Arc 9 | Chapter 433: A Problematic Superpower

Crisp green eyes stared up at Emilia, the shade reminding her of the fields upon fields of pastures that spread over the Dionese-Byshirian border. It wasn’t a colour generally seen in Lüshan, where architecture and style leaned dark and brutal—although, as that little café had shown, bright colours were currently trending. Even above ground, the flora tended to burn red and orange, set off against shades of green that leaned purple. Some people thought there was something in the soil—some remnant of all that the Lowdouran had done to create the subterranean cities lingering within the soil until everything that existed within it was an oddity. Stars knew the people themselves were an oddity, living in the darkness of the planet, their skin almost always holding an echo of paleness under the brown tones that most citizens had.

This girl’s skin, however, had none of that soft sickliness; instead, her skin shone from within, freckles spread over her cheeks, and the blonde hair that tumbled out from a haphazard bun even seemed streaked with highlights—gifts from the sun.

That was… odd. Emilie knew that some Lüshanians stretched their legs above ground occasionally—there were entire resorts dedicated to allowing the citizens a chance to actually breathe fresh air, as opposed to the air that was funnelled into the underground, it and the local cuisine pumped full with the nutrients that humans needed to live, but not necessarily thrive. Still, visiting such resorts wasn’t exactly common, and while some Lüshanians did travel to other nations, that was even rarer.

So, was this girl—who must have been in her mid-teens—someone just naturally graced with a body that faked an appearance of someone actually getting the proper amount of sunshine and fresh air, or was she somehow able to step foot outside the city?

A new captive?

Someone who was loyal to Fräthk and therefore given more freedom?

“Clemence,”

Jerrial said, stepping up beside Emilia, then taking another step, as though intending to position himself between the two of them. That would be difficult, given the girl was still staring up into Emilia’s eyes, something she very much didn’t like lingering within them—it was a look she’d seen before, and she hadn’t liked it that time either.

Subtly, Emilia tried to shift away from the teenager. The claws digging into Olivier’s sweater were too strong, however, and unless she wanted to risk damage to it—she didn’t—Emilia was apparently going to be stuck with the girl… or forcing her off more directly, which still might damage the sweater.

“Oh… hello, Jerrial. You’re back,”

the girl—Clemence—said, her eyes never leaving Emilia’s.

Great, just what she needed: someone weirdly obsessed with her within seconds of meeting. With any luck, the intense look the girl was giving her would fade, or be something she turned on everyone. It didn’t seem likely, but Emilia could hope.

“Clemence?”

Jerrial called. He got nothing in return. Emilia just got stared at even harder.

Fuck. They didn’t have time for this, and as much as Emilia knew that encouraging the teenager would just make whatever weird obsession the girl had attached onto her worse, they really needed to find Olivier and get out of there. They also needed to deal with whatever Jerrial was there for as well.

Hopefully, at the very least whatever was happening between her and this girl wouldn’t escalate beyond the weirdly intense look the girl was giving her. That was probably wishful thinking; still, Emilia could hope.

“Hello, my name is Emilia,”

she told the girl, trying not to shrink away when Clemence practically started to vibrate. It would have been cute if not for Emilia having the horrifying feeling that this girl had a black knot—maybe even something worse.

While she’d always been good at making friends with black knots—Varo, one of the few older clones who she never really knew what to think of, had once said her very existence was like a drug to black knots, drawing them to her—that had mostly been when she was younger. It wasn’t that she wanted to write off befriending older black knots, but there was something softer about children—something malleable, that she had been able to pull into herself, that she had been able to push a piece of herself into in return. So, she had close friends who were black knots, and they were either children she had grown up with or the clones, who were… something else entirely. There was a reason why, as much as the Baxter and Laprise adults liked her, she knew they wouldn’t bend for her with the same intensity their children would. The clones, on the other hand? Yes, there was a faction who seemed to abhor her, but for the most part, any clone she met was instantly someone who would die for her—especially the younger they got. It was rather cute when she met clones who were still small children, their eyes lighting up when they saw her as though their souls recognized her with the same instantaneousness that her own mind snapped onto them, forever allowing her to recognize them as the specific clone they were. The love she received from those tiny clones wasn’t quite the same as the instantaneous love that had filled the triplets’ eyes when they’d first met, but it was close.

The point was, she had experience befriending black knot children and clones. The adults liked her, but would leave her to die if necessary. Her only other experience befriending a black knot? 'ariah—’ariah, who had been pulled apart by a traumatic black knot and then tried to kill Lux and her.

Maybe it was just a traumatic black knot thing; Emilia had no idea. It was still a lingering worry in the back of her mind as she gave the girl clinging to her a bright smile—this worry that her superpower of befriending black knots had been a boon when she was young, but had morphed into a curse as she aged. Plus, even if she simply wasn’t meant to befriend people with traumatic black knots, she had no idea if this girl even had a black knot—it could be something worse!—and if it was, it could be natural or traumatic! Chances were it wasn’t additive, at least, which tended to make those who had them a little… chaotic.

Or a lot chaotic.

Additive knots of any sort were always a little… random. Traumatic knots wound their way through the human genome like a rapidly breeding pest that buried tiny eggs wherever it stepped, those eggs just waiting for their parent to be burned away so they could explode and infest their unwilling home anew. Additive knots, on the other hand, were a pushing in of an exotic, difficult-to-breed creature into a home it didn’t want. All it took was a single drop of too much of

something

or a single missed feeding for the creature to wither and die; yet, parts of it would linger, bringing in new pests to consume its corpse.

So, yeah, additive knots were a mess—there one moment, leaving worse things behind the next. Fortunately, as much as most Free Colonies had some form of knot manipulation, it wasn’t particularly popular in Lüshan. That said, given this was a criminal organization that leaned heavily into utilizing irregular deviations that sometimes worked far better in combination with certain knots…

Well, Emilia wasn’t ruling anything out.

She was also slapping a tracking skill onto this girl, with her bright-green eyes and sharp smile that made Emilia’s skin crawl, images of the girl digging those teeth into her filling her mind, ripping tendons from her body, eating raw, bloody organs and—

And maybe that horror story of Olivier’s had left some images in her mind of flayed humans, their skin and various organs removed as they became barely-living monsters. What had been done with all those organs? All the muscle and blood they’d been missing? There were rumours out of Chinsata that they used the bodies of slaves in food and medicine—and for that alone, it was interesting that the terrible little Free Colony located south of the Grey Sands hadn’t been mentioned in any of those documents. Of course, they were just rumours, largely spread through whispering criminals as they worked through their conscience and decided whether they really could traffic humans off to such fates, as well as in media—Emilia had read a few books from the Grey Sands that included such rumours about their southern neighbours.

All that aside, personally, Emilia didn’t much want to be consumed, nor even looked at like she might make a good meal!

“I’m looking for someone—a Baalphorian man who was taken a few hours ago. Jerrial thought he might have ended up here. Have you seen him?”

she asked, willing herself not to look away from the girl’s intense eyes. They were pretty. Emilia wasn’t sure she’d be able to look at anything in this particular shade again and not be vaguely concerned that she might be eaten alive by it.

Seriously, though? How did someone manage to have this much deranged energy seeping out of them? Coral would have a fucking time of it feeling out this girl, considering how palpable Clemence’s feelings were even to her!

It didn’t help when the girl’s smile dropped away—fast and fierce and frightening.

“Who is he to you?”

Clemence asked with all the energy of someone who had just decided to kill their rival for someone’s affection—

someone

being her!

How had this happened!? Fuck her stupid existence as a drug to black knots! What even was this!?

“He’s our teacher—we’re visiting a few Free Colonies on a class trip for his law class. Well… he’s not really my teacher, as I’m not actually his student,”

she added, Censor swimming as it worked through the best way to make sure this girl helped them

and

didn’t kill Olivier the moment they found him.

“I’ve just been taking his class because I need him to take a case for me, so I’ve been doing a mix of harassing him and trying to befriend him. So, he’s my hopefully-soon-to-be lawyer and friend.”

“What kind of case?”

Clemence asked, and at least there was less bite in her voice now. The adoring smile she had been aiming at Emilia didn’t reappear either, but less animosity aimed at Olivier—someone the girl might not have even met—was good.

“I killed someone,”

she told the girl, ignoring the way Vern hissed,

“You what!?”

behind her.

“They were going to kill my friend and me, so I killed them first.”

“That sounds like self-defence? Why are you being charged?”

Jerrial asked, still standing angled close to them. Within him, his energy was an unending vibration—a scream into the aether that, if this girl tried to hurt her, he would try to stop her.

It was a little odd, actually. Jerrial had given her a rundown of Fräthk’s most powerful

little bugs

, as well as the few people who were more loyal and friendly towards them. As far as she or her Censor could tell, this girl hadn’t been on the list. The only thing Emilia could think of, as to why the teenager had been excluded, was that she hadn’t been in the city—perhaps wasn’t in the city often. So, why would Jerrial bother mentioning her?

Also, this seemed like a giant

fuck you

from the aether if that was the case!? Had it literally gone back in time just to bring this deranged creature into her path—into a place where she generally wasn’t!? Rude—impossible, but also, Emilia was annoyed at somehow having found herself surrounded by so much obsessive, stalker energy. So rude, and fuck you right back!

Shaking her head, Emilia explained her case in broad strokes: she was a nuisance to the government; the boy she’d killed had been the child of someone powerful; there were laws that could be applied to her, sketchy as they were, so the government had done so.

“All the lawyers I’ve talked to have told me it’s a lost cause—even Olivier, but he’s still considered the best. So, if I have any chance of not spending the next decade in prison or on house arrest, I need to get him back.”

Emilia let a sad smile slide over her face, her eyes twisting away from Clemence. It was a look she’d practiced in the mirror, learning how to make herself small and pitiable. Sometimes it worked—although, Emilia wasn’t convinced that it only worked because the people she used it on loved her and knew she was faking it, but appreciated the silly effort. Clemence didn’t know her, and Emilia could see the look digging under her bright brown skin, her green eyes filling with a concern that was less frightening, but just as intense as the

I might just eat you, so I can keep you with me

grin she’d worn before. At the same time, there was an anticipation—an echo of planning—lingering in those eyes as well, and yeah… that wasn’t quite what Emilia wanted.

“Well,”

she quickly added, trying to cut off the girl’s thoughts about keeping her in Lüshan to avoid the charges before they fully formed,

“depending on how things go, I might just move to the Free Colonies if things go badly with my case. I like the Free Colonies, and have friends here—actually, I could see spending a lot of time here one day, even without the charges. Even with its problems, though, Baalphoria is still my home. I’d be heartbroken if I could never return, all because I’d run off from charges that shouldn’t have been made against me in the first place. To not be able to see my favourite places again… ah… that would be a punishment even worse than being locked away for a decade, I think…”

Probably, that was laying it on a little thick. Still, when her gaze turned back to Clemence, the girl no longer seemed to be planning on, well, basically kidnapping her? Which, seriously!? How did this happen!? How did she keep wandering straight into people who were intent on kidnapping her—she still wasn’t convinced Rayleen

wasn’t

their kidnapper, considering how she’d effectively forced them to listen to her directions since meeting. What even was this day.

“Well then! We’d better go find him!”

Clemence declared, looping their arms together and tugging Emilia forward.

“I think they put him on the kinda-bottom floor,”

she added, giving Emilia a smile that was still intense and terrifying—giving her the feeling that she’d just doomed herself to dealing with the insane child until the day one of them died—but at least softer. At the very least, some of the cannibalistic energy of it had dissipated. That was good, even if she was still fucked and probably stuck with this child.

Yeah, fuck you too, aether. With any luck, this alone would be her punishment and there would be no ultimatums coming for her in the near future. Either way, Emilia was so going to get the universe back for this—she didn’t even care that she didn’t really believe in the will of the aether. This called for vengeance!