Arc 2 | Chapter 47: Not a Good Cover Story

Emilia was sure, that if she could only focus hard enough, she could tune out the sound of Harmony droning on and on about

responsibility

and how inconsiderate she was. The girl really did enjoy lording over people, even her brother cringing away from her as she let all her frustrations go on Emilia.

Sk’lar seemed the least put out by her ranting, although he didn’t try to stop her, either. Emilia had the feeling there was more to the man and his relationship with the Stringer siblings than they were letting on. Key had vaguely told her he was a childhood friend, but unless he had aged particularly badly, he was clearly at least a decade older than them.

He also still gave Emilia the creeps, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It wasn’t exactly the same as the feeling people with black knots gave her, nor the feeling of someone who was simply dangerous—which she had no doubt he was. There was something else to him, something mysterious and most certainly more frightening than even a black knot or skill that could destroy the entire world was.

Emilia had known more than a few people with world ending abilities, usually they were just regular people, although that was probably because The Black Knot swiped up people with personality issues pretty damn fast. Well, criminal organizations snatched them up too, but they generally weren’t any more interested in destroying the world than the government.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to try to judge the tall, seemingly laid-back man based on her own world’s fucked up way of managing dangerous people, though. The better plan was to treat him with a distant respect and hope whatever was up with him wasn’t going to be a problem for her.

Emilia yawned as Harmony continued ranting on. They were making their way through the library, which was maintained by an Enclave member who had helpfully closed the doors due to a

“sudden staff shortage,”

and kicked everyone but them out. It wasn’t exactly the most subtle of plans, but by the time the truly scary members of the Risen Guard managed to get word of the library’s odd hours, they would hopefully be long gone.

⸂

You cannot jump from just anywhere,⸃

Key had explained when she’d asked about what was stopping the Risen Guard in the city from using the technique to go alert the higher ups before Harmony had started going off on her. ⸂

Even the Guard must use the landing pads.⸃

He had grimaced slightly, telling her that while jumping to specific locations was relatively easy, the chances of accidentally landing inside something—or worse, someone—were relatively high.

The landing pads were an easy way to manage that risk, and while they had jumped directly between a pad near the Stringer household and this city’s, when they wished to travel further, they would need to jump between several interconnected cities, each with designated landing pads between them for safety.

“So… they have to notice something is up, go to the landing pad, and then get to wherever the big bag Risen Guards are?”

⸂

Yes, and they are quite a few jumps away.⸃

Key’s lips twitched in amusement and pride—wherever he had managed to get that information from, it must have been unexpected. ⸂

We chose this heartcore not only because of how close to our home it is, but because it is relatively removed from the Risen Guard’s personal landing pads.⸃

⸂

They maintain a network of their own pads,⸃

Rin had told her, eyes glued to Harmony, who had looked about one wrong word away from exploding at all of them. ⸂

Due to magic and cost constraints, only the main cities are directly connected.⸃

They had gone back and forth a bit after that, Rin and her discussing some of what she had learned from Zach—although she had kept his name out of it—as they climbed the long, winding staircase. Both Rin and Key had been impressed with how much she had learned in such a short period of time. Sk’lar had offered to fight her—show her that she really knew nothing—once she gained access to the system. Harmony had asked if she had any leads on how to access it.

“A few,”

Emilia had said, before falling silent and refusing to say more, no matter how loudly Harmony screamed at her—or how long. She’d been yelling for at least two stories now, and Emilia was quite done with her tantrum.

“You know this is a competition for us, right?” she finally cut in, between Harmony’s huffing breaths. “I know that’s cold, given that you guys are suffering, but I’m not going to give you information that you could give to one of my competitors.” Just saying it made Emilia feel dirty, even if it was true. That said, she’d probably share information with the right person. Harmony was definitely

not

the right person.

⸂We aren’t going to give the information to anyone!⸃ the girl hissed, her normally beautiful features hidden under a mask of increasingly red ire. ⸂We don’t

have

anyone to tell!⸃

“Not now, but your grandmother made it pretty damn clear she hates me,” she said, pausing so Rin could translate her words for Key and Sk’lar, although the older man didn’t seem to be paying attention to their argument, his fingers running absently over the magic engraved into the staircase’s banister—for fire and theft protection, allegedly.

⸂My grandmother will come around,⸃ Key said, his voice filled with childish conviction. It was sweet, if too innocent for this kind of situation, especially since Emilia was pretty sure that woman rarely—if ever—changed her opinion.

Nope, she was just going to perpetually be on the woman’s bad side… unless she won. If she did manage to change the world—receive the Blessing of the Harbinger—she was sure the woman would go around singing her own praises. ⸂

Of course, I always knew that girl would be the one. I just knew she needed a little extra push! This is all due to me~ ho ho ho~

⸃

Okay, so, maybe she wouldn’t say that

exactly,

but the vibes would definitely be there. The ⸂

I’m the one you should be thanking⸃

vibes.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Emilia said, rather than burst the boy’s bubble.

It was easy to forget that these people were far younger than her—she was actually closer to the Stringer Matriarch in age, although none of them had mentioned it, if they even knew. Emilia wasn’t about to tell them how differently people in her world aged, and she imagined most other heroes felt the same way—it was almost always better that people assume you were younger and more innocent than you actually were.

On top of that, while she might have as many decades under her as the Stringer Matriarch, but their cultures were completely different. Inside, Emilia was just a university student—a few decades older than normal, yes, but one nonetheless. She wasn’t a grandmother or even a mother. She didn’t have a family to run—only one to run from. She might be more experienced than these children, but her culture had moulded her into someone barely older than them mentally, even with all the war and trauma inside her. Living through a war wasn’t the same as living through a life.

If anything, the empty looks she occasionally saw pass through her new friends’ eyes, memories and fear welling up inside them, told her

they

might very well feel older inside than her. A lifetime of conflict and tension versus her few decades, even if those years added up the same. Growing up in what might as well be considered a war zone, always worried for their lives, was far different from stepping into war as an almost formed adult. Take away these children’s innocence and naïveté? Emilia was afraid of what she would find, of what horrors were buried inside not just them, but the children who had grown up during her world’s war as well.

⸂I swear my grandmother is nice,⸃ Key insisted, glaring at Sk’lar when he snorted. ⸂She is!⸃

⸂That old bat would rather see the world burn than not be the one responsible for saving it,⸃ the man said, darting out of the way when a burst of magic surged towards him, although Emilia couldn’t tell which of the siblings it had originated from.

⸂Watch your mouth,⸃ Harmony said, her shit mood shifting onto her so-called childhood friend.

It really was a bad cover. Harmony seemed to outright hate the man, while Key treated him with a passive disinterest.

“What is he to them, really?” Emilia whispered to Rin as Key sighed, his own anger with the man vanishing as fast as it had appeared as he began trying to diffuse the fight.

⸂There will be problems if you ruin any of the tomes,⸃ he insisted, although neither Sk’lar nor his sister appeared to hear him through their argument.

⸂I was told what you were told,⸃ Rin replied, her voice a whisper of cool indifference and disbelief over Emilia’s core. ⸂I also do not believe them.⸃

Emilia snorted as they passed the trio, leaving them behind to continue up the stairs. Outside, the building had reached up to the ceiling itself, disappearing into the magic splattered metal. Occasionally, a window opened up, and each floor the ceiling grew closer, closer, until Emilia could make out a number of huge circles built into it, each covered by the same odd collection of metal plates spiralling towards their centres.

⸂They open to create darkness,⸃ Rin told her as they stopped in front of what seemed to be the last window before they reached the ceiling. ⸂The plates slide open, revealing the magic beneath.⸃

“Is that common knowledge or just something the Risen Guard know about?” she asked. She’d found, through conversations with the former Risen Guard trainee, that numerous pieces of information she would have thought everyone would have widely known were actually only known by the Risen Guard—officially, at least. Zach had been the same, sharing tidbits of the most seemingly banal information with her while simultaneously telling her almost no one knew.

Rin stared out the window, expression blank as usual, as her muddy red eyes passed over the tops of buildings, most of which were barely half as high as the ceiling. ⸂It is relatively common knowledge. Anyone may visit the library and watch the eyes open. However, I do know more about them than most, as my mother was an architect. I would ask her questions, when I was younger.⸃

“Didn’t want to follow in her footsteps?” Emilia asked, leaning against the window frame as they waited for the others to catch up, their yelling now a distant echo. She wasn’t even sure they had noticed the two of them leave, perhaps the only sign they actually had known each other since childhood: the ease at which the world fell away until only the three of them existed.

⸂I would have,⸃ Rin said slowly, as though she wasn’t used to answering such questions—which maybe she wasn’t. She had already said people rarely refused an invitation to join the Risen Guard, or perhaps no one had ever bothered to ask what she actually wanted in life. ⸂My mother died long ago. Becoming an architect died with her.⸃

The girl turned, continuing upwards, telling Emilia the others would catch up as she scrambled to follow.

“Do they do that a lot?”

⸂Often enough that I have learned to not wait for them unless I want a headache.⸃

Emilia laughed as they went, trying to coax stories of the trio out of her new friend—they could be considered friends now, right? Rin didn’t disagree with the friendship sentiment when Emilia claimed that as friends, they should totally be sharing embarrassing stories about their other friends.

⸂You first,⸃ Rin said, eyes filled with rare amusement as she slid a challenging look at Emilia.

Emilia hummed and hawed, going over potential options in her head. The problem was that a lot of her stories were sex stories, especially the newer ones, where pretty much everyone in her friend group were low-key sex addicts. The goal was to tell embarrassing stories and get more details on the Stringers, not embarrass Rin with stories of Sil being caught with his pants down.

She contemplated going back further, back to her childhood, but those memories were too painful—too close to the desperate want for family and friends that was beginning to swirl within her because of whatever Payton was doing—

Actually…

“I have this friend,” Emilia started, telling Rin a tamed down version of how she had gone to school with Payton for years, but they’d only become friends recently—a couple of days or a few hours recently, depending on your point of view. “He was a medic during the war, so people in our class have gone to him quite a bit for help with this and that. Sometimes it was just because he was there, other times it was at the clinic where he works.”

It was unfortunate that Rin was so against sex stories. Emilia had more than a few about classmates awkwardly asking her new friend about sex related issues. Once, a story had even gone around about how one of their former classmates—he had given up on the program after only a few years, being wholly unsuitable for doing anything with his brain—had tried to coerce Payton into helping him remove a foreign object from his ass. Apparently, the drugs had made him do it. Apparently, it was not his first time getting something stuck up his ass.

Payton had not been impressed, and while Emilia couldn’t

prove

he was the one who had leaked the story—the stuck-something-inside-him guy himself had actually blamed Elijah’s asshole friend for that—she was pretty sure it had been Payton. Elijah, for his part, had insisted his friend hadn’t told anyone about the guy’s anal experimentation, although Emilia was sure that if Payton hadn’t leaked it first, her boyfriend’s asshole friend certainly would have.

Unfortunately, Emilia couldn’t tell Rin about that, and was instead in the middle of telling her about the time someone had brought an injured wild animal in for Payton to look at. It had been adorable, watching Payton nurse the small, fuzzy creature back to health, until it had gotten lost in the building.

“This is a high-tech building,” Emilia told the other girl, trying to find the best way to explain what that meant to someone who lived in a world seemingly devoid of tech. “Imagine there are a lot of magical items—or even expensive food—in a building, and an animal is running around in it.”

⸂Damages.⸃

“Damages,” Emilia agreed, pausing as they passed a window, this one looking out into a black expanse. “Shit, that’s dark,” she muttered. If there hadn’t been a window, casting the barest of light out into the darkness, she would have been convinced the library was rising into something solid, and the window was just looking out into a wall. “Why isn’t whatever’s out there stealing the light from in here?” she asked, thinking back to the way anything that created darkness seemed to eat all the light it could find.

⸂Engravings on the building,⸃ Rin told her, stepping forward to point out a long stream of words etched into the window frame. ⸂It can neither become more nor less dark inside the library. The temperature is also maintained by magic.⸃

“Oh~” Emilia sighed, eyeing up the engravings. “Does that fall under the purview of architects? Or someone else?”

⸂A combination,⸃ Rin said, her voice suddenly sounding distant and distracted.

Emilia glanced back at her, eyes squinting as they readjusted to the moderate light of the library. “What are you looking at?” she asked, following the other girl’s eyes towards the floor. Her core reached out on instinct, searching for something amiss, and finding it just before the building began to shake.