Vari landed in a roll, breaking his fall—which was good, as he had fallen from easily fifty paces up and with a great weight of ringmail to help drag him down—before springing back to his feet. Thoress, worthy as she was, came down just a moment later and swung again. Her hammer destroyed another section of street, leaving a new crater large enough for one of this strange city's living metal animals to leave itself trapped within. Vari stumbled back, parried another swing and took to the air again—involuntarily. He stopped his flight only when a brick wall caught him and surrendered.

The mortar cracked and pushed inwards, doing something, at least, to cushion Vari's fall. He still needed a moment to catch his breath. Would have lost then and there if Krummer weren't still tangled with their opponent, buying time.

The vampire was faster than Vari, stronger, tougher. He did not tire, and his powers of regeneration were carrying him long into this fight. On the other hand, he hadn't even one tenth as much skill as Vari. His was not a nation that practiced combat with melee weaponry as much as they should, and his bayonetted rifle was far from a purpose-built tool. He was not even as skilled as the shockingly amateurish Thoress.

One swing broke his weapon apart, and another almost did the same to Krummer's head. He got in close—wise—and punched the woman. Less wise. She shrugged off his knuckles, which had landed with the force of a ton-heavy battering ram, and responded with a strike of her own. Vari fancied he could actually hear the sound of breaking bone from dozens of paces back, and Krummer left a red smear trailing behind him as he slid limply along the road.

By then, though, Vari had already started moving. Thoress was not quite ready or quick enough to avoid his blow to her blindspot, and the enchanted hammer clubbed right into the back of her head.

It was quite a superhuman head, Vari thought. Perhaps the kind a Demigod's child might have, early into their path for ascension. He knew this much by the fact that it did not burst apart and distribute its contents across the area several yards ahead of her.

But the woman was stumbled, and Vari acted fast while she did. His hammer twisted around and came down hard on her wrist, already weakened in grip by the moment of shock at being struck so hard and unexpectedly. Vaskryn came free of her hand and thudded into the stone. She had just a moment to look mortified before another hammer-blow sent her farther back, and Vari turned to his new prize.

The hammer was not unlike any he'd seen, it almost looked mundane at a more cursory glance. Square and scarred, the meta was, but humming as it rested in the ground. Perhaps Thoress had thrown it down in some muscular spasm rather than merely dropped it, for it seemed to have lodged inches deep in the stone. He wrapped his hand around the hilt—a short one, clearly for a one-handed grip—and worked to free it.

Vari felt pain lance through his elbow as he almost tore the bones from their joints in his effort to free the hammer. He turned, stared, half-expecting some unseen resistance to be wrapped about it. But there was none. None, that was, save for the hammer itself, and what Vari now recognised to be a mass greater than he could have possibly known built into its head.

His thoughts got no farther than that before Thoress recovered and took her opportunity to strike. He did not fully avoid the blow, feeling it graze his shoulder and almost sunder the joint. A fist, but it moved like a trebuchet stone fired from the people of Engwyr. Vari staggered away from the hammer lodged in the ground, then cursed as his enemy practically tossed it back into her own hands.

"It was a nice try," she grined, "but Vaskryn knows only one master."

Vari readied himself just as that one master charged in to continue besting him.

***

Emma didn't have a potion in her, and, already armoured, there was no time to put on her stupid ring. It wasn't made for this anyway. Better at sneaking around weak idiots than powerful peers, magic let people see clean through it.

That was the list of her disadvantages, other than the three-on-two odds. Her advantages, though, were…surprisingly high.

She could fly for one thing, that was neat. It didn't appear to Emma that any of her enemies could, and if she hadn't gotten much practice in from spending a few weeks repeatedly sulking and flicking herself off, she'd at least become a not-shit flier back during her frenzied learning curve against the Nocturnae. The fruits of that labour were evident for all now.

A bullet whipped by her head, hitting a stone gargoyle behind her. Due to recent experiences, Emma did not feel particularly bad watching the statue explode into pieces. Other than, of course, being keenly aware it was both solid stone and thoroughly Emma-sized or above. Her eyes flicked down to the cowboy, revolver smoking as the barrel moved again.

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That was her main problem. Because flying was all well and good, but rednecks had gotten quite good at shooting things out of the air several generations ago.

"Fuck you!" Emma snapped, then swore as a fireball came racing for her. A big one, maybe bigger than her head and getting a whole lot bigger as it detonated against her hastily-thrown-up wall of hardlight. The heat was more thans he'd have expected from normal fire, and the blast wave was just barely felt even through her armour. More like a hand grenade, or a bundle of dynamite. Emma wasn't sure why she was comparing it to those—she'd not felt either.

Kruger threw a hand grenade, which at least broadened her horizons that little bit more. The man he targeted was the one who'd tried to hit Emma with flames. The baby-man, bald and—

—"YOU DARE DEFY WIZARDUS!?" he shrieked, in what could only be referred to as a "Miltonian" voice. Emma decided quite fast that she did not like him one bit, but couldn't afford to focus just yet. The redneck was drawing another bead on her.

"Stay still would you honey, it's hard to aim with you flitting around all pixie-like."

Emma did not stay still, obviously, and actually threw out a cloud of conjured coal dust for good measure. The black debris drifted fast along the air as a wind caught it. It'd clear soon, give her enemy a clear shot, but she'd bought herself seconds. Wait, was she forgetting something?

The power ranger drop-kicked her.

"POWER KICK!" He screamed, as Emma shot back head-over-heels and smashed down hard into the stone below. Another physical fighter. She hated those. Stupid fucking horrible bastards, so fast she could barely see them. Emma blasted her way out from the stony tomb formed around her as broken pavement collapsed into the crater. She was hurt, badly. Even with the impact-absorbing effects of her yellow hardlight that collision had reached deep into the viscera, a few more and she wouldn't be moving around much.

And of course, the power ranger was coming back at her. Literally cartwheeling his way across the street and doing it faster than a normal man could sprint. Emma fired an energy lance at him, watching it detonate about a metre below the stupid fuck as he propelled himself spinning and flipping high overhead.

He landed behind her, swinging another kick that caught her in the back and threw her another ten metres forwards. Emma would've been flayed, scraping along the road as she did for twice again as far as she'd flown. Fortunately hardlight was both a lot sturdier than skin, and fully covering her. Unfortunately it didn't put up a lot of resistance when it came to friction. Emma's slide ended with her hitting another wall, she took a few moments to stand, and by then the power ranger was already close to upon her.

Things didn't stay that bad forever of course, no. The cowboy shot her first. Emma was blown off her feet by the bullet and fell back again as the power ranger jumped high and brought his heel down hard, cracking open her breastplate and squeezing spongey yellow hardlight out through the newly-made cracks. Emma sent a volley of iron balls smacking into him, driving him back as she rose.

His uniform was armoured. Must have been, unless he was just a lot tougher than strong. Emma didn't see a single spurt of blood or tear in the fabric as her enemy backed away. She did, however, see another opportunity. By the time she was flat on her feet Emma had prepared a cavitation gun, aimed it and—

—been shot in the head again.

***

Krummer caught Thoress' hammer directly to his chest, and Vari winced at the sight of his ally breaking clean open. Ribs shattered violently enough that the shards were left jutting out of skin, and blood misted all around him in a thick fog.

He flew through the air and disappeared from sight, though Vari did hear him land. A hundred yards back, he estimated, maybe more. His impact with the hard stone was soft and wet, squelching like mud under a boot. Thoress came at Vari without hesitation.

By now he had started to adjust against the woman's style, which was enthusiastic and talented but without any great level of skill. She had clearly been in enough fights to intuit the basics, though it was far from enough to close the gap between them. Any of his brother's carls would have bested her technical abilities, and most would have managed the same while drunk.

It didn't matter. Most men were more skilled than a bear, but the contest there was no contest at all.

***

Emma didn't die, fortunately. She felt like it though. Everything wen white and loud with concussion as a bullet the size of her fingertip smashed into her hardlight helmet and committed suicide against the durable stuff. She was, once again, thankful to have spent so much time perfecting the protection it provided. Without any one of the countless improvements she'd made, Emma knew the great cracks reaching around it would be wider and deeper, the force transfer beneath worse. She'd have been killed.

But she wasn't. She did fall out of the sky and land hard, bouncing, rolling. The power ranger was leaping after her without a moment of delay and Emma barely threw a wall up in time to buy herself all of one second against him. He punched, elbowed and kicked through the sheet of hardlight as if it were…well, hardlight made shortly after Emma's arrival in Aethiq without any of the strengthening effects that made her able to stop bullets with the stuff.

She really, really hated fighting fellow earth people. They were so…unbalanced.

A concern for later though, if she got a later. Emma scrambled back from the power ranger by flying herself clumsily against the ground, delaying him with more iron bullets and loudly swearing as she saw them bounce harmlessly off their target. Distance widened between them, at least, inches at a time where she'd wanted feet, and she barely took back to the skies.

From the corner of her eye, Emma saw…No, not saw, she sensed the cowboy stop moving, abandon all the casual motions of frantic battle and stay suddenly still. She could feel his mind's location, if not his thoughts, and knew that location had stopped changing. Why?

Because he can't hit you while running himself.

Her wall was just in time to catch the bullet, though it bulged disturbingly thick at the back where supersonic lead threatened to punch clean through. The power ranger kept coming.

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