Out of necessity, Emilia and Conrad had allowed another member of the rebel Clarity group to transport them to the building Conrad’s niece and nephew were travelling through, although they had quickly shooed the woman off, unwilling to trust any Clarity member more a necessary.
Annoyingly, Conrad had refused to give her names for his niblings—which, yes, she understood that with more of their names she could perhaps hunt the family down in the real world, but still—and out of spite she had taken to referring to them by their now official names of The Quiet Boy and The Child. Out of additional spite, she had considered coming up with some other way of referring to Conrad—or sending Boundary a million messages until he relented and gave her the other visitor’s real name—but had given up when nothing catchy came to her mind.
The Stalker would have been just a bit too on the nose.
They had, after a brief discussion, decided to intercept the pair on a lower level, and according to their intel—Emilia’s Risen Guard map, which still helpfully showed each of the visitors that old, rebel Clarity member’s gift had shown her—Conrad’s family were still three floor above them.
That gave them a respectable amount of time to plan.
Or, it should have.
Unfortunately, just as they were settling in, Conrad preparing to tell her about The Quiet Boy and The Child’s abilities, dark energy swelled around them. Emilia had barely registered it before Conrad was throwing her over his shoulder and bolting, his own energy rising up to cocoon them, and it wasn’t going to be enough. Whatever was coming for them had taken that moment of surprise and used it with a brutal efficiency that tickled the back of Emilia’s mind and—
And her {Blood Ball}—or, a copy of it, thanks to one of her quest rewards, the original still with Boundary, while another copy had gone with Key—chose this moment to activate, shattering outward and enveloping her and Conrad into a pocket dimension… which Conrad then proceeded to run into the edge of.
“Wow…” Emilia breathed out, rubbing her ass—which had taken the majority of the hit and probably protected Conrad from a broken nose. “Second wall I’ve run into today… kinda.”
“⸂What?⸃” the man asked, somewhat dazedly. Probably more than a little dazedly if he was suddenly speaking out loud again.
“I tried sparking earlier… like, earlier in the real-world night? Ran into a wall… wait, did I run into a wall twice?” Emilia blinked into the darkness of the pocket dimension, both wondering why it wasn’t dissipating and trying to remember how the fight with the echo had actually gone down. It had been a while ago, she supposed. Honestly, it was no wonder so many of her classmates could barely remember anything about their classes once they’d spent their entire weekend inside a virtual raid. Months would have gone by for them, and she doubted any of them were taking their schoolwork with them, so they could study in their downtime.
Well, if the raids they played were even half as active as this one, she doubted there was much downtime. She knew some of her classmates played more mellow raids, doing things like farming or managing restaurants. The fact that they could do those things in the real world—even if things like farming were almost completely automated now, at least in Baalphoria—had always seemed weird to her.
There were much better ways to relax.
⸂Why did you spark if ya can’t do it properly? I thought that was dangerous?⸃
“Eh… a bit? It was an emergency, is all. There was an echo.” On second thought, maybe she shouldn’t have told him that. As much as they were planning to meet up in real life, there was still a bit of a buffer to that—a place where either of them could panic and back out. Now, he’d be able to look at the echo logs, and it wouldn’t take long for him to figure out she went to Astrapan—there weren’t many silverstrains walking around Piketown, okay?
Conrad didn’t say anything about her recent run in with an echo and a wall, instead deciding to bury her in word vomit about his niece and nephew.
Effectively, they were generally considered the most dangerous of his niblings, although Conrad willing admitted every member of his family was dangerous in their own way. The Child could be vicious—and, despite her appearance, was actually the oldest of the kids. The Quiet Boy, on the other hand, Conrad was slightly vague about. Emilia had a feeling, from reading through his words, that it wasn’t just Conrad himself, but at least a few members of his family, who had a hereditary irregular deviation, each showing signs in a slightly different way. The other visitor didn’t explicitly want to say my nephew is fucked up because of his genes, so he was only giving vague details.
The energy that had swelled around them? That was the nephew. Brutal and efficient, and while he often preferred to stay out of combat, once he had decided to fight, no one got away from him.
Lovely.
Conrad also wasn’t sure, but he figured the reason the {Blood Ball} hadn’t faded yet was his nephew was still assaulting them with his energy. ⸂If you think th’ feeling of my energy pressing down on you at Boundary’s house was bad, it’ll be nothing compared to— to my nephew’s energy. My energy hurt. His will squeeze you t’death.”
Even more lovely.
“So… are you admitting he’s stronger than you?” Emilia teased, squeaking when Conrad landed a slap over her thigh—he had patently refused to put her down, suspecting they’d need to run the moment the {Blood Ball} retracted—and told her to be nice.
⸂He’s not. He’s simply…⸃ the other visitor trailed off, trying to organize his thoughts and seemingly failing to when he finally just told her they were different. ⸂We each ‘ave strengths and weaknesses. I would sooner run from a fight an’ avenge myself later, he will fight to th’death and beyond, if he has chosen to fight. And you think I’m creepy? It’s nothing compared t’him.⸃
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Actually,” Emilia tutted, feet beginning to wiggle as she grew more and more restless from being held aloft and unable to move, “I think your entire family is creepy. Well, maybe not the baby one— actually, where did the baby one go?”
Tobias was how they’d even figured out the Haym family might have been searching for a blood weapon in Salsetrun. Wherever he had ended up, it wasn’t in the Clarity City System with the rest of his surviving family—not unless the old woman’s gift had missed a random visitor, anyways.
Under her stomach, Conrad shrugged. ⸂Maybe he died. Tobias didn’t belong here to begin with. I’ve no idea who let ‘im come. He’s too young an’ soft.⸃
“Ah…” Emilia breathed out, and seriously, when was the {Blood Ball} going to let up? As much as she didn’t want to be smushed by The Quiet Boy’s energy, this was boring. “Did he have this long-lasting of energy stores in your world?”
⸂No…⸃ Conrad breathed out, and as much as he had just been nonchalantly talking about how the youngest of his nephews—assuming his crazy ass sister didn’t have even more kids outside of the raid—was probably already dead, he was tense now.
“Do you think it’s just a consequence of the raid? You said some of your abilities are augmented just by being here?”
⸂Maybe.⸃ Conrad didn’t sound convinced.
Emilia wasn’t convinced either. “When I saw them earlier,” she said slowly, willing the scenario inside her head to not be true, “something seemed off with him. I couldn’t tell what—especially since my perception floated off so fast—but even his sister seemed… wary of him. Is that normal?”
⸂No.⸃
Conrad didn’t say more, and instead Emilia contented herself to waiting, flicking through the settings of her system access, looking at this and that and wondering what in the world Conrad had spent days looking at.
Gamers were just too intense.
She was just finishing a round of a silly little game she’d found buried inside her system access—one that involved making deliveries in the most efficient manner—when her {Blood Ball} contracted and Conrad was moving again, continuing down a path that he had already mapped out, it seemed.
It was a good thing he had, a barrage of icicles shattering down where they’d just been standing. Emilia hadn’t just been playing her delivery game, however, and the {Blood Needle} already in her hand went flying towards the building the siblings were standing atop, just out of view—not that hiding was useful, when she could clearly see them on her map.
Whatever the nibling pair did or didn’t know about the system and the features available on it, Emilia had no idea, but it certainly didn’t seem like they’d been prepared for her to find them so easily. The Child shrieked, and The Quiet Boy’s energy—which had been reaching towards them once more—ceased to exist. Not because he was dead—Emilia could see their dots moving as one over her map, although a brief stall in their movement told her they’d been forced to bail off the building and someone had landed badly.
“Did they jump before the explosion?” Emilia asked, unsurprised when Conrad hummed in agreement.
⸂My nephew may have sensed your attack coming,⸃ he said, sounding thoroughly unconvinced. Conrad had already confirmed for her that out of all her blood weapons, the {Blood Needles} were the hardest for him to sense. Even when he knew they were on her, he could barely sense them. They were just too tiny, the magic within them so condensed, that when combined with the other weapons on her—in her, in the case of the {Blood Tattoo} she still had no clue as to the purpose of—they simply disappeared.
Emilia knew what Conrad wasn’t saying: that within the maelstrom of all their energy, attacks and blood weapons, it was unlikely his nephew had been able to sense a blood weapon he would have barely any knowledge of—if any at all.
That was not good. Not only was the fact that he had several potentially very dangerous gifts a problem at the moment, but in the context of the heartcore’s corruption…
“We need to get to them, before they activate that weapon, assuming they have it.”
This was easier said than done. Whether one of the siblings had a map or not, they did have the ability to track them through the city level, and it didn’t matter where they went or how hidden they were, The Quiet Boy’s energy always found them.
Thankfully, whatever requirements her {Blood Ball} needed were fulfilled by his power, and without fail, whenever his energy got too close it would explode around them. Luckily, it didn’t need any energy to do so, so Emilia wasn’t being slowly drained, but neither did The Quiet Boy’s attacks seem to be slowing down or flittering out of existence more quickly.
The kid was like a bottomless pit!
“Hey,” Emilia asked, during their sixth time waiting within her {Blood Ball}’s pocket dimension, “where do I fall in terms of your niblings’ ages?”
Conrad seemed to disappear within his mind and worries every stint within the pocket dimension, and it took him a moment to realize she’d spoken to him.
In his defence, she had been spending most of her own time within the pocket dimension playing the delivery game. There was something addicting about it, and eventually, she’d been able to unlock themes for the deliveries and several different versions. Currently, she had it set to delivering sweets—yum—in a version that involved constantly moving vehicles that she had to direct to the proper locations. It was rather addicting, scratching the part of her brain that required constant stimulation and chaos in order to focus.
“You’re almost 70, yes?” Conrad asked, and Emilia wondered if she’d specifically told him that, or if he’d put it together between her various mentions of events in her life. “The eldest two are older than you, the next two about the same age—that includes this nephew.”
So, she probably shouldn’t be thinking of either as kids, then. Not that that would stop her, especially when she knew how much being called a child pissed some people off… unless of course they were wandering around in the body of a child, and acting one as well.
When the pocket dimension sizzled out of existence once more, Emilia was already ready. There had been a few times in her life when she’d needed to yell, but the skill for amplifying her voice had been inaccessible, for one reason or another. So, she’d improvised, and created a core-only way of doing so. It had caused a lot of chaos, every time she’d used it.
Now, she was hoping it would do exactly that.
“You know, little granny~” she teased, already having forced Conrad to put her down so she could take off without him, “just because you make the baby boy attack for you, it doesn’t make you less crusty inside. Or, ah! Maybe that’s why you’re having your little brother do all the work? Too old and decrepit? Your brain melting under the rot of old age? Is that why you act the child? Your adulthood gone into dementia and—”
Emilia bolted to the side as icicles rained down on her, Conrad already gone, using her distraction of his niece to go after his nephew.
“You!” a little child’s angry, twinkling voice screamed. “You are going to take that back!”
Her brother stood behind her, glaring blankly in Emilia’s direction as he said something to his sister—Oria. Too bad for them, they didn’t know her aethervoice reading gift extended to normal speech as well—not that she had either, until this moment.
“Oria?” Emilia cooed. “What an old lady name! Your mommy and daddy must have named you for how old you looked, even as a baby. Ah~ but maybe that’s why he went and fucked someone else? Couldn’t stand making such ugly children with—”
Another blast of ice hurdled towards her, and while The Quiet Boy definitely tried to stop Oria from heading her way, she was clearly too pissed off. Then Conrad was on the boy, his shadows reaching around him and forcing him to leave his sister to her fate.
“DO NOT TALK ABOUT MY FATHER!”
Emilia hoped Conrad would tell her what in the world had happened with these kids’ father, that he could seemingly cheat on his wife and create a bastard child, yet still be so loved by them.
Strange, but useful.
Pissed off people were so much easier to take down.