There wasn’t anger, only fury. A burn of hatred and regret and the fact that Hyr had been right when they said Caro’s life could not be saved—the fact that all of them had been able to see it, with near perfect clarity, long before that sweet little child flung himself in front of an attack that would have killed all three of them.

  Perhaps that should have been a little comforting: that regardless of Caro’s sacrifice, they would have died anyways, differently, but dead all the same.

  It didn’t help, not when Emilia knew it was a thousand little moments that had brought Caro here—and yes, Hyr had told her that Caro’s fate had already been all but sealed before they had found each other again, that leaving them behind with the Risen Guard would have guaranteed their death just the same. It still hurt, and her only comfort was that she could tell it hurt Hyr was well, to have been the one to bring Caro to this place, only the syn’s trust in the aethernet’s visions and inescapable futures keeping them from breaking.

  There had still been a crack in their voice, however, when they admitted that they had seen the smallest flicker of a future where Caro wouldn’t die, in the moments before they decided the child had to stay with them, no matter what. That future had vanished, though. Disappeared just as quickly as it had flashed before Hyr’s eyes. Where had it gone? They didn’t know. Had it ever actually existed, or simply been the result of wishful thinking for a child? They didn’t know.

  Emilia didn’t think of these things as her fury bubbled, blistering over the universe with so much force and violence that Hyr gasped. Had she not been so blindly filled with rage, she might have smiled—the syn so rarely showed shock, and she would have loved to turn around and memorize their golden features as they took in her anger, saw the way she had ended the war.

  If only she’d been able to summon this ability to bend the aether to her will a minute earlier. If only during the war she’d been able to do this two decades earlier.

  Caro’s death, Olivier’s near death, were her catalysts and as much as she hated that she needed them, a part of her knew it was for the best. Their world—whether real or virtual—didn’t need someone who could pull this much power out of themself with a simple thought, an imagining of pain and suffering. They needed true fury and heartbreak and desperation.

  Caro had died so she could kill this thing—so this god wouldn’t be left to torment the world of the raid after their souls were forced from its borders.

  Maybe one day that would make their sacrifice hurt less. Not today. Today, Emilia leaned into her emotions and power, the world and building splintering as she sought out the being who had heartlessly killed a child, would kill a million more in revenge for the actions that had led to Clarity’s destruction.

  She stepped, the world moved with her—a spark in a world without sparks. Broken and fractured, forced along by her body’s remembrance of what a spark felt like as it shuddered through her, her body sliding through the insides of the universe a bit too long, blood of the world splattering to the floor in front of the god as they panicked.

  ?What are you—? they tried to say, and perhaps at another time Emilia would feel pride for the fear she saw in the god’s eyes. Was this how the monsters of war had felt, when she shuttered their doors behind them, locking them within and without of whatever terrible place they hailed from? Had they feared her unknown power?

  Another step—the attack the god had been aiming at her missing as Emilia reappeared elsewhere in the room it had killed Caro from. Out of range—whatever attack it had used wasn’t something Emilia had seen it use before. She had messed up, assumed the god had shown her the true range of its offensive skills. Now, Caro was dead, Hyr in danger.

  Not that Hyr mattered—not really. They’d be fine. Not like Caro, who was—

  For a moment, Emilia was tempted to pull the god into the universe’s insides with her. Spark wrong, leave them inside that visceral, disgusting place to rot and fester. Except, something told her that wasn’t a good idea. As much as she had tried to not think about the time she had spent inside the aether, during that spark gone wrong so long ago, she couldn’t deny that she had learned things there—that her very ability to slide in and out of it now, her ability to end the war, had likely only been possible because of that time, terrible as it had been.

  This creature couldn’t be allowed to learn such things, and at the same time, the back of her brain itched with the reminder that she didn’t know if the aether of this world was the real one, or some simulation. What would it mean, for game souls to be capable of reaching—touching, altering—the universe itself?

  Probably, she shouldn’t tempt fate—shouldn’t step through the guts of the universe, real or imagined, so many times within this raid that anyone watching could figure out what she was doing.

  The god attacked her again, clearly assuming she’d jump once more. Emilia didn’t move, only letting her hate filled mind erase the god’s power from the world.

  ?I was told the magic of this world could do nearly anything, as long as you can imagine it,? she told the god, taking in their shocked expression as she stepped forward. ?It’s just annoying that I can’t figure out the exact trick of it, unless I’m pissed the fuck off.?

  One of the god’s arms snapped backwards. They screamed. Their own pain? Or pain from Yuka? Apparently, being only a fraction of the god’s consciousness had worked for it, because none of the hive mind infected Clarity members had ever shown much sign of pain.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Part of Emilia wanted to torture the creature—make it suffer not just for Caro’s death but for all the Clarity members who had suffered, even if they had brought that fate upon themselves, at least a little bit.

  ?What are you smiling about?? the god asked, and Emilia could tell that whatever abilities it was trying to use weren’t activating the way it wanted. This wasn’t the result of her forcibly erasing magic from the world—that had only been a short lasting blast of imagination—but something else completely blocking its powers. Was that her?

  Her system flickered with a notification, one that altered her that one of her mystery gifts had finally been activated: Rage Against the Rules.

  Emilia wasn’t convinced the ability—which according to a little write-up allowed her to temporarily nullify the rules of the raid—hadn’t been chosen by whoever was monitoring their fight and given to her now, just so she’d win.

  Perhaps that was why she could suddenly use the magic system, rather than her rage. That probably made more sense, every attack she made on the god perfect and powerful as she contemplated also torturing whichever asshole had led them to this place. The platform maintainer. The raid designer. Whatever top executive was overseeing this whole situation.

  She could torture them all—rip their limbs from their body just as easily as she was tearing this god apart. Easier, even. Maybe she’d take them to a black site, torture them slowly. The clones would help, Levi, Samina, Malcolm—anyone she asked would help, because it was her, because she was in pain and—

  “Emilia.”

  Hyr’s hand wrapped around her wrist, a slow trickle of beautiful, controlled and cooling energy beginning to rub against her meridians. Not forcing itself in, just a gentle offer of comfort and calming.

  “Emilia,” they repeated, their arm wrapping around her waist and pulling her close. “Kill them.”

  The urge to pull away and continue ripping the god apart tore at her, her mind once again wondering if Payton had done something—if this rage was some strange, mutated black knot, tying up her empathy and control and leaving her a wrathful mess.

  “Maybe,” Hyr said because apparently she’d said some amount of that out loud, “or, you’re just sad and grieving and want revenge. I know you, and you don’t really want that. You will regret this, if you go on.”

  ?How do you know?? she breathed out, struggling to fight her body into submission and acceptance of Hyr’s energy. ?We haven't known each other long enough for you to know things like that.?

  The syn’s arm tightened around her, grounding despite the fact that they had lifted her off the ground, her feet dangling uselessly under her. “I know,” they said, like they did really know—like they’d seen inside her and knew that somewhere in there, there was a good person who loved their friends and didn’t torture people unless it was actually necessary. Sadly, it wasn’t usually necessary.

  Given the huff of a laugh that left the syn, apparently she’d said that out loud as well. “I also do not think it is necessary now.”

  No, it probably wasn’t, and before releasing that final lever and letting Hyr’s energy consume her, she let her anger overtake her, for one moment more. Most likely, she could have just destroyed Yuka’s body and sent the god spiralling back to wherever the gods of this world lived. That was too good for it, and no regret slid through her as she instead imagined burning it out of existence—imagined writing a skill that would slice a piece of the aethernet away, leaving a gaping hole where it had once existed. Gone, disappeared; the web of the world stitching itself back together to account for the sudden lack of anything where it had once been.

  Behind her, Hyr tensed, the arm around her tightening, their energy pressing more insistently into her until she finally assented and let them in. The syn’s energy was cool, soothing and caring. Just as it had when Conrad first pressed his energy into her, part of her bit back at it—the part that seemed always connected to the rules of having a Censor, telling her that this was too close to utilizing her core in a way it wouldn’t like. A bigger part of her leaned into the sensation, like a shivery hug that she never wanted to end.

  They stood there like that for a long time, Hyr eventually rearranging them so they could slide to the floor, Emilia cradled in his arms like they were the older, more mature one. Maybe in this moment they were. Certainly, she felt like a child. Fragile. Broken. Rung out.

  Hyr just rocked, their energy continuing to dig through her until every ounce of angry energy she had was gone, all that remained grief that, despite decades of facing it over and over again as friend after friend was wiped out of existence, she still struggled to reconcile.

  ?I should have done that earlier,? she finally said into the crook of Hyr’s neck, the same side Caro had been snuggled into for the too short hours before their death.

  “You could not have,” the northerner said, like it was the truest thing in the entire world.

  ?You don’t know that,? she replied, although given what she’d seen the syn do and see, perhaps they did know. Emilia didn’t think it would be any more comforting to know this was an inescapable fate than it would be to know she’d fucked up—that she could have done better. Under her, she felt Hyr hesitate. ?What??

  “In the synat, many young members are turned to different careers because they are unable to accept the fates that happen, the fates that do not. We are expected to accept fate as it occurs, to not mourn the futures that did not. To do so, is a lesson in frustration and self-torture.” Their fingers rubbed gentle circles into the bare skin between the bands of her {Blood Armour}, travelling lazily—comfortably—over her and sending little shudders down her spine.

  ?So, you’re saying I shouldn’t look back and say this could have been different? Doesn’t that just mean I wouldn’t learn from my mistakes?? Before she could stop herself, Emilia snorted, muttering about how she hadn’t learned the first time, so why should this be any different.

  “The first time?”

  Emilia hesitated, wondering whether to say more, not on Hyr’s account—despite not knowing them well, something about the syn was just inherently trustworthy—but because she had no idea who was listening. For all the bits of herself that any external witnesses could piece together, some things—some facts about herself and the world itself—weren’t for their eyes.

  ?It’s not the first time I should have done something sooner, and people died because of it.?

  Hyr’s fingers stalled in their path, and Emilia wondered if they knew she was talking about her brutal end to the war. A sound escaped them—not even the beginning of a word she could recognize—when the world shook, their eyes snapping to the place where she had wiped the god was existence.

  Except, apparently she hadn’t.