[Can’t Opt Out]

He felt it, the moment his trap sprung loose. This wasn’t exactly uncommon; the man had traps the nation over—fuck, there were even a few in other nations. His influence was a slow spread over the continent, crawling into nations over the long decades of his life as each struggled with civil wars and government coups. Those were always the best times to reach his fingers into the fluctuating power of nations, but Lüshan was his home, and regardless of how difficult it was to traverse the Free Colony at times—not that that applied to him, as long as he had that child by his side—it was still a place ripe with corruption he could use to his advantage.

The man was good at using things to his advantage. While he wasn’t a black knot, the guilt he felt at abusing the people he could was muted in a way both similar and distinct from those monsters. There were reasons, of course, to feel guilt. He wouldn’t let himself feel such things—guilt was a road to the grave, paving stones set out to lead him to a world that was very much not the one he wanted to see created under his careful hands. Probably, he would never get to see that world. The problem was how slow their world was to change. Even within nations that had suffered coup after coup after coup, throwing off the power structures that had formed their culture into what they were proved difficult.

Take this place where he sat, for instance. In a building that looked over much of the capital, he could taste the influences of both Falrion and Dion over everything he saw. Little bits of Baalphoria were there as well now. Drips and drops of The Atrium and all the nations that flying fortress had made a long history of trading with. It wasn’t enough. Only the smallest dollops of those nations slipped between the cracks of Falronian and Dionese cultures because it was too difficult to change, even when it would mean removing the influence of their former masters. Nations and governments might rise and fall, but the underlying culture remained a slow-moving thing unless hands were forced.

He wanted to be the hand that forced—be the person for whom the world bent, all so it could change. It didn’t matter if it was a slow, painful change—a feral animal digging its nails into the worst aspects of their culture and refusing to give and die and let itself be burned back into the aether, never to be seen again. Change might only come once he himself was gone and buried. Still, he would continue pushing.

Just because he may never see the change, that didn’t mean he shouldn’t push for it. Just because some lives might be ruined for that change, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t force his guilt down and ruin them anyways.

All for a different world.

“Oy, Gëon?”

Gëon didn’t look away from the view as he motioned his subordinate forward with a shift of his free hand, the other occupied with illegal alcohol from Dion. Somehow, it didn’t matter that it had been centuries since Dion had any foothold in Lüshan, nor that their northern neighbour’s culture still fluttered through their everyday lives: Dion was the enemy, and even The Atrium’s traders were forbidden from bringing anything from Dion into Lüshan. That didn’t stop them, of course. There were always people filling to bring in the good stuff, selling it at even more exuberant prices than The Atrium’s traders already set for their legal wares.

Again, as long as he had that child, Gëon didn’t need to rely on illegal trading to get anything he wanted—not that he would use his most valuable possession for something as ridiculous as getting into Dion, just for a good drink. Plus, it wasn’t like he couldn’t easily afford whatever price The Atrium’s traders were charging, although it was rare anyone dared charge him anything so ridiculous. It wasn’t even that he was the head of the organization, although he was up there in the ranks; rather, Gëon was just that terrifying, his reputation preceding him.

That said…

“Boss wants’ta see ya,” his subordinate said.

While the man’s voice was as calm as ever, nervous, twitchy energy radiated off him, turning Gëon’s stomach despite how much experience he had in suppressing his body’s natural response to feeling the emotions of everyone around him. Of the many nations on their continent, Lüshan was neither known for treating its Dyads badly, as nations like Baalphoria and Byshire were, nor kindly, as Nur’tha, Norvel, and Falrion were said to—only said to. Nur’tha was simply a ball of mysteries, even to someone like him, with his ear constantly to the ground and aether alike, his empathy going wild with every lie and truth and manipulation that slipped through him.

Norvel, on the other hand… Well, officially, Norvel disappeared their Dyads into the palace, at the behest of their emperor. It was never known what happened to them, although most assumed the Emperor Augun, with his harsh laws and cruel tendencies, disposed of them. Gëon wasn’t so sure. It was only rumours, of course—whispers of the power the emperor’s son was attempting to pull from him, mutterings of the influence the unloved empress had over the staff. Neither could do much until the old man was dead—and aether willing it would be soon; the man so unpleasant Gëon refused to even visit the Free Colony, lest he absorb some of his cruelty. Still, there were enough rumours for him to assume something was shifting under the hands of the young prince and his mother, and rumours suggested that vanishing into the palace as a Dyad was a boon, rather than a death sentence.

Regardless of the veracity of such rumours, the young prince seemed to hold hope for a better nation inside himself. Hopefully, the boy wouldn’t lose his head before the old Emperor Augun found his soul consumed by the aether—the Prince Ju might be the emperor’s only legitimate child, but it was well known the man had bastards the nation over.

As for Falrion, that one was more interesting, with all its whispers of a prominent member of their aristocracy having both a rare form of Dyadism and a black knot—or was it that a significant amount of his family had black knots while he didn’t? As closed up as Falrion was, the rumours were always so muddled. It didn’t help that the Falrion aristocracy rarely spoke anything other than High Falronian, hoarding knowledge of the language so tightly that, from what Gëon could tell, it was so different from the more common dialect that the languages had little more than a few words in common, many with completely different meanings.

All that meant that news of Falrion’s aristocracy was a mess, even when he managed to hold on to contacts in the notoriously tight-lipped nation. Instead, Gëon had his gossip about the potentially high-ranking Falronian Dyad from someone out of Byshire, who had it on good authority that all those Dyads who had vanished from Byshire a few years back had been spirited away by said Falronian aristocrat. There had been a whole thing, where Byshire wanted compensation from Falrion for the missing Dyads, but didn’t actually want them back—after all, Byshire hated problems and according to most of the continent, Dyads like Gëon were nothing but problems.

Allegedly, Falrion had offered to help look for Byshire’s missing Dyads. Byshire’s aristocracy had refused, instead pushing once again for some compensation for the Dyads they couldn’t even prove had been taken by this Falronian aristocrat. It had all been settled, somehow or another, but unfortunately, Gëon’s contact hadn’t known how it was settled. One day, he hoped to find out—it was just so uncommon for anyone to care about Dyads, and the flavour of his contact’s story had implied that more than a few Falronians had been willing to protect not just their Dyad aristocrat but all the Dyads they’d disappeared as well.

To the majority of the continent, Dyads were nuisances—misunderstood and therefore seen as lesser. Mostly, this was because they had allowed themselves to be misunderstood. It almost never turned out well for Dyads when the world remembered how terrifying they could be. That was how Baalphoria had ended up with some of the most stringent anti-Dyad laws: the Baalphorian government knew how powerful Dyads could be, if allowed to shine; so, they kept them locked up, small, broken.

Gëon would never let himself shine. Someone like him, under the right circumstances, could rise to the top of the world. There were already a thousand obstacles in his way, and the people standing between him and his goals already feared him enough. If they had known about the abilities he kept buried under his skin, refusing to ever let anyone see how easily he could read them? Well, he would have been dead long ago.

Take his so-called subordinate, fidgeting behind him. This man was hiding something, and it wasn’t a fear of their boss. The subordinate had met their boss many times, never batting an eye at meeting one of the more influential people in their nation. Had Gëon done anything particularly untoward recently, he might have assumed their boss was in a bad mood and inadvertently scared his poor subordinate. He had done nothing, and their boss wasn’t particularly known for having a temper either—and certainly not one they directed at undeserving parties.

Gëon could still taste the bittersweet flavour of their once loyal subordinate, lingering in the aether even as the man attempted to pull his emotions under control as he waited for Gëon to say a single word to him. Most people didn’t realize that their flavour shifted with their allegiances; Gëon had known for weeks that his subordinate’s loyalties were shifting. Annoyingly, despite sending more than a few of his little ones off to search for who suddenly had the man’s heart, none had returned with anything. Now, he wasn’t sure if something had set off his subordinate’s nerves, and their boss really was asking after him, or if the man was setting him up.

In the background, under the noise of his thoughts and the stink of the man behind him, Gëon felt his trap finally buckle—buckle not spring, as he had first been assuming it to be doing. As a slow-release trap, which was meant to slowly suffocate whoever stepped into his domain, it had been expected for the trap’s activation to be long and drawn out. In no world would he have expected it to have both been sprung and broken.

To be sprung, meant it had activated. The air would have slowly begun to melt around whoever was sniffing around— Where was this? The bakery down in the lower end? There was no one there with enough skill to counter the trap—no one who could break it while it attempted to kill them. Someone from elsewhere in the city? Gëon doubted it was a Drinarna officer—there were only a handful who could disable traps like his, and he had enough in his pocket that he would have long ago found out about any planned raids. This update ıs available on novel~fire~net

Actually, there were few people in general who could break his traps—and again, how had someone managed to break it while it was working to kill them? A rumour out of Dion came to mind, of a criminal organization whose members could break traps through feeling their way along the lines of the aether alone. While feeling the aether so well wasn’t exactly common, neither was it so uncommon that he had blown off the rumours entirely. Still, he had assumed them overblown—it took years for people to train their mind and body to be so aware of the aether, and as a result, few people ever bothered. More, he had assumed the rumours were off in their scope, and it was instead a member or two of this Dionese criminal organization who were capable of such things.

Not that all that mattered. What matter was someone was likely now making their way through his territory—possibly someone from a Dionese gang, although how they would have gotten into Lüshan, let alone the city, was a question.

“Tell the boss I have urgent business,” Gëon told his subordinate—with the man’s exact intentions unknown, there was no way he would be wandering off with him, let alone when someone was digging through his space and there could be people entering the city through less-than-legal means. “Tell them to message me, if it's that important.”

If their boss really had requested his presence, he’d be in trouble, especially since the bakery was one of his off the books bases. Wasn’t like he could explain his urgent business if the boss demanded to know what was up.

Still, if they hadn’t actually requested him…

Gëon grabbed his xphern as he exited the room, sending a message off to several of his little ones. They had things to do, and better to keep the most valuable of them with him and those he trusted, in case they had to evacuate the city.

Regardless of how much power he had in this city and nation, he could always start over somewhere else, but losing some of his little ones? That could send his plans collapsing down.