Hyr could see how painful the game of tag Emilia had mentioned would be—could feel the torture of it viscerally, if they let themselves dwell within their sight too long. They were too old for such lingering attachments to a future that almost surely would come to pass in the next few months. Most synat were able to control their sight by the time they were pre-teens, only those whose futures held the potential for a corebond left to be tortured by visions of what may come to pass with their bondmate—bondmates, occasionally. Even those visions would eventually fade under a mastery of control, although as Hyr could personally attest, moments of strong emotions could still bring their mind spiralling back to their bondmates and the future they hoped to share with them. For them, however, it was usually the past that pulled them back these days—the future had long been a murky water of unknowns.
The absolute misery of this
spark tag
Emilia had spoke of, though? That Hyr could see with perfect clarity, and if they didn’t get control of that particular vision, they were going to vomit from not just sight blowback but the torture that would be inflicted upon them in this game of tag.
“Fucking stars,” one of the group members cursed, turning in circles and searching for Hyr before they were there, popping up behind the young man and striking a meridian. The teenager’s breath caught as he was brought to his knees for the second time that evening.
Most of the people Hyr had brought down during the raid so far hadn’t seen them coming, the aether so wrapped around them they were constantly falling in and out of the perceivable world. It was easy to let the aether drag them away—second nature to let it wrap around them in a slithering embrace. Yet, they knew it would be even better once they were more adept at sparking, which Conrad had taught them how to do within the Virtuosi System, in case of emergency.
“Unfortunately, sparking doesn’t translate well into the real-world,”
the man had explained as they sat and watched Samina demonstrate a handful of skills she had subsequently taught one or both of them, most of them skills exclusive to the kryjy’fra and the people they extended their protection to.
“Yeah,”
she had agreed, skidding to a stop in front of them, her metal legs scattering light over the world.
“You can learn to aim and shit in here, but the physiological effects are, well… all body based. Your tummy has to get used to how nauseating stepping through the aether is, and to do that, you gotta practice top side.”
Hyr was not looking forward to
practicing topside.
It was, however, necessary. Unfortunately, practicing would have to wait until they were back on the ground. Emilia intended to help them, but once they were off this ship—once they had the conversation that Hyr knew they had to have, that Conrad had told them multiple times now to have—Hyr wasn’t sure she would still be willing to help. They hoped she would—that their secrets wouldn’t ruin the friendship that had so easily blossomed between them. That conversation needed to come, but it wasn’t the time, and there had been no good time to even discuss the parts they could between all of their running around and now this.
“Fuck! Where did he go!?”
“They,”
Leerin corrected her relative.
Odd, that she would correct the person over their gender perception when that was as connected to their synat identity as their sight. Why believe one aspect of their collective identity and belief system, but not another?
More hypocrisy, Hyr supposed.
The aether bent and rippled, a shudder running down the ship as Hyr worked on altering their control of the aether to account for the movement of the ship. They had been practicing while they moved, of course, casting energy and aether through the raid, attempting to match the movements of the ship through their core, and therefore without the aid of their temporary Censor. The results had been somewhat questionable, the little dots on their map that indicated their simulated locations flickering from place to place, their real locations occasionally slipping back into the world. Emilia had offered to create a skill to account for the ship’s movement, or at least a function to help with the intricate mathematics involved.
Hyr had refused. They had no desire to rely on a Censor more than necessary, and while adapting their mind and core to being on a ship would take time, it was an important skill to have—they
knew
it would be an important skill to have, when this situation came to a head, regardless of how blurry that future was.
Besides, it was rare they were able to actually use their mind to such an extent, and while their core and mind alike were burning quietly, their Censor softly checking their calculations after they had finally allowed it to help them with corrections, the heat of it leaving a vague ache over their neck, it was a good burn, a good ache.
As their elder’s had so often told Hyr, they were a synat with abilities meant for war. They had never had much of an opportunity to use those abilities—other than occasional training sessions with Zyrex, which were generally for their own amusement rather than actual need—and although they had certainly spent their teenager years training as though they may be allowed to join the war, despite their youth, they currently did not train as though a war were on the horizon. Hyr had to admit, however, that there was something calming—something
right
—about allowing themself to lean into their abilities.
Sliding back into the visible world—not because they had to in order to interact with the group, but rather because they were enjoying messing with them, and it was also good to keep the full extent of your power to yourself—Hyr knocked another pair down.
“Is that a core-based skill?” one of the women asked. She was older than the rest; unlikely to be related to the Zentari family.
“Yes,” Hyr replied, already shifting to dodge a skill being hurled their way. A flicker of the future shone behind their eyes, flowing through their soul. Several days off. Soft, warm, important.
The woman squeaked when Hyr pulled her out of the blast zone of another skill, tossed by one of the younger Zentaris and aimed so poorly it had nearly collided with their temporary ally.
“You are not with that group,” they noted, wrapping the aether around the both of them as they moved.
“No,” she agreed, smiling warmly at him. “I was just along for the ride. Couldn’t get past the guy blocking the way to the next level. Figured we’d do better with more numbers, but the kids insisted we take you all down first.”
Her smile tensed as admitted that she probably should have just left the raid, but something had pulled her to stay. The look she sent Hyr, one of curious interest, was enough for them to offer that she make use of their opening, when they pushed into the next level.
“You want me to betray the group?” she clarified, watching Hyr closely as they bolted around more members of the group, leaving her location hidden while letting themself fall back into reality and take down several more people.
“Would you?”
“I… don’t know. They’re rude, but still a bunch of kids. Stop fighting for them? Sure. Not sure about actually fighting them.”
“That is understandable. I have no expectation that you will fight them, only that you leave them to their fate,” Hyr told her, sending a bubble of protective energy up around them, so powerful the ship seemed to shake for a moment.
Energy vibrated out of Hyr, Leerin’s eyes growing huge as she took in the form of it: a perfect sphere. Clearly, she understood that on a moving vessel, such a perfect shape could only be achieved by a sustained release of energy, rather than a single release left to linger in the aether.
The results of the skill Emilia had used on them, intent to determine where their aetherstores were so they could learn to use them, hadn’t been a surprise to Hyr: they had already known their core was far more powerful than most, the most powerful among the kyrfa’Nur’tha by far. What her skill had failed to realize, however, was how fast their core refreshed itself. Even releasing enough energy to cancel out virtually any skill thrown their way—although Hyr was aware of at least a few, unregistered skills that were unlikely to be stopped by virtually anything, thanks to some intel from Xand syn Gru, who had been a member of Division 30—around both themself and the woman, their core was losing none of its power.
They could sustain a much larger barrier forever, even through sleep, and never falter.
“Fuck…” Emilia’s former teammate—Hyr refused to think of this woman as someone Emilia would team up with in the future, regardless of spurts of it that flashed through them—breathed out, taking a step back.
“Leerin?” one of the men in the group asked, the anger that had laced his voice every other time he spoke giving way to nervousness, brought on by Leerin’s own nerves. He shared the same deep black hair as the woman, but his eyes were a more attractive blue. Where Leerin’s were an almost dull blue, his shone like the sea, his deeper colouring giving the impression he spent far more time in the sun than his older relative.
“Just stay out of the fight,” Hyr told the woman standing beside him. “I have no reason to fight you. If you join the fight, I will take it as an agreement with their words.”
Their eyes flickered to the few other people in the group who hadn’t joined the fight. Some had admonished those who had decided to throw around derogatory words, while others had awkwardly stepped aside, unsure of what to do. Hyr had mixed feelings about the latter. They both understood it took strength to stand up to people, and that staying silent could be just as harmful as saying the words yourself. Still, many of those who had stepped aside were younger than themself, facing down beliefs that had been long infecting their family—
The world filled with flashes of the past—of the slow creep of purism into their family, of the mixed views the younger generation had on such things, of the people who were slowly dragging more of them into that hateful world.
Seeing the past wasn’t a particularly common ability among the synat, nor one that was encouraged when it was discovered—it was far too easy for synat to allow themselves to live outside the present as it was, the ability to remove themselves to the past increasing the likelihood that they would seek happiness where they knew it once existed.
Hyr had never had that problem. There was little happiness in their past, only the potential of better times pulling from the future.
“That is the same for everyone,” Hyr added, meeting the eyes of the young woman who had spoken of
getting with
them. While Hyr hadn’t changed their stance on this subject—there would be no
getting with
—the woman had spoken against her relatives, and for that, if she stepped aside, Hyr would allow her to follow their own group in moving onwards…
“Should I be asking Emilia and Conrad for permission?”
they wondered, before shaking the thought off; there was no way Conrad wasn’t returning from his own fight with his opponent in tow, announcing that he would be joining their group in a more permanent capacity.
“And if I want to fight them?” the young woman—girl, really—asked, stepping fearlessly towards Hyr’s barrier even as Leerin hissed at her to get back, the young man she had been talking to about how difficult and draining their energy bubble should have been grumbling once again about
lynie lovers.
“My cousins are saying rude things to you,” the girl continued, shooting both Leerin and the man a dirty look as she stopped just before the bubble. “I’m perfectly okay with betraying them. They deserve it.”
Her deep blue eyes met Hyr’s, intent and annoyance with her cousins and their views—with her entire family’s views—flowing through them. While Leerin would continue to defend her relatives, even when they said terrible things, this young woman would not. Hyr could respect that.
“Fuck~ Korrin’s right,” the woman beside him mumbled, scuffing her foot against the ground. “They’re being assholes, and we shouldn’t let them get away with that.”
A few of the others who had been distancing themselves from the group mumbled their assent, and suddenly, it wasn’t just Hyr versus the purist-leaning members of the group and those who would continue defending them.
A half dozen people slotted themselves into their mind, requesting to temporarily join the team Emilia had set up for them. Considering the group itself was well over thirty people, this was a shockingly low number—or, it would have been, had Hyr not already seen bits of the situation they were stepping into when they entered the ship.
Not just a single man, a single terrorist with purist ties, using this ship as a base to remove people from Baalphoria. Not just a small organization. Not just something fast and easy.
No, there were a thousand little threads to what was happening here, so intricate that Hyr could barely read more than a general sense of danger in their futures.
Danger, not just from a purist terrorist group, but from something else. This mess of strands, pulling the fates and destinies of many of the continent's most powerful people together, wasn’t natural; rather, it was a forced collision because someone knew they needed to hide the reality of the situation and were risking the consequences of the aether’s wrath.
Someone was manipulating the future of this place. There were few people alive who could do that, and even fewer reasons to do so, this far from Nur’tha, where the eyes of the synat were always present, or Mitine Dyn, where the Sever was always watching, and every one of those reasons was concerning.
Although, perhaps the obfuscation wasn’t purposeful, but a consequence of some other manipulation? That would be even more concerning.
Either way, whatever was happening in this place wasn’t right, and every strand of favour should be pulled, lest they need that favour in the dark future ahead.
“Alright,” Hyr said, accepting each of the people into their team and letting a small part of themself revel at the fury radiating off their opponents, betrayed by their allies, their flesh and blood. “Shall we?”
.
!
Arc 7 | Chapter 262: Favours for the Future
Comments