Arc F1.7 | Chapter 32: Reeling Me In

Levi wasn’t sure he liked Falmíer much, an opinion he happily shared with his new companions as they stepped out of the building Gëon's

little shadow

had brought them to. Both the man and the child were with him, although the kid had yet to say anything to either of them. They had given him a drink and snacks, though, so they seemed okay. Levi wouldn’t die for them, but he would at least grab them if shit went down and they were nearby.

Shit going down

seemed likely, the aether still warbling from whatever had been done to it a little while ago. When he’d asked why the

little shadow

wasn’t just… shadowing them closer to the action, the three of them taking an elevator down several dozen flights to the ground, the man had said it was some mixture of what was happening with the aether potentially interfering with his

little shadow’s

abilities, as well as the fact that several of Fräthk’s most loyal captives were lingering in the streets.

“We should avoid several of them, if possible,”

he had said, hand placed to Levi’s back as he guided him out of the extravagant lobby.

The ceiling stretched high above them—ten floors, at least. A huge chandelier loomed above them, glittering with sharp gemstones in shades of black and green that reminded Levi of Gëon himself. Beautiful. Breathtaking. Dangerous.

If that thing fell, it would slice open anyone caught beneath it. Levi had a feeling that, were he to fall for Gëon, it would also be a spike through him heart.

How could he not like the man, though? Levi could still feel the man’s fingers in his hair, could still hear him whispering praise as Levi sucked him off—could still feel the man’s hand against his own cock, brutally forcing him into a second orgasm while he’d whined and complained and just taken it.

It had been perfect, being taken like that—dirty, too, given they’d been breaking the law. Levi had never particularly cared for Baalphoria’s age of consent or age difference laws. Mostly, for the decade and a half between when he’d lost his virginity and finally—

finally

—turned twenty-eight, he’d viewed them as a constraint on his desire to be with

men

, rather than

boys

. Censors kept them all in line, however, and until two years ago, it had only ever been while travelling the Free Colonies alone, Censor Interference drug tucked into his pocket, that he’d been able to enjoy the attention of older men.

Like many of his classmates—Emilia, Simeon, and Halen in particular—Levi was decades older within his mind than he was meant to be. So what if his body had been

too young

by Baalphorian standards? It was, in his opinion, a stupid law, arguing that

emotional maturity

and

not allowing children to be hurt by predators

mattered most, and yet, with a mind as old as his, that first part wasn’t relevant. So which part was it? Either a body or a mind mattered. If it was a mind, their time within the Virtuosi System’s time skew should have eliminated their need to exist within the scope of the age difference law. If it was a body, Emilia with her too young appearance should be trapped under the laws until she finally looked the adult she was—and really, if that were the case, Levi had no doubt that her ire with her slowly aging body would explode, and she’d be having plastic surgery to force her body to become more clearly that of an adult.

A body that refused to grow up, containing a mind that had always seemed some mixture of a child and an ancient old woman.

A body that, even a few months ago, had been approached by someone clearly thinking she was far younger than she was.

So, yeah, Levi generally thought Baalphoria’s laws about sex annoying, even if he understood they kept

other people

from being abused. Maybe, they had been keeping himself and Emilia and all of their friends from being abused as well—it was difficult to tell, impossible to know. What he did know? Lüshan’s age difference laws were weird and while he had spent the last ten or so years happily disregarding Baalphoria’s laws in favour of following the laws of wherever he was—Dion’s laws, for instance, legalized all sex between anyone once a person was the oddly specific seventeen and a half and three days—in the case of Lüshan’s laws… No, Levi hadn’t given a shit about telling Gëon he was perfectly happy to break them, their age difference far exceeding the stupid laws.

Lüshan’s age difference laws, in the end, effectively made his desires—his enjoyment of older men—illegal no matter how old he got. Stupid laws could go fuck themselves—also, in what world would he expect a crime lord to follow age difference laws! As long as the man wasn’t wandering about grabbing up actual children, Levi didn’t really care.

Was it odd for a member of one of The Black Knot’s ruling families to not particularly care about what wrongs a crime lord—probably crime lord, Levi had yet to actually ask—committed, as long as Gëon didn’t hurt children? Or silverstrains? Or Dyads—and okay, maybe he cared about

some

of the crimes the man might be committing.

“Gëon doesn’t hurt people,”

the little child said, their first words to Levi, when he asked if Gëon was, in fact, a crime lord, and where his lines lay. Seriously, he was going to be rather unhappy if he realized after the fact that he’d fucked a child molester!

“Gëon gives people a home, if they want one, and his projects do not involve hurting people like that.”

“Like what?”

Levi asked, peering around as they moved.

Everything, in his opinion, looked the same. The building they’d come from stood out a little bit—like, Levi was sure if he looked hard enough, he could find it again—but everything else was just… the same. The sort of place that, unless someone grew up there or spent weeks wandering the streets with purpose, they were unlikely to ever understand the layout or know where anything was without help.

“Like you’re wondering,”

the child said, as though it were that easy—as though he had asked a specific question about children and silverstrain and Dyads, rather than something as generic as

how far his empire went.

“My little shadow is blessed with some amount of sight by the aether,”

Gëon explained and Levi… sort of understood?

Obviously, as someone who regularly let the aether take control of him, Levi knew that there was something

more

to the aether, but it wasn’t like he was ever able to actually communicate with it—that was something that existed more in the land of myths and stories spewed upon them by Baylor than anything else. Levi believed in the

will of the aether

, but he generally thought that more a pull, an urge, a feeling; he hadn’t considered that some people might actually… what? See the future through the aether? Hear it speaking to them?

“It isn’t quite like that,”

Gëon told him, the child once again falling silent now that they had defended their… friend’s honour? Was Gëon the kid’s friend? Owner? Father? Unknown. They cared for each other, at the very least.

“What’s it like then?”

Levi asked, eyes flickering to the left, something pulling him that way—tugging, urging, dragging—and the next thing he knew, he was grabbing Gëon’s hand and leading the man down an alleyway that erupted out of the sprawling, climbing, cityscape. The man didn’t resist, his other hand dragging

his little shadow

along.

Levi could feel the man’s questioning gaze on his back, as heavy as the energy that vibrated out of the Lüshanian man near permanently—an ability he couldn’t or wouldn’t turn off? Something to do with his ability to read emotions? Levi should ask, but they had to move, before it was too late.

“My little shadow can feel the aether. I have my suspicions about their origins, before they came into my care, but I believe they would have received proper training to see the future and hear the will of the aether more fully, had they not been stolen away. The aether has found ways to communicate them regardless of that lack of training. For instance, I imagine in this case, it gave them the feeling of your hatred for people who would hurt those whom you love. Therefore, they knew the intention behind your more generic question.”

Beside the man,

his little shadow

nodded, Levi’s eyes having shifted to them while Gëon spoke. Now that he was looking a little closer, the kid didn’t look Lüshanian. Similar enough that they had presumably come from a nearby nation; similar enough that he didn’t doubt the kid, with their mixture of silence and fluent Lüshanian, could pass for being of mixed heritage or from a smaller ethic group.

The red hair was uncommon in Lüshan, bright and burning—and that was properly why they had the hood: to hide their most obviously

othering

feature. The rest of them, though… it was impossible to pinpoint any particular lineage. Their skin was on the lighter side, suggesting they weren’t from Falrion, whose citizens tended towards a deep black and people with skin too light were often treated as lesser—as possessing too much heritage from another nation. It was a bit of problem for people who experienced irregular deviations, and there had often been systems smuggling those with

too light skin

out of the nation, which was often in lockdown for anyone but the elite.

That left quite a few nations, Norvel, Byshire, and Jinkai being the largest western nations, but there were so many tiny Free Colonies this side of the continent—not to mention a handful that were technically nations of the southern continent pressing against some of those Free Colonies, including the southern side of Lüshan.

Did it matter where the kid was from? Not really. Baylor would perhaps be able to guess if he learned enough about them and their abilities, but within the general state of the current situation… No, it really didn’t matter much. Interesting—something to potentially keep in mind as they moved, especially as Gëon had admitted that, due to the aether still settling after

the little mind eater let their abilities loose

, the man’s own abilities weren’t functioning quite right.

“Normally, I can tell where those I monitor are,”

he had explained during that elevator ride, quick and matter of fact and so unlike Levi’s own squishy, distractible conversations with their thousand segues and digressions.

“For the moment, I may not be able to feel them until they are upon us, and I believe the reason the little mind eater let their abilities loose was to hide themself from one of Fräthk’s most loyal and deadly captives.”

It was an odd way to put it, Levi had thought at the time—

captives

, as though they people who were loyal to Fräthk were still their captives, seeking to be free of this person they were now loyal to. Perhaps they were, in a way. Loyalty born of fear, desperation, trauma bonding. It didn’t really matter to him—he’d kill anyone who tried to hurt him or his friends—but he knew it would matter to Emilia and Darrian, who would try to help anyone they could. They, stupid and loving as they were, would try to save everyone they could, especially if they knew that those they were fighting had originally been victims themselves.

Swerving down another alleyway, Levi was pulled to a stop by Gëon. He would have pulled himself to a stop as well… in another second. Gëon, it seemed, had better reflects than he himself did—or perhaps it was just more experiences? Unknown; regardless, Levi looked back at the older man, smiling up at him, his heart doing a little turn over when he was graced with a small smile in return. Beautiful green eyes tilted in his direction, fine lines blossoming at their edges.

Fuck was the man gorgeous. Levi hoped that, when this was done, they’d see each other again.

“Thanks,”

he said, turning back to the alleyway and letting his core slither along it.

For whatever reason, his Censor had yet to come back. Maybe Gëon or all those orgasms had done something to it, but who really knew. It would return eventually—probably soon, unless something was really fucked. Until then, core it was!

The alleyway was a mess, covered in aether as though a bomb had gone off, leaving a visceral scar over the city walls. It wouldn’t last long—this was more like a scratch over the aether, leaving a mark that would dissipate in a couple days—but it was odd.

Odd, and impossibly familiar.

“Is this from the mind eater?”

the kid asked, reaching a hand out as though to poke at the aether. Gëon pulled them back as he told them that he didn’t think it was—that he didn’t know what this was, but it might explain why this section of the city had seemed even more difficult to feel than so much more of the area.

“It’s fine to touch,”

Levi assured them, reaching out to swipe a hand over some of the aether. Nothing happened, although Gëon’s hand did flex in his, as though tempted to pull him back just as he had

his little shadow.

“You know this technique?”

“Yeah. Never seen it done quite like this, though? It’s so uncontrolled—like, that’s how it’s meant to be, but Emmie and Halen have never really been able to work out how to make it so truly uncontrolled and unpredictable? Censors like order a bit too much, I guess? So, even if a skill is designed to be random, Censors sort of spit it all out a bit more ordered than intended? This…”

Levi trailed off, aware that he was babbling about things the pair of Lüshanians likely had no ability to understand—even Baalphorians who had Censors struggled to understand the most basic of things about how skills and functions were designed, after all.

“This makes me think that someone—and probably someone who isn’t used to using the skill—was panicked when they used it?”

he finally said, explaining as they moved through the alleyway that it was a skill meant to obfuscate the use of another skill, leaving behind such a mess that it would be difficult to spot a trap.

Something, however, told him that this wasn’t a trap, the aether continuing to tug him, insistent. There was no waiting—no tentative steps to make sure the place actually was safe.

They needed to move.

He

needed to move.

Time was running out.

Faster. Faster. Faster.

He needed to go faster.

“Levi—”

Gëon was calling, the man’s hand an insistent tug against his that was nothing compared to that of the aether urging him forward, forward, forward, and turn—a soldier, obeying the call of the universe in ways that he was so good at, if only the reward was big enough.

In this case, as his energy slammed against the wall of the alleyway and shattered the illusion that had been placed there apart, Levi thought that this was probably a good reward—something Emilia and Darrian would like because some Baalphorian had tucked this reward away, likely hoping that someone else would come along and find it.

A treasure. Levi liked finding treasure.

And just like that, Levi’s Censor came back to life, a million and a half notifications shimmering through him mind. Really, it was a good thing Gëon was standing so close: usually, Levi had no one to fall into when his brain tried to split itself apart under the strain of hours gone from the system and the aethernet.

His last thought, before the darkness that would feel eternal and really only be two or three seconds took him, was that

this

was why the aether had been so insistent: it had known his Censor was coming back, their time together coming to a close, and it had needed him to find this child, just beginning to wake from sleep.

They would have been scared to wake within the darkness of the illusion, Levi thought, darkness slamming around them as he fell.