Arc 9 | Chapter 295: This is Gonna Be Bad

Emilia needed to get off this fucking airship. It had been a while since she’d free dived, and

technically,

she was only certified to do so over a body of water and the ship was currently cruising leisurely over land, but if she hit the ground and died, oh well.

The way things were going, she was going to die once they landed in their final destination anyways. Might as well go out with a bang.

Gazing over the edge of the ship—judging what the chances were she could make a perfect land dive on the first attempt—Emilia took in the scenery below them. The intricate landscape of Dion was slowly making way to Byshire, rolling green hills replacing mountains and the perfectly organized fields of crops that spread over the western border of the largest Free Colony.

Byshire and Dion hadn’t been at war in quite a few centuries, and their border was less strict than many others, merchants and civilians crossing the imaginary line to trade and live and even occasionally love. This far out from the hustle and bustle of Chion, the capital city of Dion, or Jeolong, the party city that surrounded the Summer Palace, everything was so much calmer for the local Dionese populace. Even from so far up—Olivier had purposefully chosen a slow moving, low-flying vessel for his students to enjoy what for most of them was their first-ever glimpse of the Free Colonies—she could see the slow meandering of locals as they went about their lives.

Eventually, she supposed they’d be able to see the chaos of Byshire, its own capital, Forent—where the Assembly of Lords, which she had only visited once with her father, was located—closer to the border and bringing more bustle to the surrounding area. For the moment, however, aside from the occasional trading post they flew over, marking crossroads that connected the two Free Colonies and the too-often blockaded passage to the north—Falrion and the Northern Tribes were often in conflict with one another, Falrion forever making war with each of the Free Colonies that almost entirely surrounded it, only a sliver of land pressing into the Zereth Sea, just north of Norvel—there was little to see on the Byshire side of the border.

Soon, they would be over Byshire and heading into Norvel.

Landing in Norvel.

Yeah, Emilia was gonna die. It was going to be brutal and painful and all because one little boy was a petty little bitch, his father so stuck in his ways that we refused to ever admit to his mistakes, enabling his entitled brat of a son chief on that list, in Emilia’s opinion.

How the fuck did she get to this place, one might ask? Well…

✮ ✮ ✮ Four Days Earlier ✮ ✮ ✮

“We aren’t going to Zironia?”

Olivier levelled a look at Emilia. It wasn’t exactly unimpressed, more… confused? Bewildered? Straight up amused? Emilia wasn’t quite sure.

“No. Why did you think we were going to Zironia?” her teacher asked as they boarded the airship he had reserved the class rooms on—rooms, because this wouldn’t just be a multi day visit to whichever Free Colony he was taking them to, but one with multiple days of travel.

That had been Emilia’s first clue they weren’t going to Zironia. Travel to the Free Colonies west of Baalphoria often involved travel on airships built for overnights, the vessel landing at ports along the way to the Zereth Sea before it would turn back and do it all in reverse. Virtually everyone travelling from the western Free Colonies to the eastern ones either landed in Baalphoria—if they came from a nation with positive relations with Baalphoria—to switch to a day-travel-only ship, or had to take the longer route out of Seer’ik’tine and over Mitine Dyn, Chinsata and the Cyrenix Desert to reach the few eastern Free Colonies. If someone wanted to go south of the Cyrenix Desert… well, that was a whole other messy thing.

Even Emilia’s father never went south of the Cyrenix Desert. Maybe some of the clones had gone past there, ingratiating themselves into the slaving culture of Chinsata while they wore fabricated faces, or even pressing further south. Emilia had no idea, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to; just as the culture of the Northern Tribes was often secretive, knowledge of the Moonlit City in the frozen north even more obscure, Baalphoria’s information on anything past the Cyrenix Desert was blurry, what knowledge they did have part rumour, part ancient, outdated knowledge.

What she did know about those southern nations… none of it was good, and she really didn’t want to think about a clone—even one she didn’t know, but knew she would love, should she ever meet them, all the same—wearing a face of hatred as he oppressed people like her…

No, that wasn’t something she wanted to think about.

The point was, they weren’t going southeast to Zironia, nor to Lu Ros in the northeast, nor any of the other smaller Free Colonies that dotted the coast or had split off from the Northern Tribes. No, they were going west, over the Twin Tides and the Core and who knew what else.

“Are we going to Dion?” Emilia asked, before backtracking and answering Olivier’s original question about why she had assumed they'd be going to Zironia. “It’s closer, and Pylenius talks about basically everything. I bet, if you asked, he’d specifically plan some lectures on justice for the class? You’d have to contact him, though, and that man seems really, really weird.”

Olivier made a confirming sound as he herded everyone onto the ship, doing a head count before directing everyone to settle in their rooms before meeting at a restaurant on one of the upper decks in an hour. “We’ll be here a few days,” he told them, a silent indication that they should get comfortable in their rooms. “This ship makes day trips at several ports, so there will be a few stops before we reach our final destination. This way.”

It took a moment for Emilia to realize he was talking to her—his shadow, for all intents and purposes. Rushing along behind him, Emilia asked if he had ever gone to one of Pylenius’ lectures in person.

“Once. He recognized me and made me come down and debate with him. It was terrible.” The man’s voice was so dark Emilia couldn’t help but laugh, the sound bubbling out of her as the scene played out in her head. Olivier, grumpy and annoyed and silently cursing his mother for outing him as a non-dev. Pylenius, strange and smiling that teasing grin he seemed to almost always wear, needling Olivier probably even more than he did most people.

Actually… why was she imaging it?

“Can I have your memory of it?” she asked, lengthening her steps so they could walk side by side, and she could smile up at him.

“What? No.”

“Why not?”

“Some things are private.”

Humming, Emilia contemplated that. Pylenius’ lectures were almost recorded using some sort of older technology—that was part of the reason she had only seen a few, her father’s acquaintances in the Free Colony having sent a few along to him. If most said lectures involved the Zironia non-dev speaking on topics about filial piety, virtuous behaviour and just generally not being a menace to society, Emilia was choosing not to say anything about it—she still had to interact with said acquaintances on occasion, and thinking about how they were very obviously not fans of her personality wouldn’t do any of them any good.

“I guess I’ll just have to visit and get a copy before I’m sentenced,” she mused, as they made their way through the ship in an entirely different direction than the rest of the class had headed. Her father had never allowed her to accompany him on his rare diplomatic missions to Zironia—she was convinced he was worried she would meet Pylenius and the world would implode—so she had no one there to secure recordings for her, unfortunately.

Had Olivier booked them fancier rooms? Or had he just asked that he be put nowhere near his students, so he wouldn’t be disrupted by their nonsense? Or, maybe he just hadn’t wanted his presence to inadvertently pressure them into not enjoying their vacation? While the nearly two weeks away wouldn’t matter much to her, for everyone else, they had needed to arrange makeup classes and midterms with their other teachers. To say they wouldn’t be able to rest much for weeks, once they returned, as they worked to catch up, was an understatement.

“Actually,” she continued, thinking over her increasingly more plausible sentencing, likely followed by an appeal in which she would have nothing to do but sit around in her parents' house and mope, “maybe I should get copies of more than just your torture at the man’s hands. I’m gonna need something to fill my time with.”

“And filling your mind with that man’s nonsense is a good use of your time?” Olivier asked tightly, just as the airship began to rumble gently, the engines stuttering to life in the way only technology from the Free Colonies still did.

“Are we travelling on a Free Colony ship to save money?” she asked. While they had all paid for some amount of their trip—well, all the other students had, Emilia’s parents had paid for the entirety of hers—both the university and Olivier himself had clearly supplemented the trip. “Or was it so we could stop in specific places? Or just get a better sense of Free Coloniers?”

Being a Free Colony vessel, both the staff and the majority of the guests would be from there as well. It wouldn’t be weird for Emilia—not unless she ran into someone she knew—but for everyone else, who had probably never met even the rare Free Colonier who had immigrated to Baalphoria—or, more often, had relatives who had defected to Baalphoria during one of the many Colonial Wars—meeting Free Coloniers would be a new experience.

Usually, it took a few generations for Free Colonier ex-pats to more fully integrate into Baalphoria’s weird

non-culture culture.

There were some cultural subgroups, sure, but what some Free Colonies referred to as

The Cult of the Censor

tended to be their most connecting, long-lasting custom, and even when they ended up living in Baalphoria long term, few Free Coloniers ever had one installed. Sometimes they even refused to let their children have one installed at sixteen—although, if they grew up primarily in Baalphoria, most of those children eventually had one installed once they were thirty and no longer beholden to their parents’ whims and beliefs. Still, that delay made a difference, and it often wasn’t until

their

children were born in turn that those kids fully accepted Censors and experienced what was, rather pathetically, Baalphoria’s most connecting and important ritual.

It would be strange to see her pseudo-classmates experience the vast and rich culture of whatever Free Colonies they ended up in. Having been so young when her father began bringing her with him on his assignments, it had been a long time since that level of culture—of rituals and traditions that connected each Free Colony’s citizens strongly enough that warring nations rarely tried to bring conquered people under their control, knowing the centuries required for true integration wasn’t worth the effort—had done anything more than fascinate her.

For the rest of the class, they may not even realize what they were about to walk into. Stars above, considering how little was often taught in compulsory schooling about the Free Colonies, some of them might not even realize most of the Free Colonies had their own languages!

“Do you do this trip every year? Or, semester, I guess? You've been teaching for, what? Two years?”

“Two years and a season,” her teacher replied, something between exasperation and what Emilia would bet was fondness lacing his voice. “And yes. The locations we stop along the way are often different, but the first, main, and final destinations remain the same.”

“Is that why you were so extreme about us not talking about where we end up with anyone? You don’t want to spoil the surprise for future students?”

“Something like that,” Olivier sighed as they came to a stop in front of a door, the lawyer producing a key—it wasn’t like a Free Colony ship would have any interfaces for Censors, another thing the rest of the class would likely have difficulties acclimating to.

Maybe

that

was actually why their room—rooms?—were so far away! Olivier didn’t want to hear his students whining about having to use physical keys, rather than using their Censor as one. Just wait until they realized how many other things—like ordering food!—they wouldn’t be able to do with merely a thought!

Censors were nice—convenient—but Emilia liked the key she had been given, heavy and cool in her pocket and adding to the aesthetic of the airship in a way a keycard wouldn’t have. Not ruining the vibes of their accommodations was worth the mild annoyance of having to keep track of her key, something she was notoriously bad at.

On the opposite side of the door were two more doors, each with a room number chiselled into the soft, brown wood. Lock-off rooms were so much less fun than sharing rooms, but Emilia would have been shocked if Olivier had booked them into the same room. Actually, it probably would have been a red flag, and she would have been forced to let Dean Vickers know—even if she would be happy to share a room with the beautiful man, it would be highly inappropriate for him to assume!

Snickering to herself, Emilia unlocked room 249ʚ, the strange symbol etched into her key, but not the room number. No sooner had the door opened than a hand pressed into her back, and she was being pushed inside, a squeak leaking out of her. Behind her, the door snapped shut.

“Olivier!” Emilia half-laughed, half-gasped, turning back to find the door closed, herself on one side, Olivier on the other.

She wasn’t positive, but Emilia thought she heard a small laugh slither through the door, before the sound of her teacher’s own door clicking shut could be heard.

“Ass,” she muttered, a smile tugging at her lips.