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Arc F1.8 | Chapter 33: I’d Dig My Abilities Into Him But Our Situation is a Little Precarious

The man wanted to reach his abilities out and wrap every tendril around the Baalphorian non-dev—feel out every fractal of his being.Humans were such interesting things, filled with faults and contradictions, with unending love and hatred—and sometimes for the same person, no less. Everyone contained multitudes, their every flicker of thought something entirely new—instances of their past and present pulling together to create a monster of a thing, all sharp lines and bending ridges.

People cut with words, their thoughts never lining up with the hatred or kindness spewed from their mouth. People simpered and pled, only malevolent ill will sinking through their minds, each hateful thought held back by threats of fists and knives, by internal promises of eventual revenge.

Ridges pulled over minds, creating mechanical thoughts born of force of will and a disinclination to give in to baser urges, each bump hiding the worst of humanity, the man had always thought. Better a sharp or simpering tongue, never matching up with the mind that owned the tongue, than a mind that didn’t know itself—that denied the horrors lingering within it.

The man had met Prex once, the creature who was now seeking out the little boy stolen from the Baalphorian non-dev—the child another non-dev, from what the man had heard, from what he had felt in the shimmer of the little mind eater’s emotions. Had the Baalphorian non-dev known he held another like him in his arms? What a strange thing, for them to have found each other—for there to be yet another Baalphorian non-dev filling the city with her presence as well, that silverstrain girl.

There were rumours, of course, of the Baalphorian Secretary General’s silverstrain child being a non-dev—a creature of ethical chaos and strength and confidence. The fact that she had stupidly gone through something created by Curtisal? The man was now inclined to think her more insane than even those stories he had heard suggested—not that he had ever given much thought to the girl himself. For her to have stepped into that place—to have stepped into one of Fräthk’s dungeons, the man’s mind never daring to slip so far below the surface of the city, lest it collapse into that place and find itself trapped with wickedness—Gëon wasn’t sure what to think of her common sense.

Beside him, his little shadow’s steps faltered. Usually, Orexi was the only one other than the man himself capable of detecting the minute shifts in his little shadow’s movements, each giving way to evidence of a slip of passing through the child. They were so subtle—so perfect—in their awareness of the aether slipping things inside them despite their age, and in general, the man could not fault anyone for missing those signs.

Not a single person around him missed his little shadow’s slip.

the Baalphorian man with a soft heart and slippery mind asked.

When both the man and his little shadow's slip glanced back at Mikhail, the man—boy, really, so young and inexperienced and entirely unaware of the power his liquid heart and mind gave him—was smiling, soft and sweet. Someone to be trusted, implicitly. If the man asked him to take his little shadow and run, the boy would run and never look back—would hold firm to the man’s sweet little shadow, even as they screamed and fought to be let go.

Beside Mikhail, the Crisharian man whose mind was so full it was impossible to glean more than the most vibrant of emotions from him—although, the little mind eater had seemed capable of grasping more of his bursting mind—frowned, his eyes shifting over the world until a shot of fear cracked through him.

This time, the man’s little shadow really did falter, Levi already catching them—he had already been watching the child as well, also aware that was wrong. His mouth opened, a question sitting on his tongue before Zavriel’s voice bit out a Levi’s eyes snapped up to him, and while the Crisharian man said nothing, seemed to pass between them. Levi blinked, blinked again, each blink a rapid fire of awareness and fact rippling through him.

Gëon had not realized the Crisharian man was a majenstra, capable of pressing thoughts into people—capable of , if the rumours of the exact nature of their abilities were to be believed.

Whatever was forced into Levi’s mind, the young man seemed to accept it and move on, returning to smiling down at Gëon’s little shadow, asking if they wanted to be carried.

he laughed, all bright happiness that was gleeful and all-encompassing,

The Baalphorian wasn’t wrong. While they had been content to move slowly while the Baalphorian non-dev found his footing—and now that Gëon knew the Crisharian man was a majenstra, was he the reason Olivier was up and moving so quickly?—that footing had now been found, and they needed to move. Not only did Gëon want to get clear of the area Hwris was last spotted—the lavender code and their minder would be annoying, but with Porsq napping in Olivier’s arms and quickly recovering, the pair would be little more than a nuisance—but he didn’t want Xavier to wind up in Prex’s for too long.

What Gëon wouldn’t do to go back in time and slit that piece of shit’s throat when he’d had the chance. There were people out there, of course, who could purposefully trick—or perhaps, manoeuvre around—his abilities. Increasingly, Gëon suspected Levi and Mikhail to be two such people, the question was simply and . Levi’s black knot? Mikhail’s slippery mind, which Zavriel had stated also resisted his abilities—abilities he had spoken around, likely having realized that while they Baalphorian wouldn’t know much, if anything, of the majenstra, Gëon would—and Levi had explained was being , whatever that meant.

It could be nothing. If the men—boys—hadn’t already known one another before today, Gëon might have thought it was a coincidence. People who happened to have an inherent ability to resist his abilities accidentally finding their paths colliding. The fact that they had known one another most of their lives… Gëon tried to taste the quality of their relationship yet again, a difficult thing, what with the way his abilities were stretched around them, attempting to feel out the area for enemies—that was why he couldn’t wrap his abilities around the Baalphorian non-dev so completely, in order to figure out the truth of his feelings for the dangerous creature napping in his arms.

Levi and Mikhail were —that was the only way Gëon could think of it. They reminded him of some of his own more influential group members: people who respected the other, trusted each other, were friendly, and yet, not friendly at all. The difference was, where few of his people would die for one another, Gëon had a feeling these two would. Levi had mentioned they were former classmates, an implication within his and Mikhail’s words and emotions implying that, if they had never seen one another again, neither would have cared. So would they risk dying for one another?

Gëon’s mind slipped to the silverstrain, another of their classmates, one Levi loved with so much of his soul that Gëon couldn’t feel something for the girl he had only briefly met as well, Levi’s heart constantly pulling towards the girl and another person roaming the city, Gëon’s attempts to not be pulled into the flow of the young man’s adoration doing little to stop his own heart from clamping around them, much to his dismay. Mikhail seemed to be friendly with her as well, each of the stories he told Gëon’s little shadow overlaid with some amount of friendship, and certainly a good dose of appreciation for all she did for him—given the girl was spoken about as a , Gëon could only assume she aided the boy with his own Censor issues. Still, there was something within the man’s slippery thoughts and emotions—some attachment to another person who would be more severely affected by the girl’s death?

Was she why the pair and all their friends and allies were here? Their affection for this girl or people who cared for her something so strong it would lead them to search her and everyone she cared about, including the Baalphorian non-dev, out? Was that why they were willing to die for one another? That this girl, whom Mikhail had described as , would be upset if either of them died, so they would die for one another?

It was so strange, and if they Baalphorian non-dev hadn’t quite seriously told Levi that —something that had sent the black knot boy into a flurry of delighted laughter—Gëon, who had little experience with Baalphorians, might have assumed they were all like that: potentially self-sacrificing idiots.

Evidently not, if Olivier wasn’t willing to risk the lives of the embassy’s clones finding many of his students, who, as whispers from him people had suggested, had indeed run off after he was kidnapped. Gëon thought him quite right—too many people disregarded the Hyrat clones, as though each of their minds didn’t taste entirely different from every other clones’—but the Baalphorian non-dev was the chaperone and teacher of his missing students. Idiots or not, the fact that he was so willing to leave them to their fate…

Gëon wasn’t used to not understanding people. He could pluck emotions from every person around him, and yes, when people spoke and thought in different languages, their emotions formed within completely different cultures, it was often more difficult to fully grasp what they were feeling and where those emotions originated. Usually, it wasn’t quite this terrible, and Gëon didn’t like it—no, he didn’t like it at all.

Better to be fooled than to know he was missing something, he thought. Had it been frustrating, to realize, decades after he let a younger Prex go, that the young man had been burying his proclivities under his skin—under the folds of thought, the tug and pull of softer, more loving inclinations?

To have let the piece of human trash slip away—to that he had plunged his cock into small, screaming bodies and in that cruelty? In many things, Gëon was a heartless man, but had he known the truth of all the evils that man had stuffed under the folds of that had filled his mind… well, to say the man would have never left that room—would have lived within it as a grotesque thing to be tortured unendingly—was an understatement. Just as Gëon could be heartless for his own missions, so too could he be so for the sake of those who could not protect themselves.

He would scour the earth, do terrible things, making sure that the vision he had for the future came to pass, one day.

He would traffic illegal goods, kill anyone in his way, start wars, finish them, lie and cheat and do everything he could without blinking an eye, his heart already a sour, corrupt thing.

He would fight the Baalphorians for the little mind eater, if he thought there a single shred of possibility that they wouldn’t be capable of keeping the child safe from the world, from their own covetous desires, from the boy’s self-hatred itself.

Gëon wanted to think they would be capable of protecting the child from the horrors of the world, the things that had been done to him, from the things he would do to himself, if left to torture himself over everything that had happened to him—everything he was capable of doing.

Hence, Gëon wanted to shrink his abilities into a single person’s worth of space and dig into the Baalphorian non-dev. The man seemed sweet and sincere in his words, his actions, the thoughts lingering under each twist and turn of his mind. There was love there, so impressively powerful for how few hours the man had known both the little mind eater and the missing child. His heart seemed to have wrapped around them—decided they were his to care for, and Gëon was sure that, until both were safely back in Olivier’s arms, the man wouldn’t be able to settle.

Indeed, the moment Gëon’s little shadow acquiesced and let Levi haul them up—they seemed to quite like the black knot, who had quite quickly decided the child was cute and that he would at least try to protect them, if needed—the Baalphorian non-dev was the first to speed up, his steps quick and sure as defensive abilities—skills, Gëon corrected himself—rippled out of him.

A whistle escaped Levi, Gëon’s eyes shifting away from Olivier to the black knot. he laughed. Behind them, Zavriel’s head cocked, his awkwardly accented tongue asking what happened, Mikhail explaining that, as they were walking, he and Levi, as well as several members of the other groups spread through the city, had been .

The skill Olivier used flittered out. He activated it again, again, again. The fifth time, it stuck, Levi laughing over Mikhail’s explanation that while were well-trained, that wasn’t common for Baalphorians, so no one had been sure how quickly Olivier would be able to master any skills they sent him.

Zavriel asked, each of them watching as Olivier cycled through a collection of skills, each rupturing through the world a handful of times as he

Gëon agreed, glancing back at the majenstra who was liable to give of his abilities away to the Baalphorians if he wasn’t careful—majenstra had older caretakers to make them they didn’t know how to use each core ability, or so it was said. As a result, it was possible the Crisharian had never struggled to learn an ability.

Levi popped out, beginning to babble about all the different things that went into determining how long it would take for someone to master this skill or that, Gëon already wondering how far into his explanation the distractible boy would get.