Something hit one of the walls. It was fast, bright. It exploded on impact.
Did someone just cast fireball?
Emma had precisely enough time for that thought, then the explosion grew and a piece of wooden debris caught her in the head. She went down hard, the debris snapping on impact and her head jerking back like someone had tied a rope around it and yanked with all they had. She fell, gasped, got up and…Felt nothing. A sore spot, maybe, fading fast. The pain wasn’t just distant, it was barely there. Her body was fine.
She wondered whether she’d be a dead woman were it not for the potion. Suddenly, Emma wondered more what might happen if she died here. Felt all her thoughts about unreality and hallucination feeling thin.
Well I won’t die. I’ll win, I’m the hero. This is just a low-level encounter. She repeated it to herself, a mantra. A promise. Started rushing to the hole now exposed in one of Tepetlmoseua’s walls.
Emma’s new personal shield came on in a flash, drawing from her reserves of power as she dropped the amulet over her neck. It dangled clumsily, and drank greedily of her magic. But it also sheathed her in a centimetre or two of armour. The choice there was no choice at all, and the weight it added barely slowed her as she charged on. Emma reached the wall in moments, leaped into the air and landed hard atop it—eight feet above the ground—just in time to see Sculds start breaching the town’s defences. Most were trying the walls themselves, scaling them with a good deal more effort than Emma had. Some were managing the breach. All were armed, all were a threat. She got to work.
An energy lance lit up the night, illuminating a dozen men’s faces in streaks of dancing shadow and wide eyes as the raw power of Emma’s magic smashed itself against their ranks. She felt the wall shake, its structure actually tested by the waves of force thrown down into the ground, but kept her footing. Men were blown apart—both from each other and from their own limbs—and the sudden lull in their attack seemed to hit the defenders like some pre-arranged signal.
Instantly, men lurched up from behind cover and began whipping out slings and bows. A few even had weird, curved stretches of wood that they propped spears into before throwing them. The barrage of projectiles hit the enemy while they were still unbalanced from Emma’s energy lance, and it was devastating. Only a few had the cognisance to raise their shields, the rest were left protected only by ringmail and luck. The former did well, the latter was somewhat lacking. Another few died almost as one, dropping down to bleed out and twitch into the dirt.
But the rest were back to charging now, and Emma saw a berserker among them.
He made himself pretty obvious, sprinting ahead of the other soldiers at maybe half again their speed and reaching the wall in moments. Emma abandoned her half-readied energy lance as he took to the air with a running leap that took him easily ten feet high and straight over the barricade, then brought him landing hard on the other end. She whirled, raised a shield and winced as she saw the man’s thrown axe stop inches from her face as it lodged in the barrier.
She’d have been too slow, if it weren’t for her strength potion. Emma banished the thought, he was drawing another axe and lunging for her again.
Her own jump must have surprised him, and Emma’s choice to land on the man’s face feet-first certainly did. He stumbled back, but didn’t go down. It felt silly, to see him violate such a basic law of momentum and mass, but then Emma had done that just by attacking. She dropped back down to her hands and slashed at him with an energy scalpel, watching with some satisfaction as he barely evaded the wafer-thin beam and lost a notch from his shoulder in the process.
Then the berserker closed, and suddenly everything was a lot less satisfying and a lot more scary. His axe carved through her new shield, glancing off the skin-tight barrier provided by her amulet and flying wide. Emma scalpeled his side just as another one came, this time connecting more solidly.
She shot back, striking the wall behind her. Emma hadn’t shielded that swing, not deliberately. Her only protection from it had been the armour automatically conjured up by her amulet, and a daring glance down showed blood running free of a wide crack now left in its side. The pain was hot, assassinating Emma’s focus by replacing it with toxic fear. She stumbled away from her aggressor, suddenly wanting nothing to do with him. Suddenly desperate to merely survive rather than win.
Some hero.
For whatever reason, the thought needled her. Emma found her conviction strengthening, gritted her teeth as the frothing berserker came charging again and planted her feet. Clearly, the berserker hadn’t been expecting a physical attack. He slammed into Emma, stumbled as she somehow held her ground and bounced him back. While the man was regathering his balance, Emma saw her opportunity and…
Slugged him. Hard. Right across the jaw, with every ounce of strength she had. It wasn’t a great punch, she hadn’t done a lot of punching in her life, but it was lucky, landing on an unresisting opponent and thrown with enough strength to break a normal woman’s arm with the sheer force of it. The berserker’s feet left the ground as he flew back a full metre before landing, dazed and blinking. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Emma wasn’t going to trust her luck for another sucker-punch though, so while he was busy getting up she focused her magic on a more productive means of attack. The berserker rose to be met with a big, jagged chunk of solidified energy slamming into his chest like a falling stalectite. Emma winced as she heard the sharp sound of rending mail links, followed by the meatier thud of critical injury a moment later. This time the berserker flew back two metres. He landed hard, gurgling, wheezing. The spike of energy was still jutting out of his chest, a dozen crimson streams spiderwebbing outwards from where it protruded. Emma saw broken ribs around it, heard the whistle of punctured lungs cycling air, saw the terror—the realisation—in the man’s eyes.
Then she watched him go still, life leaked out of him all in one moment. Emma stared. She froze. She felt the creeping tendrils of doubt, fear and regret assassinating her nerve.
Then something pinged off her shoulder, an arrow. An enemy arrow. Everything that was slow and uncertain in her mind disappeared instantly as she whirled around to face the threat behind her. Several threats, men with bows and clear shots to her. Emma swept her hand as the arrows flew and threw a wind out into the air that sent most of them off-course. The few it didn’t hit her armour, broke it. Didn’t penetrate. She was sent back a step by the impacts but righted herself near-instantly and started weaving a more complete counter-attack than before.
Complex, but not new. No point in fixing what wasn’t broken. Emma’s energy lance swept across the walls just before its new occupants could rain down another volley of arrows onto her, she watched the men as they seemed to just disappear with the wave of her hand. But felt somewhat tired. That was two lances now, two scalpels, and plenty of hasty shields and repairs to her armour. She was burning through magic fast.
And, by the looks of the new waves now scrambling past the breach, she’d only get faster. The defenders were falling away from attackers now, fleeing like rats before cats. Emma had been right—most of them were too young and too inexperienced, little more than children trying to hold off a force of grown men.
One exception made itself known of course. Aexilica was standing in the breach, killing pretty much everything that came within killing range. Emma wondered whether she’d been holding back in their previous fights, or whether she was just surging with adrenaline now, because the woman moved impossibly fast, her limbs like whips as they rushed around to parry one swing and remove the limb midway through another. Ten or more men were dead at her feet, and the rest were backing off.
Right up until a trio of new ones made themselves known by marching forwards. Big, broad, covered in armour and…Foaming at the mouths. Berserkers.
Emma rushed in to help, just as the carnage started.
Aexilica’s first parry was fine, the next was clumsy. She wouldn’t have been able to make a third at all if Emma hadn’t caught the next attacker with a javelin of energy which clipped his side right below the ribs and dragged a trail of blood out as it whipped behind him. The man growled, stumbling away in surprise while Aexilica backed further up to leave herself more room against the others.
For her part, Emma had really pissed off that other guy she hit. He came at her like a rabbid dog, literally snarling and with his tongue hanging out as he rushed ahead. It might’ve been exciting, were he not legitimately planning to hack her head off. Emma’s shield came up just in time for him to bounce off it, leaving an ugly, deep crack across its surface. She tried the same trick she had on the Muki, exploding it at him as a cloud of debris. Mixed success, most of it just bounced off ringmail or preternaturally tough skin. Even the cuts she did make were thin, then he was on her.
Emma threw another panicked punch, but this berserker wasn’t nearly as blindsided as the first. He moved awkwardly, left the fist bouncing off his skull at a long, ineffectual angle, then tackled Emma down. He landed atop her, pinning her as he raised one axe high and readied himself to bring it down. She just froze.
Her armour was thick, but not nearly as strong as steel. She’d felt herself wounded through it already, and that attack hadn’t had anywhere near the leverage of this one.
It hadn’t been aimed at my head, either,
Emma could do nothing except watch death slowly come down for her, licking its lips and drooling as it lunged after her life. Then Aexilica’s sword flashed and the top of the man’s weapon disappeared, cut neatly free.
They stared at each other for a moment, making stunned, stupid faces and doing nothing while they comprehended far too slowly what had just happened. The man figured it out first, lunging aside and bringing a rock twice the size of his fist down onto Emma’s face where the axe would have landed. Her armour cracked open, but held. He hefted the rock high again to give it another go. Finally, Emma’s brain clicked into motion.
Her energy scalpel didn’t hit his chest or neck, both of those targets were protected by ringmail. She played it across his hand. His rock hand. The beam cut deep, either slicing open tendons or causing enough pain that the fingers opened up out of shock. The rock fell, the berserker leaned back and gave her more room in his surprise.
Emma’s next move was somewhat less sophisticated, but then if a rock across her enemy’s face was good enough for Cain then it was good enough for her. She took the sight of flying blood and broken teeth as a sign of concurrence from her enemy.
The berserker groaned, rolling away from her and stretching his limbs out as if he were reaching for something important. Emma did more or less the same, head pounding and body aching. Her eyes were full of tears, guts squirming with fear.
Just lie back and die again, Em. It’s not like you were ever going to do much else.
That was what settled it for her. Maybe Emma would die, maybe she’d shit herself and bleed across a full acre as she did. But she would not keep being her. She wouldn’t live the way she had before. With a scream of pain and sudden fury, she got to her feet.