Aexilica refused to let Emma up onto the roof, no matter how much she asked or how nicely. She claimed it was dangerous, stupid, insane. Emma suspected she was just jealous of her cool new shield, and taking it out on her. In any case, she did find a way to test her durability in the end. Emma sprinted around, throwing herself into walls, down slopes, smacked into rocks. She tossed her weight against every big, hard thing she could find and basked in the results.
They impressed.
Emma would have been thrilled to do nothing but work on her powers, but unfortunately life wasn’t that cool. Not even when it existed purely inside her own head.
Everyone was scared, frantic. They were panicking. Word hadn’t taken long to spread across the full length of Tepetlmoseua, not now that the Priest believed it, and the news of Sculd invaders, even in disorganised raids, was wreaking havoc on everyone’s courage. Emma noted that much of the fear was manifesting as hatred. Hatred aimed at her.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, Aexilica had already hinted at just this sort of treatment. And Emma looked more like the Sculds than she did the Aethiqi. People were always quick to leap on a good scapegoat, and there never seemed to be a better scapegoat than those who lived as outsiders to the norm of a society.
At any other time, Emma might’ve taken it upon herself to teach the people of Tepetlmoseua better than to be such massive dicks. But any spark of vengeful anger she might’ve felt evaporated as the hours dragged on and she saw the state of the town continue to…Progress.
People started buying food in bulk. Panicking, within half a day food prices were doubled, then tripled. Then people had almost stopped selling altogether. After her day of grinding out Alchemy and her Talisman, she woke up to find even more changes. Makeshift barricades hastily assembled across a dozen or more parts of the small town, outer walls suddenly having their bases dug out on the opposite ends. Anything, she thought, to keep people from doing nothing.
“What are things actually going to be like?” She asked Aexilica, halfway through the day after her large-scale crafting fit. Emma had slept a lot better, with her shoulder mostly healed. Though she was displeased to discover the thing still played up at times. Another week or so and it would be fine. Hopefully.
“People will get antsy, as you’ve noticed already.” Aexilica replied. “And-”
”Not that.” Emma cut in. “Not the people, I mean what will the actual invasion be like. Are we going to have an army flattening this place?”
The woman snorted. “No. Remember, it’ll probably just be smaller-scale raiding around most of the country. Villages with a hundred or fewer will get the worst of it, and cities will be hit by actual sieges. Towns like Tepetlmoseua are too small to be worth a full invasion force, and too big for smaller raiding parties to risk.”
That did soothe Emma somewhat, taking off an edge she hadn’t noticed feeling.
“Are you…Scared?”
“No.” Emma blurted her response out a little too fast, realising from Aexilica’s face how unconvincing she probably looked. She inhaled, mastered herself, tried again. “Why would I be scared?”
Aexilica’s face softened somewhat. Pity, all over again. Emma’s temper gave in, she felt her teeth grinding. That look. That same fucking look she’d gotten when she flunked out of college, when she went two months without going outside, when she got disentry from the puddle. Oh, look at her, the poor dear. What a pathetic piece of shit. I suppose I’d best throw some money at her, such a shame it couldn’t be used better on someone who might accomplish anything.
“You almost died.” Aexilica pressed, speaking slowly and evenly as if she were afraid of some explosion.
Emma exploded.
“So did you, you’re fine. So am I. We’re fine.”
She was fine, because none of this was real. If it weren’t in her head, maybe she’d feel her heart pounding, her fists tightening, her teeth grinding, her blood pumping, her vision blurring, her…Her…
Both knees went weak at once, and she almost fell down then and there. Emma grabbed the wall of Aexilica’s home, gripping it even as she felt her thoughts scatter into a light-headed fog.
“I’m fine.” She muttered, blinking back the dark spots in her vision. She couldn’t stop inhaling, kept doing it. Short, sharp. It was a struggle to even breathe properly, her lungs spasming in the middle of every cycle. Aexilica had taken a step closer, but she didn’t touch her, didn’t say anything. Just stared, frowning, concerned, confused. Judging.
Emma opened her mouth to speak again, wondering what she’d say even as she readied to say it. The words never managed to get out of her however. They were interrupted as cries came flooding through the town, and panicked people snatched both her and Aexilica’s focus away from their own conversation.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.
Aexilica was the first to shift her focus, practically sprinting towards the source of the terror— the place that the less-scared looking people were running towards instead of from. Emma didn’t exactly have much to do beyond follow, and so she hurried on after her. Missing the preternatural strength of her combat potions with every step.
At the wall, Emma found exactly what it was which had caused so much excitement. She felt her stomach sink at the sight of it. Maybe half a mile beyond, out in the plans, were fires already starting, tents already raising. Men already gathered and whooping as they stared at the town. Not that many, not a full army, at least, but certainly more than she and Aexilica had snatched their prisoner from.
“What’s happening?” She croaked, staring at Aexilica. “You said—”
—”I know what I said.” The woman snapped. “I don’t know. This is…This shouldn’t be happening, there’s no point to it. Tepetlmoseua isn’t worth attacking.”
Emma was suddenly a lot less concerned with what Aexilica thought Tepetlmoseua was worth, clearly her judgement was less than perfect in that regard.
“There’s a lot.” She muttered. “Got to be three, maybe four times what we saw before, right?” Emma was trying to count the men, but found it an impossible effort. There were just too many, too spread-out, moving around too much. For a moment she found herself wishing her mastery of Space had come with some intuition for headcounts too. Then she saw the small group heading up to Tepetlmoseua’s walls.
Five, no six of them. All wearing ringmail of the sort the Grai had back in her and Aexilica’s attack. Whispers ran through the crowds gathered at the wall, and soon shouts came from behind them. Emma turned to see the Priest and two of his supposed Hearteaters striding towards the structure. It felt strange to see him out of the temple, and the outdoors made him somehow seem smaller. His bodyguards more than compensated.
“Back, all of you.” The Priest commanded. Despite his almost juxtaposing surroundings, he spoke with all the authority he usually did. Except now it seemed less like authority and more like a very whiny man expecting everybody to do as he was told.
If Emma were a more politically-minded gal, she might’ve made some clever commentary there. In her head, of course. Those Hearteaters’ biceps were big enough to lobotomize a cavewoman at twenty paces.
The Priest took his place upon the walls, looking imperiously down at the outsiders as they approached. Emma, for her part, hung as close to them as she could and kept a curious ear out to see if she could hear what was said. Aexilica didn’t try to dissuade her, she was busy doing the same thing.
“We’ll make this quick,” one of the newcomers began, “We’re going to attack you. You can choose whether to fight back or not, we’d prefer it if you did. We’re going to break your walls and take everything you have, have our way with your women, kill your men, burn your town to the ground and sack your temple. We will do this to prove to the rest of our people how fearsome a force we can be. If you put up a valiant resistance and fall anyway, so much the better.”
A silence followed that, and Emma wasn’t surprised. It was, quite possibly, the most insane thing she’d ever heard outside of 4Chan. Even she needed to take a few moments to let it sink in. Evidently, so did the Priest. When he finally replied, after several stunned moments, it was with a somewhat shakier voice than before.
“We have no riches for you here, you’d best test yourself elsewhere.”
There was a smile in the Sculd’s voice at that.
“We’ll see that for ourselves, Priest. If nothing else our Gods are hungry for sacrifices, and you have so many unused among your town.”
Aexilica eyed Emma, and Emma eyed her back.
“So,” She managed after a moment, “We’ll not be attacked?”
The other woman said nothing, just turned and started heading back for their home. Emma, just as wordless, followed after. It didn’t seem real.
Hours passed in a blur as the town prepared itself. Emma found herself watching, not fully comprehending. Nothing seemed to be sinking in. She’d stare out atop the walls, watching the enemy from across the plains and trying to better count them, comparing their numbers to those of the defenders. She didn’t like the results.
Maybe, maybe, fifty men stood ready to defend Tepetlmoseua. Most of them had armour, at the very least. Less than half looked like they were even Emma’s age. Teenagers, she thought, made up the bulk of their defensive force, wielding weapons no more than wooden clubs with obsidian teeth embedded along their lengths.
If there was one positive element of this, it was that Aexilica looked a good deal more impressive by comparison. One of the local craftsmen had repaired her armour free of charge, in light of everything, and Emma had taken a page out of his book in knuckling down to try and ready herself as best she could for the inevitable conflict. Potions seemed her most promising option.
Naturally, Emma started things with another healing draught. She’d done some experimenting with the last ones, finding that making more didn’t actually improve the effects. Making less than she had did diminish them to some extent, but only once it went below a hundred millilitres or so. That was fine with her, just about enough to chug in one go. She made two this time, just in case.
Around the third potion, another bodily enhancer, Emma realised she was starting to grow tired. Larry chimed in on that, as he tended to.
“Don’t get this twisted, there’s nothing magical about any of these ingredients. It’s your own magic you’re putting into that stuff. Try and make a million potions a day and you’ll just drain yourself.”
It would’ve been nice to know that sooner, of course, but then Emma had sort of brought this kind of treatment onto herself. Tearing the head off of one’s own source of guidance had predictable consequences, even if they lived.
She’d resisted the urge to start experimenting with more effects, or stockpiling more healing. Upon considering things, Emma knew that she was best served guaranteeing she’d have a full tank whenever the enemy attacked. She had, stupidly, not taken the time to gauge exactly how fast her reserves of magical power would replenish themselves over time, which meant now she had no choice but to play it safe.
Every lapse of judgement comes back to bite me.
This really was unforgiving. Emma had been eager to get into this world first, expecting Skyrim but real. It was looking a lot more like Morrowind.
Fine then. She’d bullshitted her way through that game a few times, too. It just came down to breaking things. Emma had barely finished her strength potion, just as the day was turning to night, when she heard the telltale panic of people under attack.
Her bullshit was about to be tested.