✮ ✮ ✮ Gëon ✮ ✮ ✮
So monsters are not ant to exist—it was a simple fact, sew into the fabric of reality: so monsters are not ant to exist, and yet, they do. Even the aether is unable to wipe all it does not care for from reality. Innovation grows creations of cruelty and malice. Desperate sows seeds that will grow to beco hideous ghouls of corruption. The aether cannot erase them, only guide the hands of those gifted with her visions to tuck such things that should never have been born into the earth—bury the bones of the mind, plucked out and offered to the gods of war and destruction, and—
“Your mind is, like, totally weird,” the little mind eater noted, peering up at . Apparently, for as much as I was often known for being a cruel man, my reputation for never harming children preceded , even into Fräthk’s holding cells.
“Oh… Vtraní told to trust you, if we ever t?” the preteen replied when I asked how he’d known I wouldn’t care about him nosing his way into my mind. “I know a lot of people don’t really like them, but…” The boy shrugged, my own abilities latching onto his mind in turn—sucking out the delicious little emotions that swirled through him: confidence, affection, worry for not just Vtraní but Olivier de la Rue as well.
We were still hurrying along to the latter’s location, Levi leading the way now that he had Censor access again—a pity, as I had quite enjoyed pressing my energy into him, dragging him to release. It wasn’t far to the place where the Baalphorian’s body allegedly remained—I would trust Levi that his Censor said the man was there, but not the function itself—but with Hwris potentially lingering in the area and the possibility that other mbers of Fräthk’s loyal were as well, I wasn’t willing to risk surging into the area and finding ourselves killed.
So, slowly we went—not too slowly, Levi a thing of movent and impatience. He had explained that the Baalphorian man—a non-dev lawyer, apparently—was important to one of his friends, his words and emotions tasting of a fascinating truth.
It wasn’t often that I t black knots, most swiped up for special training by the Drinarna the mont their genetics were tested as children. Occasionally, one would slip through—so child, protected by their family’s influence the way Fräthk’s child had been. More often, the black knots I t had traumatic black knots, their personalities a brutal, shattering thing that threatened everyone they ca into contact with.
Levi was a natural black knot, although I doubted the little mind eater or my little shadow could tell—the young man was all bright, spinning energy, and when he spoke of his friend? Of the girl who was apparently buried within Fräthk’s dungeons, digging up monstrosities that were ant to remain buried? In that girl’s case, Levi truly loved her.
The love the Baalphorian boy had for his friend was an infectious thing, bouncing towards the girl with so much unending force it felt impossible to not be dragged into the flow of it. Such drags weren’t common, and part of wondered if he had experience with such things—if he had undergone training in manipulating Dyads with Excess Empathy. The ability to do so was no common thing—a lost art, practically—and yet, in the monts were I found myself being absently dragged through the unending love he had for his friend, it felt like it must have been intentional.
I didn’t think it was; rather, Levi seed to never be quite sure of what he was feeling.
There was lust, impatience, love. There was a bouncing, overactive boy, letting his attraction to bring him to his knees so easily, his love for her friend filling him because he didn’t know what else to fill himself with. Through a simple accident of chatting about his friend with the little mind eater and feeling little of anything else, Levi was dragging along in his love.
It was infectious.
It was a problem.
Tugging out my xphern, I opened the chat where all of Levi’s friends were congregating. Perhaps due to their Censors, the chat had seen little use—more, it seed that the girl in Fräthk’s dungeons had been taken offaether, aning her Censor was no longer working. As a result, Fräthk’s daughter was keeping everyone updated on the situation, her last ssage reading “Emilia found a weird doll.”
A few people had responded since then, asking what sort of doll and why in the world there had been a doll hidden within those dungeons, as well as why it would matter that she’d found a weird doll.
It mattered, I knew—I had seen that creature before, had heard tales reaching back over a millennium of the terror it left in its wake.
“Little shadow,” I called, tugging the child’s attention back to —they were quite enamoured with Levi’s stories of this Emilia, their often empty eye lighting up slightly as Levi regaled us with tales of how open-hearted and accepting his friend was.
Silently, my little shadow returned to my side, their eyes peering up at as I explained that, under no circumstances, were they ever to touch the doll Levi’s friend had just found. It was impossible to know for sure where the child had co from—where their family had hailed from before they found their way to —but to be safe, my little shadow needed to know: touching that doll may very well end in their death.
✮ ✮ ✮ Zavriel ✮ ✮ ✮
A shot of information plunged through , shocking and brutal—a thousand legends of death connected to… a doll? That was weird, right? That seed really fucking weird?
“It could be this doll that Emmie found?” Mikhail suggested, holding up my xphern to show a ssage from the cannibal accompanying his friend, stating that Emilia had found a weird doll. Did I need to know for sure this teenager was a cannibal? No, but apparently the aether deed it relevant information. Even worse!? The fucking aether had put recipes into my head. I would not, now or ever, be cooking human flesh!? What was the aether on!? This was not relevant or useful information!
“Honestly… yeah,” I agreed, letting my awareness of the world flood outwards, searching for more Drinarna and other people lingering in the streets. As much as it was great that Mikhail had believed imdiately when I’d explained a bit of my abilities to him, the guy’s own abilities—unknown to either of us, but there was definitely sothing there—were interfering with my abilities.
I could still erase my own presence from the world and minds of those I ca across; Mikhail’s, not so much. Instead, it seed as though the boy was a parasite, sotis being dragged along into the flow of my abilities, sotis dropping off and being left with no awareness of where I was. It was strange, especially as he wasn’t entirely certain if he’d ever done such things before.
“I guess there have been tis were I’ve ended up in the right place at the right ti? That could be connecting to soone’s feeling that sothing is wrong? I don’t know? You’d think I’d have mories of feeling Corrie or Sion’s abilities?” he had said when I’d first explained the most bare-bones version of my abilities to him: I could erase reality.
I’d given the Baalphorian boy a few examples: I could erase my presence; I could erase my lack of knowledge of a language and other things, but it wasn’t sothing so simple that I could erase my lack of knowledge on how many factions were operating in the city and who they were aligned with or anything. I could try. At worst, I’d pass out from the influx of information. At best, I’d maybe receive so vibes about how many there were.
Mikhail’s first question, after spending a bit of ti in silent contemplation—really, I wasn’t even sure he’d shared my abilities with his friends, the guy oddly serious about not gossiping—he had asked if that’s what I planned to do to help Emmie’s friend: erase the olthagri from his body. This was, more or less, what I was hoping to do. As I’d frad my abilities as an erasure rather than a forgetting—there were the sa thing, but not quite, in my opinion—it was more that I was going to try to make the man’s body forget it was sick. Sa thing, but sohow… it seed more difficult. Erasing a virus from a body seed much simpler than attempting to make a body forget it was sick.
Who knew if it would work. I would try, at the very least—that doll, though?
Fuck should that thing have remained buried—especially if the aether was taking a mont to make sure I knew everything about it.
“Should I warn anyone about it?” Mikhail asked as I summarized what I’d seen—what the aether had forced into .
After a mont of thought, I told him no, so extra piece of information the aether had placed within saying that no, this information shouldn’t be allowed to spread—so bit of information the aether had made forget I didn’t know, sliding into place within my soul: for as cursed as that doll was, it needed to get out of here, and if Mikhail’s friend learned of its curse, it never would.
Blood would follow that doll, as it always had. Blood would follow regardless, and in the end, a world without that doll, swiped up in this singular mont of chance, would be bloodier than one in which it was allowed to once more see the stars.
✮ ✮ ✮ Rayleen ✮ ✮ ✮
The girl had already touched it, her fingers grazing over the cool glass of the doll’s cheek, streaked with the tears of a million, billion souls, each plucked from reality by its cruel existence. I had known it was there, of course—had seen a dozens futures laid out in which Emilia found the doll, in which she passed it by. Stupidly, I had thought her about to escape that falsity of a dead end without ever even catching sight of the monstrosity.
Now, it was too late—she was bound to it, just as it had been bound to countless people before her.
It could be worse—after all, that thing would never hurt her, although it could certainly hurt people who would co to hold her heart in their hands.
The girl gave away her heart so easily—too easily. If she weren’t careful, it would be her downfall.
“Uhm… how fucked am I that I touched it?” Emilia asked, always the curious thing. She didn’t believe in my abilities, and yet, she so often did. Currently, she stood frozen, barely breathing, her fingers still pulling through molecules of air and aether towards the doll as though, if only she didn’t move closer or further away from the doll, she might be able to pretend she had never touched her soul upon its.
“You are not,” I replied, letting a new version of the future solidify itself within my mind—the doll would co in handy for the girl soon, at least. Things before might have gone either way—might have ended in blood or freedom—but with that doll, horrific as its existence was, freedom would be attained.
Only later would the blood co, again and again and again. So things, in the end, were not ant to see the light—not ant to connect themselves to anyone, let alone soone as powerful as Emilia.
“It may have been better had you not touched it,” I continued, shifting until I was nudging Vern aside and peering through the gaps in Curtisal’s playground to et Emilia’s silver-shot eyes. “You are stuck with it now.”
The look Emilia wore was amusing—disgusted to be stuck with the doll, although she had no idea what sort of malicious power it contained. “Can’t I just… stuff it back into the panel and close it up? Forget this ever happened?” Apparently accepting that her touching it more would have little effect on their bound fates, the silverstrain pushed the doll back into the wall.
It would do her no good, but neither would my telling her it was a lost cause. So things people need to learn on their own ti, and this—this reality that Emilia was stuck with that doll—was one she was going to need pushed into her path again and again and again.
One day, she would understand. That day was not today.
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