?I believe the gods from without are interfering in this world,? Carne said from within the bubble of protection he—it? Emilia wasn’t really sure what to think of Carne as anymore—and Hyr were creating for them, all of them seated in a circle.

  Emilia had tucked herself into the safely V’s chest, although Hyr had swiped up her hand and was feeding energy into her. It was making her feel better—more balanced. Hyr hadn’t said as much, but she had the feeling something strange was going on inside her, and while the syn didn’t know exactly what it was, they were doing their best to keep her from devolving into a puddle of stress and self-hatred again.

  Mostly, she had been left to assume it was either the result of something Payton was doing with her knots or just… that she was the same broken person she’d been in the months directly following the war. Back then, she hadn’t yet messed around with her knots—had instead been holding out hope that time and distance and perhaps a really good knot therapist might be able to sort out her mangled genes. The world had been a terrible place, her mind chronically playing tricks on her to the point that half the time she’d been unable to distinguish the nightmares of her mind from reality. Then, she’d almost been killed by an echo as she tried to convince her mind that it wasn’t real—that she didn’t really need to unleash wartime skills into the gaggle of screaming people—and well… combined with all the other things that had been going wrong in her life and the hope that she could be fixed being shot down by yet another professional…

  Yeah, it had been around then that she’d started to mess around with her knots, intent to figure out how to live life as best she could. The current volatility of her personality reminded her of both those first months and a few in between when she’d started experimenting with her knots and actually found something that worked—there were a lot of weird things that knots could cause, and an inability to control her emotions had been an unfortunate consequence of one particular attempt to patch herself together.

  This wasn’t nearly as bad as that knot sequence had been—Emilia didn’t even want to think of some of the things she’d done back when she had that sequence inside her—but it was still annoying. Luckily, she supposed, she had people with her this time. It wasn’t until after she’d figured out her knots that she’d applied to Astrapan and met Beth or Pria or Sil—or Elijah and his shitbag friends, she supposed. Now, she had V and Hyr, each holding her like she was precious—like they weren’t judging her for falling apart. Then, when she went home, she’d have them and all her other friends and all the people she still wanted to let back into her life, as long as they were still willing to be her friend.

  That was different too, she supposed. Rather than fear her friends and family the way she had back then, the feelings of peace she had amassed in the raid still existed. It wasn’t a perfect peace—and especially when it came to certain people, she was still scared shitless they’d figure out exactly what had driven her away and take revenge on the person who had taken their anger out on her—but there was some peace.

  A little hope, as well, that in the future she would be able to scrunch her feet into the beaches of her home once more, be able to smile as she fearlessly walked into her childhood home like she’d never left, be able to pop in on Hetexia or Olivier or Helix or anyone else without fear that nightmare memories would come for her, or they would kick her out because they too somehow blamed her for not stopping the war soon enough.

  No, rather, she was looking forward to being able to see people again. Of course, in order to do that, she had to get out of the raid—which wasn’t going to be hard, as there was little time left in the raid—and stop the god—Emilia wasn’t sure she’d be able to forgive herself if this world was destroyed because of her. Plus, she was still more than a little nervous about how far the god’s power would stretch, if this really were the real aether dragged into the raid.

  As such, she needed to stop pouting and pull it together. Time to put on her big girl pants, even if she was still technically only wearing her {Blood Armour}. At the very least, Key—who had tucked himself into V’s other side—wasn’t avoiding looking at her the way he had back when he’d first come across her wearing only it, back in the Library Labyrinth.

  So long ago, so many bumps and deaths along the way. They’d already said goodbye once, but now, as they sat pressed into the same man’s chest, listening to Carne, V and Hyr discuss the likelihood that whoever was interfering in this world would help them stop the god, as they tried to determine under which circumstances they would—or perhaps just simply could—help them, Emilia reached her free hand out and poked the local boy in the cheek.

  They’d already said their goodbyes, and there was nothing left to say—it really seemed like too much to say it all again—but as they agreed to try the idea that Carne and Hyr had determined between them was the most likely to succeed, some glimmer of a future existing within their visions from the aether before they’d been cut off from its paths, it felt like they needed something. Some tiny little gesture of friendship.

  Key smiled back at her, his eyes bright but tired, dark circles etched under them. Her friend reached out and poked her cheek in return. A hundred years could go by, and Emilia would still remember this moment. As hard as it was to consider, Emilia hoped he would too, in the blink of time it would take for him to live his life and die, once she and the other visitors left this world.

  ?How come you don’t know how things will happen?? Emilia asked Carne as she accepted Hyr’s somehow still pristine white jacket, holding it to her chest as she let her {Blood Armour} contract to give the others better access to her {Blood Tattoo}. ?I thought you were all scary because of how much you knew about the future?? Technically, no one had said that exactly, but there were vibes.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Beside her, V had pulled off his filthy, torn up shirt as well. Apparently, the fact that their original, useless {Blood Tattoo} had been connected had led to the one she’d accidentally stolen from Tobias splitting between them. According to V, it had been exceptionally painful—just like her, he’d passed out and experienced an extended raid dream in which she had been extremely drunk and handsy. When asked if he had taken advantage of her overly friendly, drunken state, much to the horror of Key, confusion of Hyr and disinterest of Carne, he had vehemently denied doing any such thing.

  Her friend had actually been rather offended she’d even asked. That was probably fair. V was a sweetheart, and had learned enough about her own past assault that even suggesting he might do something like that wasn’t very nice, even if she’d meant it as a joke.

  ?The future is not so easily read where gods or visitors are concerned,? Carne said, his cool fingers running over the ink across her back. ?This is Boundary’s life…?

  ?Oh… yeah, so… the original tattoo was created from a blood weapon I created using his blood? It exploded when V and I killed his Enclave babysitter, and they kinda combined to create that first tattoo? I kinda assumed that was why it was broken? Because it had two sources? Or maybe because only half of the blood was actually dead? Or because the balance was off—it’s not like Boundary bled that much when I created the {Blood Orb}.? She shrugged, not really knowing what to think of it, especially since all her experiments with the Clarity members they’d come across hadn’t yielded any ideas as to the why of its brokenness. ?Oh, I guess when I got this new tattoo, my system access asked if I wanted to overwrite the first one.?

  ?What did you say??

  ?Nothing. I didn’t know what to make of it, so just pushed the dialog box to the side. Even now, it’s still over there, in the corner of my vision.? In hindsight, maybe that was why the new blood tattoo was broken? Oops.

  V gave her a concerned look.

  ?What??

  ?Isn’t that annoying?? he asked, jerking away when Carne’s fingers dragged over his tattoo in turn. Sensitive. Chances were the local man—no, not man; the fucking god’s—fingers weren’t even as cold as they’d been when they touched her, having soaked in some of her heat.

  Emilia shrugged, holding Hyr’s fluffy coat closer to her. It was ridiculously warm and soft. If she wasn’t against killing animals unless necessary, she would have asked for one in the real world. Alas. Synthetics were pretty good, though, so maybe if she got her hands on a real Nur’tha coat, she could have one made up for her? It would be expensive, but with Olivier’s money— Ooh, actually! Better idea: giant duvet made of a synthetic version of this fur!

  ?Emilia??

  ?Hm?? Oh, shit. She was supposed to be answering V’s question!

  ?Not really? I’ve been ignoring messages on my Censor for… well, my whole life, really.? She laughed, telling a few stories of various notifications she’d ignored over the years, especially when she was younger or received annoying messages from the higher ups during the war.

  Part of the Military Censor System had been designed to allow the brass to push popup notifications to anyone not actively engaged in conflict. They had, at times, overused this feature, especially in the last years of the war. In theory, it was good! Notify the rank and file of attacks occurring and ask that anyone available spark out to help with evacuations. There were a lot of them who didn’t want being engaged in something distracting—like sex or games—to lead them to ignore a notification and not head out to save people. In practice, sometimes there were too many attacks, too many requests for help, and Emilia had been among the portion of veterans who disabled their Censors from taking their fatigue into account, unless they were literally about to keel over.

  In other words: she had received a lot of notifications about things she really couldn’t do anything about. As a result, she had pushed that specific channel to the far corner of her vision—it would pop up in front of her face over and over if she just closed it. Forced into the corner, it would blink when a new message came in, but eventually, even that had just faded away from her conscious notice.

  Now, even Emilia wondered why she hadn’t just disabled the notifications entirely. Mental burnout, she supposed. Disabling it required thinking about it, and she—and so many others—had had so little left to give those last few years. In the end, ignoring it had made more sense.

  Regardless of the stupidity behind her and others' decision to mess with their notifications like this, the look V was giving her implied that certain moments of the war were suddenly lining up for him. ?You weren’t the only one who did this,? he stated blandly.

  ?Nope.?

  The man nodded, pieces falling into place. ?I wish someone had suggested that to me. My family had a custom CS. They sent way too many persistent notifications.?

  Despite how close they were getting to openly talking about his real-world identity, Emilia wanted to know more—wanted to ask all the questions about her friend’s family life that she never would have imagined he’d answer in the past. Unfortunately, as much as her curiosity had been stirred up, they did have to get back to dealing with the god before the raid ended, a deadline that was quickly approaching as the three others began to look over their shared tattoo, trying to figure out if they could do anything with it.

  At the very least, the god’s power was a slow-growing thing, so they didn’t have to worry that it would explode out of the Clarity City System and consume the world while they organized themselves. Plus, it was giving Boundary and the others—contacted through Carne, as Emilia and the other visitors’ system access was still down—time to evacuate. Thankfully, that wouldn’t take them long, as almost everyone who had come into the city system was capable of teleporting. They had been in the middle of evacuating a large group of residents, however, and no one had been inclined to leave anyone behind.

  They would, though, if they needed to. Hopefully, when they did leave, it would be because they were done or because their group had figured out a way to stop the god, not because they were fruitlessly trying to flee its power.

  ?I believe your avoidance of dealing with the tattoo will be helpful,? Carne finally said, after going over their theory on why whoever was meddling in the raid wasn’t interfering more directly once more, making sure he had the facts correct. ?Erase the old tattoo. It is likely the gods from without will offer you a weapon capable of stopping— no, containing the god.?

  Emilia looked to V—he had part of the {Blood Tattoo}, after all. The other visitor shrugged, muttering that he didn’t have any better ideas.

  Accepting and hoping it was, then.