LIGHTNOVELONLINE Arc 3 | Chapter 97: Bonk
Emilia bolted upright, her forehead colliding painfully with something—with someone else, given the yowl of pain that echoed through the aether a moment later.
“Fuck,” she muttered, rubbing at her head as she peaked an eye open.
Nearby, Gale was leaning over Miira, asking if she was okay. Several more children, including a number who had been despondent before they had all fallen asleep, were gathered around the pair, looking less concerned so much as amused.
⸂What are you smiling about!?⸃ Gale growled at one, their smile falling as the teenager glared.
⸂Nothing,⸃ the younger girl responded, pitch-black eyes wide as she pushed herself up and away from the rest of the group.
“Sorry,” Emilia muttered and signed at Miira as they mutually rubbed their heads. “Bad dream,” she added, throwing in a couple of signs for various monsters that amused the children still lingering around them, although many were following the previously smiling girl back towards one of several larger groups scattered around the area.
To Emilia’s relief, nearly all the children seemed to be in better shape than the night before. Night? She really had no idea whether it had been night or not when they’d fallen asleep, not that it mattered all that much. The raid might have a time limit, but winning was the least of her concerns when she needed to get all these children to safely… somewhere.
⸂No shit you were having a bad dream,⸃ Gale spit out, as much as someone could spit out words through the aether. ⸂You were waking everyone up. Then you wouldn’t fucking wake up!⸃
Under her hand, Miira shot her friend a disapproving look, while behind them, several of the younger boys giggled and began swearing quietly to each other. The younger girl looked like she wanted to reprimand her friend, but whether due to the recent strain on their relationship or something else entirely, she stayed quiet.
Emilia looked to the children still around her, sleepy eyes gazing up at her in a mix of fear and concern. “Sorry,” she signed at them as well. “It can’t have been fun to be tossed around in your sleep.”
⸂Tossed?⸃ Gale asked, tone oddly incredulous. ⸂Is that really what you said?⸃
Emilia nodded, frowning at the teenager as she scoffed and told her that she had not been tossing.
⸂You were frozen solid, more like. It was the screaming that woke us up.⸃
Emilia froze, blinking wide eyes at the girl. “What?”
⸂Yeah, that’s what we were wondering. I have no idea if you were just screaming so loud we could hear you or what, but everyone could hear you,⸃ she said, nodding her chin at Astra, the silent child who had become the most attached to Emilia since she had first been picked up off the street. ⸂That one’s definitely taken it the worst.⸃
Against the wall, as far from Emilia as she could get, sat Astra and Benny, the other child Emilia had picked up with her. They didn’t know each other, Benny had told her. He had just seen her fall on the street, during the beginnings of the stampede, and tried to help her. He was a good kid, even if his actions had almost gotten him killed—trampled under the feet of unseeing adults.
Then again, perhaps if he hadn’t tried to help a child he didn’t know, he wouldn’t be here now. Perhaps, he would have died like so many others had in the chaos of that panic. Although, it wasn’t like their current situation was going much better, what with them being stuck in a labyrinth and a third of their group missing.
“Hi,” Emilia signed as she came to sit beside the pair.
Benny’s eyes flashed to her, concern flooding through them. ⸂Are you okay now?⸃ he asked, a little frown tugging at his mouth as he gave her a once over that would have looked more appropriate on an adult.
She nodded before frowning and signing, “Kinda sorta.”
The boy’s frown deepened. ⸂Does that mean not really?⸃ He waited for Emilia to nod before going off on a story about his own nightmares. Apparently, his mother had died some years earlier and he had witnessed it.
⸂So much blood,⸃ he was telling her—telling the group, a significant portion of the children having gathered closer to hear him talk. His aethervoice shook slightly, a child’s fear cracking over the bravado that had had him continuing to challenge the water slides even after his friends had begun to vanish. ⸂It was always worse in the nightmares, of course!!⸃ he added, chest puffing up and making more than a few of the children giggle, their own chests pushing forward in mockery.
Benny growled, demanding that they stop.
They didn’t, of course. Kids will be kids, and kids are mean. Kids, unfortunately, are also quite likely to fight—or run to find an adult. Benny was of the former variety, probably due to the fact that he had largely been living on the street since his mother died.
According to Sawyer, who had filled Emilia and V in on some of the details of their group before the last challenge had erupted into chaos, about half their group—Sawyer included—were homeless. Most of the city’s homeless children had been homeless for a long time, and were largely left to their own devices by the adults of the city. Benny, on the other hand, had only recently lost his mother, and was still bouncing between friend’s of his parents and the streets. Their city was relatively poor, unfortunately. Even people who wanted to help—and Sawyer had made it clear that many did not—struggled to do so. Bringing in another mouth to feed would put everyone else in their family at risk of getting too little to eat.
⸂It didn’t help that Benny became a bit violent as time went on,⸃ one of Sawyer’s friends, one who had been spirited way, whisper-hissed at her. ⸂The only reason my ma lets Sawyer stay around so much is he’s a good little boy~⸃
Sawyer hadn’t liked this framing and told him to get lost, the boy stomping off and pushing his way through the line of kids nicely waiting for their turn on the slides.
⸂He doesn’t mean to do bad,⸃ Sawyer had explained, sliding down to sit beside Emilia and Astra. ⸂Our town is so poor, though, a lot of kids are kicked out for being too… anything. Too loud, hungry… big. Friend of mine was booted, cause he kept growing too fast. Parents didn’t want to keep buying him clothes.⸃
The boy had shrugged, bare foot rubbing idly over the ground. Where he was boastful and confident in front of his friends, in that moment, he had been quiet and sad.
“Is that why so many kids have been wandering the labyrinth?” Emilia had tried to ask. It took a few goes, but Sawyer had eventually understood the gist of what she was asking.
⸂That… that’s part of it…⸃ he had whispered, eyes growing shifty in a way that Emilia knew meant he was hiding something. All it had taken was an accusing eyebrow raise for the boy to break—the boy really did just want to get everyone out of there alive and whole, even if he wasn’t the most forthcoming with information.
⸂We definitely get good things in here,⸃ he admitted, explaining that the labyrinth sometimes led them to rooms with treasures they could take out and sell. Pretty much all of them, even those with families, could benefit from the money, and the adults they sold the items to took them to other towns, where they likely got far more in return. The kids were generally content to sell their stuff to adults with families to take care of as well, even if they sometimes gave them too little money for their trouble. ⸂But that’s only part of it. You see, every time we complete the labyrinth, we come out somewhere else in the city… or the outskirts. A couple boys never even came back!⸃
Emilia had shot him a dubious look, hearing the unsaid presumption of the missing boys ended up in another city in Sawyer’s words.
The boy had bristled slightly at her silent accusation and assured her that he knew they had come out in another city. ⸂We got a letter from one!⸃ he had insisted, as though a single letter from who knew how many missing children confirmed that the labyrinth was a potential way out of their shitty city.
Emilia had seen a lot of cities in her life, usually, they were all the same. Sure, they looked different—pretended to have different cultures and values and aesthetics—but at their core, they were the same. Sometimes, the poor part of town was smaller, more fragmented. Other times, it was a thriving city within the city. There was crime and knowledge, fun and misery, love and internal wars for power and money and control. The flavour, size and shape might change, but a city was a city, no matter how much it claimed to be better than others*.*
Looking at Sawyer’s enthusiastic, defensive and hopeful little face, Emilia had known that, even were they able to communicate properly, she wouldn’t have been able to tell him such hard truths. Some things you just had to see for yourself. Even if she had told him the truth of the world, he wouldn’t have believed her—might even have said his world wasn’t like that.
She would have had to agree with that sentiment. If, as he said, his entire city was poor and struggling, she would have had to tell him that it had been thousands of years since an entire city within Baalphoria had been defined as poor. Parts of a city, sure, but an entire city? There were probably some small towns, populated by a few hundred people, that leaned poor, but a city? Thousands of people left to be so poor they couldn’t house orphans?
No. Such things wouldn’t stand in Baalphoria. Even in Alver, poor as it was, the residents had enough money to survive, even if that survival was painful at times. When children roamed the streets, homeless and afraid, some adult swiped them up and gave them a home, and the few adults who did so with ill intentions were quickly snuffed out by The Black Knot. Even the government and its enforcers didn’t completely ignore the struggles of the poor.
Children who were too much work for the area were moved to homes elsewhere, ones that were better equip to help them. From what Emilia had seen during her years at Astrapan, however, those homes were treated as an absolute last resort by the residents of Alver. Sub-30s and ex-300s didn’t get rid of their kids, unlike every other social class, especially the sub-50s. Children who were difficult, who needed extra care and help, were loved, just like any other child. Despite their lack of resources, the residents of Alver converged around those children to help them flourish.
Yes, the adults of Alver and other poor areas might go forgotten by the majority of Baalphoria, but the children? The children were never forgotten, not like they seemed to have been in this city—or perhaps in this world as a whole. Perhaps something was different about this city—perhaps some corrupt or inept politician managed it—but it could just as easily be the whole city system that was corrupt, leaving its children to suffer in cold hunger.
That was concerning, especially in the wake of Sawyer’s belief that they could pop out somewhere completely different. No matter where they came out—assuming they actually managed to get out of this place—Emilia had no idea where they would go. If they ended up back in the city they’d come from, at least the kids might have some idea of where to go—of where they would be safe.
Assuming there was anything left of their home, anyways.
And if they came out somewhere completely different? The three cities she’d been to so far had been wholly unique from each other, stylistically. There was no common aesthetics or city plan. Neither she nor the kids were likely to have any idea of where to go—of where to leave the children so they’d be taken care of. Honestly, she could already see how things were going to end up, unless something major changed: with her being forced to go to the Risen Guard or Enclave for help.
The Enclave would probably be the better bet, for her, anyways. Chances were they’d take her in, or maybe even return her to Key and the others. She wasn’t looking forward to meeting Harmony or Sk’lar again—although perhaps Key and Rin had reprimanded them for their earlier behaviour—but they would be better than ending up with a family like Taoran or Cade’s babysitter’s Enclaves.
There was no telling what they would do with the children, however. If she spilled the secret of the Enclave’s existence to the children, they were unlikely to let them go free—might even kill them outright, for all she knew.
The Risen Guard were more likely to keep them safe. Probably. They didn’t like spilling blood, at the very least, so while the Enclave could very well try creating blood weapons from—
Emilia shook herself as she pet Astra’s head, the little redhead tucked quietly into her. She wasn’t going to think about the possibility that the Enclave could do such terrible things to children, even if she was sure that many of the Enclave families would have no qualms about doing anything necessary to change this world—to win a blessing for it.
She wasn’t going to think about it, even if that fear was going to guide her decision once they were free of this place. No matter what, she was not turning these children over to the Enclave, even if that meant turning herself over to the Risen Guard.
