Emilia could feel the people chasing her. It was an odd sensation, the one person—the one who seemed to be a local—sending energy and magic spiralling after her as she ran.

Stalking her.

He was stalking her, his energy latching onto her, snapping at her heels because he found this fun. She could feel that, too, the air of amusement and outright joy sprinkled through his energy. Even during the war, when everyone with enough connection to the aether could feel monsters lurking in shadows across the aethernet, waiting to pounce and devour anyone who got too close, it hadn’t felt this malevolent. That was truly impressive, that the people behind her had managed to surpass those monsters.

No, not people, person. Emilia could only feel the one person behind her, only his energy reaching out towards her, forcing her onward. Aside from the brief whispers she’d heard from the other person, she could only assume they were like her: a visitor who had yet to gain access to the system, although she supposed they could simply be lacking control of this world’s magic.

They could still have blood weapons, however, and she was rather disinclined to linger and find out. Even the person she assumed was local could have magic she didn’t want to clash with, especially not here in this empty, cramped hallway. One of them could very well be the person who had destroyed the lower levels of the library, after all, and she didn’t exactly want to tangle with that power unless she had to.

She also still didn’t know where Rin or that zinging sensation had gone. Every step she took, her scuffed knees stinging quietly as she went, she reached out her core, searching for any sign of… anything. This stupid hallway was just like the previous one, though. There was nothing about it of interest— Well, there was one difference, one point of vague interest: there was no empty void outside its walls. Instead, there was solid, impenetrable darkness.

Emilia wasn’t sure that was any better, but it was different, and she’d had far too much of the same the last few days. Stairs and hallways and stairs. There had been the ladders in the library behind her, but that was close enough to being more stairs that she was going to count it as such. If she never saw another set of stairs again, it would be too soon. Luckily for her, despite the fact that she had climbed more stairs than she cared to count before entering the raid, Baalphoria wasn’t known for its stairs, almost everything running on elevators and uplines. That wasn’t particularly helpful while she remained in this world, but the reality that she eventually wouldn’t have to see stairs for a very, very long time was heartening.

When she reached an abrupt turn in the hall, however, and came face to face with yet another set of stairs, Emilia wasn’t particularly surprised. “Fucking stars,” she grumbled, peering up and then down the staircase. Neither turned. Instead, what she could see was long and straight, before the steps disappeared into blackness. “Awesome.”

After a moment of thought, Emilia took a step down. Originally, when they had stood before the shortcut to the heartcore, it had felt as though it were right there, and depending on how much this weird ass place had bent the rules of physics, right there was now below her. It was shaky logic, however, and when her knees screamed in complaint after just a few steps down, she twisted and went to try the stairwell that led up.

Her knees still stung as she climbed, but barely controlled steps down had hurt far more. She could have pushed that pain aside—she had more than enough practise from her time as a troublesome child, then a soldier, then a troublesome university student—but she needed to focus as much as she could on not tripping and moving quickly. Wasting time carefully traversing downwards because maybe the heartcore was that way definitely didn’t seem like the right move.

Still, her legs quickly began to burn again, the muscles complaining that they were being terribly misused, and Emilia took the chance to try out one of the techniques Zach had taught her. Slowly, as carefully as she could manage while still trying to run up the stairs, she wove her energy downwards, cycling it through her meridians and letting the energy seep out into her muscles.

She had very briefly tried the technique back at Zach’s, although their limited time together meant he had only explained the basics of core usage and made sure she could actually do it. They’d been sitting down then, though, and doing it while not just standing, but running was an experience all on its own.

Little bits of her energy splattered golden across the world, leaking out of her pores and leaving a physical imprint on the walls and stairs as she went. It was strange, and she really had nothing with which to compare it to.

She knew some people in her world had problems controlling their aether stores, which were similar but not the same are cores. Where cores had some amount of energy inside them, that energy was created by the person themself. Cores, along with Censors and anything run on the Virtuosi System—like raids—could use that energy to some extent, but more commonly they used aether stores. The amount of the world’s aether each person could store inside them was unique, with sub-30s and non-devs in particular often capable of storing enough to destroy entire cities if they used the right skill.

Core energy was a person, whereas aether stores were the universe itself.

People who found themselves unable to control their aether stores, that aether leaking out into the world due to a defect in the storage area, were rare, and the condition was barely studied. Before the war, it had largely affected teenagers, puberty growing their storage capacity too quickly and leading the defect to shatter. Since the start of the war, more adults had damaged their aether stores in combat, and there was slightly more research on how to treat people with the condition.

Only slightly more, however, as it was more common for the person’s aether storage to burst and kill them—and anyone unfortunate enough to be standing too close—in the backlash. A few divisions had been taken out by storage explosions during the war, a consequence of aether storage perpetually growing and expanding with use. A teenager’s storage exploding could destroy a room, a solider from the front’s exploding could level the area.

This—her energy literally leaking out of her in a splatter of gold—reminded her of that, but it was also wholly different. Thankfully, it was different in a way that didn’t seem to be leading her towards exploding, but it was off-putting to look back and see her energy glowing across the steps like some abstract art piece. The colour alone was strange, as when she more purposefully reached out with her core, the energy it produced was almost translucent, as had Rin’s. She even took a moment to double-check, letting her energy wind its way to her fingertips to make sure she wasn’t crazy. A nearly invisible strand of energy slipped out of her, sliding through the world and disappearing behind her.

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She… didn’t really know where it was going, which was also somewhat concerning. It had seemed to have a mind of its own, which was a small part of why direct core usage in her world was heavily discouraged. It wasn’t quite illegal, but being caught using her core could definitely land you in a Black Knot facility, answering questions about why you were using your core and not your Censor or one of the similar devices used by some of the Free Colonies, although those had mostly become obsolete in the face of Baalphoria sharing information about their Censors during the war.

Behind her, the energy of the person chasing her shuddered, the world itself shaking with them, and Emilia only barely managed to not go tumbling to her knees. A growl of rage filled the aether and Emilia could feel that little strand of energy blinking out of existence, either whatever it had done sapping all its energy or the people behind her destroying it.

It was nauseating, and if she hadn’t been excellent at not throwing up, she probably would have done just that. Actually, maybe her puke over the stairs would slow down her pursuers? Oh well, she couldn’t throw up on command, so as amusing them slipping in her stomach acid would be, it wasn’t going to happen.

She pushed herself up and onward, listening for more action behind her, but the people had gone eerily silent. Maybe, if she were lucky, they’d been sucked away by whatever had taken Rin. Although, maybe not. Who knew if they’d end up in the same place as Rin, and Emilia would rather she—as the person who couldn’t die, regardless of how much the other girl argued that she actually didn’t know that for absolute certain—be the one whose kinda-sorta life was in danger.

There was nothing she could do about any of that, and Emilia instead returned her focus to her core and trying to stay on her legs’ good side, returning to streaming her energy through her lower limbs. More energy dripped out of her, and although her legs were aching considerably less, but she couldn’t tell if using/losing her energy was affecting her actual energy levels. Normally, when she used a skill and her aether stores, she had her Censor to helpfully tell her what her aether level was at. Her stores were pretty massive, knotting only affecting how much aether she could use and how well she could handle it, not how much she could store. As a result, she generally ignored her aether levels, and there were only a handful of times she could remember actually feeling like the level was too low.

Zach hadn’t really known what to say when she asked about monitoring energy levels, as locals monitored theirs through the system. Children had moderately limited access to the system, their access increasing as they aged, but general knowledge of how much energy they had was standard by the time they began learning to use their core. Emilia had learned from Zach that children learned the basics of core usage from a young age, mostly directly at self-healing. It was an interesting contrast to Baalphoria, where most people didn’t begin learning until their Censors were installed. Some families taught their children the theoretical side of aether usage before then, but that was relatively rare and confined to sub-50 and the occasional sub-30 family. Given the vastly different life expectancies between their worlds, perhaps that was to be expected. What was losing a few years of study when you had three or four hundred years to master your control of the aethernet?

As for the idea of aether stores, as far as Zach had known, locals had nothing of the sort. He had admitted that sometimes both the Enclave and the Risen Guard hoarded secrets, however, and he had no idea if visitors maintained any connection to their aether stores. For the moment, Emilia was going to assume that visitors without system access didn’t—although if she ran into any visitors with system access, she was going to assume they could access theirs, just in case.

Behind her, the world shuddered again and this time Emilia did stumble, catching herself on a stair and cursing when her palm landed square on the edge. “Fucking nebulae,” she hissed, flipping onto her butt and shaking out her hand.

The world below her was dark and silent, save the rattle of rubble and her energy still glowing dimly, like some horrific safety lighting, on the stairs.

She waited, listening for the sound of her pursuers, concentrating on listening to the aether for signs of them. No sign or sound of them came, only the rattle of more rubble falling, of rocks rolling down the stairs and disappearing into the abyss below.

Tentatively, she released another shard of energy, letting it melt through the aether in search of whoever had been chasing her. It slithered through the world, going down, down, down until it finally reached the bottom, having found nothing save a giant gouge in the wall twenty or so metres away from where she sat.

Her energy shot back towards her, banging against the walls, searching for anything else amiss. By the time it returned, Emilia had descended the stairs to inspect the damaged section. It wrapped itself around her like a child hugging a parent, seeping back inside her core, where it vibrated gently, its presence more palpable than it had previously been.

Emilia’s fingers dragged over the wall. It looked as though something had taken a bite out of it—something much too large for the hallway, the damage nearly seven feet high and almost as wide. The pads of her fingers brushed over the edges, over what felt like teeth marks and she hoped to the stars above—assuming this world even had stars that weren’t suns—wasn’t. She’d dealt with enough man eating monsters, she didn’t need anymore, thanks.

The energy inside her wiggled, urging her to let it out again. It zoomed about the area when she did, watching as the shimmering, clear energy investigated. It returned occasionally, lingering inside her just long enough to give her whatever information it had found before asking to be let back out again to gather more—not that Emilia knew how to analyze what it brought her. Whether a language or a skill or a lack of the system issue, Emilia could only glean vague vibes from the information now filling up her core.

Mostly, those vibes said the person who had been chasing her was just gone, and they probably weren’t coming back, the only evidence they had ever been there were her memories and the damaged wall. Something in the information also seemed to imply the only one person had been chasing her, and Emilia wondered if the other person—the presumed visitor—had been spirited away just as Rin had been.

Eventually, her energy settled back inside her, seemingly exhausted from its excursion, which was an odd sensation. Baalphorian skills used aether, and then that aether returned to the aethernet while fresh aether was slowly pulled back into your aether stores—this had actually been something of an issue on the front lines, where the fresh aether wasn’t always so fresh. Absorbing aether that had been used recently was revolting, but having her energy return to her core was like tucking a child safely into bed.

It was like welcoming a family member home after a long separation.

Emilia shook her head, once again contemplating whether to go up or down, now that she was no longer being chased by a random person with bad intentions.

Up, something told her. She wasn’t sure if she was her losing her mind or if vibes from her core were urging her upwards, but she sighed, turning to return to climbing. After a step, Emilia stilled, glancing behind her to where her golden energy still littered the floor. Her thoughts floated to the piece of energy now vibrating, exhausted, within her.

It took a moment, but eventually, she was able to coax a new strand of energy out of her core, reaching out with it towards her lost energy. She was relatively unsurprised when that lost energy began to hum. Louder and louder it hummed before shooting towards her energy, each tiny drop forcibly joining up with it before it was all tunnelling back inside her and returning to her core, seemingly stronger and wiser for having existed outside of her so long.