They arrived in the city of Vichin by foot, rather than river. This was very much against Emma’s will, but unfortunately she could not decide what the terrain around her was or how far a river would extend.
Yet.
It was really not that big of a place, despite the fuss that’d been made about it by everyone Emma had asked. It felt like a long time ago, her ride in that wagon. Thinking of it brought back unpleasant memories of travelling to her death, facing it. Then it brought back nicer ones of being rescued.
She turned to Aexilica, realised that despite having been saved hours before she still hadn’t thanked her.
“You need something?” The Aethiqi asked, prompting Emma to hastily look away.
“No.” She hurriedly replied. Glanced back, found Aexilica’s lip curling.
“Do try not to ogle me,” Aexilica continued, “Occasionally.”
What?
What?
“What?”
But Emma didn’t get an answer, and Aexilica just kept moving. Larry was cackling all the while.
She trudged along after, suddenly in a much worse mood than she’d been in before and not finding any appeal in further speech. They drew close to Vichin. If nothing else, that gave her something new to focus on.
Not that it was a pleasant distraction, of course. Social frustrations really weren’t anything major compared to the crushing awe and fear that washed Emma as she strolled her way towards the city-sized deathtrap.
It was actually a lot less dirty inside than Emma would’ve thought, that was the first thing to struck her. Not tidy by any means, not clean at all, but more…Sanitary. There seemed to be some form of gutter in the streets, if only made by slopes to the centre of the dirt roads, and the buildings were a far enough distance from one another not to feel stranglingly close.
A plague might still eat through the place like…Well, like a plague eating through a dark ages settlement. But at the very least Emma wasn’t being pelted by any buckets of shit as she walked past people’s homes.
“We need a job.” Aexilica muttered, speaking perhaps more to herself than to Emma. “That’s all. A job we can do fast, get the bare minimum of pay for and leave. Just a few days’ worth of food will see us across the countryside.”
“And a night of rest.” Emma added, helpfully. It really had been an incredibly long day, up close to dawn and now, well into the evening, still wandering around. Most of the city’s occupants had already vanished into their homes, the few who remained out were moving with the aid of an excessive amount of light.
Maybe not so excessive, actually. Emma thought she remembered something about nutritional deficits worsening the night vision of primitive people.
They spent some time walking before finally reaching an inn, and Emma let Aexilica do all the talking. Larry had, of course, been tucked away in her pack, and the severed head fortunately knew to remain silent in such delicate surroundings. Aexilica was having somewhat less luck in dealing with the Sculd behind the counter, however. Emma wasn’t standing close enough to hear the conversation—for some reason Aexilica had thought she might make things go awry if she were to join in—but she could see the other woman’s irritation blossoming clear as day.
Finally, Aexilica stalked over to her in a dark mood.
“We got our rooms.” She managed at last. “But not for free.”
“Are they making us sleep with them?” Emma asked exctitedly, Aexilica stared at her in bafflement for a moment before shaking her head.
“No, idiot, but we’re getting a stable and they’re making me hand over my armour.”
Emma’s face fell. She remembered how that armour had served to protect Aexilica time and time again. Ordinarily, she might’ve been pleased and excited at the prospect of seeing the woman walk around in less layers. But her capture and near-death had sobered such petty concerns right out of her head.
“That’s…Not good.” She grumbled. Could she make another shield amulet, for Aexilica?
Emma thought about that. Then quickly landed on the obvious conclusion that she’d be better off asking Larry than trying to figure it out herself, there were a thousand potential points of failure in all things Untethering which she simply couldn’t account for by herself. She barely could even with him, for that matter.
“So there’s a couple of limits on Talismans.” He told her, with hissmugly-informing-Emma-of-things voice, “The main one is actually controlling them. It’s a lot less effective to have something complicated for an ally than it is for you, because it’s linked to your magic, not theirs, which means that they can’t just subconsciously manipulate it the way you can.”If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“It’s a shield.” She groaned. “A fucking shield, what needs manipulating about a shield?”
Larry eyed her as if she’d just drooled on herself.
“A lot, actually. It’s something solid, wrapped around you and allowing motion. What did you think it was just coincidence that you were still able to move around like normal with your magic armour on?”
Emma bristled at that.
“I couldn’t move like normal, it was heavy—”
—”Yeah, and you could still touch your toes dumbass. Because it responded to your will to soften and give whenever being rigid would’ve stopped you from moving a certain way, and toughened back up again on impact. Aexilica’s will won’t control anything you make for her though, so she can’t do that.”
“Ugh.” Emma started pacing, groaning, rubbing her face and resisting the sudden, petulant urge to beat her head on a wall. “This is bullshit!” She did a circuit around the room as she spoke. It wasn’t a big one, but it was warmer than outside at least. Colder than her abode back in Aexilica’s house.
Huh. Suddenly she was missing that place a whole lot more.
“You have the power to shape the world in accordance with your will.” Larry sighed. “Are you seriously complaining that it doesn’t have a built-in auto correct function for when you shape it like an idiot?”
“Fuck you.” Emma grunted, did another circuit, paused, then spoke again. “Fuck you!”
Larry just stared back at her blankly, which prompted her to do a bit more thinking.
“What about those other powers I had, besides Alchemy and Talismans.”
“The other Crafts you mean?” Larry prodded.
“Yeah, those. What were they called…” Emma pretended to remember, while checking her character sheet again to avoid looking stupid, “Enchanting and Animacy. Those ones.”
Larry fell into one of his classic, contemplative pauses at that.
“Enchanting is basically just the ability to make your standard magical effects last longer, less automated and active than Talismans but less resource-intense and difficult too. Animacy is…You’re not ready for that.”
“I’ll leave you in the shit-bucket overnight.” Emma told him.
“Animacy is what Untethered use to create autonomous servants basically, to put it in your nerd language they’re like golems. Seem to be harder than Talismans or Alchemy and difficult to power but…You know. They’re free servants.”
Aexilica was back before Emma could come to any sort of hard decision, and exhaustion soon swept fully over her. The two of them went to sleep for the night. They woke up horrifically early, and Emma immediately found her body protesting at it. All the aches and pains she’d been tolerating before had, apparently, worsened in the night. By Aexilica’s face she was in much the same condition.
“Work.” She groaned. “We need work.”
Emma groaned too, and kept her mouth pretty much shut while she headed out to find it.
She hated jobs. It was a point of pride for Emma that she had managed to go her entire adult life without ever working one, and yet now, in a sick twist of fate, she was being forced to search for no less than two purely to avoid dying.
It was the death of liberty itself, she thought. Yet another evil this world had inflicted upon her. And unfortunately, one Emma had to do alone.
Aexilica was, sadly, visually Aethiqi enough that her wandering around would’ve attracted unnecessary attention. Emma didn’t exactly fit in with the locals perfectly—hair brown instead of blonde or red, eyes green instead of blue or grey—but she at least didn’t stick out as obviously as someone with the ethnic features of the locals’ national enemies.
After a few hours of searching, Emma finally found someone who had work for them. Apparently the offer of a single woman able to lift several times as much as most large men went a good ways, and Emma was able to get herself thrown in on a “helper’s fee”. She didn’t like their new boss, for several reasons. He seemed seedy, underhanded somehow. And all together too pleased to see her.
But she didn’t like the idea of staying in Vichin a day longer than necessary, either. And it didn’t take long to decide which of those two things was less appealing, so she went to find Aexilica and they both got to work.
Stacking boxes was pretty much what Emma had always imagined when asked to picture “basic labour”, and it was no more fulfilling now than it had ever been in her head. Tedious, slow, difficult exertion that punished her tiny body for every inch shy of five feet it was.
Aexilica managed it better, of course. It didn’t matter to her if the boxes were three or five feet across. All of them seemed to weigh nothing to her full or otherwise. She just planted them where they needed planting, without ever taking the time to so much as grunt or complain at the effort.
Emma tried to match her stoicism, and promptly failed on account of having musculature that was made out of actual human tissue instead of iron wiring. Maybe twenty minutes passed in relative silence before something caught Emma’s attention.
Granted, it was not hard to catch Emma’s attention. Her focus tended to be scattered at the best of times, and with her current job being as monotonous as it was she could barely keep it pinned down on even a second by second basis. In this case, though, that proved to be a good thing. Because had Emma not abandoned her work to go and stare out the window, she’d never have seen the rather large volume of Sculd soldiers making their way down the road.
She took all of two seconds to think about that, her tired, miserable brain slowly creaking along the cognitive path and taking its sweet time about it. Then the conclusion hit her like a big fist to the temple.
“We’ve been ratted out!” Emma spat the warning as she whirled around, pulse suddenly surging like a war drum in her ears. Aexilica didn’t delay a moment, just dropped a crate she was stacking, breaking it to pieces under the weight of its contents, and drew out her sword.
A big weapon, for such tight quarters. But then neither of them would be sticking around for much longer. Aexilica charged to the back entrance and kicked the door open as she and Emma surged out into the street.
Of course, there were more Sculd warriors waiting for them out in the alley they emerged into. They weren’t stupid.
“Run.” Aexilica was moving before Emma had even felt the words sink in, leaping at the enemy and crossing all of ten feet in that single bound. Her sword came down fast, barely leaving enough time for its target—a big man with uncommonly good armour—to raise his own in a blocking motion. It was useless of course, Aexilica had too much strength and, more importantly, momentum for him to stave the blow off. Steel came down, bit into his shoulder and was dragged back in one move that cut him down to the bone. He dropped, nerveless.
Then everything happened all at once.