[Can’t Opt Out]

✮ ✮ ✮ Levi ✮ ✮ ✮

The man’s deep voice vibrated through me, itching some part of me that just wanted to submit, and wasn’t that just wonderful? To have finally tracked the bitch who had taken my not-a-rock back to some sort of base within the cave system, only to find the most beautiful voice I had ever heard among her allies.

Hopefully the owner of the voice wasn’t as stupid as the people he was talking to were—although, perhaps stupid was the wrong word. It was easy to feel, through the call and response of the aether and my energy, that something was wrong with most of the people below. The way they were talking about why they had attacked us just cemented that all the more.

Something was wrong within a few of them—although, oddly enough, not the woman who had stolen my not-a-rock. No, if anything, she seemed too level. Yes, she had spent a certain amount of time while we moved through the cave system resting and just breathing, as though her body was perpetually in need of more oxygen because stress was eating away at her. Yes, she had stumbled more than a few times—and once, she had even nearly lost my not-a-rock! Yet, that was a normal sort of panic, and certainly, based on the number of times she had glanced behind her, eyes searching—always searching—she had known I was there.

A predator, waiting for the perfect moment to reach out and snap her neck before taking my not-a-rock back.

So many Baalphorians argued that people with abilities like Coral’s were making it up, and yet, how could they possibly argue against the ability for people to feel the energy of those around them, vibrating so chaotically through the world? Who could ever deny that gory feeling of fear that trailed them when a predator caught them in their sights?

More than a few people admitted in court cases that they had felt as though The Black Knot were already watching them, the green eyes of a clone—at least, they would always be green under the manipulations of their bodies to hide their impossible to ignore bodies in plain sight—trailing them through life.

Looking for evidence.

Keeping them safe.

Idly, as I listened to that beautiful voice, wondering if it belonged to an equally beautiful man, I also wondered if anyone had ever complied a list of cases where people had mentioned having such feelings.

Did those feelings line up with when someone had begun watching them? If not, could the feeling be tracked back to guilt—a self-watching, of a sort—or another person watching them, such as a lover or criminal or journalist? Depending on who and why they were being watched, did the feelings they felt change?

If there wasn’t already a list, we should make a list—well, not we, as this wasn’t the sort of thing I was good at, but we as in someone like Emilia or Coral, and ooh! Coral could add in her own feelings and—

And, I needed to focus on what was happening in the cavern below, especially as my Censor was still dead to the world—disconnected, its little mind off in the abyss. Actually… where did my Censor go when I disconnected from it? Did it go to sleep? Effectively die? Was each iteration of it a new existence, pulled from the void of the OIC—or maybe some backup function? Some people had Censors with personalities, but not mine—I had enough personality for the both of us. It could be coming back at practically its factory default every time I drugged myself so I could use my core.

Was I committing AI murder? Was there a word for that? Some sort of -cide? AI-icide? No, that was stupid. Computercide? No, that seemed to imply something more… physical? Like bashing a computer in with a sledgehammer? But then, if the computer’s brain and data were backed up elsewhere, did that even count as killing it? And like, could something that was potentially a mostly factory default AI even be killed?

No! Focus! Ethical and word questions later—not that I was liable to remember to think about this again later. If I did, I did. If not, well, such was the way of things within my mind.

✮ ✮ ✮ Gëon ✮ ✮ ✮

The person tucked back in the caves was a fascinating thing, their emotions a bubble of a thousand things, fluctuating so quickly despite nothing really happening down here to make their mind spin so fast.

There was disbelief when my people talked about why they had attacked the group of Baalphorians. Then, it had quickly shifted into a suspicion and dislike that was difficult to quantify. It was there, but slippery—so slippery that I wondered if the person themself had even catalogued the feeling.

Some people, I had found, had hearts and minds that moved too fast. Everything was always a blur, shifting about until even I struggled to grasp on to their emotions. They were rare, but they existed. In the Grey Sands, they had once been used as investigators of a sort, seeking truth in the more brutal of places because that brutality would—theoretically—be unable to touch them. This had been a long time ago, however, myths reaching me through whispers and stories I was neither supposed to understand nor remember.

Outsiders weren’t supposed to know Grey Sander, but that hadn’t stopped me from learning. One day, perhaps, things would be different, and I would be able to visit the vast, unchanging sands that had tortured me during my youth and find answers to some of my lingering questions. As it was, I would be hard-pressed to find refugee there anytime soon.

My mentor, for as much as she had been a cruelty upon the world, had still been power within so many of the nations south of Baalphoria for centuries. Her mark remained, and anywhere her mark was to be found, I would not be welcomed.

Where her allies remained, I would be a blight—the reason she was dead, even if so many decades on, the woman would have been dead of old age regardless.

Where her enemies remained, I would be their enemy just the same as always. It didn’t matter that I had been partially responsible for her death; I was not responsible enough. It didn’t matter that I had been nothing but a child, sold off to her when I could barely string more than a handful of words together; to Grey Sanders, death was preferable to allowing oneself to become a pawn for another—a bloody legacy, to be sure.

Across the sands of time lay millions of bodies, throats slit to keep themselves pure and free from the corruptions of the world itself—perhaps even things beyond it.

That was perhaps the most interesting thing about the creature snuggled behind the rocks above. Whoever they were, in the midst of their blurring, burning-fast emotions, there was also that otherness that spoke of the aether’s power. It was the same energy that the golden one had when she reached into the universe and scooped out its innards for her dissection—except, this person was gentler, more refined, in their molestation of the aether and it was fascinating.

The ability to commune with the aether in a meaningful way was in no way common. Within the city, there was the golden one and my little shadow, still tucked diligently against the wall, reading away. That was, as far as I had ever been able to discern, the extent of the aether’s reach within this place, and neither of them had ever received any formal training.

There were Dyads within the city, of course, each of us able to gobble up bits of information from the vibrations of the universe, but it wasn’t the same as what the golden one and my little shadow did, nor were any of their abilities anything like the power I had felt in other places.

There was the quiet power of the synat, each of their members able to sniff out and feel the secrets of the universe to varying degrees. Normally, I had little reason to cross paths with them, as they kept to the north for most of their lives. I had met a few in passing, their eyes always skimming over me with interest, and even more interestingly, never fear. I had met their new syna Gru recently, as they had made a habit of travelling with their terrifying little hy—although the girl was more towering woman these days, her legacy within the Dread Coliseum preceded her, as did the energy of youth that made it nigh impossible to see her as anything but a child in a woman’s body.

The syna Gru had been an odd one, if also… could I say helpful? Perhaps. Their words lingered with me, months since that meeting. They had been so sure when they told me someone would come along who could help me find that missing piece of my soul—two pieces, if I was lucky.

“Trust yourself, even when it leads you to do something odd,” they had laughed, not cruelly, not kindly. “You won’t want to trust yourself—will feel like you are giving up the chance to find your missing piece—but if you do… things will be good.”

So much had lingered in that statement—in their statement that things would be good. It wasn’t just a good for me, nor even for myself and those missing pieces. No… it was a bigger good, and wasn’t that just great, especially now that the potential key to finding at least one of those missing pieces was now back in the palm of my hand, smooth and chill and feeling just as right and wrong as it always had—a blank slate, able to accept the evil of this world, just as easily as the good.

I had felt that evil before, just as much as I had the good—the good that the golden one brought into herself, as did the syna Gru and my little shadow and all the other people I had passed by on my travels, each letting the smallest bits of the universe seep into them. Sometimes, however, their consumption was an endless thing, and it was in that endlessness that evil seemed to stuff them full.

I could not claim it for certain, but in the cacophony that was the Sever and their Gloriana, their ability to commune with the aether so powerful it was a splitting pain across the world, I thought that perhaps some etching of evil had seeped into them. It was possible that that evil was simply a figment of my imagination, brought on by the overwhelm of their powers, so similar to what I felt from the disgusting thing that sat on the Norvellian throne; however, for the life of me, I could never remember the Sever and their Gloriana’s power being such a grotesque thing when I had been near the Mitine Dyn border as a child, nor even as a young man. Instead, the machinations of the previous Sever and their Gloriana had been something softer—something closer to what I felt from the all those who seemed content to feast on the goodness of the aether, their teeth never treading too close to the rotting parts of their meal.

The person still listening in as I discussed the gemstone that should definitely not have been within the cave system seemed to have that glowing wonder of the aether’s love within them as well, yet, there had been that moment during their eavesdropping where the smallest ember of evil had surrounded them. It did not enter them, only pressed against them as it seemed to do anyone who thought too long on its existence, as though the simple thought of it were enough for it to set its eyes upon them.

With that thought in mind, I pressed my observations about the nature of aether to the wayside, lest I accidentally let something into myself—it wouldn’t succeed in doing more than annoying me, I was sure. Able to pull apart my own emotions as I was, after years of torture under the manipulative abilities of my mentor, I could easily discern what originated within myself, what came from without. I also wasn’t stupid enough to ever assume I was infallible, however. Better to simply not tempt evil with a delicious and powerful meal.

Even through my wandering thoughts, it did not escape my notice that the surging emotions of my eavesdropper settled into a firm regard as we discussed where the gemstone had been found: with one of the Baalphorians.

Really, I might have thought our eavesdropper the Baalphorian in question, except they were using their core, an impossibility for Baalphorians. It was possible my people were wrong when they claimed the entire group had clearly been Baalphorian, I supposed. Regardless, apparently the person who had been holding the gemstone had given chase after the woman stole it from the boy, but she assumed she had lost him as he had never caught up.

“I didn’t want to lead them here,” the woman told me, unaware that she had done exactly that. Well, I couldn’t blame her for not noticing—they were a quiet, slippery little thing, after all, their presence barely discernable even to me. It was a rarity that had me wanting to take a bite out of them—see what was inside the little boy who coveted what was mine.