something, or maybe I'll fuck up and get tossed in the brig." She shrugged. "Beats doing fuck all, though, right?"

Lamu frowned, conflicted.

Gudrun smiled reassuringly, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Relax, Lam-Lam. Just leave this to your buddy Gudrun. You brought me here for this kind of thing. I'll have this wrapped up in a hot minute, and then I can get back to schmoozing that asshole we're sitting with."

She nodded hesitantly. "Alright."

"Great." She gave Lamu a firm pat, then turned around to face one of the mirrors. "Gimmie a sec first though. I wanna fix my makeup. Gotta make sure I'm serving cunt."

"Gudrun, they're gay."

"Figure of speech," she replied. "And we might end up at the bar later anyway. I don't trust myself to make myself look good once I'm wasted."

After Gudrun was done, they left the bathroom quickly, Lamu making sure that no one was out in the hall who'd see them leaving together. (Gudrun described this precaution being warranted due to her 'needing more time to decide if they were gonna commit to the bit', which she ignored.) Then, they headed back out into the ballroom.

They had only been gone a little over five minutes, but a complication had arisen instantly. Utsushikome of Fusai was gone.

𒀭

Inner Sanctum Underground | 9:33 AM | ∞ Day

"What was that?" Tuthal asked, prying his eyes away from the grisly scene before us to address me, his brow furrowed.

I pointed listlessly ahead. "The front carriage."

He turned, looked, and a few moments later, balked.

"What the-- No, it's got to just be too dark to see it." He sounded skeptical of the words even as they left his lips. He glanced over his shoulder. "I'm going to check something. I'll be right back."

These words seemed to snap Bahram out of his reverie, and he looked at his friend hopelessly, along with the cook. (Hildris, however, remained unresponsive, seeming in shock.) "T-Tuth, she might still be-- Even like this, we've... we've got to..."

"And you should," Tuthal cut the older man off. He'd produced his own small lantern from somewhere underneath his gaudy vestments and struck a match, lighting it. "But you're the bloody doctor, not me. I can't do a damn thing here. I'll be back in just a moment."

He sprinted off along the train's roof, heading to the opposite end. I followed at a more measured pace, my feet feeling slightly fleeter than a maybe ago-- Maybe the adrenaline was hitting me and I was getting a second wind, or maybe my lungs were starting to recover now that I'd had a few moments to breathe. I hopped the little gap to the roof of the engine car, walked along the overhang aside the boiler - the smell of smouldering coal filled my nose for just a moment or two - then finally arrived above the dining car. By this point, Tuthal had already come to a stop, looking over the edge.

Glancing downward, I noticed that in his wake he'd left a few indentations - subtle, but noticeable - on the roof's metal, which if I had to guess seemed to be made of thin aluminium. Evidently it wasn't designed to take much punishment. On top of being strange for the period, this also had some interesting implications, though I wasn't thinking straight enough to process them just yet.

I was soon standing aside Tuthal, who looked somewhere between dumbstruck and furious. The front carriage had, indeed, vanished. Though the liminal connective chamber appeared to remain, everything beyond where the second door ought to have been had simply vanished into the ether.

"What the... that's..." Tuthal clutched his hands to his mouth, almost hyperventilating. "I-- I should have known! I ought to have fucking known!" He stomped his foot, creating another small dent. "The bastard's tricked us! I don't know how, but he's tricked us! The painting's gone, it's all gone!"

"No," I said calmly.

He snapped his eyes towards me. "What?!"

"I have the painting," I explained. I didn't know why I was explaining this. Was I trying to get caught? Was I an idiot? "The Last Winter-- I claimed it."

Several emotions flourished across Tuthal's face in the space of a few moments; confusion, relief, anxiety renewed anger. He flushed red, and he thrust his lamp towards me angrily. "Kasua, we, you, remember, you made a promise to me--"

"I know," I told him. "You can have it. Just pay me what I would have made from a normal item on top of what we already agreed."

Again, he cycled through various emotions rapidly, arriving at suspicion. "This... You aren't lying to me for some reason, are you? You really have it?"

"I do," I said, which was not a lie.

"And you'll give it to me?"

"I will," I said, which was also not a lie. (Though the value of the painting was now somewhat in question (or was it, actually? Would an event like this actually build an even stronger myth for the thing after all?)) "It's in my room right now. We can-- I'll get it later, when we all head back."

Tuthal heaved a heavy sigh, clutching a hand to his chest. "Thank God." He looked at me with intense eyes. "I could kiss you, right now, Kasua. I'd be on one bloody knee if I weren't already stuck with a prior commitment."

I nodded aloofly, not even knowing how to respond to this out of character, let alone in.

Despite this moment of solace, Tuthal's features quickly reverted back to the realm of rancor and disquiet. "Still, what the devil is going on? Where did the carriage go? Did whoever killed Phaidime use it to escape? Did it have a separate engine?" He bit the end of his thumb. "I wouldn't put it past Rastag. But then, the horse..."

I looked out onto the horizon. There was no indication of part of the train speeding off into the distance, but on the other hand it would have been difficult to tell if there was. Again, it was very, very dark. The clouds blocked effectively all light from the lesser lamp, and the landscape lacked distinctive features upon which light could play. I could see the track ahead to some degree up to maybe 50 meters ahead, and the features of more distant parts of the landscape at the Mimikos curved upwards towards Viraak and Lower Mekhi, but anything between that was a dead zone.

But as we'd established, I'd read a lot of mystery novels with trains in them. An idea instantly occurred to me. The inter-carriage pocket had conveniently flopped outwards a little in a shape that looked easy to climb down, so I lowered myself down to my knees, then turned and got a grip on one of the wooden connectors.

Tuthal, of course, looked down at me at once. "What are you doing?"

"Trains create a lot of friction," I explained. "I'm going to see if the track is still warm. If it is, that means your theory is right."

He frowned. "That's a fine thought, but at least let me handle it. You still look like you've been mugged. What happened to you, anyway?" He grunted in irritation after I failed to reply. "Bugger me, you're stubborn."

I slid down the hanging smooth wooden shaft - it was a little awkward, the leathery material comprising most of the liminal realm having even more give than I'd expected - and reached the side of the track at around the same time as Tuthal, who simply jumped all the way down from the roof in a typically machismo fashion, cursing under his breath after this resulted in him injuring his ankle. We both reached down to touch the metal.

"It's ice cold," Tuthal commented.

"Yes. If a train had passed over it any time in the last several minutes, it would at least be a little bit lukewarm." I looked up at him. "The reinforced bronze they use for these takes a longer time to completely cool compared to... other metals, especially at this time of night where the ambient temperature is low. That means the front carriage couldn't have escaped this way unless it happened probably more than a half hour ago."

(Note: Later it occurred to me that this might not be scientifically accurate. I looked it up, and historical trains, while certainly creating more friction than modern ones, still only created a marginal amount of heat on the tracks unless they were extremely heavy-- We're talking freight trains with multiple cars here. I was just parroting the logic from a book I'd read thoughtlessly. But it seemed to work out, so that's fine, isn't it?)

"And when were you in there last?" Tuthal asked.

"Less than that," I told him. "I'd guess about 20 minutes ago at most."

"Then that's impossible. The thing couldn't have just disappeared."

I stood up, dusting myself off, and looked out into the distance. "It's an Uqartul. Or at least, that's what they want us to think."

"A what?"

"An Uqartul," I repeated. "Bahram was telling us about them earlier. The monster that the steppe-people believe exists, that steals valuables and takes the form of anything living. But that can be returned to its true form - a horse - using flame." I nodded to myself-- Even stuff I hadn't thought of yet clicked perfectly with the dream logic this all seemed to operate under. What an elegantly stupid plot point. "It must have been lured by the artwork, and taken the form of Rastag's carriage."

Tuthal was flabbergasted, his mouth opening and closing rapidly before he managed to form a rebuttal. "T-That's just superstitious nonsense! And a train isn't 'living'!"

"A normal train wouldn't be. But you said it yourself. Rastag designed this train to, on a mystical level, be a human being. And if that wasn't enough, this is the train he died in. His body burned in its engine. He gave it his very soul." I looked back. "Phaidime went inside the carriage for some reason, then somehow started a small fire. This caused it to transform back into its true form, crushing her body and killing her instantly, and causing the flash of light we saw from all the way back in the rest car. But because the engine is the middle of the train and not the front, it didn't stop. It slammed right into it. Its body, despite its weight, went flying, smashing into the roof multiple times before finally coming to a stop near the rear. This explains everything about the scene: The dents, the state of the body, the burns on the horse's cadaver. All of it!"

"That's--" Tuthal's mouth hung open. "That's insane!"

Suddenly, there was a sound from overhead: Someone was slowly clapping atop the train. We both turned our heads.

There, staring down at us, was Summiri. She wore an expression completely unlike anything I'd seen on her face thus far: An amused, relaxed smile.

"Well done," she said.