[Can’t Opt Out]

Emilia watched her younger self attempt to remove the doll from her person. It wasn’t working, nor would it ever work. The thing was hers now, glomming onto her and refusing to let its little fingers relax. It had attached itself onto her bag, smart little thing—although, in general, everyone’s opinions on whether the terrible doll was intelligent or not were quite varied.

The thing was evil and sneaky, at the very least. Had it snapped those hard little fingers around her younger self’s clothing or even the hair she hadn’t wanted to cut, Emilia knew the clothing would have been burned away, her hair cut off without remorse. In no world could Emilia ever harm her bag, precious as it was to her.

Around her, the playground continued to move, each piece settling away into what was clearly a preset configuration that would open a pathway. It could snap open once more at any moment, but her younger self was more concerned with the fact that the doll had literally thrown itself at her. The floating Emilia, lingering and watching all, thought that was fair.

There wasn’t any particularly malevolent energy lingering in the air, for one thing, and both the present and past versions of herself rather trusted their gut—despite all the things that had happened to her due to following her instincts, Emilia generally didn’t think she’d ever massively fucked up following those instincts. This version of herself was also increasingly trusting of vibes from the aether and Rayleen’s words as well; therefore, as long as Rayleen didn’t yell at her to move, it was fine… probably.

Floating Emilia wasn’t entirely sure Rayleen could be trusted. It wasn’t that the woman would lie to her; rather, she now understood that Rayleen wasn’t trained in the use of her ability to read the will of the aether, her ability to see the future something incomplete.

It had to be because as cold as the woman had often been, Emilia couldn’t see Rayleen sending Vern to her, had she known what would happen.

Below her, the younger version of herself groaned and let her hands drop away from the doll that had attached itself onto the strap of her bag, its dark little hands veritable vices. It was a disturbing thing, as off-putting now as it had been then or in the years since finding it. They’d tried to get rid of it so many times, and yet, the fucker kept coming back, blood and gore left in its wake.

Its head titled back, lolling, empty white eyes staring up towards her lingering presence, as though it could sense her there—and odd, how both little Hyr and this thing could see her when no one else had seemed aware of her presence. Of course, in the doll’s case, she doubted it could actually see her; rather, its head was just lolling back, its sightless eyes catching on her by pure chance, clearly, probably, maybe.

“Well, shit,” her younger self said, hands planting on her hips as she glared at the doll, with its deep-black skin and mop of red hair. “I guess… we should go look at what’s over there?” she asked, glancing back at her friends, eyes sharpening when her xphern started going off, Clemence startling slightly.

Still, no one moved, as though afraid the suddenly lively playground would snap open once more, reducing anyone within its maw to viscera and splatters of blood and brain matter—or perhaps, they were afraid of the doll, its cruelty a soft and lingering thing, suffusing the air in a way Curtisal’s playgrounds never had. Rayleen could feel the doll’s presence, Emilia thought—her younger self as well, although she didn’t think it was a fully grown realization yet.

Really, this younger version of herself simply thought the doll another part of the playground, controlled by whatever had pushed a path into the world for them. She would learn.

Soon, she would learn what power that thing held within itself. Fortunately, this first time, things would work out for the best. Other times, not so much.

✮ ✮ ✮ Jerrial ✮ ✮ ✮

“Should we—”

“I mean, what other option do we have?”

“We could, like, run?”

“Run up all those stairs? I don’t know about you, but there is no way I can do that—and Jerrial? There’s no way he’ll make it.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly, although I knew Clemence was correct: the medicine I had been given to suppress my olthagri was quickly running out, each breath a little harder than the last. It wasn’t yet something I thought most people would notice, but most people hadn’t spent years of their life confined to a veritable prison cell. There wasn’t much to do in the holding cells, and I knew each bit of my body with perfect clarity.

Each fingertip, nail bed, catalogued into my mind. Each twitch of errant muscle, each spot that itched a bit too often because nerves remembered—or, maybe there was something growing there, hidden under layers of skin, that wasn’t quite right. Cells that split an error into them, my body’s internal mechanisms knowing something was wrong and sending an urge to scratch, scratch, scratch to that specific spot as though down in the holding cells, homeless on the streets, running for my life, there was a single thing I could do to ease even the most dire of issues with my body.

Had I been able to afford to seek out a doctor—had I not known Fräthk had their ear pressed through the city and would have their loyal and their pawns seeking me out for the rest of my life—I would have sought treatment for my olthagri earlier, and now…

Beside me, Vern made an unhappy sound, and I wished things were different. I wished I wasn’t dying. I wished I’d never been taken by Fräthk. I wished my time there hadn’t left me feeling a broken thing, unable to return my friend’s love.

In a different world, we would be boys again, glancing at one another with nervous affection neither of us knew what to do with. There had been a few times, before I was taken, when our fingers had brushed, our feet knocking together, each touch an urgent wave of panic and trepidation and the ever-lingering question of what if?

What I wouldn’t do to go back and tangle our limbs together—to take that youthful innocence and seize it while I could, and find out the answer to the question of what if I make the first move?

It was an easy thing to imagine, the two of us together. For years, memories and fantasies of my friend had sustained me. Within those flashes of my mind, however, I was never the me of now—never anything but the boy who existed before I was taken. Maybe that was where the problem lay: every time I dared imagine what Vern and I could have been, we were both young and innocent, learning our bodies and one another’s with gentle and awkward caresses. I was no longer the person I had imagined being with Vern, and perhaps in a strange way, I had set my mind to refuse to consider whether we could now be something, without innocence to guide our way.

Vern was different as well, of course—harsher, grumpier, always frowning… unless he was blushing. I’d caught him looking at me so many times since I managed to escape and find him. It didn’t matter that I was skin and bones and scars inside and out: still, this boy I had been growing to love looked at me like he too had spent every day since we parted thinking of me, imagining what we could have been—what we could be, maybe.

It was a strange thing to consider—this reality that maybe, if we were lucky, we would both escape with our lives intact and find a home for ourselves. Emilia would help us, I knew—would probably hide us away in her own bedroom, were that the only option she could think of it. Maybe, if I wasn’t struck dead by the olthagri, if we didn’t find death in this dungeon or on our escape from this city of ruin, something could come to exist between us? Once we were clean and fed, every ache and scratch cast within and without our bodies mended up… would it be fine then, to at least try? To let our fingers explore one another and finally learn the answer to that ever-lingering what if?

What if we tried, despite my fear? Would it be beautiful? Or would it be a disaster?

Maybe it would be both: a beautiful disaster all our own.

For a moment, my eyes met my friend’s, deep-brown orbs staring back at me in silent question of what do we do now?

We move forward—isn’t that all we can ever do? Looking back isn’t helpful—and yes, I realize the fact that I came to this place searching for another friend who may very well be dead or destroyed by this horrible place is, in a way, a looking back.

It isn’t something I can help, nor would I want to; in no world would I want to become the sort of person who turned their back on a friend and the horrors they may be experiencing. In the future, had I not come to this place and tried to find out the fate of my friend and then learned they had still lived… No, that wasn’t the sort of thing I thought myself liable to survive.

“Come on,” I said, watching Rayleen step forward first—before I had said anything—her gaze locked onto Emilia as it so often was. For a woman who always seemed to understand people and the world, Rayleen certainly was obsessed with the girl, always staring her down like she was a thing to be dissected and examined.

Somehow, I thought Emilia in less danger from Clemence at this point than from Rayleen.

✮ ✮ ✮

There had been many times during her trailing through the minds and experiences when Emilia had wanted to cry—wanted to sob her pain into the universe because it was unfair.

This—this reality that Jerrial had been preparing to try and find something with Vern was more painful than perhaps anything else.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t already known—she’d had Jerrial’s tears and grief burned into her skin, just as she’d sobbed her own pain and fear and mourning into Olivier’s skin. Yet, there was a difference between hearing the after and hearing the during and she wanted to sob—wanted to break and scream and tear the universe apart because the world was an unfair place.

Mostly, Emilia was reminded of the revenge she had never been allowed. One day—one day, a man’s head would fall into her hands and all Emilia would feel was pleasure. It was a revenge decades in the making—a desire for vengeance that ten-thousand years with the Virtuosi System had never been able to settle to ashes.

Some people deserved to die, and if Emilia were able to control this vision, she would urge the aether to take her to that man’s present. Let her see him so she could find him—something even Zavriel had never been able to do. It was one of those things, mysterious and strange. The aether knew things, and yet it did not. The aether told of things, and yet it told nothing of so much.

Emilia wanted to reach her hands into the guts of the universe and dig—drag facts and visions and truths to herself until she knew it all. Somewhere along the lines, someone had fucked with her memory and erased her belief in the will of the aether and her knowledge of the aether’s enemies, and while Emilia wanted to know who had done it, she could understand their reasoning: she was too curious, and she would have dug.

Oh, how she would have dug and dug, and more than likely, somewhere along the lines, that thing would have seeped inside her, her questioning mind’s barriers snapping until she was just another vessel—because that’s what these people she and her friends were headed towards were: potential vessels for evil, for the aether’s enemies.

Of course, there was always the question of who truly was evil: the aether or her enemies. Clearly, the thing down here—which was presumably the thing that had moved the hands of those three evils within Olivier’s horror story—had inspired horrific things, and yet.

And yet, sometimes things aren’t so black and white—so laid out in easy terms and simple facts. Here were horrors, and more horrors loomed, and yet.

And yet.