#in video veritas

[pazzoincasamatta]

video kill the radio star

[cheriafreya]

Dendro x Imaginary

[syadoodles]

what is wrong with them!!!!

[chain-peoplebreaker]

*hits you with a follow up* ah shit sorry *hits you with a follow up* oh oops *hits you with a follow up* sorry accident *hits you with a follow up* ah i didnt mean to do that *hits you with a follow up* gomen oomf chan *hits you with a follow up*

[anominous-user]

Double Indemnity, Veritas Ratio and Aventurine

This was originally a part of my compilation post as a short analysis on the Double Indemnity references, linking to this great thread by Manya on Twitter. However, I've recently watched the movie and found that the parallels run much deeper than just the mission name and the light cone itself, plus as the short synopsis I've read online. Since there isn't really an in-depth attempt at an analysis on the film in relation to the way Aventurine and Ratio present themselves throughout Penacony, I thought I'd take a stab at doing just that. I will also be bringing up things from Manya's thread as well as another thread that has some extra points.

Disclaimer that I... don't do analyses very often. Or write, in general — I'm someone who likes to illustrate their thoughts (in the artistic sense) more than write. There's just something about these two that makes me want to rip into them so badly, so here we are. If there's anything you'd like to add or correct me on, feel free to let me know in the replies or reblogs, or asks. This ended up being a rather extensive deep dive into the movie and its influences on the pairing, so please keep that in mind when pressing Read More.

There are two distinct layers on display in Ratio and Aventurine's relationship throughout Penacony, which are references to the two most important relationships in the movie — where they act like they hate/don’t know each other, and where they trust each other.

SPOILER WARNING for the entire movie, by the way. You can watch the film for free here on archive.org, as well as follow along with the screenplay here. I will also be taking dialogue and such from the screenplay, and cite quotes from the original novel in its own dedicated section. SPOILER WARNING for the Cat Among Pigeons Trailblaze mission, as well.

CONTENT WARNING FOR MENTIONS OF SUICIDE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

To start, Double Indemnity (1944) is a film noir by Billy Wilder (and co-written by Raymond Chandler) based on the novel of the same name by James M. Cain (1927). There are stark differences between the movie adaptation and the original novel which I will get into later on in this post, albeit in a smaller section, as this analysis is mainly focused on the movie adaptation. I will talk about the basics (summaries for the movie and the game, specifically the Penacony mission in tandem with Ratio and Aventurine) before diving into the character and scene parallels, among other things.

—

[THE NAME]

The term "double indemnity" is a clause in which if there’s a case of accidental death of a statistically rare variety, the insurance company has to pay out multiple of the original amount. This excludes deaths by murder, suicide, gross negligence, and natural causes.

The part of the mission in Cat Among Pigeons where Ratio and Aventurine meet with Sunday is named after the movie. And before we get further into things, let's get this part out of the way: The Chinese name used in the mission is the CN title of the movie, so there's no liberties taken with the localization — this makes it clear that it’s a nod to the movie and not localization doing its own thing like with the mission name for Heaven Is A Place On Earth (EN) / This Side of Paradise (人间天堂) (CN).

—

[SUMMARY OF THE 1944 MOVIE]

Here I summarised the important parts that will eventually be relevant in the analysis related to the game.

Insurance salesman Walter Neff, wounded from a gunshot, enters his office and confesses his crime on a dictaphone to his boss Barton Keyes, the claims manager. Much earlier, he had met Phyllis Dietrichson, the wife of Mr. Dietrichson and former nurse. Neff had initially wanted to meet Mr. Dietrichson because of car insurance. Phyllis claims her husband is mean to her and that his life insurance goes to his daughter Lola. With Neff seduced by Phyllis, they eventually brew up a scheme to murder Mr. Dietrichson in such a way that they activate the "double indemnity" clause, and the plan goes off almost perfectly. Initially, the death is labeled a suicide by the president of the company, Norton. 

Keyes finds the whole situation suspicious, and starts to suspect Phyllis may have had an accomplice. The label on the death goes from accidental, to suicide, to then murder. When it’s ruled that the husband had no idea of the accidental policy, the company refuses to pay. Neff befriends Phyllis’ stepdaughter Lola, and after finding out Phyllis may have played a part in the death of her father’s previous wife, Neff begins to fear for Lola and himself, as the life insurance would go all towards her, not Phyllis.

After the plan begins to unravel as a witness is found, it comes out that Lola’s boyfriend Nino Zachette has been visiting Phyllis every night after the murder. Neff goes to confront Phyllis, intending to kill her. Phyllis has her own plans, and ends up shooting him, but is unable to fire any more shots once she realises she did love him. Neff kills her in two shots. Soon after telling Zachette not to go inside the house, Neff drives to his office to record the confession. When Keyes arrives, Neff tells him he will go to Mexico, but he collapses before he could get out of the building.

—

[THE PENACONY MISSION TIMELINE]

I won’t be summarising the entirety of Aventurine and Ratio’s endeavours from the beginning of their relationship to their final conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth the same way as I summarised the plot of the movie, so I will instead present a timeline. Bolded parts means they are important and have clear parallels, and texts that are in [brackets] and italics stand for the names of either the light cone, or the mission names.

[Final Victor] Their first meeting. Ratio’s ideals are turned on its head as he finally meets his match.

Several missions happen in-between their first encounter and the Penacony project. They come to grow so close and trusting with each other that they can guess, understand each other’s thoughts, way of thinking and minds even in high stakes missions. Enough to pull off the Prisoner’s Dilemma (Aventurine’s E1) and Stag Hunt Game (Aventurine’s E6) and come out on top.

Aventurine turns towards Ratio for assisting him in the Penacony project. Ratio's involvement in the project is implied to be done without the knowledge of Jade, Topaz, and the IPC in general, as he was only sent to Penacony to represent the Intelligentsia Guild, and the two other Stonehearts never mention Ratio.

Aventurine and Ratio cook up the plan to deceive Sunday before ever setting foot on Penacony. Aventurine does not tell Ratio the entirety of his plan.

Aventurine convinces Topaz and Jade to trust him with their Cornerstones. Aventurine also breaks his own Cornerstone and hides it along with the jade within a bag of gift money.

[The Youth Who Chase Dreams] They enter Penacony in the Reverie Hotel. Aventurine is taken to the side by Sunday and has all his valuables taken, which includes the gift money that contains the broken aventurine stone, the jade, and the case containing the topaz.

Aventurine and Ratio speak in a “private” room about how Aventurine messed up the plan. After faking an argument to the all-seeing eyes of Sunday, Ratio leaves in a huff.

Ratio, wearing his alabaster head, is seen around Golden Hour in the (Dusk) Auction House by March 7th.

[Double Indemnity] Ratio meets up with Sunday and “exposes” Aventurine to him. Sunday buys his “betrayal”, and is now in possession of the topaz and jade. Note that this is in truth Ratio betraying Sunday all along.

Ratio meets up with Aventurine again at the bar. Ratio tells Aventurine Sunday wants to see him again.

They go to Dewlight Pavilion and solve a bunch of puzzles to prove their worth to Sunday.

They meet up with Sunday. Sunday forces Aventurine to tell the truth using his Harmony powers. Ratio cannot watch on. It ends with Aventurine taking the gift money with his Cornerstone.

[Heaven Is A Place On Earth] They are in Golden Hour. Ratio tries to pry Aventurine about his plan, but Aventurine reins him in to stop breaking character. Ratio gives him the Mundanite’s Insight before leaving. This is their final conversation before Aventurine’s grandest death.

Now how exactly does the word “double indemnity” relate to their mission in-game? What is their payout? For the IPC, this would be Penacony itself — Aventurine, as the IPC ambassador, handing in the Jade Cornerstone as well as orchestrating a huge show for everybody to witness his death, means the IPC have a reason to reclaim the former prison frontier. As for Ratio, his payout would be information on Penacony’s Stellaron, although whether or not this was actually something he sought out is debatable. And Aventurine? It’s highly implied that he seeks an audience with Diamond, and breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone is a one way trip to getting into hot water with Diamond. With Aventurine’s self-destructive behaviour, however, it would also make sense to say that death would be his potential payout, had he taken that path in the realm of IX.

Compared to the movie, the timeline happens in reverse and opposite in some aspects. I will get into it later. As for the intended parallels, these are pretty clear and cut:

Veritas Ratio - Walter Neff

Aventurine - Phyllis Dietrichson

Sunday - Mr. Dietrichson

There is one other character who I feel also is represented in Ratio, but I won’t bring them up until later down the line.

For the sake of this analysis, I won’t be exploring Sunday’s parallel to Mr. Dietrichson, as there isn’t much on Dietrichson’s character in the first place in both the movie and the novel. He just kind of exists to be a bastard that is killed off at the halfway point. Plus, the analysis is specifically hyper focused on the other two.

—

[SO, WHAT’S THE PLAN?]

To make things less confusing in the long run whenever I mention the words “scheme” and “plan”, I will be going through the details of Phyllis and Neff’s scheme, and Aventurine and Ratio’s plan respectively. Anything that happens after either pair separate from another isn’t going to be included. Written in a way for the plans to have gone perfectly with no outside problems.

Phyllis and Neff —> Mr. Dietrichson

Goal: Activate the double indemnity clause by killing Mr. Dietrichson and making it look like a freak train accident

Payout: Twice or more of the face value of the life insurance ($100,000)

Main Actor: Walter Neff    |    Accomplice: Phyllis Dietrichson

During the entire time until the payout, Phyllis and Neff have to make sure to any outsiders that they look like complete strangers instead of lovers in an affair.

Step-by-step:

Neff convinces Mr. Dietrichson to sign the policy with the clause without him suspecting foul play, preferably with a third party to act as an alibi. This is done discreetly, making Mr. Dietrichson not read the policy closely and being told to just sign.

Neff and Phyllis talk to each other about small details through the phone (specified to be never at Phyllis’ own house and never when Neff was in his office) and in the marketplace only, to make their meetings look accidental. They shouldn’t be seen nor tracked together, after all.

Phyllis asks Mr. Dietrichson to take the train. She will be the one driving him to the train station.

On the night of the murder, after making sure his alibi is airtight, Neff sneaks into their residence and hides in their car in the second row seating, behind the front row passenger seat. He wears the same colour of clothes as Mr. Dietrichson.

Phyllis and Mr. Dietrichson get inside the car — Phyllis in the driver’s seat and Mr. Dietrichson in the passenger seat. Phyllis drives. On the way to the train station, she makes a detour into an alley. She honks the horn three times.

After the third honk, Neff breaks Mr. Dietrichson’s neck. The body is then hidden in the second row seating under a rug.

They drive to the train station. Phyllis helps Neff, now posing as Mr. Dietrichson, onto the train. The train leaves the station.

Neff makes it to the observation platform of the parlour car and drops onto the train tracks when nobody else is there.

Phyllis is at the dump beside the tracks. She makes the car blink twice as a signal.

The two drag Mr. Dietrichson’s corpse onto the tracks.

They leave.

When Phyllis eventually gets questioned by the insurance company, she pretends she has no idea what they are talking about and eventually storms off.

Phyllis and Neff continue to lay low until the insurance company pays out.

Profit!

Actual Result: The actual murder plan goes almost smoothly, with a bonus of Mr. Dietrichson having broken a leg. But with him not filing a claim for the broken leg, a witness at the observation platform, and Zachette visiting Phyllis every night after the murder, Keyes works out the murder scheme on his own, but pins the blame on Phyllis and Zachette, not Neff.

Now for Aventurine and Ratio. You can skip this section if you understand how deep their act goes, but to those who need a refresher, here’s a thorough explanation:

Aventurine and Ratio —> Sunday

Goal: Collect the aventurine stone without Sunday knowing, ruin the dream (and create the grandest death)

Payout: Penacony for the IPC, information on the Stellaron for Ratio, a meeting with Diamond / death for Aventurine

Main Actor: Aventurine    |    Accomplice: Veritas Ratio

From the moment they step onto Penacony, they are under Sunday’s ever present and watchful eyes. “Privacy” is a foreign word to The Family. They have to act like they don’t like each other’s company the entire time and feed Sunday information through indirect means so that the eventual “betrayal” by Ratio seems truthful to Sunday. Despite what it looks like, they are closer than one would ever think, and Ratio would never sell out a person purely for information.

Step-by-step:

After Sunday takes away the bag of gift money and box, Aventurine and Ratio talk in a room in the Reverie Hotel.

Aventurine establishes the Cornerstones’ importance, and how he lost the gift money and the case containing the Cornerstones to Sunday. Ratio turns to leave, saying “some idiot ruined everything”, meaning the Cornerstones were vital to their plan. (Note that Ratio is not wearing his alabaster head while saying it to said “idiot”.)

Aventurine then proceeds to downplay the importance of the Cornerstones, stating they are “nothing more than a few rocks” and “who cares if they are gone”. This lets Sunday know that something suspicious may be going on for him to act like it’s nothing, and the mention of multiple stones, and leaves him to look up what a Cornerstone is to the Ten Stonehearts of the IPC.

Ratio points out his absurd choice of outfit, mentioning the Attini Peacock and their song.

Ratio implies that without the aventurine stone, he is useless to the IPC. He also establishes that Aventurine is from Sigonia(-IV), and points out the mark on his neck. To Sunday, this means that Aventurine is shackled to the IPC, and how Aventurine may possibly go through extreme lengths to get the stone back, because a death sentence always looms above him.

Aventurine claims Ratio had done his homework on his background, which can be taken that this is their very first time working together. (It isn’t, and it only takes one look to know that Aventurine is an Avgin because of his unique eyes, so this comment does not make sense even in a “sincere” way, a running theme for the interaction.)

Ratio mentions how the true goal is to reclaim Penacony for the IPC, establishing their ulterior motive for attending the banquet.

Ratio asks if Aventurine went to pre-school in Sigonia after saying trust was reliant on cooperation. Aventurine mentions how he didn’t go to school and how he doesn’t have any parents. He even brings up how friends are weapons of the Avgins. This tells Sunday that the Avgins supposedly are good at manipulation and potentially sees Ratio possibly betraying Aventurine due to his carelessness with his “friends”. Sunday would also then research about the Avgins in general (and research about Sigonia-IV comes straight from the Intelligentsia Guild.)

Ratio goes to Dewlight Pavilion in Sunday’s Mansion and exposes a part of Aventurine’s “plan”. When being handed the suitcase, Ratio opens it up due to his apparent high status in the IPC. He tells Sunday that the Cornerstone in the suitcase is a topaz, not an aventurine, and that the real aventurine stone is in the bag of gift money. This is a double betrayal — on Aventurine (who knows) and Sunday (who doesn’t). Note that while Ratio is not officially an IPC member in name — the Intelligentsia Guild (which is run by the IPC head of the Technology Department Yabuli) frequently collaborates with the IPC. Either Aventurine had given him access to the box, or Ratio’s status in general is ambiguous enough for Sunday not to question him further. He then explains parts of Aventurine’s gamble to Sunday in order to sell the betrayal. Note that Ratio does not ever mention Aventurine’s race to Sunday.

Ratio brings Aventurine to Sunday. Aventurine offers help in the investigation of Robin's death, requesting the gift money and the box in return.

Sunday objects to the trade offer. Aventurine then asks for just the bag. A classic car insurance sales tactic. Sunday then interrogates Aventurine, and uses everything Ratio and Aventurine brought up in the Reverie Hotel conversation and their interactions in the Mansion, as well as aspects that Ratio had brought up to Sunday himself.

Aventurine feigns defeat and ignorance enough so that Sunday willingly lets him go with the gift bag. After all is said and done, Aventurine leaves with the gift money, where the Aventurine Cornerstone is stored all along.

Ratio and Aventurine continue to pretend they dislike each other until they go their separate ways for their respective goals and plans. Aventurine would go on to orchestrate his own demise at the hands of Acheron, and Ratio… lurks in the shadows like the owl he is.

Profit!

Actual Result: The plan goes perfectly, even with minor hiccups like Ratio coming close to breaking character several times and Aventurine being sentenced to execution by Sunday.

This is how Sunday uses the information he gathered against Aventurine:

• Sunday going on a tirade about the way Aventurine dresses and how he’s not one to take risks — Ratio’s comment about Aventurine’s outfit being peacock-esque and how he’s “short of a feather or two”. • “Do you own a Cornerstone?” — Ratio talked about the aventurine stone. • “Did you hand over the Cornerstone to The Family when you entered Penacony?” — Aventurine mentioned the box containing the Cornerstones. • “Does the Cornerstone you handed over to The Family belong to you?” — Aventurine specifically pluralized the word Cornerstone and “a bunch of rocks” when talking to Ratio. • “Is your Cornerstone in this room right now?” — The box in the room supposedly contained Aventurine’s own cornerstone, when Aventurine mentioned multiple stones. • “Are you an Avgin from Sigonia?” —Aventurine mentioned that he’s an Avgin, and Ratio brought up Sigonia. • “Do the Avgins have any ability to read, control, and manipulate one’s own or another’s minds?” — Aventurine’s comment on how friends are weapons, as well as Sunday’s own research on the Avgins, leading him to find out about the negative stereotypes associated with them. • “Do you love your family more than yourself?” — His lost parents. “All the Avgins were killed in a massacre. Am I right?” — Based on Sunday’s research into his background. • “Are you your clan’s sole survivor?” — Same as the last point. “Do you hate and wish to destroy this world with your own hands?” — Ratio mentioned the IPC’s goal to regain Penacony, and Aventurine’s whole shtick is “all or nothing”. • “Can you swear that at this very moment, the aventurine stone is safe and sound in this box?” — Repeat.

As seen here, both duos have convoluted plans that involve the deception of one or more parties while also pretending that the relationship between each other isn’t as close as in reality. Unless you knew both of them personally and their histories, there was no way you could tell that they have something else going on. 

On to the next point: Comparing Aventurine and Ratio with Phyllis and Neff.

—

[NEFF & PHYLLIS — RATIO & AVENTURINE]

With the short summaries of the movie and the mission out of the way, let’s look at Phyllis and Neff as characters and how Aventurine and Ratio are similar or opposite to them.

Starting off with Aventurine and Phyllis. Here is where they are the most similar:

Phyllis is blonde and described as a provocative woman. Aventurine is also a blond and eyes Ratio provocatively in the Final Victor light cone.

Phyllis was put under surveillance after Keyes starts figuring out that the so-called accidental death/suicide may have been a murder after all. Similarly, Aventurine was watched by Sunday the entire time in Penacony.

Phyllis never tells Neff how she's seeing another man on the side to possibly kill him too (as well as how she was responsible for the death of her husband‘s previous wife). Aventurine also didn't tell Ratio the entirety of his plan of his own death.

Phyllis puts on a somewhat helpless act at first but is incredibly capable of making things go her way, having everything seemingly wrapped around her finger. Aventurine — even when putting on a facade that masks his true motives — always comes out at the top.

Now the differences between Aventurine and Phyllis:

Phyllis does not care about her family and has no issue with killing her husband, his previous wife, and possibly her daughter Lola. Opposite of that, Aventurine is a family man… with no family left, as well as feeling an insane level of survivor’s guilt.

Really, Phyllis just… does not care at all about anyone but herself and the money. Aventurine, while he uses every trick in the book to get out on top, does care about the way Jade and Topaz had entrusted him with their Cornerstones, in spite of the stones being worth their lives. 

Phyllis also uses other people to her advantage to get what she wants, often behind other people's backs, with the way she treats Neff and Zachette. Aventurine does as well (what with him making deals with the Trailblazer while also making a deal with Black Swan that involves the Trailblazer). The difference here is Phyllis uses her allure deliberately to seduce men while Aventurine simply uses others as pawns while also allowing others to do the same to himself.

Phyllis makes no attempt at compromising the policy when questioned by Norton. Aventurine ends up compromising by only taking the gift money (which is exactly what he needs).

The wig that Barbara Stanwyck (the actress of Phyllis) wore was chosen to make her look as “sleazy” as possible, make her look insincere and a fraud, a manipulator. A sort of cheapness. Aventurine’s flashy peacock-esque outfit can be sort of seen as something similar, except the outfit isn’t cheap.

Moving on to Ratio’s similarities to Neff… There isn’t much to extrapolate here as Ratio is more of a side character in the grand scheme of Penacony, however this is what I’ve figured out.

Neff has dark hair. Ratio has dark purple hair.

Neff almost never refers to Phyllis by her name when speaking with her, only as “baby”. The few times he refers to her as Phyllis or Mrs. Dietrichson is during their first conversations and when he has to act like he doesn’t know her. Ratio never calls Aventurine by his name when he’s around him — only as “gambler”, sometimes “damned” or “dear” (EN-only) gambler. Only in the Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode does Ratio repeatedly say his name, and yet he still calls him by monikers like “gambler” or, bafflingly, a “system of chaos devoid of logic”.

Both Neff and Ratio committed two betrayals: Neff on Mr. Dietrichson and Keyes, and Ratio on Sunday and Aventurine. With the former cases it was to reach the end of the trolley line, and with the latter it was on a man who had put his trust in him.

As for the differences…

Neff is described as someone who’s not smart by his peers. Ratio is someone who is repeatedly idolised and put on a pedestal by other people.

Neff is excellent at pretending to not know nor care for Phyllis whenever he speaks about her with Keyes or when he and she are in a place that could land them in hot water (the office, the mansion when there are witnesses). His acting is on the same level as Phyllis. With Ratio it’s… complicated. While he does pull off the hater act well, he straight up isn’t great at pretending not to care about Aventurine’s wellbeing.

Instead of getting his gunshot wound treated in the hospital like a normal person, Neff makes the absolutely brilliant decision of driving to his office and talking to a dictaphone for hours. Needless to say, this is something a medical doctor like Ratio would never do.

Now here's the thing. Though it's very easy to just look at Phyllis and Neff in the movie and go "okay, Aventurine is Phyllis and Ratio is Neff — end of story" and leave it at that, I find that they both take from the two leads in different ways. Let me explain. Beginning with Aventurine and Neff…

Neff is the one who hatches the plan and encourages Phyllis to go through and claim the double indemnity clause in the first place. He is also the key player of his own risky plan, having to fake being the husband to enter the train as well as fake the death. Aventurine puts himself at great risk just by being in Sunday’s presence, and hoping that Sunday wouldn’t figure out that the green stone he had uncovered wasn’t the aventurine stone.

Adding onto the last point, Neff had fantasised about pulling off the perfect murder for a long time — the catalyst was simply him meeting Phyllis. Aventurine presumably sought out Ratio alone for his plan against Sunday.

Neff makes a roulette wheel analogy and talks about a pile of blue and yellow poker chips (the latter in the script only). I don‘t even have to explain why this is relevant here. (Aventurine’s Ultimate features a roulette wheel and the motif is on his belt, thigh strap, and back, too. And of course, Aventurine is all about his chips.)

Neff has certain ways to hide when he’s nervous, which include hiding his hands in his pockets when they were shaking, putting on glasses so people couldn’t see his eyes. Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back when he’s nervous: Future Aventurine says that "they don't know the other hand is below the table, clutching [his] chips for dear life", and in multiple occasions such as the Final Victor LC, his character trailer, and even in his boss form in the overworld you can see that Aventurine hides his left hand behind his back. And he is also seen with his glasses on sometimes.

Neff says a bunch of stuff to make sure that Phyllis acts her part and does not act out of character (i.e. during their interactions at the market), like how Aventurine repeatedly tries to get Ratio back on track from his subpar acting.

Neff is always one step ahead of the game, and the only reason the plan blows up in his face is due to outside forces that he could not have foreseen (a witness, Keyes figuring out the plan, the broken leg). Aventurine meanwhile plays 5D chess and even with the odds against him, he uses everything he can to come out on the top (i. e. getting Acheron to kill him in the dream).

Even after coming home on the night of the murder, Neff still felt that everything could have gone wrong. Aventurine, with his blessed luck, occasionally wavers and fears everything could go wrong whenever he takes a gamble.

Neff was not put under surveillance by Keyes due to him being extensive with his alibi. After witnessing Robin’s death with eyewitnesses at the scene, the Family had accepted Aventurine’s alibi, though he would be under watch from the Bloodhounds according to Ratio.

Neff talks about the entire murder scheme to the dictaphone. Aventurine during Cat Among Pigeons also retells his plan, albeit in a more convoluted manner, what with his future self and all.

Continuing with Ratio and Phyllis, even with their personalities and motivations being quite different, they do have a few commonalities.

Phyllis was a nurse. Ratio is a medical doctor.

Her name is Greek of origin. Veritas Ratio, though his name is Latin, has Greco-Roman influences throughout his entire character.

The very first scene Phyllis appears in has her wearing a bath towel around her torso. Ratio loves to take baths to clear his mind.

Phyllis was instructed by Neff to be at the market every morning at eleven buying things. Ratio is seen in an auction house with his alabaster head on so no one could recognize him.

Phyllis mostly acts as an accomplice to the scheme, being the one to convince her husband to take the train instead. She is also generally seen only when Neff is involved. Ratio plays the same role as well, only really appearing in the story in relation to Aventurine as well as being the accomplice in Aventurine’s own death. Even him standing in the auction house randomly can be explained by the theory that he and Aventurine had attempted to destabilise Penacony’s economy through a pump and dump scheme.

With these pointers out of the way, let’s take a closer look at select scenes from the film and their relation to the mission and the pair. 

—

[THE PHONE CALL — THE REVERIE HOTEL]

Before the murder, there is a scene with a phone call between Phyllis and Neff discussing the plan while Keyes is in the same room as Neff. Neff has to make sure that Keyes doesn’t think of anything of the phone call, so he acts like he’s calling a “Margie”, and says a bunch of stuff that sounds innocent out of context (“Can’t I call you back, ‘Margie’?” “What color did you pick out?” “Navy blue. I like that fine”), but are actually hinting at the real plan all along (the suit that Mr. Dietrichson wears.)

In a roundabout way, the conversation between Ratio and Aventurine in the Reverie Hotel can be seen as the opposite of that scene — with the two talking about their supposed plan out loud on Penacony ground, a place where the Family (and in turn, Sunday) has eyes everywhere. Despite being in a “private” room, they still act like they hate each other while airing out details that really do not make sense to air out if they really did meet the first time in Penacony (which they didn’t — they’ve been on several missions beforehand). It’s almost like they want a secret third person to know what they were doing, instead of trying to be hushed up about it. The TVs in the room that Sunday can look through based on Inherently Unjust Destiny — A Moment Among The Stars, the Bloodhound statue that disappears upon being inspected, the owl clock on the left which side eyes Ratio and Aventurine, all point to that Sunday is watching their every move, listening to every word.

Rewinding back to before the phone call, in one of the encounters at the marketplace where they “accidentally” run into each other, Phyllis talks about how the trip was off. How her husband wouldn’t get on the train, which was vital for their plan, because of a broken leg. All this, while pretending to be strangers by the passersby. You could say that the part where Ratio almost leaves because Aventurine had “ruined the plan” is the opposite of this, as the husband breaking his leg was something they couldn’t account for, while Aventurine “being short of a few feathers” was entirely part of the plan.

—

[QUESTIONING PHYLLIS — THE INTERROGATION]

This section is going to be a little longer as I will cover two scenes in the movie in a more detailed manner — Mr. Dietrichson signing the policy, and Phyllis being questioned — and how they are represented in the Sunday-Aventurine interrogation and the prior conversation between Ratio and Sunday in multitudes of ways.

Going about their plan, Neff has to make sure that Mr. Dietrichson signs the policy with the double indemnity clause without him knowing the details, all the while having Phyllis (and Lola) in the same room. He and Phyllis have to pretend that they don’t know each other, and that this is just the standard accidental insurance process, instead of signing what would be his downfall. To sell it, he gets Mr. Dietrichson to sign two “copies” of the form, except with Mr. Dietrichson’s second signature, he’s duped into signing the accident insurance policy with the respective clause.

You can tie this to how Ratio goes to Sunday in order to “expose” the lie that the suitcase didn’t actually contain the Aventurine Cornerstone, as well as there being more than one Cornerstone involved in the scheme. Ratio must make sure that Sunday truly believes that he dislikes Aventurine’s company, while also making sure that Sunday doesn’t figure out the actual aventurine stone is broken and hidden in the gift bag. The scheme turns out to be successful, as Sunday retrieves the two Cornerstones, but not the aventurine stone, and truly does think that the green stone he has in his possession is the aventurine.

This whole scene with Sunday is also reminiscent of the interrogation scene in the middle of the movie, where Phyllis was questioned by the boss (Norton) who was deducing that Mr. Dietrichson's death was a suicide, not accidental death. Neff, Phyllis, Keyes and Norton were all in the same room, and Neff and Phyllis had to act like they never knew the other. Phyllis acts like she knows nothing about what Norton insinuates about her husband and eventually, Phyllis explodes in anger and storms out the room, even slamming the door. Her act is very believable to any outsider.

Now back to the Ratio and Sunday conversation. One glaring difference between the movie and here is that his acting isn’t great compared to either Phyllis nor Neff. It never was throughout the Penacony mission. He even comes very close to breaking character several times, and is even defending Aventurine in a somewhat aggressive manner during his one-on-one conversation with Sunday, as in he literally tells Sunday to see a shrink. It’s very different from the way he was acting in Herta Space Station — like Ratio cares about Aventurine too much to keep his hands off.

It's also worth pointing out that Neff doesn't speak a word when Phyllis was being interrogated. Similarly, Ratio is silent throughout the entire scene with Sunday and Aventurine, with his only “line” being a “hm”. When Aventurine calls him a wretch to his face, all he does is look to the side. In fact, he can only look at Aventurine when the other isn’t staring back. Almost like him uttering a single word would give them away. Or his acting is terrible when it has to do with Aventurine, as he has no issue doing the same thing in Crown of the Mundane and Divine (Mundane Troubles).

So, Sunday finds out about the Cornerstones and reveals them to Aventurine, and reasons that he cannot give them back to him because Aventurine had lied. Note that in that same scene, Aventurine attempted to use the two murders that had occurred beforehand against Sunday to retrieve his own cornerstone. Similarly, when it was revealed that Mr. Dietrichson did not know about the accident policy and that the so-called “accidental death” was not, in fact, accidental, the insurance company refused to pay out the money.

Unlike the movie, this was all planned, however. The double-crossing by Ratio, the gift money being the only thing required for Aventurine’s real plan. All of it was an act of betrayal against Sunday, in the same manner as the meticulous planning as Mr. Dietrichson’s murder — To sign the policy, get him to take the train, kill him on the way, and to have Neff pose as the husband on the train until the time is right to get off and lay the body on the tracks. A key difference is that they could not have expected their scheme to be busted wide open due to forces outside of their control, while Ratio and Aventurine went straight down the line for the both of them no matter what.

From here on out, we can conclude that the way Ratio and Aventurine present themselves in Penacony to onlookers is in line with Neff and Phyllis.

—

[“GOODBYE, BABY” — FINAL VICTOR]

And now for the (in)famous light cone, Final Victor. The thing that truly kickstarted the Ratio and Aventurine ship in the fanbase, and the partnership between the two in general. It’s a direct reference to the final confrontation between Neff and Phyllis in the movie.

I’ll fire through all the similarities between the two scenes.

During the respective scenes, Aventurine and Phyllis both outsmart their partner one way or the other: Aventurine with his one-sided game of Russian Roulette, and Phyllis hiding her gun underneath the cushions until Neff turned away.

The guns are owned by Phyllis and Aventurine, not Neff and Ratio.

Phyllis couldn’t bring herself to fire any more shots after she realised she truly did love Neff. Ratio could do nothing but watch as Aventurine did what he did — he couldn’t even pull away if the LC animation is anything to go by him struggling as Aventurine firmly keeps the gun to his chest.

Neff says he doesn’t buy (believe) that Phyllis loved him. She then goes “I’m not asking you to buy […]”. The LC description has Aventurine ask Ratio “You don’t believe me?”, while in the LC animation Ratio straight up says “You expect me to believe you?” and Aventurine answering “Why not, doctor/professor?”

The visual composition of the LC and the scene are nearly identical, from the lighting to the posing to the way Aventurine looks at Ratio — Aventurine and Ratio are even wearing different outfits to fit the scene better. The background in the LC is also like the blinders in the movie, just horizontal.

In the shot where Phyllis’ face is more visible, the way she looks at Neff is strikingly like the way provocatively looks at Ratio. Even their eyes have a visible shine — Phyllis’ eyes brightly shining the moment she realised she really fell in love with Neff, and Aventurine having just a little light return to his eyes in that specific moment.

And now the differences!

Neff holds the gun in his right hand. Aventurine makes Ratio hold his gun in his left.

Neff is the one who takes the gun from Phyllis‘ hand. Aventurine is the one who places the gun in Ratio’s hand and fires it.

Three gunshots are fired. In the movie, Phyllis shoots the first shot and Neff the second and third. Aventurine unloads the gun and leaves only one bullet for this game of Russian Roulette. He pulls the trigger three times, but they all turn out to be blanks.

Phyllis does not break her façade of not smiling until the very last moment where she gets shot. Aventurine is smiling the entire time according to the light cone description, whilst in the animation, it’s only when he guides the gun to his chest that he puts it on.

So, you know how Neff meets Phyllis and it all goes off the rails from there. The way Neff goes from a decent guy to willingly involve himself in a murder scheme, having his morals corrupted by Phyllis. His world having been turned upside down the moment he lays eyes on Phyllis in that first meeting. Doesn’t that sound like something that happened with the Final Victor LC? Ratio, a man all about logic and rationality — a scholar with eight PhDs to his name — all of that is flipped on its head the moment Aventurine pulls out his gun in their first meeting and forces Ratio to play a game of Russian roulette with him. Aventurine casually gambles using his own life like it’s nothing and seemingly without fear (barring his hidden left hand). All or nothing — and yet Aventurine comes out alive after three blanks. Poetic, considering there’s a consumable in the game called “All or Nothing” which features a broken chess piece and a poker chip bound together by a tie. The poker chip obviously represents the gambler, but the chess piece specifically stands for Ratio because he plays chess in his character trailer, his Keeping Up With Star Rail episode and his introduction is centred around him playing chess with himself. Plus, the design of the chess piece has golden accents, similar to his own chess set. In the end, Aventurine will always be the final victor.

Furthermore, Neff had deduced that Phyllis wanted to kill her husband and initially wanted no part in it, but in a subsequent visit it was his own idea that they trigger the double indemnity clause for more money. As the movie progresses though, he starts to have his doubts (thanks in part to him befriending Lola) and makes the move to kill Phyllis when everything starts to come to light. It’s strikingly similar to how Ratio initially wanted no part in whatever Aventurine had in mind when they first met, but in the subsequent missions where they were paired up, he willingly goes along with Aventurine's risky plans, and they come to trust each other. Enough so that Aventurine and Ratio can go to Penacony all on their own and put on an act, knowing that nobody in the IPC other than them can enter the Dreamscape. The mutual respect grew over time, instead of burning passionately before quickly fizzling out like in the movie.

Basically, in one scene, three shots (blanks) start a relationship, and in the other, it ends a relationship. In the anan magazine interview with Aventurine, he says himself that “form[ing] an alliance with just one bullet” with Ratio was one of his personal achievements. The moment itself was so impactful for both parties that it was immortalised and turned into a light cone.

—

[THE ENDING — GOLDEN HOUR]

The ending of Double Indemnity that made it into the final cut has Neff continue his confession on the dictaphone until he realised that he wasn’t alone in the room. Keyes had come inside at some point, but none had said a thing, only listening to a dead man speak of his crime. When Neff sees Keyes, they talk for a moment, Neff says he plans on fleeing to Mexico. Keyes does not think he will make it. He tries to leave, only to collapse at the front of the elevator, Keyes following just behind him. Neff attempts to light a cigar but is too weak to do so, so Keyes does it for him.

Parts of the ending can still be attributed to the interrogation scene between Sunday and Aventurine, so I’ll make this quick before moving on to the conversation in Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Ratio and Aventurine’s final conversation together. Once Sunday mentions how quickly Aventurine gave up the suitcase, he inflicts the Harmony’s consecration on him, which forces Aventurine to confess everything that Sunday asks of. In a way, it’s the opposite of what happens in the movie — where Neff willingly tells the truth about the murder to his coworker. Aventurine does not like Sunday, and Neff is close to Keyes. Ratio also does not speak, similarly to how Keyes didn’t speak and stood silently off to the side.

Post-interrogation in Golden Hour, Ratio worriedly prods at Aventurine and asks him about his plan. He then gives him the Mundanite’s Insight with the Doctor’s Advice inside when Aventurine tells him to leave. Throughout Heaven Is A Place On Earth, Aventurine gets weaker and his head starts to buzz, until he falls to the ground before he can hand in the final gems. Similarly, Neff progressively grows weaker as he records his confession. Keyes says he’s going to call a doctor and Neff says he’s planning to go to Mexico. And when Neff collapses near the elevator, they talk one final time and Keyes lights Neff’s cigar as the other was too weak to do so himself.

—

[OPPOSITE TIMELINES AND DEVELOPMENTS]

Remember how I said the way certain events happen in the movie and the game are mostly opposite and reverse of one another? 

The Final Victor LC is the first meeting of Ratio and Aventurine, and Neff killing Phyllis is their final meeting.

Between that first and last meeting between Phyllis and Neff’s whirlwind romance, their relationship becomes strained which ultimately leads to Neff not trusting whatever Phyllis has to say at the end point of the movie. As for Ratio and Aventurine, the exact opposite had happened, to the point where Ratio trusts Aventurine enough to go along with his plans even if they went against his own ideals. The basis of the mission involved Veritas Ratio, whose full name includes the Latin word for “truth”, lying the entire time on Penacony.

Aventurine is sentenced to the gallows by Sunday after his unwilling interrogation. The movie starts and ends with Neff willingly confessing everything to Keyes.

It bears repeating, but I have to make it so clear that the trust between Ratio and Aventurine runs incredibly deep. Being able to predict what your partner says and thinks and plans in a mission as critical as the Penacony project is not something first-time co-workers can pull off flawlessly. All the while having to put on masks that prevent you from speaking sincerely towards one another lest you rat yourselves out. You have no way of contacting outside reinforcements from within Penacony, as the rest of the IPC are barred from entering. To be able to play everybody for fools while said fools believe you yourselves have handed your case on a silver platter requires a lot — trust, knowledge of the other, past experience, and so on. With Phyllis and Neff, the trust they had had been snuffed out when Neff grew closer to Lola and found out what kind of person Phyllis truly was on the inside. Phyllis did not trust nor love Neff enough and was going behind his back to meet with Zachette to possibly take Neff and Lola out. And the whole reason Neff wanted to perpetrate the murder was due to him being initially taken by Phyllis' appearance, which single handedly got the ball rolling on the crime.

Now then, how come trust is one of the defining aspects of Aventurine and Ratio’s relationship, when Phyllis and Neff’s trust eventually lead to both their deaths at the hands of the other? Sure, this can be explained away with the opposite theory, but there’s one other relationship involving Neff which I haven’t brought up in excruciating detail yet. The other side of Ratio and Aventurine’s relationship.

—

[NEFF & KEYES — AVENTURINE & RATIO]

Here is where it gets more interesting — while Phyllis and Neff are at the centre point of the movie, there is another character to whom Neff has a close relationship with — Keyes. It’s also the only relationship with no pretences, at least, until the whole murder thing happened and Neff had to hide his involvement from Keyes. Watching the movie, I couldn't help but feel there was something more to the two than meets the eye. I knew that queer readings of the film existed, but I didn't think too much of them until now. And though Aventurine and Ratio parallel Phyllis and Neff respectively, the fact that they also have traits of their opposite means that it wouldn’t be completely out of the question if parts of their relationship were also influenced by Keyes and Neff on a deeper and personal level. Let me explain.

Keyes and Neff were intimate friends for eleven years and have shown mutual respect and trust towards one another. They understood each other on a level not seen with Phyllis and Neff. Even after hearing Neff confess his crimes through the dictaphone (and eventually standing in the same room while Neff confessed), he still cared for the other man, and stayed with him when Neff collapsed at the front door. The only reason Keyes hadn’t deduced that it was Neff who was behind the murder was because he had his absolute trust in him. Keyes is also Neff’s boss, and they are always seen exchanging playful banter when they are on screen together. Neff even says the words “I love you, too” twice in the movie — first at the beginning and second at the end, as the final line. There’s also the persistent theme of Neff lighting Keyes’ cigarettes (which happens in every scene where they are face-to-face), except in the end where it’s Keyes who lights Neff’s.

Doesn’t that sound familiar? Mutual respect, caring too much about the other person, the immense amount of trust�� Ratio says he’s even the manager of the Penacony project (which may or may not be a lie), and despite their banter being laced with them acting as “enemies”, you can tell that in Dewlight Pavilion pre-Sunday confrontation that Aventurine genuinely likes Ratio’s company and believes him to be a reliable person. From the way he acts carefree in his words to the thoughts in his head, as seen in the mission descriptions for Double Indemnity. Their interactions in that specific mission are possibly the closest thing to their normal way of speaking that we get to see on Penacony.

Not to mention, this is the way Neff describes Keyes. He even says (not in the script) “you never fooled me with your song and dance, not for a second.” Apart from the line about the cigar ashes, doesn’t this ring a bell to a certain doctor? “Jerk” with a heart of gold?

After solving the puzzle with the statues, Ratio jokingly offers Aventurine to join the Genius Society. Aventurine then goes "Really? I thought you’ve given up on that already", and then Ratio says it was, in fact, a joke. Solving the puzzle through brute force has Ratio telling Aventurine that the Council of Mundanites (which Ratio himself is a part of) should consider him a member. In the movie, where the scene with the phone call with Neff and Phyllis reiterating details of their plan happens, Keyes actually offered Neff a better job (specifically a desk job, as Keyes’ assistant). The two pairs saw the other as smart, equals, and were invested in each other’s careers one way or another.

Because of all this, the character parallels for this side of the relationship are as follows:

Aventurine - Walter Neff

Veritas Ratio - Barton Keyes

With the way I’ve talked about how Aventurine and Ratio take from both leads in terms, it does fit to say that Aventurine is Neff, and Ratio is Keyes in this layer of their relationship. Since we’re on the topic of Keyes, let me also go through some similarities with him and Ratio specifically.

Keyes says the words “dimwitted amateurs” in his first on-screen conversation with Neff. You can’t have Dr. Ratio without him talking about idiocy in some way.

Keyes almost only appears in the movie in relation to Neff, and barring a single interaction in Neff’s house, is also only seen in the office. Same with Phyllis, Ratio also only ever appears regarding Aventurine.

Keyes genuinely wanted the best for Neff, even offering to celebrate with him when he thought the case truly had been busted wide open by forces when Zachette entered the picture. You could say the same for Ratio, as he hoped that Aventurine wouldn’t dwell on the past according to his response on Aventurine’s Interview, as well as telling him to “stay alive/live on (CN)” and wishing him the best of luck in his Doctor’s Advice note.

Whether or not you believe that there was more going on with Neff and Keyes is up to you, but what matters is that the two were very close. Just like Ratio and Aventurine.

—

[THE ORIGINAL FILM ENDING]

Something that I hadn’t seen brought up is the original ending of Double Indemnity, where Neff is executed in a gas chamber while Keyes watches on, shocked, and afterwards leaves somberly. The ending was taken out because they were worried about the Hays Code, but I felt it was important to bring it up, because in a way, you can kind of see the Sunday interrogation scene as Sunday sending Aventurine to his death in seventeen system hours. And Ratio doesn’t speak at all in that scene, and Keyes doesn’t either according to the script.

Another thing that’s noteworthy is that Wilder himself said “the story was about the two guys” in Conversations with Wilder. The two guys in question are Keyes and Neff.

—

[THE NOVEL]

With the original film ending covered, now it is time to bring up the novel by James M. Cain. I bought the book just to read about the differences between the adaptation and the original source material, and to list a few more similarities and opposites I could gather. For this section alone, due to the changes in the (last) names of certain characters, I will be referring to Walter Huff (Neff in the movie) as Walter, and Mr. Dietrichson as Nirdlinger. The plot is pretty much the same as the movie’s apart from a couple of changes so there isn’t a need to recount everything.

From my two read-throughs of the novel, these are the following passages that stood out to me the most. Starting with Aventurine:

Walter, as a top businessman of the company, knows how to sway a deal and to get what he truly wants with what the other gives him. Aventurine is the same, reliant on his intuition, experience and whatever information he has on the table to claim the win. Him luring out Sparkle in Heaven Is A Place On Earth and his conversation with Acheron in the Nihility is indicative of that.

• "But you sell as many people as I do, you don't go by what they say. You feel it, how the deal is going. And after a while I knew this woman didn't care anything about the Automobile Club. Maybe the husband did, but she didn't. There was something else, and this was nothing but a stall. I figured it would be some kind of a proposition to split the commission, maybe so she could get a ten-spot out of it without the husband knowing. There's plenty of that going on. And I was just wondering what I would say to her." 

Phyllis, like in the movie, had been hiding her true intentions of talking to Walter in their first conversations, always saying things that she didn’t actually mean. In a similar vein, Aventurine consistently says stuff but almost never truly means any of it, which is all part of his façade.

• "And I could feel it again, that she wasn't saying what she meant. It was the same as it was the first afternoon I met her, that there was something else, besides what she was telling me. And I couldn't shake it off, that I had to call it on her."

When discussing the murder plan with Phyllis, Walter makes this comment, kind of like how Aventurine seems to operate in a way where he has a plan, but is ready to improvise and think fast when needed.

• "And then it's one of those things where you've got to watch for your chance, and you can't plan it in advance, and know where you're going to come out to the last decimal point."

Remember the roulette wheel line from the movie? In the novel, the gambling metaphor that Walter makes about the insurance business goes on for two paragraphs, mentioning a gambling wheel, stack of chips, a place with a big casino and the little ivory ball, even about a bet on the table. Walter also talks about how he thinks of tricks at night after being in the business for so long, and how he could game the system. Needless to say, insanely reminiscent of Aventurine.

• "You think I’m nuts? All right, maybe I am. But you spend fifteen years in the business I’m in, and maybe a little better than that, it’s the friend of the widow, the orphan, and the needy in time of trouble? It’s not. It’s the biggest gambling wheel in the world. It don’t look like it, but it is, from the way they figure the percentage on the oo to the look on their face when they cash your chips. You bet that your house will burn down, they bet it won’t, that’s all. What fools you is that you didn’t want your house to burn down when you made the bet, and so you forget it’s a bet. To them, a bet is a bet, and a hedge bet don’t look any different than any other bet. But there comes a time, maybe, when you do want your house to burn down, when the money is worth more than the house. And right there is where the trouble starts." • "Alright, I’m an agent. I’m a croupier in that game. I know all their tricks, I lie awake thinking up tricks, so I’ll be ready for them when they come at me. And then one night I think up a trick, and get to thinking I could crook the wheel myself if I could only put a plant out there to put down my bet." • "I had seen so many houses burned down, so many cars wrecked, so many corpses with blue holes in their temples, so many awful things that people had pulled to crook the wheel, that that stuff didn’t seem real to me anymore. If you don’t understand that, go to Monte Carlo or some other place where there’s a big casino, sit at a table, and watch the face of the man that spins the little ivory ball. After you’ve watched it a while, ask yourself how much he would care if you went out and plugged yourself in the head. His eyes might drop when he heard the shot, but it wouldn’t be from the worry whether you lived or died. It would be to make sure you didn’t leave a bet on the table, that he would have to cash for your estate. No, he wouldn’t care."

Returning home from the murder, Walter attempted to pray, but was unable to do it. Some time passed and after speaking to Phyllis, he prayed. Aventurine presumably hadn’t done the prayer ever since the day of the massacre, and the first time he does it again, he does it with his child self.

• "I went to the dining room and took a drink. I took another drink. I started mumbling to myself, trying to get so I could talk. I had to have something to mumble. I thought of the Lord's Prayer. I mumbled that, a couple of times. I tried to mumble it another time, and couldn't remember how it went." • "That night I did something I hadn’t done in years. I prayed."

Phyllis in the book is much more inclined towards death than her movie version, even thinking of herself as a personification of death. She’s killed ten other people (including infants) prior to the events of the novel. Something to keep in mind as Aventurine had mentioned several times that he attempted to kill himself in the dream, plus his leadup to his “grandest death”. Just like Phyllis, he’s even killed at least a few people before, though the circumstances of that were less on his own volition and more so for the sake of his survival (i.e. the death game in the maze involving the 34 other slaves where he was the winner and another time where he murdered his own master). Instead of Phyllis playing the active role of Death towards everybody else, Aventurine himself dances with Death with every gamble, every time his luck comes into play. Danse Macabre.

• "But there’s something in me, I don’t know what. Maybe I’m crazy. But there’s something in me that loves Death. I think of myself as Death, sometimes." • "Walter, The time has come. For me to meet my bridegroom [Death]. The only one I ever loved."

Moving on to Ratio:

Walter says several times that it’s hard to get along with Keyes, and how he says nice things after getting you all worked up. A hard-headed man to get along with, but damn good at his job. Sound like someone familiar?

• "That would be like Keyes, that even when he wanted to say something nice to you, he had to make you sore first."  • "It makes your head ache to be around him, but he’s the best claim man on the Coast, and he was the one I was afraid of."

Keyes sees Walter as smarter than half the fools in the company. Ratio can only stand the company of Aventurine in regards to the IPC.

• "Walter, I'm not beefing with you. I know you said he ought to be investigated. I've got your memo right here on my desk. That's what I wanted to tell you. If other departments of this company would show half the sense that you show—" • "Oh, he confessed. He's taking a plea tomorrow morning, and that ends it. But my point is, that if you, just by looking at that man, could have your suspicions, why couldn't they—! Oh well, what's the use? I just wanted you to know it."

After going on a rant about the H.S. Nirdlinger case (Phyllis’ husband) and how Norton is doing a horrible job, he ends it by saying that it’s sheer stupidity. “Supreme idiocy”, anybody?

• "You can’t take many body blows like this and last. Holy smoke. Fifty thousand bucks, and all from dumbness. Just sheer, willful, stupidity!"

Phyllis’ former occupation as a nurse is more elaborated on, including her specialization — pulmonary diseases. One of Ratio’s crowning achievements is curing lithogenesis, the “King of Diseases”.

• "She’s one of the best nurses in the city of Los Angeles. […] She’s a nurse, and she specialized in pulmonary diseases. She would know the time of crisis, almost to a minute, as well as any doctor would."

As for the murder scheme, they talk about it a lot more explicitly in the novel. Specifically, Walter mentions how a single person cannot get away with it and that it requires more people to be involved. How everything is known to the party committing the crime, but not the victim. And most importantly: Audacity.

"Say, this is a beauty, if I do say it myself. I didn't spend all this time in the business for nothing, did I? Listen, he knows all about this policy, and yet he don't know a thing about it. He applies for it, in writing, and yet he don't apply for it. He pays me for it with his own check, and yet he don't pay me. He has an accident happen to him and yet he don't have an accident happen to him. He gets on the train, and yet he don't get on it."

"The first is, help. One person can't get away with it, that is unless they're going to admit it and plead the unwritten law or something. It takes more than one. The second is, the time, the place, the way, all known in advance—to us, but not him. The third is, audacity. That's the one that all amateur murderers forget. They know the first two, sometimes, but that third, only a professional knows. There comes a time in any murder when the only thing that can see you through is audacity, and I can't tell you why."

"And if we want to get away with it, we've got to do it the way they do it, […]" "Be bold?" "Be bold. It's the only way."

"I still don't know—what we're going to do." "You'll know. You'll know in plenty of time."

"We were right up with it, the moment of audacity that has to be be part of any successful murder."

It fits the situation that Aventurine and Ratio find themselves in extremely well: For the first point— Aventurine would not be able to get away with simply airing out details by himself, as that would immediately cast suspicion on him. Having another person accompany him who not only isn’t really a part of the IPC in name (as the IPC and The Family have a strenuous relationship) but would probably be able to get closer to Sunday because of that means they can simply bounce off each other without risking as much suspicion with a one-man army. Which is exactly what Ratio and Aventurine do in the conversations they have on Penacony. Secondly — they knew how Sunday operates: as a control freak, he leaves no stone unturned, which is how he became Head of the Oak Family, so their acting required them to give off the impression that a. they hated each other, b. Ratio would go against Aventurine’s wishes and expose him in return for knowledge, c. there were only the two Cornerstones that were hidden. This would give Sunday the illusion of control, and lead to Sunday to lower his guard long enough for Aventurine to take the gift money in the end. The pair knew this in advance, but not Sunday. And thirdly — the plan hinged on a high-level of risk. From breaking the Aventurine Cornerstone, to hoping that Sunday wouldn’t find it in the gift bag, to not telling Ratio what the true plan is (meaning Ratio had to figure it out on his own later on), to Sunday even buying Ratio’s story, it was practically the only way they could go about it. “Charming audacity”, indeed.

An interesting aspect about the novel is that the ending of the novel is divergent from the movie’s final cut and the original ending: Phyllis and Walter commit suicide during a ferry ride to Mexico. The main reason this was changed for the movie was because of the Hays Code, and they wouldn’t allow a double suicide to be screened without reprecussions for criminals. There’s also a bunch of other aspects that differentiate the novel from the movie (no narration-confession as the confession happens in a hospital, less characterization for Keyes and instead a bigger focus on Lola and her boyfriend, the focus on the murderous aspect of Walter and Phyllis’ relationship instead of actual romance, Walter falling in love with Lola (with an unfortunately large age gap attached), etc.)

As for the ending, this wouldn’t even be the first romance media reference related to Aventurine and Ratio where both the leads die, with the other being The Happy Prince and San Junipero (in relation to the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth reference), which I normally would chalk up as a coincidence, though with the opposite line-of-thought I have going on here (and the fact that it’s three out of four media references where the couple die at the end…), I think it’s reasonable to say that Ratio and Aventurine will get that happy ending. Subverting expectations, hopefully.

—

[THE HAYS CODE — LGBT CENSORSHIP IN CHINA]

I’ve brought up the Hays code twice now in the previous two sections, but I haven’t actually explained what exactly it entails.

The Hays Code (also known as the Motion Picture Production Code) is a set of rules and guidelines imposed on all American films from around 1934 to 1968, intended to make films less scandalous, morally acceptable and more “safe” for the general audiences. Some of the “Don’ts” and “Be Carefuls” include but are not limited to…

(Don’t) Pointed profanity

(Don’t) Inference of sex perversion (which includes homosexuality)

(Don’t) Nudity

(Be Careful) Sympathy for criminals

(Be Careful) Use of firearms

(Be Careful) Man and woman in bed together

What does this have to do with a Chinese gacha game released in 2023? If you know a little bit about miHoYo’s past, you would know that pre-censorship laws being upheld to a much stronger and stricter degree, they had no problem showcasing their gay couples in Guns Girl Z (Honkai Gakuen 2/GGZ) and Honkai Impact 3rd, with the main three being Bronya/Seele, Kiana/Mei (admittedly the latter one is a more recent example, from 2023), and Sakura/Kallen. Ever since the Bronya and Seele kiss, censorship in regards to LGBT content ramped up, causing the kiss to be removed on the CN side, and they had to lay low with the way they present two same-sex characters who are meant to be together. They can’t explicitly say that two female or male characters are romantically involved, but they can lace their dynamics with references for those “in the know” — Subtext. Just enough to imply something more but not too much that they get censored to hell and back.

So what I’m getting at is this: The trouble that Double Indemnity had to go through in order to be made while also keeping the dialogue of Phyllis and Neff as flirtatious as they could under the Hays Code among other things is quite similar to the way Ratio and Aventurine are presented as of now. We never see them interact outside of Penacony (at least up until 2.2, when this post was drafted), so we can only infer those interactions specifically until they actually talk without the fear of being found out by Sunday. But, there’s still some small moments scattered here and there, such as when Aventurine goes near Ratio in the Dewlight Pavilion Sandpit, he exclaims that “the view here is breathtaking” (he can only see Ratio’s chest from that distance) and that Ratio could “easily squash [him] with just a pinch”. Ratio then goes “If that is your wish, I will do so without a moment’s hesitation.” Not to mention the (in)famous “Doctor, you’re huge!” quote.

It’s not a coincidence that Ratio and Aventurine have three explicit references to romance media (Double Indemnity, Spellbound, Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince), possibly even four if you take the EN-only Heaven Is A Place On Earth as a reference to Black Mirror’s San Junipero. It’s not a coincidence that the storylines or characters of said references parallel the pairing, from surface-level to deep cuts. It’s not a coincidence that the CN voice actors were asked to “tone it down” by the voice director when it came to their chemistry. It’s not a coincidence that Aventurine has only flirted with (three) men throughout Penacony, even referring to a Bloodhound NPC as a “hunk of a man” inside his thoughts, all the while ignoring Himeko and Robin when it came to their looks — women who are known across the cosmos with a myriad of adoring fans. There are so many other so-called “coincidences” related to the two that you could make an iceberg just based on versions 2.0-2.2 as well as content miHoYo themselves have put out on social media. They absolutely knew what they were doing, and were trying to get their point across through subtle means — the extent they went to with the Double Indemnity reference while also keeping it under wraps from a “surface” level point of view is proof of this — the implications are there if you take the time to look for them, and are simply hard to ignore or deny once you do find them.

—

[CONCLUSION]

This was supposed to be short considering the other analyses I’ve seen were also pretty short in comparison, but I couldn’t get the movie out of my head and ended up getting carried away in the brainrot. I hope you could follow along with my line of thinking, even with the absurd length of this post, and the thirty-image limit. I tried to supplement context with some links to videos and wiki pages among other sources wherever I can to get around it.

I will end it with this though — the love in the movie turned out to be fake and a farce, going off track from what was a passionate romance in the beginning because of the murder scheme. Meanwhile, the whole reason why Ratio and Aventurine can pull off whatever they want is because of their immense trust in one another. What was initially shown to be distrust in the Final Victor LC grew into something more, for Ratio, someone who would have never put faith into mere chance and probability before this, put his trust in Aventurine, of all people.

TL;DR — (I get it, it’s over ten thousand words.)

Not only is the relationship between Neff and Phyllis represented in the deception and acting side of Ratio and Aventurine, but the real and trusting side is shown in Neff and Keyes. They have a fascinating, multi-layered dynamic that is extremely fun to pick apart once you realise what’s going on underneath the bickering and “hatred” they display.

Many thanks to Manya again for making the original thread on the movie. I wouldn’t be here comparing the game and movie myself if it weren’t for that.

By the way, I really do believe that Shaoji totally watched this movie at least once and really wanted that Double Indemnity AU for his OCs. I know exactly how it feels.

—

Other points I'd like to mention that didn't fit anywhere else in the main analysis and/or don’t hold much significance, have nothing to do with the Penacony mission, or may even be considered reaching (...if some of the other points weren’t). Just some potentially interesting side bits.

Phyllis honks three times to signal Neff to go for the kill. That, and the three gunshots in the confrontation. Aventurine is all about the number three.

The height difference Aventurine and Ratio have going on is close to Phyllis and Neff’s.

Phyllis had killed her husband’s previous wife and went on to marry Mr. Dietrichson, pretty much taking the wife’s place. Aventurine killed his previous master, and had taken certain attributes from him like his wristwatch and the rings on his hand and the “all or nothing” mantra.

When calling Ratio a wretch (bastard), Aventurine smiles for a moment. This is exclusive to the EN, KR and JP voiceovers, as in CN, he does not smile at all. (Most definitely a quirk from the AI they use for lip syncing, but the smile is something that’s been pointed out quite a few times so I thought I’d mention it here.)

Sunday specifically says in the CN version that he knew of Aventurine's plans the moment Aventurine left the mansion, meaning that he realized he had been played the fool the moment Ratio and Aventurine talked in Golden Hour

In the description for the "All or Nothing" consumable, teenage Aventurine says this specific line: "Temptation is a virtue for mortals, whereas hesitation proves to be a fatal flaw for gamblers." According to Ratio, this is Aventurine's motto - he says as such in Aventurine's Keeping Up With Star Rail episode. Note that in the anan interview he explicitly says he does not have a motto, and yet Ratio in the video says otherwise. They definitely have to know each other for a while for Ratio to even know this.

A big reason why Neff even pulled off the murder scheme in the first place was because he wanted to see if his good friend Keyes could figure it out, the Mundane Troubles Trailblaze Continuance showcases Ratio attempting to teach the Herta Space Station researches a lesson to not trust the Genius society as much as they did.

In Keyes’ first scene he’s exposing a worker for writing a policy on his truck that he claimed had burnt down on its own, when he was the one who burnt it down. Ratio gets into an Ace Attorney-style argument with the Trailblazer in Mundane Troubles.

Neff talks repeatedly about how it won’t be sloppy. Nothing weak. And how it’ll be perfect to Phyllis, and how she’s going to do it and he’s going to help her. Doing it right — “straight down the line”. Beautifully ironic, considering what happens in the movie, and even more ironic as Ratio and Aventurine’s scheme went exactly the way they wanted to in the end. Straight down the line.

[artemisjpotter]

Just looking at some of Ratio’s voice lines and this one. What do you mean “our man?” Idk, sounds kinda gay to me

[delzinrowe]

DR. RATIO Honkai: Star Rail | 2024

[slowd1ving]

✦ IV. WEEP FOR HIM, I BID OF THEE

'Ratio had not been man for a millennium. He had not heard, not seen, not felt, not tasted, nor smelled, for a thousand years.  It began with a faint frequency that droned in the very recesses of the stone. A buzz, or a low hum, resonated as though he could hear the very orbitals of electrons whirring in each atom. At this point, the background levels of his simulations had ceased—for this was far more important.  For the first time in centuries, the sluggish pulse that still beat in his undead chest had quickened, just a little.' • . * cursed prince ratio + alchemist m reader rough design for minoan fashion ratio here warnings: video game violence, death? kind of? tyranny (are we surprised), male-coded reader (or at least the in-game avatar is) wc: 15.7k

LAMENT OF OUROBOROS MASTERLIST

HONKAI STAR RAIL MASTERLIST

MASTERLIST ・゜・NAVIGATION

On the first day came death, on the second a state of limbo, and on the third came rebirth—in the form of an idyllic meadow and the iron tang of blood far in the distance. Living was a constant skirmish; a fight amidst an amorphous crowd of not just humans, but against the nigh omnipotent tides of nature and its catastrophic ebb and flow. Every breath you took, every minute shiver of your body was all weighed against you: shivering in the frigid chill as you prayed to whatever higher existence there was that you’d live to struggle some more. 

Your limbo would not come just yet. 

Facing you was a man who teetered on the edge between cowardice and courage. Fear dulled his chromatic eyes, that seemed to only resign themselves to you leaving him far behind while you slipped out of his hold. It would’ve been easy. Wounds littered his arms into vices far too weak to anchor you in place, and the latent hum of the equation you’d failed to complete was still circulating throughout your body like a second respiratory system—endowing you with freakish strength. 

Behind you, past the worn bark of the tree that concaved into your flesh, was the behemoth occupying the river that had produced the clay that you’d filled your pail with: now knocked futilely to the ground, mauve seeping into the earth once more. You couldn’t see it, but you could hear the massive volume of water displaced with each shift of its swaying, powerful coils of steel-like muscle. A monstrous frequency tainted the otherwise clean air—piercing right past the inked dermis of your body and painfully twisting against your very veins. 

Any longer, and you feared both you and the stranger afore you wouldn’t live much longer. 

You considered him, trembling like a fragile leaf while trying desperately not to show it. Despite his acceptance of whatever fate allotted him, he clearly desired to live, whether he knew it or not.

Then, you studied the river. Not visually, but rather you tasted the faint salt on the air—wetting your lips slightly, feeling its sharp brine on the roof of your mouth and then the back of your tongue. The sea was just out to the west, and the river meandered into that: freshwater and seawater mingled in this area, enough to give your clay a slightly unfamiliar consistency. From what you saw, the river was wide; perfect for the foolhardy plan slowly taking root in your mind. 

In turn, the stranger studied you too; there was no matching panic in your own pupils, but a more analytical, dispassionate observation that put you into the shoes of a spectator rather than participator in this scenario. Like you didn’t belong there—and you knew it, too. 

Casually, you weighed the stick in your hand. It was up to your chest—a solid, decent height—yet in the face of that grinning colossus it was no more than a twig: a toothpick for its gaping maw to use after chowing down on the two of you. But it would do. 

◼◼◼◼◼ father thereof ◼◼◼◼ Sun, the mothe◼◼ Moon; wind carried ◼◼◼◼ ◼◼◼◼◼◼ with great sagacity it doth ascend◼ gently from Earth to heaven ◼◼◼◼ again it doth descend to Earth. 

The soft song of the tongue of thought wove against your neurons, clearer than ever. But the stranger wedging you betwixt him and the tree was unaware of the crooning placations building a spell in your mind—he could only watch you straighten, more alert than ever. 

But not to run. No, your stance looked like you were bracing yourself—not with painfully squeezed-shut eyes and a grimace for your impending doom, but rather with the disposition of a doctor armed with a syringe. There was a clinically straight set of your mouth as you gauged the usability of the primitive weapon you held.

No time to think. 

The leviathan was growing impatient; and you could practically hear its webbed crown fan out as it prepared to unleash whatever toxins it had built. But something else, too, was building: a buzzing of ions that were slowly disrupting the vein-twisting frequency emitted by the monster. In a split second decision, you diverted some of the energy tracing its electronic, droning charge back into your body to fortify it. 

It was risky. Your plan was risky, and you knew it. Maybe the stranger knew it too, but you had no time to care about his knowledge of weather phenomena. 

Thus was this ◼◼◼ world created. 

Where the tattoos glowed, your skin began to splinter in incandescent lines; and the sudden flow of charge seeping through fragile dermis of your skin caused your tentative ally to jolt back: stumbling against the tree root and falling to the soft foliage. But still you didn’t use the opportunity to run. Rather, you turned so your back now faced him—light bleeding through the clay- and blood-muddied cream shirt. It was reassuring, which he found to be ludicrous: in this situation especially, where his trust in others had been whittled to nothing. 

Fuck, this hurts, you momentarily took a break from the chant—feeling your mouth taste like static charge, like the metallic blood you’d gurgled prior to your death, But this time you weren’t dying—not when you still had to fulfil the self-assigned duty of rest in this life. 

Like an arcing javelin, the hands imbued with electrical power jolted the stick into the rest position of projectile motion—primed with an almost-superhuman awareness you never possessed before and probably wouldn’t possess again. Limbo had occurred; a sacrifice of your energy that had now returned back into a far more destructive form. 

Above both the clearing and the river churned dark clouds that weren’t here just minutes prior. With them came the pungent scent of ozone, a homage paid to the events that were about to unfold shortly. Your mouth filled with the bitter, ionic remnants and the filthy taint of blood. 

“Sa keres?” he hissed out behind you. ‘What are you doing?’ It was a garbled question, tied together only by the fact that it was his mother tongue. Each syllable from the tongue of honey was scattered with panic, inclining into a pitch that almost transcended the range of human hearing. As if to punctuate his poignant hysteria, you could hear him scrambling back as flickers of electricity began their coils down your body—beginning to char the once-soft shirt with pinpricks of a soot black. 

You couldn’t reply, too focused on the continued chant in your mind, as well as the hurried assessment you were making of the pattern behind that massive, weaving head. Though it was faint, the remnants of coding were there behind the eternal loop of the monster—shaking its frilled crown, ducking slightly, turning against the banks, and finally coming to a brief pause as the sequence came to a close. 

True it is, without falsehood ◼◼◼◼ certain and most true.

You toed a line with your dominant foot behind you, settling into a loose stance that would allow the perfect parabola through the air. Video game mechanics didn’t show the effects of air resistance, thus you surmised you could probably get away with bending the laws of physics a little. 

Theoretical, the calculation was—written somewhere on your body, no doubt. 

Ha’qal yaqina la◼◼ shaka◼◼ fih.  

Its monolithic, blinking eye was lined in your crosshairs: a horrifying sight, burning aureate sliced in half by a slit pupil. 

The acrid smell of ozone grew stronger. 

With your other hand, you guided the end of the stick to where the pupil would end up after the sequence concluded. 

The sinew in your body was beginning to slowly turn into live wires, hyper contracting your muscles as you fought to stay conscious in the torrential current that was threatening to teem from your skin itself. Not yet… Past the thrumming veins and the aorta that throbbed with pain, was the dermis that was pulsating along the etched lines of the formulae—white-hot crackles of electricity were invading the confines of each equation, and your mind was starting to cloud over deliriously. 

Not yet…

The monumental crown fanned itself out. 

Your hold on the weapon tightened, fingers pressing into the wood grain even as your skin fought to stay together. 

Ten seconds. Ten seconds it would take, once the ruffles closed, to act. Missing wasn’t an option: never was, never would be, not if you wanted to get out of this alive. The creature blinked as its head wove this way and that, breath just grazing past the bark of the tree you stood behind—the surrounding foliage withered immediately, and you swallowed thickly. 

The power thereof◼ ◼ is perfect. 

Your hand no longer shook, but rather thrummed with the coursing circuits lighting up beneath your skin. 

“◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼◼,” you murmured, just as the head began rising back to its neutral position. Equivalent exchange. 

As above, so below. 

Your muscles screamed hoarsely, protesting the quicksilver motion of your arm as it flung the stick with all the borrowed force you’d exchanged. It was so fast it hurt: flesh and sinew practically creaking in how it snapped forward. But there was no time to nurse your wounds and proverbially lick them—there was only space for watching the stick pierce into the pupil. 

It was a needle in the face of a camel. For a brief moment, the massive basilisk stood stock-still, and that was when you forged past the aching hum of your body to transition into the second phase of your incantations. 

If it be cast upon the Earth◼◼◼◼ it will separate the element of earth from that of fire, the subtle from the gross. 

The behemoth shuddered, and rapidly descended into thrashing—attempting futilely to dislodge the firmly-stuck stick from its eye. It convulsed madly, and you prayed it wouldn’t whip its colossal neck towards you while you finished the final few lines. 

By now, the water from the river was flooding from the banks as the colossus disturbed the waves in its distress—the bilious smell of its lethal breath soon filled the surroundings, but there was only ozone you tasted. Too much water. Panicked, you realised there was water sloshing around your ankles; by extension, it had soaked the man behind you. 

You turned, wobbling slightly in the recitations, gesturing for him to get away with hand signs universal even as you crossed into a different one. The hurriedness of your movements left no time to observe his reaction to your ability: the way the breath caught in his throat; the strange, sharp pounding in his chest; and the tremors his hands carried—far more so than when he’d escaped from that hellhole and accidentally came across the basilisk in its territory. 

It was only when you heard the scrambling sounds get more distant that you finally relaxed. Not a minute too soon. You pressed your blood-slicked palms together, feeling more of the red liquid drip from your nose and splash onto your wrist. 

Uniteth ◼◼◼◼◼ in itself the Sky and the Earth. 

The sky tore itself asunder. It, ‘it’ being the cloud-stained firmament, split in two jagged halves as light descended from the heavens. Or, more accurately, lightning pierced through the delicate hues and straight through the eye your stick had marked. 

It was a quick death, if not a painful one. The basilisk contorted and thrashed, until suddenly it didn’t—topping over onto the bank only a dozen or so lengths away from the pair of you. Dead. You might’ve felt a twinge of pity, if it hadn’t been out for blood. 

Rolling waves crackled with dying electricity as you scampered back, but your calves still felt the faint crackles of voltage pressing in from the sloshing water that was now ankle-deep around you. Though, in actuality, it may have just been the remnants of the energy you’d exchanged—gone unused in the depths of your muscle and bone. 

It didn’t matter, not when the light had faded from the ink on your body and blood bubbled from your dry mouth. Dimly, you registered your metal pail floating on its side just near the blond; and your eyes could only flick feebly upwards to meet his own, widened ones. Your heart pulsed, sticky and metallic on your tongue: and it clouded the words forming on your tongue weakly. 

“To… umiro.” The syllables coalesced into a clumsy string in honey tongue; a futile attempt to be reassuring, when your clothes were stained with blood and charred marks and your fists still palpitated with small pulses of electrons. ‘It’s dead’. You staggered, pressing your fingers into the tree you hid behind only minutes prior to this—digging your nails harshly into the bark while you fought to stay upright. 

The profile was right—transferring energy into another form was far more efficient than turning it into a material object. But that didn’t do any good when you could feel the unfamiliar energy; you were due to collapse any time soon from the fatigue that had built up—ignoring the energy sacrificed. 

Still, you thought drowsily as you fumbled the thin, cold handle of your pail (the clay, miraculously, had stayed half in the bucket), the combat experiment had been extraordinarily useful to gauge how far you could push yourself in a fight. Casually, you wrung out your shirt and the rolled-up bottoms of your trousers, before you glanced at the massive snake one last time. Just like a minute ago, it was still dead. 

Whatever. It no longer concerned you; as someone who dropped Lament of Ouroboros an hour into playing, you had no concept of the value of the beast, nor how rare it was. Objectively, it was a fat snake. Perhaps you could take its massive skin for yourself, or find a market for basilisk meat, or even carve its massive teeth into more suitable weapons than the damn stick you’d found to walk with. 

Like a cracked pomegranate, the lightning had pierced through its body and spilled its innards onto the banks, while a fang lay chipped nearby. 

“Wait!” Ah. In all honesty, you’d forgotten about the blond man who now scrambled to his feet with a stricken, almost-panicked look in his eyes. While he was in the throes of adrenaline, his pinprick pupils had allowed you to observe briefly the vibrant turquoise and magenta rings in his eyes—blue spreading into the purple in a shade you’d never quite seen so bright. Though now, they had dilated back to a healthy size; similarly, his irises were almost completely purple as he held your wrist in a slight daze. You frowned. 

“Yes?” A headache began to form. 

. 　⁺ ✦

In the end, you took the stranger home. 

“Sorry,” he’d murmured with his teeth worrying at his lips, a habit you used to have back on Earth. Maybe that was what had made a shred of pity dampen your wizened old heart, or maybe it was the countless wounds that needed treating as soon as possible. You didn’t know what he was doing all the way in the deep of the Borderlands (you also didn’t particularly care), but it was particularly commendable to stay alive so long when he looked like he sucked at fighting. Perhaps he just had some insane luck, some you could’ve used a life ago. 

Though, you thought while flexing your fingers, this life had certainly made up for its shortcomings, present just a few months ago.

His name was Aventurine, he’d told you, eyes searching your face as if you were meant to react. Great, you’d replied, but you hadn’t given him your own in return as you half-carried, half-propped him up: his arm flung over and secured firmly in place by your hand over your shoulders, while your other hand gingerly clasped his side with a metal pail bumping against him. You win some, you lose some, you’d sagely surmised. Judging by the ornate clothing, which still wasn’t given as a convenient window of your system (seriously, you had to do some serious guesswork with that massive snake!), it was evident that he could be someone important—though you lacked both the knowledge and the shits to give to treat him with whatever courtesy he ought to have been owed. 

No, his name was actually Kakavasha, he’d amended hastily as he sat down in your bathroom. Maybe it was simply the brief security he felt when, upon seeing the long stairs in your house (and his face becoming a tad more palloured at the sight), you’d gently picked up his too-light body and merely climbed the rest of the way to the large bathroom that gazed out onto the forest and distant horizon. You said nothing. Neither did he, but when you held down his shoulders to wrangle him onto the wooden stool that clattered against cerulean tiles as you dragged it over to the cabinet where you kept medical supplies, he decided to finally break his silence. Alchemy, to your annoyance, could not directly be used to heal—at least not yet, when the finer points of anatomy eluded you. 

Cool, you replied once more, in that same impassive tone. For someone you were going to send away in a few business hours, he sure was chatty. Peeling off the long, dark coat that had been stuck to his body by blood, and the subsequent quality shirt (that was damn near unrecognisable with how much it had been torn and bloodied), you missed the faint pink on his face whilst you surveyed him clinically. 

A long gash from left pectoral to right clavicle. Bruising around the rib area. Lacerations on his lower abdomen. Bruising on his lower back, as well as many smaller wounds on his upper. Grazing on his arms with a more serious abrasion on his left bicep. 

“...No broken bones, right?” It was the first sound from you that hadn’t been monosyllabic. Really, almost dying together made you practically amicable. Buddies, even. These paltry words were the most you’d spoken to anyone in weeks. 

“No.” He was quiet as you pressed a ball of gauze soaked in cold spirits against the shallow wounds with nary a hiss. “...Thank you for saving my life.”

“Don’t sweat it. It was going to eat me too,” you returned. Gratitude that wasn’t mere platitudes came rarely. Gratitude was what you should’ve gotten by shouldering your runaway mother’s debts, but that never happened.

His sincere, earnest gaze prickled your skin with discomfort; too used to perfunctory nods and smiles.

“It was the most terrifying sight I’ve seen.” And for a brief moment, you didn’t know who he referred to—that basilisk, or the you so carefully wrapping his arms up with bandages. Your scent was that of blood and saltwater, tearing into his senses with an acuity that only reminded him of how easily you felled that beast. 

He didn’t elaborate. 

You didn’t ask further. 

. 　⁺ ✦

“Are you a spellsword?” 

The question was both unprompted and unprecedented. Aventurine peered his gem-like eyes up at you, while you paused in your deft chopping of fragrant onions. You could only stare back. Really, you hadn’t expected him to stay longer than three days at most, but apparently your interpretation of him being a flighty individual was ill-conceived. 

This was his second week staying with you, and between his slowly accumulating jabber was the transfer of drachma and minae on a startling level. If you thought Dan Heng had been rich, this guy was on a completely different level—gifting you so much gold that you avoided any semblance of the shade in your clothes for the past few days. 

Wearily, you thumbed the jade bead that felt slightly heavier despite the enchantment on it that prevented it from ever growing so. Or maybe it was your body, bone-tired from your self-dubbed ‘apprentice’; you still didn’t know why you dumbly accepted, though the wild look in his sclera that gave him the appearance of chased prey might’ve contributed partly. Although, you didn’t particularly understand what knowledge you were meant to pass on. 

“They’re mages who are proficient in physical weaponry,” he clarified when you kept mum—a habit of yours that hadn’t changed even after your death. A prickle of hot oil stung your hands as you swept the root vegetable into a gleaming copper pot. “I thought you might be one. If you could take out a beast that had killed over a dozen of the knight company I’d been travelling with, then you must be a spellsword of the highest calibre.”

A beat passed, in which you considered the weight of a false identity to further mask your own as an alchemist. 

“Foremost, I am a sculptor,” you murmured, feeling the drag of the kitchen chair as he padded over to you—an act graceful despite his slouching, which further reinforced your theory of him being an important figure in a far off land. It only puzzled you, to be frank. 

Why?

The answer eluded you as you supped with him, as you swilled the wine you’d managed to ferment, as you sunk below the fragrant bubbles in the large porcelain tub upstairs. You didn’t probe into his origins, thus the question of your class was the limit he could ask you, too. In fact, he didn’t even mention learning the ability you’d showcased at the river—rather, he was content in merely basking in the warmth with you and working over the clay you’d salvaged. In fact, sculpting was the only profession he seemingly wanted to learn from you as your apprentice: not the strange magic you possessed, nor the knowledge of chemistry packed tightly into your brain. 

“What are you thinking about?”

It became a routine, of sorts. Like some… colourful… lucky… bird, he brought back shiny things he’d ‘chanced’ upon in the forest. A pail of the smoothest clay you’d ever seen. A slab of the most luminescent rock you’d ever had the pleasure of carving. An opalescent bauble, delicately strung upon a thin chain—something you severely doubted that he simply stumbled upon. 

You eyed the man who stood by your stool while you worked the clay absentmindedly with your hands. The breeze today was especially pleasant, enough that your mood was light enough to actually reply with far less hesitation than normal. 

“Your abnormal luck,” you answered bluntly, gesturing to the large barrel of the soft medium that stood proud in the corner. 

“Really?” His voice was low as he leaned down, melodious even as he enunciated the harsher cadence of the common tongue. He was close, too close, enough that you could smell the faint aroma of floral tea on his breath and the expensive scent that lingered at the base of his throat, bound by the transient form of perfumed oil. Your oud, in particular—the one he was adamant on using despite the wide collection you’d purchased with a mere fraction of the drachmae that you now possessed. 

You couldn’t move back. If you did, it would be losing a gambit that you didn’t know existed in the first place. Some form of psychological attack, in such an amorphous shape that you could neither identify nor classify it. 

“Yes,” you murmured, eyes searching his. Your lump of clay congealed on your hands, misshapen and somewhat forgotten as you mindlessly worked into its soft material. 

“Was blessed by the almighty Gai’Athra Triclops at birth with it,” he offered, though that was no more answer to your question than a goose was a swan. You nodded like you knew what that meant, like the very words weren’t slipping away even as he spoke them. “My turn. Where did you learn the tongue of Avdĭn?” Honey-tongue. 

[The tongue of honey: a last relic to a land forgotten and swept away by time and sand. Barely any survivors made it out of the extinction of the Sigonian wastelands, and the language remains as mere fragmented shards amongst those who crawled to safety. Though nearing total deterioration, the tongue still serves as a bastion that those of the Avgin will one day regain what they lost.]

A question for a question, though you could feel the pressing weight behind his in a way that was never present in yours. Mechanically, your fingers pressed indentations in the cylinder to make room for eyes—feeling the cheekbones slowly melt into shape, and the strong nose taper beneath your hands. 

“I’m sorry,” you murmured. “I woke up two months ago with no memories of this world, and nothing but my name, occupation and New Metis remained in my head.”

“I see.”

The two syllables were embittered. He pulled away, focusing on his task once more with none of the cheer he possessed mere moments ago.

In hindsight, this brief moment could’ve been considered a turning point in your short new life. However, you didn’t and couldn’t know that; rather, your attention was honed on the face taking shape in your palms. 

How strange. Furrowing your brow, you cast your gaze to your other attempts you made while growing distracted; all shared a startling similarity that could no longer be ascribed to mere coincidence. A high, arrogant brow cast a thoughtful shadow over erudite eyes, while the rough mouth shaped by the flat end of your wooden carving tool held a displeased sort of heaviness that reminded you of your peers that went into teaching. Even the wavy hair you thought you only briefly shaped held the same uniform sort of curl in the front and back, framing the sides of his face until he bore an uncanny resemblance to his predecessors. Nonetheless, they possessed a nostalgic, dreamlike quality you couldn’t bring to destroy. 

Frowning, you set the new face to slumber alongside the rest.

. 　⁺ ✦

The frequency of Aventurine’s forays had begun to augment themselves. He was no less cordial and cheerful than—and no matter how hard you tried, there wasn’t any anger nor coldness that you could detect. Neither did he cease bringing you back something each time, though this time you could feel the desperation to cling to normalcy with him. 

His departures felt like thought itself, wrapped neatly in a contemplative air that prompted you to press your lips together and look away. 

In the end, you’d gotten used to his presence despite your reticent nature. That was your fault in the first place. 

[Princo Kakavasha, of the Avgin bloodline. The only prince that survived the Katica-Avgin Extinction, the one who desperately searches for  ◼◼◼◼◼.]

A prince. Charcoal stained your fingers as you absentmindedly sketched designs for new sculptures. It made sense why a prince on the run needed a place to stay, especially with someone strong enough to save his life. It made sense, but it embittered you to the same depth as he. 

Staring down at the large sketchpad, you frowned once more as that familiar face took root. Though this time, the soft waves of hair were shaded a sooty black, while a finger-smudged crown of laurels sat neatly in his hair. A dull ache resonated through your mind as you tried to remember where exactly you’d seen those accusatory eyes. 

Who is that?

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

“Who is that?” 

Another week passed. The man named Kakavasha to some, Aventurine to others, appeared to have been contemplating something very deeply—and his train of thought had noticeably approached its final destination. 

He peered over your shoulder now as though there was never any distance between the two of you. In his fragrant, red-stained hands, he carried a basket of foraged fruit: something he only took the effort for when he was in a particularly good mood. The tired glare of your eyes softened at someone you’d fostered a tentative friendship with getting comfortable once more. 

“I don’t actually know,” you murmured. Though you took your time sculpting birds, faceless figures and endless ceramics to both sell and use, the image inked into the sketchbook resembled none of those—but rather something your hands felt strong gravitation towards. Rich purple bled into once-ink-black locks, while sanguine lips pulled back in a sharp grimace. 

Beautiful. He was beautiful, in every right, but all the media you cast him in never showed him happy. 

“Maybe he’s from my past,” you lied. The hands skillfully easing the knots in your upper back paused, and when he spoke again, his cadence was significantly clipped. 

“He might not even be real,” he retorted scathingly; startled, you turned to look at his face, but his expression was still pleasant despite his words. “If you want me to, I can check.”

You started at the unexpected thrum of hostility that threaded dangerously through the syllables leaving his lips. Rationally, nothing in this world was a coincidence. If you were somewhat superstitious—carefully treading around cracks in the pavement, praying for a tidbit of luck whenever sugar spilled—in your old life, the magnitude only increased now. 

The pounding headache you got whenever you stared down at the man without a name only further attested his significance. 

It was only logical to carefully tear the page out from the metal teeth clipping it to the rest, and hand it to someone offering to help. But just as strongly was the undercurrent that bid you to keep it safe: keep it close. 

This was a mystery you had to solve yourself. 

“It’s fine,” you said instead. “I have a feeling he’s not real, too.” 

It was a lie, of course. The man staring up at you from the paper felt a pen-stroke away from breathing—brows carefully poised in a question. 

Why did you create me?

. 　⁺ ✦

There was ozone in the air tonight. Through the open window, the draught stirring your fluttering curtains and brushing across your furrowed brow felt more sentient than not. 

Tonight, your sleep didn't come easily. Hours of fitful tossing and turning had led you by the hand to a restless slumber—not the dreamless night you were used to, but something far more sinister. 

Tonight, you walked past desolate fields under the pitch-tinted sky. The two suns were gone, and the moon appeared to exist only as a mirage. Just like the ever-amorphous path, it could not even keep its spherical shape. 

It was the field you woke up in all those months ago, but it no longer seemed as welcoming as it had, nor did it resemble the cradle it did previously. 

No end was to be found on the path you trod on. And walk you did, from one end to infinity to the other: never quite knowing why, but treading the beaten road nonetheless. The only justification you could find was the urgent beat of your heart and the taste of iron on your lips as you borderline fled this place—so filled with despair and loneliness that you needed out.

A flash of damson flickered in the edges of your vision. Wonderingly, you looked up, onto to be met by the distant view of the port of the Isle of Thassos. Except, this wasn’t Thassos, and this certainly wasn’t a very good dream either. 

It was far too grey. The moon sat lonely in the sky, while you reflected the heavens and were just as lonesome.

Your feet ceased their patter, and the audible crunch of earth beneath your ragged, bare feet was the only sound you had heard so far in your solitary eternity of wandering. 

Up above you, the tendrils of a small star blazed into existence; the moon was no longer by itself. 

The breath in your throat lodged itself inside, while your eyes traced the path of the two heavenly bodies that ambled their way towards the horizon. When you focused on the line of precarious cliffs kissing the firmament, there was a figure amidst the bleak backdrop. Though as soon as your pupils honed in on the person in their solitude, their garb rippled and you could only watch your company slowly drift away.

“Wait,” you tried to call out, but your syllables warped and scattered in the vacuum between you two. 

Nonetheless, you thought you could see a flash of damson as he turned—a pale face framed by rich locks, lips pressed together in displeasure—before he ceased to exist in the intransient space of your mind.

You knew him. 

Despite the leagues separating the two of you, you knew him.

. 　⁺ ✦

On the day Aventurine’s luck went to shit, it was a brilliant July day—almost qualified to be completely perfect. 

Nobody could sense the slight change in the winds: not the prince himself, nor his teacher. In fact, the lot that Fate sent him today was so similar to all the rest that no one thought to scrutinise the strand further. 

Kakavasha had always been lucky. Fortunate. Clinging to life by the skin of his teeth and miraculously, miraculously surviving; even when he let go of the narrow precipice with the express wish of slipping into death. 

This is perhaps why it was better to describe that particular July day as a lapse in his destiny, rather than it totally going haywire. 

Of course, like all days, he naturally assumed his golden, shining thread of life would remain unbuckled by the pressures he exerted on it. Like a tightrope, he had long gotten used to uncaringly placing his weight on it—one foot after the other. After all, it had never failed him before. 

But, alas, today the thread binding him to fortune loosened somewhat. 

It started as all days did. He woke up bathed in the comforting scent of your home, yawning as he ambled downstairs to where you already lounged with a thick book and a cup of tea that had notes of bergamot wafting from the rim. He felt refreshed, like he always did—a lack of nightmares plagued him in the sanctuary of your home, where you reigned over it like a god would their temple. 

At least, out of all the gods he prayed to, you were the only one who saved him with tangible hands. With fingers stained with mauve clay, and messy, loose clothes that were a far cry from the stiff cuts of the city, you did what a dozen spellswords couldn’t. Save someone, and stay alive yourself.

It weighed on his mind as he saw the long rib bone from the dracon carved into a curved blade that you kept by the fireplace. There was light dust on its gentle slope, yet Kakavasha had never felt more secure even if you barely held the thing. After all, you had felled its source material with nothing more than a branch and strange, brilliant magic which he could never hope to replicate with the Avgin arts. 

It was something other. 

Perhaps it was his pensiveness that led him deeper into the forest, past the cold thrum of the river and into the Borderlands proper. He’d ventured here enough to know where the miasma liked to frequent: shadowy monsters who still cropped up despite the tales of the glorious Hero those over the South Sea liked to spout. 

If there was anyone to herald as the anointed one, it was you. 

Soon, the wind turned sharper and saltier, and he could taste the chalk in the air. 

The cliffs of the Borderlands. 

There was something strange in the atmosphere. As though someone was watching him, but upon turning there was nobody there. Aventurine shook it off, deciding to walk further until he saw pitched tents in the distance, where he could distinctly see workers mining into the sides of the cliffs. 

“Hoy,” one greeted in a thicker Southern cadence as he wiped the sweat off his brow. “Fine day we’re having, y’think?”

Aventurine studied the man’s naive, friendly expression. It was clear he was on break, chowing down on some fruit and swilling something he could identify as a sort of cloying mead, threading honey-sweet through the air. 

Just to be safe, he’d employed one of the glamour arts, changing the harsh neon of his eyes to a softer brown. He’d done the same when he first stumbled in your vicinity, but he had the feeling none of his enchantments worked around you. There was a pressure greater than his whenever he began the soft weaving of prayer around you, something he didn’t think you were even aware of subconsciously. Like a coil of electrified wire, you were constantly live, overriding any magic and rationality the blond had. 

“Y’mining?” His lips pulled as he slipped into the accent with ease, suddenly remembering the ease with which you spoke both common and honey tongue. There was a third language, too, one you sometimes donned when performing your strange arts—the same one that had decimated the dracon on the river that day. No matter how his ears pricked to hear it and try to understand exactly what you said, all he could comprehend was a faint, ozone-like buzz—something that warned him to not go any further. 

Thus, he gave up on ever learning this strange magic to help restore the Avgin back to their former glory. 

There were times when he deemed it unwise to push his luck, after all. 

The worker’s expression convoluted into something sour, then finally into a sort of contemplative wince. “Err, not exactly. Our tools won’t cut the damned stone, but every year the cliff erodes through leaving blocks of itself that we then haul off and sell.”

His brows raised in a perfect picture of surprise. If there was anyone who was up for the challenge, anyone who could work their magic on the immoveable stone, it would probably be you.

“How much?” 

“I’m… sorry?” His syllables stumbled over themselves, thinking he had perhaps misheard the blond’s question. 

“How much for a block?” Aventurine gazed at the smooth rock cuboids that eclipsed his height, eclipsed even yours. 

Dumbly, the man listed a string of numbers that would’ve made your eyes grow wide in disbelief. Don’t do it, Kakavasha, he almost heard you say. He smiled, a small one that nobody ever saw but you. Your words of financial caution were heard loud and clear, but he was already thumbing the edge of his space-sealing charm that hung off his belt. 

“Who do I speak to?”

. 　⁺ ✦

How endearing. The man named Kakavasha crouched by his teacher’s slumbering body—on the flagstones by the yard, you snoozed peacefully while your tattoos flickered in and out of existence. Out like a firelamp, he thought, too used to your exhaustion after performing massive conjurings that would’ve taken at least five spellswords and five times more time to realise into the material realm to truly panic like he did the first time. 

This time, it was an extension into the lush gardens; there was now an outdoor workshop that merged the clean, open air and the delicate marble architecture. It was circular in shape with a stained glass roof covering all the materials within, which drew intricate patterns on the large block of stone that stood proudly in the centre. 

It will be my magnum opus, you’d mused, and he was too fascinated by the excited gleam in your eyes to truly dwell on the two strange words that had followed your winding voice. 

Carefully, he brushed the small twigs and flowers off your shoulders, propping your head to rest gently on his legs. Leaning back on his palms, he closed his own eyes to the steady rhythm of your breathing, as you slept the magick off—imagining this as every day for the rest of his miserable life. 

It was a pleasant dream. 

There were bags under your eyes that belied the nightmares you denied: strange landscapes rolling off the disturbed cloud that seemed to follow you with each step. But in slumber, you looked utterly at peace. 

With trepidation, he leaned down: ear to your face to make sure you still breathed. 

Don’t leave, he commanded, though he knew if anyone could break the tenuous bonds of his enchantment, you could. 

Nevertheless, it didn’t stop him from trying. 

. 　⁺ ✦

“Will he succeed? That is the question,” the youthful girl murmured. HER hands fumbled somewhat on HER spindle, as if SHE hadn’t been spinning threads since the very universe woke up in his cradle. 

“There is only one fate that hangs in the balance,” the matron insisted. HER face was drawn together in a scowl that marred HER elegant face: brows pinched together, mouth pressed into a thin line. “He must.”

“I bade you to consider the existence of the other fate,” the hag croaked. As always, HER wisdom was not initially clear to the other two women; Clotho’s hands ceased in winding thread onto a spool, whereas Lachesis put down HER gleaming ruler onto HER lap. 

“The golden child?” the mother queried. HER voice contained a sharp shock of disbelief. “The boy whose fortune will always be solely his own?”

“I do feel quite bad for the boy. He will never keep who he truly loves.,” Atropos defended. In HER hands, the scissors continued callously severing the marked lines of fate, finally freeing a mortal from the endless suffering life brought. 

“Please,” SHE scoffed. “You were the one who got us into this mess in the first place. Don’t get us into another one.”

“Hah,” the hag snapped. “As if you weren’t anxiously waiting for this to play out.”

“This was mere curiosity. Rethreading the tapestry of time is no easy feat, sister,” Lachesis seethed. 

“We have never tampered with probability like this,” the youngest added; a distinct trepidation wavered HER syllables.

“We are saving someone innocent from the same limbo we are stuck in,” Atropos replied flatly. Despite HER weathered cheeks and aged voice box, HER words were steadier than they’d ever been. “Don’t forget we judge what is fair and what isn’t.”

Both the maiden and the matron went quiet, with only the sound of thread against thread and the sharp sounds of a metal ruler cutting through air seeping into the endless cosmos. 

. 　⁺ ✦ 

The dreams didn’t cease. Nights spent tossing and turning while that pitch-tinted landscape unfolded afore you became so common that you began sleeping off the exhaustion in your studio: nestled against the cold side of the massive block in the middle, with nothing more than a tarp covering your body, 

It was frigid, and uncomfortable, and left you with a profound ache in your bones—but the dreamless cleansed your mind and filled you with nothing but the insatiable urge to draw. That man who’d faced you briefly at your slumber’s conclusion only exacerbated this effect: damson, scarlet and a rich gold flowed from your paint palettes, while your tools collected dust. 

Seven days after Kakavasha gifted you the stone, the first rough draft of your sculpture had materialised in your sketchpad. Countless renditions had swept over your hands: page after page was filled with the smudged body of the man in your dreams. Not once had he smiled at you, thus each face appeared troubled with the weight of the world.

The sketches began with the elegant planes of his body—a light step combined with rippled muscle supporting his bones. Then, eyes blinked up at you—irritated at his materialisation on the page, but there was something so entrancing in the cold glare he levelled you with. A strong nose gave his face some structure, extending and tapering into two brows that cast a deep shadow over his eyes. Finally, a mouth stained rich with graphite tensed at your ministrations: pressed together disapprovingly, like he was disgusted by the pixels that made up this very world. 

The dreams still hadn’t ceased. You still woke with sweat dampening your face, reaching out for a man who lingered for no longer than a second in the plane of illusion. 

But some things had changed. The sketches you pinned to the corkboard above your workbench had grown softer. 

He still didn’t smile, but the shadows above his eyes no longer looked as deep, and his mouth was more of a tranquil line than a frown. 

Fourteen days after Kakavasha gifted you the stone, the final sketch was ready: a life-size model of the man who eluded you. Just like you in your dreams, his hand reached out to an entity that did not exist in his own plane (you). His forearms gleamed with soft grey bracers, while his body was draped in delicate robes that looked like the ones you woke up in—but older. His garb was not of the glitzy New Metis, though you could see intrinsic similarities in the cut and how the garments were worn. Nestled in the gentle crests of his locks was a half-crown of laurels: something you saw him wearing night after night but couldn’t pinpoint the significance of. 

It consumed you. 

Every day had been spent in the warmth of the studio that you’d hastily put up just a fortnight ago. From dawn—when Aventurine left for his daily excursions—you pressed your stick of graphite into paper and drew, weaving together the image of a stranger until he meshed into something almost-tangible. Though Aventurine tended to stay out of your business, he had definitely noticed; your apprentice made sure to leave you food at the foot of the studio door, and when you stumbled into the villa at dusk, there was always a pot of food already simmering away in the kitchen. 

Your dreams merged into reality; the trance only broke when your palm pressed against the cool stone of what would be your magnum opus. 

Cold. It could only really be described as cold, but you swore you could feel something stir within—as though it were the faintest pulse, light as gossamer. 

You shook it off, and picked up a chalk stick to mark the preliminary shapes to cut. 

Drawing on the stone was easy. Like a child doodling on the sidewalk, the chalk pressed thickly into the ore. Perhaps it hummed beneath your thorough hands, but that was neither here nor there. 

After all, you had gotten used to the strange nature of this world. 

Tracing your fingers along the grooves, you surveyed the stone wonderingly—how the hell were you supposed to actually begin? Forget the pressure that you felt from who-knew-where; Aventurine had told you that tools couldn’t cut this stone, but the slight sparkle in his eyes indicated his faith in you. 

Why?

Why, you contemplated, staring at the deep colours that tentatively traced the limits of what would be your sculpture. Absent-mindedly, you pressed your palm on the circles that marked where his hand would reach out. Like your fingers were reaching past the vacuum of reality into imagination—past the stone and into a state of spaghettification, like you were reaching deeper than his desperate hand and into the black hole of his heart. Something so heavy it couldn’t help but draw others into its reality. 

It seemed to shiver slightly. 

Running a blunt chisel along the plane of the stone, you weren’t surprised in the least when it neither chipped or cracked. It was not like the yielding marble you’d carved small birds into—cold, but soft when you knew how to work it right. The rock that Aventurine found was immoveable. You knew instinctively that your chisels would be about as powerful as tissue paper against how densely compact the atoms no doubt were in the rock. 

Muttering a quick incantation, you could feel the latent flow from your tattoos envelop your chisel and warm your hammer; the tongue of thought strengthened the materials you would use, imbuing them with the abstract of destruction. 

Equivalent exchange. 

You could feel a faint wave of exhaustion ebb into your bones—not enough to knock you out, but enough to indicate the transfer was successful. Yet, still, the rock didn’t budge; a painful scraping sort of sound traced the air, but there were no other effects. 

He was right, you contemplated pensively. Tools really did not work, but from what Kakavasha had relayed, there was a periodic sequence where the cliffside of the Borderlands dropped these massive chunks of stone. It was too strong to be naturally eroded, and neither could the best equipment of this time cut it. 

This indicated some other force at work here. 

Your chisel hadn’t worked, but there seemed to be some reaction when it was just your bare hands. With careful, trembling fingers, you reached for the stone once more. Something that couldn’t possibly be pliant like your clay, something that hadn’t been cut by the heavy duty cutters you used for your marble busts. 

Nothing. 

Your hands couldn’t work miracles. By themselves, your hands could not possibly do what a good old hammer and chisel couldn’t. 

Nevertheless, there was a pulsing thrum in the material that only intensified the longer you pressed your palms onto it. It was as good a time as any for the system window to show you exactly what this block of stone was made of, but alas, fate wouldn’t be that generous. Disappointed, you drew back to make a note to research the Borderlands cliffs, only to pause. 

There, imprinted every-so-faintly into what you thought was a stone impenetrable, were the traces of fingerprints. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Deep in the heart of the Borderland colossus that guarded the straits leading to Metis, something was stirring. 

Coalescing. 

The cliffs had been a symbol of strength for centuries: a last bastion of defence for Metis against the hordes of shadows that still roamed the dense forests. Those interested in geology, a rather niche field for the hub of philosophy and orthodox sciences in the city, had published papers remarking on the unnatural way the monsters seemed to agree on a specific rule when venturing through the Borderlands. 

The most primitive of laws, this avoidance was described as: the law of the jungle. Strength won over all—in this case, something was off about the cliffs. Those large blocks that made up the ‘off-cuts’, as geologists liked to put it, could not be analysed in any conventional methods. Smaller samples were impossible to gain, while outside observations yielded little. 

Simply put, there was and had been a flow of energy that thrummed like Ourosboros’ heartbeat for the past millennium or so. 

And now, that energy was gathering. Not all at once, of course—more like a very large hourglass that only now had been turned. Slowly, but surely, the thing that had laid dormant for so long was waking. It was growing aware of one of its pieces that it had discarded after so many humans had hammered futilely at its walls. 

For the first time, one of those pieces had been pushed back by an energy far greater than the energy it constantly pressed outwards. Something so ancient it could not be defeated by mere human tools.  

And thus, this energy was slowly being siphoned off. Granule by granule. Piece by piece. Particle by particle, the entity stuck in the Great Wall of the Borderlands was being transferred—for no energy was ever created or destroyed. And particle by particle, that block of stone was gaining more of its fragments. 

Bit by bit, the workers at the cliffside witnessed the beginnings of a tidal wave in geology. 

Bit by bit, their tools finally sunk into the white stone and embedded inside the giant’s slumbering body. 

Bit by bit, the geologists would come and analyse their samples, only to come back with even more questions as it turned out to just be ordinary rock that made up the cliffside—that had formed one of their largest conundrums for the past centuries 

The wall of the Borderlands was growing weaker—there was no doubt about this—but in turn, there was something else gathering its strength. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Like most of his previous relationships with his fellow humans, Kakavasha noticed the stark difference between others’ fortune and his own. He noticed: the unlucky stumbles he never seemed to come across himself, the fatigue wearing down on someone’s bones, and how one’s actions often seemed to consume the person initiating them. 

Of course, it is much easier to identify something from an outside perspective—namely, that his master’s time was so merrily occupied with sculpting that he barely had time to eat. Aventurine did what he could. He chopped onions into neat cubes, made matchsticks out of the root vegetables that you’d planted painstakingly, and carefully made sure you had at least two meals a day. Despite his efforts, however, your passion appeared to be gnawing at you from the inside. 

Your misfortune was clear as day to him. The wonder he felt at your ability to indent the rock with your hands (oh-so-human they were) was overshadowed by his worry over the gauntness in your face. You were extraordinary. There was no doubt about that, and he had come to expect it. This misfortune, for it was every sense of the word, was due to him bringing that cursed stone in. As always, he was the cause of despair in others. 

But just as humans judged a situation from the outside easily, it was much harder to do so from inside it. Aventurine’s fatal error was in assuming he was absolved from bad luck. After all, his very birth was a golden one; where those born under an ill-omened star languished in despair, he was positively mired in fortune. The name Kakavasha and the adjective blessed could not be easily distinguished; this was a fact he long knew. 

Thus, Aventurine was dangerously reckless. As his thoughts of you began overriding the thoughts he had of an ordinary future, he, too, failed to gauge the situation from the inside. 

Your passion was not the only all-consuming one. 

. 　⁺ ✦ 

August arrived with no more than a whisper. Silently, it had crept its fingers alongside yours, and you found yourself staring at the abstract shapes that composed your preliminary statue with something akin to wonder.

He was to be your height, but the vast stone made him seem like a colossus. Something that you created, something you actively shaped to remove the damson-hued figure from your recurring dreams. He was to be your height, but already the bearing of the lines was far more regal than yours. In the night, he shone like gold—eyes and skin luminous in the lone moon, yet utterly reproachful when he stared at you. He was to be your height, but you felt cowed whenever you felt the thrum of a pulse in the stone. 

You were sure you were imagining it. A side effect of the hum of your tattoos. Perhaps it was merely the reaction of a stone said to be unyielding. 

The stone could not possibly be alive.

. 　⁺ ✦ 

August was once named Hekatombaion, back when the city of New Metis was simply called the centre in the old tongue. The month ushered in a new year: a herald of possibility, a harbinger of all omens. And like all things, it started at the very beginning. 

A day to mark all days henceforth—the Day of Silence. Millennia of traditions had homogenised under cultural pressure, creating a day of festivity that absolved one of all suffering and sin from the previous year. It was a chance to cleanse the mind in an environment where thought was always encouraged. Silence. In the modern era, it no longer possessed the same ritualistic heaviness it once did, but nonetheless, it was a day for reflection in Metis. 

The first of August. 

The beginning. 

Germinating in the very centre of the stone was a consciousness that had been sleeping for a millennium, yet one that never fully slipped into slumber. The seconds had turned into minutes as he counted them to prevent himself from losing his mind; into hours as he recounted all the knowledge he had learned from his extensive studies; into days as he slowly compartmentalised his memory into a shelf of segments. Months. Years. Decades. Centuries. 

Each day was longer than the next. 

He held on by mere fingertips, envisioning the evolution of science and humanity through simulation alone. On the precipice of madness, it was no surprise that his lucid being was slowly becoming binary. Zero. One. Zero. 

One. 

Ratio’s existence was a computation. Abstract. Immaterial. He was theoretical in all senses, and he had long lost all feeling. 

Except, it was the first of August once more, and the seventh prince of Metis had just felt a brief pressure on his incorporeal body. Something so absurd, so inconceivable, that he simply brushed it aside in the endless matrice of his mind. He had lost all sense of physical touch at the very end of his physical life, therefore phantom pain was computed as an anomaly every few decades or so. 

There was no other evidence to suggest otherwise, after all. He could not see, so he could not check for any disturbances. He could not hear, so he could not listen for the sounds of hammers or beasts careening into his form. He could not taste or smell, thus any chemical erosion causing the faint twinges was not based on observation. 

In any case, the faint pressure that occurred on the first of August was well within his margin of error: a mere blip in the fabric of his binary. Veritas Ratio, once descended from a mad god, carefully chalked it in the vast amphitheatre of his mind as just that: a remnant of madness. A rather contained, controlled sort of insanity, for which there was no other output than input. 

On the second day of what was once Hekatombaion, however, the pressure happened again—and this time the entity known as Veritas Ratio noticed. It was not the harsh clang of tools like he’d envisioned in his simulations of civilization; from the final image that replayed of Aha leaving THEIR son in the cliffs, he had documented and painstakingly predicted the wear in the environment. The climate, the evolution of species, the flora—and finally the use humans had for natural resources. 

He had imagined that, should he ever regain physical feeling, he would awake to the harsh beating of hammers and chisels. 

But this pressure was an anomaly within an anomaly. He wasn’t supposed to feel—and the striking of tools did not follow. Rather, the faint resultant force still held traces of firmness, but it did not have the painful impact of a hammer. This wasn’t enough to draw a conclusion—Ratio had no corporeal form, therefore his evaluation of this force needed more data to shape an analysis. 

Thus, the entity Ratio brooded in his imprisonment; for he felt a nagging curiosity for the first time in a millennium at the prospect of data from outside. 

On the third day a pattern was bound to emerge—and so it did, in line with the previous two forces he’d felt on his being. Something softer than metal, he noted in the vast bank of his mind. Like a hand that had simply reached past the covalent bonds and into the cliff itself, something was carefully grasping and twisting the energy that made Veritas up. He could feel the slight shifts: could imagine the pull of what he thought was a magnet. 

Slowly, the mind of Veritas Ratio was regaining the human sharpness he once prided himself on. Man rather than algorithm.

The simulations became background noise; rather, the entity placed that ticking clock in the forefront of his brain once more. Each second was carefully counted down until he could predict the periods of when he’d feel that pressure. Perhaps it could be earthquakes, he mused. Seismic activity could certainly cause such shifts. 

Yet, the wavelengths he registered weren’t the sinusoidal pulses of plates shifting; no, they were irregular, yet filled with a consistency that pointed him to fauna once more rather than flora and the shift of nature. 

A monster? Sightings of giant beasts had been ever-so-rare when he was still the seventh prince, but Ratio had included a possible population rise—a smooth exponential if he ever saw one—in his simulations of Ouroboros. He was no fool. 

But the longer the ebb and flow of force continued, the less it resembled the territorial marking of a beast. 

It resembled a human. 

Yes, the hands slowly pulling and pushing at the rock were utterly incomprehensible—but they were just that. Hands. They couldn’t be anything else, not when Ratio could feel each finger gently curl around his incorporeal soul. It was not the sharp strike of a mallet, nor the blunt scrape of a chisel boring into him. Hands: kneading him back into place as if he weren’t rock. 

It was a lie to say he believed it, but data was all he could rely on. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Metageitnion was the month of thanksgiving, and by the time autumn crept in, Ratio could hear the merest whispers of sound. The tiniest of frequencies—of which he clung to with gratitude, with such desperation it would’ve shamed any greater man. 

But Ratio had not been man for a millennium. He had not heard, not seen, not felt, not tasted, nor smelled, for a thousand years. 

It began with a faint frequency that droned in the very recesses of the stone. A buzz, or a low hum, resonated as though he could hear the very orbitals of electrons whirring in each atom. At this point, the background levels of his simulations had ceased—for this was far more important. 

For the first time in centuries, the sluggish pulse that still beat in his undead chest had quickened, just a little. 

With painstaking care, he catalogued every murmur—every brush of something against stone, for the force that periodically shaped his vessel had sound. Everything had sound: its very own natural frequency it followed. And there was sound. By the second week of Metageitnion, Ratio had begun to discern someone’s voice. 

(Like all things, it had a beginning.) 

Starting off with a mere brush of air, the first words he heard were nonsensical to his bleeding ears. The first sound in a thousand years was song. It was an absurd ditty—a melody of no particular rhyme nor reason. Someone sang for the sake of it while hands prodded and kneaded at him; for by now he could feel what appeared to be a body materialising into existence. A body, just for the prince who had lost his own so long ago. 

What appeared to be a rough thumb pulled and pinched at his right lobe, rolling the stone between two pieces of flesh that could not possibly be human, yet were painfully so. It dug a shallow concha into the rock, creating a very preliminary vessel for sound, but a vessel nonetheless. 

A human. A human, twisting stone for a whim as though it were clay. 

A human, who had given his hearing back—at least, some rudimentary version that seemed to be improving by a few degrees whenever those hands sculpted the rock he resided in. 

He found himself filled with anticipation. 

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

“Truth, certainty! That in which there is no doubt,” were the first proper words the stranger said to Veritas Ratio. Or, more accurately, those were the first words he’d overheard—slightly deeper, more mellow than the singing the voice had been cheerily repeating. To be even more precise, these weren’t exactly proper words to his half-formed ears either; the inflection of the words was far more different than the common tongue he was familiar with, while the intonation was more of an under-the-breath murmur, followed by a static buzz of something that might’ve been a word yet he could not place it. 

If he had autonomy over his limbs, though, he would’ve clung to each word until his fingers bled and his nails formed crescents in each syllable. 

No matter how absurd they were. 

“...then I told him, are you stupid or what? Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever…” 

His voice. Every word, every flux in the language Ratio once knew, every syllable—those were carefully compounded into memory. The common tongue was no longer quite what he knew, but the prince found that each small change was eagerly discovered and rectified in his own simulation of speech. 

A hand cautiously worked some stone out of his outstretched arm, and it was warm. 

Ratio liked warmth. 

The frozen walls that kept his time stagnant and in limbo were melting due to it, after all. 

Occasionally, his words made no sense to Ratio. The prince was well-versed in etymology and language, therefore the occasional sentences in what he presumed to be the language of the Avgin (and snippets of something he could barely put his finger on, but sounded familiar), weren’t all that surprising. What was surprising to him, however, were the small sentences that possessed none of the linguistic developments of any language he’d heard before. 

“Shit—” followed a muted thump; “Oh, fuck—” followed a small crash, and “What the hell—” seemed to be murmured at times of lull. The sharp, irritated cadence of the syllables suggested to him that the man was using colourful expletives; but the language shared no roots with anything he knew. Though, with each gentle press of fingers across his body, he came to accept the oddities of whoever had given him back two of his senses. 

Over the month of Metageitnion, Ratio learned a great many things about the person slowly casting away his prison. The thumb that gently worked his lips was accompanied by a tale of a school in a far off land (what sounded like it, anyway)—the hand that pried his fingers apart, by an anecdote of a laboratory experiment. 

A scientist, he carefully noted—one who clearly just viewed the prince as a sculpture he was labouring over. Although this was the case, it was also the case that a murmured sorry graced his ears whenever the man bumped up against him: a dignity afforded to a mere piece of rock that Ratio incredulously observed.

If it were a millennium ago, Ratio would’ve been irritated by the constant, spontaneous chatter. The conversations were utterly one-sided, yet the man appeared accustomed to casually talking about this and that: his apprentice, what he ate for breakfast, the progress of his vegetable garden, the weather. Really, the only useful things he got out of the banal talks were that this was a residence he was sequestered in; far removed from the cliffs of the Borderlands, but in the area nonetheless. 

Still, he found that he didn’t dislike the talking as much as he might have a thousand years ago. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Boedromion ushered in his sense of smell as the sculptor began working on his face in earnest, smoothing and kneading the material like clay while his words ghosted past Ratio’s stone ears. 

He first realised it when the faint scent of perfume oil—a woody scent, with sweet, rich undertones—cut through a rather chalky smell he attributed to his environment. A studio, perhaps, he’d documented; a background slowly materialised in the artist’s wake. The warm smell of sunlight. A breeze, stirring and rustling the clothes of the person before him even more. Birds, chirping and singing with such honesty that he could feel himself ache with bittersweetness, just a little. The aroma of grass and plants. 

All these things were sensations he clasped eagerly, each more precious than the last. 

Of course, there was the sculptor as well, who still managed to stand out against the vibrant backdrop. Decadence mingled with the powder-fresh scent of clean laundry, but one could tell a lot from the deeper undertones that lingered beneath. He could feel a sleeve flutter against his body, before the warm pulse point of a wrist allowed for a faint profile of clay to seep into the air. 

At the very centre, twining with the cool breeze, was a distant ozonic scent. Lightning, he noted, half-wonderingly. It seemed to be a constant—only growing stronger when the sculptor’s hands pressed white-hot into the stone, as though the creator of the body was less human than he’d imagined. 

He’s something far wilder, Ratio mused. 

A deep, fluctuating energy was concealed with utterly human anecdotes: a crackling core of lightning, with laughter masking the high frequency. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Naturally, the emergence of his olfactory sense occurred tangentially to hands granting him a mouth. He could not speak, he could not scream—for his lips were only stone—but he could taste the salt of regret. 

Sophos Nous’ words rang in his mind once more.

For all knowledge one must pay equal price. 

Alongside the bitterness of his pride was the bite of tangerines that trailed behind with each motion the sculptor made—such a deep scent that he could compartmentalise each and every aspect of its profile. It was sweet, as if it were offsetting the grief that rested heavy on his tongue. 

The notes of flavour, of scent only expanded his questions: data that only complicated the picture further. 

Who are you?

. 　⁺ ✦

Who are you?

He found himself focused on every single detail of his creator; Ratio’s thoughts centred on unravelling exactly why this person could do the impossible. Every passing comment—every slip in the language he began to identify as the long-lost tongue of thought—started to intricately inscribe the sculptor with various adjectives and titles. Even scholars—revered in his time—struggled with even preliminary translations, as material to access the tongue used by people millennia ago were far and few between. 

There was a certain bated breath with which he listened to the man’s fluency in the language; part of the reason that leads were so hard to access came due to the language’s ties to alchemy (though he had only learned this due to his trips to the palace library all those centuries ago). 

The question that shaped his thoughts for the past few months became more poignant once more. 

Who are you?

Based on the cumulative senses he’d regained, he would be an imbecile to not realise that his sight would be next to return; in due time, he would finally be able to put a face to the entity before him. A method, to try to explain the madness that he had been experiencing. 

His investigations on governmental corruption (and indirectly, alchemy) had doomed him to limbo; would alchemy save him, after he already spent his life in hell? Had he finally paid off the price of his knowledge?

Who are you?

Even if he was doomed to hell again, the possibility of getting an answer to his question consumed him more than anything before. 

Thus, the once-seventh prince of Metis patiently waited for his creator to give him back his eyes. 

He could be patient. 

Hadn’t he proved that already?

. 　⁺ ✦

Ratio endured. 

He had held out for the past millennium; waiting another three months was nothing in comparison. Still, he found himself itching to claw out of the confines of stone; every brush of warm skin against his, every calloused touch of his skin and tentative shaping of his body ignited in him an impatience uncharacteristic of his previous assumptions about himself. 

Managing to stay sane was a miracle, and it allowed him to appreciate the fruit that the month of harvest brought. 

Pynopsion had come with the telltale signs of fallen leaves crunching underfoot, with the small imprecations that left lips right before a brush began sweeping the floor, with the scent of warm honey and spices enveloped in milk. When he was a youth, he would’ve felt the warmth of the harvest fires and tasted the pynopsia stew that was traditionally offered in the temples. 

But, he found that he didn’t mind the low heat of hands fleshing him out instead: feeling all the effort the sculptor put in beginning to show. Sinew, muscle, skin—all were painstakingly pressed into shape, with stone robes carefully draped on top. In fact, Ratio could feel the once familiar feeling of bracers weighing on his arms—garments he thought he’d never wear again. 

The eagerness that was slowly growing into a fervent madness was abated by the continued voice, with the mundane tales of the world outside. He listened to stories of pickling exploits with fascination, of foraging with an apprentice for berries and nuts with enrapturement, and summaries of novels with considerable interest. 

Yet he still didn’t know the sculptor’s name. 

There were too many things he didn’t know about him, but Ratio could wait. 

He could wait, especially as those warm hands had finally begun working on his eyes—smoothing and pressing and pulling eyelids into position, then gently opening them. The first rays of light were in the form of a flickering candle: bound to waver behind the thin layer of stone that made up a tentative iris. 

His sight had been the very first thing to start deteriorating: blind for a millennium, with nothing to guide him. 

In this sense, perhaps he should’ve been the most accustomed to the loss of his sight, but in other ways it had been the most painful to recreate in his simulations of the world. Forgetting the faces of the old woman who sold him basyniai dripping with honey, the victims of the Elation, and the Sophos had been painful enough—but in his simulations, he could no longer recreate his own face. 

He had forgotten what he looked like. 

In his recreated worlds, he wandered faceless; no mirrors existed in his imagination, for any reflection would be blurred from the centre, features morphing into others. 

Ratio’s anticipation of his returning sight was therefore tainted with dread—mired in a fear that should he see the statue’s reflection, he wouldn’t recognise himself. Or worse, that he’d wrongly accept the image of whoever the sculptor carved him as. 

Though, this was forgotten on one Pynopsion evening. The hands chipping away at the irises were particularly gentle and slow that night, and though he could not feel pain, he appreciated the thought nonetheless. There was an orange glow backlighting the shadowy figure in front of him, which only grew clearer as the suns began hiding over the horizon. 

The man was silent as he worked, but Ratio didn’t mind that either. He, too, was focused entirely on making out the details registering in his optics. 

Ratio’s first view of the world as it was now was of symbols inked into the sculptor’s palm. They gradually focused as his stone retinas adjusted to the world—fixed in shape and place but seeing nonetheless. Lines that ranged in colour glowed incandescent as the sculptor worked, and though Ratio impatiently waited for the hands to move away, he catalogued each symbol as they appeared nonetheless. 

Some of the images—like the scales, the geometric progressions, the sequences—he recognised, though he had not seen them decorating human skin ever before. As the sculptor’s wrists moved across his vision, his gaze jumped from the shapes to long strands of formulae written in a language that he could not comprehend: twisting and moving with each movement. 

He’d never seen something quite like it. Every time the palms chilled somewhat, the sculptor murmured something in the tongue of thought and the tattoos on his hands glowed white-hot. There was a faint ozonic smell that lingered in the air after every chant—and suddenly, Ratio realised the exact reason that the sculptor was able to break through Aha’s enchantments. 

THEY were revered for THEIR powerful sorcery: achieved by crude extractions of alchemists’ powers in an utterly terrifying, amorphous amalgamation of strength. That had partly been why royal supremacy had been so strong; against an omnipotent lord, who could possibly question THEIR rule?

But this was something different. Ratio, in his study of ancient magic and his secret studies on alchemy, recognised these chants for what they were; verbal conversions of energy that perhaps could never have been achieved by anyone else. This was undoubtedly alchemy, though with none of the orthodox tools that alchemists would ever use. 

No, his sculptor was using themselves as a medium; a thing utterly forbidden and stupidly reckless. It was a sign-off on one’s soul, effective right after the alchemist got their wish. He’d researched it, seen the effects in back-alley streets and never observed a case of success. 

Except for now. 

For months, he’d heard him manually transfer energy into presumably his hands—judging by the latent glow of those tattoos—yet nothing had happened. In fact, there had been many times he’d heard a specific phrase uttered in the tongue of thought, before the distinct scent of a food or beverage filled the air. Wish after wish, yet his sculptor was still alive. 

This was, perhaps, the most foolish and most practical use of alchemy he’d ever seen. 

But more importantly, he knew that it could not be recreated by anyone else. There was none of the malevolent energy that came with a demonic pact; rather, it was a clean sort of buzz that filled his sculptor. It was a chaotic sort of ebb and flow, but clean nonetheless. 

Still, the power that had been flowing into him for the past few months had been incomprehensible and completely unique. 

He digested the information with a sort of wonder he last felt a millennium ago. 

It was not fate, nor him finally paying the ‘price’ for a knowledge too heavy for him to bear. Aha had simply been too powerful, yet this sculptor was breaking him free from the prison he had been sequestered in for a thousand years. 

Nous was wrong. 

A quiet hum cut through his aghast realisation; he had paid a price that was never fair in the first place. 

Just as suddenly, his eyes opened; the hands that had covered his eyes while the sculptor worked on him were lifted, and he could finally see. 

A rush of lamplight delayed his vision for a few more brief moments, and he might’ve gritted his teeth if he could move. But when the flare faded, all he could see was his sculptor’s face in front of his own, so close that he could feel his chest rise and fall, each warm beat of his heart, every breath that ghosted his lips. 

Ratio stared at him, though he wasn’t quite sure if he wouldn’t have decided to do the same had he been able to look away. He was so close that the prince could count every eyelash, every small crease in the man’s lips. 

Before him was a human in the flesh and blood: not some demon like he’d half expected when he hypothesised on who was behind the pressure. A human. The gods had not granted mercy to him, but one of his fellow humans had, albeit by accident. 

He found it incredibly ironic: trying to save more people from the Elation and paying the bitter price for it, and being saved by another human in return. An alchemist, nonetheless. 

The sculptor didn’t notice his return of vision, it seemed—choosing to work on his under-eye, appearing utterly focused on his work. Ratio took the opportunity to keep watching: though for some strange reason, he felt the faintest agitation crawling under his skin as the man continued his light ministrations, chipping away at the stone with only hands and discarding it at his feet. 

How strange. 

A face had finally been put to the stranger, to his creator. 

He memorised the man’s gait as he swept the room, his height, the exact shade of his eyes while they bored into his own. Down to the way his brows furrowed in concentration, to the wispy strands of tangerine that clung to the ozonic scent of him, he compartmentalised it all—the profile of his sculptor was complete. 

An alchemist, gaining victory over Aha.

The thought was absurd, and if he weren’t made of stone, it would’ve brought a smile to his face. 

How ridiculous.

. 　⁺ ✦

Perhaps if he hadn’t been committing you to memory, he would’ve noticed the mirror propped up against the window sooner. As it were, he only noticed the shining reflection of the lonely moon in the sky when you left the studio for the night and his vision was forced to tear away from you. 

Well, the first thing he noticed about the room, regardless, was the size of it. He was far from his cliff, evidently, if the views of the forest that he faintly saw from the moonlit landscape was anything to go by. A colossal window framed it, and his eyes trailed to the workbench that could potentially give him more clues about you. 

What he saw would’ve made him freeze if he weren’t already stone. 

Pinned to the board above the dark wooden desk, littering the surfaces of it, and even piling up beside the bench, were sketches upon sketches that made his heart skip a beat. 

Every drawing, every small doodle was of the same subject: some in vibrant colour, others in graphite and charcoal. No matter the medium, they were all of the same man. Carefully, he traced the features slowly to not skip over any. 

Dark hair, coloured a lustrous damson and cascading down his shoulders in waves. Gold leaves twisted up the side of his head like a crown, and Ratio felt his own head twinge with a familiar sensation. The status of a prince, he thought feverishly. A strong nose was shadowed by proud brows, though the sketches pinned had made the man look softer, ever-so-slightly lowering his eyelids in a pensive look. Those lips in some drawings were a disapproving line, but once more in the pinned drawings, there was the barest hint of a smile on them—

If he could draw breath, the rise and fall of his chest would’ve been extraordinarily shallow: rapid beyond belief. 

His focus snapped onto the drawing directly in front of him; a full-body, coloured image that detailed the robes he could feel on his clothes, and the outstretched hand that mirrored his own, reaching one. 

Yearning. 

Instinctively, Ratio recognised the emotion that the expression portrayed. Though it was regal, there was the clear wistfulness in the slight furrowing of his brows and his stare at the vacuum his hand reached for. But there was something in the drawings that made him uneasy. 

It was only when he finally caught a glimpse of the mirror slightly off to the side that he finally realised exactly what it was. 

It was a full-length, sturdy mirror: evidently meant for his sculptor to check for consistency in the reflected image. Against all the sketches that drew his attention, his vessel’s own, ghostly reflection hadn’t captured his attention instantly. 

There he was: a vision that matched the sketches almost exactly, albeit with a few, less-detailed accessories and robes that marked him as unfinished. He had the same locks, the same strong brow and wistful gaze, the same yearning hand—everything, down to the very lines of his muscle and sinew, were identical as in the drawing. 

Unbidden, his mind raced as he compared the blurred image of his simulations to the sketches and his reflection that stared back at him with what now appeared as regret. He searched for the generated figure, yet he could no longer find it. 

That was him in the sketches. It was not merely his current vessel, nor was just some vague imagining of somebody. 

It was him, before he lost both his body and his mind. 

It was him, back when he was still a naive prince mired with hubris. 

It was him.

In the studio beneath the lonesome moon, the lonesome statue felt his pulse thrum for the first time in a thousand years. 

. 　⁺ ✦

Finally. Wiping sweat from your brow (despite the December chill that had settled in the air, though you couldn’t be surprised with the heat your hands radiated when sculpting), you took a step back to survey your sculpture. 

Almost done, you mused. It had been a long five months, but the stone had yielded better than you expected. Shaping the rock had been like shaping buttery clay of the highest quality, not the impure type you’d found at the river. No, this piece of cliff had practically shaped itself into what you drew—an almost exact replica of the man in your dreams, save the few small details you still needed to fix. 

Carefully observing the minute folds of cloth draped upon him, the way the muscles rippled over bone and sinew, the sorrowful way his face looked, you concluded that the strange feeling you got when you gazed at him was due to how realistic he looked—down to the slight crease at the left side of his mouth. 

Working on him had felt like standing over a live specimen in the lab you worked in. On some days, there had seemed to be a second heartbeat syncopating with your own pulse: one you chalked up to the buzz of energy from the continuous alchemy you’d applied in order to be able to carve that damn stone. Naturally, this was only exacerbated by the intricacy of the statue—in fact, he was so realistic that you often found yourself telling him about your day. 

It had become a routine of sorts. He was a statue, thus you told him things you couldn’t tell Aventurine, and never got the chance to regale anyone with in your past life. He was a statue, therefore he couldn’t spill your secrets—though you did keep any confessions of your death to yourself. Those things would stay buried: unacknowledged by even yourself. 

You had left such scars far behind. 

It was comforting, in some ways, being able to let down your guard in the presence of the statue. It was hard, in front of your apprentice, to keep up the facade of someone ordinary when your house appeared filled with seemingly unlimited resources despite your infrequent trips to the city. He wasn’t stupid—he’d also seen you fell that monster and make a sword out of its ribs—but at the same time, you prayed that he’d stay oblivious to the intricacies that made up your alchemy. 

With the statue, you didn’t need to worry about mental incantations, nor the panicked look in his eyes whenever you sat against the wall and closed your eyes like you did for Kakavasha. No, this sort of distance was what you had preferred back in your old life, and were still accustomed to. 

You reflected on how bleak this mindset was as you busied yourself sweeping up the offcuts of the statue—half-tidying, half-watching the first snow of December fall. It was… peaceful, you mused, a peace that you’d never truly felt in either life until now. In some ways, this was the perfect paradise that made up for your life before you crossed over.

You were so lost in your thoughts, in fact, that you jolted abruptly from where you leaned on the broom handle upon the sound of Aventurine knocking on the door. Startled, you realised that he hadn’t actually seen the statue in its almost-completed state—though it wasn’t a big deal, right?

“I brought you some spiced wine.” His voice came muffled from behind the towering mahogany doors of the annex studio, as if he were wrapped tightly in a scarf to combat the frigid weather. A smile involuntarily broke out on your face at the thought, and you swore a small draught swept through the studio even before you opened the door. 

Really, you could’ve conjured a warm glass of it yourself, but you appreciated the care he treated you with. He’d settled into your life with an ease you didn’t know what to make of; the faint heaviness that traced his eyes whenever the two of you conversed in honey-tongue had faded, though when you could, you bought resources to help him search for his fellow Avgin. 

“Avav,” you called back. Coming. Recently, he’d taken to teaching you the finer points of his language—sitting side by side on the couch in front of the fire, his shoulder pressing into yours as he leaned over your notebook, snorting at the mess of your handwriting while you scowled with mild petulance. Though you could read the scripts fine, it was a different story altogether when writing them—that stupid system of yours could not give you better handwriting, it seemed. 

It hardly was your fault, though; even in your past life you were required to write quickly and type quickly, and it seemed you’d used the latter more over the course of your career. 

Shouldering the door open, you pulled him into the warmth as he stared up at you: taking in the loose work garb that you wore in the studio, the faint smile playing on your face that seemed to simply appear one day and never faded, and finally your hands still resting on his upper arms. Like you’d expected, a scarf had wrapped around his face—but you could still see the flush from the cold air nipping at his cheeks and nose. Or at least, that was what you assumed had caused it. 

He was close enough to stare at the tattoos on the hollow of your throat, and he swallowed briefly before handing you the warm mug with hands that shook slightly. 

“Nais tuqe,” you murmured, and he mumbled a ‘you’re welcome’ back, wide-eyed. “Come look at the statue.”

His eyes seemed to become more flinty, somewhat, upon shifting his gaze from you to the large sculpture. “It’s… nice.”

“Really?” you teased, swilling down a large mouthful of the wine. The taste of cinnamon and star anise lingered in your mouth beneath the fuller, warm drink. “Just nice, after I spent so long on it?”

“Fine,” he sighed exasperatedly, his lilting accent growing more pronounced with his seeming irritation. Gazing at the statue like it had physically hurt him, he briefly glared at its face before he stared back at you. “You’re extremely skilled, with such exquisite technique in capturing emotion that you’d become a household name even in Metis. You—”

“Stop, stop,” you hid the lower half of your face in your palm, both in the face of such an onslaught, and to hide your laughter. “Such sweet compliments, yet such a bitter voice.”

“You’re neglecting your apprentice. I can’t help but be bitter,” he grimaced, petulant. “Five months, and I see you maybe two hours a day.”

He clung to your arm, and you could only suppress your laughter some more, missing how his eyes glared daggers at the sculpture with almost murderous intent. 

“I’ll be done soon,” you reassured him. “I’ll be able to teach you sculpting properly then.”

The techniques in question that you’d used to sculpt the man from your dreams, after all, weren’t possibly applicable by anyone else. Once more, you missed the glare your apprentice levelled at the statue. 

“I’m holding you to that,” he smiled, sweet as the strawberry aftertaste of the wine. 

You placed the glass down on the bench, ruffling his hair with your free hand affectionately. Really, these past few months had brought you out of your reclusive shell—like some bristly cat that had finally settled in at home. 

“Take a break and come see the snow with me,” he insisted, hiding his face in the scarf. “You’re overworking yourself.”

Reluctantly, you looked back to the statue—alone with the snow settling behind him in the background. You’d been planning on finishing off the final details decorating his clothes, and maybe touching up the curls of hair that rippled down his shoulders, but Aventurine wrapped his long fingers around your wrist. 

“You’ve been here from dawn till dusk the past few months,” he muttered, unwinding his long scarf from his neck and wrapping it around yours with his free hand. There was a faint bitterness in his voice, offset by the vague traces of pine and oud on the garment. Wordless, you let him tighten it, lingering on the knot on your chest for a few more seconds than necessary. He seemed to be staring carefully at the jade money-bead at your neck with a pensiveness he only got when he was planning on buying something again—but it passed just as quickly, and you wondered if you imagined it. “You have time later today to work on it—it’s almost done, anyway.”

Unbeknownst to you, he’d occupy your time today as he saw fit, until the suns finally entered their slumber beyond the horizon. 

Swayed, you allowed the latent heat in your palms to dissipate. 

“Fine,” you acceded, dusting your hands off on your working trousers. Once more, you could feel the draught chill the air behind you, but once more you ignored it. It must’ve been the windows not being closed properly. 

Moving to the cupboard that functioned as an area to store spare garments, you rummaged around for a clean shirt, trousers and warm boots, as well as a surprisingly supple coat you’d got off that one snake. Casually, you pulled the dusty shirt over your head, missing the surprised cough Aventurine let out. He whirled around with such speed you might’ve been concerned if you’d seen, but you were too busy figuring out the strange fastenings that some of this world’s clothes had. 

You did the same with the trousers and shoes, and though Aventurine had turned, he could distinctly hear each piece of clothing hit the floor. He swallowed. 

Folding up the work clothes, you settled them on the bench as you picked up the warm mug of wine once again. “Ready.”

“Right,” Aventurine couldn’t seem to hold your gaze. As he held open the door for you, you swore you saw the stone hand that reached in your direction move, just a little. 

Upon looking back, however, nothing had changed.

“What’s wrong?” Aventurine asked from your side, forcing your gaze back to his face to answer him. 

“Nothing,” you shook your head. Really, maybe it was for the best that you took a short break from the endless sculpting, if you were beginning to hallucinate things.

Statues couldn’t move, right?

. 　⁺ ✦

[lazy-sand-wich]

Sometimes I want to draw something hot 🔥

And, yes, a small part of the game gives me this pretty idea. I don't regret anything.

[10yrratiolover]

I find the Scholars' Strife to be extremely interesting, I didn't initially pay attention to the actual story when playing but re-reading up on it I think it depicts my thoughts on Ratio's issues with both the Intelligentsia Guild and the Genius Society.

It's stated on the wiki that: "It was decided that whoever possessed the most valuable research and could solve greater problems would own the Scepters." which, essentially, is another way of saying 'Whoever is decided to be the smartest gets both recognition for being selected and additional resources.' The existence of the Scepters sparked various 'attacks' from one school to another in order to prove that they deserve to be considered for owning more.

This, to me, sounds similar to people trying to join the Genius Society. Although I don't believe it's meant to be a direct representation (nor does this event mention Ratio anyway) but it seems to me that they fit. The data bank on the Genius Society states: "There are also those who rejoice, thinking they have already reached greatness and had created priceless asset of civilization with their diligence and wisdom. They were sure that their life's achievements deserve Nous's approval." Which fits directly into the Scholars' Strife of 'thinking they deserve what they don't, but could, have.'

The data bank also states in regards to the Scholars' Strife that: "The Guild's knowledge and ideals were no longer pure, leaving only ugly conflicts behind." Which, to me, perfectly encapsulates what I believe to be Ratios issue with both the Guild and the Society. Every party is entirely focused on themselves and what they can gain that they simply don't care for actually spending knowledge and truth.

[clowningclownn]

still comic is under the cut, but this one's with music :3

[cheriafreya]

Chibi Ratiorine (◕‿◕✿)

Bonus:

[saunterdownwards]

“I need a version where his ultimate hits but it's just falling_metal_pipe.mp4”

@king-alpha-wolfz-blog say no more

[smile-files]

kris - headcanons, theories, and analysis (a jumbled mess from yours truly)

kris has selective mutism and is semi-verbal: they have the capability of speech, but the extent to which they are willing and eager to speak at any given moment is highly dependent on their current mental state as well as the people around them. generally speaking, kris is not very talkative and infrequently starts or participates in conversation, even when in the presence of people they are comfortable with and when feeling fine; it is noted, though, that kris only ever actively wants to speak and is eager to do so in such situations -- when uncomfortable, kris will not speak unless direly necessary (and even then, their ability to speak is not guaranteed). also worthy of note is how unexpressive kris's face tends to be; they rarely wear anything other than a blank expression. exceptions only occur under extreme, catastrophic distress, or when around friends and family -- kris has been known to laugh, especially since they would like making mischief.

in kris's youth, they had close, warm relationships with their adoptive mother, toriel, their adoptive father, asgore, their adoptive brother, asriel, their next-door neighbor and friend, noelle, and, to a slightly lesser extent, noelle's sister, dess, and father, rudy. while still quiet most of the time, kris would actively want to speak to them on some occasions, and would often be happy to point out things to them (kris is a very observant person, noticing small details in their environment) and play games that had some minor speaking component (such as playing a video game in which comments are often exchanged between players). given their emotional proximity to kris, these individuals knew kris well enough to have a general sense of how they were feeling, even in moments when kris wasn't in the mindspace to speak; asriel and noelle could tell what kris was feeling better than anyone else, asriel especially understanding why kris felt what they did (noelle always knew what kris felt, but often didn't understand why they were feeling it and required an explanation kris wasn't able to provide), and so kris was very attached to them. however, this attachment was wrought with insecurity: asriel was growing up, soon to leave for college, and a well-beloved golden boy; noelle was always leagues better than kris in school, and a darling, endearing girl; kris couldn't help but fixate on asriel and noelle leaving them someday.

unfortunately, a cascade of events eventually pulled the majority of kris's loved ones away from them, including azzy and noelle. dess disappeared, splintering the relationship between kris's family, the dreemurrs, and noelle's family, the holidays; kris and noelle began to grow apart as their families lost touch; asgore was fired from his position as police chief, and toriel divorced him; finally, asriel went off to college. the only close connection kris maintained from their childhood was toriel -- and even if toriel never understood them quite as thoroughly as azzy or noelle, kris was still strongly attached to her and her ability to understand them at all, to the point that, in the absence of anyone else to connect with, kris became very clingy to her. kris has been massively lonely and depressed, fixated on the great time asriel must be having in college and how happy and beloved noelle seemed to be -- while they've been alone, with nobody to truly know how they feel when they're uncomfortable. oh, and how often kris is uncomfortable! basically friendless, constantly sleep-deprived, and harboring a hidden self-loathing stewing in their soul since their childhood… since asriel moved away, kris has been quieter than ever, unable to express the pain festering within. they were never that expressive, but that seemed to have come to a head, with kris becoming almost completely unresponsive to any emotional stimuli. kris seemed completely unfazed by susie's cruel bullying when she joined the class… however, her words seemed to strike a chord deep, deep within them, and they couldn't help but laugh.

since the player has taken control over kris's soul near the beginning of the game, however, kris's verbal "self"-expression has increased. the player can compel kris to speak -- not only in moments where kris would choose to speak themselves, in which the player just directs what it is they are to say (possibly contradicting what kris wants to say), but also in moments where kris would be uncomfortable and wouldn't even be willing to speak at all. the player seems to not have control over kris's facial expression, however -- so, despite having suppressed most show of emotion in recent months, kris now has the chance to take advantage of their ability to communicate their true feelings through their face, and might well seize it… though, why would kris not take the player's manipulation as another sign from above that they will never be understood? why even try? regardless what they think, though, a certain primal desire to be understood overrides any logic or loss of hope: like always, if disturbed enough, kris's face will show it; likewise, if something strikes their funny bone -- or if it strikes a chord deep, deep within them -- kris will laugh.

kris, no matter what, does not like being suppressed, and even if the player isn't hurting them (which can certainly, certainly happen), kris will have some negative opinion of them. they want to be loved and understood for who they truly are, more than anything else in the world, and the player, even if unintentionally, is actively undermining that. if we imagine some alternate timeline, where kris made friends with ralsei and susie all on their own, that friendship having formed at all would imply that kris believes that ralsei and susie either do or will love and understand kris for who they truly are; why would kris become friends with them otherwise? in this hypothetical, kris would learn that they aren't truly alone, and that there are always people to connect and relate to, if they believe they're capable of being understood -- that they don't have to wait forever for people like asriel. however, as the "friendship" kris has with ralsei and susie is entirely manufactured by the player and the game, it is little more than a distant dream. as we control kris's body and words, it's as if kris's self is watching what "they" do from within themselves, looking at the friendships "they" have and wishing they were truly theirs: it is dissociation, a feeling that these relationships aren't real.

at the same time, though, kris desires these relationships as they currently are, even in their apparently empty state, or wants to desire them; kris desires a world in which they aren't constantly craving understanding, in which closeness was taken for granted, in which they were open and talkative, in which, perhaps, they were a different person who isn't such a weird, quiet loser. this is what the player provides; this is what the dark world provides; this is what the game provides. the dark world is a game that kris is playing: it is doubtful that kris summoned the player to control them, but the player's control is what gives kris these relationships, and so, in some strange way, kris might desire the player as much as they hate the player. kris has never been good with people, but now they can be piloted by someone who, via the game (which, notably, is a path ralsei sets for us: the prophecy), follows a relatively stable path in which they must be good with people. chapter 1 always ends with kris being "friends" with ralsei and susie, with kris doing the "right thing", with kris being "happy". perhaps kris can come out of chapter 1, half-satisfied with having lived vicariously through themselves. chapter 2 is largely the same for basically every player, and would perhaps result in noelle genuinely, earnestly reconnecting with kris (kris themselves) through their adventure in the dark world; however, if the player tries hard enough to defy the game's path, they can force kris to do terrible things to people: to emotionally abuse noelle right as she was about to rekindle something with kris, manipulating her into killing someone. this, obviously, would f*ck kris up, the main reason for which need not even be spoken. but there is something more subtly tragic about it all: that the one genuine, non-vicarious, non-player relationship kris might foster through the game -- their faded friendship with noelle -- was forcibly dashed on the rocks with kris's own, puppeted hands. is that not horrible?

no matter what path the player makes kris take in either chapter, kris removes their soul each night (twice during chapter 2) and, shambling like a silent zombie, performs some impulsive, violent act with their knife -- cutting a pie, slashing toriel's car tires, or opening a dark fountain. worthy of note is that the soul the player controls is still kris's soul, and yet they are willing to literally remove their soul, the culmination of their being, to be free of us from a little while. in two of three cases, kris clearly returns the soul to their body; in the third at the end of chapter 2, they hold it up as their handmade dark fountain billows smoke, and it is ambiguous what they do with it. are they gazing at it in awe, or glaring at it in disgust? how much do they need the soul, and how much can they act without it? will they return it to their body? the player, the dark world, and the game are what allow kris to reconnect with noelle -- or break her. in the former case, kris might be opening a dark fountain in the hopes that perhaps more good will come out of this strange system of control at which they are centered; in the latter, they might be opening it to spite the player's attempts at closing dark fountains, in accordance to ralsei and the game's will. true, the path that leads kris to manipulate noelle is one that defies the game's central intent -- but the game still allowed it to happen, tantalizing the observant player with a secret route. or, in both cases, kris just might want to create a dark world where their mother is present, given that the dark world has either brought people closer to them, or left them completely alone…

[cateatinglemons]

Audio credit: Hinaudios on Instagram