Arc F1.7 | Chapter 36: It Looms

Rayleen could feel it coming—this small moment of chance that would lead to the deaths of millions. A curse, released unto the world once more—an itch through her soul. It pulled upon her, winding down meridians and veins of pulsing blood—instinct and aether pressing together until it was suddenly not chance but an inevitability.

So much in their world was inevitable. This little girl, filled with so much curious chaos that she wasn’t ready for, her heart an open wound that would be left a bleeding lump of sadness by the time her feet once more found purchase on the ship she had come to this place on.

Head tilting, Rayleen saw two options laid out before her: Emilia, with her feet on the airship, sobbing into the Baalphorian man’s arms—Olivier de la Rue, the man her child would never see in more than fading visions until their eyes finally found his, gold meeting white-blue and green. Rayleen could not clearly see the man either—such an odd thing that, for the Baalphorian man to be so protected, so unlike Halen Mhrina who was an open scar.

Three being, one open and yet able to push the aether’s enemies away with so much ease that Rayleen could see so many possibilities laid out for her.

Emilia, sobbing into Olivier de la Rue’s arms, his warmth leading her to being pressed into a wall in Norvel, all of this ripped away from her.

Emilia, trailing Halen Mhrina’s shadow through the caves that lingered above them, her mind and fingers digging into all the secrets she and her friends had discovered here.

Two options. Rayleen knew which one she would choose for the child: the one Emilia would never choose, not for herself, but for her friends—for the fate of her heartbond’s nation. Were it Rayleen’s decision to make, she would push the girl to go with Halen Mhrina. Together, they would dig and find out the truth. They would save the universe itself, although the battle would be bloody.

It would be bloody no matter what, Rayleen’s mind tugging to the explosion that would wipe so much of the continent’s most powerful from the war. Limbs lost. Spines cracked. Lives wiped out. Tears spilled—hateful words as well, a dozen years later, only remedied by vengeance after a decade more.

Purple eyes exploded—a lavender code who long should have been beside the girl and her friends. That boy would have made a difference, Rayleen suspected—would have torn his own heartbond free of his shackles and left Emilia free to not bother herself with the Dyad’s fate.

Going with Olivier de la Rue would set the stage for that battle. Going with Halen Mhrina would sever it and Rayleen could hear them, the child who would pop free of her body and immediately become the aether’s most beloved child. They were hers, and yet, they would never be hers.

“Emilia would not want her friend to suffer for her own happiness,”

that child would tell her, their relationship a fracture of fate. They were never meant to be hers—were never meant to be at all, according to so many of the continents’ visionaries. Truly, Rayleen looked forward to the day when the synat would realize she should never have been allowed to bear a child for one of the kyrfa’Nur’tha. It was ordained by the aether itself that she give this child to the synat and her child’s bondmates, yet, the synat would not like it. Rayleen could not blame them. Her child would be a monster—a being capable of seeing far too much, their mind always a moment away from cracking under the strain.

Perhaps they would break. Perhaps they would become a conduit for the aether’s enemies. Rayleen doubted it. For as much as Emilia was a strange creature, Rayleen could see her light. As long as her child was capable of seeing Emilia—of basking in her light and suffering, even from afar—Rayleen was sure they would be fine.

“Fuck!” the girl cursed, stuck as she was. It was fine—she would find her way out, and in the meantime, Rayleen turned her mind inwards once more. As much as the aether’s enemies lingered still, seeking a way into each of them, neither Jerrial nor Vern seemed aware of the thing lingering around them, while Clemence had taken Emilia’s demand that she

not

to heart, despite having no idea what she was

not

supposed to do.

A collection of futures shattered through Rayleen as she watched the girl shift between glancing up at Emilia and back at the two xpherns in her hands—Emilia’s and her own. Rayleen knew what both would contain: messages on the situation with Olivier de la Rue and Xavier. Had Emilia held even a strand more belief in

the will of the aether

, Rayleen would have assured her that both would be fine.

In no world would either even die in this city, and although there were splatters of moments in the next few decades where both, either, neither, might find their lives snuffed out, Rayleen doubted any of those would come to pass. There was a flavour to futures that were set, a sour tang to those that were unlikely to come to be.

Rayleen had heard that some of the most powerful visionaries were capable of sniffing out those visions that were a tangle of reality and a pull of yearning—they were the visions that drove the hands of those to whom they came, never proper visions that would come to be.

Drops of candy, pulling actions.

One day, Rexanti would burn Emilia’s meridians clean of drugs, seeking to make sure the aether’s enemies were removed from her soul. It was unnecessary—such conniving by those who wished to see the aether fall would never succeed by using drugs the girl’s body seemed to relish in to achieve such an end—and yet impossibly necessary—a single moment that would lead to so many innovations of the unit that Emilia and her friends would form, each leading to a thousand happy futures.

Rayleen had no idea how those drugs would make it to Emilia, seemingly safe within the secure walls of the Ridge Rind which would protect both Porsq and Bristol Centarka and so many of the continent’s most dangerous secrets for decades. Perhaps it would be the aether, tugging her enemies into false plans. Perhaps it would be her enemies, seeking to destroy the chaotic being who is set to become the aether’s champion.

Eyes skipping back to the girl in question, beating her head against the wall of the place she was trapped, so close to finding the trap door and yet so far away. It would be easy enough to tell the girl where the switch was—Rayleen had seen this moment play out since she was small, confused as to why someone would step into such a miserable machine that was clearly designed to kill anyone who stepped within its terrors. It hadn’t been until she’d met Emilia—had puzzled over her desire to come down into their place for Jerrial, and to a lesser extent, Clemence, and aid in their search for people they cared for—and stood here in person that Rayleen had finally understood why Emilia would go in there: she was a profoundly kind and stupid girl.

For so many decades, Rayleen had wondered why the various visionaries of their world were afraid the war was unwinnable. Many times, she had thought they must not have been blessed with visions of Emilia striking through the aether and mutilating it to such an extent that only wisps of her enemies could slip through. Anyone who had seen the power that girl could wield, if only she were given the tools to learn how to become a monster herself, would be unable to doubt she would come out on top.

Now, having met the girl and learned more of her personality… Rayleen wasn’t convinced the child wouldn’t accidentally get herself killed before the final battle came. Forget the aether’s enemies manipulating its people to kill the girl—she was more likely to kill herself through sheer stupidity.

Once, when she had been younger—Emilia’s age now, she thought—Rayleen had come across the future father of her child. In that moment, she had known, if they had sex, she would fall pregnant with their ordained child. That child would have been a little older than Emilia now—would have been there with her in Falmíer. Together with her, they would have met all these people and been allowed to fall into both their heartbond and bondmates’ arms, their presence a shattering reality to all of those to whom they were fated.

In the end, that proximity had been the main reason she had not pursued the future father of her child decades ago: Rayleen did not want to be a mother. It was fate, set in stone that she would be. It was a part she had to play in this conflict, as inescapable as Emilia’s own place on the final battlefield, her mind and core shrieking and cracking as she forced herself outward in recompense for the aether’s enemies daring to touch Olivier de la Rue, for daring to try and take yet another of her bondmates from her. So, Rayleen would give birth to the girl’s last true bondmate—and truly, Emilia had an astounding number of threads of

potential

bondmates lingering within her.

Rayleen counted them, those untethered tendrils, reaching outwards towards eight people within the city alone. Her heartbond was there was well, as were each of her true bondmates’, all colliding in a cacophony that Rayleen struggled to make sense of. Really, she couldn’t even tell who belonged to who—couldn’t even determine which belonged to her own child—only fractured futures she’d seen of Emilia and her own heartbond allowing her to determine that that man was lingering nearby. Too far for them to meet, but called to this place of beginnings and endings no less.

A thousand connections forged.

A million pieces played by both sides.

There was still more to play, here and in the future. This was a conflict, billions of years in the making, thousands of years of tugs on the human realm all coming to a head.

Before her, Clemence motioned Vern over—the most reasonable, in many ways, of their group, despite his hot temper. The man looked over the messages the child had been sending on Emilia’s behalf, pretending to be her because the teenager wasn’t stupid; Emilia didn’t need the extra distraction of knowing that Xavier was liable to find himself the catalyst of a conflict. There was nothing any of them could do for the little boy—not yet. Eventually, but that was a choice Emilia needed to make for herself—a choosing of fate that again, Rayleen could not make for her.

Stepping forward, Rayleen pulled Clemence’s xphern away from her and typed a message out for Clemence and Vern to see:

Do not tell her yet, it will be too distracting.

Neither looked happy, and perhaps if Jerrial had been paying attention, he might have insisted they tell Emilia what was happening, but Jerrial could barely tear his eyes away from Emilia or the slip of visible doorway, tucked onto the other side of the machine.

“I think I saw a silverstrain child?”

Emilia had told them when explaining why in all the aether she was choosing to move forward through the machine, rather than turn back, despite the aethernet-blocking oil that had just been dumped over her.

“I can’t leave a kid down here—any kid, but a kid who looks like me? I know all kids are worth the same—and fuck is that a weird way to put it? All kids are worth saving? That’s a bit better. The point is, they’re all worth the same amount of effort and risk, but our similarities make things hit a bit harder, and—”

“And you can’t leave someone who's like you behind,”

Clemence had finished as Jerrial glared over at the doorway.

It was hard to see, and from their angle, Rayleen had no doubt a small child

could

have poked their head out without being seen by anyone but Emilia. Yet, Jerrial was likely thinking the same thing she herself was: there should have been no silverstrain children down there.

Of course, Jerrial knew he could be wrong. It weren’t as though he had been privy to all the goings-on of Fräthk’s machinations down here, not when he had been a captive himself, certainly not since he escaped.

Rayleen knew, of course, that no silverstrains were allowed down here. They were creatures, blessed by the aether itself—given a layer of protection that was both unique to them and impossibly common amongst those this world despised. So, there were a collection of people forbidden from this place unless they were escorting new experiments downwards. Silverstrains were corrupting, however, and were not allowed here, no matter what, and Curtisal had not erected this device until recently—and how had that boy gotten away with that? This machine was clearly Curtisal’s child, and yet, there was little chance Fräthk or their master had allowed that boy to place it here.

Had no one noticed? Surely, someone must have? Unless…

Unless, Fräthk had stopped sending anyone down this far? This place was toxic, and there were so few people who could truly resist the call of the aether’s enemies, corrupting and conniving. It drove most to the brink—not all, but most.

It should, realistically, have driven Curtisal to the brink, had he come to create this machine in person. Had he stepped within this place, he should have been broken, and yet, the boy had seemed normal the last time Rayleen had seen him. Although… there had been that time, years ago, when Fräthk had summoned the boy to them to

have a chat.

Back then, had they been trying to determine if Curtisal had been down here and created this thing? Had they been searching through the boy’s mind and personality for clues of corruption? As far as Rayleen had been able to tell, Curtisal had been the same as always.

Had that been a lie, or had something else been a lie. Perhaps Curtisal hadn’t been the one to create this place—although, Rayleen doubted anyone else had the sort of abilities or mind capable of creating this machine—or perhaps more likely, Curtisal was hiding something: some quirk in their genetics that protected him from the corruption of this place. Impressive, if that was the case—few were capable of hiding their abilities from Fräthk or the one to whom they owed allegiance.