Earl Ragni screamed, which was not particularly surprising given that he was now less of a person and more of a large, person-shaped chunk of fuel. Aexilica caught a strong whiff of burning flesh, felt the revulsion that came with recognising how similar it was to that of an animal, and kept scrambling. Hagor didn't hesitate before rounding his view on her and building up more magic. Aexilica swung experimentally at where she thought the Earl's sword had passed through to cut him, but her own was denied that same allowance of penetration and rebound heavily at the point of contact.

He didn't answer with fire, now, rather wind. It caught Aexilica with just as much power and lifted her clean from the ground to fly back and hit a wall. Everything hurt. Everything had already hurt from her fight with the draugr, but now that pain was growing insurmountable. She dropped her sword, landed, sprawled out and wheezed in desperate breaths right before Emma's attack struck the Runepriest.

It was, Aexilica saw, one of the powerful ones, the ones that had terrified her even when they first met. And it had grown far, far stronger since then. The room actually shook, expansive though it was, as magic met magic. Hagor went flying.

Aexilica found it quite satisfying to see somebody else be on the receiving-end of that for once, and more satisfying still when the Priest smacked into a stone pillar and took a few chunks out of it as his shield rebound. He lived, of course, and was scrambling up with a speed that belied his old age. But his face was red, almost sizzling, and Aexilica found herself thinking back to the hit she'd taken as she forced herself to stand.

Wind, not fire. Why had he done that?

If the Priest had engulfed her in flame as he had Ragni, Aexilica would be out of the fight entirely. But she'd been right beside him. The answer came fast.

"His shield doesn't stop heat!" Aexilica roared. Emma and Hagor's heads both turned to her as one, the former grinning and the latter cursing.

"Little whore!" The Priest snarled, waving his hand at Aexilica and turning the world to fire. It was almost on her when Emma's own magic shot out, a great spinning sheet of that mysterious substance she called "hard energy", mixed with sand, crashing down to lean before her. The flames hit it and started burning the stuff away instantly, but even that thin layer of protection gave her chance enough to flee from Hagor's line of sight and tuck herself behind a pillar.

That didn't stop Hagor of course, oh no. No he was far too determined, and more flames were soon curling about the stone. Fortunately, they were interrupted by a thud, a cry of pain and a sudden silence as the roaring fire dissipated. Aexilica lunged out and started back across the room just in time to see…Something.

It looked, to her, like Hagor's shield was ablaze, but as she peered closer she realised there were actually several things jutting from it which themselves were burning. Lengths of wood, all coiling with flame and stabbed well into the Priest's barrier. None seemed to actually be close enough to burn him, but they gave Aexilica a few ideas. She closed in, and the Priest turned to her only when it was too late. Her shoulder smashed into several of the wooden stakes and drove them hard against the shield. Most crumpled, splintered or dislodged entirely. Two fell inside, and then everything good about the Priest's barrier became bad.

With the burning wood trapped inside, and the barrier so close to his skin already, he had the flames pressed right up against him. The fabric of his robes caught quickly, and his panic was on him like the surging of a rat pack smelling food. He screamed, stumbled away beating ineffectually at himself with hands that didn't do anything to abate the fire. The burning grew, worsened, and in moments Hagor panicked. He dropped his barrier, let the wooden stakes fall away.

Then cried out again as Aexilica's swing, perfectly timed for this exact moment, cut into his chest.

It wasn't a deep blow, she realised that an instantl into it as her weapon's edge cut deep and escaped with a hiss and a spurt of blood. Still, Hagor was far from a young man and Aexilica could tell she'd nicked him good and proper. She shot back with another wave of his hand and barely even minded the impact this time, almost grinning as it came.

***

Emma saw the flames surging out after Aexilica, and threw another shield in front of them. Her reserves really were dwindling, now. If she fired off another energy lance she'd be out, no ifs or buts about it, and even her lesser magic was straining her. It felt like trying to wring water out of a damp cloth, watching every new drop as it fell and silently praying it wasn't the last.

This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Hagor sent another wave of fire at Emma, and, thankfully, her latest shield also wasn't the last. She watched the flames curl around it, shoved it forwards with a touch of Force and sent a volley of bullets out after. These ones were newer, of course. Emma had left pinches of soil in the centre rather than stone, holding them before her as she channelled heat through the energy encasing them and firing them off only as she started to make out a dull glow beneath.

Like before, they hit Hagor's shield and the shells of energy broke fast. Like before, splinters and slivers breached the barrier. Unlike before, droplets of molten soil—whatever it was soil was made from—followed suit.

Hagor's screams came soon after, and Emma ducked down as another wave of fire burst across the room. Directionless this time, she thought, washing across the walls and igniting wooden surfaces, by the time it all cleared he was already heading for the door. She stood, started funnelling magic out to ready another volley of molten bullets…

…And then dropped down to one knee, eyes disfocused, jaw slack, head pounding. There were stars in her vision and snakes under her skin, Emma didn't even notice herself collapsing until the dark was already on her. It was, perhaps, some kind of blessing.

***

Sometimes Aexilica saw whole logs turned to ash in the fire, their entirety burned all the way through. Shape the same, still in one piece, but not wood anymore. Touch them and they might hold, try to pick them up and they came apart. Turned to dust in your hands, as if the contact made them remember they were nought but debris.

Emma's armour was that, crumbling apart all in one go and raining down on her as a cloud where she landed. For a horrible moment Aexilica thought the girl might've gone and gotten herself killed, and rushed over to her side with the speed of a god behind her.

Of course, she wasn't dead. Death just couldn't reach Emma, it would probably be too creeped out to go near her. She was breathing when Aexilica squatted down beside her, though not moving with any excess of strength. Reluctantly, Aexilica turned her focus next to Earl Ragni.

He, on the other hand, was about as dead as anything Aexilica had ever seen, maybe deader than the draugr. His body hadn't been turned to charcoal, as most would if they'd been burned as long and as hot as his, but that was really all that could be said about it. The skin was no longer really existent, and the muscles now exposed beneath seemed shrivelled and peeled away. At points, Aexilica could actually see bone poking out. She found herself suddenly sick.

Earl Ragni's face was gone, and the corpse was recogniseable to her only by the position it was resting. Still, she knew it was a person she was staring at now. Had been a person. Whatever. That sight, that knowledge, touched her in a way she hadn't expected.

A lifetime of killing monsters had done nothing to prepare her for this, and she pulled her gaze away from the wreck before it could sink any deeper in.

The room was burning, and the fire was spreading. Aexilica's people didn't use a lot of wood in construction, but she'd heard tell of its dangers. She saw them now. Even with most of the chamber being stone, there was enough wood worked into walls and support beams that the flames had plenty of avenues to run along.

Smoke was filling the place, rising, choking. Aexilica's eyes watered, and she had the feeling her lungs would already be burning with the effort of each breath if she were restricted to the physical prowess of a normal person.

Like Emma.

She snapped her gaze around to the other woman instantly, and was by her side again. For once, Emma's size helped them out. Aexilica dragged her up and onto her shoulders without even feeling the girl's weight, then headed for the door. She didn't get far before remembering Larry. Fortunately, they'd left him safely shielded behind a pillar as all the fire leapt out.

"Took you long enough you dumb bitch!" He snapped. "Do you see this smoke? What would you do if I'd suffocated, what then?"

"Can you even suffocate?" Aexilica asked, bursting out into the corridor and taking off at a sprint. It seemed Hagor had gone away entirely. Lucky that, if he'd stuck around half a minute longer he could've killed her and finished off Emma. Or, worse, taken them both prisoner.

Aexilica didn't really let herself think much as she ran, just did. Larry was pressed between Emma and her shoulders, the sword tight in one hand as her other rested upon Emma's arm to hold her steady on Aexilicca's back. The corridor just blurred by ahead of her, and everything melted together.

When she stopped at last, it wasn't in her own room or Emma's. It was surrounded by Ragni's men, or those who remained of them.

By then, Emma had woken up and started pacing. She was jittery, fearful. Aexilica empathised. Between their own reports, and those of Ragni's soldiers, they were getting a decent picture of what had started happening around the fortress since the Earl's death. It wasn't looking good.

All the territory they'd secured with Emma's mass-poisoning and the resulting push forwards had been lost when Ragni died and Hagor's own men retaliated. All of the territory, and then some. By now the remnants of Ragni's forces were boxed into one particular region of the fortress, essentially cut off from outside, and facing down some very well-made barricades.

Not to mention the desertion.

It hadn't happened slowly, more as some sort of great wave. Like a flight of birds heading from one horizon to another. A third, perhaps more than half, of Ragni's men had decided that Hagor was looking to be the winner, and apparently had no interest in pitting their arms alongside those of the losers.

Aexilica actually understood that much, at least. Heroes didn't exist. Simple as that, they were a myth, a lie. A manipulation made to trick young, gullible people into using all their potential and life on furthering someone else's goals. Seeing how many of the Sculds were immune to the kind of vanity that led into pathetic last stands actually left her respecting them more.

But it was no better for her and Emma.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.