[Can’t Opt Out]

Mentally, Emilia ticked off a few items on her List of Current Concerns. Concerns that were now taken care of?

Getting someone who might be able to help Jerrial with his olthagri into Falmíer? Check.

Letting everyone know that they had a new potential ally in the city? Many checks—one for each group relay, so no one accidentally missed it.

Getting Mikhail to said potential ally and on the way to finding Olivier’s group. Check, amazingly—also, seriously? How had this guy gotten around the recon ability!? Something to examine in more detail later.

Unfortunately, with each of the items taken off her list, yet more items piled up.

The reality that she could be sending Mikhail into a dangerous situation lay at the top of her mind. Of course, she had warned him about the potential danger—as had his new companion, who had also been able to feel whatever had occurred several minutes ago. Neither of the men had indicated they were so afraid of whatever had happened that they wouldn’t be going anywhere near it, however, and Emilia couldn’t bring herself to tell them to not.

Zavriel—the mysterious person Meridian had sent to them—also had to actually get to Jerrial—yet another reason she was nervous to have him and Mikhail head towards Olivier’s group. In no world did she want them in danger at all, but the reality that even a smaller injury might leave the guy unable to help Jerrial…

Well, Emilia was rather conflicted. Zavriel was possibly the only one who could help Jerrial—although Doctor Vickers had also sent out feelers to some of his own contacts, asking if anyone knew of any treatments for late-stage olthagri in an adult. When she’d last heard from him, shortly after Baylor and Darrian had gone plummeting into the city, he had yet to hear from anyone. That didn’t mean no one would come back with anything, but olthagri wasn’t common in Baalphoria, and while her childhood doctor had a few contacts in the Free Colonies, they weren’t people he could easily contact—mostly, they relied on the clones to transmit information between them, and due to trying to keep the situation from reaching too many Black Knot agents, Doctor Vickers hadn’t contacted those clones he knew in the Free Colonies, who could contact various medical professionals, until after Emilia had fessed up to Malcolm.

Hopefully, this wouldn’t fuck Jerrial over.

This also created the issue that Zavriel needed to get to Jerrial, but if he was willing to help them in a more general sense—which, based on their short conversation, as well as her occasional updates from Mikhail on how their travels and getting to know one another were going, he did seem—could she really tell him to avoid Olivier’s group, all so he could maybe help Jerrial? Especially given they were still in their horrible building?

No—no, she couldn’t. Rayleen had revealed that Olivier had left with quite a few people, and while the woman doubted more than a handful would have stuck around with him, a few, including several children, likely had.

Jerrial’s life sat in her heart, raging against the lives of Olivier and whoever had ended up with him.

It was terrible—almost as terrible as this horrible place. Almost.

Had she been anywhere else, Emilia might have told Zavriel and Mikhail to come to her first—avoid Olivier’s group and whatever conflicts they might have become involved in, and come meet up with their group.

As Emilia wasn’t inclined to ask anyone else to come down to this murder dungeon, she would not be doing that. This place was a toxic swamp, waiting to snatch anyone who stepped within it up. Something told Emilia that their group was relatively protected for the simple fact that she and Rayleen seemed aware that something with this place wasn’t right. It was a strange, double-edged knife, this reality that her knowledge that something was wrong was keeping her safe, while at the same time, it felt as though a single thread of too much awareness between her and whatever that thing was would tether them together forever.

To know, and yet to not let herself know too much.

This sort of wilful ignorance was, needless to say, not something she was particularly skilled at. Emilia’s mind was made to dig and search, not linger at the surface of knowledge. The not knowing was as horrific to her as the thing that circled them, waiting for a moment to snap down on them and suck them dry.

Once, Lux had come to visit her, just as she was returning from a trip to the Grey Sands, where her father had been meeting with Grinva Jnua, the Grey Sands’ top diplomat, while Emilia hung out with his daughter, Hjunri, who was a few years younger than Emilia but impossibly more serious.

Officially, Grinva had nowhere near the amount of power Emilia’s own father did, but unofficially, there was so much history and preexisting power dynamics laying between the Grey Sands and the southern Free Colonies that his opinion and words were often taken into more consideration than her father’s. At the same time, other Free Colonies would refuse to engage with Grinva as he had no real power; yet, he understood the politics of the Grey Sands and the surrounding Free Colonies better than Emilia’s father ever would. So, they collaborated quite often, although their differing views and perspectives often left them on ill terms with one another—although, they usually got drunk after their more intense disagreements, in some male bonding exercise that Emilia wasn’t convinced didn’t end in them having sex.

It wasn’t that she’d ever seen anything, but there were vibes, and she knew from overhearing enough conversations when she was younger—no one had yet realized how much she could read between the lines and that they needed to temper their words around her, if they didn’t want her to know something—that her parents occasionally had sex with other people. It wasn’t the sort of open relationship Emilia had always ended up in, if her vaguely defined relationships could be considered relationships at all. Even when she had been more seriously involved with Rafe, there had never been any expectation that she only sleep with him.

There had been hookups with Codeth here and there, the pair of them perpetually finding it hilarious that virtually none of their friends knew they occasionally fucked. Simeon knew. After the incident with Codeth happening across them playing in the woods, Rafe had guessed that they had previously had sex. Emilia thought Halen knew, based on an eyebrow raise and a shy smile she had once seen exchanged between the two after she and Codeth had returned from one of their vanishing acts, but given Halen’s recent confession, had he known? If he had, had he cared that one of his best friends was occasionally hooking up with the girl he apparently liked a lot?

As her former classmate had been hilariously honest with her, Emilia decided to just ask if he’d known, and what he’d thought about it—or now thought about it, if he hadn’t already known—in their relay. Immediately, a message came back saying he was busy and would get back to her soon. The auto-reply seemed to have been tailored for her, a little heart trailing the end of his message.

That was… sweet, and if she hadn’t had other things to worry about, Emilia might have melted.

Instead, she continued trudging down the seemingly endless and winding stairs of the murder dungeon, mind spiralling back to her contemplations of how her parents’ marriage seemed to work. She may have also added another item to her list of concerns: whether—assuming Halen wanted to try for something… more permanent between them—he was okay with her wanting an open relationship, and not one like what she thought her parents seemed to have.

From what Emilia had seen, the rules of her parents’ relationship seemed to be something along the lines of we are separated for long periods of time and have needs, and as long as we remain each other’s number ones and properly discuss extramarital relations before anything occurs, such relations are acceptable. There was also a chance that, when both her parents were together with their occasional partners, they had group sex.

It horrified her siblings—young as she’d been when she first realized how her parents’ relationship likely worked, Emilia hadn’t had the sense not to tell them her thoughts on the matter—but why would she care?

As long as they were happy, that was all that really mattered.

Regardless of whatever her father and Grinva got up to after drinking their conflict away, the Grey Sander had never been anything but nice to her.

It was actually from him that Emilia had learned most of what she knew about Chinsata, Mitine Dyn, and Crishar, each of them secretive for their own reasons. Later, she had supplemented her knowledge of each through Meridian—although he only knew a little more about Chinsata and Mitine Dyn than she had—as well as various stories and documents from other Free Colonies.

Grinva also collected knowledge for her. Most of it came in paper form, annoyingly. Every time she complained that he could have digitalized anything not written in Grey Sander for her, Grinva would simply smile and tell her she needed to slow down.

“I know your brain moves as fast as an olvri, slithering through the burning sands so quickly it cannot feel its stomach sizzling, but it still sizzles. Olvri must rest at night, to keep their bodies from boiling alive, their skin from being torn away, layer by burning layer. Yet, if a monster catches sight of them, they will not be permitted such rest, lest the jaws of death come for them. So, they must never push their bodies to the brink, lest their rest be denied them and they be forced to slither about for more than a single day, seeking safe harbour,” the man had once told her, long before her D-Levels were tested, Emilia complaining that she had a tablet and could read on it just as well as in a book.

Paper, however, was a slowness.

It was flipping pages and coming across typos that had been missed before printing and couldn’t be corrected—nor censored—within a line of data. It was curling up with something that had more heft and history. A thousand hands had touched many of the books Grinva had given her over the years, and while Emilia generally preferred digitalized material, she could appreciate what he had meant about slowing down to just be with some paper product or another, especially now that her Censor and the Virtuosi System could be used to help her absorb information faster, faster, always faster.

This was, Emilia knew, more of an issue for low- and non-devs. Most of her friends could absorb information quickly, and could tolerate far more strain on their brains than the average Baalphorian, but only some of their brains were a constant buzz. Emilia liked the constant buzz, but brains also needed to be able to slow down—they needed to breathe and relax just as much as they needed to be stretched to their limit.

Different types of learning and different ways of learning were important for keeping the brain—and body—sharp!

Emilia had told Lux this as she unpacked the obscene number of books she had been sent away from the Grey Sands with during that visit. Her friend had looked at the books, packed onto bookcases that her father had needed to have specially built for her, as paper products were not common Baalphoria.

Lux had then joked that she was addicted to learning, and that, one day, her inability to not learn something was going to get her in trouble. At no point had Emilia considered this either untrue or a serious concern. She loved to learn! There was nothing wrong with that, and sure, she’d figured some things out that were a little problematic. The whole thing with microsparking and a collection of other skills not really being safe to release publicly wasn’t ideal, but it wasn’t exactly trouble, per se.

This had been the case until now, anyways.

Now, as she descended, Emilia wanted to poke at the aether—at the thing lingering within it—and learn what was happening.

She wanted to know.

She wanted to know.

She wanted to know and it was gnawing desire inside her, tugging at her brain and core, urging her to reach out and just touch it.

Touch it, just this once.

It will be fine.

Nothing bad will happen.

What could even happen?

Nothing—nothing will happen, but you’ll know.

You will learn what is lingering there and it will be glorious.

Does anyone know?

Maybe that’s what this place is: a place for Fräthk to learn what that thing is.

They don’t know.

Maybe no one knows.

You could be the first.

The first.

The first.

The one to finally know.

The only one.

The holder of knowledge.

Unique.

Special.

Don’t you want to be special, and—

Emilia glared into the darkness, aware that Rayleen’s energy was bubbling behind her, just as aware that her curiosity had allowed some amount of whatever that something was her inside her. It was just a drop—a little speck of whatever it was. Still, neither she nor Rayleen had liked it—and Emilia had a feeling Rayleen might have flooded her system with her own energy, regardless of any potential consequences to or from her Censor, in an attempt to purge that thing from her if Emilia hadn’t managed to force it out of herself first.

She had, the cutting off of her curiosity enough to push it outside her once again, but it was too much, and in no world could she allow anyone else to come down here looking for them. Fuck—she didn’t even want them down there.

So, if she wanted to get Jerrial the treatment he needed, that meant she had to get them out of there. Technically, that had always been on the list of things she was concerned about doing. The we need to get the fuck out of here item on her list just had a footnote now, was all, reading so we can survive and get Jerrial treated for his potentially fatal illness.

So, there was that.

Also on her updated list of concerns was the fact that none of them had met Zavriel before and who knew if he could actually be trusted or what he was capable of? Meridian—whom Emilia had connected with at Zavriel’s request because the pair hadn’t shared xphern exchange numbers—had admitted that he also didn’t really know Zavriel.

Instead, the Crisharian prince only knew about him by reputation.

Emilia had added concerns about Meridian’s common sense to her List of Current Concerns. Was there anything she could do about the future king of an entire fucking nation having the sense of a lollibob? Not at the moment; possibly not at all. It still went on the list.

“He’s supposed to be some sort of prodigy,” Meridian had insisted in their sporadic messaging, Emilia more concerned with finding Jerrial and Clemence’s friends—or signs that they were dead—and getting the fuck out of that place than dealing with Meridian at the moment. He had done good, sending someone who might be able to help Jerrial to them, but also, something was weird.

For one thing, even Meridian had no idea how this Zavriel person had managed to get to Falmíer so quickly. The prince had also needed to begrudgingly confirm for Emilia that the strange situation Coral had explained to her, which had resulted in Mikhail somehow getting past the Drinarna along with Zavriel, had likely been caused by whatever abilities Zavriel possessed. Meridian had been cagey on the details of Zavriel’s abilities, but had eventually agreed that, at the very least, he could manipulate the perceptions of the people around him, which had allowed him to slip through the papers checkpoint without anyone noticing.

Amazingly, Mikhail hadn’t even noticed he was accidentally following his new companion. The guy’s brain was such a strange, magical thing, and really, while their class had figured out a few ways to utilize Mikhail’s uniqueness, she really didn’t think they’d spent enough time doing so.

Clearly, they needed to find more people who had abilities that could mess with brains and see if they affected Mikhail’s brain as inconsistently as Censors and Zavriel’s abilities did—actually! Had they ever had a clone try to manipulate Mikhail’s memory? Or used {A Private Moment} on him?

Maybe, if he were down there with her, Mikhail might be able to resist whatever was lurking in the darkness. Maybe not. She still wasn’t going to risk it, even if the vague contemplations of that thing once again had her mind itching to think about it properly—to dissect what she felt and knew until it made sense and she knew the truth, and yeah, Lux had been right, all those years ago: she had an addiction to learning, and in this case, it might get her fucking killed.