Emilia couldn’t stop looking through the {Blood Glass}. It was addicting, the world within it seeming to bend and break, showing her flashes of a future that could be and yet wasn’t, guiding her to the conclusion of a thousand moves no one dared start, for fear they were choosing the wrong path.

The future, laid out before anyone who dared look upon it.

Options.

Options.

So many options.

She never wanted to stop looking.

It was a problem, tugging at the addictive side of her personality with all the force the best drugs did, the most satisfying sugary foods and puzzles and—

⸂You should take this,⸃ Emilia sighed as she let herself fall behind Hetexia, the woman leading their group—minus Fiona and Bread, who had split once they realized there was no chance they were getting their hands on the {Blood Glass}—through the wreckage of the collapsed building, looking for anything of use—or any signs of life or her missing friends, whom Emilia had told her former teammate about.

As much as they were running out of time, none of them had any idea of where to go, and upon learning that their new blood item wasn’t so much a weapon of mass destruction as an object that could lead them onto the most fortuitous path, they’d been content to search the rumble for a bit while Boundary, Rin and Phlostra continued searching for any sign of Ajarni on their journey to remove as many children from the buildings as possible.

Hyr’s sharp golden gaze shot between her own eyes and the offered {Blood Glass}. “Why?”

Emilia didn’t give them the incredulous look she wanted to. She had thought it would be clear enough from her ability to speak Brylish without her Censor that she knew more about the Northern Tribes than most. Evidently not. ⸂Who better to give it to than a syn?⸃

The young syn didn’t blink. They barely even moved as they assessed her, and she was suddenly struck with the thought that members of the synat may be just as capable of reading the aether as some of the residents of this world were. “I did not think your kind believed in seeing,” they stated, their words awkward, stilted in a way that told Emilia they didn’t have quite as fluid a hold of Baalphorian as they might have liked.

Assessing the syn in return, still holding out the {Blood Glass} for their taking, she said, ⸂I… don’t know what I believe, anymore. Not after seeing the way the people of this world treat the aether.⸃ At the look of confusion—mild as it was—that entered Hyr’s expression, Emilia asked if they had experienced anyone reading the will of the universe while under Clarity’s control.

No, they hadn’t, and as they walked, Emilia’s fingers itching to return the {Blood Glass} to her eye, she explained in broad strokes what she’d learned about reading the universe since exiting the Livery Labyrinth.

“Has it not always been so?” Hyr asked, squinting around them and so clearly reading the aether that Emilia almost laughed. “I have not been in many raids, but I believe I have always been able to see within them.” They frowned, thick blonde eyebrows pulling together and turning their otherwise soft features harsh.

⸂I don’t know,⸃ Emilia admitted. ⸂During the war, the late syna Gru never indicated they could read the aether within the training system these raids are built on, though.⸃ Unfortunately, the syna Gru had died during the war, and as far as Emilia knew, no other member of the religious sect of the Northern Tribes had ever entered the training system. If she asked, Hetexia would definitely set her up to talk to whatever synat she had sway with, let her ask around to see if they had always been able to read the universe within raids or not—and whether it was similar or identical to what they saw in the real world’s aether—but that was something for later.

“I have only entered raids these last few months,” Hyr admitted, finally accepting the {Blood Glass} from Emilia now that they knew she had more than a passing knowledge of the synat and her decision to hand it off to them was not random. “It is not something many synat do. You may find it difficult to locate one who has knowledge beyond the last few years. There has been much to do since the war.”

The Northern Tribes had been hit especially hard during the war, and while their nomadic nature meant there was little rebuilding needed, so many of their numbers had been killed or seriously injured that they had needed to set up more permanent settlements. That was about as much as Emilia knew, and as they walked, Hyr occasionally looking through the {Blood Glass} and using their religious training to read the universe in turn and decide which way their group was to go next, they explained to her some of the things that had happened in the last decade.

Effectively, the permanent, collective settlements had become cities for the young, old, and injured of many—but not all—tribes. There were several settlements now, and while many of their number did not wish for the always growing settlements to survive longer than necessary, many tribe members had set up homes and come to enjoy having a more permanent base.

⸂I imagine they are called ‘da saleen for that,⸃ Emilia laughed, half in amusement, half sadness. The words for people corrupted by outsiders had been thrown around a lot during the war, sometimes in jest—such as the first time Hetexia had put her long black hair up into a Byshire style—other times in cruelty. It had been thrown around so much and over some of the smallest things—even the syna Gru had often scoffed at those who called Hetexia hy’da saleen despite their relatively conservative views on such things—that the word meant little to Emilia now.

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Evidently, it meant little to the syn Bur as well. “There are pros and cons to having a home so solid. Those who wish to leave for the seasons are still many, and sharing space with other tribes has fostered more friendship than in many centuries past.” They motioned to their group.

⸂You met in the settlements?⸃

“Yes,” Hyr told her. “Zyrex and I were together in… ah… I believe you call ‘compulsory schooling?’”

⸂Ah~ little school friends. I didn’t realize children in most Northern Tribes attended anything like that. I thought you went straight into professional training?⸃

Unlike in Baalphoria, where children attended compulsory school for twenty-five years, generally followed by a gap decade and then more schooling for the profession of their choice, the synat of each tribe read the future of children when they were born. These readings took multiple forms—although Emilia was only passingly familiar with several of the methods, including something that she now realized was a near mirror image of this world’s reading of the universe—but the resulting knowledge was used to guide children and teens through the first years of their lives, including into training for their destined profession.

It was yet another thing many outsiders judged the Northern Tribes for, as though the nations that had nobles who were forced into accepting political positions were any different—as though Olivier’s family of lawyers weren’t choosing their children’s destinies for them just the same.

Something about the fortune-telling aspect of it put plenty of people off, but Emilia knew that in most of the tribes there was some leeway given for children who grew to view their fortunes as wrong. The late syna Gru had actually been destined to be a weapon smith when they were born, and yet through twists of fate and changes in their circumstances they had died the most powerful member of the synat Gru—perhaps in the whole of the synat Nur’tha. While neither the overarching religious body of the Northern Tribes nor the Northern Tribes themselves had an official leader, Hetexia had certainly been the most powerful and influential of the hy during the war, and that power had likely leaked down to her second in command as well.

Hyr shook their head as they turned the {Blood Glass} higher, looking between each of the buildings, searching for anything the universe—the system? a combination?—might think worth their time and notice. “Too many died. It is difficult to teach everyone separate. We learn the main things together, the specific things apart.”

That made sense. There would be a lot of cross over in knowledge, but when the tribes had been strong, it may have made sense to keep children within the atmosphere they would spend the rest of their lives within, learning their specific profession’s way of doing even the most basic things, so as to integrate their methods and beliefs more fully.

Not for the first time, it struck Emilia how much many of the Free Colonies had lost during the war, the Northern Tribes especially. It wasn’t a secret that Baalphoria and Dion had been the powerhouses of the war, their words and choices rising above everyone else’s. Despite all the death they had suffered, both had escaped rather unharmed culturally.

Dion was ancient, its history and customs reaching so far back in time that no one knew where many of them had originated, and yet in images millennia old, many of the same bits of custom could be seen. They had always been slow changing, and while the Free Colony had certainly changed over the course of two decades of war and contact with outsiders, it was relatively minimal in the grand scope of things.

Baalphoria, on the other hand, was an ever-changing machine, and while even the most open-minded of Baalphorians often had some purist sentiment, for the most part, they had been relatively open to accepting new customs from their Free Colony allies. On top of that, Baalphoria had already been quite diverse, unlike places like the Northern Tribes, where there was a shared culture between the tribes, with relatively minimal differences between each and virtually no contact with outsiders for the average civilian. As a result, it had been no struggle for Baalphorian identity to survive the changes that came with exposure to different cultures and the unending death of the war.

Places like the Northern Tribes were different. Their tribes were small, compared to the giants of Dion and Baalphoria, and too many people dying in a single tribe meant the dissolution of the tribe itself. Those left were forced to beg entry to other tribes, hy forced to give up their rulership in hopes of saving their remaining members from a slow death.

To see so much of your culture erased, by death and necessity and the drag of a different culture into your own… Emilia couldn’t imagine how that felt, but she imagined it must hurt, especially since she knew quite a few members of Hetexia’s tribe had chosen to install permanent Censors. Their very existence changed the Northern Tribes, as they brought Baalphorian technology into an area that had long eschewed foreign interference.

Emilia knew well enough that had been changing within some tribes, even before the war, however. The Gru had been one of the biggest proponents of opening their borders before the war, a result of Hetexia’s experiences in Norvel and several other Free Colonies when she was a young adult. Where other leaders called for the borders to remain largely closed—especially after the PollyPollen incident in Halvery—Hetexia had wanted change and openness. While pushback from the other hy had led her to temporarily stop pushing for such things, when the war had come, she hadn’t hesitated to bring her tribe into the alliance, nor had several other tribes, although of the over thirty tribes, only five had joined before the war was pressing at their borders.

It was all too sad—too hard. Concerning, as well. This had been one of the concerns they had had during the war: that too much contact between their so different cultures could lead to conflict, when old and new beliefs collided. For the moment, the Northern Tribes were surviving, despite the tension that Hyr wasn’t saying, the sadness that echoed in their sister’s eyes as she listened to them chat about life in the settlements.

How long would it take before things exploded? Before the Northern Tribes became another Falrion? Different factions colliding into a war that would lead to one side overtaking the other, not that Emilia had any idea of what had happened in Falrion in the decade since civil war had broken out.

Her heart squeezed as she thought of Ri once more, as she wondered what strain Hetexia was under. Was she still in contact with their other teammates? The ones who had been leaders and nobles of their own Free Colonies?

Did she have the support she likely needed, either from within or without the Gru and Northern Tribes? With the syna Gru dead, she would have needed to replace them, but there had been no time during the war. Had whoever she found become her second? Or was she alone, or seeking advice from someone else now?

Emilia’s heart clenched.

She was a really, really, exceptionally terrible friend, wasn’t she?