Arc 5 | Chapter 168: Just a Grieving Mother

The building Phlostra led them through was just as dreary as the rest of the Clarity City System. Everything was grey and flat, and while a random hideout—base? Emilia wasn’t actually sure what to think of this place as—didn’t exactly demand decor… Well, their unit’s own bases had always been filled to the brim with everyone’s memories of home, even more after they gained a more permanent base at Alliance Ridge.

And after? After, they had still had a base, giant, moving thing that it was—they hadn’t been willing to risk another Alliance Ridge, hadn’t been willing to set themselves up for another destructive attack that would obliterate half their numbers and tens of thousands of civilians in a single strike. That home—hidden as it now was—had been a home, with its sparkling curtains, constant stream of baked goods and permanent altars to the lost.

The altars weren’t really a Baalphorian thing. In Baalphoria deaths just… were. There were no graves, like she’d seen erected in some Free Colonies, no altars to lost family members in people’s homes as she’d seen in others. The most Baalphorian’s had were pictures, hung on walls in mismatched frames, matching the era the subject had died during.

Not for their unit’s lost—not after that day. The loss of Alliance Ridge had altars and pictures in so many house—and even more in the minds of their friends, Emilia herself having a special room inside her Censor for visiting her deceased friends. Then there was Alliance Ridge itself, forced into the form of a giant burial ground for all the bodies that had been burned into the aether there.

Several morbid jokes about not needing to pay for any cremations had been made, each just as burned into her memory—the heart-rending laughs that had followed as well.

You don’t survive a war without carving a pretty dark sense of humour into yourself, even if she hadn’t survived it as well as she might have liked.

All that said, this place was nothing like the bases and hideout they had made for themselves during the war. Maybe there was no need, this some rarely used location or place where Clarity members spent little time.

The dirt caking the floor, the garbage can full of discarded food containers, the supplies in a closest that had been left ajar—all of those things told her that probably wasn’t true.

This place was used—used and lifeless, perhaps a reflection of the empty hive minds that floated through it?

Phlostra rounded a corner, followed by Rin—and Emilia really had to commend how brave the local girl was. More than any of them, her life was in the most danger in this place. Still, she didn’t hesitate to follow a woman she didn’t know—someone who, from everything Emilia had told her, was just as much an enemy as any other Clarity member.

Not that Emilia herself believed that much, at the moment. She had seen the look on Phlostra’s face mirrored a thousand times over on the faces of parents, as she told them their child was dead. On Halen’s mother’s face. On her ex’s grandparents. On Naomi’s fathers’ and the parents of dozens of other friends she had lost during the war.

Stars above, she had even seen that look on perpetually cheerful Helix’s face, when she’d told him his father was dead—burned himself out, trying to protect the very people who had scoffed at him for daring to bring

a child like that

into their lives.

As much as Phlostra was a Clarity member, she was also a mother—a grandmother—who had just sent half her family off to die. Emilia didn’t know why that made her different—or if it was something else entirely, driving her to act against Ajarni—but for the moment, she saw no reason to doubt the woman, especially not when she’d drawn blood—spiked nails through her own palms—in order to break the control of the hive mind.

Impressive, and so much like the skills she’d learned from Rafe’s family library that she had to smile and—

And…

Emilia’s steps stuttered, Key sending her a concerned glance as they turned the corner and walked into a room chock-full of Clarity members. She barely registered them; her brain was elsewhere, back in the Livery Labyrinth, back learning magic from the kids—learning about keeping her mind blank and… and…

And what had it been? It was so long ago, a thousand bits of conversations filling those days trapped in that labyrinth with dozens of terrified children, each of them fraying at the edges. There had been a moment, though, when all the homeless kids gathered around her.

⸂

Just like Carne, right?

⸃

Who had said that? Well, that didn’t matter. Only the context did—the context that she had snapped herself out of a panic attack—

No, not a panic attack. She’d been snapping herself out of her anger—anger so powerful it had blasted the terrible host straight out of the challenge. At the time, she hadn’t understood what the kids were talking about, and when their words had quickly escalated into an argument over whether Carne was a good influence or not, she had just sort of tuned them out, more concerned with getting the kids what food she could. In the end, as more of the homed kids snapped out of their stupor, she’d never asked what the kids meant—what about that moment had reminded them of Carne.

What if it was this: that Ash was capable of snapping themself out of their heartcore personality through the same brutal methods Emilia used to break her panic attacks and moments of uncontrollable power? The same method Phlostra had just used to keep her hive mind at bay?

Emilia didn’t know if that was helpful, but it was interesting, especially since it implied that both of them had at least some awareness and control while their alternate personalities were in control.

⸂Emilia!⸃ Rin hissed, and Emilia finally blinked back into the present, smiling as though nothing amiss had happened.

Rin did not look impressed, Key looked like he hadn’t even noticed she’d zoned out, and while Phlostra still looked miserable, Emilia could see a hint of curious amusement lingering under her sadness.

“Phlostra,” she greeted the woman, eyes skimming the room for any other face she recognized—mostly Fran’s—and finding none. One or two might have been at the meeting with Ajarni, but she couldn’t be certain—most of the attendants had avoided her, unless they were glaring at her and V when they’d had the audacity to quietly chat during Ajarni’s speech.

⸂Emilia,⸃ the woman replied, motioning for them to take seats.

Five seats were vacant, the Clarity woman taking the only one that looked like it actually belonged at the table.

“Did you think the other girl was with us?” Emilia asked, half curious, half intent to simply lighten the mood—or at least not leave too much awkward silence, now that they had begun to speak.

⸂Yes. Clearly she was not.⸃

“Nope! Just some crazy chick I pissed off back in Livery!”

⸂That is the city those children are from, yes?⸃ another man at the table asked. He looked just as tired—just as full of mourning—as Phlostra. So did nearly everyone else at the table, although a few looked more pissed than sad.

Emilia nodded, explaining in broad strokes how that particular situation had gone down. V might have told Phlostra, but couldn’t be sure—and the woman was certainly making no move to silence her. Plus, while she had no idea if these people were on their side yet, telling them that more members of Conrad’s family may be inside the city system couldn’t hurt… probably.

⸂They likely acquired a blood weapon from all that,⸃ an ancient woman who looked like she hadn’t slept in days said softly. Several people at the table shifted uncomfortably, and Emilia had to tell them it had, but that weapon was gone—tucked away into Risen Guard storage, likely to never be seen again.

If she left out the fact that the family might have an entirely different weapon of mass destruction on them, and that the Risen Guard was currently trying to get their hands on one that could be used on the Clarity City System, well… only Key and Rin knew, and they weren’t any more likely than she was to mention that.

“So, what are we doing here?” Emilia asked, as though they hadn’t been the ones lingering outside the building, trying to get someone’s attention.

Given the way Phlostra’s eyebrows raised, she was clearly aware of this fact as well, but chose not to point it out. ⸂What happened to my daughter?⸃ she asked instead, eyes glaring her down like if she looked hard enough, she could see straight into Emilia’s soul.

Actually, considering how they’d first met—how Phlostra had seemingly seen straight into her and guessed at her newly discovered gift and the way she itched to touch the arrays that littered the tunnel into the city system—the woman probably could do exactly that. Twelve gifts—just like every other member of Clarity, this woman had visited the labyrinths at least twelve times, touched the heartcores at least that many times. Who was to say she hadn’t become a mind reader, from one of those gifts?

“She attacked me,” Emilia said honestly, ignoring the shifting murmurs of the other people around the table. “I guess I should have listened to V, way back when he and Fran first found us. I was… jealous, of the way Fran seemed to think she had a claim on him. I antagonized her, more than once, then I antagonized her and your daughter after we came here.” Her lips quirked as she told the group, her eyes never leaving Phlostra’s, that V had told her more than once to stop poking at them.

⸂She attacked you over a man?⸃ someone at the table asked—Emilia had no idea who. Most people seemed to indicate they were talking through movement, to make up for their aethervoice seeming to leak out of the aether itself. Whoever was talking now didn’t move, and while she knew it was none of the people who had previously spoken, this man’s voice scratchy and rough, like he’d spent too much time smoking—or screaming—there were nearly a dozen more people at the table.

Emilia cocked her head, considering. “Maybe. It’s not like I could read her mind. I think… I actually think Fran really liked V, so it was probably at least partially that. I also just think Jerrina didn’t like me much.” Shrugging, she told them about what had happened after Jerrina had attacked her: that her {Blood Ball} had unexpectedly protected her, and then the Ingogia family had shown up.

No one looked surprised as she related what the Ingogia family had told them, and she wondered if they’d already know Ajarni was in league with the Enclave, or if news of what had been said had made it back to Clarity as a whole. The people she and Conrad had questioned had only mentioned Jerrina messaging Fran, and then the news spreading to other groups from there. They hadn’t said anything about messages sent to Clarity members who had remained in the city system, or who may have returned.

If they had already known, had they known what they were sending their family and friends into? Emilia didn’t think so.

⸂So, Jerrina…⸃ Phlostra cut off, her blonde eyelashes fluttering as she held back tears.

“She was terrifying,” Emilia said genuinely. “Out of all the members of our group and the one we joined up with, she killed the most Ingogia members”—that was information they’d gotten out of someone as well—“and she even tried to kill me a few more times in there as well! So yeah… the Ingogia family killed her. She was just too dangerous to keep around.”

Emilia was going to leave out the part about how some of Jerrina’s last words had been about how everything at the Ingogia estate had been her fault. As much as she hadn’t much liked the woman, Emilia hadn’t generally been one for rubbing salt in the wounds of mourners—not unless they asked for it by being asshats, anyways.

Phlostra wasn’t being an asshat. She was just a mother, grieving for the family she had left in Ajarni’s care.

Family

—Yuka was her step-grandchild, and while Emilia could understand why the woman cared more for her child, something about her completely lack of questioning about what had happened to Yuka was odd and foreboding.

⸂Yuka?⸃ Phlostra sighed out when Emilia asked about it—asked why she hadn’t wanted to know a single thing about what had happened to their step-grandchild, not that Emilia knew. No one had seen Yuka, since the Ingogia family had killed or imprisoned their group. ⸂Yuka returned from the mission alive,⸃ she said, an edge of ice leaking into her voice.

Well, that would explain it, wouldn’t it?

Interesting, though, that Phlostra was asking Emilia about her daughter, when Yuka had seen just as well as she had what had happened to Jerrina.