“How long do you think we were in there for?” V asked, pushing himself up to get a better look at the disaster that was now the library, extending a hand to haul Emilia up as well.
The area was worse than she would have expected. It wasn’t just that the building had fallen, a gaping hole visible in the ceiling far above, where the rest of the library continued to exist. Whatever had brought the building down hadn’t just pulled screws loose, or broken the foundation, or even just compromised the structural integrity of the library. Emilia had seen tons of buildings destroyed during the war. Most had fallen more naturally. Earthquakes racketed through the planet as skills were slammed into it. Monsters and humans and mechs alike had destroyed them by blasting skills about, or throwing their opponents straight through them.
It was never pretty, and she had seen more than a few people killed because a building had tumbled down upon them.
This wasn’t like that.
The supports of the building were mangled—twisted in wholly unnatural ways. Remnants of the staircase banister lay in balls and ribbons that were barely recognizable across the ground. Books were shredded, their pages unnatural in their thin, cracked apart state.
“I have no idea,” Emilia said, eyes wide as she took in the scene—as she registered the blood splattered over the remains of the library. There were no bodies, as far as she could see, but…
“Where do you think the blood came from?” V asked before she could, his own eyes wide and shifting erratically over the scene.
“No idea. Key had almost everyone evacuated from the library before we entered. There should have only been a few people inside…” Certainly not enough for this amount of blood. Emilia took a few, careful steps over the wreckage, toeing at some of the library’s remains. Half of what was around them was unrecognizable. Walls, which had been beautiful and shining from the outside, had been reduced to scattered, burnt husks that snapped under her feet.
V followed quietly behind her as she walked, and walked, and walked. For whatever reason, the library’s destruction had spread far farther than it should have. Buildings several streets over had been flattened and bowled over by the crash, and beneath her feet...
V’s hands wrapped around her arms as a sob broke out of her. “Fuck,” he breathed out, his own energy reaching out perfectly in the direction hers had gone searching.
So many bodies—there were so many bodies under all the destruction. People who couldn’t get away fast enough, who didn’t have the magic that Key and the others had. People who had just been living their lives, when someone decided to destroy a building next to their homes, just because… something.
“Was the building already gone, when you entered the labyrinth?” she asked quietly, wondering if V had perhaps seen something that would help in figuring out who had done this and why.
The other visitor hesitated a moment before telling her yes. “It collapsed shortly after we arrived in the city.” He pointed towards one of the huge doors, which led to elevators and other cities and the fast travel landing pads. “Taoran… left me where we arrived. He said he had something to do. When he returned…”
Emilia looked back at him, taking in the anger and frustration radiating off him.
“I thought it was strange timing, for the building to begin collapsing while he was gone, but I didn’t think—” The man shook his head, running a hand through his hair as he growled and cursed. “I didn’t think there was any reason for him to destroy the building.”
“Maybe he saw us,” she said quietly, reaching out to grab his hand before he started tugging out his hair. “Or heard us—that’s probably more likely. Harmony was screaming at me, then at Sk’lar, before the collapse. That could be how he knew who we were.”
“That’s… so stupid! Fuck!” V kicked a piece of the building, sending it flying. It bounced off a nearby building, damaged but not fully destroyed by the library’s collapse.
“Fucking stars,” he laughed, shaking his head and turning sad, beseeching eyes on her. “I know people were petty and possessive of information and fame during our war, but at least most people didn’t actively try to kill their rivals.”
Emilia’s mouth twitched. “Not usually, anyways.”
On top of the divisions who had held back intel, a few of the more extreme divisions had made a concerted effort to kill their so-call rivals. They had given out inaccurate information, hoping other divisions would be destroyed following their leads. It wasn’t uncommon for intel to be wrong, and it had often taken years for anyone to realize specific divisions were purposefully fucking with people who were supposed to be their allies.
Both The Black Knot and the more secretive group that usually dealt with rogue soldiers had taken care of those responsible for such events, but everyone knew there were people who had never been caught—who were still out there, pretending to be good soldiers, despite the deaths they had caused. Emilia even knew of one instance of someone acting the war hero despite the military knowing they had encouraged their subordinates to alter information.
There was no proof, unfortunately—virtually their entire division and everyone who could have confirmed suspicions against them had been killed in the last days of the war. One of the few remaining members had confessed that it was all them, that they and several others had decided to alter the information on their own accord, and their captain had nothing to do with it.
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Emilia knew it was bullshit. The Black Knot, military brass, practically everyone important knew the captain had been the one to encourage, if not outright order, their subordinates to fuck over the rest of the military effort.
It didn’t matter. As much as The Black Knot could disappear people with very little proof, in this case, they couldn’t. Not now, anyways. That captain was famous now. If they disappeared, there would be questions—questions no one wanted to answer, because as much as everyone in the military knew information couldn’t always be trusted, no one wanted the public learning how untrustworthy many of the people they had been depending on had been.
That would only raise more questions about other incidents during the war.
Still, every time she saw that captain on the news, had to learn about them in class… it was frustrating. Frustrating and upsetting, and she was pretty sure if she ever got the chance to kill them, she’d take it. The world would be a better place without the asshole.
Besides, the government was using raids to keep them ready for another war, and as much as Emilia hoped to the stars above that war never came again, if it did, she certainly didn’t want that captain returning to service.
Emilia scuffed a foot against the bloody ground, frowning severely down at it. When she looked up, she found V watching her, giving her a knowing look. “People are stupid,” she muttered, foot continuing to swing.
“Yeah,” he agreed before pulling her closer—or at least, he started to pull her closer. Something crossed his face, and suddenly, he wasn’t pulling her into a hug or kiss or whatever he had been planning. Instead, they were moving, V’s steps sure over the rough ground and his grip around her hand tight as he pulled her along.
“What is it?” she asked, trying not to trip. Honestly, the only reason her real body had any coordination at all were her D-Levels. That coordination had already been fucked when she was unknotted, and only worsened by her knots. Being a level 300 in this world? With no Censor to help guide her way?
Yeah, it only took a dozen steps before she stumbled.
V darted back to her, and suddenly that aborted, possible hug was him catching her. “Sorry,” he mumbled, something unreadable in his voice and gaze, and she had no idea what he was actually apologizing for.
“I can carry you,” he offered, voice soft. “It’ll be faster. I don’t think we should linger here.”
Emilia nodded dumbly, letting herself be hauled into yet another man’s arms. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked, realizing that despite the ease he had hauled her up with, he was also a level 300, his body far weaker than it likely was in the real world.
Maybe.
She’d been thinking back on his earlier confession, that he regularly played blackaether raids. Not being interested in raids in general, Emilia knew little about the illegal raids, but she did know there were a variety of reasons people played them. The most common—according to the media, anyways—was the illegal aspect. Rape, murder, illegal sex acts; there were blackaether raids to suit every desire out there. Other reasons included less restriction—and although she hadn’t known it, she assumed being able to use your core was a draw to at least some clientele.
The other big reason, which the media hadn’t covered, but her Censor had (un)helpfully supplied her with after she’d been slapped with a SecOps warning about avoiding blackaether raids a few years previous, was the potential to feel like more. Just as she currently felt like less, forced into a body that was so much lesser than her real one, people could exist in higher level bodies in raids.
While that was true for all raids, blackaether raids did it better. Where normal, legal raids, largely allowed heroes to use skills far above their levels, blackaether raids allowed for so much more. According to the information her Censor had gathered, there were even people who claimed they were ex-300s in real life, but could attain sub-30 status in not just skill but mental capacity as well within illegal raids.
If that were true… Well, Emilia could definitely understand the draw of feeling like you were more skilled. She’d always been skilled, but before this last decade, she had also possessed a burning desire to always be better. It hadn’t just been a love of learning, but a need to be the best as well. It had helped that some of her childhood friends were just as competitive, and the majority of their unit in the war had enjoyed one upping each other—sometimes to the point of being suicidal.
Once people got a taste of being the best, it was challenging to let go of the desire to continue on being the best. While eventually their unit had become very firm on monitoring its members and making sure they weren’t putting their physical or mental health at risk for such stupid reasons, most divisions had no such qualms. She had seen her fair share of people burn themselves out during the war, due to pushing themselves too hard. Officially, the military didn’t support such selfish heroics. In practice, they encouraged it.
Emilia looked up at V, seemingly effortlessly carrying her through the rubble of the destruction that they had accidentally brought into this world. If it wasn’t for them—for humanity and raids and heroes—this world wouldn’t exist, either whole or in pieces. If they—her and V—hadn’t collided here, this city would still exist. People wouldn’t be dead, even if they would still be living in a secretly violent world.
This was what most heroes wanted when they joined raids. To be powerful. To face dangers that wouldn’t do more than cause them a little mental trauma, if even that. People were so good at compartmentalizing what happened within these worlds—she’d seen that when, within months of returning from the matriarchal raid that had left Elijah and his friends jumpy, they had been seemingly perfectly fine. She might not know what exactly happened in that raid—what the matriarchal society they had landed in had done to them—but she was pretty fucking sure they shouldn’t have been fine that fast.
“What?” the man asked, after she’d spent too long gazing up at him, trying to figure out if he were someone who could compartmentalize like that—if he were someone who was living inside raids because his real life self wasn’t who he wanted to be.
“Just thinking,” she said, instead of asking him about it. He wouldn’t answer her, even if she asked. “Do you think we can just leave via the front door?” she asked, noting that V was leading them towards one of the city’s giant doors.
“Probably not,” the other visitor admitted, eyebrows pulling together. “I just figured we’d employ the same strategy we were going to use if we met people outside the labyrinth doors: blow them up.”
Emilia glared up at him. “No. Go that way instead,” she said, pointing in one direction before shifting her hand about 50 degrees to the left. “Or… was it that way?”
V gave her that too familiar, long-suffering look, but shifted direction nonetheless. “We’re going to get lost, aren’t we?” she thought she heard him mutter under his breath.