Arc 5 | Chapter 196: A Shocking (not) Turn of Events

A thousand bodies fell in their wake.

A thousand souls,

broken

shattered

scarred and ruined

returned.

Their fate untethered,

let go

let go—

The one at the top,

mouldering and cruel

they shall never let go.

Their hand must be forced

sliced

flayed

returned

not destroyed—

Never destroyed.

~ last poem from the High Seer of Mord, before the destruction of Mord’s home building

✮ ✮ ✮

Emilia sliced through a body, trusting the pair trailing behind her to clean up stragglers and anyone misfortunate enough to have not suffered a killing blow.

The blood curse boiled, filling the air with unfulfilled rage.

Hyr had been the one to point that out that as long as they were still fighting, no blood weapon would form. Without a visitor actively calling to the curse, it was only once all carnage had ceased that anything would happen, and the more blood there was—the more bodies they had cut down—the more likely it was that someone would have to push the creation process along.

At the time, Emilia hadn’t given it much thought, but now, as more and more Clarity members surged onto the floor, filtering through stairwells and elevators and maybe even teleporting in, she wondered at the tattoo across her back.

The first version had been a creation of Taoran and Boundary’s blood, but while Taoran had died, her original {Blood Orb} had only been formed from a small portion of Boundary’s blood. Perhaps that was why it had been flawed, no power seeming to come from it. It existed. It probably told a strange, mashed together story of the two local’s lives. She’d never been able to figure out what it did, and even in her visitor system’s information about her gifts and items, it hadn’t really said anything about it. As far as she knew, V had never been able to use his either.

In contrast, Emilia could feel the power thrumming through her back. It was so powerful that Hyr had been able to see the energy radiating off her before they knew it existed—the syn had eventually revealed that was one of the reasons they’d been moderately suspicious of her when they’d first met. After explaining how she’d come into its possession and how they would potentially try using it to destroy the Clarity City System, if it came to that, the northerner had visibly relaxed, although they’d already been well on their way to becoming friends by the time it came up.

Hyr hadn’t said as much, but Emilia felt that they leaned into the belief that raid AIs deserved life. If she’d revealed she’d killed hundreds of locals forming the weapon, Hyr wouldn’t have been happy—might have even cut her down right then and there, before asking Hetexia for her contact info so they could kill her in the real world as well. That sort of belief was endearing, even if she’d prefer the syn not go around killing Baalphorians—unfortunately, there’d be few citizens left if they killed every Baalphorian who had ever killed a raid AI for sport.

Overall, that alone was a terrible thought. Emilia knew people who had killed in the real world—had killed flesh and blood humans herself, both for revenge and sport, thanks to several vendettas against Chinsata and a visit to the Dread Coliseum. Those were decisions she had made, knowing the cost to herself and the world. Killing the Chinsata had been nothing—and honestly, she’d gladly burn that entire Free Colony to the ground—while everyone who entered the Dread Coliseum knew what they were doing, and it wasn’t like she hadn’t offered to let them admit defeat and leave with their lives.

Neither she nor Helix had ever wanted to kill anyone there, although they both had. That was something they accepted and lived with, and in the end, those deaths had likely saved lives—the people who refused to admit defeat, even when death was imminent, were often the sort to never offer their opponents the chance to surrender.

They lived with their decisions. The Baalphorians and Free Coloniers who killed AIs… Emilia was pretty sure most didn’t care about the damage and hurt their actions caused. If she thought about it too much—thought about how even those with black knots, who were regularly looked down on as unfeeling, felt more regret as they killed than regular people did when offing AIs—then she might break.

Run away.

Leave her life and all her murderous friends behind.

Heart clenching, Emilia focused back on her tattoo, on the feeling that it was

incomplete.

Hyr had noticed that, too—had noticed that something about it wasn’t quite right. When the two northerners had—somewhat begrudgingly—examined her tattoo, her {Blood Armour} snapping into its unused bracelet form and scandalizing the pair with her naked butt, Hyr had told her it had gaps.

In the end, it did seem that part of it was missing, and she really wished she’d bothered to examine Tobias’ version before killing him. It had made sense not to, of course—the last thing she’d wanted was for him to activate it while she tugged his shirt up—but now it was frustrating, and none of them had any idea if the {Blood Tattoo} would even work, or if it would be a dud, like that first version.

Worse, it could simply backfire or do something else entirely—something like destroy the entire planet or raid platform.

Emilia wondered if there had been a clause in her contract about damage to the system itself. Some raids had things like that for heroes: policies that would leave them liable, should their actions permanently alter the raid’s internal coding, even if it were the result of some preexisting error within the raid. Searching through her shoddy memory of the things she’d agreed to when first entering the raid—the contract she’d barely read—Emilia couldn’t remember a clause like that.

Hopefully, there hadn’t been one, given she’d already fucked with that one labyrinth’s internal code. In her defence, it had provided her with access to that code, though! If they came after her for damages due to that… Well, for one thing, she technically had the money to pay for those sorts of damages, for another, Olivier was a great lawyer, and for another, she was pretty sure that regardless of how much of Halen had been a hallucination, how much fragments of his consciousness, he had been right: a portion of Hail’s raid system was hers. If Hail didn’t want her sending Olivier after them for that, they’d be covering any legal fees from her involvement in any raid, ever, thank you very much.

The aether rippled and bulged as Emilia slit another throat and pulled the energy of the blood curse towards herself. It was too early, dozens of Clarity members still surging onto the level, but that was the point: she wanted to figure out

why

her {Blood Tattoo} was broken, why it was incomplete.

On her map, a number of Clarity members dots flickered between red and black as they bled out, waiting for someone to come along and kill them. If her first {Blood Tattoo} had been incomplete because Boundary hadn’t been dead, then the item that formed for her now should also be incomplete. Yet, when the small tiara formed in her hand, it seemed… right.

⸂Yo, Hyr!⸃ she called, turning back towards where the northerners were cleaning up the living bodies behind her. ⸂Does this seem complete to you?⸃

Having already heard Emilia mull over the potential

whys

about her broken {Blood Tattoo}, Hyr didn’t need to be told what she was doing. The syn looked at the tiara, nodded and told her they saw no issues with it.

Unfortunate, that was the easiest thing to test, especially since it also hit the

maybe the blood curse was expecting more death

question—while they had no idea if anyone had gotten out of Salsetrun before Tobias’ {Blood Tattoo} had been created, it was easy to assume that plenty of people had probably escaped the city and survived. It wasn’t like there had been dead bodies in the houses. If some sort of

expectation

was set before the creation of a weapon, the lack of meeting it causing an error in the item, it didn’t happen with smaller weapons.

She really wished she’d taken a better look at the {Blood Hoop} before handing it off to Boundary, if only so she could know for sure that

it

had been complete.

Grumbling, the three of them continued on, making their way towards the other group. They probably didn’t have a map, their movements through the level sporadic, twisting and turning and—

⸂Fuck!⸃ Emilia spit out as they disappeared, likely moving up or down a stairwell. ⸂Seriously?⸃

“They likely had no choice,” Hyr said annoyingly sensible, once she’d explained why she was yelling.

Emilia had to agree: the place they had disappeared was filled with Clarity members. Interesting, though, that the other group had risked the stairwell so many of them were coming out of… and now disappearing back into.

⸂Uh…⸃ Emilia squinted at the map.

Technically

, squinting did nothing for her—it actually might have made the map a little blurrier, her actual field of vision a little smaller—but… had they left a member behind?

Down the hall, probably about forty feet from where the rest of the group had disappeared, was a dot in a colour that… well, it was similar to the shade of Key’s, but not quite the same. Where Key’s had been a light pink, this one was more a hot pink. Was it Key? If it was, what in the world had happened to him? Nothing good, she imagined.

That said, nothing good would be happening to him—assuming it was him—in a few seconds. While most of the Clarity members were still disappearing into the abyss of the stairwell, a respectable amount had turned towards maybe-Key as well. Given the majority of the Clarity members on the floor were now congregating in that area, that meant at least a hundred were forcing their way after the vanished group, while two dozen had turned on the left behind member.

Emilia really hoped it wasn’t Key. There was no way the Enclave boy had enough combat training to fight off that many trained killers, running on hive mind energy and empty hatred. It didn’t matter how much she worried—how many terrible images flashed through her head. They were too far apart, the winding route the other group had taken leaving them several minutes of frightened running apart.

Key, her friend. He might be in danger, and that was to say nothing of the rest of the group, disappeared from her map and perception. They could be dead—could have run into too many Clarity members for them to handle, even if one or two of them had some amount of magic and core control and—

“Emilia. You must calm down.”

Hyr’s voice. It sounded far away. When had she started to panic?

“Breathe.”

Their voice was so calm, calling to her through the panic and terror and shame. Shame, because she shouldn’t have let Key go off on his own. There hadn’t been a black dot travelling with their group, the rebel Clarity members hadn’t been travelling with them—not obviously, anyways. Was he dead? Had he abandoned Key? Had—

A sliver of energy wrapped itself around her, warm and safe and pulling her back.

“Hatrav—breathe.”

The syna Gru had told her that before, their voice scratchy but coolly kind, aged from years of smoking some northern psychedelic. Usually, they’d told her that when she’d been pissed, not panicking.

Old Emilia hadn’t panicked. Well, she had panicked a few times, but she’d been much better at hiding it.

This Emilia, even with all of Payton’s unknotting, couldn’t even hide her panic, to say nothing of just

not

panicking.

“Hatrav,” Hyr repeated.

They were still moving—still cutting down anyone who got in their way. That was good—at least they weren’t wasting time, squatting in a hallway while she hyperventilated. Still, it was only a matter of time before her panic fucked them over. Zyrex had already been left alone to clean up after them, Hyr having abandoned the hy in favoured of trying to help her.

That was sweet, even if it was also pretty stupid.

“Hatrav.”

Emilia tried to breathe—tried to let Hyr’s energy into her, soothing and calm. They weren’t even touching her, and she wondered if they could reach their energy out like this in the real world, or if it was a raid only thing—maybe even a

this raid

only thing. That, or maybe her perception was the thing that had changed—maybe, someone more believing, more in tune with their core and the aether, might have been able to feel a synat member’s energy in the real world. Just not her.

It wasn’t that useful to think about—although she did attempt to make a mental note to ask Hyr to do something similar to her, assuming it was a real-world ability, if they met up one day. That said, their actions and her ponderings on it had served as a distraction from her panic, and by the time they rounded the last corner, coming up behind where maybe-Key was fighting off Clarity members, she had mostly stopped panicking and Hyr had been able to fall back a little to help Zyrex.

Unfortunately, the moment she realized maybe-Key wasn’t Key at all, her heart squeezed in another roll of panic.

Dark, cruel eyes turned on her, a blast of shadow magic slicing through a dozen Clarity members. ⸂Hello again, Emilia.⸃

Emilia turned, grabbing Hyr’s arm as she bolted back the way they’d come. ⸂Run,⸃ she said, throwing up a barrier as Sk’lar’s shadows surged after them.