Arc 5 | Chapter 179: Am I Stupid, or is it Something Else?

<<Down, down, down~ We go down, down, down! Down to the depths and then further still! Down we go, into the hell below. Hot and red and burning bright, we go down into the light!>>

Emilia jumped down a step as she sang, idly thinking of how far she’d come. It had been weeks since she’d first entered the raid, and yet while so much had happened, it all felt like it had gone by impossibly fast. It probably didn’t help that she’d barely slept, catching long, nightmare filled sleeps here and there, along with short—also nightmare filled—naps along the way. Combined with all the stress, the labyrinths, multiple kidnappings and more stress…

Yeah, it was pretty understandable that her sense of time had become totally fucked.

Less than a day—that was how much time she had left in this world.

Less than a day to save this world—or at least keep Clarity and certain shitty Enclave families from destroying the framework of the world, corrupt as it was. Hopefully, they’d be able to do something to make this world better, but with so little time left, she really wasn’t holding her breath.

<<Dream, dream, dream~>> she sang, lyrics shifting the same way they had that first day, when time had first begun to spin out of control. “We shall dream, dream, dream! Dream of a world that won’t bend or break! Dream we will, we will never stop. Free and true and love so strong, we shall dream ‘till the end of days!”

Even back then, she’d slept and dreamt, her nightmare ripping apart under the force of the blood curse before she even knew it was a thing.

Emilia shook off memories of those dreams. The fact that they had seemed to hold prophecies of the world within them, misshapen as they’d been, wasn’t something she wanted to consider—especially considering how many visions she’d had of real people, dead and living.

That was another thing she was less than a day away from, annoyingly: figuring out what to do once she returned to her world.

Over the last weeks, her intentions had shifted this way and that, giving her whiplash for how often they changed as she experienced this world’s conflicts and Payton brutally—tenderly—tugged her knots loose.

The person she’d been when she entered the raid was gone, some version of her who had never before existed standing in that person’s place. She was not the Emilia of the past, no matter where she looked in her life. That… had not been what she was expecting, as strange as that sounded even to herself.

Obviously, after experiencing weeks within the raid, she would be different. Obviously, after having so much of her self-inflicted knots removed, she would be different. The person who came out of the raid was never going to be the one who had entered.

Hopping down another stair and turning on her heel to start down the next set of stairs—Carne and the universe had said nothing about how far down she was supposed to go, and currently she was intent to keep going down—she wondered what she had expected. Probably to be closer to the broken person who had come out of the war? That person had been powerful but shattered, and she was glad not to be them, but that

had

been what she’d been expecting, and she’d been willing to accept the pain that would come along with the terror those knots to her Balance Levels had caused her.

Mostly, she’d just been hoping that the combination of distance and friends so completely disconnected from the war and her unit would be enough to ground her.

Part of her wanted to assume it was everything that had occurred within the raid, while Payton had still been working through her knots, that had grounded her. There had been so many moments where she’d been forced to confront her beliefs about herself and what her friends would want from her. Moments where she had regretted and loved and promised to do better. There was passion reignited within her and a desire for friends and family she hadn’t seen in a decade.

Some of that had definitely helped, but as her steps faltered—as something tugged her attention towards the city level she was about to pass—she knew that her experiences here weren’t the entire reason she felt so much like the person she had been before toxic blame had been spewed her way. The other part was Payton. While Emilia was certain the man hadn’t managed to completely unknot her, he had either managed to pull a few of her traumatic knots loose or had put in his own additive knots—ones that were doing a much better job of managing her mental state than her own slapped on, bandages of trauma control had done.

Seriously, she was going to owe him so, so much. Unfortunately, even on the off chance she managed to win them those tickets to Ship o’ Stars, offering to take him with her was more a punishment than anything else.

Once again, a thought wiggled through her brain, digging for information that her Censor probably would have been able to find, but her current brain just sent back a scream of,

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR!”

and then the thought was gone. Poof. Whatever the slippery thought her brain couldn’t decipher was, it wasn’t sticking around for her to puzzle out. Maybe it would come back, once she was back in the real world, so she could ask her Censor what in the world it was on about.

On the other hand, the niggling feeling that this was the city level she needed to investigate wasn’t going anywhere, and Emilia hoofed it back up a few flights to open the hidden door. Much like the exit she, Rin and Key had gone through during their combination

search for Clarity members and escape Conrad’s crazy family,

this lock also involved a finicky puzzle. Luckily, it was just as simple—if time-consuming—as the first one, and she didn’t have an attack barrelling down on her this time. So, easy-peasy.

The lock popped, the door swung open and Emilia skipped down the stairs towards it.

As her map had already told her, this city level was actually inhabited, and unlike the previous times Emilia had made her way through a city level, she had nothing to even try to cover her hair with… or her {Blood Armour}. Her clothes had been lost in the fight with the Ingogia family—or, technically, Jerrina’s attacks had destroyed them—and then her lovely, oh-so-warm sweater from Boundary had caught fire during her fight with Livia.

So, no clothes. No pants, shirt or even shoes.

If she’d been thinking clearly, she would have made Conrad give up his clothes to her before she killed him. Neither of them had been thinking clearly, and Emilia was more than a little concerned about that because they had known there was a chance that The Quiet Boy had been inside too many labyrinths. They should have been more careful not to kill him before they knew more, and while she was almost positive that Conrad had tried his best not to kill his nephew…

Emilia didn’t want to think about the fact that neither of their brains had been working properly. The last time that had happened—at least in such an obvious way—was back at the hidden labyrinth, where she’d gained her mostly-annoying aethervoice. At the time, she’d assumed it was just the influence of the labyrinth. Now, she wasn’t so sure—she wasn’t even sure it was the heartcore’s mind corruption either, the words of the kids ringing through her head.

Right at this moment, as she let her body move through more instinct than anything else through the city level, narrowly avoiding locals catching sight of her as they seemingly went about their everyday life, it felt like something was guiding her. As much as she wasn’t actively trying to read the will of the universe, it felt like it was pushing her to go this way and that.

So, if the universe could guide her, even when she wasn’t actively trying to read its secrets, and the platform maintainer could potentially manipulate—or perhaps simulate?—that will, wasn’t it possibly that the maintainer was pushing visitors this way and that as well?

Would that even make sense? To push her to enter that labyrinth, for seemingly no reason? To force Conrad to kill his nephew and then himself?

Maybe it would make sense, if she eventually figured out who was maintaining the raid. Until then, there wasn’t much she could do but keep the fact that both the universe and the maintainer could probably push people into acting certain ways in mind. Both the incident with the labyrinth and The Quiet Boy had put people’s lives in danger without her even realizing. Clearly, she needed to be more aware of her actions…

A dozen smaller moments, including her ill-fated trek down the mangled stairwell, flashed through her head. Granted, she’d always considered herself more than a little absent-minded, jumping into things without giving them proper thought—especially when alternative actions would require more time—but some of the things in this raid were a bit

too

thoughtless.

Unfortunately, there was no way to tell if it was the universe or an evil raid overlord manipulating her or just her own stupidity. What Emilia could do, however, was stop and assess her current movement through the city. She stood, squished into an alley that was littered with garbage. Gently, her body urged her to keep moving. It didn’t feel malevolent, and it wasn’t like she’d been caught yet, even with all the people wandering about.

If it was the maintainer, they were leading her somewhere and didn’t seem to want her to be caught just yet. If it was the universe… well, Emilia didn’t think even Carne’s altered personality knew what the universe wanted—if it even wanted anything.

Story

, he had kept saying. The universe shows people their story, but what did that even mean!?

Groaning—mostly because she was fighting her brain on whether this was a good time to have an internal debate over a thousand little details of how the universe could possibly know people’s stories, let alone deal with free will, people fighting and ignoring their stories, as well as stories colliding with each other—Emilia relented to the growing drive to move, and move faster than she had been previously.

It was a good thing she did listen to whatever was pushing her on. Several turns—and one close call with a local woman—later, Emilia rounded another corner and wouldn’t you know it: Tobias.

Tobias, bits of his blue hair escaping the hood of his cloak, and a local man who Emilia would bet was a member of the Haym family… or someone who had kidnapped Conrad’s nephew. Possibly both, she supposed. Conrad had clearly been kidnapped by the Enclave family several times; what was stopping this kid from being in the same position?

Well, the fact that Conrad hadn’t said anything about his nephew not wanting to be involved with his family or the Enclave family they’d become associated with was probably stopping it, but still! It could happen! And who was Emilia to turn down potentially helping one of Conrad’s relatives and making sure they couldn’t be spirited away from her again!?

Emilia had already bolted forward and landed a hand on the local man’s back before either he or Tobias had noticed her. The visitor’s eyes blew wide, while the local snarled. Too late. Magic ruptured through her core and arm, into her much used {Blood Ring}. Blood and gore splattered over the wall behind them, and Tobias screamed, trying to scramble away and falling flat on his ass.

In an exceptionally gross turn of events, the local man had been holding on to Conrad’s nephew

really

hard, and the severed limb was still hanging off his arm, spurting sizzling blood over the poor kid. Tobias looked at it, screamed again—honestly, pretty fair—and proceeded to pass out.

Ah well, that made it easier for her to lean down and flip his shirt up, revealing the same summoning array Conrad had had burned into him. ⸂Sorry, kid,⸃ Emilia muttered, already reaching forward to remove the array. ⸂Hopefully, you’ll sleep through this.⸃