[Can’t Opt Out]

“I cannot believe Levi was the one to find the entrance.”

“Trust him to be the one to find a hole.”

“I pretty sure Levi’s a habitual bottom. I don’t think he has any reason to find other holes.”

“Y'all are so lucky Mikhail left. He’d be giving y'all shit for the sex talk.”

A laugh spread through the group, someone muttering about how Levi didn’t mind the sex talk—stars knew he made such jokes often enough himself. If he made them about himself and other people, what did it matter if other people made them at his expense?

“So unfair,” Codeth groaned. “I made a joke about holes, and Mikhail laid into me. Why couldn’t I have kept my joking until he was gone~”

As though worried Codeth would once again make a joke about Halen looking for Emilia’s holes—Levi had been close enough to overhear that, although he didn’t think anyone had noticed him—Halen reached out and smacked his friend on the back of the head. More snickers worked their way through the group, but Levi was sure most of their group didn’t realize Halen was head over heels in love with Emilia—had been for a long time, Levi thought. Levi… didn’t really have an opinion on it. Emilia could do worse than Halen. Halen could do worse than Emilia. Levi wished Halen luck in getting involved with someone so chaotic—with someone who had a long line of boys willing to fill her bed and cunt, many of whom she would never wish to say no to.

Generally, Levi tried not to think too much about that—about the fact that someone like Emilia, who was so like him and yet so different, was able to not just find love but find it with so many different people. Granted, she had a type—black knots—and there were no shortage of those around to worship her. Levi had fucked a few of the clones, a few random Black Knot agents. Not for him. They were fine, but they weren’t the sort of energy he was looking for in someone he would want to spend more than the occasional night with. It wasn’t that he wanted love—if anything, the way love had seemingly broken Rafe and the triplets should have set him off from it entirely. So, no, it didn’t exactly bother him that his friends were making sex jokes about him; more, it bothered him that they seemed to think so little of his searching efforts!

Despite what was being said between the lines—that he wasn’t someone who could be counted on to do anything useful when fists and skills weren’t involved—he definitely was a good person to have around! Someone who would never hesitate to throw himself into a fight! Someone who would go, go, go until everything was settled! Was he a little distractible? Yes. Irresponsible? Definitely. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novęlfire.net

People didn’t have to be quite so mean about it, and while his black knots kept him from really caring about how everyone thought him to be more of a pain in the ass than anything else most of the time, it still left him feeling unsettled. Not upset, just… not quite right. It had, after all, been during his efforts to follow Valor’s suspicions that the effect of aetherstreams on the local foliage might lead them to the tunnels that he had, yes, stumbled right into the hole that led to the tunnels. Still, it had been him who found the entrance while following instructions!

So, he had actually helped with the search! Most of their school days had been spent with him fucking around, having fun. That was school, unimportant because he had a job with The Black Knot waiting for him, no matter how bad he did in school. This was life, and if he fucked around, Emilia might get hurt.

So, he was… annoyed, maybe? Or… something.

Fuck.

Levi wished Coral was still there so she could tell him what he was feeling. The good emotions Levi could name, the more negative ones, not so much. It was nice when Coral was there, able to send him little messages when she could tell he was growing frustrated with his inability to properly quantify what he was feeling. Someone had once told him that he should try and sit with his emotions and figure them out by himself. That was all fine and good, except neither he nor his emotions could sit still. Right now, he was whatever he was. Two minutes from now, he wouldn’t be. Lingering on his emotions wouldn’t help—not in any meaningful way. It wasn’t even like he could look back on the previous emotions Coral had named for him and pick one that suited his current mood because his negative emotions were All. Fucking. Different.

Happy was happy.

Excited was excited.

Horny was horny.

A thousand different things, indiscernible and impossible to catalogue, were mystery emotions, and—

Ooh, a rock.

Levi swooped down as their group made their way through the tunnel they had found—that he had found—and grabbed the rock that definitely wasn’t a rock as he had first thought. {Starless Eyes} shifted over his eyes, their entire group wearing an activation because it was fucking dark down here and just getting darker. Pretty, though, veins of glittering ore weaving their way through the stone as they worked to get deeper. So far, it had been pretty easy going. No one was counting on it staying so simple.

At the beginning of the tunnel, vines had crawled into the darkness, alive and then slowly dying as they moved further in. Valor had explained that due to the lifecycles of the local flora, it was likely that the tunnel had previous gotten more light, allowing the vines to infiltrate the tunnel. Then, one day, the trees had reached a little too high, and suddenly, the light no longer reached the tips of the vines. Maybe they had tried to move a little further into the darkness—tried to reach a few more inches before death from the lack of light began to seep through the now gnarled brown of them, snuffing out whatever it was that made the vines grow, live. Some plant life could live on the nutrients of the air alone. These vines, not so much.

Levi wasn’t into… biology? Was this biology? What had he just been thinking about school? That he had never really been too invested in all that? Yeah. Fuck that shit. Better to just vibe through life, making shit up in his head as he went, listening to the mumblings of his friends to forge his own path.

In this case, forging his own path had led him to fall into the hole that led to the tunnel! Thankfully, it hadn’t been the deepest of holes. Still, hole! Getting into Falmíer! Finding Emilia! Possibly ending up in a war with a criminal organization and the Drinarna!

There had been deeper holes further into the tunnel, requiring a few of them to ferry the rest of their group down. The fact that they were a bunch of climbers worked well for them, the low-devs among them crafting equipment from the aether to make their way downwards. Ropes and carabiners and all that shit. Most of them still wore their equipment now, knowing that despite it not exactly being the most comfortable stuff to walk it, it was more annoying—not to mention a giant fucking waste of time—to take the stuff off only to need to put it back on in an unknown amount of time.

Despite Darrian’s attempts to get Leerin to keep hers on, she’d taken it off every time. Despite having to put it all back on two minutes later that first time, she was still taking it off every time. Despite Levi’s request that he be allowed to kill her—or at the very least leave her tied up in the tunnels for later retrieval—all his cousins had refused. Technically, after so many generations, the clones were so far removed from the Baxter and Laprise families that it was a little weird to consider them cousins, but they were often raised to think of them as cousins. Levi thought it was maybe so they’d be less inclined to kill them? Unknown. Regardless, the only one who had been all in on killing Leerin—or abandoning her; Levi just wanted the bitch gone—had been his sister. That was how bad things with Leerin were going: someone who had once been her friend was now perfectly okay offing her.

Currently, Samina was walking arm in arm with Lux, the two of them patently ignoring Leerin as she trailed behind them, arms crossed and glaring at their backs. No, that wasn’t quite right. Samina was ignoring Leerin. Lux was just used to her friend’s moods and wasn’t willing to waste energy trying to get Leerin out of whatever was currently bothering her. Nobody, not even Darrian, was inclined to try asking Leerin why she was in such a miserable fucking mood at the moment.

They all knew, was the thing, and no one was bringing it up.

Levi wanted to bring it up.

Samina wanted to bring it up.

Once again, their cousins said no. Levi didn’t even know why they were saying no. None of them liked Leerin. All of them thought she needed to fuck off and leave their friend group. No one wanted to point this out.

“Darrie will go with her,” Taelor had said the first time the topic of ejecting Leerin from their group had come up.

That had been over a decade ago, and Levi hadn’t been convinced by this argument even then. Darrian was a good boy, and Levi knew that with a little… persuasion, Darrian would tell his cousin to fuck off and stay with them. Levi had faith! Everyone else, not so much. Hence, Leerin was allowed to stay as insurance that Darrian would stay and they all suffered.

One day, when Leerin was finally ejected, Levi was going to point out to Darrian how loved he was. All of them were suffering, just so he would definitely, absolutely stay with them.

As though summoned by thoughts of him, Darrian slipped his arm around Levi’s waist. “What’s that?” he friend asked, pulling Levi closer into the warmth of him.

“It’s a not-a-rock,” Levi replied, turning the not-a-rock over in his hands and pushing himself more securely into his friend’s solid and yet squishy-soft body.

Unlike the rest of the cavern, which was primarily composed of some sort of rough, near-black stone, veins of blue and purple reaching through it that Lüshanians claimed were the result of the Lowdouran’s powers—who fucking knew if that was accurate, everything about those guys myths at this point—the not-a-rock was a smooth, not-quite-round, gold thing. Maybe there was a bit of pink in it? Not a solid block of gold, in any case, but {Starlit Eyes} skewed the colours of the world a tad, so it wouldn’t be until they were back in proper lighting that he’d be able to determine the exact colour.

Of course, someone could have lit up the tunnel properly with a skill, but everyone was a bit on edge, worried they would run into someone else using the tunnels, and while there were Black Knot skills to cover light and sound up, the former tended to be aetherstore intensive. Someone could have supported it—many someones, if they were being honest—but not knowing what they were going into, they didn’t want to waste so much aether. Plus, it wasn’t like they needed to see better, despite what Leerin had claimed, early in their trek.

It went without saying that of those who could use the skill necessary to cover up any light their group created, Leerin was not one of them.

“It feels almost like a willbrand,” Levi noted, turning the not-a-stone over the Darrian. “Not quite, but close? Can’t say I’ve held many non-Baalphorian willbrands, though, so maybe it's some weird Lüshanian one?” That was a lie, of course—Levi had a lot of experience handling Free Colony willbrands, it just wasn’t something most of their group knew. Still, the thing didn’t feel like any willbrand he’d ever handled.

As expected, the moment the word willbrand slipped from his mouth, Simeon was falling back from his position between Valor and Rafe to take a look, his Censor keeping track of the words slipping from the mouths and occasional signs falling through their group.

“Have you seen willbrands from around here?” Darrian signed as he passed the not-a-stone over to the shorter boy.

“No,” Simeon replied curtly, delicate fingers brushing over the not-a-stone. “A few from Dion, but I doubt they are anything like what exists in Lüshan, given their history,” he added.

“Oh, wouldn’t that be fun! For Lüshan to actually have heavy Dionese influence in their willbrands, despite the whole hating each other thing?” Levi laughed, thinking back on the times Emilia had specifically worn clothing from Dion when the Drinarna were around, just to piss them off.

“A lot of Lüshan still has influences from both Dion and Falrion in it, so it is quite possible their willbrands also retain that influence,” Valor noted, making use of Halen’s new function for reading signs they couldn’t physically see, but could detect through their Censors. Halen had explained how it worked. Levi definitely hadn’t been listening, the ins and outs of such things not worth his attention.

“Bet they wouldn’t want to hear that,” Levi replied, muttering about how touchy the Drinarna he had met were about any mention of similarities in their fighting styles and core abilities and those found in Dion. He knew the whole… being beholden to Dion on and off over the millennia thing had left its mark on Lüshan, but they were from the same general area! Of course there would be similarities between them! “So, is it a willbrand?” he asked, turning his attention back to Simeon, his hands itching to reclaim his not-a-rock.

Simeon was quiet—or, his hands didn’t move to sign, Simeon rarely making any verbal sounds—for a long time, the conversations of the others echoing quietly through their group before hitting the sound barrier travelling with them and being forcefully snuffed out.

Finally, Simeon raised a hand from the stone. “Maybe. If it isn’t a willbrand… it is definitely… something.”

Mystery not-a-stone, then. Levi did love himself a good mystery. Unfortunately, they had more important things to focus on. Still, as Simeon continued poking at the stone, Darrian’s other hand gently wrapping around his upper arm in case he stumbled while he paid no attention to the pesky task of walking, Levi couldn’t help his gaze from shifting back to his not-a-stone, something about it calling to him.