Arc F1.9 | Chapter 40: Those People We Cannot Forgive

It had actually been relatively rare that Emilia ever saw Vantril fight—certainly, she’d never seen Vantril fight with Codeth as her support. While there had been tons of times before the war when a number of them had set out to do such-and-such stupidly suicidal thing together, with the civil war in Lüshan, few of their Drinarna allies had ever been with them. Then, once the war came, their unit’s Drinarna members had been relatively set in their configurations, largely continuing to team up with one another, rather than branching out with their other members unless their partner died or was unavailable. Besides, Vantril was more of a support herself, acting as a sniper for the rest of them while her teammate—who had usually been something between a support and a combatant—defended her against close-range attacks.

There had been a handful of times when Emilia had ended up closer to the woman during an attack, when monsters had gotten too close to their support line. If Emilia had to guess… the Vantril who would exist in a dozen years was about as skilled as this Vantril in terms of hand-to-hand combat. An understandable thing: the Drinarna officer would be one of the first people to test out their temporary Censors, using the movement skills within to act as a sniper for Wander whenever he stepped into public.

During those eight years of civil war, Vantril had killed hundreds of would-be assassins, sent by the various factions, none of whom had possessed as pure motivations as they claimed. In no world was Wander perfect—no government or the officials who ran them were—but the things many of the other factions had wanted?

An expansion of Lüshanian territory into surrounding Free Colonies? A renewed war with Dion? Drinarna supremacy? For the old families to be murdered in cold blood, all so new families could rise?

In that last case, the leaders hadn’t even differentiated between children and adults of the old families. Many of their top members had eventually been killed, during and after an attack on the Baalphorian embassy, where Candence would end up spending the majority of the war, getting her out proving too risky both to the little girl herself and Wander’s position. It didn’t matter that Candence had rarely been seen by the majority of them: she was as much a child who belonged to their group as any of the other children and teens they were leaving this place were—as the children they would acquire for years to come would be.

Baylor was right: no one touched what as theirs.

In the end, that faction—the one that had infiltrated the department that managed the nation’s housing—had been the first to burn itself out. As foreigners, their interference would cause issues… if they were found to be doing anything for one of the factions.

That hadn’t stopped a number of them from repeatedly slipping into the city, Vtraní having information about a tunnel that, as far as they knew, only Fräthk, Vtraní themself, and Rayleen had known about. With Fräthk dead and Rayleen vanished into the wind, there hadn’t been much risk in using the tunnel. A handful of people loyal to Wander had known they were coming in to kill powerful faction members. Sometimes they helped, slipping them intel, mostly. Later, in the years before Division 30 had fully formed, those same people would be sent to them by Wander.

Shortly after the war began, a number would join her in slipping into Chinsata in order to swipe up silverstrains—and the occasional person with another irregular deviation—and kill every slaver they came across.

Vantril hadn’t been on that mission, but she’d come on the second one, after Alliance Ridge. By the time they’d gone into Chinsata that second time, the woman had trained herself up—learned how to fight better in hand-to-hand combat than she currently did.

This wasn’t to say the Drinarna officer was a bad fighter, or anything! For someone who had probably never fought someone outside of training before—and certainly had never fought someone potentially to the death—Vantril was doing well.

There were still cracks.

Emilia could see them.

Codeth could see them, her former classmate cringing every so often.

Vantril herself could see it, her attempts to gain the upper hand falling flat despite her efforts.

Had Emilia not already known how this fight would end, she would have been able to guess. There were just too many flaws in the woman’s attacks, Codeth having to pick up too much slack with defensive strike after defensive strike.

Worse?

Their opponent was learning their openings—and odd that, for this person to have no thoughts within their mind, Cheskarina still panicking in Izurial’s arms, to be able to notice anything. Clearly, they were thinking things through—were working something about the battle out in their mind, despite how those thoughts couldn’t be felt.

One day, if she ever happened to meet this fucker herself—much like she still had allies out there, keeping an eye out for Hwris and the person who had sent assassins after Coral, Emilia also had people watching for this person. There weren’t many people out there whom she would never forgive, even if they got their life together—her contact in Chinsata was proof enough of that, the man doing everything in his power to make up for the crimes his younger self and generations of ancestors had inflicted on people like her. Perhaps there was no salvation to be found for him—certainly, Emilia knew a number of the silverstrains he had helped wished him dead, despite knowing he was the only reason they were able to get so many silverstrains out of the place.

The thing was, the guy was trying to make things right, even if it would never be enough. He tried, and that was what mattered.

The last time Hwris had been sighted, just over three years ago, he was an assassin for an unknown crime family. Rudely, the guy had a temporary Censor, and attempts by herself, Ivirium, Oireasha, and a collection of their clones to kill him had simply resulted in his sparking away before anti-sparking skills could be fully activated. They may have taken out a significant portion of several city blocks during the brief struggle with him, some nearby Free Colony tech interfering with both his ability to spark and their attempts at blocking fully the spark.

The last anyone had heard of the person who ordered Coral’s death, they had sequestered themself away, aware that their identity had been blown. There were kill orders out on the majority of their unit, thanks to that person’s desire to keep themself safe, as though it hadn’t been their own actions that had brought their unit’s ire down on them—and actually…

For a moment, Emilia blinked into space. Below her, Codeth had to remove one of the skills he was using to keep their attacker contained in order to erect a defensive barrier around Izurial and Cheskarina. A little crack in his control of the situation, their attacker clocking each little error and twitch.

It was just a matter of time before the slip would become big enough for them to get away.

People like Codeth, due to his public facing nature, had dealt with numerous assassination attempts, thanks to that kill order, over the last four years, since the Shadow of Jinkai had managed to track down the person who ordered Coral dead. Fortunately, between all of their public members, they’d killed enough would-be assassins that attempts were rare these days—they were just too powerful, and almost all of them had at least a few clones trailing them, sometimes as themselves, sometimes not. If they had information about someone coming for them, Zavriel usually gathered every public member in Crishar for a bit, the man better able to use his abilities to defend his friends when they were all together.

Vantril dodged to the side, too slow—a brute-force core attack slammed into her, Codeth’s willbrand pulling her back likely the only thing that saved her from dying. The woman was getting a bit too reckless. It was easy to see why: she wasn’t stupid and knew she was going to lose if the fight went on much longer. Unfortunately, Vantril wasn’t stupid; she also knew that, if Cheskarina couldn’t feel the person out, they could sneak back up on their group unless Codeth started running recon skills again.

This would slow them down, Codeth having already explained to the Drinarna officer many of the finicky details of the available recon skills, as well as her recon-like skill sequence. In other words, Vantril knew how much running them would drain on him, especially if they had to be run constantly, not knowing if this person would return or not.

All of this was making her reckless in her attempts to kill the person. The woman’s jaw set, annoyance flickering through her eyes and mind—Vantril didn’t want to let her allies down, especially when Izurial already didn’t trust her.

Emilia could understand her frustration—could feel the reality that, on top of her desire to prove herself to her new allies, Vantril also just wanted to make sure Cheskarina was okay.

If this person were killed, perhaps Cheskarina would feel safer.

So, despite how the inside of Vantril’s head was filled with the knowledge that she was fucking up—that she shouldn’t be pushing so hard and it was just making things messier and messier—the Drinarna officer was struggling to stop herself. It wasn’t so terrible that anyone would call her out on what was happening—would blame her for letting their attacker get away, all of them so aware they were in over their heads. It was also significantly better than the mistake Emilia was, rather embarrassingly, just realizing she’d made.

That stupid video of her tearing a hole in Elijah’s dorm room—the video that she had distributed herself—was liable to create a mess. Hopefully, whenever she got out of here, as much time as she’d spent within their dream wouldn’t have passed in real life. For one thing, people would be pissed off and panicking if she ended up in a coma for… who the fuck knew how long. Emilia wouldn’t be surprised if, when added up, all the time she’d experienced inside this dream became months, if not years.

It was a lot, and personally, she’d be a little upset if, just as she was beginning to think that she could maybe return to her old friends’ lives, she spent a year or two—or three or four because this fucking trip was nowhere near over—in a coma. That would suck. Also, people would be worried for her… and there was a good chance she’d never find whoever had been responsible for giving that bartender the knotter.

No, no. Emilia refused to accept such things. Clearly, she was going to wake up and only an hour or two would have passed, definitely. If the aether dared take any more time from her, she was going to throw a fit. Also, this was beside the point that she’d kinda, maybe, sorta put everyone in danger by calling attention to herself? Not everyone would guess she was a member of Division 30, but enough would, connecting her to rumours of her father’s silverstrain daughter. On a whole, this was annoying, but with those kill orders out on all of them?

Every time something big happened—usually, the news covering some echo attack or big raid that one of their public members had been involved in—a few up-and-coming criminals would look into information about Division 30 and come out with the kill orders in hand. People were stupid, especially young criminals trying to make a name for themself. It didn’t matter that no one had ever gotten close to killing them—not since Coral, anyways. People tried. Those people died, just as they always had, or got sent back as spies for them, in a few cases. The few who survived were left hiding themselves away because their unit didn’t forget.

This person was like that as well: someone stuck in hiding, likely for the rest of their life, due to what they had done. They were actually one of the few people who had ever been on their shit list who they’d been able to contact. All they’d said was exactly what they meant: if the person changed their ways and found a better path in life—and not even one that wasn’t of crime, simply one that didn’t hurt innocent people so perversely—they’d leave them be.

The fucker had refused, and gone on being a horrible person. One day, one of them would find them, and they would snap their neck.

An attack exploded out of Vantril’s willbrand, Codeth pulling his willbrand in tight around himself and the two former captives, while Vantril risked the blowback as she attempted to hit their attacker or run them off. The pair had decided during her last moment being caught behind his willbrand as attacks barrelled down on them that they were wasting too much energy and time fighting this person, every extra moment of combat doing nothing but wearing them down and risking that the person would land a lethal attack.

Dust and debris shattered through the area. Cracks echoed up the buildings, the neighbourhood they were in one of the older ones. Later, a significant amount of this district and a number of the surrounding ones would need to be evacuated, due to all the damage their various battles had wrought on the few districts surrounding the holding cells.

Later, during one of the times she visited Candence officially while her father was on a diplomatic mission to visit the city, Emilia would come back—would travel along the paths her friends had taken while looking for her and Olivier and then each other and everyone they’d picked up along the way. Homeless people had moved in by then, as well as remnants of the criminals who had escaped Fräthk’s control and had nowhere to go, Gëon’s righthand man managing to get most of his people out of the city over the next few years, although not without significant loss.

The homeless people who would one day live here, as a war that would never help them find better lives, no matter who won, raged around them, had been bad off, everything within her screaming to help them, when there was little she could do. They’d already managed to take so many people out of the city, and she had been there officially. If people had started disappearing every time she was in the city, it wouldn’t matter how unwanted they were. Eventually, someone would care—would claim it Wander’s doing.

Two weeks later, a million incidents in Dion proving where she was to anyone who might ask, she and a handful of the adults who would be leaving this place with them joined forces in their first official mission since parting ways, later today. For them to return to Falmíer, despite the risk, in order to help a bunch of people they had maybe known, maybe never met before, maybe hated, maybe loved?

There were moments in their lives that were pivotal. Seeing a handful of adults able to work with Porsq—too young to be there, but needed to keep the smallest of their smuggled humans quiet during the journey—despite their clear desire to never see him again, was one of the only reasons they’d been able to become friends, and later allies.

Porsq still made them nervous; for innocent victims, they would figure it out.

They would return to Crishar with yet more children and teens, many of them having heard stories of the lengths their group had gone to from someone none of them would name—someone they wouldn’t know the identity of until after the war ended, and suddenly, a million little things would make sense.

Almost make sense—something to ask Wander, Darrian, and perhaps Conrad about, if she escaped this place with her memories at all intact.