Emma hadn't jumped people a whole lot in her life, it just wasn't really an option for her. Element of surprise helped, of course, and a lead pipe or brick could go a long way for equalising physical disparities, but the sad fact was that a woman shorter than most twelve year-olds just wasn't going to get a lot done by attacking people in any circumstances. Save for getting herself killed, of course, which she'd generally done her best to avoid managing.

On the other hand, her toolbox was somewhat expanded now from what it had boasted back on earth. Emma found, much to her lack of surprise, that a beam of energy able to melt stone was a good deal better for opening up a fight than an improvised weapon. Hagor didn't even see it coming, he was just standing back and making his dumb speech one moment and being launched across the hall in the next.

Pandemonium followed. It obviously came as quite a surprise for Hagor's men that he'd been blasted across the room, and Emma took the opportunity to make an energy platform beneath her feet and launch herself upwards with it. For a few moments, everyone saw her. She took the chance to speak.

"I've got the Priest!" She roared. "You all kill everyone else!" Emma was falling before she could check to see if anyone actually paid attention to her, closing in rapidly on Hagor. She opened her descent up with a volley of bullets. It was a reminder of how much a little more magic could really help.

They struck his shield and burst apart, buckling and warping it, making it visible for brief moments of impact and then sending waves to ripple along its surface like stones tossed into a deep lake. Hagor stumbled, fighting to keep his footing against the onslaught, and Emma closed the gap more. More conjuration, but this time she vetoed the energy shells for her projectiles and just blasted out a wave of sand.

Her suspicions about Hagor's weakness proved right, and he was bowled completely over by the sheer mass of it. Emma kept the sand up for a few moments even after he went down and slid back to press against a wall, quickly burying him in the stuff, then finally producing a sheet of hardened energy to drop down over the pile. From there, she started channeling heat into it.

The intent was to cook him alive. While he was buried in the sand, trapped beneath it, Emma would transfer heat until the stuff just…Boiled him. Let its weight pin him down, trap the heat. She'd burned him through his shield before, with her energy lance, so she knew some could get through. If nothing else, Emma figured he'd start dying once the pile was as hot as a bonfire.

Maybe it would've worked, Emma never found out. The sand exploded outwards, shredding the shield of energy and freeing Hagor to emerge from beneath. He looked pissed. Emma had just long enough to recognise that fact before his retaliation came, a corridor of fire tearing after her.

It hit the shield she'd raised just for such an occasion, and deflected around it. By the time it cleared the stone beneath her feet was already cracked and blackened, and Hagor was taking to the air. Electricity building around him.

Shit.

Emma conjured another shield, wood this time. The lightning struck it and the whole sheet just kind of exploded, splinters striking her energy armour hard enough that Emma knew she'd have had her skin lacerated halfway off were it exposed.

Hagor's second bolt of lightning stopped her from worrying about that, though. In the same way that a sledgehammer to the chest tended to make punches in the arm seem a lot more tolerable. She went flying, hit a wall of men—her own or the enemy's, Emma really couldn't say—and took them down to the ground with her before finally exhausting the damned momentum.

Of course, Hagor had another bolt ready by the time she climbed up. Emma directed her thoughts to the Talisman, urging it to hurry up and repair the crater now smoldering in her armour's breastplate.

Emma's hastily-conjured shield didn't have nearly the thickness of the last, but the wood did its work anyway. Catching the lightning, poorly conducting it, insulating it. A good fraction of the bolt's energy was wasted as flying splinters and exploding steam, whatever portion ran along Emma sent her back a step but no more. She retaliated with a volley of bullets, which Hagor evaded by launching himself to one side. Neither he nor Emma could really fly, but his mobility in the air was quick and easy enough that it came as a real advantage to the bastard. She needed him to have as few of those as was possible.

The idea of increasing gravity, or getting rid of all the air, was about as close as Emma could come to a legitimate way of stopping that, so she focused her efforts onto taking back the offensive instead. She conjured a length of stone, almost a stalectite really, and encased it in hardened energy. Then she applied as strong a Force effect as she could manage, before assisting the acceleration with a surge of kinetic energy.

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It was draining, to do so much so quickly. But the results spoke for themselves. The forearm-sized spike of rock shot out faster than an arrow and clipped Hagor's shield, punching clean through. The projectile broke apart, sending a spray of jagged splinters to burst into his barrier and punch deep through the meat of his right arm and shoulder.

His face twisted in agony, throat convulsed in a scream loud enough for her to hear it even through his defences, and for one moment he just dropped down into the floor, distracted too much by his own pain to focus on fighting back.

That was just fine by Emma, she was also quite focused on his pain. Her energy lance shot out fast and hard to intensify it, scoring a clean connection against the Priest's chest—or rather, the section of his barrier covering it. Again, Hagor disappeared in a flash and upkick of debris. When the dust cleared, he seemed to have recovered somewhat.

But Emma didn't miss the large burn now resting in his torso.

Hagor's fires came again, and this time he accompanied them with a bolt of lightning so abrupt that it actually shot out in-between rolls of flame. Emma wasn't ready for it, got hit directly and felt the entire left side of her body grow numb as one leg gave out beneath her and the other started twitching uncontrollably.

More fire leapt up, but this time it seemed to rear back rather than washing over her all at once. Building, Emma realised, constrained and growing in density and intensity, like a spring being compressed. She winced, readied the thickest shield she could and got ready for something she knew would really, really hurt.

It did.

Emma dropped down, screamed. It wasn't that her flesh was sizzling, cooking, sloughing off—she knew she was getting off light, relatively speaking. Her armour bore the brunt of the heat, but what was leftover still left the skin throbbing on her body, blistering and peeling as the hairs curled and withered away. The flames kept it up, lingering around her more like mist than anything combustive. Emma felt her armour thinning, felt the heat grow more intense. Then it all stopped in an instant. She blinked away the spots in her eyes, and took a few moments to realise why.

Aexilica was tired, haggard, jerky. Her motions were clumsier and slower than usual, but they were sure as shit enough to draw Hagor's attention in his state. Emma watched the sword seeming to race its own sound as it chased after his skin, and saw how the Priest's barricade spent a few precious moments more time shimmering after every new impact.

He's getting tired.

Of course he was, she realised, thinking about it, how absurd it had been to even consider that he might not. Mana, or finite reserves of magical energy, were concepts well familiar to those few magic-knowledgeable people Emma had talked to so far. It was only natural that Hagor himself not be above the limitation.

And it was very good for her, to boot.

Aexilica stumbled back from a hastily-conjured blast of wind, and Emma took the chance to pelt Hagor with another volley of bullets. She tried something new, now, focusing them all down a quickly formed cylinder of hardened energy with both ends open. As she'd hoped, it kept the numerous projectiles tightly grouped and saw them all hitting closely together and perfectly timed. Hagor almost lost his feet entirely, and then did when Aexilica bolstered the effort with a timely swing.

When he was down, Emma got to work on another longer lance of stone and energy like the one which had done so well at penetrating his barrier before. She sent it flying just as Hagor got himself up, throwing Aexilica conveniently far from the dangerous zone of near-impact, and watched the energy encasing her projectile clash with that encasing her enemy. The air screamed, sparks and waves of force rolled out hard. Hagor shot back.

Fortunately for Hagor, a wall caught him. Unfortunately for Hagor, it was solid stone. His shield had been weaker than the first time Emma hit him with such a projectile, too, because now she saw far larger chunks of it digging through his body. She almost winced at the very sight.

Hagor did a little more than wince. Sitting up seemed close to the limits of what he could manage, with blood bubbling forth from his lips and both eyes staring glassily at seemingly nowhere at all. Emma found a stab of satisfaction running through her like…Well, like a big length of stone through a dumb priest's guts.

"You…Can't…" He coughed mid-sentence, spitting up a spatter of sludgy blood and other fluids about the size of a person's fist. Emma watched it run down his furs with a curled lip, felt a stab of pity, suddenly, at how pathetic her enemy looked in his current condition. Hard to see a terrible human sacrificer now, he just looked like an old man.

"I…I am the chosen!" Tears were welling in his eyes, rolling down his cheeks to mingle with the ichor dribbling out of his mouth. "I am chosen of the Gods! This can't happen! I…I will destroy you!" He was sobbing, breathing hard, almost unable to speak between the heaves of his own chest. Emma realised the man didn't even seem to know he was injured. "I am the chosen!"

"You are meat. Dead, and mine." The voice was so low, so grating, that Emma jumped as she heard it, feltt a vital spark of terror run through her. She spun around, stared as Herag began striding his way across the hall.

No, not striding. Limping, really, but in his condition even that much was a feat. There were burns covering much of his torso, and Emma thought she could see muscle actually exposed beneath the skin at parts. He was trailing blood behind him, and still smoking despite it being at least a few minutes since he'd been beaten down.

Not for the first time, she wished she'd had the resources for more than just her healing potion. A few of her strength-enhancers would've made the fight go far more smoothly, but it was over now at least.

As Herag drew nearer, Emma found herself glad she hadn't made him even stronger.

Hagor melted back from the berserker, denial turning instantly to fear in his eyes.

"Wait—" he began, but was cut off as Herag seized him hard by the neck and hoisted him into the air.

"Shut the fuck up." He growled. Then bit down into the High Priest's skull.

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