All at once, the group realized what Ailn had: that the entire chamber was the medium for Noué’s art.

  “Unbelievable…” Naomi muttered, from beside him. “How would Areygni even manage to…?”

  Her head slowly rose to the ceiling, and she shuddered. It was such a visceral reaction, Ailn wondered if they’d ever found cave paintings in this world.

  The most natural comparison he could think of was Lascaux.

  Like its Hall of the Bulls, the paintings on the wall were vast, panoramic, and continuous in scope. But where Lascaux had shown deer, horses, and bison, here Ailn found himself staring at a dragon.

  Its feet touched the floor. Its head grazed the ceiling. Bright red and wrapped in flames, it seemed to be roaring. The dragon’s neck had been painted on a distinctly bulging surface, giving off the impression that air had caught in its throat, that its muscles were flexing as it craned its head all the way back.

  It was either in wrath or pain.

  The rough surface of the cave caught the light of Ailn’s lantern, casting flickering shadows that gave the painting motion. The dragon—and the flames it was wrapped in—seemed to shift and breathe. Ailn wasn’t sure if the dragon had created the fire, or… if it was just burning.

  “It’s hurting,” Renea said softly. She’d crept up from behind, her gaze fixated on the flames. Evidently, to her, the answer was clear.

  Kylian was examining a section about ten feet over.

  “What an absurd medium… Every manner of fae is here.” Kylian tilted his head up as he raised his lantern, then cast its light ahead. Astonished, he swept his gaze over the wall. “The continuity of it is almost akin to a frieze.”

  Ailn walked over, slowly taking in the art. Kylian was right. There was more than just flow to these paintings—there was narrative.

  Behind the dragon were scenes of nature, fae in their natural habitats. Lakes with naiads lounging in the waters, sylphs soaring between mountains as they sang, and alraunes shivering in delight as they danced in the forests.

  But beyond the dragon was scorched earth underneath a scarlet, swirling sky.

  The fae were weeping. The naiads clung to puddles that were nearly evaporated. The sylphs seemed to wail in the searing air. The alraunes shrank back in fear from their own homes in the smoldering forests.

  “Guess she did paint some naiads, in the end.” Ailn furrowed his brow. After talking to those gossipy, babbling brooks himself, this mythic, almost primal depiction of the naiads felt uncanny. It was the opposite of ‘The Saintess and the Wolf,’ where Noué had captured a legendary figure with exceptional warmth and humanity.

  Thinking of Elenira, drunk and miserable, steeped in the memories of a woman who never looked back at her, Ailn felt a pang of pity. However vivid and intimate her sense of the unreachable, Noué really did have a sort of emotional far-sightedness—as if the people right in front of her had faded to a blur.

  The woman from ‘There She Is,’ standing faceless and alone at the cave’s entrance, drifted into mind.

  Then, Safi’s voice rang out.

  “Wow! Look at the ceiling, Cora!” she shouted. She sounded like she was on a field trip. “It’s like, um… that one guy! The one who really liked the feeling of paint dripping on his face, so he’d lie underneath it all day!”

  ‘...What a weirdo…”

  Subtle character assassination of Michelangelo aside, Safi was right about the resemblance… however shaky she was on the facts. The ceiling did resemble his work on the Sistine Chapel.

  Smooth—almost a perfect half-cylinder—and divided into arcs, the ceiling depicted what Ailn could only assume were deities. The roughness of the walls lent their art a primeval quality; the ceiling’s smoothness, in stark contrast, made the deities look all the more transcendent.

  He had to squint, and he couldn’t see all the way to the end of the chamber, but directly above him was the striking image of the dragon from earlier, adorned now with butterfly wings.

  The dragon was likely associated with the Radoschtian Empire. It was either the empire’s tutelary deity, or its primordial nemesis, depending on the origin story chosen. Ailn walked down the chamber, lantern raised high, trying to make out each figure.

  A woman clad in priestess robe, and bathed in light. That was Lumitheia.

  A young girl, surrounded by stars, with angel wings. He didn’t know who that was.

  A lion with a serpent for its tail. That… well in his past life, that was a depiction of the Demiurge. He didn’t know what to make of it here.

  A four-limbed creature that was pearlescent—and unfinished. Ailn wasn’t sure what it was ultimately meant to be.

  The last arc was also still unfinished, though it seemed to show the beginnings of a flower.

  “Do you recognize these deities?” Ailn asked Kylian. “Besides the dragon and Lumitheia.”

  “The angel surrounded by stars is a motif I’ve seen before,” Kylian said. He frowned in thought. “Though I’m not certain if it refers to any specific deity. And this depiction of her appears younger than any I’ve encountered.”

  Naomi, who’d been silent until now, gestured toward Ailn and Kylian. There was scaffolding underneath the final, unfinished arc. With a frame that looked like bamboo, it seemed sturdy and portable despite its height and size.

  Still, it seemed terrifying to work from.

  When he’d painted the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo actually had an elaborate scaffold with straps that let him work without fear—even if it meant tilting his neck and dealing with the drip of paint. But he’d also had assistants. And it was clear that Noué, lacking that, had opted for something she could move around herself.

  Now that he was here, Ailn could understand how Noué died working on this piece; the only surprise, maybe, was that she’d starved instead of falling to her death.

  The unfinished parts became more apparent, the more one examined the chamber. Besides the unfinished arc on the ceiling, the walls were only half-filled.

  Some scenes were largely complete. One scene seemed to depict both dwarves and elves, opposing each other, each within their own forms of grand architecture—huge stone artifices for the dwarves, and enormous plantlife for the elves.

  Another was a full depiction of the Legacy of the Magi: the magi in their floating city, and the suffering, envious masses below.

  The rest of the art was sporadic. There were therianthropes, seeming to split in different directions; angelic figures who variously seemed to be flying or falling; tiny people living among flowers. What was actually happening in each scene was difficult to discern, as they were still only half-painted.

  Most ominously, she’d painted shadows on the wall—silhouettes that faced forward, staring at the viewer.

  With ample space between each silhouette, this scene also seemed incomplete. But upon closer examination, Ailn wasn’t so sure. As he stood nearby, caught in his own lantern light, the shadow he cast to the wall almost seemed to join their ranks.

  Because of that eerie effect, the negative space between each shadow felt like… an invitation.

  Feeling a tug on his sleeve, Ailn flinched. He recognized it as Renea right away, but the shadows were just that unsettling.

  “Let’s, um… let’s not tarry,” Renea spoke softly, trying not to stare at the shadows on the wall which clearly frightened her. “T-there’s a door up ahead.”

  If Ailn had to guess, something about this particular scene needled her phobia of being left alone, lantern-less in the dark.

  As they reached the end of the cavern, the tall ceiling gradually sloped down to a height of about fifteen feet. There, the others had gathered at the door Renea mentioned—the entrance to the antechamber.

  Rendered in Noué’s characteristic irreverence, the fresco framing the doorway was unmistakably an homage of The Last Supper that bordered on satire.

  Unlike most of her pieces, Noué had titled it with a stainless steel plaque: An Unfinished Supper (Working Title). More than that, she’d left frustratingly simple instructions to enter the antechamber: “Say the line.”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Ailn could see why this one was hard.

  Naomi hadn’t simply been awed by the chamber. She’d been disturbed by it. As a Sussuro native, she was no stranger to Noué Areygni’s art, her prolific nature, the almost caustic attitude that seemed to perfuse even her simplest pieces.

  The ambition behind her final work was staggering. The desperation in her obsessive attempt to finish it was frightening.

  This little riddle, though, was comforting. The childishness of it, the imperative to simply say the line turned the grand, manic design all around them into something approachable. It was just a game. Naomi could play games.

  She had to admit, though, this game seemed patently unfair.

  “You’re saying this is another reference,” Kylian sighed, holding his head, “that only you and Lady Renea know.”

  “Wait no, I know it too! It’s um… Oh, wait there’s no way to explain this—” Safi fumbled, biting her lip.

  “Safi must have read the book too,” Ailn interrupted.

  “...Yeah!” Safi nodded.

  “I suppose it’s popular reading among nobles,” Kylian said, arching an eyebrow.

  At the word ‘noble,’ Naomi crossed her arms in discomfort. It irked her, to realize she never even had access to the book, to the knowledge necessary to grasp the allusions in the fresco—all because she was a commoner.

  She avoided eye contact, as she spoke. “If that is the case, then one of you should complete the context for us, no?”

  Seven figures were dining, with Noué at the center.

  “The original would have had twelve—no, thirteen,” Ailn said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Noué, uh, characteristically has put herself in the central position that implies divinity—to keep it simple.”

  “Is this strange division of the table part of the original?” Kylian asked.

  “No,” Ailn said. “Not at all. I have no idea what that’s about.”

  The fresco was actually divided in half by the antechamber’s door of towering white stone. It wasn’t just strange—it was jarring and ugly.

  To put it one way, the canvas simply didn’t suit the piece. Why have a dinner scene split inorganically in two by a doorway, with no attempt at integration?

  “If you consider the original…” Ailn started, tilting his head. “It’s not just split into two. It’s almost split into four. The original piece had them all sitting together on the far side of the table. But here, half of them are sitting on the side closer to the viewer.”

  Taking a long moment of consideration, as if he wasn’t sure of his analysis, he finally added: “It’s almost like the piece is split into quadrants.”

  If that division really was sensible, then the fresco would be construed as follows:

  In the top left quadrant, a woman with raven hair stood alone, facing the right. She had a knife raised, and a fierce look in her eyes.

  In the top right quadrant, Noué sat next to a woman with brown hair. While Noué rested her palms on the table facing the viewer, the woman with brown hair pointed upward, largely facing away from the viewer.

  In the bottom left quadrant, a man and a teenaged girl seemed to be in animated discussion. The man had an almost hurt look in his eye, seeming to shrink. The teenaged girl stood over him, facing him earnestly, both arms held against her collar.

  Finally, in the bottom right quadrant, a man held his arms out wide with a shocked expression. Beside him, a teenaged boy seemed to be fainting toward the right.

  “That man, in the bottom right. I recognize that regalia,” Kylian said. “It’s dragoon armor, the kind worn by the empire’s most elite knights.”

  “I think I recognize…” Ailn held his temple, sighing for some reason. “...that teenage boy who’s fainting. Besides that, the arrangement of this homage is pretty different—but I can give a basic rundown of what each pose is.”

  “The woman in the top left is as straightforward as it looks. She has a knife, and she’s hostile. Then—”

  “Then what of Noué and the brown-haired woman?” Naomi interjected.

  “...Noué is currently speaking,” Ailn said, raising an eyebrow. “The brown-haired woman is pointing to the heavens—if I remember correctly.”

  “Then um…” Renea, the duke’s younger sister, seemed fixated on the bottom left quadrant. Her voice was hushed, and anxious. “Then which one’s the betrayer?”

  “That would be the man who’s shrinking away. Then the teenaged girl’s pose is supposed to convey, er…” Ailn held the tip of his cap, searching for a word. “The pose means, ‘who me?’”

  “Why is the dragoon knight extending his arms, then?” Kylian asked, furrowing his brow.

  “...He’s shocked, I guess?” Ailn scratched his head. “Not sure there’s a deep reason. And the teenage boy… the original’s really more of a swoon than a faint. So, I don’t know what’s going on there.”

  Naomi felt her eyes burn, she was staring so intently at the image. She searched for some kind of hidden meaning she could bring to the table. Then, focusing on the fainting boy, she recalled one of Noué’s paintings.

  “The boy! Noué’s—” Naomi slowed down, clearing her throat. “Ahem. I believe I know the allusion. Noué is referencing her own work ‘Sakura, Wither and Bloom.’ In it, a dryad looks as if it’s fainting, lying in the branches of a decaying cherry blossom tree.”

  “I don’t know the piece myself,” Kylian said. “It certainly sounds as if it might be key.”

  Feeling just a little pleased with herself, Naomi hoped her contribution would spur discussion. After her comment, however, no one said anything.

  At first, she had the absurd misapprehension that she had somehow caused the silence. Soon enough she realized the group had simply run out of insights.

  “...So uh, anyone got any ideas?” Ailn asked.

  Safi was silent for a reason. She was experiencing a terrible sense of alienation.

  The strangest sense of déjà vu had hit her when she saw the fresco. Of course, she knew what The Last Supper was. But there was something else that stuck out to her.

  It was the composition. The simple shape of it. It bugged her, and while everyone else discussed the meaning of the painting, the allusions, the psychology of those individuals at the table, and the interplay between the original diners and their substitutes, Safi stared at the whole.

  Her mind wasn’t searching for new details. It was erasing them.

  “The girl with brown hair could be Lumitheia, right?” Renea offered.

  “Lumitheia? The blonde goddess of truth?” Naomi shot Renea a confused look. “I don’t understand.”

  “In Noué’s mausoleum, there’s…” Renea paused in thought. “...there’s an elaborate sequence where a brown-haired woman’s hair turns gold. And Noué seems to consider Lumitheia her muse.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” Kylian agreed. “In that case…” His eyes creased with uncertainty. “...is it not possible that the five other individuals at the table correspond to the deities on the ceiling? If the brown-haired woman transfigures into Lumitheia, then it stands to reason that the others have analogous transformations.”

  He added: “The connection between the dragon and the dragoon knight seems immediately suggestive.”

  Ailn walked back to the center of the chamber again, raising his lantern to look at the deities above. “It feels like we’re just kicking the can. We still need to find whatever ‘magic phrase’ Noué is looking for.”

  “Then naturally the phrase should be something mythical, no?” Naomi asked. “‘The dragon’s thirst pales only to the ocean.’”

  Nothing.

  Safi, standing quietly to the side, started to bite at her fingernails. An awful feeling was knotting her stomach. She felt like she was on the verge of figuring it out… but why did that feel so terrible?

  The figures painted on the wall started to become lines. And the four quadrants…

  “Um, maybe it’s… ‘Do this in—’” Renea trailed off, not finishing, then shook her head blushing. “Nevermind. That’s too obvious.”

  “The problem is the deities on the ceiling span different theologies,” Kylian frowned. “Worse still, we don’t even know all of them.” Then the blood seemed to leave his face as he stared back at the whole chamber, the far half of it shrouded in darkness. “This, before we even consider that the answer might only be furnished by considering the entire chamber.”

  Kylian gave it some thought, before giving it a shot. “It must be a simple maxim. One that’s universal, yet applicable. ‘Truth weaves the world; history, its stitch.’”

  Nothing. Kylian sighed and shook his head.

  “...It might be a lot simpler than we've been thinking,” Ailn said. Returning from his walk through the chamber, he came up next to the plaque. “According to Ellen Lirathel, Noué died of starvation. So, the answer could just be a play on the title.”

  An Unfinished Supper(Working Title).

  “Would… Ellen Lirathel know that?” Kylian asked.

  “Yes, how would she?” Naomi asked, eyes narrowing.

  “Well, I don’t necessarily expect you to believe me,” Ailn shrugged. “I’m just sharing what I know. It would match her sense of humor, wouldn’t it?

  Suddenly, a jolt seemed to run through Ailn. He strode up to the jet black marble door, though he lost some of his confidence as he got close. Then, he cleared his throat.

  “...Eat my shorts?” Ailn asked.

  The chamber went silent.

  “What?” Kylian asked, blankly.

  Naomi glared at Ailn, seeming to think he was mocking them. “Is this some vulgarity from Varant, Duke eum-Creid?”

  “Absolutely not,” Kylian answered incredulously.

  “That was actually a great guess, if you knew the context,” Ailn said, raising his hands defensively.

  “Am I to take ‘eat my shorts’ as a form of high culture only to be grasped by the nobility?” Naomi seethed. “Or perhaps you mean to insist this crass phrase is a religious creed?”

  “Nobil—creed?! What?” Renea blanched. “J-just ignore Ani! He didn’t mean anything by it!”

  The discussion raged on beside Safi, turning into white noise. Culture and religion, mortality and mockery, this world and the original world the reincarnators shared with Noué.

  None of it mattered.

  Safi gasped with horrified realization, and the debates ceased. Everyone turned to look at her, suddenly aware of just how quiet she’d been.

  “No…” she whispered. “No no no no. No.”

  Cora, who’d also been silent, gurgled.

  “Cora, no!” Safi grabbed both sides of her head.

  Ailn looked over with concern. “Something wrong, Safi?”

  “No um. Yes. No. Nothing’s wrong. I have the answer.” Safi covered her face. “The answer’s just very very wrong.”

  “What? Is the answer right or wrong?” Ailn asked.

  “It’s stupid. It’s really stupid. Even I think it’s stupid,” Safi rambled. “It’s so stupid I feel sorry.”

  “You shouldn’t—speak of the dead like that,” Renea said, frowning terribly. “I’m sure the answer meant a lot to Noué…”

  “Um. I sure hope not.”

  Everyone stood awkwardly, waiting for Safi to just say it. Even Cora tapped the back of her calf a few times, urging her on. Safi groaned, exasperated in a way she almost never felt. And today, she understood the horrible pain of being the only person in the room—possibly this entire world—who understood just how absurd and elaborate the joke was.

  Inching up to the tall stone doorway, making sure whatever magic mechanism there was could hear her, Safi whispered the answer, the line Noué wanted them to say, the dumb punchline which waited three centuries to be uttered.

  “Is this loss?” Safi squeaked.

  The door started rumbling open.