Emma didn’t waste her mana on wind, she just threw out a big cloud of spinning blades and watched as they caught one of the men from five paces away. She’d seen a liveleak video of a cartel execution once, some guy kneeling down while five or six others just unloaded shotguns into him. This was a lot like that. It was hard to see where exactly he was hit or wounded, because his whole body just came apart as one.
Again, queasiness. So silly, so ridiculous. Emma’s own mind was making her queasy. It was absurd. There, absurd. She couldn’t be scared of an absurdity, could she? That would just be…
Insane.
More men came, screaming and swinging and snarling with saliva trailing behind them and veins bulging in their too-wide eyes. Emma, somehow, screamed back, as if their madness had become a pathogen thrown across the air and cycled into her lungs. Maybe it had seeped in at the sight of so grizzly fate befalling what had once been human. Maybe she was just in that sort of mood, a falsity as this all was.
Emma raised a wall of energy just as an axe came down for her head, and watched the blade stop just centimetres from her eye. She stared at the gleaning steel for a moment. Then realised it was wiggling, wielder trying to free it from the wall and bring it back around.
She didn’t let him, just sent the sheet of energy flying out and smashed it into him right as he pulled back. It sent him to the ground instantly, and Emma didn’t give him the chance to get up. A single blade of energy appeared high overhead at one gesture from her, then came down fast as a meteor with another. The man moved last second, sparing his life. But losing his arm.
It all got neatly hacked off at the shoulder, and his dodge left bits of stringy meat trailing behind him as the blood exploded outwards. Emma was about to follow up when movement caught the corner of her eye. If she hadn’t leapt away from it without thinking, she’d have died then and there.
Emma landed, scrambled back as the axeman started chasing her down and flailed at him. Dust flew off her fingers, propelled by a sudden wind and hit his eyes so fast she saw blood flash in the air for a moment. It was Emma’s turn to scramble up, but she was too slow to get her feet beneath her before yet another man closed in and swung a great hammer with both hands. Right for her skull.
Her shield was small, thick and just barely fit her inside it. A thing of hardened energy that caught the steel and broke beneath it. But it didn’t stop it. The wall broke and the hammer smashed through, slowing just barely enough that Emma lived its glancing collision with her brow. She hit the dirt, dazed, blinking, hearing more thuds and cracks as her shield weathered only a few more blows. Then she looked up to stand the man forcing his way into it.
She’d fallen out of reach, now he’d given him the space to extend that reach back over her.
Emma closed the shield back up, on the man. She giggled at the sight of his arms pressed inwards and locked in place by the compressive energy construct. Then started scrambling again as he struggled against it. Emma reinforced the shield, pinning him more firmly. Her next attack took care of the struggling warrior more permanently. He fell back in a shower of broken metal rings and spurting blood, the shield collapsed a moment after. Men closed in around it the instant it yielded, swinging as one.
Neither of their blows landed, Emma had gotten her wits back.
A pillar of hardened energy dug into the ground and caught one axe came down, splitting open and allowing only a few inches before the weapon stuck fast. The other didn’t even meet resistance, its wielder just shot back as Emma’s spear of solidified energy drilled through their guts. She didn’t watch him fall, just turned and grabbed the first man’s axe. With her will, not her hands.
Emma couldn’t have done this before, it was too dangerous to her, but with the metal held in her energy construct she could extend her magic to it without physical contact. It heated up to glow red within a moment, orange in two. Emma hit her limit on temperature-increase around there.
Fortunately, fucking orange-hot was already overkill for making a metal weapon less…Convenient.
The axeman screamed, let go. Or tried to, rather. Wood didn’t conduct heat very well, but this was a lot of heat and the handle caught flames almost instantly. His fingers stayed locked around it, because their melting flesh was already fusing to the thing.
It looked like he was in quite a lot of pain, so Emma helped out by taking the tortured limb off entirely with a deft little upwards slice from one of her energy blades. The thing was hardened by her Matter, and moved incredibly fast. Not so durable, certainly not heavy, but sharp. There wasn’t even any ringmail impeding this section, just soft meat and brittle bone. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.
Screaming, and of course bleeding, the former-axeman stumbled away clutching his bloody stump and finally freed Emma’s attention up to focus back on Aexilica. If anything, she was surprised to find the woman still fighting. A few moments spent actually studying the pace of her battle made it clear just why that was.
Her opponent was quite literally foaming at the mouth, screaming and flailing around both of his single-handed axes with the eyes rolled back into his head and the veins jumping up over every visible inch of his body. The speed he moved with was nothing human, so fast Emma actually struggled to follow the action as swings and parries were exchanged three or four times a second. It was like the wind and rain were trying to kill each other.
Aexilica wasn’t losing, but neither was the guy with rabies. That decided Emma on stepping in pretty fast. Her hands came up, then she paused. There was no rush now, right? Might as well take her time.
Seconds passed, the energy reached a crescendo, and she screamed her warning out to Aexilica. The woman hit the dirt just as the energy lance hit their enemy, everything disappeared into a sea of white and heat.
The man was completely unhurt, as long as one didn’t count the large, blackened patch of carbonized flesh which began a centimetre south of his naval and ended right at his hips. The hips in question were now separated from said naval by…Oh, Emma eyeballed it at about five or so metres. Both of them were still steaming, spitting up thin wisps of vapor where the heat had agitated water molecules enough into wanting out.
Unsurprisingly, the man with rabies was not screaming anymore. He was still twitching though, Emma suspected that wouldn’t last him very much longer in any case, His eyes had rolled back out of the skull, but were staring blankly into nowhere. His arms were by his sides, his chest was…Holy shit, actually rising and falling. Somehow he was still breathing.
That ended when Aexilica’s sword came down hard on his neck, biting down deep and giving his body something else to do besides keep itself alive. The head rolled away with an almost disappointing lack of sound, and Aexilica dropped down onto her ass in the dirt.
“He…” She gasped. “Berserker…” Emma found herself wishing the woman wasn’t in armour, she was breathing so heavily it must’ve done wonders with her chest. “Thanks.”
What? Oh, right, deathmatch.
“You’re welcome.” She grinned. Emma looked around at the carnage and waited to feel some hint of regret or disgust. She didn’t. Actually, a fit of giggles threatened to take her over. God, that had been cool. The coolest thing she’d ever done maybe. She’d known her powers were impressive, known that anything able to cut down trees would do nasty things to even the toughest of humans, but it was another thing altogether to actually see the fruit of her magic on live enemies. No video game kill animation could come even close to what she’d done today.
For one moment, she just let herself enjoy the feeling that washed over her at that. Then Aexilica, in typical fashion, had to ruin it all.
“This is bad.” She whispered, getting to her feet easily and apparently already having recovered most of her breath. That was what happened when one exerted oneself more than every other day, Emma supposed.
“Bad how?” She frowned. “We won, look at them. They’re in bits.” None of them were still alive, either blood loss or shock had taken care of all the ones who’d merely been maimed by her magic. Emma almost wished there’d been some movement among the mangled bodies, it would’ve made for a much more dramatic show.
“Bad as in, it’s bad we even had this fight in the first place.” Aexilica snapped, pacing now. She did that when she was nervous. She’d done it the day before Emma met the Priest. It actually sobered her up somewhat, and that left her a little less enthusiastic about her butchery.
“It was…Self defence.” She frowned, talking to herself as much as the other woman. “We had no-”
“-Not that.” Aexilica interjected. “It’s what they are- where they’re from.”
Hearing it said like that, as if it were obvious, Emma noticed a few details. Obvious ones, go figure. Adrenaline was powerful stuff. In the frenzy of combat, she’d overlooked a lot of minor things. Things like these men’s skin being pale, rather than brown or bronze, Their beards growing in a different, scragglier texture, their eyes being too blue and hair too blonde. She’d overlooked that, unlike everyone else she’d seen in Aethiq save Aexilica, they actually used metal in their arms and armour.
And Aexilica had mentioned using foreign magic, why not foreign technology?
“They’re not locals.” Emma gasped, realisation hitting her like a thrown brick.
“They’re Sculds.” Aexilica groaned, pacing even faster. “Fucking Sculds.”
She said it like the name ought to have meant something to Emma, which, obviously, it did not. She tried thinking about it anyway, but all the connections she managed were more phonetic than anything.
“Sculds?” She offered.
“Uh, our neighbours, sort of.” Aexilica spat. “They live…” She nodded, to the direction they’d been heading when the men attacked. “Over that way, in a nation called Scurlga. Savages, all of them. Raiders and rapists mostly, sometimes they head over the border in bands to attack villages, steal livestock, that sort of thing.”
“So…This is nothing unusual?” Emma asked.
“This definitely is.” Aexilica growled. “These men, their armour, their behaviour…Their numbers. They’re scouts, I’d bet anything. A small group, all well trained- even with a Berserker among them- and all well equipped. They tried to kill us the moment they saw us. Not incapacitate, not take prisoner as…” She trailed off, continued. “They tried to kill us. To silence us.”
Emma saw what she was getting at.
“To get rid of the witnesses who’d seen them coming down this way.” She nodded.
“Stop grinning.” Aexilica snapped. Emma tried, couldn’t.
“Sorry.” She shrugged, insincerely. “But this is a pretty good chance for me to make a name for myself, right?”
Aexilica stared at her, just shaking her head. “We need to tell the Priest, Tepetlmoseua needs to know about this. They need to evacuate. If there’s scouts with orders to kill on sight…It could be nothing, but there could be a full invasion heading for the town.”
Emma squealed. This was going to be so, so cool.