"Bloom? Like a flower?" She asked quizzically, one eyebrow raised at the unorthodox word choice.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHKYx7F65jG
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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.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcdf8wYm13d
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In Empyrea, bloom now had a new, sinister undertone. Flowers blooming would normally evoke images of spring or rebirth. Not anymore.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡZwK4p8JHPj
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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.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡOfMNvtXZLC
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*The Era of Hope was the sixth age of Empyrea.*252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRmdBptbYJz
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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 examination252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡiNEj8i3wS5
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to be a mix of heart failure - caused by a cardiac glycoside called Convallatoxin - and suffocation.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNg74cqmVbm
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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.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡv12awspksV
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"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.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡG8IaLcS7n9
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"To answer the only question that ever matters...why." He replied mysteriously.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡBGfl6aJ0RF
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"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.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5feCWrcWZp
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"I meant why they did it like this...what do these flowers mean?"252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡwPX02HuFHH
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Airko Petal had studied the art of floriography - communication with flowers - and was a leading expert in the symbolism behind them.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡK7d5rcaSZ9
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"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.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡRRDdQkOHbI
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"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."252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY0JfuPA9iM
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"Aquiloria won't be forgetting Operations Bloom and Chancellor anytime soon," Petal assured him.252Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡX1yMR77kGO
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Although, she wasn't sure she believed it herself.
Penana
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