Emilia blinked into the middle distance as Rin vomited beside her. They had survived going through the mystery doorway, but the experience had been less than pleasant, like a thousand amusement park rides smushed into a single, blisteringly short moment. Only her own flight training was keeping her stomach contents inside her, but even they were roiling with threat.
“You okay?” she asked weakly, sparing a glance towards the other girl. It was a good thing her hair was so short, her shoulder-length locks in little danger of falling into the mess at her feet.
Rin made an unintelligible noise, half through her aethervoice, half seeming to actually gurgling out of her before her stomach decided more needed to come out. Lovely.
Emilia sighed, looking around them. They were no longer stuck in the endless hallway, nor were they in the abyss that had existed outside its walls. The new space looked closer to the library they had originally been in, although it was in far better shape than either the areas that had been mangled by the earlier destruction or the ancient, mouldering ones they had passed through on their way to find the heartcore.
This place wasn’t exactly like either of those areas, however, appearing to be more suited for sitting down and studying a book you’d grabbed. Large tables spread through the room, with lights that seemed to simultaneously be too dim to read by and the exactly correct mood for the space set onto each table.
“Odd…” Emilia thought, stepping forward to examine the lights. Lights hadn’t existed until this moment, the world instead relying on magic substances that absorbed the natural light that suffused most of the world. The few places she’d been in that were seemingly devoid of that light—outside of that weird hallway from before—were the underground caverns surrounded by the light absorbing material. Those had either been lit by stalactites, as the one that led to the first heartcore had been, or magic, as Zach’s training rooms had been. The only other things she’d seen emitting light was fire magic and the heartcore itself.
She peeked under the shade of one of the lights, finding the lightbulb wasn’t a lightbulb at all. Instead, a golden red stone was glowing faintly, its edges surprisingly jagged.
“Are these stone lights common?” she asked, moving around the tables to examine each of the lights. Most of the stones were the same golden-red, however a few edged closer to a bloody red, the light they cast ominous, reminding her of the horror movies Beth and Pria loved—one of their few shared interests, outside of partying.
⸂No,⸃ Rin said, sounding worn out and still a little woozy from their entry. ⸂I have only—⸃ She broke off, and when Emilia glanced back at her, her eyes were clamped shut, a hand resting gently over her stomach.
⸂No…⸃ Rin started again, shaking her head slightly before risking opening her eyes once more. ⸂There are stones that glow—⸃
“Like in that cavern.”
⸂Yes, but they are never removed.⸃
“Why not?”
Rin stepped forward to examine one of the lamps herself. She reached out with her energy, a barely there pink wrapping around the light, before she overturned the lamp to look at it better. ⸂The caverns are considered a blessing from the visitors. They are sacred and not to be harmed.⸃
“And… a bunch of young people getting drunk and high in them isn’t considered harming them?” Her own country was pretty lax on their drug laws, but it was only in the Free Colonies that you found governments who considered being intoxicated to be a sacred experience. It was a bit of an issue, what with all the immigration since the war. People brought their customs with them, and sometimes those customs didn’t mesh with the normal flow of Baalphorian life and culture. Neither side had been particularly good at finding a middle ground.
⸂That is not considered harmful,⸃ Rin told her, fingers brushing over the stone. Pink tendrils slipped out of her again, winding their way through the cracks in the stone until the aether itself seemed to be screaming.
“Uhm…” Emilia gulped out, the hands pressed to her ears doing nothing to protect them from the sound that seemed to be the world itself complaining about how Rin was treating it. “Should you be doing that?”
Just like that, Rin’s energy scattered through the air and the screaming stopped. ⸂I was demonstrating what harming these stones actually feels like,⸃ she said matter-of-factly, as though she hadn’t just finished doing the thing she’d said people weren’t supposed to do. ⸂Simply enjoying their company is not harming them.⸃
“I… see…”
Emilia rubbed absently at her ears. At least the screaming hadn’t been actual screaming, which was definitely liable to burst her eardrum yet again. As much as her body seemed inclined to heal more serious injuries in this world, her eardrum apparently wasn’t vital enough for the system to heal it. Key had also healed up his hands, after her blood magic had mangled them during the fight with her former guard, but even for locals, healing abilities were built into the system. As much as locals could increase their skill in healing others, more energy was focused on giving people the skill to heal their own injuries, even those who were generally discouraged from using magic by the Risen Guard.
According to Harmony, who had stepped in to answer questions when her brother had begun to fumble them, this had always been the case, even before blood became such a toxic substance. The introduction of blood magic into the world had simply upped the need to make sure everyone could heal themselves with the upmost efficiency and speed.
This, unfortunately, meant that no one was capable of healing her eardrum and she was just going to have to live with the itchy feeling and quiet, inescapable buzz. Given most of her body was now itchy from her ongoing knot therapy, though, and she wasn’t even sure the itching was because of the damage. All she knew was she was itchy, pretty much everywhere. Her ear was by far the itchiest, however, and she couldn’t soothe it. It really sucked.
“I’ve been wondering…” Emilia started, coming to stand beside Rin as she disassembled the lamp, examining each piece with the concentration of someone who had wanted to spend her life creating.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Rin didn’t even glance up when Emilia trailed off, her focus entirely on the magic item before her. Emilia shrugged, turning back to explore the room. She knew enough about obsessive people to know you didn’t interrupt them when they were focused—not unless it was an emergency, and sometimes not even then.
The room itself was tall, bookshelves reaching several floors up, walkways that glowed faintly edging the walls and allowing access to the books. Sliding ladders covered the space as well, attached to the walls by rails. It was strange. Nothing like this existed in her country, where paper copies were to be avoided whenever you could—and the books here really were a more regular paper, unlike the ones in her Risen Guard holding room. Some of the room’s design reminded her of the strange and outdated architectural and interior design choices Charles had brought from the Free Colonies, though—much to Nettie’s everlasting annoyance, her own aesthetics leaning hard into the futuristic.
He had also brought with him a large collection of paper books, which had been relegated to his library and office. What the man needed an office for, Emilia wasn’t sure. He had come from a rich family, but unlike in Baalphoria, where even those who could retire on family money were expected to join the workforce, the Free Colony Charles and James hailed from had no such customs. If anything, after decades of learning bits about their home, she had come to believe that earning enough money to retire early was considered desirable—even better if your descendants could retire from birth. Even Halen, who she had seen attempt to avoid work on many occasions, had been put off by the idea of living off accumulated wealth.
Money was meant to be used. Yes, many of the more affluent Baalphorian families kept their fair share of cash sitting around for emergencies, but between taxes and donations and the cost of their often opulent lifestyles, if they didn’t work, that cash would quickly vanish. She knew that in the years since the war, many of those families had increased their donations, working overtime to help rebuild the country in any way they could. Even the people who continuously built and demolished the towers of Piketown worked and donated substantial amounts of their wealth—their choice of where to spend their remaining cash was still stupid, though.
Charles had always sworn there were some Baalphorian customs he would never adopt—a Censor being one of them, preferring the temporary, external model when he had to use it—but maybe working, helping the country recover, managing the substantial profits from his wife’s job, were ones he had learned to accept?
Maybe. The man had always been… difficult to understand. He had married a temperamental and high maintenance woman whose country he seemed to viscerally dislike half the time, after all.
Her fingers ran over the spines of the books. They were so… fresh. She’d seen collections of books in some of the Free Colonies she’d visited as a child. They had been old, their spines cracked with misuse and love. Even the newer ones, still being manufactured for people who preferred paper to digital for whatever reason, had generally been noticeably worn after a single read through. Pages crinkles and bent and ripped. Spines and covers were scuffed and marked up, even with the most attentive of owners.
These books looked too perfect—too new.
“I think this place is fake,” she said to herself, giving a squeak of surprise when Rin popped up beside her, an echo of agreement flooding out of her.
⸂I agree,⸃ the other girl said, ignoring the way Emilia was dramatically clutching her chest.
“Stars above, you’re stealthy.”
⸂Trained killer, remember?⸃ Rin joked—at least, Emilia thought it was a joke. She had been under the assumption that the Risen Guard were more of an authoritarian police force, and that while they did kill, they weren’t trained to be outright killers, except in the higher ranks. That said, Rin and Harmony had both been tagged for more training, so maybe they had already known the general direction of their careers?
Maybe, Rin had already known she would be forced to kill her fellow citizens, in an attempt to protect the world—in an attempt to earn the Risen Guard more control and power. She had seemed to know that the guard were killing people they viewed as dangerous, after all, even if she was surprised at who and why those people were being killed.
“So…” Emilia breathed out, glancing back at the mess of the lamp Rin had disassembled and left in pieces across the table. “What makes you think this place is fake?”
When she looked back, Rin’s eyes were glued on the books, assessing them with the same intensity she had the lamp. Emilia blinked and then Rin was gone, moving down along the shelves examining the books and shelves, occasionally pulling out a book to flip through it.
Okay then. Still focusing.
Emilia pulled out a few of the books as well, grimacing down at the symbolic writing before sliding each back into place. Worth a shot, even if she had already figured the writing here would be indecipherable to her. Not only had they already discussed the possibility that the system was translating their words for one another, but the writing she’d seen in the cities had been nothing but mysterious scribbles to her. It would have been weird to discover the writing in this room was something she could read, but it didn’t hurt to check.
She might not know a lot about raid platforms, but she knew they varied in how much the challenges within them were natural constructions of the world and the system that managed it, and how much the maintainers interfered, designing intricate events for heroes to partake in. She had heard Elijah and his friends arguing over which was better on a few occasions. Maintainers could be far more creative than the systems, but the systems could leverage knowledge and understanding of itself and its population far better than any human maintainer ever could.
Sil had his own views on the topic, but his general dislike of Elijah and his friends generally kept them from interacting, and he knew Emilia didn’t particularly care for the topic of raids or raid platforms, so she only knew he had opinions, not what they were.
It was almost too bad the books here weren’t written in her native tongue. The proof that the maintainers were interfering in this world would have taken the question of how much of this was natural out of her mind. The fact that this world was a construct used as a game by her world was bad enough, but one could argue the system was its god, manipulating it as it saw fit, slotting visiting heroes in as best it could. When people from her world got even more involved in it—when they came in, twisting and destroying the natural progression of a world for their own amusement…
It made everything worse, but she also knew the difference was minute and hardly worth thinking about.
These people weren’t some foreign country they had invaded in a war and made a cruel vacation spot for themselves in. This world and its people wouldn’t exist without these games, and that fact blurred the lines so much it made her head hurt.
Her own ethics told her this was wrong. The laws of her world had long since determined that AI were not people with rights, even if they had long since passed the point where you could never hope to differentiate a human and an AI.
Emilia released a long sigh as she pulled herself up onto the lowest of the balconies encircling the room. There were more tables and lamps here as well, these ones giving off a faintly green glow that made everything look poisonous. She poked her head back over the railing, catching sight of Rin looking over another book, flipping the pages so fast Emilia wasn’t sure she was actually seeing what was on them.
The book snapped shut and Rin glanced up towards her. ⸂Find anything?⸃
Emilia smiled down at her, resting her elbows on the railing. “Not really, but I do have a question for you, if you’re ready to hear it?”
Rin’s expression pulled tight. ⸂Why would I not be?⸃ she asked because apparently either no one had ever pointed out her single-minded focus to her, or it was new.