The world opened around Emilia, and she immediately regretted every decision she had ever made. The air burned, and she suddenly understood what V had meant when he’d said, “Told you I’d see you at the bottom.”
They were, rather unfortunately, once again on the planet’s crust— Was this world a planet? Emilia actually had no idea how far her and Halen’s training system had been pushed to create raids. Things like gravitational force and other points of universal energy definitely played a part in how skills behaved, but the cost of emulating a world with those constraints hadn’t been something they’d had time or mental space to deal with in the midst of the war. What they’d made had worked well enough for their needs.
It was easy to imagine that in the years since, with all the money of the post-war government under it, the people who had taken over the project and turned it into the monstrosity that powered virtual raids might have augmented it—turned it into something with the power to create realistic solar systems. Elijah had talked about space themed raids before, although to Emilia, they always seemed to hold more than a few fantastical notes.
Nebulae knew this world had fantasy pressed into it as well. That was, supposedly, part of the fun. It also meant the platform designers didn’t actually need to include realistic physics—as previously noted, the entire city system seemed to ignore such universal rules, and—
⸂What are you thinking about?⸃
Emilia blinked wildly back into the present. “Uh… how physics are applied to virtual raids?”
V blinked back at her. Whatever weird mood had hit him after her and Fran’s fight had stuck, and even when she stared intently back at the other visitor, Emilia couldn’t quite decipher what he was thinking. Was it good? Bad? Was he sick of her?
Emilia had no idea, and it was going to drive her bonkers. Hence, thinking about how an army of programmers and hackers had destroyed her war training program!
“So…” Emilia breathed out, her voice catching as she waited for Fran to interrupt her.
The woman seemed to have learned her lesson, however, and continued pouting behind them as they made their way through the spicy air of the streets running between the giant buildings that housed the cities. The buildings seemed impossibly larger, yet all too small and fragile, now that she knew what was inside them. In this area, the buildings looked grungier than the ones she had seen when she first arrived, their coatings peeling under the oppressive, spicy air.
For a moment, Emilia contemplated playing the same trick she’d played on Boundary on V. If she asked smoothly enough—brought up “that time during the war when we allowed Helix to cook…”—perhaps V would give himself away. The man would quietly laugh and admit that yes, he did remember that, and then he’d have to reveal who he was.
That seemed like cheating, and unlike with Boundary, where the answer to his identity and split personality had actually mattered, V’s identity didn’t. He’d reveal himself one day, on his own terms, and forcing him to do so too soon felt wrong, especially since she had no idea what the man was thinking about her at the moment.
“Is the air going to kill us?” she asked instead. That actually was a serious concern, especially for Caro and Gale.
⸂If we’re out here too long,⸃ V said, glancing back at Fran as they reached a crossroad. He waited, giving the woman a chance to realize he wasn’t sure which way they were going, before he awkwardly asked which way they had to go.
The woman pointed left, looking completely miserable. Interestingly, she hadn’t bothered to dry herself off—hadn’t even tried, as far as Emilia could tell. Couldn’t use fire magic? Too dangerous? Or perhaps couldn’t use magic on herself?
Emilia had no idea, and she wasn’t about to ask.
The woman did look like some sad, drowned animal, though.
Despite Fran no longer interrupting every time she spoke, the mood had turned quiet and sombre, and they simply continued walking in near silence, the five of them taking up the majority of the road as they walked hand in hand, Caro having blessedly passed out in V’s arms. It was cute, V leaning his cheek against the child’s mess of hair occasionally. He looked good with a child in his arms.
It wasn’t until they had been walking for some twenty or thirty minutes that V finally spoke, his arms shifting as he roused Caro. ⸂We’re here.⸃
Here turned out to a very dilapidated building. If the towers they had walked by before looked run down, these ones looked like they should have been condemned, which apparently they were.
As V led them into the building—although Fran had to step up to actually unlock the door—it became clear that this wasn’t a normal building.
The building’s hallway led one way: down and straight, boring slowly into the ground. Brightly coloured arrays were etched into nearly every available space, glowing and pulsing as they went. Several were burnt out and seemingly repurposed, portions of their colour pale, while other sections had been lit up by newer arrays. That alone was strange: overwriting skills in the real world was extremely difficult, it was why Emilia had bothered training herself to use her core to cancel out skills: even defensive skills struggled to rewrite the aether if it were already being affected by someone else.
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She itched to stop and examine them, to run her fingers over the divots and grooves of the magic, even if she would never be capable of understanding them.
Except, she could.
⸂Emilia?⸃ Gale asked as her steps stopped.
Astra’s fingers slipped from hers as V continued on, dragging the girl along, while Caro was awake but sleepy in his arms. V and the children stopped as well, and for the first time since they had left the labyrinth tunnels, Fran took the lead.
“I can read the arrays,” she signed, vaguely noting Fran leaving them behind as she eyes flicked between an array that stabilized the building above, partially overlapped by another that kept whatever was beneath them from collapsing as well. At first glance, they had seemed to be overlapping due to lack of room, but now that Emilia was looking—really looking—she could see the sense of it.
Specific lines overlapped, lending its mirror array strength. “You stabilize the sky,” one seemed to say, “and I’ll stabilize the earth.” The other, a reflection. “Lend me strength to hold up the sky, and I will lend you strength to hold down the earth.”
She wanted to touch—to fondle the magic that was creating this place. Her mind screamed at her not to, but—
⸂I wouldn’t do that.⸃
Emilia’s energy froze where it had been preparing to wrap itself around the twin arrays. “Sorry,” she said, cheeks heating up. Seriously, what was with her lack of thinking things through today? At least when she’d been inside the labyrinth, she’d been able to blame it. According to her map, all there was for a good kilometre was the entrance and the tunnel. No labyrinth, no excuse for sticky, nosy fingers—or energy, as the case may be.
A woman came to stand beside her, her blonde hair pulled back into a high ponytail, the long strands cascading down her back in dozens of braids, beads woven through them. ⸂You can see what the arrays do.⸃ It wasn’t a question, and before Emilia had the chance to do more than tilt her head at the woman, wondering how she had known, the newcomer smiled.
Startling, bright pink eyes turned on Emilia. They reminded her of PollyPollen, a candy that had been popular when she was younger. Nearly everything in their world was coloured with natural ingredients. As a result, most food was a pale colour. Not PollyPollen. Somehow, the manufactures had won a contract with Halvery, a Free Colony in the far north, for a local berry—an impossibly bright pink berry, with very little taste but high nutritional content.
PollyPollen had been delicious and beautiful, but whoever had been handling the exports in Halvery had been greedy, and by the time Emilia hit her mid-teens, the plant had been farmed to near extinction, several of the animals that had primarily survived on it suffering for it. Then, of course, the ecosystem had begun to collapse. One plant dies, the animals that eat it die, the animals that eat them die. Collectively, their feces and bodies do not feed the soil or bugs or scavengers, and, well… it had been bad.
There had been attempts to replenish the plants in the years before the war. From what Emilia knew, there hadn’t been much success. Then the war struck, and efforts at maintaining ecosystems fell away in favour of making sure humanity wasn’t wiped out. Due to its isolation, Halvery had been hit hard by the war, and Emilia wasn’t sure if they’d ever gotten back to trying to return their wilderness to what it had originally been. Probably not.
The woman smiled quietly at her, something in her general vibe seeming to say, ⸂I see a lot, and I see your thoughts.⸃
“Hello,” Emilia said, throwing in signs just for the sake of it.
⸂Hello,⸃ the woman responded, those beautiful eyes blinking slowly before she turned to the others. It was only once she was no longer looking at Emilia that she came fully back to herself, as though the woman had held her hostage simply with her attention.
It was creepy and fascinating in equal measure.
⸂Welcome back. I passed Fran on the way here,⸃ she said, obviously directing most of her words at V, but glancing between the rest of them in quiet acknowledgement of their existence. ⸂She did not seem pleased.⸃
A rude sound escaped Gale—something that always amused Emilia because the teenager had made it very clear that sounds did not accidentally escape someone, and that anyone who claimed they had accidentally said something or made a sound was lying. That said, Emilia didn’t think the teenager would deny she had meant for the world to hear her grunt of partial-disapproval, partial-amusement if anyone actually asked about it.
No one did.
⸂She will get over it,⸃ V said without much conviction. Hope? Sure. Confidence that the local woman actually would get over… everything? Not too much.
The new woman seemed to be of the same opinion, a thick blonde eyebrow raising before she turned to the rest of them, Emilia having scurried back to Gale after being reprimanded for trying to touch the array keeping them all from being smushed under thousands of tons. Not really—the tunnel was covered in dozens of identical arrays, each reaching out and stabilizing a small section of the building above, but someone would likely have had to come fix the array she’d been looking at if she’d dared touch it.
Emilia probably shouldn’t touch it.
She really wanted to, though.
⸂Are you a child?⸃ Gale hissed into her as the woman, Phlostra, made her introductions.
Apparently, she’d been eyeing up the arrays a bit too greedily.
“No,” Emilia signed at the same moment that Fran’s aethervoice silencing magic vanished from her body. ⸂Man, I wish I could go back to being a child, though. Sometimes it’s really wonderful being a child. Those times with Olivier, I got to do whatever I wanted, and even when I was a brat, the worst that happened was he turned my butt a little—⸃
This time, it was V’s energy screaming through her and silencing her highly inappropriate musings about acting a child when you were actually an adult. Luckily, none of the kids seemed to understand the undertone of kinky sex and role play in her words. V did, obviously, his own cheeks burning surprisingly red despite their previous discussions of his own kinky nature.
If Phlostra understood what her thoughts had been about, she gave no indication. Rather, the woman—who was far older than Emilia had realized, now that she was looking at more than her PollyPollen eyes and intricate hair—simply shook her head as she gazed down the hallway. ⸂There was no need to drop you so abruptly,⸃ Phlostra sighed. She reached out a delicate and wrinkled hand towards Emilia. ⸂May I extend my own suppression abilities to you? I promise, I will let you know before I drop my magic.⸃
Emilia blinked between Phlostra, her hand, and V, who nodded in silent confirmation that she could trust the woman. He still looked embarrassed, his eyes quickly flicking away from hers and refusing to return.
“Thank you,” Emilia signed, reaching her own hand towards Phlostra and allowing her to seal up her aethervoice once more, lest V’s suppression fade and her wonderings about what was up with him start leaking into the world.
As embarrassing as contemplating kinky sex in public had been, Emilia was pretty sure if everyone heard her internal pouting over V’s strange mood, she’d burrow into the ground and die.