The last member of their team was… odd. Odd and quiet, and seemingly unknown to the rest of the group.
⸂They are a spy for our group,⸃ Yuka told Emilia as they walked, her incessant questioning about the severe looking woman finally wearing them down. ⸂They have been a spy for decades. They just happen to be outside of the Risen Guard’s own spying eyes at the moment and were free to join us.⸃
Emilia had almost immediately questioned the sensibility of that. What if they got caught? Was blowing decades of work infiltrating the group really worth it, when there must be other people who could have taken their place? Not to mention, they might not even be the right person! What a perfect opportunity to infiltrate Clarity: taking the place of a member barely anyone knew!
According to Yuka, Ajarni said it would be fine, so it would be fine.
Needless to say, Emilia wasn’t convinced. Something about this whole situation was… off. The information that everyone was getting about what was happening, what each group’s goal was, whether they were expected to survive this assault—not to mention do so without killing every person they came across… There were so many details missing or contradicting.
Officially, they were to avoid killing any Enclave members they questioned. Unofficially, stuffed between lines of motivation thrown about with the manipulation of a cult leader, Ajarni had told them to torture and kill as necessary. Officially, they were expected to return alive. Unofficially, everyone spoke of sacrificing lives for the greater good. Strange, and no, Emilia didn’t like it.
Vermilion didn’t either, from the bits of information they’d been able to slip between each other as they made their way to the entrance to the Ingogia estate. She had entered the raid with her boyfriend, who had never been released by the Risen Guard. Unlike the other visitors Emilia had met, Vermilion had been picked up by Clarity almost immediately. They had carted her around to a collection of labyrinths, and while she hadn’t gained the ability to speak the local tongue, the gifts she had been given were quite useful.
Most noticeably, the girl—apparently she was only in her late 20s—had gained the ability to alter other people’s movements, and once their group entered a second cavern, this one containing a trail of steps and short rocks walls leading upwards, the two of them began experimenting with the ability.
No one else was inclined to test it out, even after Emilia assured the Clarity members that it made her feel like she weighed nothing. They were having none of it.
⸂And what if her ability gives out while we’re climbing?⸃ Jerrina sneered, her nose scrunching up as she glared up at Emilia and Vermilion, who had taken the chance to move a fair distance from the unpleasant woman. ⸂Then we’ll fall and hurt ourselves. No thanks.⸃
The woman was truly annoying, nothing seemingly pleasing her. She had complained about practically everything since they left. The walk, the landing pads, more walking, Emilia, the shoes their latest member was wearing, the climb to the Ingogia estate.
It was tiresome, and Emilia turned away from her and the rest of their group, content to let them figure out how to climb on their own. Kyren seemed to have some experience, but clearly had no proper training, and while he was trying to explain the basics to the other three locals, he wasn’t doing the best of jobs. Emilia had offered—rather stupidly—to teach them, only to immediately be cursed out by Jerrina.
Apparently, locals didn’t need the help of visitors. Emilia had been half tempted to point out that they did actually seem to need their help in breaking the blood curse, but that would have meant sticking around. Emilia was not sticking around Jerrina more than necessary, especially when the woman was being so rude.
Yuka had briefly looked like they wanted to stop her—ask her to stay and teach them how to climb the walls. They didn’t, and the walls were only ten or so feet tall each. They’d be fine if they fell… as long as they didn’t fall wrong. What a tragedy that would be.
So, Vermilion had activated her gift on herself and Emilia and up they’d gone on alone. The other girl clearly had some experience climbing, and for a moment Emilia had worried they had accidentally ended up in another labyrinth, but no. If she reached out her energy, she could feel the city level below them, the Ingogia estate above them, bustling with more and more activity as the holiday celebration began.
She didn’t know much about the holiday, Honey—who was still sending so many messages back-to-back that Emilia couldn’t risk opening them to see why the trainee was freaking out at the mention of Clarity—had previously sent her info about the basics: that it was to celebrate a historic event. For someone who loved to talk, the girl wasn’t great at providing actually useful information.
The holiday was allegedly celebrated through the entire city system, but Emilia had her doubts. When it had been mentioned during the meeting, Ajarni screaming into the tiny crowd that ⸂this Forming Day will be different!⸃, Gale and Caro had looked… perplexed. In their brief moments alone between the end of the meeting and dropping them off with Conrad, she had asked about their experience of the holiday.
They had almost none.
⸂Ash came back for it,⸃ Gale had grumpily admitted, before sinking into the bed and proceeding to ignore the world.
⸂Some of the bigger families celebrate it! Ally’s family did!⸃ Caro had told her, explaining that sometimes Ally would share treats from it with the rest of the kids. ⸂Benny was invited once, even though her parents don’t really like me or Benny. They think we get into trouble too much.⸃
Emilia had shot the child a look, silently asking, “Do you not?”
The little shit had beamed back at her, eyes filled with malicious intent. If they hadn’t been sent off with Conrad, Emilia imagined they’d be getting into trouble back at Clarity’s headquarters—going off to search for the other homeless kids who were being held on the city levels.
Emilia didn’t like that—didn’t like that they had left a collection of children under that group’s control. They didn’t seem like the sort of group to let people go, whether they were children or not. She hadn’t seen that one visitor who had refused to join this siege since the meeting, and when she and V had poked into the room they’d been staying in—just down the hall from V’s own room—it had been abandoned. Their blood weapons had still been there, along with their few other items. They hadn’t been there, and Emilia didn’t expect to see them within the raid again.
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Clarity was, quite frankly, terrifying. It reminded her a bit of Carne’s group, the children following him with vacant, accepting eyes. They were children, however, and Carne—as powerful as he was—was still barely more than a child. His group was new, its beliefs slowly filling in the minds of the people he pulled into his orbit. This—the people who followed the goals of Clarity—were like an evolution of that: what Carne’s group would be a few generations in. Most of these people had grown up within Clarity, their minds completely shaped to follow the will of its leaders without question.
This was what had driven people to try and destroy the cult that had popped up in The Grey Sands before she was born. This unwavering belief, so strong that even if Ajarni popped out with an entirely different belief system and goal tomorrow, his followers would go along with him and say nothing about it.
Emilia wasn’t even convinced Ajarni was the true leader of the group, although Phlostra had told her he was. Not that that—that the real person behind Clarity—would likely have anything to do with her, and it was annoying! Honestly, she could see the appeal of continuously joining the same raid for years on end, if this is what a short-term one felt like: like she was going to be leaving a thousand mysteries and problems behind her.
They weren’t her problems, of course. Visitors might have caused the blood curse, but given everything she’d learned over the past week or so, the Enclave and the Risen Guard had once supported Harbingers seeking out blessings. It was only once this one came along that opinions changed—although Emilia was sure at least some people had always held that blessings weren’t useful for the world.
It was frustrating, was all. In many ways, she wanted to just go home, crawl into bed and assure Olivier and Rafe that she was fine, poke at SecOps and The Black Knot to do something about the knotters, and never join a raid again.
In many more ways, she never wanted to leave. Calm would be preferred, compared to this terrible go, go, go situation. She cared for people here now—cared for how the world they were trapped inside would turn out, once the war between each party ended. Gale and Caro… she loved them, worried for their futures. Benny tugged at her mind, as did Kelly and Stephy’s futures. Miira… was something of a lost cause, but then there were all the other children. Key and Rin—even Harmony and the rest of the Stringer family. Honey and Boundary and—
And, moral of the story? Emilia wasn’t cut out for these short-term raids. She needed long term—some slow moving virtual raid with infinite possibilities—if she ever joined something like this again, which… she definitely had mixed views on. Maybe with V or Sil—would the two of them get along? Emilia thought they might. Sil would be cute and silent, V a menace of too much energy who would vaguely annoy Sil, but become friends with him nonetheless.
Emilia’s hand latched onto another hold, and she effortlessly flung herself upwards. It was fun—even with all her spinning thoughts—climbing the rock walls with none of her usual weight. It reminded her of that last time climbing The Strats, unfortunately. Weightless and free, until the reality of death slammed down around them.
For the first time in forever, the reminder of The Strats—of that day—didn’t bother her much. Everything that had happened here—every knot that Payton had diligently pulled loose—had changed something within her. Two decades of trauma—of fear of a place and activity she had once lived for—shattered, mostly. Her eyes still blinked away phantom hallucinations of shimmering rock formations, cast over the sea in hues of iridescent purples and pinks and teals. Beautiful and heart-wrenching, but a little less terrifying.
Emilia still didn’t think she’d be going to climb them anytime soon, but now, when she looked out at the sea from the cliffs of Mount Pike, she wouldn’t be averting her eyes from the place she knew they stood. Seeing them from Astrapan was impossible even on the clearest of days, of course, but she had always averted her eyes, regardless.
The last landing came as a surprise, the steps and rock walls reaching at least a hundred feet higher. Where they went, Emilia had no idea, but she and Vermilion had no need to go searching for mysteries—not when for all they knew ascending would lead to the Ingogia realizing they were coming for them. Instead, they slid to the ground, legs hanging over the edge of the last climb, and contented themselves to watching the rest of their group climb. It was rather slow-going, their group still near the base of the cavern as they struggled to ascend.
“I don’t like this,” the other visitor said over Emilia’s burning brain—she’d tried to look at Honey’s messages again, like an idiot. The trainee wasn’t letting up on her stream of thought messaging, unfortunately. This time, Emilia had at least been able to read several of the messages.
[Honey: Be careful!]
[Honey: That group is totally not trustworthy!]
[Honey: Shit, are they making some sort of move tonight? Where?]
[Honey: Emilia! This is serious! Tell me where!]
The Risen Guard trainee had—for the most part—seemed flippant about most things. In the few days they’d spent together—not to mention the million messages they’d sent—Emilia had rarely seen them take anything seriously, and to see them doing so now was… concerning, to say the least.
Yet another item on Emilia’s own list of reasons she didn’t like this situation.
“Same,” she whispered to Vermilion, glaring into the distance as she shut down Honey’s messages and contemplated what to do—what to tell the Risen Guard trainee, the Enclave spy.
She agreed that something was wrong, but telling Honey where they were… what would that even lead to? The Risen Guard showing up? Burning the Enclave status of the Ingogia family and all the Clarity members here? Everyone caught? Tortured? Killed? Or, maybe Honey would just inform the Ingogia family. They’d pop out and capture them, torture them, kill them.
Personally, Emilia wasn’t into dying tonight, and she wasn’t getting V or Vermilion—who seemed like a perfectly reasonable girl, despite her accidental, long-term alliance with Clarity—killed because she gave someone she barely knew information about what they were doing.
“I don’t want anyone killed or tortured,” Emilia told Vermilion, idly wondering if any of the Clarity members were eavesdropping on them. Locals capable of hearing visitors could hear far and wide, when they wanted to, after all.
“Same.”
The two of them shared a long look, something passing between them, two people who weren’t exactly there by their own freewill.
“Man~” the other visitor sighed, flopping dramatically backwards onto the burnt red dirt of the cavern. “I just wanted a free vacation.”
Emilia laughed, thinking of her own reasons for seeking access to Ship o’ Stars. “Technically, being inside a raid for so long could be considered a vacation. Not a good one! But a vacation, nonetheless.”
Vermilion didn’t like this joke and kicked Emilia, accidentally sending her giggling over the edge. Luckily, it wasn’t far and a moment later she popped back up, still laughing and contemplating how much visiting Ship o’ Stars was not going to be a vacation, should she actually manage to get there.