[Can’t Opt Out]

“Up, up, up,” Emilia chanted to herself as she and Rin bolted up the rumbling stairs. The library creaked and cracked, the metal supports of the building bending in ways that shouldn’t be physically possible—not without the entire building collapsing in any case. “Can you get us out of here?” she yelled at Rin, her voice barely audible even to her own ears over the sounds of the world breaking apart around them, and given the way she received nothing from the other girl, her own magically dampened ears couldn’t make out her words either.

Emilia cursed to herself as they pulled themselves up flight after flight, the library seemingly stretching on forever. That was both horrible—because she was quite done with stairs—and wonderful—because the floors beneath them were slowly falling away from them.

Fucking, everlasting nebulae. This was so bad—not for her, but for her friends and the locals. Zach had made it pretty clear that locals had very little magic themselves, and that the Risen Guard’s magic ranged from sketchy to world bending, with the normal patrols primarily having physical enhancement magics. How many people were going to die beneath them because this damn building had decided that now was the time to forget physics existed? Not that it had personally had a choice in the matter.

Emilia grabbed hold of the railing as the stairwell swung wildly to the side, her waist crashing into the metal. “Fuck!” she wheezed as the air was forced out of her, her ribs grinding ominously against her insides. The last thing she needed was to add blood to this whole situation—more blood, that was.

Below them, she could feel the call of the blood, its energy reaching up towards her. Hopefully, it wasn’t the others bleeding out. Hopefully, they had been able to get out of the library somehow. Jump back to the Stringer family’s private landing pads and hope no one was using them. Someone was bleeding below them, though—that was just simple fact. Whether friend or foe or random stranger. Most of the librarians had left, but a few had still remained and—

Emilia’s hand tightened around the railing as she hauled herself up onto another landing, this one more intact than the last, its floor practically flat and definitely not moving. Rin had stopped on it as well, apparently having deemed it safe enough to pause and assess the damage below them. Emilia turned her eyes and core to the crumbling ruins below them, her breath coming in heavy, strained breaths as she poked and prodded her ribs. Nothing broken, not inside her, anyways.

The library was a different story, the clang of metal plummeting through the mess of mangled architecture below echoing up around them. The world had stopped bending, at the very least, whatever magic had caused the library to suddenly collapse dissipating back into the aether.

“What in the world was that?” she asked, turning wide eyes on Rin. She knew large scale, building oriented skills had been used during the Colonial Wars and the various conflicts between Baalphoria and the Free Colonies since, but she hadn’t been expecting to see something like that here—they were too bloody and uncontrollable. Either the Risen Guard had decided collateral damage was unavoidable when dealing with visitors and the Enclave—which seemed insane, this early into their visit—or someone else had caused this.

⸂I do not know,⸃ Rin said, her own breathing ragged from their ascent. ⸂Nothing I have seen or learned about.⸃

Great, mystery magic—not that she was one to talk, with her forbidden blood weapons. The {Blood Dagger} was normal enough, but the {Blood Orb} was like nothing any of them had seen before, which was apparently how weapons forged from another’s blood worked.

⸂What records we have of the last visitation,⸃ Key had said that morning, his tone somehow managing to say ⸂What records that I have access to⸃ without his consent, ⸂note that the weapons created with the blood of another create unique magics.⸃

This had also been backed up by Zach, who, despite having frayed and distant relations with the Enclave, had known more on the subject than Key or Harmony. Weapons forged from your own blood had little magic, but could cut through virtually everything, save another blood weapon—although there were exceptions to that limit based on how powerful the visitors had been when they were forged.

Weapons forged from another's blood varied more, although more blood usually meant more destructive power. A full body’s worth of blood? Multiple bodies? The blood of another visitor? Emilia’s stomach had rolled as Zach described some of the weapons those methods had created, forcing magic even more monstrous than the murders themselves into strange weapons.

“Why did the Risen Guard even let any of us live?” she had asked him, genuinely confused. If there were random groups of potential murders capable of making weapons of mass destruction coming into her world, you can bet your ass she’d be all for killing them off before things got out of hand, no questions asked.

⸂I am also surprised,⸃ Zach had admitted, giving Emilia a curious look.

“Please don’t kill me,” she had said, half-joking, half-concerned as she pushed her chair back. They had stared at one another for a moment, Zach looking too assessing by half, before he rolled his eyes and looked away.

⸂Not worth the cleanup,⸃ he had said, returning to telling her that it was possible the higher ups in the Risen Guard were keeping the existence of such powerful weapons under wraps.

“You mean, they still exist?” she had asked. Everyone knew that blood magic didn’t work quite the same for locals—it was still dangerous, yes, but in a more raw, barely controllable way. Only visitors could create actual weapons.

⸂I believe so,⸃ Zach had confirmed, explaining that he still had several of his father’s and while he had never been tempted to try and destroy them, his mother had seen her own family attempt to destroy one of their fallen Harbinger’s weapons. They had been unsuccessful, and the dangerous weapon had been sealed away, not just due to the risk that another visitor could steal it, but because it was semi-useable by locals.

“‘Semi-usable’ makes it sound like something bad happened.”

⸂Yes,⸃ Zach had whispered, his eyes skimming over the notes in front of him, although it had seemed more out of nervous habit than actual need—he’d told her he had been running the area’s underground magic school practically his whole life, so he probably had the whole curriculum memorized, even if he was giving her a highly redacted version of it.

⸂The locals who tried to use blood weapons all died, but the damage they did…⸃ he had trailed off, his eyes far away with some memory he couldn’t bring himself to share.

Emilia could guess. Catastrophic damages, and whenever they had happened, he had been old enough to see and remember, meaning there were other blood weapons from the last visitation out there—weapons that could potentially do something like bring a building crashing down. Some 80-year-old weapon given to a Risen Guard suicide bomber or a new visitor. That, or a new visitor having already learned how to make weapons of such destructive powers.

None of those were good options.

“Do you think the others got out?” she dared ask, the sound of the collapsing building beginning to change from earsplitting bangs to the ominous creek and clatter of everything settling.

Rin swallowed, her jaw working through her thoughts, before she said she didn’t know. ⸂Probably. They can all jump, and the Stringer family has private landing pads.⸃

“Can you jump us out of here?”

Rin shook her head, eyes turning away from the rumble below, from the bent metal of the stairs, hanging limply off the walls, to the intact world above them. ⸂I was assigned a temporary pad, but I cannot jump with this an amount of magic in the air. It will dissipate eventually, but we should not remain here.⸃

⸂Something else could happen, or the magic could be activated anew,⸃ went unsaid as they began to climb the stairs once more.

“Does that mean… the others may not have been able to jump either?” she asked, mulling over how that also potentially explained why her guard hadn’t just jumped out of the fight the other night either: too much magic. It seemed like a visitor’s personal babysitter should have a personal, emergency escape landing pad somewhere—a place just for them, so they wouldn’t jump into another jumper. Her guard hadn’t jumped, though, even if he’d taken the first chance he could to get out of there—not that that wasn’t its own can of weird worms, given he probably could have killed them all but had left.

Then again, maybe he simply couldn’t jump. It wasn’t like he’d volunteered to jump them to one of the cities, instead making them use those stupid elevators. Honestly, it was pretty damn rude of him if he’d forced that travel on them for no reason!

⸂Possibly, if they noticed the gathering magic before it loosened,⸃ Rin said, her voice tight and very much telling Emilia she needed to shut up. As much as the girl didn’t seem as close as the trio they had left behind, she was still friends with them—had still not hesitated to help Sk’lar fight off her guard, or follow Key’s instructions to gather up blood for her to create a weapon. Her new friend might seem distant and bored, but she probably felt a lot more for her friends than she was letting on.

“Is there an exit up here?” she asked instead, turning the conversation back into what the fuck are we going to do? territory. They were going to reach the top eventually… probably.

⸂I do not know.⸃

“Do you know where the heartcore is?”

⸂I do not.⸃

“Great…” Emilia sighed, just another shitty thing to add to this shitty outing. They could very well have run past it on their escape—fuck that, it could be lying in pieces now for all either of them knew.

“Not your fault!” she added hastily when Rin shot her a look. “Everything just sucks, and it’ll quadruple suck if we can’t even get what we came here for.” If people were going to die, at the very least they should try to fulfill their objective.

They climbed in relatively silence, haphazardly stepping over the books that had toppled onto the floor during the building’s half-collapse. Honestly, the architecture was probably the only thing that had saved them. Emilia was willing to bet that, if they were willing to risk trying to descend, they’d find supports built into the city’s ceiling keeping them afloat, either by accident or design. Who knew how long that would last, though, and Emilia was almost tempted to speed up her steps so they could get the fuck out of these faster—force her mind to ignore the burn of her thighs and calves before they started to fall.

Almost.

Instead, she focused on her steps and the vibration of her core—one of the few things she could work with, despite her lack of system access.

Zach had been surprised when she’d brought her core up—or, more specifically, brought up the feeling of people touching her core with words directed solely at her. She’d been more curious to know if she should be able to tell when people were speaking directly to each other, like something just out of reach was scratching at the edges of her core.

⸂Locals can…⸃ he had told her, thick black eyebrows pulling together. He really had aged incredibly well, only a few grey hairs beginning to work their way through his facial hair.

“I'm guessing that means you never heard of a visitor being able to?”

⸂No. From what I know, it has always been something of an issue. Visitors could never fully utilize their cores, and often refused to even try.⸃

“We don’t use our cores directly in our world. It’s actually, like, super, super frowned upon? I didn’t have anyone to tell me better until I had already started messing with mine, though? And it’s damaged, cause I’m uh… kinda reckless.”

⸂I noticed,⸃ Zach had replied blandly, shooting her a highly unimpressed look. He had already reprimanded her for following strange men into dark, grimy basements. It had been sweet and annoying all at once. She already had enough men looking at her like her life choices were insane, she didn’t need one more, thanks. Well, Pria also looked at her like she was judging her quite often… so did Beth… and Serena… Okay, so maybe pretty much everyone she knew gave her the look, it was still rude!

“I’m also connected to an old machine,” she had continued, glaring harshly at the older man, daring him to say more about her recklessness. He hadn’t seemed phased, but given he had a daughter who radiated trouble, Emilia was pretty sure he was used to dealing with troublesome women. “It could be malfunctioning, connecting my core to the platform in ways it shouldn’t? I’m not sure. There was a moment where I thought maybe it was? Now, I’m not so sure.”

Aside from feeling like she was more connected to her core than she should be, she really hadn’t felt anything else off about it, but honestly? That could just be the platform if core use was normal here. It could totally just be that other visitors didn’t have the natural connection to their core that she had, and had never noticed the natural push and pull against their cores.

An unimpressed sound from Zach had drawn her out of her wandering thoughts. ⸂Perhaps you should avoid using your core—⸃ he had started to say, only for her to cut him off.

If she wanted to avoid using her core, there was no way she could continue competing. She couldn’t escape words of locals edging over her core, so unless he was going to be feeding her in silence for the next 20 some days, he was better off teaching her how to utilize it, so she didn’t accidentally fuck it up.

Meditation. That was how you accessed your core—how you learned how to harness it and bend the magic of this world more easily. Emilia hated meditation. The man who had taught her how to wield a weapon had tried to teach her meditation as well. She had repeatedly run away until he’d finally given up.

It takes a lot to make one of the most feared men in the Free Colonies give up.

⸂We have had children like that,⸃ Zach had said, a smirk tugging at his lips as he compared her to an unruly child. ⸂I generally suggest a moving meditation.⸃

Well, moving was better than sitting—her mind spiralling away inside her as she tried to stay still and quiet—and what better way to meditate while moving than in the monotonous step, step, step, step of climbing stairs. Yes, there was the occasional obstacle to climb over, but as they ascended, Emilia tried to focus.

Focus on your core.

Focus on the feel and weight of it.

Let it reach out and become part of the universe—part of the aether.

It was once a part of the everything of the world, let it become part of it again.

Her core shuddered with effort, the muscles around it, just below her belly button, somehow vibrating with effort. What those muscles were doing, she had no idea, but it seemed important, and she leaned into it.

Step, breathe, relax, reach.

Step, breathe, relax, reach.

Step, breathe, relax, rea—

A smile split across Emilia’s face as her steps stopped, Rin looking back at her and frowning slightly.

⸂What is it?⸃

“I think I found the heartcore.”