Emma hated walking. She’d hated it back in the real world, with paved roads and level streets everywhere. Here, where everything was rough sand underfoot, she hated it even more. There was perhaps a single good thing about all her walking, and that was the time it gave her to focus on her powers.
She’d been practicing of course, studying. More than anything, finding their limits- and Larry had helped with that. Smugly, snarkily. Emma giggled. She’d stored him in a basket back at Aexilica’s house. The prick.
Energy, that was the one she was most effective with so far. Her Fundament of choice. Emma had already used that to make winds, which she could still do, and her skill at generating that lance of energy had grown. In the plains she had chance to test its range, which was…Not great. Whatever. Fifty feet was better than arm’s reach in any case, and she had other tools too.
Matter was much less immediately cool, but, at a more studied examination, it revealed that it was also much less deeply cool too. It let Emma strengthen materials at a touch. Stone, wood, whatever. Maybe if she ever found herself trying to stab a scytheshell to death with a stick it would come in handy, but she didn’t see that happening while she still had her cool Energy magic.
Force was…More interesting. Emma had slept through most of her physics classes in highschool, but she had a decent memory for such things. As far as she recalled, potential energy was equivalent to force multiplied by distance. She formed a hypothesis around this fact, then converted it to a theory with one quick test.
A stone left her hand, flying away from her as if gravity had suddenly changed direction. Flying faster, even, as if Jupiter’s gravity were propelling it. When it hit its target- a tiny, withered growth of a tree long dead and desiccated- it did so with so much speed that a good portion of the dried trunk just exploded.
The stone had been maybe the size of Emma’s fist, and the distance a few dozen metres. She found herself wondering what a bigger stone- a boulder- might do at that distance, or at a greater one. She wasn’t sure if terminal velocity would be even approaching mach speed, but that was still a lot of mass.
Situationally useful, but it had potential for sure.
Entropy, Emma could toss a stone up and guess exactly where it would land without looking…Nine times out of ten. Very useful if she ever met some rich gambling addicts, not useful until then.
Cognition…Weird. Emma had to practice a lot to even make that one work, but as she got the hang of it her mind sort of…Left her. Expanding around, awareness moving beyond merely her own body. Everywhere around her, she felt other thoughts. Or primitive approximations of them. Insects, arachnids, animals so small they almost didn’t register as animals. The sensation was remarkably disconcerting, and limited to a few dozen metres outwards. Interesting utility applications, but it wouldn’t help her blow things up so she didn’t care much.
Space was next, and that was one of the most disappointing by far. Emma knew exactly how far she’d walked from Tepetlmoseua, and exactly how far she still had to walk before reaching the mountains. She knew at a glance how tall every boulder around her was, how fast the winds were moving, which directions. Not exactly teleportation, not exactly portal-opening, not exactly any of the other cool shit she might’ve done. But…She had to admit, useful. Particularly combined with Force. Gauging distances so exactly would be a nice benefit to combine with her new ability to accelerate objects linearly over greater distances.
Emma knew two things about Time; she knew it had been seventeen thousand, one hundred and eight seconds since her departure from Tepetlmoseua, and she knew that it was the most underwhelming of all. Maybe one day she’d get to run around dropping roadrollers on people, for now she got less out of it than she did from Space.
It takes me exactly two point three seconds to properly focus Energy into my laser attack.
Okay, so she got something from it, but still compared to the potential of fucking time it was a great pile of nothing. Larry had warned her of that, mentioned the Fundaments were described in ascending order of difficulty, and that the hardest ones started out as more sensory aids than anything.
One day, roadrollers. For now she’d just be a bit better at judging attacks.
Nightfall came, and Emma could have continued walking through it. She chose not to. The stream she’d been following wasn’t actually necessary for her, Emma could just cut right to her destination using the intuition granted by Space. The issue was that Aexilica had mentioned a lot of nocturnal predators, and she wanted no part in that.
So she rolled up beside the stream, hoping the noise would disguise any sounds she made, and waited.This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
Come morning, she was back to walking. Eating too. Her rations were vanishing fast, Emma had always eaten a lot even in the real world, and by the time she realised she’d already emptied out half her pack. With more than half the journey left. Bollocks.
Emma didn’t ration herself much better, but it made some difference. By the next day she’d finally reached the mountains, at least their base. She kept after the stream, finding, to her surprise, that it was starting to widen slightly. Her pace picked up, then picked up some more as she clambered and scrambled up after it.
Less than an hour later, she was at the source of the blockage. Emma was no detective, but she would’ve bet money that the giant pile of boulders and logs smashed down into the river had been put there intentionally.
She examined them, finding that most were embedded somewhat into the floor of the river, dirt deformed and packed around them. Most were big enough that they probably weighed five or ten of her each, and collectively they stemmed the flow almost in its entirety. That got her thinking.
Probably, Emma couldn’t move this blockage. Not physically. She doubted a non-petite woman would be able to, or even a big, hairy man for that matter. So it was fortunate she had magic powers..
But, she’d need to be careful about how she did it. Stone was more brittle than wood, and it tended to react a bit more violently to being exploded. Denser, too, so shrapnel from blowing it apart had a lot more staying power before drag force exhausted its kinetic energy. Was there anywhere nearby she could hide while energy-lancing the blockage? Emma examined her surroundings, and all the while her brain kept churning away.
Hold on, back up. Something had put this blockage there deliberately. Emma saw a lot of drag marks in the ground, deep, large footprints, going back and forth. Dozens of trails. It’d taken a while, required a lot of work. Would someone willing to do that just abandon the fruit of their labours? They must’ve known it’d be undone, so why…
Bait. She lunged forwards at the sound of movement behind her, turning to see the club smash through the air she’d just been occupying and feeling the wind it left in its wake. It made her eyes sting.
Emma hit the ground with all the grace of a suicidal skydiver, feeling the breath knocked out of her as she sprawled in the dusty plains. Her enemy, a giant, one-eyed, human-ish thing which looked about double her height and three times her width, raised its club high and stepped forwards.
Just as Emma splayed a hand and conjured another wind, then a second beneath it. One current raked along the ground, picking up dust and carrying it ahead just as the next struck it from below. Air had mass, momentum, and velocity. The first current was redirected by the second, blown upwards to carry all that debris right into the cyclops’ face.
She grinned as it stumbled back, roaring and rubbing its one big eye. Emma took her chance and scrambled to her feet.
Rocks, she needed rocks. Big, hard, delicious rocks with equal to or greater than durability to a cyclops’ skull. She found none. None? How were there no rocks? They were fucking rocks-
The cyclops roared, and Emma started sprinting from it, waving her hands over the back of her head, throwing out energy at random. Wind, mostly, maybe some pockets of hot air. That last fact gave her an idea, and she hurried for the river. The blocked section.
Just as the cyclops swung down, she tore a stick- thin, but long- from the collection and watched as her enemy’s club struck a boulder hard.
And broke in half, the moron.
“It’’s fucking wood!” She laughed, watching the disturbingly large fragments shoot out in all directions as if someone had snuck a hand grenade inside the club and set it off.
Then she turned her laughter into a scream as the cyclops went for a grab. It managed it, and Emma gasped. Her vision went dark, ribs started creaking. The thing’s hand was abnormally large even for its size, big enough to wrap around her ribs and then some. It lifted Emma high as if she weighed nothing at all, brought her up to its face, opened its mouth…
Then screamed, as she mustered just enough focus to do her thing. One hand on the tip of the stick, pumping energy into it. The other held at the other end. Her skin blistered as the wood heated up to scorching temperatures, then burst outright into flame. Emma withdrew her sore fingers and thrust the makeshift torch right up the cyclops’ nose.
Apparently, it didn’t like it. Emma landed hard as the cyclops stumbled away, batting its hands at nothing, roaring and coughing up smoke as the stick continued burning in its sinuses. Smoke trailed from the thing like it was trying to breathe fire, Emma actually felt slightly queasy at the sound of its screams.
The ground did not greet her warmly. She’d been really quite high up in the monster’s grip, and thrown a little higher still as it let go of her in surprise. Emma lay there for a moment, just groaning. Thinking of better times. Happier times. Warm beds, a global pandemic that got people to stop asking why she never went out, and all the tentacle hentai she could ask for. What had she done to deserve this?
No use worrying about that now, she was still in this fight. Or thought she was, whatever. Emma rolled over onto her side, puked, cried a bit, got back up onto her knees and looked up just in time to see the cyclops finally yank the bit of burning wood out of its nose.
Took it long enough. Then again, she’d be dead if it hadn’t. It was still dazed, still in pain, still looking through a tear-clotted eye from the sensation. She had seconds, maybe. At best. Emma used them.
Her energy built, coiled, mounted. Then she choked it, squeezing it, pinching it, compressing it into a coherent point. The cyclops recovered, stared, roared and started thundering towards her. One second, three steps. Two steps, half a second. One step.
She unleashed her power.
Emma didn’t actually see the energy hit her target, because the moment it impacted came with such a bright light she was forced to look away. She stumbled back, feeling a wind against her that blew harder than any she’d felt before, skin flaring up in pain as if she were pressing it against concrete heated by hours in a summer sun. Then the feelings faded, and she saw the cyclops lying about five metres farther away than when it had first been hit.