Once, we were pure. Clean and untouched by the forces without.

Once, we were one, not driven apart by the evil that lingers, dragging rotting fingers over our souls and minds, forcing their will upon ours in return for power we need for nothing but the wars they start.

Once, we were, and once more, shall we be. Although the time will avoid our touch, guided by this world’s unseeing gods, one will come, two, three, four, five. Once five arrive, from this world and without, from the without that extends its fingers here from the world above. Together, the end will come.

Together, the world will unite once more, the true evil that even the gods fear snuffed out with life itself.

— from The Manuscript of the Blessed, acquired during the Blessing of the Xth visitation

✮ ✮ ✮

⸂So… does anyone have a plan?⸃ Key asked tentatively as they descended flight after flight of stairs, leaving the city level where Conrad and Boundary still fought far behind them.

“Uh…” Emilia groaned, her head aching from supplying maps of the city levels they were passing to Boundary. Rin could have done it, but she was better at using the Risen Guard system overall, and had instead been given the glorious task of trying to figure out where they were going.

The answer so far? No one had any idea.

“I really should have paid more attention when the kids were explaining how to read the universe,” she muttered, despite being pretty sure she had been listening. Her energy had even lingered over Sawyer’s at times, and later Caro’s, trying to see what they saw—and she’d even succeeded! The fact that she couldn’t do it now by herself was aggravating.

⸂You could attempt to teach me?⸃ Key offered as they reached the bottom of another city level, this one just as abandoned as the ones above had been. Probably the sensible thing to do, considering energy from the fight above was still reaching them.

⸂Key,⸃ Rin said, a note of warning in her voice.

⸂What?⸃ the boy asked, turning to frown at her, hands planted on his hips.

Both he and Rin were wearing what Emilia could only describe as war attire. Rin’s appeared to be a model of the Risen Guard’s standard armour, and much like every other members’, hers was largely black and red, although the magic gems built into the arms were unique to her specific brand of magic. Key had also acquired some magic gems, although far less, the blues and whites of them standing out against her red-black clothing.

Honestly, Emilia still didn’t understand the magic of this world. Some was imagination, some was magic gems—but you still needed imagination to activate those. Everyone had different magic—different specialties—but that didn’t mean that was the only magic they could use or anything. Then there were heartcore gifts, and blood weapons—not to mention the other strange objects the blood curse created as well, many of which had abilities and triggers that she couldn’t even guess at. All of which didn’t even include whatever people had going on with their cores.

A world where the main things were skills, cores and willbrands was much simpler than everything this world had going on—even if she knew most people couldn’t hope to understand the specific details of creating new skills and core abilities—and Emilia was looking forward to the normalcy of her own world.

“Maybe… we try to get me system access,” Emilia finally suggested over the strange argument happening between Rin and Key over whether he should try learning to read the aether or not. From what she could tell, while both of them believed people could read the universe, it wasn’t something either the Risen Guard or Enclave encouraged.

Emilia was tempted to ask why, but that could wait until they’d decided what to do.

⸂You want to sacrifice someone for system access?⸃ Rin asked darkly, and wow, was she pissed.

“Yes, and no,” Emilia replied, explaining in broad strokes their theory about how the sacrifice part wasn’t actually necessary. “That said, I don’t think the two of you alone will be enough to keep the hole open long enough. We’ll need help.”

Key blinked at her as his hand darted out to catch her—she’d been about to miss a step and go sliding down the stairs. ⸂How many do you think we need?⸃

Emilia grimaced, telling him that according to what Conrad had forced out of the Ingogia family, they’d need at least half a dozen—more, if their magic was on the weaker side.

⸂You want to trick some Clarity members,⸃ Rin guessed. ⸂I doubt they will be willing to help us.⸃

“Maybe, maybe not,” Emilia agreed. “They were pretty disinterested in me when they attacked. I think there’s a chance they don’t realize I’m dangerous? Or don’t realize I’m acting against them? No one in the hive mind actually saw me betray anyone, and even when I attacked them above, I only did so when they attacked first. It might not work, but I think if I find someone I know and tell them I want system access, they’ll agree.”

⸂But you might have to sacrifice someone,⸃ Key noted uneasily.

“It’s possible,” she agreed, before arguing that she could insist they sacrifice a Clarity member. “I’d obviously try to convince them it try the ritual without a sacrifice first, and then be prepared for them to disagree and bring out some random person to sacrifice anyways, but it might be worth the risk. Most likely, if they do insist on a sacrifice, it’ll be one of their own, though. That was their entire purpose for going to the Ingogia estate: to get a whole bunch of sacrifices to the Ingogia family without the, uh… normal personalities of too many members realizing they were pawns. Jerrina attacking me over a man messed all that up.”

Both Key and Rin gaped at her, Rin’s eyes humorously large. Another fault of this world: she couldn’t record Rin’s expression with a picture, tucked away into her memory for later enjoyment!

⸂Someone… what?⸃ Key asked, and Emilia laughed—half-amused, half still very much annoyed at the woman—before explaining what had occurred with Fran and V, Jerrina’s attempt to kill her and the Ingogia family using the chance to attack them, as well as the chaos that had resulted.

⸂They probably meant to lock you out of your system access before attacking you,⸃ Rin suggested, her eyes staring into the middle distance. It took a moment for Emilia to realize she was likely relaying the information to other Risen Guard, as she hadn’t actually told Boundary that ridiculous part of the story. ⸂We should be prepared for someone to try and block our system access as well. It is an uncommon ability, but it exists.⸃

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They walked in silence for several long moments, letting Rin communicate what she needed to her peers— former peers? It was unclear, and Emilia wasn’t about to ask about her status with the Risen Guard at the moment.

⸂You’re assuming the system you gain access to will even be helpful,⸃ Rin finally said, dragging the conversation back to Emilia potentially gaining proper system access. The girl’s expression was still tense and unimpressed. ⸂It could easily be of no help, especially if we end up in a situation where we all lose access anyways.⸃

Emilia nodded. The local girl was right. This could be a terrible plan—one that would result in nothing but someone dying and her gaining access to a useless system. “Do you have a better idea? Personally, my only other idea is to kill a bunch of people and hope whatever blood weapon I gain is enough to destroy this entire city system.”

That was their emergency plan: create a weapon of mass destruction and hope it would only take out this city system, leaving the world above untouched. There were a few weapons in the Risen Guard’s store houses that could potentially take the entire area and everyone within it out, but they were locked down—and when Boundary said locked down, he really meant it.

There had been problems, after the last visitation, containing the most powerful blood weapons. Originally, the ones the Risen Guard came to hold were tucked away behind powerful arrays for safe keeping. Big surprise: they hadn’t worked long. A rogue faction had stolen a number of them, and plenty of people had died in the destruction they enacted on the world.

Even now, decades on, no one knew why they had done it. The most Boundary had suggested was they had been under the control of their alternate personalities. It was nothing more than a theory, of course, but the group had all been powerful Risen Guards, who had reached the upper limit of heartcore gifts—a limit that had since been lowered in an attempt to keep those alternate personalities from gaining too much control.

Since then, any blood weapons the Risen Guard found that were capable of so much damage had been stored inside a labyrinth, which was in turn guarded by people and arrays alike. People were only allowed in when they were taking blood weapons inside—unfortunate, as this particular labyrinth forced everyone to touch the heartcore on their way out.

The storage of these blood weapons was a specialty, within the Risen Guard’s ranks, and the people chosen for it all came from highly respected families with long histories of service and retired after moving weapons inside several times.

Since this method’s inception, those specialists had lasted a few decades each—there weren’t that many blood weapons capable of destroying entire buildings roaming the world anymore. At least, not until recently. Now, the Risen Guard was pulling people out of general training to quickly bring them into the fold of keeping those weapons contained. The {Blood Loop} that had been created during the stampede in Livery was one such weapon, and had been taken inside by a trainee, a distant relative of Boundary’s, who Emilia had learned was from one of these old and powerful families.

All that meant, was that while the Risen Guard was aware that Clarity needed to be destroyed, doing so with a blood weapon was difficult. Not only would someone have to risk their mental stability to get one, most had never been tested—and out of all the blood weapons, the most powerful ones were well known for having limited uses. Even the ones that had been previously used, that they could say had done such-and-such, might turn out to be useless if used again.

One option that had been thrown around as they descended into the cavern that held the Clarity City System, Boundary relaying what information he received to their group, was for someone to remove multiple weapons. This had been quickly shut down, the risk of being ambushed and losing the weapons to either Clarity or the Enclave—or even another rogue Risen Guard—too high.

The last thing anyone wanted was to accidentally unleash more danger onto the world while trying to stop Clarity.

In the end, it had been decided that, if given the chance, they should try to create a blood weapon from the lives within the Clarity City System itself—something Emilia had begrudgingly agreed to, as they didn't know how complicit most of the people living down here were. On the Risen Guard’s part, they had begrudgingly agreed to contact the Enclave families who they knew held their own powerful weapons, Conrad even giving over the name of the Enclave family his own family had been associating themselves with, although there was no saying how they would react to being asked to help with all this. While Conrad couldn’t say they had approved of Clarity and the Ingogia family's plans, he was also pretty sure they hadn’t actively disapproved either.

⸂They weren’t a nice bunch,⸃ he had snorted, when Boundary asked if he thought they would be willing to use the weapon they may have acquired in the library city—Salsetrun, apparently—to help destroy Clarity. ⸂Even if they agreed to help, I wouldn’t trust them not to turn around and try claiming the hive mind for themselves.⸃

Boundary had relayed this information to his superiors, and in the end, they had decided to ask for the family’s assistance, but omit as much detail about what exactly was going on as they could. Everyone—even Carne—had tried to argue that was a terrible idea: the Haym family likely already knew at least some of what was happening, and only giving them half-truths was more likely to piss them off than anything.

The Risen Guard brass would not be swayed, however, and some poor sap had been sent off to speak with the family. None of them had much faith in that person returning, let alone returning with good news.

The most they could hope for on that front was that Conrad’s name would hold a little sway, even if just with his family. Well, not Conrad’s name. That alone had been one of the funniest things Emilia had seen in a while. Conrad had chosen the name only while dealing with her—apparently most of his family used their real names while raiding. In other words, his family would have no idea who this Conrad dude was. As a result, Conrad had had to tell Boundary his real name, but he also hadn’t wanted Emilia to learn it.

A good ten minutes of their descent had been Boundary telling Conrad he was stupid while the man tried to figure out how to speak privately via aethervoice.

⸂We are wasting time,⸃ Boundary had said, although they really hadn’t been: Boundary could send Conrad’s real name to the assigned Risen Guard via message at any point, and the poor guy hadn’t reached the Haym estate at that point—still hadn’t, as far as Emilia knew.

⸂I want to surprise Emilia with my real name, when we meet up in the real world,⸃ Conrad had retorted, looking like he was a moment away from pouting.

⸂You’re going to meet up with this man in your world?⸃ Boundary had asked, skeptical of the sensibility of this plan.

Emilia couldn’t blame him for that—she too was a bit skeptical of their meeting up in the real world, even if it would potentially gain her an ally in her quest for answers about the cause of the war. Not that it had been a quest, before she entered this raid—or, perhaps, before she ran into that echo. Actually, at the moment, aside from her quest to find the asshole, knotter distributor, she was more worried about the whole mind manipulation thing, and whether it would have long-lasting effects on heroes, once they returned to their daily lives—not to mention whether mind manipulation was popping up in other raids as well.

That was probably the more pressing quest, and it would be helpful to have another person with experience—extra experience, no less, given how much Conrad had dug into people’s heads—around when she started contacting people about that.

Contacting who? Well, there were a few people she had in mind. Unfortunately, going straight to the source and beating up the current head of Hail—Halen’s company—was probably not a reasonable course of action. Alas.

Eventually, after more bickering between Conrad and Boundary, Emilia had pointed out they could actually message each other. Neither had been impressed with how long it had taken for her to remind them of that fact, as though it were her job to manage their interpersonal relationships and knowledge of their own fucking systems.

So, there was a chance the Haym family would show up—or worse, Conrad’s family—with their weapon of mass destruction. Awesome. The way things were going, chances were they’d just blow the entire city system up, them along with it.

Emilia wasn’t exactly keen on that. Hence: tricking Clarity into giving her system access, or just going around killing people and hoping a weapon of mass destruction would form for her.

Both were terrible plans, and given the way Key and Rin were silent, entrenched in their own thoughts about these potential courses of action, they thought so as well.