After a respectable amount of back and forth about whether triggering the mechanism Emilia had found was a good idea—Rin had, unfortunately, stuck to her insistence that Emilia shouldn’t risk her life because she had no way of knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt if her real body and soul would actually be okay—Rin had finally capitulated and agreed to let her activate it. It had taken about thirty minutes, the other girl searching through the library’s three levels looking for any other mechanisms or hints as to how they should proceed, but now she stood a ways away from Emilia, waiting for her to activate the thing.

Emilia was pretty sure the distance was ridiculous—neither of them could sense anything connected to the mechanism other than another hidden door—but she resisted doing anything more than rolling her eyes at the girl before reaching her energy out towards the thing.

It shuddered. She shuddered back.

⸂Are you alright?⸃ Rin asked as Emilia staggered slightly, although the other girl made no attempt to move towards her, probably thinking she’d deserve it if the mechanism killed her.

“Yeah,” Emilia said, stepping back to lean against a table as the bookshelves opened, metal grinding loudly together as it did so. She smacked her free hand to her injured ear, wondering if the people of this world weren’t fortunate to have magically deafened hearing.

“What was that?”

Emilia and Rin’s eyes flew wide as another voice floated towards them from below—from beyond the still open doorway to the endless hallway. Rin bolted towards her, grabbing hold of her wrist and tugging her into the newly revealed tunnel.

⸂I do not know,⸃ another voice said, slithering through the aether towards them and sending a shudder through Emilia as Rin turned back towards the door, her eyes flittering about searching for some means of closing it.

Emilia tugged her along. “It’s a waste of time,” she hissed, cursing the fact that she was so helpless as they hurried along the dark corridor. “They’ll hear it close, and they’ll obviously know there’s a hidden door. Even if they have to search it out, it wasn’t hidden well enough to slow them down much.”

She glanced back, catching the way the former guard’s jaw tensed, although she said nothing about the people behind them, instead telling Emilia she should watch where she was going.

“Huh?” Emilia’s gaze shifted back to the long corridor, which apparently wasn’t as long as she thought. She cursed, twisting her momentum to the right as the corridor split in two, a sharp edge leading the path to each side. “Shit,” she hissed as she slammed her shoulder into the wall, Rin’s own momentum stymied by some sort of magic. Why she didn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—use it on her as well, Emilia had no idea. Something told her it might have simply been a petty desire to see her slam into the wall, though.

⸂Are you okay?⸃ Rin asked, although Emilia could see the hint of amusement in her eyes. At the least, it was a good sign that the former Risen Guard was still capable of finding levity in the moment. In Emilia’s experience, taking things too seriously was more likely to lead to fuck-ups than trying to stay calm and enjoying the ride, even when unknown and potentially dangerous people were following close behind.

“Yes,” she said, eyes turning back the way they had come. The corridor was so long and dark that she couldn’t see the entrance, although they certainly hadn’t run far enough to completely lose what light had been making it into the darkness from the library. Hopefully, they hadn’t ended up in yet another endless hall they’d struggle to find their way out of. Then again, maybe if it was, those people wouldn’t be able to catch up with them? Unlikely, given they’d also found their way into the first endless hallway, but a girl could hope!

“We should keep going,” she said, turning away from the way they had come. She glanced down each of the paths, finding both just as black and empty as the other. “I think we go right.”

⸂Why?⸃

“Why not?”

Rin, rather unsurprisingly, didn’t seem to like Emilia’s non-existent reasoning for going right. Really, she had mostly chosen that path because that was the natural direction her body had moved when the split had popped up in front of them. Somehow, she thought Rin would like that reason even less, so she kept her mouth shut as they hurried down the path, neither of them inclined to dawdle while there were unknown people not too far behind them.

“Don’t imagine you recognized them?” Emilia asked. Around them, the world spread empty and black and too much like the first hallway had.

⸂No,⸃ Rin replied, her steps lighter across the floor than Emilia’s own.

Emilia reached out her core, probing the aethernet for signs that her friend was using some sort of magic, a slight zing shot through her. It wasn’t a zing from Rin or whatever magic she may or may not have been using to soften her steps, though, as far as she could tell.

⸂I am not acquainted with many members of the Enclave,⸃ Rin continued as Emilia began searching for the source of the zing, the other girl’s words falling away slightly as she concentrated.

Something was hovering around them—lurking. It felt like it was lurking, reminding her too much of the way the monsters during the war had felt, slinking through the aether until they were ready to jump out and—

⸂Are you listening?⸃ Rin half-growled at her.

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Emilia glanced towards her. “I was looking for something. What do you feel here?”

Rin’s energy filled the space, flowing like water around them as it whipped at the edges of the world, curling into the aether until—

Rin frowned, deep and strange looking across her normally bored face.

“Do you know what that is?” Emilia asked, glancing behind them as though she’d be able to see if the strangers were now chasing them. It was impossibly dark behind them, however, and all she managed to do was trip over her own feet, stumbling forward with a yelp. Her knees banged and skidded across the sticky floor, and even without looking, she could tell she’d drawn blood. “Fuck,” she mumbled, flipping onto her butt to examine the damage.

The tights Harmony had lent her, after deeming her own, lacy tights too risqué, were definitely ruined. Giant holes crossed her knees, blood slowly oozing out of the scuffs, the skin burning when she bent her knees to examine them more closely. “Why isn’t it going back in? The times I was injured before, my blood just kinda… seeped back into me—or became a weapon. This blood isn’t doing either.” She peered up at Rin who was resolutely looking away from her, her eyes instead staring into the abyss they had come from.

⸂It’s not?⸃ she asked, energy still spilling out of her as she searched for whatever was zinging through the aether. Her jaw tightened for the briefest of moments before she glanced down, watching with wide eyes as blood dripped out of Emilia’s scrapes, caking her tights in what would definitely become uncomfortable spots of dried, cracking blood too quickly. ⸂That is not good.⸃

“Yeah… I didn’t think it would be. Do you think it’s this place?”

⸂Perhaps. We should go. If it is this place, we do not want to be caught by those people here. Can you walk?⸃

Emilia pushed herself up, cringing a bit as pain spiked through her. “I’ll be fine. Stings, but it’s not too bad. Ideally, we find a spot to stop, so the blood will clot, but I get what you’re saying. We definitely don’t want to be fighting someone where my wounds won’t heal.”

She wasn’t sure if any injuries Rin sustained would heal by themselves, even under normal circumstances. She’d seen her former Risen Guard babysitter’s wounds start to heal, seemingly of their own accord, the night they’d fought, but it had seemed slower than her own healing. Key’s hands had needed healing magic, and while everyone had been rather tight-lipped about it, Emilia assumed the Risen Guard were capable of using a lesser version of whatever was healing visitors. It was just a question of whether Rin had the same ability—not to mention if anyone outside the Risen Guard did as well.

Rin blinked at her.

“What?”

Rin shook her head. ⸂It is nothing. I am simply not used to people treating injuries so nonchalantly.⸃

“There were some kids at the Stringer house that did as well,” Emilia said as they began moving again, their steps quick but not quite the run they had been previously.

⸂Those children are… odd. Their father and Key have allowed them more freedom than is common.⸃

“Ah…” Emilia trailed off, thinking of the way the children had failed in their attempts to be sneaky, instead tripping and bleeding and soaking their clothes in a matter of minutes. She had thought it cute, at first, but after having met the Stringer Matriarch, who she supposed must be their grandmother or another close relative…

Stars above, she really hoped that woman never found out about their escapes. Emilia had experience with people like that—had spent the first few years of her life surrounded by adults who thought children were too much trouble, even when they weren’t actively up to anything. She’d never been good at staying out of trouble, even back when there had been all that pressure to be good, and certainly not a single moment since escaping that oppression.

“You don’t think children need freedom?” Emilia asked.

She’d seen a general lack of freedom and play in the two cities she’d visited so far. Children shuffling quietly through the streets, nearly every scrap of their body covered by thick, uncomfortable looking cloth in what was likely a vain attempt to keep them safe. Children were meant to run and play, to get into trouble and fun, to scuff their knees and palms, just as hers were now.

Out of all the things wrong with this world of red, that—that disappearance of what had hopefully once been a standard childhood—wrapped itself around her heart in a wholly different and uncomfortable way. Even her own quiet childhood was nothing compared to the way these children seemed to live. She knew that in some of the Free Colonies, especially the more authoritarian ones, the lives of children were often strictly controlled. You didn’t get good little soldiers, parroting back government propaganda by letting them have imaginations, after all. Even from what little she’d heard about how this world had existed before the blood curse had arrived, it didn’t sound like that had been the case here.

More than likely, once, children had grown and lived and laughed. There were so many horrors in this world, but that one—the loss of childhood—was so tangible. Emilia was sure she could walk down any street and see how normal something so wrong had become. Other things were easier to hide, but they were hidden because even the locals would find them horrifying. Killing people to stop their blood from becoming a weapon was terrible. Ruling with an increasingly ruthless hand was definitely not ideal. Destroying the happiness of children because they may injure themselves was just as traumatizing.

Emilia frowned when the former guard failed to answer her question, instead leaving her mind to wander about. She turned towards where Rin had been hurrying along beside her a moment earlier and startled to a stop. “Rin?” She glanced behind her, finding no sign of the other girl.

“Well… that can’t be good…” she mumbled to herself, hands planting on her hips as she backtracked a few steps. Emilia reached her energy out, searching for any sign of the other girl, frown deepening when she found neither any sign of her nor the previous zing through the aether. “Also not good.”

She took a few more steps back towards where the entrance—in theory—was located, her steps pausing when another person’s energy ripped through the aethernet. “Fuck,” she hissed under her breath, twisting and bolting away from the theoretical entrance as magic pricked against her skin.

⸄I think I found someone~⸅ a voice, cold and cruel, vibrated through her, the speaker having purposefully thrown his voice towards her.

Asshole. Emilia had seen enough horror flicks to know the man was fucking with her, his voice holding the same malevolence that she’d heard in those of serial killers’, chasing down their next victim and revelling in the fear their actions garnered them.

Distantly, she thought she heard their companion—the visitor she had heard earlier—saying something to them, but they were too far off. A laugh echoed through the world, and Emilia shuddered before steeling herself. She would not be afraid—not of someone like that. This wasn’t her first time being chased by someone who wanted to kill her. Between monsters, black knotted stalkers, crazed soldiers and a few outliers, Emilia was used to fighting for her life.

She might be running at the moment, but she’d always found it convenient if people thought you a dumb irregular or a terrified victim. She might have her faults, her scratches and broken bits, but Emilia had never considered herself a victim.

She wasn’t about to start now.