⸂So… ideas?⸃
No one spoke, no one offered any ideas about either what to do about Sk’lar or why he hadn’t died, although the latter was pretty obvious: either his defensive abilities were frankly terrifying, or he had a gift protecting him. Given what Emilia knew about defensive skills, she was willing to bet it was the latter.
As much as her own core-based defensive skills were sketchy at best, that was more a result of having taught herself to utilize her core for such things and a general lack of practice than cores being unable to actually sustain such things. Ri in particular had been a monster, as she supposed had Conrad. Both had been able to push their energy outside of their cores and physical bodies with little effort, creating a bubble of safety for themselves and their allies, although it had sometimes been a struggle to fight alongside Ri, as his defences could also interfere with the skills and abilities of his allies.
So, yeah, Sk’lar’s whole not currently being a roasted human thing might have been due to some insane core control, but then, why wasn’t he moving? More likely, in Emilia’s estimation, it was some gift—or perhaps even a stolen blood weapon similar to her own {Blood Ball}—that was protecting him, with the consequence that he couldn’t move.
Unfortunately, that meant they—or at least Hyr—were stuck holding the man prisoner, or they had to let the fire spread.
[Emilia: how’s evacuating the building i’m in going?]
Technically, she wasn’t completely positive which building she was in, but when she had entered it she had had Hyr tell her how they would have described the building they were entering in relation to the collapsed one. Boundary and Rin had replied to her message containing said information that Phlostra was pretty sure she knew which building she was in. Hopefully, the woman had been correct.
[Boundary: It is as complete as it is likely to get. We have been moving primarily through it since you entered it.]
That seemed like quite the coincidence…
[Rin: Neither Boundary nor I thought we should leave anyone inside your building, given you may have not one, but two weapons of mass destruction on you.]
[Boundary: The first is more in her.]
[Rin: True.]
[Rin: That makes it even worse.]
[Rin: Emilia is quite clumsy.]
[Emilia: hey now!]
[Emilia: i seem to remember you were the one who fell off that climbing wall a bunch of times inside the Library Labyrinth!]
[Rin: I know you almost died on the first part.]
[Emilia: for one, who told you that!?]
[Emilia: for another, that wasn’t due to clumsiness!]
[Boundary: I don’t think that makes it better.]
No, it probably didn't. Nearly falling because she could be a klutz was probably better than nearly falling because she had overestimated her abilities, if only a little. That climbing wall had been hard, okay!? And when she’d gone through it the second time, inside the labyrinth she’d hacked, she had shot through it!
Still, as much as it hurt a bit that her so-called friends had turned to evacuating the building she and the northerners were travelling through because they were worried she would accidentally blow it up—they hadn’t said as much, but they might as well have—it was convenient.
⸂I say we let it burn and run,⸃ she said, shooting off a few more messages to the others about what was happening. Phlostra informed them that the buildings did have fire protocols, but they likely wouldn’t be enough to stop the fire Emilia described from eventually consuming the building.
Part of it was that Zyrex hadn’t used normal magic to create the flames: he’d used a different sort of core ability, one that came from the real world. As such, while the buildings were normally protected from this world’s magic, they rarely survived anything otherworldly. That would explain why The Quiet Boy’s attacks had destroyed so much: just as his uncle’s membrane of defensive power was based on some real world ability, his attack likely had been as well.
“I can keep it from chasing us for some time,” Hyr said, their voice strained as they continued keeping the flames at bay, “but unless I completely obliterate the flames, the moment I move, they will begin to spread.”
⸂Yeah, well, according to my friends who were evacuating people, there isn’t much left to try and evacuate in this place.⸃
Boundary and Rin had been sending her updates as they travelled. They had succeeded in reaching several of the places Phlostra knew children had been tucked away. Rin, along with a few other Risen Guard investigators who had decided to risk their lives to help evacuate people, had sorted anyone who wanted to be taken out of the city system into categories of danger level, based on their heartcore corruption and connections to Ajarni.
Since she’d awoken from her dream, following taking in Tobias’ {Blood Tattoo}, a few other people had joined their group, mostly Clarity members who weren’t far enough along in their corruption to be too much of a danger, but who had enough skill with teleportation to remove kids and other, more innocent-leaning adults. The Risen Guard had at least relented and sent a number of members to temporarily commandeer landing pads in one of the bigger cities. While the landing pads were normally set up to work as in-pads and out-pads, that was only a safety precaution, so people didn’t slot themselves into one another.
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As such, the Risen Guard were using the out-pads as in-pads for their evacuations, while Rin had been relegated the job of letting the coordinator know where the evacuators could land back wherever she and Boundary were currently working. Emilia wasn’t sure who had come up with this idea or organized it, but it seemed to be working quite well, and the group of mishmashed people had been working themselves through the city levels relatively quickly.
It probably helped that Phlostra knew which levels to avoid—which levels were populated by too many Clarity members deep into their hive mind control, making them too difficult to try and evacuate.
A number of Clarity members were also cooperating with the Risen Guard to lead them to various secret landing pads that the group used to move in and out of the Clarity City System—ones like those that Emilia’s group had used during their assault on the Ingogia estate. From what Emilia could tell, so far, these searches had lead to very few captures—and most of those had turned out to be people who had little affiliation with the Clarity war force, and had simply realized something was happening, and they needed to get out of the city system. It was as though Ajarni were uninterested in evacuating his hive mind army.
Indeed, most of the people Boundary and the others were evacuating knew little to nothing about what was happening. That wasn’t too surprising: the buildings were thick, and while earthquakes weren’t super common, without windows to look out and see one of your sister buildings had collapsed, most people were liable to just continue on with life, trusting that if they needed to evacuate, someone would let them know. On top of that, while their various groups had infiltrated several populated city levels, they had done very little to draw attention to themselves within those levels.
Sure, Livia had attacked her on the one, and Emilia had knocked Tobias out in another, but otherwise… that was about it, and as far as she knew, and neither of those situations had affected the residents much. Honestly, Emilia wouldn’t be surprised if fights with magic were a semiregular occurrence in this world. Stars knew that when Boundary and Conrad had fought, only a few people had even bothered looking out their windows. Granted, that was a normal city level—as normal as the city levels could be, anyways, given all the city levels Emilia had seen seemed to have vastly different cultures—but Clarity definitely seemed the type to rule with an iron fist that would lead people to stay out of their business, if they could, and their business probably included a substantial amount of magic being thrown about.
All that was to say, if Boundary’s group believed they were mostly done with this building—that their burning it down by now-only-partial accident was something they could let happen—Emilia had to believe him.
People would die, of course. Innocent and guilty ones. Those who had no part in Clarity’s wrongdoings, and those who were so entrenched in the hive mind that they would destroy the world if Ajarni asked. There was no way they could save them all, neither the guilty nor the innocent.
As Hyr focused their energy, preparing to run while holding the flames away from their group—Zyrex would also be helping with that, but Hyr’s wind was needed to keep the majority of the scorching flames back—Emilia sent off a few more messages, letting Boundary and Rin know that they were going to stop controlling the flames and didn’t know what would happen or how fast the fire would spread, as well as to ask if she should try to use her new {Blood Tattoo} once they were outside the building, assuming someone wasn’t able to come evacuate them before they reached the bottom.
Technically, she had no idea what the tattoo did, or if it would even work, broken as it seemed to be. Might be worth a shot, though. Either the flames would destabilize the building at this level and that ones around it, or it would continue to spread. Eventually, it would probably collapse on its own from the damage, but in the meantime, the residents might figure out what was happening and start teleporting away—either to another building or to the outside world. That would kinda defeat the purpose of destroying the building, as only the innocent were liable to end up dead.
Actually, why weren’t more of the Clarity members who were corrupted by the heartcores either coming for them or at least evacuating to other buildings? Enough members had come for them that it was clear they knew where they were, but according to Phlostra’s numbers, the majority hadn’t bothered trying to fight them.
⸂Our best guess is that they have been told to stay put by their leader,⸃ Rin messaged when she asked, just as their little threesome had begun to move, the inferno behind them swelling and sparking now that Hyr’s wind was focused solely on keeping them from burning to death. ⸂Many of the Clarity members we have found have not touched enough heartcores for the hive mind to have the ability to take them over at any given moment. It comes and goes, much like with the Risen Guard’s alternative personality. They are still a danger, but they cannot be controlled at will by the hive mind.⸃
⸂Perhaps it’s that Ajarni knows those who aren’t completely affected by the hive mind won’t be controllable? Nearly everyone I’ve come across trusts Ajarni, but when they realize exactly what he’s doing… Well, the hive mind takes over and then their regular mind can’t fight back. If the hive mind isn’t entrenched enough in someone for that to happen… even telling them to evacuate may cause them to develop doubts,⸃ Emilia messaged back as she dragged Hyr along, taking corners wide so they wouldn’t accidentally bump into the wall and could let their mind focus on keeping them from burning to death while she navigated.
Well, not navigated. Zyrex was still leading their group, because as much as she’d managed to follow her map well enough to get Sk’lar where they needed him, that had pretty much burnt the bit of her brain that could map to a crisp. It would need some time to recover because as it was, she was thinking in circles and the fact that they had a fiery death to avoid wasn’t exactly the sort of encouragement she wanted for doing a good job.
⸂That makes sense,⸃ Rin responded, along with a message that they had evacuated their group to another building, and would be continuing to remove more people there, as well as ask around about Ajarni—Emilia had already told her and Boundary about their run in with Sk’lar, and how they thought Key might be on a level below them.
So far, no one had heard from Ajarni in a while. Their group had sent a few Clarity members who were fully taken by the hive mind off to be interrogated, hoping to glean even a bit of information from them. So far, the Risen Guard had had no luck.
It was a little unfortunate that Conrad was gone. As horrific as his methods of interrogation had been, at least he had been able to get things out of even the Clarity members he questioned. Better yet, while they weren’t completely positive, both she and Conrad assumed his energy membrane had also disconnected them from the hive mind’s information network. In other words, while Ajarni and the rest of the hive mind would be getting back information about whatever questions the Risen Guard interrogators were asking, that probably hadn’t been the case when Conrad had questioned their now dead members—assuming the Risen Guard didn’t have someone with a similar gift, anyways.
Actually, Ajarni might not even know she and Conrad had questioned his people and then killed them.
Emilia supposed it was a bit like the Virtuosi System stations in the Data-Recovery Lab, except in reverse. Where the stations they used in class were protected from outside threats, due to their isolation, hive members who were removed from it were a liability, whatever they said an unknown to their colleagues.
Of course, the Virtuosi Systems in the lab also struggled when they needed to be updated. It was a whole thing, having to choose between taking the time to update them individually, while they remained offaether, or risk connecting them to the aethernet to let them update automatically. Speed vs the risk of a virus.
A virus.
A virus.
A—
Oh. That could actually be a good idea, assuming they could make it work.
[Emilia: hey, boundary, is there anyone in the risen guard who knows the gifts and abilities of every member?]
[Emilia: preferably someone who’d be willing to talk to me directly, so i can tell them my idea on how to take out everyone connected to the hive mind at once?]