Aexilica was in a bad mood. It was actually sort of hard to tell, her face seemed perpetually locked in a scowl regardless of circumstances. Emma though, perceptive girl that she was, managed to note that the depths of her frown had grown by no small amount since the meeting.
No surprise there, the Priest was a prick.
At first she ignored the other woman’s discontent, but soon enough it started to piss her off too. Emma didn’t like the sight of unhappy people, they always looked so much prettier while smiling.
“Why can’t we just get some evidence?” She suggested.
The woman’s stare would have frozen beer.
“Because we’ll be killed.” She replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“You will, maybe.” Emma countered. “I’m-”
“-If you say you’re the only real person in the world, I’m going to punch you in the cunt.”
Emma did not say she was the only real person in the world, and Aexilica sighed.
“It’s just too dangerous. We got lucky, once, in taking out a single patrol of scouts, but by now the rest of the Sculds will have noticed their absence. Whatever they’re planning, they’ll have accelerated it. And they’ll be ready for another attack.”
“They got lucky.” Emma pressed. “By ambushing us, that won’t happen again.”
“The answer is no.” Aexilica snapped. “Now stop bugging me about it, we have less suicidal and more pressing things to do. This is just…” Her face fell. “One of those things we need to accept. You can’t do everything. Can’t save everyone. Even with magic.”
Emma thought there was history there, saw it in the woman’s eyes. Felt it tugging her gut in sympathy. She didn’t like that. Tear-jerkers had always pissed her off, made her all confused and…Impulsive.
“Alright.” She said at last. “Okay, fine, we’ll just wait.”
Aexilica eased up, and the rest of their walk was uneventful.
Until the woman headed inside first, giving Emma ample chance to sprint off for the Sculds.
Aexilica liked to get food ready as soon as they returned, it was one of her little rituals. She also tended to relax when they arrived. She was probably worried, while out, that Emma would wander off or something. Seemed to have come to consider herself Emma’s protector, or perhaps carer. Whatever the cause, that relaxation, combined with the distraction of beginning to cook, made for the perfect opportunity. Emma slipped away, and wagered she had quite some time before her absence was noted.
It also gave her the chance to try a new mode of transportation.
Concentrating, she conjured a sheet of hardened energy beneath her. Not that big, maybe six feet long and three wide. It was ovular, and curved slightly upwards at its edges. A perfectly serviceable sledge.
Or so she thought. Emma’s first attempt to power the craft ended painfully as it just disintegrated beneath her less than five metres into the journey, fraying apart and leaving her to clumsily roll ahead in the dust. She got up, coughing and spluttering, swearing and kicking. Then tried again. This time she reinforced the hardened energy with Matter, and when she got in to power it anew it held.
For a minute. Emma hit the ground far harder this time, and might have actually injured herself had she not reflexively wreathed her body in yet more of the hardened energy. As things were she succeeded in completely shattering her makeshift armour, and scraping a good deal of her legs and arms.
She got up, felt the stinging of her skin and ego, and actually thought the problem through. Taking her time to do that made several issues clear.
The first was speed. Emma didn’t have the ability to steer per say, just vaguely guide her creation. Doing that as it travelled much faster than a sprint seemed to make it prone to turning. It was so light that as soon as one edge dipped down and lodged in the dirt, the whole thing flipped over and went tumbling.
So the first thing she did was limit her velocity. The second was actually consider what she needed it for. She’d been using Energy so far, a mistake. Emma needed distance and efficiency with this thing. So she used Force instead, letting her sledge move on with a gravitational propulsion.
Force wasn’t like Energy, once applied it lasted for seconds at a time and produced sustained thrust. Emma experimented a while with dialling that down until she could finally maintain a modestly impressive speed, maybe just shy of her own maximum sprint, merely by re-applying her Force effect every ten seconds or so.
The wind was gentle in her face, soothing against the hot air, and the flat land around Tepetlmoseua soon made its advantages known. With the stark mechanical problems of her device hammered out, she was treated to a pretty smooth journey for the duration. Emma was left to enjoy the feeling of pride bubbling away in her gut.
Not for that long of course, life just didn’t work like that. Not in reality, where she’d been left to sleep on the streets for daring to stand up against the fascist, authoritarian demands of society for her to get a job. And apparently not in her own head, either.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Emma still tired as she pushed herself with Force, not nearly as much, but she still did tire. Each application exhausted her maybe three or four times more than an equivalent use of Energy. She could make do with one in ten seconds, rather than two each second. On balance that gave her about five to seven times the total distance. A big difference, but a finite one. She paced herself, stopping after an hour to catch her breath.
She was just half an hour into her rest when she saw something on the horizon behind her. Small, growing bigger fast. A figure moving with impossible speed, closing in. Emma didn’t like the look of it. Not until she realised what it was.
Or rather, who it was. Aexilica was jogging, as far as she could tell, the entire way. Tireless and moving in great bounds. In another five minutes it felt like one of the kilometres separating them had been sheared off. Another followed in just five more. Emma decided not to wait around for Aexilica to catch up, at best she’d get yelled at. At worst she might get dragged back to town.
That was when Emma felt the frustration of her design. As the terrain sloped upwards in proximity to mountainsides, she had to drop her speed. Every glance over her shoulder showed Aexilica closing faster. Within the hour, she was on her.
“You stupid girl.” The woman snarled, coming up behind Emma and effortlessly keeping pace with the sledge. It was, Emma thought, moving faster than most people could jog even still.
“I can’t believe you caught me.” Emma scowled. “How do you move so fast?”
She didn’t even look tired, either. But Aexilica just got angrier at the question,
“Don’t change the subject.” She snapped. “You ran off without me.”
Emma was about to say something snarky when she caught something in Aexilica’s face, actual worry. It made her feel ever so slightly guilty. Okay, sure, maybe the woman wasn’t real, but…That didn’t mean Emma couldn’t play along. For now at least. She’d spared the cyclops, maybe she could spare her feelings.
“Sorry.” She said at last. “I just wanted to…You know, help. And I really do think I have better odds than before.”
Aexilica wasn’t exactly convinced, more…Defeated. She sighed, staring at her feet for a long moment before finally replying.
“I’ll help.” Emma grinned for all of a moment before she saw the look on Aexilica’s face. Resignation, and of a more reluctant kind than she thought she’d seen anywhere before. The woman really didn’t believe they had a chance.
Part of her wanted to turn back for town then and there. Another bristled at being underestimated. She could do this. She would do this. Aexilica had made herself Emma’s carer, because she thought she needed caring for. Emma would teach her different.
She started up her sledge again, and with Aexilica jogging right along beside her they both continued up the mountain.
Emma found herself working on potential fixes for her little sledge as she went. She wasn’t preoccupied by it for long, though. At six or seven miles per hour, they crossed the rest of their trip before evening had even come. They actually needed to pause and take a breather before advancing just to avoid risking an approach into enemy territory by day.
That was satisfying, almost as satisfying as the actual rest. Once it was over both of them continued. More slowly now, more quietly.
It didn’t take long to find something worth looking at, the first Sculd war-party they stumbled onto was just a few more kilometres out and painfully obvious in the night. They had campfires everywhere.
“Looks like a whole Grasp.” Aexilica muttered beside her. Emma glanced over, frowning in confusion.
“A Grasp?” She prodded.
“One of the Sculds’ military units. A Finger is the smallest, eight to fourteen men strong and led by a Thyr. Jyns lead Fists, made up of four Fingers, and Grai control Grasps that are made up of two Fists.”
Emma did some quick mental maths at that.
“So we’re looking at about…Sixty four or so? Sixty four to a hundred and twelve?”
Aexilica confirmed with a nod. Emma glanced back at the camp, and estimated that a Grasp sounded about right. There were maybe a hundred people there, give or take a few dozen.
“So how are we doing this?” Emma asked. “I can make a distraction, I had this idea for a really big-”
“We are not doing anything to get their attention.” Aexilica spat. “A hundred men means maybe five berserkers, any two of them is more than I can manage. That’s assuming their Grai- the one leading them- isn’t even more powerful. Sculds respect martial power above everything.”
Emma liked the sound of that, but decided not to worry Aexilica by drawing their focus.
“Alright, so then maybe we watch them and wait to see if we can get any on their own?” She suggested.
Aexilica didn’t agree. Or rather, she did. In fact, she agreed in the strongest way Emma had ever heard her agree to anything. By grumbling, complaining, but not actively contradicting her. Small miracles there, but they were still miracles. The two of them sat and waited.
Fortunately, things were happening fast tonight. From their vantage point about fifty metres from the camp, they soon saw two of the Sculds begin stumbling away from the rest. Both men, plenty broad and strong.
“Stop drooling.” Aexilica whispered.
“I’m not.” Emma growled back, wiping the completely non-sexual saliva from her lower lip as she watched the pair head off into some bushes. This night was getting better and better, Emma had always wanted to watch people fuck without being seen.
“What the fuck are you doing!?”
Emma froze, snapped her head around and…Relaxed. It wasn’t her being called out to, rather a bunch of clearly misbehaving Sculds now receiving a dressing-down from…The most beautiful woman she’d ever seen. Tall, lithe, blonde hair cropped short and eyes like-
Aexilica cleared her throat.
“You are unbelievable.” Emma grinned. She couldn’t help having such a refined appreciation for the female form, could she?
Keeping an eye on the commander, who seemed to be rather hands-on as she berated her men for minor or imaginary transgressions, they made their way around the camp and closed in on the bushes those two lovers had headed for.
Emma watched them carefully, making sure that neither man caught sight of her. She took her mission seriously, of course. Seriously enough that she kept her eyes hard on the pair, watching every bead of sweat that formed across muscle-tight skin, cocking her head to better hear the exact pitch of their moans and gasps, scrutinising their faces as one tongue met another to ensure she caught any minor tells that they suspected foul play. And step by step, moment by moment, she crept in closer. It was only then that she started thinking of how best to knock them out. Perhaps an energy construct made around both of their heads, let them suffocate themselves into unconsciousness while she bound them to ensure silence.
Emma would never get to test her plan. Just as she and Aexilica closed, they heard a voice behind them.
“Alright you two, this is the third time this…” The woman, the Grai in charge of the forces, froze as she saw them. Then everything went to shit in an instant.