[Can’t Opt Out]

Now, Levi knew that he was bad at decision-making. Spontaneity! Going with the flow! That was where he functioned best, as proved by the whole being able to go with the flow so hard the aether could literally use him like a puppet thing. Generally, it worked out well for him—and to be fair! Things hadn’t not worked out well for him yet!

Even he, however, had to admit that perhaps he had done something exceptionally stupid. It was so stupid, in fact, that Levi wasn’t entirely convinced it wasn’t going to be the thing that finally got him killed!

This was all getting ahead of himself and the situation—the exceptionally warm, firm situation—he had suddenly found himself in. Was it also a terrifying situation? Absolutely.

Still, getting ahead of himself.

His problems had begun when the aether began to scream—well, if he were being technical about it, his problems had probably started the moment he met Emilia. Bouncing over to her, enamoured with how she was befriending the quiet little girl who would eventually become the adorable young man that Simeon now was, whom no one in their class could figure out how to befriend, had been the beginning of all his troubles.

Now, did he have the sort of personality that likely would have led him to stick his nose in incident after incident, to do insane thing after insane thing, even without Emilia as a friend? That was another absolute. Still, the things that led from little baby Levi to this current life-in-peril Levi included a lot of Emilia. There was also the not-a-rock in there—Levi shouldn’t downplay that his not-a-rock was a contributing factor to his current situation, the whole running away from his friends in his attempts to get the not-a-rock back thing was definitely high on the list of causes for this situation.

Actually, it was probably the most contributing factor… Most contributing factor? Top contributing factor? Most important factor?

“You are a curious little thing,” the man laughed, his bright-green eyes, flecked through with sparkling purple, tilted in a smile that had lines sketching over his face and Levi may have melted a bit inside.

That voice.

Those eyes.

The gentle tilt of the man’s lips, soft pink-brown against his brown skin, much of it covered by a deep black beard that wasn’t too long, nor too short. Not scruffy, but perfectly manicured.

How, one might ask, had Levi gone from being high above the group who had attacked them for reasons none of the attackers seemed to know, wondering how he was going to get his not-a-rock back, to being wrapped up in the arms of the most beautiful man he had ever seen? Seriously, the guy put even Halen to shame.

Would Halen look like this when he was older? When he was a bit more filled out and not looking quite so young and gangly? Probably not—where Halen’s skin leaned into a darkness that seemed to glow golden from within, this man had much lighter skin, underlaid with more red tones than was common in Lüshan. They were also built differently, this man taller and wider, and while Halen could get a little bigger over the next decade… No, the main thing that connected them was their beauty. The perfect cut of their features. The way everything was proportional, while also leaving something a little off about some of their features in a way that made them intriguing to look at, rather than blandly pretty.

The man being a stunning creature was beside the point that Levi may have panicked when he realized the man was attempting to leave! And! He’d been trying to leave with Levi’s not-a-rock! What was he supposed to do!? Just let him go off, then attempt to get back to his friends?

No, no. Levi couldn’t do that. At the same time, the way things had occurred had been significantly less than ideal. Could Levi currently think of a way things could have gone better? Not particularly, but that could just be the result of his brain melting due to the whole bodily pressed against what might be the most beautiful man in existence thing. It could also be stress… or general stupidity. It could also be that there actually hadn’t been a better option.

Perhaps, he would never know—and really, while his mind was currently buzzing as it replayed how this situation had come about, it was quite likely that he would never bother asking anyone else what they would have done, had they been in his situation.

Put a dozen people in a situation where something they value is about to vanish from sight, and he thought most people he knew liable to jump in and attempt to get it back, no matter the cost. Even Leerin, he thought, would risk her own safety, if only Darrian were in danger—of course, that may simply have been self-preservation, as there was no way the girl wasn’t aware that, if she left Darrian to die, Levi would kill her.

Levi might like killing her… at the same time, he also might just pass off his revenge to Baylor—his distant cousin would enjoy cutting the insufferable girl apart far more than Levi ever would, after all.

All this had nothing to do with how he had gotten there, though!

So, first! There had been that weirdness with the aether. As it had warned Levi that something was coming beforehand, he hadn’t been shocked by it—well, that was a bit of a lie. The surge had been huge, reminding him of the shockwaves that occurred when new aether scars formed. It hadn’t been an aether scar forming, but someone using an ability that gnawed on the aether. It had lasted barely more than a minute, and for the few minutes between when the ability had vanished from his perception and when he had more or less accidentally caught a ride with the man and his little shadow to—presumably—a building within Falmíer, everything had gone back to normal.

The aether and universe had felt normal.

Now, he was closer to the epicentre of whatever had occurred and he could feel it still wiggling about, a kilometre or so away. It was off-putting, to say the least, and he was by no means as aether aware as many Free Coloniers or Dyads were.

Regardless of that currently happening in the distance, at the time of the initial impact of the ability on the aether, Levi had known the man and his little shadow had felt it as well. The man’s head had tilted in that direction—Levi had eventually been unable to help himself and crawled to a spot he could peek out of, finally seeing the breathtaking owner of that lovely voice for the first time and finding the man holding his not-a-rock. The child had been less obvious in showing their awareness of the shift in the aether, but there had been the smallest hesitation as they flipped the page of the book they were reading.

Then, they had continued on as though nothing had happened—as though it hadn’t just felt like the universe itself were screaming into the void of, well, itself.

None of the other people below him had, but aside from the woman who had taken his not-a-rock, they were all being… weird. If every member of their group hadn’t been running skills, making sure the air in the cave system was safe, Levi might have assumed they had inhaled toxic gas or something because what else could affect this many people so suddenly and simultaneously? Some sort of strange ability, maybe? Although he had heard rumours of people capable of manipulating the minds of people in a similar way to how Coral could manipulate emotions, usually, stories of that sort of manipulation suggested it could be disrupted by someone questioning the oddity within their minds. These people were confused, but their confusion wasn’t breaking as they pondered what had occurred in the cave, and that seemed not quite right in a way that scratched at Levi’s brain—mostly, it was an itch that said to be careful and not get snatched up by whatever had broken these people’s minds because yikes, what a terrible fate.

Regardless of all that, Levi didn’t really know if he himself, the beautiful man, and the little shadow were weird for feeling whatever had occurred, or if the rest were weird for not.

Then, the androgynous little child that was the man’s little shadow had been asked to go get someone named Orexi. The kid had vanished into a puff of shadows. This explained the nickname, but also! What. The. Fuck!? Levi had seen and heard about a lot of core abilities and irregular deviations over the years. There was information from Emilia, the clones, the Blood Rain General, his mentor, as well as so many other sources, all memorized because that was the sort of thing he bothered remembering. The books Doctor Vickers collected. Myths and stories from Baylor. Tales overheard in taverns and inns as he travelled.

Nothing had ever spoken of anything like what the kid could do. Then! They’d returned with another person, both of them falling from the returning shadow.

In the ensuing conversation, Levi had learned that whatever had happened wasn’t something most people could feel. Orexi, it seemed, was the man’s second-in-command, and while he had been far closer to whatever had occurred, he had only felt the barest tinge of the aether shifting. From the various things he had overheard of the conversations that had occurred below him, Levi had been left to assume the man was a criminal of some sort. In this case, he was running a smuggling operation, but the way Orexi had spoken to his kaírak, Levi thought it was only one part of whatever criminal activities the man got up to.

Annoyingly, kaírak wasn’t a word Levi knew the exact translation of. He thought it meant something like boss, but he also thought it had more connotation to it than just that. With his Censor still down, however, he couldn’t confirm his suspicious about all the meaning hidden in the word.

This hadn’t been much of a thought at the time, however. No… what his brain had instead latched on to was the reality that the man was planning on leaving! Orexi had been brought in to deal with whatever weirdness was occurring with the people who had attacked them, while his boss and the little shadow took off!

Levi couldn’t have that! For one thing, he needed his not-a-rock back! For another, he couldn’t let the man leave him.

He just… couldn’t. Was this sane or rational? Absolutely not, but neither had been chasing after his not-a-rock napper the first time, nor a million, billion things that had come between that moment of leaving his friends behind and his birth itself.

So, Levi had just sort of… jumped.

As the child had been reaching out for the man’s hand, Levi had jumped and surged forward, intent to grab the man and… that was about as far as Levi’s thoughts got. Had he actually managed to grab the man before the child, he would have been relying on gut instinct and the aether’s guidance to figure out what to do next.

There were a few options in his head now, as his new reality of being a kinda-sorta captive of this man settled into him. He could have run. He could have tried to kill them all—although now having felt the pressure of the man’s energy around him, he doubted he would have succeeded because the man was powerful enough to make what was essentially the energy equivalent of a junk-skill-based defensive zone with his core.

The guy didn’t even seem strained by the effort!

He had also sent his little shadow off to get snacks because rather than Levi grabbing the man, the fucker had grabbed him! One minute, Levi had been surging towards him, the next, the guy had stepped forward, slipped an arm around Levi waist and pulled him into his chest!

“Hello there, little cutie,” the guy had said, and Levi’s heart soooo hadn’t clenched at the term—shá fúrùna in Lüshanian.

Then, of course, his heart had definitely clenched when the man stepped back, his hand reaching for his little shadow, before a burst of darkness took them away and Levi had become the victim of a kidnapping.

At the very least, there had been a brief look of shock on the man’s face when he had first seen Levi drop in between him and his second-in-command. That was it, though: a second of shock, then, he’d been intent to kidnap Levi just as much as he was kidnapping Levi’s not-a-rock.

Annoying.

Now, as the little shadow shuffled off to get food, Levi was being manhandled across the room—an office, by the looks of it—the guy’s arm still wrapped tightly around his waist, his feet barely brushing against the floor as they moved.

The man continued to watch him, eyes gleaming, mouth tilted into a smile. It was the man—the everything of him—and the aether itself, whispering to him that he was safe, that kept Levi from panicking.

Still, he wanted to panic, just a little.