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Arc F1.8 | Chapter 40: With That, I Fall

Legs kicking, Emilia hung from the harness she had attached to the roof of the cavern for her designated five-minute break. As time was tight, she had no set timeline for how often she got a break, but she did still have enough sense to know that she occasionally needed one.In no world did she want to stop; yet, she knew she had to.

From her bag—creepy doll still attached to it, rather than having been lost to the abyss of the river rushing below her, it’s grip still taut when she tried to drop it in—she had pulled one of the remaining snacks Nivel had gotten them.

Energy—she needed energy, her various, emergency-use-only functions slowly losing their efficacy as time went on. There was only so much functions—and a few, much more dangerous skills—could do to force her body to secrete various hormones, to amp up ATP production so she could keep going, to force her mind to use more molecules of this or that, so her Load Levels could sustain themselves a bit longer.

Even as someone with as perfect a body as one could wish for, with the perfect balance of a million little things right down to her gut bacteria and the microbes that lived on her—which, weird that even those things so affected by the external world were inclined towards , right?—this was a lot.

she could remember her lo’lu saying, during her first trip to Dion after her D-Levels had been officially tested. While the man had never admitted it outright, considering that both she and Hurinren had turned out to be non-devs, while Ryukan was a 3D with a rare variety of Dyadism, it wouldn’t surprise any of them if the old man had an eye for such things, snatching up those who contained power within them whenever he could.

Fuck knew Emilia herself could see power lurking within people as well, more often than not; she was almost positive that, within moments of meeting the little boy she was headed towards, she would be able to tell if the rumours about him being a non-dev were true or not.

Regardless, she had been struggling—Hurinren too, in his own way. They had both seen the amount of pressure the Blood Rain General was still put under to be despite his quickly advancing age and the reality that he was a vocal critic of viewing as a meaningful designation outside of war. Still, people had looked to him for advice, for proper decorum, for Hence, she and Hurinren had both feared what the world would become for them, as they grew and expanded their presence throughout the international power structure.

For each of them, that fear had a different flavour. Her lotyung had been raised for years to know that, unless someone better came along, he would inherit all of the Blood Rain General’s influence; yet, if he hadn’t been perfect, it would have been both good and terrible for him. There would have been less pressure on him, but his influence would have weakened—would have become a question of rather than a response of

For her, who hadn’t been raised to expect herself to be a low- or non-dev but had long ago come to realize it was a near inevitability… she had been frustrated, afraid, alone.

Hearing her lo’lu talk about how much of a struggle it had been to be a young non-dev, given so much responsibility during the war, had not been helpful. Had the old man been trying to help, when he told her about all the times when soldiers had relied on him to —to come up with plans and then brush off responsibility when things went wrong? Some failed attempt to remind her that she wasn’t alone in feeling like too much responsibility would inevitably be thrust upon her? Emilia, honestly, wasn’t sure.

Mostly, she thought about it now, as she munched on her snack and looked through the messages that had been sent on her xphern since she’d last glanced at it, right before she had reached up to secure her first anchor into the roof of the cavern that surrounded the subterranean river.

Mostly, she hoped that, if the little boy were a low- or non-dev, meeting her and Olivier—and maybe Hurinren and Andre as well, one day—would help him feel a little more grounded, a little less alone.

Eyes flickering closed, Emilia took a moment to breathe—to pull her worry for the little boy down.

At the very least, the xphern transmission network still reached her down here, so she still had Vtraní letting her know that, according to what was being communicated between Fräthk’s people, the pedo creep who was set to have Xavier handed over to him hadn’t met up with the women yet. The head of the Baalphorian embassy, of all people, had been able to cause a bit of a situation around the area the guy, Prex, had been travelling through, forcing him to take a longer route to his and Xavier’s kidnapper’s meet up location.

Emilia had met the head of the embassy a few times—a relatively grumpy woman who had never appreciated Emilia being in her city, given the amount of chaos she often caused. The woman was a mother, however, and after learning about what was happening, she had voluntarily put herself into danger in order to give Xavier a little more time—in order to give Emilia a little more time to reach him.

Later, Emilia would need to thank her. Currently, she was simply trying not to worry about that little boy—not worrying or panicking involved of breathing exercises.

Her designated time done—mere seconds, as she couldn’t waste her time—Emilia forced her eyes open again. Below her, the water rushed by, wild and spinning. It was a little nauseating, to be honest—beautiful, but all that spinning was making her dizzy.

Overall, the cavern was some mixture of the bland rock walls that had surrounded the stairwells of the holding cell’s dungeons and the jaw-dropping rocks and gems of the cavern that houses Falmíer itself. The smaller tunnels she’d moved through originally, Jerrial’s abilities having made a long tunnel for her that had quite quickly met up with dozens of branching paths that gave the impression they’d been created for human use, much like the cave system that existed above the city did, were mostly bland. Occasionally, strikes of glittering colour had reached through the formations, while a few sections had been… weird—not the part that Jerrial’s abilities had created, which was mostly straight, but a few of the branching paths…

They weren’t the sorts of paths she had wanted to step within, something about them in a way that both reminded her of that suffused the dungeons and seemed entirely unique. Not having time to explore and being highly disinclined to let her mind wander to without Rayleen there as backup, Emilia had patently ignored those strange paths, with their complicated stonework that seemed some mixture of purposeful, accidental, and ceremonial.

To say Emilia was happy to be out of those tunnels and now travelling along the river was an understatement. As much as the river below looked crazy and cold and treacherous, it was at least feeling. Water and rocks, surrounded by the glittering gems and stones that were normally seen in Lüshanian cities.

Turning her attention back to her xphern, Emilia went back to going through the messages she’d received while quickly trying to get through the tunnel and to the river itself. When she’d glanced at it briefly before lifting herself into her situation, Emilia had mostly focused on the basics: whether anything with Xavier or the group back in the dungeons had changed, and whether or not anyone was seriously in trouble. It wasn’t like she could do anything if something were wrong; still, she’d wanted to know.

Now, in her few minutes more of rest, she looked at the finer details.

The situation with Xavier was the same: the women who had taken him were waiting for Prex to arrive for a handoff. Could be better—the woman Vtraní had said was also headed their way could have already reached them, but she hadn’t—could definitely be worse—that predator could already have Xavier in his arms, but he didn’t.

As for the group back in the dungeons… well, Clemence had finally realized she’d disappeared, and it had been a . Thankfully, someone had managed to talk the teenager into both not coming after her—which would be a definite problem, considering that Emilia was definitely reachable by the Lüshanian girl at the moment—and to moving her complaints about Emilia vanishing into a private message. The last thing they wanted at the moment was to tell anyone in the drop group that she wasn’t with them anymore. Emilia had let a few people know, but for the most part, she’d decided to just… not.

Mostly, she just assumed that the triplets would abandon the rest of the drop group to try and descend into the holding cells as quickly as they could, so they could chase after her. As she didn’t want anyone in dungeons, they couldn’t do that. Hence! They had to be kept in the dark.

A message from Rayleen had come through in her new message thread with Clemence as well, telling Emilia that the woman would At this point, Emilia saw no reason to let everyone else know whenever Rayleen told her to? At the same time, Emilia rather wished that Darrian and Baylor hadn’t suddenly become friends! Was it great that the two of them were now friends? Sure, but also! Had they not been such friends, Emilia would have had Halen tell Darrian that she’d split off from the group. As it was, she didn’t want to accidentally ruin his and Baylor’s new friendship by immediately making Darrian keep this huge secret from the middle triplet?

In the grand scheme of everything happening, it wasn’t the biggest of things. It was still

As for other groups… well, Coral and Halen’s groups had finally run into their own issues, each now fighting against various groups. Coral’s group at least knew they were fighting a faction, while no one in Halen’s group could figure out they were being attacked, but had originally suspected their attackers were part of some faction or another; really, though, they could have just been panicking. The Lüshanian ambassadors in Seer’ik’tine Baalphoria were now being sent recordings of everyone who attacked them, and were trying to sort through and categorize who each person was. As neither were often in Lüshan, it wasn’t exactly the most effective thing, but combined with the interns and other staff that both had brought in after each had been thoroughly interrogated by the clones had their entire person searched for xpherns, lest they sneak a communication in a rebel faction, they’d been able to determine where a bunch of the attackers worked.

To say the attackers were from a mess of different departments was to undersell the situation, and all in all, knowing the attackers worked wasn’t the most helpful of things. Still, the Lüshanian staff at the two embassies were continuing to help, although Emilia remained unclear on how much was due to threats from the clones, how much due to an actual desire to help, and how much simple worry for the people they knew back in the capital—it didn’t escape Halen’s notice that of their commentary on the attackers was accompanied by claims that

Needless to say, no one was asking for the Lüshanians’ opinions on the people Coral’s group were, quite honestly, slaughtering. Their attackers were quite obviously from a rebel faction—and at the very least, they now knew that there absolutely was more than Fräthk’s group trying to do within the city? All knowledge was good knowledge, and especially for Halen’s group, now clearly travelling through hostile territory, it was good to know that they weren’t coming across panicking government workers.

Surrounded by random rebels from numerous groups, however, none of them doubted that at least of their attackers were just panicking.

Emilia sent off in her message thread with Halen, who had largely become responsible for letting her know about the various situations, leaving Rafe and Simeon to keep them safe during the moments when he was sending her updates. Obviously, he couldn’t give her details on —neither of them had so much free time on their hands—but Emilia trusted him to keep her informed about the most important things… as long as they wouldn’t distract her too much.

Much as Clemence—and by extension the others—had chosen to keep some of the updates on the situation from her while she was inside Curtisal’s machine, in order to not distract her, Emilia didn’t doubt Halen would do the same thing, if necessary.

If one of her friends died, or was even seriously injured, Emilia knew no one would tell her while her grief could cause her to accidentally hurt herself.

Halen replied, and Emilia was hit with a wave of —want and affection for this boy? That seemed insane. Halen had only just become someone she knew to actually be nice and kind and attracted to her; how was it that it felt so… right? Like she wanted to push Halen down and curl into his lap and just be allowed to live there for a bit, so she could forget about the pain of this day, of her heartache for all the people Fräthk had harmed—people who the Drinarna, through both turning a blind eye and their own cruel greed, had harmed.

As if summoned by her thoughts on all those people, a message from Vtraní came through. They were a nice person, Emilia thought, giving her updates on where they, Curtisal, and Anarch were in their own journeys.

Emilia wished them luck—Vtraní wished her luck in return. They were both going to need it.

Sucking in a deep breath—not that she wasn’t already activating a dozen defensive skills, including one that would summon breathable air straight from the aether while also evicting her own exhaustions from the bubble of—hopeful—protection she was creating for herself—Emilia braced herself. It didn’t help. With a flinch, Emilia pulled the climbing gear she had created to climb her way out to the middle of the river back into the aether. For a moment, she floated there, free from both suspension and gravity; then, she was falling.