The agony was everywhere, it was everything. A storm, a state of being. It was Isolde's world. She could try to tune it out, to extend her undead apathy of all things pain and let it drive the bother from her. It didn't work. This was not a mere prick or cut, this was the mark of the sun. It was anathema to her kind and she could feel the evidence of that where flesh still seared from the light.

Night had come minutes ago, now, and the enfeeblement of day was banished from her entirely. Still, she hesitated to give chase.

Kruger.

Isolde's temper bubbled up as she thought of the man, her fellow Isekai-ee. He had been a thorn in her side, it had to be said. Clever, driven and with a knack for battle tactics that she herself couldn't match. He'd probably been some obsessive history nerd back home, the sort to spontaneously come up with a hundred ways Hitler could've won World War Two. That was serving him well in attacking her nation now. Almost as well as that damned weapon conjuring of his.

She found another deformed sliver of lead lodged in her skin, and gently plucked it out with a wince. These were the worst of her wounds, the tiny little scratches Kruger had given up in making moments into their fight. Buckshot was actually an already-invented tool of destruction, here in Gorgoschia, and during the lead-up to her founding the Nocturnal Nation Isolde had been exposed to a lot of it.

Weaker, then, and more fragile, she had nonetheless found it unthreatening. It was the larger, armour-piercing projectiles made of tough steels and spat north of double mach speed that truly threatened her. Krugerhad figured that out near-instantly and promptly switched to some kind of oversized machine-gun firing just such rounds. Isolde winced again as she picked one of those out, this one embedded more like an inch deep into the tissues of her body.

The pain that drawing it out sparked had Isolde almost halfway to sprinting for the door, but…

No. She paused, held herself back. Looked around at her allies. Marceline was by far the worst for wear, her blood had always manifested in more magical than physical ways. Her regeneration was no less potent, Isolde thought, but her ability to withstand the blows that would leave it needed fell far short of even her own. She had been a palace of broken bones and perforated organ tissue when Isolde arrived. Had such things been required to sustain her unlife, she would surely be dead already.

And then there was the sun. She hissed as the burns across her own form flared up all over. Of all the gifts Isolde had gained in coming to this world, in accepting Susanne's offer and exchanging home for power, perhaps the greatest had been her ability to heal.

Others could do it, here. Those with innate superhuman strength often boasted similarly bolstered regeneration. She had seen particularly strong men—ones able to lift ten or twenty times their own weight—recover from a broken bone in mere days. It wouldn't surprise her at all if that brown skinned woman who'd fought Eric with a sword healed her various gunshots even faster.

But nothing, at least that she had yet seen with her own eyes, could heal like a vampire. If Isolde left her own wounds unattended, they would doubtless fix themselves anyway. Her flesh would push out the dense lead and hard steel fragmented among it and close around the gaps.

And yet still, she would bear the solar burns now caking her skin. Another stab of agony struck her as she thought of them, and Isolde growled. It was not that they never healed, indeed such wounds still healed faster for her than similar burns would in a human, but compared to the vanishingly fast recovery of all other injuries the process was a slow and plodding thing.

"We could still pursue them," Eric grumbled. He was the most and the least wounded of them. It had been he who had taken the brunt of their enemies' attacks, magical weapons ravaging his body one way and the other. Isolde understood that most of his wounds had healed on the spot, but near the end of the fight he had been given so many that even his regeneration—greater than the others—was tested to keep up. His healing had slowed, and now she saw mundane gashes left by steel rather than sun closing themselves at a remarkably lacinine pace. Within the hour he would be unblemished, save for the burns, but…That was an hour.

"No." Isolde replied, sharper than she'd intended. Her thoughts were still spinning around.

Despite the airs she put on, the impression of some centuries-active elder she projected, vampirism had come recently to her. As she understood it, Susanne's gift had brought intensely pure blood, and a great deal of instinctive knowledge in using it, but no real age. Certainly no experience.

She had never sired another of her kind—never created a progeny. Isolde had not been especially selective in choosing, merely aware that vampires could do so only occasionally. Emma had caught her eye as the ideal choice.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. "Why?" Eric growled, taking a step forwards now. His whole body seemed to move like a falling mountain. Isolde found the sight intimidating, for a moment. Her mind was too long in a human body—a human woman's body—for the intellectual knowledge of her own power to come instinctively. But she didn't back away.

"Shut up." She told him. "I'm thinking."

"No—" Eric's words had barely exited his mouth when Isolde struck, and struck hard. She was not quite so strong as him, nor so magically gifted as Marceline, but she added a touch of the arcane behind her blow to compensate for both. It launched the vampire off his feet and hard against the far wall.

Not the outer wall, fortunately. That would have been embarrassing.

Eric grunted as he dropped down to his knees, cheekbone caved in where Isolde had struck it. Healing, she saw, but still slowly.

"We're in no condition to chase them, don't be an idiot." She spat, feeling the same thrill of ecstasy that always accompanied her exercising the right of the Elder. She pushed that aside, though. There were more productive things to do.

"Marceline," she barked, watching with some satisfaction as the woman jumped, "can you track them?"

Just as Eric's physicality was beyond her, so too was Marceline's magic. Isolde didn't know if she could have done what she asked. Fortunately, she was not disappointed.

"I need time, but yes."

"We have time." Isolde shrugged, glaring at Eric now. "We'll be waiting to heal, yes?"

Eric lowered his gaze, and she smiled again. This was the way of things. She'd always been born for the night, always. It was why she'd stuck out so much among humans—the cattle. They'd sensed, on some level, that she wasn't one of them. A wolf pup among the sheep. Now she was a wolf grown, and stood as separate from them as they did their own cattle.

Her own kind were removed from humanity in body, but not in spirit. Not yet. She saw those cracks of will in Eric and Marceline from time to time, and it had become part of her focus to smooth them away. Her empire of night would not be brought about without conviction.

"We'll be waiting to heal." She repeated, thinking once more of Emma. Her childe. Her pet. Her prey. "And then we will hunt."

***

Kruger felt another headache coming on. He had been getting so many of late, and always from the same handful of irritants. It was almost a relief to find his temples throbbing over something new, now. Almost.

But this girl, Emma, had a way of making him find the bright side of any situation, and then forget it existed entirely.

"The uniforms!" She barked, as if some extraordinary point were being scored. "Why are the uniforms like that, they look just like nazis."

Krieger sighed.

"We use grey because it is the cheapest, easiest to colour and because that was what people here wore before I was elected."

The woman paused at that, quivering as if she were somehow irritated to not be in the presence of a nazi. She started pacing, fidgeting, glowering.

"Your flags look like swastikas." She pointed out. Kruger met her eye blandly.

"That's because they are. Swastikas, ancient symbols of good fortune and light in Hinduism, often linked to the sun god Sūrya. The nazis appropriated that for their own ends."

Her face twisted, nostrils flared.

"Argh! You are so fucking suspect!"

"Why would I be a nazi when I, myself, am gay?" Kruger asked her. Before the woman could respond, one of her comrades piped up. The red-headed Sculd.

"What is a nazi, anyway?"

The girl rounded on him before Kruger could give a properly historic answer.

"Giant fucking assholes who think their race is better than everyone else's." She replied.

That drew a look of confusion across the Sculd's face.

"But my race is better than all the others."

Emma stared at him, then turned to Aexilica instead. Perhaps she hoped to find some support from the woman. Kruger could have helped temper her expectations there.

"Ignore the snow monkey, obviously it's the Aethiqi who hold the title of master race." She pointed out.

Emma started pacing again, looking rather more angry than before.

Something caught Kruger's eye then, something which had been rather quiet until now.

"The Angel?" He breathed, not wanting to believe it but…Yes. There on Emma's belt was the severed head of the being who had sent him into this world.

The head moved, eyes flitting over to Kruger as if he had just been pulled from some deep thought.

"Oh." He said.

"Angel!" Kruger leapt to his feet, finding a rush of horror as he took in the being's state. "You…You're here? But…How did you end up in such a state!?" There were too many questions. What was he doing in this world, what did it mean for others who died with unfulfilled attention, could he behelped? Too many questions, so Kruger just picked one.

The angel's eyes narrowed as the question rang out, and he looked rather like he was trying to glare at Emma.

"She went mad and attacked me." He spat the words, fury dripping off them. Kruger stared at the woman, who just shrugged.

"I didn't take the new reality well, thought everything was a dream. You've never run around killing people in a video game to see what happens?"

"No?" Kruger frowned.

"Oh. Well I did, obviously. Anyway this idiot survived his head getting yanked off and I accidentally took him with me, now we're trying to find a way back. I've done my best to protect him but…" Suddenly the girl looked so very fragile, guilt eating at her certainty. "I…I haven't been able to, not really…"

"LYING BITCH!" The Angel shrieked, contorting where he was tied to her hip and seeming to do his best to bite the girl.

"Poor thing," Emma sighed, looking down at the head sadly, "I think his mind has degenerated—maybe from brain damage, maybe just the psychological shock of losing his body. He's been unstable ever since we came here."

The Angel seemed in the throes of full-on apoplexy, having devolved into some kind of wordless rage with foam literally frothing at his mouth.

A tear actually rolled down Emma's cheek as she shook her head, not looking at the Angel. "I…Sorry it's…It's hard to see him like this…God, what have I done?"

Kruger felt a sudden stab of sympathy for her.

"No, it's…You couldn't have known, you were experiencing something almost no-one in existence can relate to. We all processed our first death differently…Just do better in the future, eh?" He tried for a reassuring smile, and by the looks of things it worked. Emma smiled back.

The Angel kept screeching.

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