“Oh.”
⸂What is it?⸃ Boundary asked, glancing back at her as they followed Carne.
According to Conrad, they weren’t following the exact route he had taken, but his own location gift was telling him the route Carne was taking was a good one. He and Boundary had proceeded to restart their argument over whether Conrad was more tapped into the will of the universe than he seemed to believe. Carne had continued to ignore them, not even bothering to give his opinion on the matter as he led them through building after building, taking a long, winding route. They were limited for time, but following the man seemed oddly… right. Perhaps that was aethernet, pressing itself down on her and saying, “This man is leading you right.”
That, or she’d gone through the labyrinths a few too many times and her brain was fucked. Emilia was trying really hard to not think that—to not worry that this raid had both given Payton an easy chance to unknot her while fucking with her brain in other ways that probably weren’t as easily corrected.
Emilia slipped her arm into Conrad’s letting the man guide her along as she read through the string of messages Honey was sending her, each one striking her mind as they formed across her vision.
“Honey says the Stringer siblings are missing. Rin, too. Eh… their bodyguard as well? I’m gonna assume that’s Sk’lar.”
⸂Sk’lar?⸃ Conrad asked before abruptly swinging her into his arms. ⸂Is that the man you mentioned who has even worse vibes than me, but not nearly as bad as my brother?⸃
“Uh… yeah,” Emilia said, opening her mouth to tell them that while she’d never bought that Sk’lar was the siblings’ childhood friend, she was a bit surprised to hear he was their official bodyguard. Her words caught in her throat, however, when Carne acknowledged their conversation, something the man had only done a handful of times.
⸂You should be wary of that man,⸃ he said, and Emilia could only assume he was referring to Sk’lar. ⸂He will stop this world from being born anew, if given the chance.⸃
⸂Well, it’s a good thing he’s not here, then,⸃ Conrad snorted a moment before more messages from Honey slotted themselves into her mind, clearly implying that the missing Stringer members may very well be headed to Clarity as well.
[Honey: From what I can tell, the Stringers did the same your friend did? The guy I can message now? Conrad?]
[Honey: He asked me to keep an eye out for information about his Enclave family, too.]
[Honey: He said he vanished when they told him Clarity had taken in another visitor, cause he figured it might be you!]
[Honey: Hey, was that the dude who got you out of here too?]
[Honey: Is he your friend?]
[Honey: Cause that seems like a lot to go through if he isn’t your friend?]
[Honey: But you guys weren’t really giving, like… friend vibes when I saw you?]
[Honey: Not that I saw you for more than a few seconds, but, like…]
[Honey: I don’t know.]
[Honey: Either you get what I mean, or you don’t.]
[Honey: Anyways!]
[Honey: The Stringers!]
[Honey: I’ve been digging!]
[Honey: I’ve been digging so hard!]
[Honey: So, like, it seems that information about you getting picked up by Clarity spread around.]
[Honey: Some families had more information about it—like that it was you in particular—and Clarity’s purpose, though!]
[Honey: It’s only a guess, that the Stringers found out about your connection to Clarity, but the timing of their disappearance matches up.]
[Honey: And before you ask!]
[Honey: I just knew they were bad news!]
[Honey: Not that they were so, sooooooo bad news!]
Emilia had glanced through Honey’s previous messages about Clarity while travelling to the Ingogia Estate, although she’d only been able to read bits and pieces of them as things happened, both due to the chaos and the headache reading them had caused. The Risen Guard trainee had indeed only really told her that Clarity’s leader was a known creep, with bad intentions. Her advice had been to get as far away from them as possible. It was unfortunate that by the time Emilia had gotten to that part, getting away from them would have been difficult, to say the least.
[Emilia: it never even crossed my mind that you could be holding anything back]
Honey’s stream of messages fell silent, and although Emilia knew the girl was emotional, it seemed insane for her to need to take a moment after hearing something like that from a veritable stranger. When Honey’s messages continued a moment later and it seemed she’d been distracted messaging someone else, rather than crying or something silly like that, Emilia was unsurprised, but also slightly relieved—the last thing she needed was yet another person getting overly attached to her in this world.
[Honey: Okay, so!]
[Honey: They found the girl, Harmony?]
[Honey: Seems the others ditched her.]
[Honey: Or… that maybe her brother and Rin ditched her and the bodyguard?]
[Honey: Then the bodyguard ditched her?]
[Honey: While the girls isn’t saying as much, my source thinks the bodyguard went off searching for the boy and Rin.]
Emilia sent a message, asking if Harmony had told anyone where she thought her brother and Rin—not to mention Sk’lar—had disappeared to. It was all well and good to guess they might be heading towards the Clarity City System, but confirmation would be awesome. Honey seemed to have gone back to messaging other people, however, and Emilia turned her attention to relating what the girl had said to Boundary and Conrad.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
The other visitor was rather uninterested—unsurprising, given he only really seemed to care for her, and maybe a bit for the people she cared for. She might like Key and Rin—might consider them friends adjacent—but if it was between Boundary and the kids and them? Yeah, she was definitely prioritizing the former, even if that was a bit cold to her former allies, especially since they were maybe currently searching for her.
Not that she had any idea why they were doing so! They could just as easily be seeking her out to kill her, in some Enclave blood ritual meant to regain the honour of members who had fucked up.
Considering there already was an Enclave blood ritual, fake as it likely was, meant to gain system access, it might not be as outlandish of a guess as it seemed. Speaking of which…
[Honey: I haven’t heard of any visitors with system access popping up.]
[Honey: Not that we’d automatically know, or anything.]
[Honey: The higher ups can be pretty secretive, when it comes to visitor stuff.]
[Honey: And there isn’t much of a reason to tell me, since I’m stuck here babysitting.]
[Honey: Why?]
Emilia sent off the vaguest of details of what the Ingogia family had claimed to the Risen Guard trainee, more so she’d know what sort of information to look for when she inevitably started poking around, looking for signs of more ritual sacrifices taking place throughout the city system. At the same time, more people didn’t need details of the horrific things the Ingogia family was forcing its harbingers to do, especially not with so few days left in the raid. If that information got out, she had no doubt that every visitor who heard would be offing random people, trying to gain system access.
⸄Why do you think it’s fake?⸅ Boundary asked when she related similar details to him, his eyes glazing over as he sent similar questions about whether people were suddenly being sacrificed in the city system to various higher ups and colleagues.
She hesitated, contemplating all the things that could go wrong if Boundary learned not only the specifics of the ritual—which Conrad had forced out of an Ingogia family member and sent to her via the messaging system—but Zach’s suspicions about how system access was gained as well. There was no way she’d ever see the man again—stars, she didn’t even know if he was still alive, after the collapse of the library—but telling anyone about his ideas, when he had entrusted them to her, felt a bit like a betrayal.
That was silly, however. She’d already told Conrad—would have told V, if they’d ever had a good moment that wasn’t filled with sex to talk about it. Plus, there were only a few days left in the raid. If no one succeeded in breaking the blood curse, maybe Boundary could use the information to help the next group of visitors break it. It was unlikely that he’d still be around and kicking—a thought that sent a spear of pain through her heart—but he could pass the information along, if he really had come to believe trying to break it was the best option.
“Their ritual… basically involved tossing someone into a hole in the aethernet—in the universe,” she told him, explaining that while the Ingogia family had clasped onto the sacrifice part of the ritual as the important part, she and Zach had already discussed the possibility that making the universe bleed was the key to gaining system access.
“I’ve made it bleed a few times,” she said, adding that she’d seen both Boundary and Conrad leave marks in it as well. “All of those wounds sealed up pretty fast, though. It’s the same in our world… mostly. It takes a lot for rips in the aether to stick around for more than a moment, although it does seem more fragile here? Or like there’s something in your magic that makes it easier to hurt it? From what I’ve seen, your magic leaves more marks, too.”
[Conrad: That could be why reading the universe is more common here. There is just more to see.]
Emilia nodded, reiterating Conrad’s message to Boundary. Out of the things she was okay and not okay with Carne overhearing, this conversation about ritual sacrifice definitely fell into the not okay category. The man might know way more about how the universe—at least in this world—worked, but personally, Emilia didn’t really trust him. Not long term, anyways. For the moment, he really did seem intent to get the other homeless kids away from Clarity, but what he did after that…
Well, if she left this world and one day found out that a war had broken out between Carne’s group and whatever would remain of the world after they left, she wouldn’t be surprised. The guy clearly had some sort of plan, even if it was simply go along with what the universe tells me to do for the rest of my life. Who knew what was behind the story it was telling him. It could be the platform maintainer, for all they knew, and she, for one, definitely didn’t trust whoever was behind this raid’s design.
⸄Okay…⸅ Boundary said, sounding not quite not convinced, but not quite there yet either.
“The thing that seems important—to me anyways—” Emilia said, glancing over the very, very detailed note Conrad had sent her, “is that while the ritual sacrifice is going on, a group of people are purposefully keeping a hole in the universe open. The chick Conrad questioned even said it oozes some sort of red goo as it does so. That goo is probably the universe’s blood. After the ritual is done, it apparently shatters into a dust that surrounds whoever was closest to the hole, then poof! System access!”
⸄That doesn’t mean the sacrifice part isn’t necessary.⸅
“No,” she agreed, fiddling with the collar of Conrad’s shirt. She’d stopped messaging Honey quite a while ago, but he’d never bothered putting her down, and she wasn’t about to ask. Walking so much was a pain. “But they’d tried iterations of the ritual a few times before actually succeeding. They figured out that the length of the ritual mattered, while the exact details of the sacrifice didn’t, although they never tried it without the sacrifice—I think they were just really done with testing? Anyways, what worked, was having a dozen people hold the hole open because with any less, the ritual didn’t last long enough.”
Boundary contemplated this as they began to descend into the planet, having finally reached the steep staircase that would lead to the top of Clarity’s city system. ⸄Do you know how they made the hole? How they kept it open?⸅
⸂Why?⸃ Conrad nearly growled, the sound attracting Carne’s attention, although he said nothing of it, just shot them a warning look. Warning over what, Emilia had no idea. To be quiet? To be nicer to Boundary?
The Risen Guard shot Conrad a look that said he was growing to be very done with him—impressive, considering they’d barely spoken to each other for a while. So much for tempers cooling while she chatted.
⸄Because it is extremely difficult to keep holes open. As Emilia said, making holes is simple, but no matter the size, they disappear near instantly. If any… blood of the universe escapes such a hole, it is called back into the wound, just as it would be to a human. Even large attacks leave only scars behind, not blood.⸅
“Yeah, that was kinda what I figured. It was part of why I wasn’t into checking Zach’s suspicion until I really had to. Stars, even when the library was destroyed, it didn’t seem to leave any mark on the aether? And that was a big attack— Hey, speaking of which, why didn’t the blood from that form into a blood weapon? What?”
Boundary had stopped and spun back to gape at her. His eyes would have been humorously large, if not for the near panic in his voice when he asked what she meant.
“I just… I was there? I was in the library when it collapsed, then in the labyrinth, then exited back in the city? It was terrible. There was so much blood under the rubble.”
⸂There…⸃ Boundary cut off swallowing. Behind him, Carne had stopped and was looking back at them, their own eyes vaguely concerned as well. ⸂There was no one there? From the Risen Guard? Cleaning it up?⸃
“Uh… no? Should there have been?”
The Risen Guard exchanged a look with Carne, the aether rippling with some private conversation. Their temporary ally’s jaw clenched, but they said nothing, simply turned and began to descend once more.
“I don’t get it,” Emilia said, looking between Boundary and Carne’s back. “As far as I could tell, the city was locked down. V and I had to escape through the caverns—that’s how we ended up in Livery. What does it matter if the blood was left sitting there? I mean, yeah, V and I popped out of the labyrinth, and then so did the Stringers, presumably, and…”
Wait.
If it was locked down, then how…
⸂The Risen Guard should have had members stationed throughout the town, even if it was locked down, in case someone entered the town through different means.⸃ The man shot Conrad an annoyed look. The visitor smiled back, unrepentant of his own repeated break and enters.
“There was someone else…” Emilia breathed out, thinking back to the boy—to the visitor who seemed barely a child—that she and V had found spying on them. “Another visitor. He disappeared before V or I could get anything useful out of him. Actually, now that I think about it,” she added, glancing up at Conrad, thinking back to the times he had vanished before her eyes—his nephew, too. The one who had tried to kill her and V in the cave.
Poof.
Vanished before their eyes.
Pulled away by their Enclave.
“Say… you don’t happen to have a relative with blue hair, do you?”
What had the kid’s name been again?
⸂Tobias?⸃ Conrad asked, voice dark and annoyed.
Oh, yeah. Toby.
That was it.