"Bloom? Like a flower?" She asked quizzically, one eyebrow raised at the unorthodox word choice.250Please respect copyright.PENANA64X1JfZpGF
250Please respect copyright.PENANAKQGP7J589O
250Please respect copyright.PENANAqbJqlTC79Q
Bloom can be used as an intransitive verb meaning to bear a flower or flowers and alternatively as meaning to appear or come into being suddenly.250Please respect copyright.PENANAiJ5r7KAkCm
250Please respect copyright.PENANAXaMNfzojmo
250Please respect copyright.PENANAEqdDczwCTz
In Empyrea, bloom now had a new, sinister undertone. Flowers blooming would normally evoke images of spring or rebirth. Not anymore.250Please respect copyright.PENANAYmehjUPpdX
250Please respect copyright.PENANAjty1TXrLyo
250Please respect copyright.PENANAROBb6O9QvQ
It had changed when the Spring of the eighty-seventh year of Hope*, Aiko Petal - Master Adept of Floriculture, Floriography, and Botany - had been urgently summoned by Meritocrat Mylo of Artè after an abhorrent discovery: The BCU had kindly left the Aquilorians a...gift.250Please respect copyright.PENANAEnm4NQsuVc
250Please respect copyright.PENANAFukgw24f6H
250Please respect copyright.PENANAFbh32wzj6t
*The Era of Hope was the sixth age of Empyrea.*250Please respect copyright.PENANA8boHilh9gN
250Please respect copyright.PENANA8JKg2goMVF
250Please respect copyright.PENANAyC7DSVf7E9
The Meritocrats of Æno, Academi, Adepto, Adhoma, Alerie, Azuri, Divitiae, Merita, Mezaik, Vorde, and Wyrai (every city in the Southeast of Empyrea apart from Artè large enough to be represented on the Meritocratic Council) had all been found dead with flowers growing in their lungs. The cause of death had been determined by a postmortem examination250Please respect copyright.PENANAtn3BwNAu0G
250Please respect copyright.PENANAoOWFrqYow4
to be a mix of heart failure - caused by a cardiac glycoside called Convallatoxin - and suffocation.250Please respect copyright.PENANAsyzrz7u16x
250Please respect copyright.PENANAjJ9XlTKigg
250Please respect copyright.PENANAAfP1RdFbmO
The culprit was a woodland flowering plant with sweetly scented, pendent, bell-shaped white flowers borne in sprays in spring that were native to Umbracrest and some parts of Northern Cerulea. Lily of the Valley or Convallaria majalis.250Please respect copyright.PENANAFViSvUqVrI
250Please respect copyright.PENANAxR7auYgzvv
250Please respect copyright.PENANAtesgVGHnqs
"Why have I been called here, Meritocrat Mylo?" The Master Adept asked innocently. It was a reasonable question, Floriography students weren't taken particularly seriously even by the Academy of the Adept. The Adeptus Floricultural had supposedly been mentally feeble, something that was most likely not true.250Please respect copyright.PENANAPRlzl52oMv
250Please respect copyright.PENANAKGpFI1snxQ
"To answer the only question that ever matters...why." He replied mysteriously.250Please respect copyright.PENANAriyXMm7Wlk
250Please respect copyright.PENANApBrKybSKNn
250Please respect copyright.PENANAsdcwZQnuww
"Do you mean why they did this? That's easy: the BCU wanted to paralyse the Aquilorian regional government." She responded quietly, staring with wide eyes at the agonised corpses of the Meritocrats in shock.250Please respect copyright.PENANAxmGwDm6cmM
250Please respect copyright.PENANACBe1DZC6US
250Please respect copyright.PENANA77D2tKxGEO
"I meant why they did it like this...what do these flowers mean?"250Please respect copyright.PENANAur0MyJmt4l
250Please respect copyright.PENANANamMCRmPCT
250Please respect copyright.PENANACiQGB0IkF4
Airko Petal had studied the art of floriography - communication with flowers - and was a leading expert in the symbolism behind them.250Please respect copyright.PENANA4tzYmiM9PB
250Please respect copyright.PENANAhkdlwefbNr
250Please respect copyright.PENANAfh1rF5K4xu
"What it might have meant from anyone else," She mused, " Is sweetness, humility, purity; returning happiness." She paused. When she spoke again her face had darkened, "What this means is that we are being mocked; there is nothing sweet about the immense pain Chairman Hessen has caused just to send Aquiloria a snide message. Our best and brightest, all dead from flowers..." She lamented, overwhelmed by the senseless slaughter.250Please respect copyright.PENANAZ38B1hgfyt
250Please respect copyright.PENANA7izlmgKTSb
250Please respect copyright.PENANATJ0OjRCVmU
"First Chancellor Nazarene was found dead and now this," Mylo whimpered quietly, suppressed rage seeping into his words and making them wobble, "It can't go unpunished."250Please respect copyright.PENANAVHcep5NXUd
250Please respect copyright.PENANAaEfRRz5DBY
250Please respect copyright.PENANAl8QRno4Ose
"Aquiloria won't be forgetting Operations Bloom and Chancellor anytime soon," Petal assured him.250Please respect copyright.PENANAJhWwgb5JTq
250Please respect copyright.PENANAlf3mjczNel
250Please respect copyright.PENANAbDTHr9oIz0
Although, she wasn't sure she believed it herself.