“Oof!” Emilia blinked into Zyrex’s exceptionally firm back. Almost immediately, V was there, fussing over her while Gale groaned and Astra reached down to pat her on the head. Given how tall Zyrex—who was still holding Astra and seemed perfectly inclined to continue carting her around—was, the girl’s fingers barely brushed the top of Emilia’s head.

  ?Are you okay, Emilia?? V asked, and Emilia was growing increasingly concerned about his mental state. He seemed to think she would break at any moment, and every stumble, bump, sneeze—they’d walked through an extremely dusted room several floors ago—had him appearing beside her, fussing.

  It was cute, if slightly annoying, and completely unnecessary in most cases. Still, Emilia smiled when the man leaned down and placed a kiss to her nose when she told him it hurt. Gale groaned once more, long and drawn out, and pushed past them, asking Zyrex why’d he’d stopped before saying, ?Oh. That’s… not good…?

  ?What isn’t?? Emilia asked, rising onto tip toes to look into the room over the local girl’s shoulder, V’s arm wrapping around her middle like he was either preparing to lift her—and how silly would that look?—or afraid she’d somehow mess up something as simple as raising herself up a few inches.

  At first, Emilia didn’t see anything strange about the room they’d come to. It seemed like a mostly normal room. Grey. Sparsely decorated. An abnormal number of doors that led to other rooms—seriously, it seemed like no one who lived in this place had any privacy, given all their bedrooms were interconnected.

  Unlike many of the other floors, this one didn’t have any bodies, but perhaps that was because something had clearly happened on the floor above, which had been comprised of several huge rooms, each filled with dozens of bodies. Something had obviously happened above their heads, and perhaps all the occupants of this floor had gone up to help and… die? If they had, it had probably happened before the Clarity hive mind became so… despondent. They hadn’t come across many living people as they travelled, and none of them had been up for, well, anything. Not answering questions. Not talking. Barely even fighting or defending themselves.

  The light had left them, and it was strange.

  ?Are those holes in the floor?? V asked, his chin resting softly on Emilia’s shoulder.

  Her eyes slid to the floor, the normally flat grey surface seemingly burnt through by something in several spots. Whatever had damaged it, it was gone now.

  “The ceiling, too,” Zyrex said, nodding upwards, and yup. Several matching holes, burnt through the ceiling and then straight through the floor.

  ?It’s probably from the bodies above…? Gale told them, explaining that unless the blood curse was brought under control by a visitor or a system function, blood could burn straight through practically anything. ?It’s probably still going, burning into the levels below us.?

  ?Why didn’t that happen before?? Astra asked, pointing out that they’d passed dozens of bodies since being kidnapped, and none of their blood had done anything like this. Some of it had stained the floor a terrible blackish red colour, but mostly it just sat there, waiting for a visitor to come along.

  Prefacing her explanation with the fact that she wasn’t old enough to have learned all the specifics of it, Gale told them that certain system functions helped to control the spread of the blood curse. ?It isn’t accessible to little kids—that’s why they have to be more careful—but there are special functions for special circumstances. Usually, blood just tries to return to the body it belongs to. It might damage the world a little while it’s outside them, but it's mostly okay. The problem is when there’s a lot of blood or a serious injury.?

  The teenager frowned at the ceiling, probably thinking what the rest of them were: that they should have poked their heads in, to see what had happened. Zyrex figured that going back was worth it, and together with Astra, returned to the stairwell as Gale continued explaining that the system functions were meant to be used in emergencies.

  ?They have a variety of functions—self-healing and helping blood return are the most common, as well as just sort of… disconnecting yourself from the blood? That actually removes the power from the blood, unless a visitor comes along, anyways. Only people who are in their right minds can do it, though, that’s why women need help giving birth—they need someone else there, to help with the disconnection, as well as return blood in some cases. Otherwise…? She motioned to the room, in silent indication of what could happen if the blood curse wasn’t brought under control. ?That’s also assuming the blood curse is even going to be this bad. You might have noticed that it can change how dangerous it is.?

  ?So… the people we came across before either had enough control of themselves to disconnect their blood, or someone did it for them? And the people who died above us didn’t?? V asked, his fingers rubbing circles into Emilia’s hip, and fucking stars had she missed this sort of closeness.

  It hadn’t even been like this with Elijah, who would hold her hand, throw his arm around her shoulder, give her the occasional kiss, but definitely wasn’t one for public displays. Her ex had been handsy, but looking back on it, his touches had always been something of an ownership—a telling to the world that she belonged to him. Olivier had touched her this way, like V, when they’d been alone—during their brief time together; before she entered the raid as well. Lingering and wanting—like he could never quite touch her enough. Then, before that… before that, she’d always been touchy with her friends, and she still wasn’t convinced she was basically the only one, other than Helix, that Simeon had regularly touched until he got married, decades after she had cracked his shell and turned him into someone who would snuggle with her alone.

  Stolen story; please report.

  In the background, Gale continued talking to V about this or that detail of the blood curse, the main thing Emilia retaining from it that—much as she had already realized—the blood curse wasn’t consistent. The worst that could happen was blood burning through city level after city level, a single drop unstoppable by anything—even the heads of people misfortunate enough to have it land on them—until a Risen Guard trained in blood magic appeared to stop it. Usually, all that happened was the blood would burn a layer of whatever it landed on away before losing its power or returning to its human.

  Unfortunately, due to how dangerous the worst case was, their world was controlled by rules designed to avoid all lose of blood. That was understandable… maybe. From what Gale said, even the Livery homeless kids, who weren’t exactly known for being the safest or most responsible, had never come anywhere close to bleeding out a worst-case scenario. Rather, they usually just left a few more scars on the city walls and streets—and occasionally the universe—with their haphazard playing and scrapped knees.

  ?Are you saying that… the blood curse is overexaggerated?? V asked as the sound of Zyrex and Astra chatting began to echo towards them.

  Gale didn’t outright agree, but Emilia had the feeling she wanted to—that she wanted to yell and say that yes, the rules for controlling the potential danger of the blood curse were way over the top, considering things rarely ever got that bad. She didn’t say that, instead muttering something about how the potential for blood to destroy their world meant it had to be controlled with the utmost severity, which Emilia bet was taught to all the kids from the moment they popped out.

  ?What’d you find?? Emilia asked, turning towards the returning visitors.

  “A lot of bodies, and no blood. Looked like the blood that caused this”—Zyrex nodded back into the room—“was from ah…”

  ?That guy, Ajarni,? Astra finished, giving Zyrex a blandly chastising look, and okay, maybe Emilia could understand a little bit why Conrad had gone along with the girl’s demands that he find her while Astra and the others went to find V. Something about her, pint sized or not, was terrifying. Authoritative. Powerful.

  A faint blush spread over the hy’s dark features, lighter and a different shade than the girl in his arms’. “Yes. Ajarni. His body was up there, or what was left of it.”

  ?Left of it?? Emilia asked, letting Gale tuck herself into her neck, as though that would block out the side of the conversation she could hear. Usually, someone would translate Zyrex’s words for her, the only person in the group—both the currently assembled one and the extended, broken apart through the Clarity City System one—who couldn’t hear visitors. In this case, no one bothered translating as Zyrex explained that not only had the Clarity leader been decapitated, but part of his scalp and face had been ripped away, his fingers burnt and melted.

  “I would guess… given what Gale said about how much damage blood can do, he was scratching at his bloody head and destroyed his fingers? I can’t imagine how he ended up with so much of his skin and muscle ripped away, especially not while still living.”

  ?Could it have been whoever killed him? You said the blood was gone, so it was probably a visitor—or at least another visitor came across the room after he was dead…? Emilia’s eyes slid over the top of Gale’s head, still tucked into her. ?The blood that caused that must have either been a lot, or the first to fall, and been gone by the time the visitors arrived.?

  ?We can’t be sure, but it looked like it lined up with where the pieces of Ajarni’s scalp ended up,? Astra noted, eyes tightening when Gale made a sound of distress. The visitor didn’t apologize, but Emilia had a feeling she wanted to—had a feeling that Astra was holding something else inside her as well, something she wanted to tell Gale quite badly but wasn’t quite sure how to.

  ?But if he’s dead…? Emilia grimaced, thinking of the reality that he must have been alive when his scalp was ripped off. ?Maybe he was tortured by someone? Unless a visitor figured out how to delay the blood curse—which we know is kinda possible, but definitely not easy—then they couldn’t have been who did that to him. I could definitely see a visitor torturing a local, unfortunately, but this is just… odd.?

  “It is unlikely the scalping was his killer.”

  ?Why??

  Zyrex shifted his weight. “I believe the hy Gru’s group killed him and the other people in the room.”

  ?Oh…?

  ?Wait, Hetexia is here?? V asked, blinking between Emilia and Zyrex. ?Why didn’t you tell me!??

  ?I thought Zyrex would have told you. I heard you introduce yourself semi-properly?—V had used V rather than his real name in his formal introduction to Zyrex and Hyr, but his proper title, and well… something that could pass for a proper final, if only under very loose rules, but definitely should have indicated to the pair of northerners that he was part of their unit—?so I assumed it came up.?

  “I thought Emilia would have mentioned it. It isn’t my job to assume who you are and what you know.”

  Okay, maybe that was a little fair. Technically, V’s introduction could have been taken as simply the introduction of a soldier and not a soldier directly related to their unit. Still, Hyr was all… intuitive, thanks to their connection to the aether, and the northerners did appear to have more than a few brain cells between them! Emilia had thought one of them would have had the sense to at least mentioned they knew the hy Gru! Usually, the hy were much better at navigating these sorts of situations. Evidently, Emilia had put too much stalk in Zyrex’s training in such matters!

  V made a put upon noise, but said nothing else. Mostly, he was probably annoyed that he might have run into Hetexia without even knowing she was there.

  Emilia glanced at the man, trying to overlay the boy he had been with this older, more than a little altered version of him. Since realizing who he was, she had been able to see more of the resemblance now—although unless her former teammate had managed to grow to be less attractive, Emilia was sure the real version was significantly more attractive than V’s avatar… assuming he had bathed. Given what V had said about not particularly caring for his cleanliness…

  Yeah, Emilia really hoped he’d bathe before they met in person. While she probably wouldn’t mind forcibly showering him again—and man, she had never even considered having thoughts like that about the innocent boy she used to know—having him clean and put together for that first meeting was much more appealing and—

  ?Stop. That.?

  Emilia blinked down at Gale, who was glaring up at her. ?Hm??

  ?Stop thinking about sex.?

  Behind her, V sputtered, and Emilia wondered which one of them Gale was talking to. It didn’t matter much, not when they needed to get moving.

  ?We didn’t pass Hetexia’s team on our way down, so they must be further down. If we hurry, we might be able to catch them.? Hesitating, Emilia asked if Key had been among the dead on the floor above them. He had ostensibly been taken to see Ajarni, but that didn’t mean they’d been together long.

  “No. He wasn’t. The hy Gru may have taken him, if she found him.”

  ?Yeah… maybe…? Emilia sighed, trying to imagine how the cute, innocent boy she knew would do being dragged along by someone like Hetexia.