Someone was screaming, but Emilia couldn’t place their words.

Everything was so far away, and she really regretted trying to stop the fight.

This hadn’t been worth it.

Not just this, everything.

Everything was wrong, messed up, broken.

They’d been wrong.

✮ ✮ ✮ One Week Earlier ✮ ✮ ✮

V giggled—fucking giggled—as they haphazardly made their way down the dark path that, in theory, led to Zach’s training rooms.

“Oh, shit,” Emilia laughed as she smacked into a wall. She had no idea how Zach had navigated them through the passages so effortlessly—magic and memory, most likely—but she could do no such thing and the two of them had been left to wander through the tunnels, using only their hands and the occasional light to find their way.

This, of course, meant they were hopelessly lost, as Emilia had forgotten that there were several diverging tunnels.

Thankfully, unlike the day before—when V had grown frustrated with her and the situation as she led them through the empty city streets, searching for anything she recognized—the other visitor was taking their current state of wandering around completely lost much better.

Almost too much better.

“Hm? Oh, because I’m used to this sort of lost,” the man told her when she asked about his relative calmness. “I told you, I used to be obsessed with an old caving raid. Those raids— Oh, fucking stars.” He laughed as he began to fill the dark silence with stories of things he had experienced inside that particular raid.

As much as Emilia hated raids, even she had to admit—adrenaline, climbing junkie that she was at heart—that the raid sounded pretty sick. “You said it still exists?” she asked as V finished telling her about the time he’d run into a group of cannibals—who he still wasn’t entire convinced hadn’t been a group of psychotic visitors—in a particularly squishy cave system. He had been unwilling to tell her whether he had been able to make it out of there, or if they’d caught him and, well, eaten him.

V’s hand squeezed hers, a little lifeline so the darkness couldn’t steal them away from one another. “Yeah, it does, but…” He hesitated, and Emilia gave his hand an assuring squeeze in return. “Okay, so, you know how I was saying that this platform was a free-for-all raid? True anything goes, being blackaether?”

Emilia hummed as her fingers edged around an abrupt corner that she definitely didn’t remember having seen on her first tour of the place.

“Well… eventually, it did have actual human game souls and other races living in it. They were like the people here: fully aware they were part of a game where heroes”—the man scoffed as he practically spit out the word—“could come and do fuck all to them and their world.”

“I’ve heard that’s often the draw of blackaether raids—the freedom.”

“Yeah,” V agreed, explaining that some blackaether maintainers cared about their platform remaining as they had designed it, but most platforms were created solely for the maintainers to have a place to live out their wildest dreams. “A lot of the mobs maintain raids for training—and pay big bucks for civilians to come play in them—but people run them as a hobby too. That’s what this one was to someone: a hobby.”

“So, what happened?” she asked when the other visitor was quiet for too long.

“I don’t really know,” he said quietly, something uncomfortably sad entering his voice. “The person who was maintaining it disappeared, but the platform was hosted by someone else, and they chose to keep it up. They weren’t in a position to maintain it—that stuff, especially for blackaether raids, is tough shit—and it sort of… fell apart?”

“So, it exists, but you can’t play it anymore?” Emilia asked, vaguely contemplating how many legal raid platforms she’d heard about being shut down over the last few years, even if she’d only generally heard about the big ones that closed their servers. Even removed from the world of virtual raids, the closing of platforms reached her, due to how… intense some of the players could become, when they realized their years of hard work and friendships—even romantic relationships with game souls—would be erased. How much larger was that number, when you considered all the blackaether raids?

Then again, perhaps people who played illegal raids were more understanding that the platform could disappear overnight.

“Oh, fuck no, you can play it,” V said, sadness shifting into a scoff. “If you want to be killed by the locals—which, some people do, but—”

“Wait, wait, wait. What?” Emilia said, pulling to a stop, V bumping into her back. “People want to be killed in these things?” she asked, incredulous. Who in their right mind sets out to join a raid with the goal of being killed?

“Did you not know?” V asked, enough amusement running through his voice that, had she been able to see him, she was sure she would have found a too wide grin stretching over his face. “People go into blackaether raids for all sorts of things. Some of absolutely terrible—I spend a good portion of my time hunting down heroes who go around raping and murdering people in raids. Others are more… horrible in the other direction.”

“Like going into a raid wanting to be killed,” Emilia muttered, wondering why in the world someone would want to die. “Wouldn’t something like that cause psychological trauma?”

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

“Who says it’s not the other way around? That legal raids are the traumatizing things, and people are left to seek out a way to cope in blackaether raids? It’s not like normal raids keep people from dying. You killed someone yourself, after all. He could very well want to go and experience that feeling again.”

“I suppose…” she breathed out. She shouldn’t ask what other sort of things people did, but there was so little to do as they wandered the tunnels, and she couldn’t help herself. “So… what other sorts of horrible things do people do in blackaether raids?”

V hummed in thought as they edged their way around the suddenly huge cavern they had wandered into. In the distance, Emilia could hear the patter of water dropping across stone. Not quite a waterfall, but neither was it a single drop falling at a steady rhythm.

“Third or fourth door?” V asked when they had come full circle back to the door they entered through. How the man could tell which door was which in such darkness, Emilia had no idea, but the few times they’d been forced to turn back, his instructions had led them perfectly back where he wanted them.

Probably.

He certainly seemed confident, in any case, although she had no idea why he was making her lead when he was their map. Maybe it was just pettiness from the day before, when she’d gotten them so lost.

“Why not the second?” she asked. There had been nothing strange about it, as far as she could tell.

Their hands bobbed, V shrugging. “Vibes.”

“Of course, of course,” Emilia said, nodding in total understanding as she led them back to the fourth door.

“Why this one?” the other visitor asked, laughing when she gave the expected answer of vibes, his laugh was soft and sweet, echoing off the cavern walls and definitely not matching the mood when he began to give her examples of other things people sought out blackaether raids for. “Kinky sex is big. Not just illegal stuff, but just stuff that’s dangerous or too difficult to do in real life. Raids offer an anonymity you can’t get in real life. You see a lot of extreme body modification, as well—both in general and related to the sex.”

“Body modification in sex?” Emilia asked, not appreciating it when V burst into near hysterical laughter. “It’s not that funny,” she muttered, wishing both her hands were free so she could cross her arms and pout, even if the other visitor would be unable to see her ire.

V pulled her back, swinging his arm over her shoulder. “It’s a bit funny. I sorta took you for the type to know a lot about kinks. Yet, here you are, an innocent baby who doesn’t know nearly as much as her vibe might suggest.”

“My vibe does not suggest I know about kinky sex that much,” she grumbled, even if she knew it wasn’t exactly true. She’d always been into more diverse forms of sex—although, apparently not as diverse as some of her previous partners had implied. Her ex in particular had been much more strait-laced in bed than she would have preferred.

“What is it?” V asked as she huffed to herself in amused exhaustion.

“Ah~ I was just thinking about my ex,” she said, noting the way V’s hand tightened in her own, even if just slightly.

“Oh?” he said, seemingly trying to sound nonchalant and absolutely failing at it. Maybe it was the darkness, the intensity to which her ears and nerves were now focusing on taking in the world. Maybe this was just something he couldn’t pretend to be so removed from.

Well, if this of all things were a topic that might help her crack the man’s identity, who was she to resist his questioning?

“Yeah, I was thinking about how if we met today, rather than during the war, I probably wouldn't have dated him.”

She wasn’t completely sure about how true that was—Payton was current winding through some knots that were making her feel extremely confident. Suicidally confident, even. It was pretty true, though. At the time, she had been young and a bit broken, fragile and searching for love with practically anyone who would give it to her.

Her ex… when they’d first met, he hadn’t like her. It hadn’t been the outright hatred she and Elijah had had for each other, but there had been a long few years, near the start of the war, where she’d been sure he wanted her gone.

She hadn’t gone, and instead she’d earned his respect and his heart. It should have been good, expect he could be an ass. It had nearly always been his way or no way. So she had made herself smaller—not always, but often enough that after Alliance Ridge it had taken her as much time to learn how to be powerful again as it had to learn how to mourn and continue living.

“I’m just different now,” Emilia explained the V, rather than blurt out decades of trauma to him. “We… kinda worked, during the war. I don’t think we would now.” Plus, she’d spent the last decade having great, apparently only slightly kinky sex. Elijah might not be into some of the things she was, but that’s where hookups came in.

She most certainly couldn’t see her ex being into sharing her with people, although the idea of even asking him to open their relationship had Emilia laughing to herself.

“I’d be into an open relationship,” V mused when she explained why she was laughing. “I think if my connection with someone was strong enough, and I trusted them…” He trailed off, likely thinking back to her earlier, magically induced truthfulness that she wasn’t sure she trusted her boyfriend much.

Emilia shrugged into the darkness, telling V that for her, it depended on the relationship. “If I was absolutely head over heels for someone, I’d have to trust them to be safe and respectful to our relationship. With Elijah… it ain’t love. Affection, sure. I think there were times when I could see myself falling for him more seriously, but…”

Silence fell around them again, Emilia unsure how to explain that she had old friends who would absolutely eat Elijah alive. Olivier and Rafe would be bad enough, Nettie would be a monster of threat to him, and Rafe’s brothers…

Emilia didn’t even want to think about the possibility of those two meeting Elijah, especially now, when he was being so… weird. Back when he was a bit more normal? When she’d occasionally imagined taking him home, introducing him to her family and best friends? Showing him her house and the places she had played as a child? Telling him about her life before him, before the war?

Back then, they still wouldn't have liked him, but at least he’d treated her like a regular person, with their own needs and wants. Now…

Yeah, now she definitely couldn't let anyone meet Elijah.

Behind her, V might have muttered something about how she needed to break up with the dude, but the increasingly loud splatter of water covered most of what he said.

Emilia’s hand reached another wall, a quick search around them revealing it was a dead end.

Except, it couldn’t be. There was too much noise. The water was so close, and yet—

“Try up?” V asked, dragging her back towards the wall at the end of the hallway.

“In the dark?” she asked, wondering if the man had truly lost his mind. There was no way she could climb in the pitch black. Forget about finding holds, she also ran the risk of hoisting herself into banging her head on the ceiling! V might be strong, but she doubted he’d want to carry her concussed body out of this place.

A spark lit up the other visitor, his veins—meridians, she supposed—glowing faintly as energy twirled out of him and into a ball inside his palm.

Emilia glowered up at him. He smiled innocently back.

“I would have run out of energy,” he explained, before she could even ask why in the nebulae he hadn’t lit anything up before then.

“Mhm…” Emilia hummed dubiously. Even if he could only use the technique a few times, there had definitely been a few other moments where seeing would have been beneficial. “Whatever,” she muttered, turning back to the wall and gazing upwards into the empty darkness.

“Good luck~” V cheered, giving her a little smack on the ass as she stepped forwards.

“Sure,” she muttered, cheeks burning slightly at the gesture. Men and her ass.