Arc 9 | Chapter 344: Some Grand Cosmic Plan

“So what you're saying is that your father’s family is supposedly the progenitors of someone who is supposed to play an important role in saving the entire planet from some sort of mysterious conflict?” Emilia asked, simultaneously baffled and so intrigued that, were she not warm and sleepy and snuggled oh so nicely into Olivier’s side, she might have been vibrating with interest.

It was like something out of a fantasy novel! Although, in a fantasy novel there would be someone actually passing this story down properly, which apparently Olivier’s paternal family wasn’t doing. Over the course of his story, he’d been sending her small snippets of the source materials, which were primarily conversations overheard when he was so small no one thought he was listening—it was nice to know she wasn’t the only non-dev in the room plagued with remembering far too much from about the time she was one on—and stolen glances of his aunt’s journals before she had effectively disappeared into the wilds of northern Baalphoria—and Emilia so needed to know more about the apparently eccentric woman.

“Yes,” Olivier agreed, his tone already telling Emilia more than she needed to know about his own opinion on the matter: he didn’t believe any of it. “I think that, at the most, it is a highly romanticized version of what happened. My ancestors did leave, and they probably travelled with a number of other Grey Sanders fleeing to Baalphoria as well. I think it possible many were fleeing from something more than just the pressure of the Baalphorian government and the risk of war, but I doubt our family is part of some grand, aether-led conspiracy to stop some future conflict.”

“Why not?”

It wasn’t that Emilia believed much more than Olivier; she’d heard more than her share of myths—familial, local, and national—throughout her life to know that in some places practically everyone had

something

in their family history that made them seem more important than they actually were. It was especially common in Dion, where family legacy was an important factor in, well, everything. Being able to claim someone famous was either your ancestor or had been friends with your great-great-something-or-other was a currency unto itself. It was part of the reason the poor stayed poor, the rich growing their wealth and power: the poor had no connections, and the Dionese army only recruited from the dredges of society in times of crisis, and even the last great war between Dion and Baalphoria hadn’t been large enough to allow more than a few new-gen sub-30s to ascend into higher levels of society through their performance in the military.

In the same vein, the way they kept such strict records of family trees and relations could backfire. Not only could a single scandal on a far off branch bring the entire family tumbling down, but illegitimate children were often killed off once discovered—especially if they were the children of prostitutes. Ironically, Yujao had gotten off easy—according to him—by just being castrated when his father found out about his existence, given the alternative was death. Of course, his father

sparing him

had really only been due to his age—much harder to kill an older child than a baby, especially when they have people who will look into their death or disappearance. On the plus side, in the end, not killing Yujao had caused the terrible man more grief than dealing with murder charges might have.

Olivier was silent for a long while, contemplating his response, his mind so far away that Emilia doubted he noticed when the hand that had been drawing such delicious, teasing shapes into her back slip lower, lower. Emilia liked teasing; she liked both being the teasing party and being teased in return, riled up until her thighs were clenching, her pussy dripping, and she was liable to pounce on the person… or whoever was closest and most likely to fuck her, depending on the circumstances. This, though? Having Olivier so close and soft—so willing to entertain her wandering mind and endless questions while also touching her of his own volition?

This would have been cruel under the best of circumstances, and in the aftermath of her reliving being assaulted, when she rarely risked sex with even her closest friends and lovers, and would never even consider it with someone she barely knew and had never been with before—someone who couldn’t even guess at the things that had been done to her?

Yeah, this was fucking torture and she was going to die. At the very least, when he did eventually speak, his hand hadn’t slipped to her ass—and fuck if Emilia would ever forget the way the man had implied he really,

really

loved assplay back in the restaurant, weeks previous—but instead found its way under her borrowed shirt so he could draw shapes directly into her skin.

It was still torture, but if his hand had dared grip her ass… Well, at least she considered him someone safe? Probably, she wouldn’t risk having a full-blown panic attack by having sex with Olivier—it had happened with Rafe a few times, when she’d begged him to erase the memories of being touched against her will with his own rough, demanding fingers, but he knew it was a risk and how to handle her. Instead, Emilia would probably just confess the contents of her nightmare and beg him to try again tomorrow night. Olivier was probably polite enough to delay sex, right? Not that that stream of thought was currently relevant given his hand’s return to her back.

“There is some evidence in Baalphorian documents from the same time period,” Olivier explained, forwarding on those files to her as well because he was just so aware that she would want them even if she probably wouldn’t be able to access them once {A Private Moment} dispersed, “that suggests there may have been agents of the Sever assassinating numerous Grey Sanders. The Baalphorian government considered it part of an ongoing conflict between the two regions, and seem to have found it more annoying than anything—it’s not like they would care much for random Grey Sanders being killed. It also seems that the still-current ban on the Sever entering Baalphoria or the Grey Sands came into being around then as well, although I do not know if they ever tried to enter Baalphoria itself.”

“Doesn’t the Sever and their servants killing Grey Sanders suggest your family might actually have been the target? I mean, sure, it’s still a stretch, but should you really be blowing it off so completely?” Emilia asked, wondering if she would remember enough about this conversation after {A Private Moment} disappeared, Olivier having set the parameters and her having, well, not actually looked to see what she was agreeing to, exactly. Could she look now? Yes. Was she going to? No, no she was not. Olivier had asked earlier that evening if she liked surprises, and she did! Was this a strange, self-imposed surprise? Yes, but it still totally counted!

The point was that, depending on how much she remembered, she could perhaps query The Black Knot’s system to find out if the Sever had visited Baalphoria around that time—or ever. A lot of information older than a few centuries had been lost during the various informational loses of war, but there could be something, even just a remembered piece of information gathered from human minds as the nation attempted to rebuilt their knowledge base.

That sort of scattered, unreliable information was about the best Emilia could hope for when it came to the secretive Free Colony. Never having visited Mitine Dyn, given the strained relations between it and everyone but Chinsata, as well as its alleged propensity for helping Chinsata gather slaves, Emilia didn’t know much about it other than that virtually everyone hated them, and they held on to their belief in the aether’s ability to foretell the future far more than most Free Colonies. While she had a vague recollection of overhearing her father discuss a change of Sever and a question of how much the new one would

interfere

—with what, she had no idea—back when she’d still been a child and probably distracted by something, that was about all she knew.

Well, that, and she had a feeling that she should, under no circumstances, meet the Sever or any of their Gloriana at this time. None of their gloria either, although that was a lot harder, at least according to the Blood Rain General. Much like the Hyrat clones, the gloria were allegedly composed of several varieties of clones. Unlike the Hyrat clones, who altered their appearance with some mystery tech for specific jobs before returning to their original appearance the moment they were done, the gloria supposedly altered theirs in the womb—or maybe before being implanted? Or shortly after birth? Who knew. The point was that the gloria were potentially born into their roles and trained from birth, but able to fully vanish into the world thanks to their diverse appearances. Of course, she’d only ever heard this alleged by the Blood Rain General, no one else really caring to discuss Mitine Dyn’s religious leaders and servants in more than a passing sense of

they’re crazy and get high on some really powerful drugs.

Thinking about their drugs, of course, reminded Emilia once again of the aching, overwhelming feeling she had experienced when she and Simeon had taken their own contraband Mitine Dyn drugs. Virtually nothing save coming down from the high had been enough to stop them; really, it was likely only their age that had even allowed The Black Knot to stop them. Had it been today… no, Emilia had a feeling she and Simeon would burn their way through virtually anyone who tried to stop them. Plus, they’d both had the sense they missed their chance to find their mysterious lavender code—that was the only reason they hadn’t gotten high again. Had that ache still lingering under their skin, digging its way into their soul itself,

nothing

would have stopped them from trying again, which…

“Wait, actually, do you know if the ban stopped them? From entering the Grey Sands and continuing their search, I mean? Well,

potential

search, I guess.” It wasn’t like they knew for sure that the Sever and their servants had actually been looking for someone destined to spawn a family line capable of playing a part in saving the world, after all.

A few more documents slotted themselves into Emilia’s Censor, from the weeks after the ban on the Sever entering Baalphoria or the Grey Sands had been enacted. While the murders had definitely petered out, there were still quite a few sightings in the Grey Sands—especially around the river that separated Mitine Dyn, Seer’ik’tine, and the then-Baalphorian-Grey Sands border—before abruptly, they stopped.

If Emilia were somehow able to figure out the exact date Olivier’s ancestors had entered Baalphoria—gone into the territory of the OIC’s always watching eyes—would it line up with the cessation? His ancestor having stepped outside the reach of the Sever, and their search therefore halting?

Shaking herself—she was being crazy; just because she sometimes got mysterious feelings that led her to good results didn’t mean the universe was somehow communicating some knowledge of the future to her!—Emilia forced her attention back to Olivier, diligently waiting for her attention to focus on him once more.

“So, yeah, with all that, how do you know your family—or maybe just someone they ended up travelling with—wasn’t the target?”

“Doesn’t it seem rather conceited? To believe our family part of some grand future?”

“Well, yeah, probably, but it's also fun and interesting, right? Have you never pictured yourself as the hero of some story? Finally fulfilling this prophecy about your family?”

“It has only been a few hundred years.”

“So?”

“So, as the fragments of conversations I sent you show, one of the few things every one of my ancestors has agreed on is that, even if our family is part of something bigger, it is long into the future.”

“That whole… thousands of years thing?”

“Mm.”

“I dunno,” Emilia hummed, thinking back to the exact wording Olivier had used before lining it up with the inspiration he sent her. It seemed like, in the end, Olivier had pulled at one specific conversation for his inspiration in implying the OIC System were somehow part of the thousands of years conundrum, one of his more distant relatives contemplating how with the time skew of the Virtuosi System—which ran on the OIC System unless explicitly cut off from it—a thousand years could pass by faster… assuming members of their family spent huge swathes of time within it. The time skew was powerful, but not enough for even a single person to hope to reach

thousands of years

within their lifetime.

Maybe in the future it would be possible—Halen certainly seemed to be pushing Virtuosi Rigs to the brink, but Censors and the human mind were also a factor. Having spent more than a few years within the Virtuosi System, Emilia couldn’t imagine spending that many years within it—not by choice, not without complaint, not without going fucking insane.

Still, humanity and technology were always improving, and she had no doubt that one day, those

thousands of years

could possibly be pushed into far less through the time skew. Maybe still spread between a few generations—

hopefully

spread between a few generations—but possible nonetheless.

Unfortunately, it was unlikely to happen in their lifetime. A pity; Emilia really wanted to know whether Olivier’s family really was tied to some grand, cosmic plan.