Arc 2 | Chapter 44: Just a Little Lost

Emilia was pretty damn sure the Stringer Matriarch—which was literally what Key and Harmony’s horrible, awful, miserable grandmother had introduced herself as—

hated

her.

The feeling was mutual.

The woman, old and wrinkly and smelling of decay hidden behind a too thick slathering of perfume, was somehow the most severe woman Emilia had ever had the displeasure of encountering—and she had known her fair share of terrible, grumpy, stick in the mud old ladies over the many decades of her life. She also had

expectations

of Emilia as the Stringer family’s Harbinger Candidate—she’d made it extra clear that she was currently only a

candidate,

something Key had tried to argue against. Emilia was sure she wouldn’t last long as a candidate, as she absolutely refused to go along with anyone’s expectations—her brain just wouldn’t let her, and the woman had done absolutely nothing to convince her to cooperate since they had met.

What kind of woman sneers at another for crying over people killed for miscarrying? The kind of woman who should be pushed into a dumpster fire, that’s who.

⸂Blood is dangerous. Spilling any, no matter the reason, is prohibited and must be punished without hesitation until the world is set right.⸃

Emilia had glowered at the woman, mouth pressing into a tight, unhappy line. She could have argued, debated the woman’s horrific views until the raid ended. She had known it would be a waste of breath. People like

that

rarely changed their views, and even when they did, there were a thousand other, more insidious beliefs buried inside their festering souls.

Plus, the woman had gone on talking, words never stilling as she talked down to their group. Key was impulsive. Key had endangered them all. Key would be lucky if Rin would be allowed to live after this.

The Stringer Matriarch hadn’t even bothered to look at the girl she as she spoke, her eyes focused entirely on her grandson. Occasionally, as she reprimanded him for being a

⸂stupid little boy,⸃

her eyes had flicked to Emilia, searching for something that Emilia had promptly decided she did not have—and if she did, she most certainly wasn’t letting this old bag know about it.

She had been obstinate after that, refusing to answer questions with anything but the most basic answers or outright lies. This hadn’t exactly made things better for Key, his grandmother eventually having turned to him and told him he had made a bad decision, bringing someone like ⸂

this ill-behaved child here.⸃

The last words the woman had said, just as Harmony and a man Emilia eventually learned was her and Key’s father—the Stringer Matriarch’s son-in-law—arrived, was that Emilia was Key’s problem now.

⸂The Stringer family will find someone better suited to even be a candidate, let along our Harbinger. Take this child away from here. Leave her to the Risen Guard to dispose of. I do not want to see her again.⸃

Honestly, the woman had better hope the Risen Guard did dispose of her because if Emilia ever figured out how to access the system and this world’s magic, the woman was probably going to be on the receiving end of her anger.

Thankfully, Key had taken his grandmother’s dismissal as a challenge, and now they, along with the rest of Key’s group, were wandering through a city, intent on visiting another heartcore. Or, at least, they had been. Emilia had, rather accidentally, gotten lost.

It wasn’t her fault, okay!? Her sense of direction had always been rather horrible, as previously noted, and there was just so much to see! Plus, Rin and Harmony had joined their magic together to create a temporary illusion spell for her, turning her hair, eyes and complexion into something closer to that of locals. It wasn’t perfect, and it wouldn’t last long—only a few hours, apparently, then they’d have to recharge it—but for the moment no one was giving her more than the occasional double take.

So, when Emilia had stalled for a moment—just a second, really—and then turned to find her new friends gone? Disappeared into the early morning crowd? Well, it wasn’t like she could just stand there and wait for them to come back. She’d wandered off the main road, following a mouthwatering smell down an alley, and used some of the money Key had given her for emergencies—and her now grumbly tummy was totally an emergency—to buy some sort of sweet, warm dessert. It was delicious, and Emilia had turned back and gotten a second helping before reaching the end of the street.

She was wandering through the streets now, listening to the people talk. It was so much louder now, the aether vibrating around her with words of all volumes and privacy. Children giggled around her, parents beginning to appear to usher them towards schools. People—mostly men—were making their ways towards the giant doors at the centre of each of this city’s walls, just as wide and towering as the ones of that first city. Doors that led to elevators that would take them away to their jobs, she was able to glean by eavesdropping on the locals.

The most interesting thing she learned—confirmed, really—however, wasn’t from the city itself, but from the fact that Key couldn’t find her with that aether jumping magic of his. He had brought them into the city, onto a landing pad of sorts. Combined with what she had seen the day before, with the way she had seen the aether bend with him as he moved around her room, she had guessed the magic could only move him to a specific place. In other words, he couldn’t use it to find a specific person—to find her.

That was fine by her, she was perfectly content to explore. She’d been told the basics of where this city’s heartcore was and would come across the library that housed it eventually. The worst that would happen is she would die, which, to be honest, she wasn’t completely convinced she could do. She had no particular proof of that, just an unsettling feeling that even if she hurled herself down an elevator shaft she’d somehow survive—or, at least, her consciousness wouldn’t return to her body until the raid ended. She didn’t exactly want to die—even if platforms

could

mitigate some of the unpleasantness of virtual death, that didn’t mean it

would

—but knowing she couldn’t escape this place by offing herself was a bit unsettling. It would have been nice to have an emergency out.

Emilia paused as she passed a store, the bright red circle above the door having drawn her eye. Most of the businesses had some sort of foreign writing over them, but this one had nothing but the circle. The inside of the store was dark, when she pushed into it, the hinges of the door loose and rattling. Thick red curtains were pulled over all the windows, thick streaks of the light eating substance smeared over the walls and ceilings and robbing the world of its light. Even through the dark, she could see a thin layer of dust settled over nearly every surface.

“Hello?” she called out, immediately smacking herself in the head.

“Seriously? ‘Hello?’ As though we aren’t supposed to be pretending to be a local who can’t speak? Dumbass,”

she scolded herself. Harmony had been the one to point out, when they had been discussing the issue of travelling with someone who couldn’t communicate via the aether, that there were some locals whose grip of magic was so fleeting that they couldn’t speak. It was rare, yes, but not unheard of. With her colouring shifted to something natural, people were more likely to assume she was muted, rather than a visitor in disguise.

That only worked as long as she didn’t fuck up and speak!

⸂Hello, miss,⸃ a voice called out to her, young and quiet, and when Emilia located the source of the voice she was unsurprised to find a small girl. ⸂You don’t look like most visitors.⸃

“No?” Emilia asked, smiling at the child. She was cute, with her long waves and big, bright eyes, her pupils dilated in the dim light.

The girl shook her head vigorously. ⸂Nuh-uh! Granny said visitors never know to look like us. Said the visitors don’t spread information about this place in their world.⸃

That was about what she had heard from the Stringer Matriarch, that visitors rarely arrived with information about this world.

⸂They come often enough, that many say they are surprised there is so little information circulating among the pros—whatever that means. Perhaps that has changed?⸃

It had been like pulling teeth, trying to get the damn woman to tell her

why

she thought it might have changed, and by the time she finally told her, Emilia had been angry enough to lie to her.

⸂

The last time visitors arrived, there was no Harbinger. Blood magic is taboo in your world, is what each of our candidates told us. They considered it unnatural and could not think of ways in which to utilize it. They failed to find the system, and we remain as we are, with blood destroying the world and the Risen Guard gaining more power with each passing day.⸃

“Blood is the key to accessing the system?”

Emilia had asked, fingers tapping over her chair, toes wiggling and legs flexing as the Stringer Matriarch explained that the last Blessing of the Harbinger—the world altering change visitors were apparently capable of bestowing on the platform—was always the key to finding the system for the next batch of visitors.

⸂

Stop that!

⸃ the woman had hissed, face twitching with annoyance as she glared at Emilia’s tapping fingers. ⸂

It is unbecoming for you to fidget. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to sit still?

⸃

“Yes, actually, someone did. I eventually pushed them into the ocean,”

Emilia had wanted to say.

Instead, she had smiled politely, and she forced her limbs to chill, before lying to the bitch, explaining that there was a war in their world a decade previous. This, the woman, as well as Key and Rin, had known, most platforms having been created since the war ended. What they hadn’t known was how secretive the government was about what had occurred during the war.

“Slowly, more information is being released,”

Emilia had told them, Key and Rin tensely watching their conversation. That part was true. The government was slowly releasing bits of information about what had occurred during the war, but what she told them after that, that the government had revealed that one of the most powerful soldiers of the war had used blood magic—blood skills—over the course of the war? That that person had brought the war to an end through blood and destruction? Well, it was true that she

had

done those things, but the government certainly hadn’t revealed it to anyone.

Would that information make it back to other Harbinger Candidates? Probably, but if she ever ran into them, she’d just convince them she made it up. She was good at lying to people, and there were so few blood skills—none of which were in the public domain—that she was pretty sure most people wouldn’t believe the tale about blood skills being used by war heroes anyways.

She also wasn’t completely convinced the old woman’s story was true because even she knew enough about platforms to know that while blood skills and magics weren’t exactly common, neither were they unheard of. For no one to have been willing to interact with this world’s blood magic? Something about that didn’t seem right, although she had no idea whether the Stringer Matriarch was lying or if the visitors had decided not to cooperate with the Enclave, for whatever reason.

Emilia smiled at the little girl, telling her that it was simply a coincidence that her colouring was similar to the locals.

The girl nodded sagely, as though she had known all along that Emilia must just be lucky, and it occurred to her that what

was

weird was that the girl could hear her.

“You’re not like other locals,” she noted, trying not to laugh when the girl’s eyes flew wide, and she slapped her hands to her ears, as though that would cover the fact that her hearing was less reduced than was typical—not to mention having some way to translate her words.

⸂Her grandfather was a visitor,⸃ a man said, appearing in a nearby doorway, his bulky frame taking up the entirety of it. The girl bolted towards him, hiding behind his leg. An echo of an apology surrounded the pair, and the man gently pat her on the head. ⸂Why don’t you go play, little one.⸃

The girl nodded, giving Emilia a wary look before disappearing further into the building.

The man gave Emilia an assessing look, eyes scanning slowly over her before he stepped forward. ⸂You lied to my daughter. That is illusion magic,⸃ he stated as he came to stand behind the counter. He didn't exactly look mad that she had lied to his child, more cautious of her general existence in the shop—more concerned that she knew something she shouldn’t.

Emilia shrugged, holding the man’s gaze as she said, “I figured it was better that she doesn't realize I was trying to hide in plain sight. I suppose, since you two are the same, I probably don’t have much to worry about.” She winked conspiratorially at the man. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.”