Hagor had been planning for a great many eventualities, he had lived too long not to. This enemy spellcaster, this witch, wielded a magic that was yet unknown to him. Whatever it was, wherever it came from, he knew only a select few things about it, and none of them had helped him further glean its function.
So far as he could tell, she did not commune with any sort of God to power her abilities. She did not require ritual or sacrifice to prepare them, for the most part, and though she had taken advantage of certain raw materials, her doing so seemed to have consisted purely of physically combining them into a piece of equipment.
It was a mystery. A magical mystery, in the hands of another caster. There was nothing in all the world more dangerous, Hagor knew, than that. And so she simply had to die.
At best, with luck, she would perish atop his altar with her heart cut out and her lifeblood trickling down over the stone rims. At worst, she would be slain by his hand in battle. If the security of removing her from this conflict meant giving up the chance to pass her might onto the Gods and reap their bountifl rewards, Hagor did not see that he had any choice in the matter. It was pure pragmatics.
So were the men gathered around him. As a rule, Hagor did not care for the slayings of warriors. He could respect power in all its forms, but the might of direct battle and physicality was of a crude, primitive and limited kind.
Nonetheless, for every Runepriest in Scurlga there were at least a score of karls and a hundred more volunteered raiders. Of all the great magics in the world, few, he had found, were truly a match for the arcane weight of numbers.
And so he tolerated the primitive simpletons now gathering around him; sharpening blades, testing armour, loosening muscles.
And drinking. Of course they were drinking, warriors could, it seemed, never find any situation in which they ought not to be drinking.
Hagor could have demanded otherwise of them, and was almost tempted to himself, but he knew that there were many under his command now who would chafe at such an order. The Priests of Vichin were his, but the fighters seemed almost to fall more upon Earl Ragni’s side.
Despite his idiocy in granting Jarldom to his own son, despite his failure in producing another as unfit for the berserker spirit as any who had lived before, Ragni was a warrior and Hagor a thinker. The latter earned him respect and veneration, but in a matter of fighting and dying it did not bring half so much weight to his calls as those of Earl Ragni.
Is this how you feel, my nemesis?
Funny. A young slip of a girl smaller than most women not yet of their first blood, and she had, in a mere few days, become one of the greatest dangers to Hagor’s power that he had ever known. There was some sense of cosmic humour in that. The God Flonri was, Hagor suspected, up to his usual tricks in arranging things. He would have to burn an extra sacrifice for him later today. Such games were rarely good for those stuck playing them.
But Hagor could play his own games, all the same. And his were deadlier still.
He had slit a dozen throats in preparation for this, and felt the pain and fear of their dying breaths rattling around in him still. It fed his magic like logs to a flame, bolstering power, intensifying it. Intensifying everything. As he was now, there would be no withstanding him. It was a temptation simply to march over and begin killin Ragni’s men this very moment—but saner heads prevailed. He was too old and too experienced to be so self-destructively impulsive.
And besides, his mastery of conjurations and bindings had left such direct measures long unnecessary…
His musing halted as a sound cut the air abruptly.
Retching, gasping. Moaning. Hagor spun, saw men keeled over, smelled the shit and saw the tears. For one moment he was just baffled, staring as grown men emptied their bowels and guts and writhed around.
What in the—
Then the blood came, spurting free in thick rivers that stuck out as crimson ribons splicing the streaks of brown. More vomit, more gasps, cries of horror as well. Hagor backed away as he stared, mind racing. Suspicions mounting.
It was not, in the end, difficult to realise what had happened. His eyes flitted across the room, to the now mostly-emptied barrels of drink which had been exchanged during the feast.
Treachery?!
Treachery of the most nefarious kind. Perhaps Hagor ought to have seen it coming. A woman’s attack, and yet Ragni now lent his ear to a woman. Foresight and hindsight were irrelevant now, though. He looked around and made a quick headcount, found that close to half his men were keeled over and dying as the voracious poisons ran through their bodies. He had to act swiftly, had to act urgently or his forces would be thinned and crippled. Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
But he had taken not so much as a single step towards them, barely even readied his magic, when a voice called out for him with fear and panic.
“High Priest!” A messenger squealed, “It’s Ragni’s men…They’re attacking!”
Of course they were.
***
Emma waved her hand outwards, and an arc of bullets shot through the air. She didn’t think any were quite supersonic, not yet, but each hit hard and fast enough that they took chunks out of whoever was impacted by them. Ringmail, shields, even solid helmets did nothing to impede the impacts. One man had his entire lower jaw snatched right off of his head, leaving him to stare and gurgle as his exposed tongue just sort of flopped around.
Very gross thing to see. Fortunately he died quickly enough that Emma wasn’t subjected to the sight for too long.
The men behind her didn’t stay behind for long, pouring ahead with an almost disturbing enthusiasm. No, actually, not almost disturbing. It was disturbing. Very, very fucking disturbing how eager these people were to die.
But useful, too. Emma watched as they fell upon the enemy—still reeling from having nice, big holes punched in their ranks by her magical volley—and started swinging. Steel screeched against steel, fists crunched against faces, curses and cries and battle-roars lit the air as everything became flashing metal and spurting blood. The sheer chaos of it took only moments to finish its degeneration. Emma was left with nothing to do but stare.
There was a lot to stare at, most of it unpleasant. Dead and dying men, hasty defences crumbling, blood painting every surface around them. Somehow, even the ceilings ended up red where particularly violent weapon-strokes left gore spattering high and fast.
It wasn’t anything she enjoyed, but the men actually doing it seemed to disagree. They seemed to disagree a great deal, laughing and cheering, pumping fists into the air as their enemies surrendered and making great whooping noises like a pack of celebrating chimps. Only Aexilica, despite being among the bloodiest of the fighters, seemed less enthusiastic about it all. Her face was tight with disgust, lips curling and jaw tensed. Emma admired that.
Everyone did not take long to move on from the slaughter, once it was finished. In one sweep they’d taken an entire section of Ragni’s castle and sectioned it off from the enemy. Once the obvious was done—consolidating their position, setting up barricades, walling themselves in—they moved onto the next step.
Celebrating, apparently.
Emma didn’t really see what there was to be celebrating, they’d only gone and killed a shit ton of people. Not exactly a rare or impressive achievement. But then the Sculds—everyone in this world, really—seemed to disagree with her on that point. In fact, they disagreed so much that they threw a full-blown party over their massacre.
Which wasn’t to say that she was being treated nicely, not exactly. There were no leering stares or grumpy growls or, certainly, balling fists—no, everybody was far too frightened for that. Eying her sidelong, stiffening as she drew near, almost trembling at her very voice as if they spent each moment in fear that she might explode into violence.
Apparently, it’d gotten around that the poison she’d used had been magical. Then the information had been distorted and shifted until “magical poison” turned into just a spell, and all of the preparation Emma had needed for it seemed conveniently forgotten. She could kill people by the dozen and hospitalise them by the hundred just with a wave of her hand now.
Seeing all that horror and fear was one of the most striking experiences of her life. Of either of them.
“You alright Emma?” Aexilica asked, frowning as Emma turned to her, looking genuinely concerned.
“Brilliant!” Emma grinned. “This is brilliant!” She looked around again, at all the fear, and soaked it up. No more crawling around with her head down for this girl! Emma was more powerful than any of the big, stupid apemen around her now and it seemed just fine to her that they know it. Maybe they should just be more careful walking home at night if they were so concerned. Ha!
“You’re drooling.” Aexilica pointed out, seeming just as worried now, but, Emma suspected, for rather different reasons.
“Am not.” Emma snapped, wiping the drool away and grinning again. An idea struck her then.
“You know, I’m getting tired of this party. Want to head back to my quarters?”
Aexilica frowned. “Why? I have my own.”
Emma considered several possible responses to that, and found the aura of terror she’d been enjoying suddenly a lot less…weighty. She spoke. Or at least, she tried to speak, but her tongue was suddenly heavy and her lips now clumsy. Aexilica stared at her as she babbled out one excuse or another, headed out of the room, and then started sprinting down the hall.
Larry, tucked away under her clothes, was cackling of course.
“What’s so funny?” She growled. Larry cackled more. “Fuck you!”
“Well, at least you’d be fucking someone!” The head shot back, barely even speaking between wheezes.
“How do you even get out of breath?” Emma spat. “You don’t have any lungs.”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” He replied, doing that slight wiggle that told her he was sending a shrugging impulse to shoulders he no longer had, “I’ve actually never been in a physical universe before.”
Emma frowned. “What do you mean? You seemed physical when we met. Physical enough to tear the head off.”
That, as usual, wiped away his amusement.
“Baryonic matter.” Larry explained. Emma waited for him to say more, then realised he was staring with just the sort of smugness he always wore when her confusion was the point.
Well fine, fuck you too.
Baryonic matter, what was that? Emma didn’t know. It rung a bell, but not a particularly loud one. And there were a lot of possibilities. Best to make a broad guess that could be interpreted in as many dubiously correct directions as possible.
“So what, you’re made of dark matter?”
Larry scowled again.
“That was a lucky guess.”
Emma just smiled, smugly, as she reached the doors to her quarters. Doors plural, because there were two of them and they were quite big. Which made sense.
Because her apartment was very big. There were, it seemed, benefits to being the Wise Woman of a powerful Earl. Especially when one’s wisdom could do as much damage as hers already had.