The draugr was charging forwards, the world was slowed. Emma felt the constant tug against her mind as mana sapped itself away through her amulet to finish the repairs of her armour.

Her body still stung, despite it. Aching everywhere, head spinning, limbs weak. Whatever burst of energy she'd called on to stagger around the wrongfooted monster was gone now. It was lucky, then, that Aexilica chose that moment to wake up and start swinging. Her sword raked across the draugr's arms, forcing it back. More with surprise than actual harm or fear, but still buying precious moments either way.

Emma sent another jet of sand at the draugr, and it demonstrated its apparently newly-acquired ability to dodge by doing just that. Aexilica, at least, was able to drag her sword nastily down its thigh amid a spray of sparks and what looked like dusty flesh. Its fist caught her with a glancing blow to the cheek that left her stumbling, but Emma was already switching to a more substantial attack by then.

Smaller bullets hadn't availed her, fine. She had other ideas anyway. The energy she formed now turned into a sort of arch, though thicker and with a wide area to catch things at its centre.

It slammed into the draugr with all the force Emma could put behind it, which turned out not to be that much. The mass wasn't her issue, it was her power. The draugr slowed, but not enough. Managed to keep bringing itself forwards right up until Aexilica righted herself and put the sword through its eye.

Opportunity number two let Emma redouble her efforts with another arch, then another. She closed, wrapping bands of energy around the stuff, settling for binding and impeding the draugr as Aexilica kicked its leg out from under it and sent it to the ground.

Another Force effect sent it skidding, this time Emma's energy lance was charged up before the draugr even hit the far wall. It freed itself from the bonds just in time to be blasted in the face and thrown back against the window, leaning against it, flailing, on the verge of falling but not quite.

Emma hadn't expected Aexilica to throw a drop-kick of all things, but damn was she glad to see it. Both heels connected with a beautiful crunch and the air actually felt like it was shivering at the impact. The draugr, of course, was knocked back.

Right out of the building.

By the time Emma reached the window to look out at the draugr, it had already landed. For once luck seemed to be on her side. The ground beneath her room was pure stone, cobbled and hard. The draugr seemed to have landed badly, because one leg was broken beneath it and its whole body was moving…Awkwardly.

More awkwardly, that was. Emma's lip curled as she saw it trying to, at once, get to its feet and shift away.

"Monster." Aexilica growled, disgust clear enough in her voice. Emma glanced at the woman, glanced back down at the monster, and came to a very swift decision. The draugr, for the moment, was still more or less directly beneath her.

And she was not fighting that thing again.

Stone was the slowest thing Emma could conjure by far. Conjuring felt different from whatever she did to make her hardened bits of energy, more locomotive. She was taking something from elsewhere and bringing it to her. Maybe that was why it was slowed by the substance's mass. Regardless, time wasn't much of an issue now. In the five seconds Emma took to have a sizeably amount of stone ready the dragr had barely moved at all. She encased her collection of rocks in energy, holding them all together, then turned to Aexilica.

"Mind giving me a hand?"

Between Emma's Force, ever-dwindling mana and Aexilica's ridiculous strength, they sent it tipping over the windowsill to fall down hard. It landed perfectly in the draugr's back.

And it landed hard.

The shell of energy was unyielding and stiff, but still plenty strong. Emma had made it thicker than her own armour by a lot, thanks to not needing to actually move while wearing it, and it actually held up against its own fall. Mostly. The weight of stone driving it down, and the thirty or so feet of pulling gravity, just sort of burst the draugr. Ribs broke, caved in. Metal plates either cracked apart or broke their fixtures and went spinning away like shrapnel from a grenade. Even the ground broken, slightly. Cobbles dislodging or, in places, splitting entirely.

Remarkably, the draugr kept moving. Worse than before, barely at all in fact. But any movement was too much for Emma. She spent another minute conjuring brick-sized rocks and chucking them down, giving each one a nice helping of Force magic to assist gravity in driving them into the horrible thing. Eventually, finally, it stopped.

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And only then did Emma let herself back away from the opening she'd blown in her own room, and collapse.

"Holy shit." She gasped, shaking all over. She always shook after a fight, and probably always would. Annoying.

"I'm surprised you won." Larry piped up. "Not bad at all, damn, maybe you actually will get me home at this rate. Good trick with the shield by the way."

Emma rounded on him at once, far from happy.

"You could've given us some help!" She snarled. "Its name, all I got from you was its fucking name."

Larry was altogether too happy as he replied.

"Oh, well, actually, I don't know if that is its name, either. I told you I don't have a lot of knowledge about this world, but that thing seems to resemble a draugr. Undead, warrior, ridiculous strength, cold and, you know, surrounded by Norse shit everywhere else. Seemed like it fit."

Emma actually couldn't think of anything to say at that, just paced around, swearing. Her body was still all jittery from the fight, undercutting her rage she imagined.

"It was a draugr." Aexilica volunteered. "I've heard of them, never…Never fought one." She winced as she moved, Emma saw, one shoulder seeming to pain her with every slight shift. It was one she'd tried to parry a blow with.

The strength gap was that big?

"I've heard they can eat hearteaters alive, and have done." The woman continued, frowning now. "But…Why was it alone? They're usually sent alongside men, or even others of their own kind. Hard to summon, sure, but not that hard. Why would this one be attacking you by itself?"

Emma didn't take long to coin an idea.

"Because it didn't matter to its summoner whether it managed to kill me." She croaked. "It's a diversion!"

They were running almost instantly. Emma had to fight her instincts to remain wreathed in the hardened energy armour emanating from her amulet, needing to remove all the weight she could as she sprinted after Aexilica. Even still, the woman pulled ahead of her at barely a jog while carrying Larry in one arm and her sword in the other.

It didn't take long to figure out the most likely point for Hagor's real attack to land, there really weren't many options. If he wasn't moving to kill Emma herself, then his next-best shot was slaying Earl Ragni directly.

His part of the castle was, of course, rather far from Emma's. Before that had seemed like a good thing, keeping them both from being swept into the same attack at once. Now it just stung her with every stupid step her tiny little legs needed to take. Emma gave herself some help, applying whispers of Force to speed her along and reduce her weight, but there was only so much she could do to augment movements as complex as running without falling on her face.

And it wasn't enough. Not by half. They arrived at Earl Ragni's quarters far, far too late.

His hallway had been guarded, of course. And Emma could see that there were at least a few of those guards still on duty when the attack came. Exactly how many was beyond her ability to count, or rather beyond her eyes' ability to mentally reassemble the various bodyparts scattered everywhere into something more coherent. She and Aexilica strided over the pooling blood and littering corpses, heading for Ragni's rooms as even Larry fell quiet at the sight of the carnage.

They entered, and found their hopes dashed as they did.

Hagor hadn't sent another draugr at all, he'd come personally.

He was standing there in the centre of the room, pissing his magic out in all directions and looking smug as he stood surrounded by dead and dying men. Earl Ragni was staring him down, in armour, thankfully, but panting and bleeding. Emma didn't have time to see how bad his wounds were. The two men didn't seem to have even noticed her entering, so she decided to make use of the advantage and spray a volley of energy bullets right at Hagor—stone cores, of course. Only the best for her least favourite asshole.

They hit a barrier just a foot shy of him, and broke apart. Splinters of energy and rock bounced off Hagor's skin, making him wince and, more importantly, getting his attention. His eyes snapped over to Emma just as he raised the shitty wizard staff she always saw him carrying, waving the head outwards at her.

Everything in front became fire. Everything around became fire. Emma's armour had engulfed her without her even realising, but even that did little to keep the heat from reaching her. She felt the hairs on her arms curling, her skin already itching, and saw the hardened energy protecting her start to flake off and disintegrate.

It wouldn't take long until more than just flakes were falling away, and not long after that until Emma was crispy and dead. She hurried forwards. Blind, for the light and heat surrounding her on all sides, blocking off sight the the orange glare. Something crashed into her, a wall probably. It was solid enough to bounce her down to the ground, and the fire just kept coming. Emma rolled, scrambled, moved as fast as she could to stop the continuous burning but it just kept coming and just kept getting worse.

Until it didn't.

Suddenly the fire stopped, and Emma looked up to see why. Hagor was distracted, the fool. His attention slipping away, detaching and rubbing off on the mild nuisance that was Aexilica swinging her sword for his head with murderous intent. It bounced and scraped off the same shield that'd kept him from dying to Emma's own attack, and its resilience made Emma's choice for her. She started building up power for an energy lance.

Her mana reserves really were low, though. And dropping fast. Her amulet was draining more power to repair her armour, and she'd burned precious trickles of extra in helping herself sprint with Force.

Moments slipped by without Emma doing anything. Aexilica dived to one side, barely evading a curtain of fire before it could fall on her, and Ragni came from the other. His sword swing came faster and harder than even Aexilica's own, maybe a match for the damned draugr. Emma grinned as she saw the barely-perceptible metal breach Hagor's defences and slide through to nick open his arm. Not a deep cut, but a cut nonetheless, soaking his fabric crimson, leaving him stumbling away in shock.

Ragni's arm came back for another swing, and then Hagor's magic lunged out and enveloped him. Unlike Aexilica, he was far more concerned with offence than defence. The flames engulfed every inch of the Earl's body in one instant.

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