[
Corrie:
They aren’t dead—or, Darrie at least isn’t. Mostly he’s just very upset—murderous, even. I don’t feel any grief from him, so I doubt anyone is dead. Something clearly happened, however, and he is concerned. This far away, I can’t feel anything more of the specifics.
]
[
Emmie:
at least they’re not all dead
]
[
Emmie:
thats something
]
[
Emmie:
not a lot
]
[
Emmie:
but something
]
[
Emmie:
hows getting through the papers checkpoint going?
]
Enough frustration vibrated through her and Coral’s relay—Mikhail was too easily distracted to be included, while she and Polianna tended to get sniping at one another if they existed within the same space for too long—that Emilia could tell it wasn’t good. The trio had been putting updates into their group relay since they’d split off from the main group, and up until they’d actually reached the papers checkpoint, everything had been going more or less okay.
The few Drinarna officers they’d run into hadn't felt anything too hostile towards them, and when they came across people who might have had ties to criminals, none of them had looked at their group with anything more than curiosity as to why three young Baalphorians were in the station. Somewhere between entering the station and getting to the papers checkpoint, however, news of
something
happening in the city had reached the Drinarna manning it. Now, the lines to both enter and exit the city weren’t quite at a standstill, but they might as well have been.
The three were now assessing their options and considering whether attempting to get through the diplomatic entrance, rather than the normal one, was worth the risk. The main issue was that there was a chance the embassy would be notified if they used the diplomatic entrance, and then the Baalphorian government and The Black Knot as a whole would know a bunch of children from the Penns were trying to get into Falmíer. At this point, with most of their group unreachable, it might have been time for them to fess up anyways. Either her friends would get through the cave system or they wouldn’t. There wasn’t much anyone could do to stop them, so the only reason to keep it a secret was to not put the government or Malcolm into the position of having to decide whether to inform the Lüshanian government about the situation.
Given some mysterious amount of the Drinarna was involved in the situation, Emilia wasn’t too happy to have that happen, especially since the caves might be being used by criminals and the knowledge her friends were within them could trickle down and cause them more problems. As they’d worked their way towards the papers checkpoint, Mikhail had thankfully been able to point out that a bunch of Drinarna officers had been making sexual jokes about her. From there, it hadn’t taken her friends long to figure out that the main portion of her story that she hadn’t been able to talk about was that the Drinarna couldn’t be trusted, and with each slip of information they learned, the more she could share with them as the locked relay loosened its hold on her. So, at the very least, none of her friends would be trusting the Drinarna to aid them and accidentally getting themselves killed by some corrupt officer.
What a mess—one with no good options, no less.
On Emilia’s side, they were currently waiting just outside Fräthk’s holding cells. According to Rayleen, they would be better off waiting for someone who was inside to leave—someone they didn’t want to be running into. Vern was of the opinion this was stupid and they shouldn’t be trusting the woman and her awareness of the aether. Emilia wasn’t so sure. No, she still wasn’t sure she believed Rayleen was tuned into the
will of the aether
the way she claimed. At the same time, neither could she deny that the woman just seemed to
know
things. There had been a number of times along their trek where she had turned them down different streets or had them wait. While most of those times hadn’t resulted in anything obvious occurring on their original, intended path, a few times, it had been obvious how close they’d come to running into trouble, their divergence the only thing saving them from a confrontation that likely would have alerted Fräthk that they were coming.
Of course, there was also the possibility that Rayleen and Fräthk were setting them up—Emilia had heard of core abilities that allowed for communication between people, although such abilities were rare. Plus, clearly the organization had some tech that she’d never heard of. So, nothing was off the table, and Emilia definitely didn’t trust the woman.
Still, without an obvious reason to go against what she was saying… Well, it would really suck to have listened to her all this time only to go bursting into the holding cells now and discover that no, actually, they should have listened to Rayleen and waited.
It would also suck to realize she had trusted the wrong person, but…
But the same thing held here as with the question of whether to tell Malcolm about all her friends trying to break into the city: there were no good options, only a thousand potential regrets laying scattered over the cobblestones.
“So… who’s actually in there?”
Emilia asked, quickly tacking on that she was referring to the person they were waiting to leave.
“Vtraní,”
and oh, that was one of the names Emilia recognized from when Jerrial had told her about some of Fräthk’s underlings. They were also one of the underlings Jerrial had most warned her away from, and yeah, sure, given their abilities, Emilia was inclined to neither go into the building with them nor upset them into using those abilities anywhere near her or anyone else she knew.
Beside her, Jerrial hissed, his energy bubbling as though it wanted to surge out and either attempt to locate Vtraní or perhaps even attempt to kill them from afar. Jerrial hadn’t explained his abilities much, but Emilia had the sense he didn’t have a fine enough control of his abilities to not potentially kill everyone within the building if he attempted such a thing.
“We’re waiting for them to leave, then?”
Emilia asked, fingers winding through her hair as she worked on braiding it once again. Earlier, during one of their pauses, she’d braided it out of her face. As she only had her hair clip willbrand—which she still had clipped out of sight—with her, however, the braids had quickly come undone. Then, during one of their subsequent pauses, Jerrial had vanished into a store and returned with more clips and elastics for her. They were cute. More importantly, they were sturdy enough to hold all her hair. Worst come to worst, she’d just slice it all off, but she liked her hair and would rather just keep it safely out of the way.
That said, sometimes long hair had other uses, as she’d learned from the Blood Rain General’s stories of the conflicts he’d found himself in over the centuries of his life. Sometimes, sacrifices were needed, and it was always better to keep your options open.
“Hopefully.”
“Hopefully?”
Emilia asked, fingers stilling so she could concentrate on glaring at Rayleen’s back.
The woman’s head tilted, her own loose golden curls pooling over the ground.
“There are many things that are… not givens. Some things will always happen. You will always stand beside his child, slip her into a cell, slip her out and push her to leave, all for the greater good—for a revenge few will ever see coming. It will happen, no matter the path the world takes.”
“Whose child?”
Emilia couldn’t say she was a fan of someone spinning stories about her, claiming they were ripped from the aether’s knowledge of how the future would play out.
Rayleen was silent for several long minutes, and even after spending so little time together, Emilia had learned that when the woman didn’t want to talk, nothing could make her. Eventually, her silence—and Jerrial’s pulling of Vern against him to keep him from starting yet another argument with the woman—paid off: not only were her braids done, but Rayleen finally looked back at her.
“It is odd. I cannot be the only one who sees this future as a given; yet, everyone worries for what the future will hold. They concern themselves with a snuffing out of the future before it is possible. This future will always be; therefore, the future they concern themselves with is nothing but a fabrication.”
Turning back to peer out across the street towards Fräthk's holding cells once more, Rayleen added,
“This future here is a mess of a thousand strands. Some things are a given. The boy meant to live amongst us will always play a part in my friend’s downfall. So it will be, no matter what. Here, however… perhaps we will face Vtraní here, perhaps it will be later, perhaps one amongst your numbers will even shift them into an ally of the future, their fates and hearts as twined together as yours and the heir’s, as the boy who will change the world with his death and the girl his heart will crack to learn is gone. Six souls, entwined, and yet meant to break in different places of growth or never grow at all, if I do not play my part to perfection. It is too unclear. Too many strands, and I am no expert at reading the myriad strands of the futures the aether believes are a possibility.”
“What does that even mean,”
Vern grumbled, muttering something about how even he had heard of Vtraní and couldn’t imagine anyone either having the power to fight them or the stupidity to try and turn them into an ally.
“You’re pretty contradictory,”
Emilia pointed out to Rayleen, snapping one of her remaining clips between her fingers and summoning bits of aether into it.
She’d already shifted it to look like her willbrand hair clip; now, all she had to do was make it
feel
a little like it as well, while pushing the code for a skill into it. With any luck, if anyone caught her and noticed the clips, she’d be able to convince them they were just silly aether-enhanced objects from Baalphoria. They weren’t exactly common, but such things had been popping up more and more the last decade or so. Mostly, they were limited to research and law enforcement, but she was a spoiled little Penns brat! What was to say she wouldn’t have some silly hair clip that could create bubbles of aether for absolutely no reason!?
“You say you aren’t an expert in reading the will of the aether,”
she continued,
“and you also say that the threads that can be seen are things the aether believes are possible. Yet, you also claim that a future you see—this situation with some person’s child and myself—is an absolute. Those opinions—or facts or whatever else you want to call them—don’t quite fit together. Who’s to say that this absolute future isn’t only a potential future that you’ve misread as absolute?”
While her intention wasn’t to antagonize the woman, Emilia really didn’t like the idea that some future existed that she would have no choice but to partake in. Same with this idea that one of her friends—this
boy meant to live amongst us
, whatever that meant—would definitely be part of taking down Rayleen’s
friend.
Part of Emilia wondered if this
friend
was Fräthk. Another part of her wondered why Rayleen didn’t seem… anything about her friend’s apparently coming death—assuming she wasn’t talking about some
strand of the aether
that lead far into the future, too far off to elicit any emotion yet. Then again, perhaps if she believed it was unavoidable and had seen it as such for who knew how long, maybe Rayleen had already accepted what would happen and grieved for her friend?
That was all to say nothing of the
six souls
stuff—someone and Vtraní, herself and
the heir
, and two other people who were both, what? Meant to die? And what did that even mean, to have your soul
entwined
with someone else’s? So weird and annoying and—
“Fuck~”
she moaned, leaning back until she was smushing Vern further into Jerrial.
“Honestly, I still don’t know whether to believe anything that you say or not, but it all just sounds so… exhausting? Like, do you even have control over seeing things? Or is it always just pushed into you, without your consent? That sounds miserable—like, are you just being bombarded by potential futures where your friends die? Seriously, how miserable that seems, especially if you’re seeing some as an absolute? Seeing your friends die and not believing you can do anything to stop it…”
“It sounds rough,”
Jerrial agreed, his arm looping around her until she was snuggled in beside a softly grumbling but obviously elated Vern. Seriously, Emilia had to figure out a way to convince Jerrial that he could try to make things work with Vern—the two of them were just too cute.
Rayleen didn’t say anything else—not an answer to Emilia’s question about how she was sure what she was seeing was an unavoidable future, nor any acknowledgement to their claims that her abilities seemed terrible, nor even an answer to the question of whether her abilities could ever be turned off. Instead, the woman just kept staring ahead, waiting for the perfect moment to urge them forward.
.
!
Arc 9 | Chapter 426: So Much Fury I Can Feel it From Here
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