Emma was on fire, but fortunately her armour was keeping the worst of it from reaching the skin. She still panicked, dropped down and rolled in the dirt until the magical flames extinguished. She scrambled up, stared ahead to see some glaring, one-eyed old man already chanting bullshit and waving a big, rattly stick around in the air. She smelled ozone, felt goosebumps, heard static crackling in the air. If she hadn’t been so wired already, and superhumanly strong on top of that, she’d probably not have been nearly fast enough to dive aside before the bolt of lightning could smash down into the ground. As things were she was treated to white dots lingering in her vision and the sight of molten sand spraying outwards in little globules.
Suddenly magical explosions seemed a lot less cool.
With a yelp, she scrambled further ahead as another bolt of lightning came down. This one was closer, she felt the heat wash over her as it melted another patch of sand into glass. Emma landed hard, knew she’d not be evading a third bolt, and flailed with an energy scalpel in what she hoped was the mysterious old man’s vague direction.
Maybe not so vague, she actually heard his shriek of pain over the sounds of everyone else fighting. By the time she was up, he was down, and the attackers were further deepening their foothold past the walls.
Aexilica was doing her part to prevent that, and so were a few of those big, burly men called Hearteaters. Everybody else was doing somewhere between jack-shit and fuck-all, but it was almost hard to notice. When people came near them, they died. When three people came near one at once, the fight continued for a few moments. Then the three people died. Emma saw arrows flung at them, missing. She watched soldiers back off in fear, and be chased.
But she saw more of the enemy mounting ahead. Eventually, she thought, numbers would win.
The enemy clearly thought that too, because they kept on sending them in. Emma had a choice to make between fleeing and living. She made it.
I’m not going back. I’m the hero. This is my world. Mine.
She was owed her Isekai power-fantasy, and she would take it by force if she had to.
Emma summoned up another energy lance, watched as four, maybe five people burst to pieces where it hit them, and charged in. She felt her fatigue growing, and had just enough time to decide against using that attack again before she smashed into the invaders. The first of them was probably the most unfortunate, smashed against the men behind him and crushed between them and Emma. He fell messily at her feet while Emma was conjuring a big cudgel of energy and swinging it around.
It hit hard, but the target’s head didn’t break open nearly as messily as she’d have expected.
Light, it’s too light. Low-density material was wonderful for wearing thick armour without slowing down, less so for bludgeoning weapons. She didn’t get chance to rectify her mistake before another weapon was flying, this time at her. The axe struck Emma in the shoulder, just barely stopping shy of her flesh as it lodged in the armour. Its wielder tried to drag his weapon back, pulling Emma off-kilter in the attempt and opening her up to another wave of strikes from his allies.
She felt her armour rattled, heard the popping of its hardened energy construction running through her. The stuff was tough, but it wouldn’t last forever. If it were berserkers wailing on her it’d be cracked to pieces already. But it wasn’t, she had a chance, and she used it. Emma spun around and punched one of the men hard. Light material or no, her fist at least had the weight of a human arm behind its impact. Her target went down, landing on a few other enemies behind him and giving Emma the space for another punch. And another. At a certain point, she stopped really thinking about her fight. All she knew was enemies ahead, and a swift haymaker in any direction she saw movement. Soon her gauntlets were wet, her ears pounding, her feet tangled on dead, dying or concussed men as dropped weapons clattered around them.
There were still a lot, and more coming all the time. Emma backed up as she fought, letting them line themselves up and weathering their blows. All the while, she could feel her magic emptying itself away. The armour around her body was growing more tattered by the moment, and she was killing men too fast to ever be fighting tired ones. Every blow that hit her was as strong as its wielder could manage.
Emma glanced over her shoulder, saw Aexilica and the Hearteaters actually making a dent in the waves of enemies washing over them. She was, she realised, working as a bottleneck. The sheer toughness she boasted, between her armour and potion-enhanced physicality, made her perfect to delay the unrelenting tide and let her allies cut away at the enemies more leisurely without getting swamped. Each one killed in isolation was one less attacking once the group rolled over them.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
At the cost of Emma’s own body, they were holding the line. That brought a lot of feelings foaming to the forefront of her mind, not all good. The feelings disappeared as a hammer smacked into her head, broke the already-damaged helmet and crunched against Emma’s temple. She went down.
There was no input on her part, no moment of decision, no chance to exert her willpower and continue fighting past her limits. The metal kissed her skin, and her body just decided unilaterally that standing up was a thing of the past. She was dazed, staring up as the men crowded around her. Boots came down hard, weapons more awkwardly as the bodies of their wielder’s bodies got in the way. Emma watched it all with a sense of distance from the ordeal, as if it weren’t really happening.
It isn’t really happening, though. Somehow the reminder did nothing to her one way or the other, she was feeling this, she was seeing it, she was hearing it. That was as real as her lizard brain cared to check.
A boot came down hard on Emma’s face, might’ve killed her normally. It only dazed her now. The warhammer following it up, though, did a whole lot more. She had just long enough to see how clean a connection it would manage before that connection was made, and all the sense went out of her.
***
The berserkers were losing, and even they knew it. Behind their bestial frenzies and mindless aggression, Aexilica saw realisation dawning in their eyes. But it didn’t keep them from throwing their bodies into the killing with a reckless abandon. Perhaps that was admirable to some. To her it was just repulsive.
Like animals, all of you. Like mad fucking animals.
An axe came for Aexilica. A big, mean axe swung by a big, mean man. She caught it just above the head with her sword, twisted her body around to move the attacker’s momentum and send him stumbling past her, then quickly raked her sword across his back in one swift slash. Difficult, cutting down berserkers. Their skin and flesh were so tough it was like trying to chop down a tree. Sharp swords blunted themselves in the attempt, and blunt swords just didn’t bite as deep.
So it was no surprise when he stopped his momentum, spun back around and came at her all over again. She found herself jealous of the big axe he was two-handing. There was a weapon which wouldn’t mind killing a tree or two.
He chased her back from him with another broad swing, putting his reach and height advantage to good work. Aexilica regretted, for a moment, giving her blood up for Emma’s potions. She perished the thought, just as she kept the axe from its latest attempt to perish her. That much blood hadn’t made a difference. These bastards were just…Good.
Good at killing, and not so good at dying. Nasty combination. Aexilica turned away another few frenzied swings and rewarded them with a headbutt which knocked out teeth. It didn’t do much of anything to actually faze the bastard of course, only bought her a moment. But that moment was long enough for a thrust of her sword to find the bastard’s chest, right in the section of ringmail she’d hacked open before.
It didn’t go all the way through him, as she might have expected from a stab into normal flesh. But it went deep enough to open up something important and leave blood foaming from the wound. He dropped fast, with only a few more wild flails of weakening limbs to remark on before he was still. Aexilica spent one second catching her breath again as the fight continued degenerating into chaos, then she spared a glance over to the worst of it.
She wasn’t even surprised to find Emma in the centre of it all, such places seemed to be where the girl gravitated. And now that might get her killed.
Emma was amid a big knot of the enemy, tied up by their unending blows while she lay down with that strange magical armour of hers slowly breaking. In the corner of her eye, Aexilica saw the Hearteaters still tangling with the remnants of the enemy’s berserkers. Their rune-priest was dead already, their bulk was busy with Emma. The battle, she realised, could be won.
But Emma’s contribution to it had ended. If Aexilica went to help her, her injuries, fatigue and disorientation would be of little help, and the Hearteaters might lose in the time she took to do it. Her decision was no decision at all.
She came down onto the backs of the berserkers with every bit of strength that was still in her body. Emma was one person, the town was a thousand. And Aexilica swung to save a thousand, feeling her sword bite sickeningly deep into the back of one berserker’s spine and sever something important enough to drop him instantly. She ripped it out, stumbled back and switched to the defence as the dead man’s allies turned their focus onto her.
It had been four on three, before. Now she’d inverted those numbers, and the Hearteaters were making quick work of their enemies with her aid. Each of them pushing them back, hacking away, biting deep. The berserkers were dead in under half a minute. Aexilica spun as she watched the last one finish dying.
Emma was gone, and the enemy were going. Just as fast as they’d been barging their way into the town, now they were fleeing from it like water pushed through a gap in rocks. There were too many to put a number to, especially in the dark, and too many to charge. The temptation to do so was strong all the same, because Aexilica knew Emma was among them.
She has to be.
There was no corpse that she could see, not Emma’s, and she was a foreign magic caster. The Sculds would want her for the very same reason the Aethiqi wanted berserkers and rune-priests. She had a chance, she could still be alive.
“Come on!” Aexilica roared, gesturing at the enemy. “They’re routing!”
If all of them charged now, Emma would live. She knew it. She knew that it had to be true, and yet Aexilica took only two strides before she saw that nobody else was following her. Not the Hearteaters, and certainly not the mundane warriors. She wavered.
Of course they aren’t, they don’t want to die for some foreigner.
Aexilica stared, considered urging them on. Didn’t bother. She looked back at the rapidly retreating Sculds and considered charging them herself. That thought was somehow tempting, in its mindless barbarity. A heroic death. But one which would achieve nothing.
In the end, she let them go.