[Can’t Opt Out]

✮ ✮ ✮ A Good Distraction From… Whatever That Was ✮ ✮ ✮

The first time Coral felt Porsq’s abilities, she was over half a city away. Kilometres spread between them, and yet, she still felt it.

Pain and suffering. The knowledge that this needs to be done.

Fear.

Pain.

Suffering.

A wavering confidence that broke across the world and how was she feeling it so far away?

So far away.

So far away.

A thousand pricks across minds she shouldn’t have been capable of feeling from so far away, and yet, could feel all the same. A drag over the senses. A removal of free will that was so similar and so unfamiliar all at once. Nausea rolled through her and them both—everyone a spectre across time and space and the aether itself as they were dug into and the person doing this was confident in their abilities, despite the shake of it and the wholehearted desire that this not be required and the unending hope that this not cost an entire district their lives.

A firm chest. Two small bodies, pressed in close. Too many people they didn’t want to die but they knew death could come for at any moment, smiles and frowns and tears cascading backwards to a man slitting his body open in recompense for the brutality he had forced on a small body.

A blade through the throat. Blood splattering over silver hair. Eyes shocked and this wasn’t the now but the then and the now and the future all mixed together—

And where and Mikhail gone?

Coral blinked around them—glanced to the spot Mikhail had just been standing, except he wasn’t there and according to her Censor and Halen’s stalking function, he hadn’t been there for a few minutes?

“Did we all just… miss him leaving?” Coral signed, unwilling to let the Drinarna know they had lost one of their number.

At the very least, noticing that Mikhail was suddenly gone—although clearly, he wasn’t suddenly gone—was a good distraction from whatever was happening in the city at the moment. Plus, the clones seemed just as perplexed that Mikhail had vanished, and it was always nice to know that she wasn’t the only one who had missed something important—it happened often enough that it was just her who missed something, her mind constantly swimming through the foggy overwhelm of the world and letting important things slip through it on accident. Still, as much as they all knew Mikhail’s mind and Censor could both behave oddly, the fact that said oddness had seemingly reached out to all of them was concerning; usually, if he tried wandering away around other people, someone noticed.

Not so, in this case, and didn’t that just add another wonderful layer of what the fuck is even happening in this city to the situation!?

Then, Coral saw it. Through the burn of those mysterious abilities settling within the city, their owner not yet someone she knew and would call friend and sweet little boy, Coral found the fragments of something strange occurring around them in the minutes where Mikhail had seemingly slipped out of all their attention.

There were emotions there that she had no memory of reading—fragments of something cutting off thought after thought before they could form. It was like nothing she had ever seen before, and as she shifted through the readings she had gotten from those further around them, Coral could see more signs that something or someone had interfered with the minds of everyone in the area.

Everyone, including herself and Polianna and the clones. Had they also dug into Mikhail’s mind? Coral could see no sign of that in his emotions—and oddly, she had continued receiving readings from him for several minutes after he had wandered off, his Censor and mind remaining somewhat connected despite his disappearance, which often came with blank spots in his Censor’s logs. Perhaps that was why she hadn’t noticed him vanish, his mind never pulling free of her grasp despite him physically moving away.

Mikhail’s mind, in the minutes she had between that something dragging through all their minds, save his own, had been a jumble of thoughts—and push and pull of empathy and frustration and sad acceptance. There was nothing to suggest his own thoughts had been cut off by whatever had affected the rest of them, and wasn’t that just like her friend? To have such a strange mind that even something that had managed to affect all the rest of them had just slipped off him.

[Corrie:Mikkie, where are you?]

[Mikkie:Uhm… in the city?]

[Mikkie:I have no idea how I got in here.]

Well, yes, that wasn’t exactly surprising, Coral thought as she sent off the coordinates of whatever horrific power had just rolled through the aether. It was still there, although less potent now—a trap, tugging those caught where it wanted, rather than a trap being set.

[Mikkie:Should I… go that way?]

[Corrie:It’s in the direction Emmie is. It also seems to have been right on top of Olivier de la Rue.]

Coral didn’t exactly want to send Mikhail off in that direction by himself, at the same time, the drop group would be coming from the other direction and while she sent out a message in their group relay about the strange power she had just felt, she doubted the triplets in particular would be put off from heading in Emilia and Olivier de la Rue’s direction due to it. Indeed, a second later, Taelor was confirming that no one in their group had felt anything—although he did state that Baylor’s recon skill had shattered around the time Coral had felt the ability.

Regardless, they would not be turning back or avoiding the area—Emilia was near there, after all.

✮ ✮ ✮ Bigger Concerns Just Keep Getting Bigger, eh? ✮ ✮ ✮

Emilia’s first thought, when she felt the world tilt and shift, was to make sure Simeon was okay. He was, but whatever the fuck that had been had brought him to his knees. Halen, thankfully, had also felt something and had the same thought she did: the Dyads in their group were more aware of shifts in the aether than the rest of them, so if they could feel something, there was no way Coral and Simeon hadn’t been able to.

Coral was also okay—and really, Emilia suspected part of it might be that she was still outside the city, the odd interference of the cave system offering her a layer of protection. While Coral had been able to feel Darrian’s rage and frustration with Leerin through the cave system, Darrian himself had admitted to feeling outright homicidal rage towards his cousin. Aside from that instance, however, even as she stood in the papers checkpoint, Coral could read virtually nothing from the people within the city itself. She’d managed to track Mikhail—who had somehow managed to wander into the city!?—through his emotions for a little ways, but that was likely because of Halen’s stalking skill leveraging the aethernet as well as Coral being manually hooked into Mikhail’s emotions, as opposed to just taking in the emotions of those who came within range.

“He’s okay,” Halen assured her, sending through a short video of a grumpy Simeon sitting on the ground and sipping water while Doctor Vickers assessed him.

“Did anyone else feel anything?” she asked, skimming through a message from Nivel who had confirmed her suspicion that Candence had also been able to feel whatever had just happened as well. Lavender codes weren’t as tuned in to the aether as Dyads, but they were still more aware than most people. The little girl hadn’t felt too much, fortunately, and as Nivel was carting her about, attempting to get them back to the embassy but having problems due to an outright civil war threatening to break out between the criminals of the city and several exceptionally disorganized Drinarna factions, she hadn’t fallen over the way Simeon had either.

“No,” Halen told her. “Just us, Simeon, and Corrie. Baylor’s recon skill failed, and he’s now arguing that he did feel something, but Taelor isn’t convinced it isn’t a case of him feeling it in hindsight.”

“Hindsight being code for his brain making it up,” Emilia laughed, glancing over at Rayleen.

The woman’s head was tilted up, her golden eyes gazing in the direction the surge of power had come from—the direction Olivier was located. At the very least, whatever had just happened hadn’t interfered with her tracking skill, and based on what Coral was saying about the emotions she had gotten during the surge, it seemed as though the power might be something closer to her abilities, rather than a more direct combat ability.

That was… some mixture of good and terrible. Emilia trusted Coral, but she knew the girl could be terrifying. Generally, she didn’t enjoy using her abilities to force people to feel something different from what they actually were, but she could do it. Sometimes, it was messy—the stronger the emotion, the harder it was to twist it into something else—but even with the most powerful of emotions, the other girl could momentarily bend them to her will. It had uses, especially in medical treatment.

The ability to remove pain for a moment.

The ability to open a stubborn brain to a suggestion.

The ability to crack a person’s heart open, so they could let emotions they had been avoiding in.

It was a useful ability; it was also extraordinarily dangerous.

“Who was that?” Emilia asked, startling everyone save Rayleen with her sudden question, none of the other people in their group having felt that shift in the aether, not even their aether-aware hostage, although Emilia wasn’t convinced Arinesi wasn’t simply so out of it that normal reactions were no longer, well, normal for her.

“Porsq,” the woman replied, and well, that was… good? Was it good? Jerrial had told Emilia that the young boy was dangerous, but also someone who would almost certainly aid her, if she happened across him.

“He’s with my friend?” Emilia asked, rolling her eyes when Rayleen did nothing more than nod. She opened her mouth, intent to ask for any information about the situation, when Arinesi laughed.

It was a horrible sound—this giggle of suffering and insanity because the woman wasn’t all there, some part of her sliced away by her time down in this horrible place.

“The little boy moves towards god. The god moves towards the boy who would dare dig his hands into the domain of gods and pull—consume.” Her head titled, a moment of clarity flashing through them—and really, the reality that the real Arinesi was still within this horrific shell of a human, sharing space with a monster, made the situation all the worse.

This thing couldn’t live—Rayleen had already confirmed that, before Emilia had even voiced her thoughts on the matter—yet, she was still human, some speck of humanity existing under the deranged things she had become. Mostly, Emilia just hoped that real Arinesi would have clarity long enough to be allowed to beg to die.

Surely, no one wanted to live like this.

[Emmie:really hate to ask this]

[Emmie:but i need you to go find the kid who just freaked corrie out]

[Emmie:youre closest]

Emilia didn’t add that, out of all the people who might be able to resist whatever the fuck was roaming through the aether of this place, plucking at the minds and souls of anyone who stepped foot within its domain or dared think of it, Mikhail might have the sort of mind primed to just sort of… ignore it? The fact that Coral was also sending data of something strange having occurred when Mikhail wandered off, which hadn’t affected him, sort of confirmed that the guy was made to let things leak off him.

Also! It wasn’t exactly ideal that there was some new unknown wandering the city, and—

And as though on cue, Emilia’s xphern vibrated. When she pulled it out, Emilia found a message from an unknown number, Clemence—who had been keeping her distance since Emilia’s annoyance with being fallen upon had only recently waned as her butt stopped hurting—edging a little closer and muttering a soft, “That’s a nice colour…”

✮ ✮ ✮ I DON’T LIKE THIS ✮ ✮ ✮

What in all the aether had that been!?

There Zavriel had been, innocently waiting for his accidental stalker to catch up—and the person was still moving through the city within the lingering shadow of his abilities, despite Zavriel no longer actively using them—then, BOOM! Huge shift in the aether and even the aether itself couldn’t tell him what had just happened!

Okay. That was a bit of a lie. Zavriel was sure that, if he’d had any idea of what to look for, the aether would have been able to provide him with information about whatever that had been. Unfortunately, he only knew it had felt weird and wrong, and yet, also not malevolent? It had felt like something that could become a tool of evil, but not one that currently was, if that made sense?

It made sense to him, and Zavriel supposed that was all that mattered. Some weapons and tools always felt evil, others always felt pure, but most feel somewhere in the middle. The Majen’s willbrand felt like a cursed thing. The hands of healers who would never dare use their gifts to extend the life of someone for cruel reasons leaked purity into the world. This had felt something in between, and the fact that that power could be turned towards evil…

Zavriel didn’t like that—he didn’t like that at all, nor did he like that this was the sort of situation where, usually, the aether would have been offering facts to him, and yet, it wasn’t.

It was silent, and that seemed like soooo not a good sign.

Not a good sign at all.

✮ ✮ ✮ Not a Tipping Point to Miss Pushing Upon ✮ ✮ ✮

He had never felt the boy’s abilities so powerful. It had never been a secret that the child would become a monster, only a question of when his powers would burst forth and to whom his power would fall. Currently, it was not a fully blooming thing, the tilt of the child’s allegiances sitting within the middle distance—sitting upon a tipping point and he couldn’t let the boy tip in the wrong direction. The mess currently swirling around him did not matter, nor did his desire to pull the strange creature hiding above him out of the shadows and pull their secrets from them.

Such things were destined either to wait or never be. Only time would tell.

“Little shadow,” he called, turning to the small child tucked against the wall.

Really, his little shadow wasn’t as young as they appeared; rather, despite him keeping their near bottomless pit full with nutritious food, his little shadow had remained small. Combined with the mop of red curls swimming, untameable, around them, and their huge eyes, they seemed a doll.

A vicious doll, but a doll nonetheless.

Those huge eyes shifted from their book to Gëon’s now, blinking when he asked that they retrieve Orexi to deal with this situation so the two of them could go see what was upsetting Fräthk’s little mind eater so badly—there was no way his little shadow hadn’t also felt that surge, monstrous as it had been.

Their small form swept away in a flood of shadows, and Gëon had to smile to himself when a bubble of shock rippled out of the person hiding above. An actual emotion that lasted more than milliseconds, all because his little shadow was the unique little thing they were.