The group seemed to be having an argument about what to do with her. They gesticulated, looked annoyed, pleading, outright angry. From what Emilia could glean, based on vibes and body language, the girl who had spoken to her wanted to figure out who she belonged to and send her back, the boy who had bumped into her wanted to not. The others in their group, a short, bored looking woman, and a tall man who gave her this man is totally dangerous vibes, seemed more inclined to let her stay but also didn’t seem inclined to get involved in the argument more than necessary.

They’d pulled her off the road, manhandling her into a closed shop using a key. Magic key, or one of them worked here. Emilia was betting it was the former, but the stakes were pretty low—she was only betting against herself, after all.

The bakery they’d ended up in smelled good, even if the bread was red. Maybe it wouldn’t bleed or squish? Unfortunately, the dangerous vibe dude was watching her, bloody eyes predatory, so she couldn’t just go swipe one.

She glanced up as the girl who could vocalize and wanted her gone approached her. She’d thrown back her hood, revealing a crop of strawberry-blonde curls and a spattering of freckles. ⸄How did you lose your guard?⸅ she demanded.

Guard. So, definitely not a polite escort, then. A guard she was not supposed to have run off from.

She shrugged, leaning back disinterestedly. “Back at the inn. He was asleep, I was bored. Thought I’d see the city. He never said I couldn’t leave—or that I needed to be guarded.”

The girl blanched slightly, realizing her mistake. She swallowed, straightened. ⸄You should not be out this late.⸅

“Should you?”

A shudder of hostile amusement wrapped around her, and she resolutely refused to look at the tall man. She wasn’t sure she should be able to feel their native communication around her, and even if that was normal, she wasn’t giving that jerk the satisfaction of knowing she noticed him.

⸄We are free to come and go as we please.⸅

“Didn’t look like it to me, but what do I know?” Emilia smiled up at them, swinging a leg over her knee. “I’m just an observer.”

⸄Observer!?⸅ the girl practically snarled, surging forward and grabbing the front of her romper. ⸄You are not—⸅

⸄Stop.⸅

Emilia glanced towards the other girl. She still looked bored, but her muddy red eyes were sharper now, boring into her friend. She was cute, in a vicious sort of way. Nearly black, pin straight hair that fell just to her chin, sharpening her features. The only things soft about her were her boredom and full lips.

⸄What inn?⸅ the other girl asked, voice deeper than Emilia would have expected from someone so small.

“No idea,” Emilia answered honestly. She had no idea what the place was called, the scrawling writing she’d seen occasional completely foreign to her. Honestly, her sense of the direction of so shit, she wasn’t even sure she’d be able to find her way back—she’d kinda been counting on her babysitter to track her down eventually. “We came up through the elevator,” she added, not exactly wanting to stay with this group. At least her teacher-escort-babysitter-guard had been nice. These three were off-putting— Well, four, if you counted the original boy. He seemed nice enough, but didn’t seem capable of vocalizing.

The group exchanged a look. More argument filled the room, heavy, and she really hated that overwhelming feeling. When the boy had tried speaking directly to her, it had felt different, lighter. Now, the conversation raged around her and—

Silence. The two girls gaped at the boy, while the taller man looked amused as he pushed himself up and out of the room. Then the argument exploded again, but the boy seemed uninterested in whatever it was the girls were saying, walking past them to Emilia and extending a hand. He smiled warmly down at her, and she suddenly realized they were siblings, him and the stern girl—their strawberry hair, rosy eyes and freckles almost identical.

She smiled back at him, accepting the hand and letting him drag her out of the shop. “Goodbye, bread~” she said mournfully, shooting him a smile when he looked at her in confusion. “Just a joke,” she said, smile widening when his confusion increased.

Then a smile appeared on his face as well, presumably as one of the girls told him she was joking around. It was a nice smile. Cute and innocent, so unlike his probably sister’s icy demeanour.

They received more than a few odd looks as they made their way back to the entrance of wherever they were going, descending the long, winding stairwell with dozens—if not hundreds—of others. It was nearly pitch-black inside, long railings running the length and almost everyone keeping a firm grip of them. Occasionally, someone stumbled, and the group as a whole helped them back up, a surge of reprimand exploding around them.

Then, the world tensed. The aether itself seeming to grow taut and silent, waiting for something to pluck it—to send it reverberating out through the world.

And when it did.

When it did, Emilia almost fell to her knees. It wasn’t the overwhelm of the locals arguing around her, or even of a thousand skills killing around her.

It was the overwhelm of being filled up with power and essence and as they all stumbled out into a huge, gaping cavern, the world exploded into silent laughter and joy. The boy dragged her along, guiding her safely through the crowd, as she gawked upwards. The cavern wasn’t a building or a city, it was the inside of a mountain—not really, obviously, but it had been designed to appear that way. Giant, menacing stalactites of black and red dripped down from the ceiling, glistening in light coming from… somewhere. Not the air, like it did above, but somewhere else—somewhere far to the left, glowing an almost blue.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Blue, in a land of black and red.

She wanted to see it.

The boy stopped when she tugged on his hand, following her gaze towards the glow. He grinned, sweet and happy, and changed course. He forced his way through for them, nudging people rudely aside until they were standing before the lake. People were jumping in, tossing clothes aside into giant piles without a care.

Water splashed onto her cheek and a shudder ran up her spine. She’d been to plenty of places, been high on tons of things. This place, this water, it was all a drug. Intoxicating, at least to her. Glancing around, she could see the sheen of drunkenness in the eyes of everyone else—many of whom were eyeing her up in less than kind ways—but no one seemed overly high. Even the people who emerged from the water, eyes shining as they sagged against their friends and were unceremoniously pushed back in, didn’t look nearly as high as she felt.

Pity for them.

The boy’s hand tightened around hers, drawing her attention back to him. He nodded towards the lake, a silent question.

She wished she could say yes, wished she could strip all her worries away in the high. She couldn’t. Not with her belongings tucked into less than secure locations. She squeezed back, tugging, and then he was following her, passing the rest of their group on their way… somewhere.

She wove her way through the crowd, so unlike the boy’s method of pushing people aside. Swerve and twist. When she looked back, he looked dazed by the experience, blinking wide eyes at her. They followed the flow of the crowd, everyone so packed together that the world burned against her skin. Sweat and the high and when they emerged into another cavern, the crowd thinning noticeably, she sighed in relief.

He led her towards a bar, buying them both drinks. They glowed faintly pink, but at least they didn’t look like blood—didn’t taste like it either, the drink sweet and sour over her tongue. He smiled as she downed it, downed his own and ordered them another. His tall friend popped up beside them, brushing too close against her, and ordered his own drink—at the boy’s expensive. He didn’t exactly complain, but something in the way he moved, in the look he gave his friend, told her he wasn’t happy about it. It reminded her of someone—someone who had been friends with her ex, until the woman had relied on him to pay, to bail her out, to be there for her, a few too many times without reciprocity.

Reciprocity was required for any relationship to work. Too many people didn’t get that until they burnt out all their relationships—until that one person they relied on snapped.

They left the tall friend there, hands locked together as they wound their way through the increasingly sparse crowd. People danced, lazy and swaying. Others drank and ate and played games, set up at a collection of tables. They weren’t like any games she’d seen before—not exactly unexpected, but it always boggled her, the extent of the imagination, the different ways people found joy and amusement.

The boy let her stop and watch for a while, eyes sliding over the strange boards and pieces, the dice and cards with seemingly abstract shapes cast over them. She especially liked the cards, slowly learning the rhythm of play, the way the cards vibrated together with their player as a specific combination was played.

Games that weren’t raids reacting to the aethernet. Games that weren’t miserable war simulations.

He was watching her when she looked back up. His curls stuck to his forehead, freckles popping against the blush of heat on his cheeks. She wanted to brush them away—wanted to be capable of getting him a drink to cool down.

She squeezed his hand, and then they were moving again, further into the cave. She glanced behind them, finding no one following them, his friends having abandoned them for their own pursuits. Well, being alone with one strange man was better than being alone with that whole group, even if men were generally on better behaviour in front of women they knew.

Guards lazed against the wall of the cavern, near a small doorway. They didn’t look like Risen Guards—at least not the few she had met—but they tensed when they saw her. Hands moving towards their belts—towards weapons that she hadn’t seen her own escort carry. Blunt metal batons, meant to bruise and knock out but not cut—never cut.

The aether rippled and their eyes shot to the boy. If she’d thought them tense before, it was nothing compared to whatever—whoever—they saw in the boy. Their hands dropped away from their weapons, and the doorway that no one else was getting close to—no one even sparing it a glance—was quietly pushed open for them.

“Mystery man of power, eh?” she mumbled to herself as they entered, darkness surrounding them once again.

He didn’t say anything, of course, but his hand tightened around hers as they descended more stairs. Tightened as though to say, ⸄Don’t worry.⸅

She didn’t know how far they had gone when her core squeezed. Then it squeezed again, again, the feeling not exactly painful, but uncomfortable. Cores weren’t meant to be touched—weren’t meant to be directly interacted with, in the real world or digital. Usually, there were safeguards in place to keep your core outside the system. Platforms that developed to use cores too directly were either scrapped or altered via a system, so heroes wouldn’t have to worry about hurting themselves because core damage could follow you back into the real world—or worse, you could learn how to use their core in the real world.

An error in her access point, or in the platform itself? Some missed core access that hadn’t been patched out by the system—the system she had no access to, currently. With the way she was becoming increasingly aware of the words of the locals, of their thoughts rubbing over her core…

The emerged into a smaller room, and Emilia’s breath caught as her eyes landed on the heart. Huge and towering, the stone heart pulsed with her core—the thing reaching out to her.

She should leave. Get out of here. Run away from this thing trying to interact with her core. This could kill her, crack her already damaged core into pieces. Shatter her ability to interact with the aethernet at all, leave her a husk of a person. Brain-dead and just waiting for someone to kill her.

She should stop the boy from pulling her forward. Ignore the silent words of calm and confidence that were sliding off him and surrounding her core. Her eyes met his as he pulled her to the heart. Searching. She searched his eyes for something—anything—that told her she shouldn’t touch it—shouldn’t trust him. This could be a trap, could be something to kill her. Her escort had mentioned something about previous violence against visitors. She should have put her foot down, demanded more information from him about that.

She couldn’t find anything but sincerity in those rose-tinted eyes. She’d always been such a good judge of people, even as a child. She was broken now, though, her abilities hidden behind a system she still couldn’t access.

This seemed like the kind of thing that access could be hiding behind. Secret hearts in places few could access. This also seemed too difficult to find, too rare and risky.

Everything was risk, though. She couldn’t tell if her real core was beating with the heart or if it was just her artificial digital one. She couldn’t tell if her real body was perfectly disconnected from this one. She didn’t know, but if she let fear rule her, she would never win this thing. Whether this heart or something else, she had to decide whether to risk it or not.

“It’s probably nothing,” she insisted to herself as she let the boy guide their joined hands to the heart.

Aether pulsed through her. Pounding, pounding, breaking her apart, shattering her core and soul and—

And, she had always been more than a little stupid. There was a reason her father had always insisted she need a babysitter. Even this, however, felt more stupid than usual.