[Can't Opt Out]

Arc 3 | Chapter 95: Hitting Isn’t Helpful

If you asked Emilia, she would say the third challenge of the labyrinth should have been babysitting the children. Forget anything actually designed by the labyrinth, this was harder than anything it could possibly throw at her. Before the second challenge, they had largely floated along the path, guided by Emilia and V and the older children, even if those older children had been glaring daggers at one another.The most despondent of children had been ushered along by the other kids, the smallest carried by Emilia and V and occasionally Gale. Several of the other children had volunteered to carry them as well, but their too small bodies would have been worn down too quickly by the added weight. Those children had been sad, to have their help rebuffed, but they understood.

They had just wanted to be helpful. It was sweet, even if unnecessary and potentially more trouble than it was worth.

Now, Emilia, Gale, Miira, and Sawyer were left practically begging the others to help. They needed to move. They needed help moving the smallest children, their legs too weak to walk much more, their brains screaming at them to sleep. They needed the few children who weren’t staring into the middle distance to help move the ones that were.

There were too many who were, and the ones who were holding on had no idea how to get the others moving.

At the very least, Gale and Miira were talking again. It was a small silver lining, with so much of their group now gone, but it was there. Emilia had learned during the war to hold on to positivity, even in the middle of a nightmare. Latch on to hope and encouragement, even in the midst of a firestorm.ic wastes.

“You!” the man started to say, eyes growing wide as her power pressed down on him.

“I didn’t sign up to get yelled at or watch people I should be able to respect beat on their students,” Emilia sniffed, holding herself back from leaving—from following half the class leave, mostly the girls and Free Coloniers, she’d later learn—in case the man decided to try something else. Another boy joined her, aether flooding out of him in silent threat, his appearance so out of place that it had taken a moment to realize she knew him—knew him well, unfortunately. “Halen!?”

Halen’s lips pulled up into that terrible, arrogant smirk of his. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you of all people here, Em.”

✮ ✮ ✮ Present ✮ ✮ ✮

Three children tumbled off her as Emilia bolted up and towards the group of children, who were quickly growing too irate—too handsy—in their attempts to get the others to move. “Don’t,” she said, hand clasped around the wrist of the boy who had been looking like he was about to hit the boy at his feet. No one could hear her, but her intention was clear enough: there will be no violence between us.

She sighed, making a series of motions that thankfully Gale was about to decipher. One of the children she’d disturbed grumbled in complaint, tucking themself into another child who was somehow snoring through their aethervoice nearby. Astra yawned and pushed herself up, wiping furtively at a patch of dirt wiped over her nose. The third child watched her sleepy, half-hearted attempts at cleanliness through wide, blurry eyes. They laughed, the sound like a bell of calm hope through the room.

It had been an hour, maybe two, since a third of their group had disappeared. No one had laughed or smiled since, not until this moment. The girl leaned forward and wiped the smear of wet dirt off Astra’s cheek, laughing and smiling. Gale’s mouth twitched, and Emilia could see the sleepiness there. It hadn’t been long since they’d entered the labyrinth, nowhere close to how long they’d spent in the library labyrinth, but it was late into the evening now. Everyone was tired, practically sleep-deprived and starving, and when Gale’s laughter broke it was as though everyone was pulled along with it.

Miira’s shoulder’s shifted with her silent laughter—a body laughing even if its owner’s voice could not. The aether ruffled over with laughter echoing out of heads and magic, splattering over the room. Several of the children rolled their eyes before letting them fall shut, something understood between everyone that if they weren’t laughing—weren’t loosing their shit and falling to the ground in painful giggles—that it was time to sleep. They still smiled, though, lips pressing tight as they tried to fight down amusement over nothing and everything.

Hours of strain and sadness exploding out in inappropriate giggles. It would have been more understandable to hit, kick, bite their way through the stress. Giggles were better, although Emilia knew that if they didn’t find the others—if they really did turn out to be dead—then this moment would haunt them.

It probably would haunt the children who returned home to find family and friends had died in the stampede. How many times had the laughter and joy of those final hours before Alliance Ridge haunted her? Of course, no one that day had known what was coming. They’d known the next day, though, when they’d drank themselves into unstoppable laughing sobs.

So much death. So many people never coming back. Olivier’s arms lifting her up. She’d never found out why he’d come—who’d called him. For so long she’d assumed she’d known, and only in hindsight did she learn that person would never have called him for her—would never have given her a flicker of kindness as they both broke under the weight of grief and regret.

“Rest,” Emilia whispered in Astra’s hair, into the hair of another child they didn’t know the name for. The child wouldn’t speak, and no one knew them. Mystery child, one of the ones who rarely let go of her. They couldn’t hear her, of course. No sound for their ears, no lips or hands moving for their sleepy little eyes.

Emilia blinked up into the white stoned ceiling of the cave. Water from the slides still poured out, loud to her own ears, silent to everyone else. Someone needed to stay awake, but she knew she wouldn’t manage it. There was a strange middle point, between stress enough to keep you awake and too much. Too little and you slept, too much, and it pulled out down. She certainly had too much in her—too many little lives relying on her.

It was too much, and her body knew it. There was no fighting, and when sleep took her, it took her deep and soundlessly.

Soundlessly, until it didn’t.