The room rumbled and roared, and Emilia cursed. Loudly—there was no reason to keep her swearing out of the ears of the children surrounding her, after all. Other than when she’d apparently been screaming during her nightmare, no one had been able to hear her say—or scream—anything else.
Personally, she wasn’t convinced they had heard her scream, so much as perhaps she had let a rip of energy escape from her during the dream. That had happened on the battlefield, occasionally. Death roar was the name they’d given it, although medics had their own particular name for it, researchers something else entirely. Both were so complicated that most people couldn’t be bothered to remember them, hence, death roar.
Technically, it was a loss of core control, usually in the moments before death. Due to a combination of factors, usually core damage, aether overload or one last suicide attack, death roars were explosions of sound through the aethernet, the result of large-scale attacks through the aether. They could be caused by normal attacks, but usually involved the destruction of the person’s core—something that inevitably led to death.
Emilia had heard death roar’s without death, however—had heard the terrifyingly human sound rip through the world, like one last scream from a dying soul before it burned out. She had heard it in the moments before her own core cracked, and she thought she would die on the field with Olivier. She hadn’t died, and she hadn’t heard a death roar since, but she knew her core was capable of making them without burning her out. Although, hopefully within a raid, that burning out wouldn’t actually be possible?
Still, the idea that she could have accidentally let her core loose while she was dreaming was terrifying, especially given the previous labyrinth had featured an entire challenge that had involved passing out and dreaming of the battlefield. Before they’d entered the kitchen, when the door had finally swung open, Emilia had tensed, worry about what they would find on the other side surging through her. Concern for the fact that she didn’t have V as back up anymore, concern for the possibility that the system could suck her away again, into some walking nightmare—into another world for her to destroy.
It hadn’t, but now, as the kitchen rumbled and rocked, the older kids grabbing the younger one’s hands to keep them from reaching for a heating array to steady themselves, she worried again.
What if this time I’m trapped in a nightmare?
What if I lose control of my core?
What if I kill all these children?
Forget about the trauma from the war, if she killed any of these kids—accident or not—she would never forgive herself. She’d spent so much of the last decade worrying she’d lose control of her skills and hurt someone. It would be ironic if now, after several years of not worrying about it—after just having experienced regret for how much she’d knotted her skills away—her fucked up core killed people anyways, and—
The room stopped rumbling and everyone turned towards the door that would lead them to the next area and… nothing.
Kelly, who had been cooking some local specialty at one of the stations closest to the door with limited success, stepped towards it. He pushed, tugged on the handle. ⸂It won’t open.⸃
⸂Did something else change?⸃ Gale asked, her apron swishing and sending flour billowing onto the floor in a pale pink haze as she peered around.
⸂Something very important changed!⸃ a voice cheered—an adult voice.
Everyone startled, twisting and turning and searching for the voice’s source, but—
⸂There’s no one!⸃ someone hissed over the worried murmurs of the others.
⸂Right you are!⸃ the voice called back, dramatic and seeming to echo out of the aether itself. ⸂I’m afraid I’ve been pelted by food in the past, so no! I will not be appearing before you today—or tomorrow, if the challenge lasts that long!” the voice laughed, although no one else was amused by its comment.
⸂What challenge?⸃ Benny asked. He had straightened back up, having tucked himself against the ground when the voice began to speak. Apparently, now that he knew the voice wasn’t some physical being in the room, he wasn’t afraid… or at least was better at acting brave. That said, his voice still shook slightly as he spoke to the disembodied voice.
⸂Well~ I’m glad you asked little man!⸃ it replied, tone still filled with too much humour.
It was the kind of voice the host of game shows had, their intonation dramatic and loud and filled with unamusing humour. Emilia had never been a fan of such shows—even the commentators for sports she was into tended to aggravate her—but during the war, their unit had watched a few. Nice, low-key media. You could zone out and come right back into the show. Contestants could lose, get voted off, disappear into the abyss, and you’d barely notice—unless the person had been your favourite to win, of course.
Emilia had rarely had favourites, being content to instead critique the competitors and the challenges they faced. Once, she had even—
“Oh, fuck,” she groaned, smacking a hand to her forehead—a hand that was unfortunately covered in her failed attempt to melt the dried aloonm. More swearing followed as she attempted to get the bits of dried, fake chocolate off her skin—a vain attempt, unfortunately, as the stuff was ridiculously sticky—and listen to their annoying host explain what they were doing.
A cooking contest. Not just any cooking contest, but one based on the modified cooking contest she’d created for their unit during the war.
The original source—a terribly executed cooking show—had just done it so badly, okay!?
Thankfully, whether due to the children or the lack of proper partners, the challenge was a simpler, modified version… which rather defeated the point of most of her and Halen’s changes, but whatever. Easier and stupider was better than impossible, which her version most certainly would have been.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
⸂So, we’re just supposed to make what we cook look like water slides?⸃ Sawyer asked, as though it would actually be that easy. ⸂As a group project?⸃
⸂Tha~t’s right! Be grateful that’s it!⸃ the voice boomed, aggressive humour flowing through it. ⸂We decided to make the challenge easier for you all. Normally, it would have to be an edible and functioning water slide!⸃
Several dozen pairs of eyes looked at her. Most of the children understood that her interests and skills were guiding the labyrinth’s challenge, and the reality that the normal of their challenges was something she’d been into had continuously left them a mixture of confused, impressed and incredulous.
Emilia was okay with that. She didn’t regret her love of graviplex or water slides, or the time she’d spent redesigning the silly engineering + baking show that had been oddly popular during the war, all so it was more reasonable—not that she could blame the show for being so ridiculous. The war had dragged engineers with any skill into the military, leaving the show to bring in less than impressive—or extremely difficult to work with—engineers.
The show had had an interesting concept: bring a baker and an engineer together to make something that is both edible and capable of overcoming challenges traditionally seen in engineering competitions.
To say the show had failed was an understatement. As far as Emilia could tell, half of the engineers were terrible at their jobs and had never even seen an engineering competition before, let alone competed in one. They couldn’t troubleshoot. They couldn’t design the most basic of robots. They didn’t even understand the importance of centre of gravity!
It was terrible, and she would have felt bad for the bakers, if not for the fact that they had obviously not seen an engineering competition either. Too serious—they were all too serious. Where the inept engineers could at least laugh at their mistakes, the bakers looked like they were liable to kill their partners and bake them into a cake. That hadn’t happened, as far as Emilia knew, but she wouldn’t be surprised if one of the engineers popped up dead one day, the prime suspect their cooking show partner from decades earlier.
Emilia had spent the entire time they were watching this terrible show critiquing it, much to the annoyance of several other members of the division. Halen, to his credit, had hated it more than she had. While she certainly had some skill in engineering and design, her talents tended more towards software and the delicate details of willbrands. Halen was engineering and software. Annoyingly, it was what had allowed them to collaborate so well in creating the training system that would become the raid system. There had been other people involved, of course, especially when it came to the minute details of interfacing with the human body, but it had only been because of them—her and Halen—that any of it had been possible.
This—their silly, alternative version of a horrible cooking competition—had been the first time they had collaborated. A spur of the moment shift in the mood. They had been biting out complaints about the latest episode one moment, contemplating how to do it better the next.
“This needed less improvisation,” Halen had muttered, explaining to James when he asked what he meant: that in engineering innovation sometimes happened in competitions, but usually, someone had already discovered something new before showing it off at the competition. “The way they’re designing the recipes for waterproof supports in the moment? That’s unlikely in an engineering competition. Not unheard of, but unlikely. I understand these people have not met beforehand, and have no experience in the other’s field, but 100% pickup competitions like this are uncommon in the real world.”
“This isn’t the real world,” Nettie had sighed. She had swung one leg over the other, his shorts ridding up on her pale thighs.
Charles had had to leave the room, much to everyone—save his bother’s—amusement. It wasn’t until later that Emilia learned the twin’s home was rather conservative, both men and women showing little skin outside of their marriage.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not stupid,” Nettie had added, frowning severely at the screen. “I’ve been in singing competitions—ones where we got, like… matched up with random people to do duets and shit like that with? If I got stuck with someone who had never sung duet before? I’d be so fucking pissed. There’s a level of expectation in these things. You know your genres, your range, how to be a teammate.” She’d motioned a delicate hand at the projection they were watching. “These bakers do not know how to be on a team. They’re giving, like… murderous vibes. Not a good look. They gotta contain, man.”
“The bakers are terrible,” Halen had agreed.
“Most of the engineers aren’t much better,” Emilia had bitten back. There had been some animosity between them while watching, simply because Emilia could cook—a relatively rare skill in their social circle—and a few choice comments on the reasonability of some of the engineers' more insane requests. “It doesn’t seem like they did any research on basic ingredients, to learn melting points and what not? Even the basics of engineering are difficult to grasp, so I understand the bakers not knowing shit, but for so many of the engineers to have not even learned some basic facts about chocolate?”
Halen had, much to his annoyance, been forced to agree with her. “There should have been some standard recipes for a few things, like supports. Not the best recipes, but a base to start with, something to then adapt with their knowledge and experience.”
“Definitely,” Emilia had found herself agreeing, and suddenly, they were making a list of all the things they would change.
Base recipes.
More knowledge of their challenge.
Some way to switch partners, so you could ditch someone you hated—that one hadn’t been a rule in any competitions either of them had ever seen, but they’d added it after her future ex had joked about how the world would end if she and Halen ended up together. They’d agreed, and added the rule, even though there had been no intention to actually hold their alternative, engineering + baking competition at the time.
Ironically, when it had become reality, they had been paired up together. Then, they had won, because as much as they had disliked each other and butted heads over practically everything, they also worked well together.
Then, they had continued working together, creating weapons of mass destruction and war, creating systems for training and skills for healing and killing—and in one case, either or. They had still hated each other, except during those brief hours of being lost on the battlefield. Then Halen had been dead—a war hero in all his moments, but especially those last ones.
“This is for you, Halen,” Emilia murmured as the voice stopped explaining the alternative rules of their challenge. The aether seemed to flutter around her, strange and other—as though it were offering her comfort and support and—
Emilia shook herself. She was losing it. Too much stress. Thankfully, this challenge, strange as it was, wasn’t going to be too difficult. She looked to Gale and Miira, who had come to stand nearby to translate for her. “Ready?” she signed, the two girls nodding in unison. “Let’s get started then.”