"Fuck off." Emma told him, turning back to her Money Pile with a grin. Aexilica kept her eyes on the Jarl, but even from the corner of her own vision Emma could see the woman was far from enthusiastic about helping him.

"That's it?" He growled. "You're just going to leave me to be killed?"

Emma thought about it for all of a second.

"Uh, yeah. You gave me to a weird asshole who wanted to stab me to death. Hope Herag eats your head actually you dumb prick."

She could hear the rage in Vari's body, and it was music to her ears.

"What choice did I have?" He croaked.

"You could've not taken me as a slave, you stupid fuck." Emma reminded him. "Now get lost, I'm still staring at my new pile of money and if you don't leave me to do it in peace I'm going to throw you at a wall as hard as I can. I probably won't bother checking to see if you lived or if I saved Herag a bit of work."

He was trembling, but not with rage anymore. With fear. Emma waited to feel a stab of emotion as she saw him go, but…Didn't.

Wasn't her fault the dick had gotten his own brother to try and kill him, and she didn't owe anything to her former kidnapper.

"You sure about that?" Aexilica asked her. Emma surprised herself by getting angry all over again as she turned to the woman.

"Don't tell me you want to help the idiot." She snapped.

Aexilica remained cool in the face of her anger, cooler than Emma probably would have if someone had bitten her head off like that.

"No." She replied, evenly. "I'm asking if you're sure about rejecting him like that. If you don't want to risk your life, that's one thing. If you want to make a mockery of telling him he'll die…Be sure about it. Not that you can do anything about it now, I guess."

"Right." Emma sighed, feeling her temper wither. "Even if we could do anything, it's just a bigger risk to us. And there's plenty of less deserving people we could be trying to free from death instead, right?"

"Right." Aexilica agreed, glancing to the silver, licking her lips.

"How much is there?" She whispered.

Emma reached over, took the chest with both hands and strained her legs to raise it a few inches from the floor. One corner of it, at least.

"Gotta be eighty kilos or so." She grunted, setting it down. It really was convenient, being able to instinctively gauge mass. Another win for her Force magic, or her Matter. She'd need to figure out which was doing this. Surprisingly, Aexilica seemed to recognise what a kilogram was. Emma figured it was probably the weird translation magic she had doing its work as usual, pretty damn convenient.

"We're rich then." Aexilica whispered, as if she were scared that being overheard might cause the world to undo it.

"We're rich." Emma grinned. She knew just enough about various parts of history—mere smatterings of knowledge really—to know that precious metals measured in kilograms would go very, very far in life. "How rich though?"

Aexilica took a few seconds to reply. Emma realised she was actually having a hard time focusing on what she was being told, still just staring at the Money Pile.

"If I worked every day with no expenses, I might make a tenth of this much after my whole life…If I died at ninety."

Shit, now Emma was distracted.

"So we can just…Retire." She grinned. "Stop working, right? Buy some land somewhere, maybe a castle even, and just live off it, right?"

"I'd heard the berserkers didn't really understand material things like money." Aexilica breathed. "But this is…Gods, yes!"

Well there it was then, they were—muffled grunting. No, not grunting. Yelling, and very muffled. Emma realised what it is after only a few moments of listening, groaning as she reluctantly made her way across the room to un-hide Larry.

He was not happy.

"DAYS!" Larry roared. "DAYS, I'VE BEEN IN THERE!"

"So time isn't nothing to you, then." Emma noted idly. For some bizarre reason, it did not seem to reduce Larry's anger.

"YOU BURIED ME ALIVE FOR FUCKING DAYS!"

Emma just rolled her eyes. "You weren't buried alive, you were hidden, stop being melodramatic."

"Fuck you!"

"Would it make you feel better to know that we're rich now?" Emma asked, waiting for Larry's rage to abate. Surprisingly, it didn't.

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"What? No, are you stupid? I'm a cosmic being from higher dimensional space you dumb bitch, what use do you think I'd have for your shitty currency?"

Ah, Emma kept forgetting Larry didn't really want normal things. Which was odd, given he was missing approximately ninety five percent of his body. You'd think that would be a constant visual clue for her to remind herself with. Apparently not.

"Well be happy anyway." She snapped. "It means we have decent odds of buying a new place for ourselves, settling down somewhere nice and comfy and defensive. Somewhere I can spend my days learning more about Untethering and not burying you in clothing piles."

Larry did perk up at that, finally.

"How'd you manage that?" He frowned, eying her rather…Pointedly.

"I didn't sleep my way into it if that's what you're asking." Emma growled. Larry actually started laughing.

"Oh, I wasn't asking that. I mean, maybe I'd ask her," he glanced towards Aexilica, "But no, genuinely, how'd you get it?"

Emma told him, interrupted only by periodic snark from Larry—nothing beyond the usual then—and finishing with somewhat of a worse mood than she'd started in.

"You're an asshole." She added, in case the fact had somehow escaped Larry's notice. He grinned back up at her.

"Good news all around then." The head announced. "Looks like we can finally relax."

They couldn't, of course. It wasn't any one thing that prevented them, really just a combination of everything. The adrenaline of what had happened was still fresh in Emma's system, leaving her twitchy and jerky in the calmest moments, and borderline spasmodic in anything more hectic than that.

Around her, all around, were men who had, at some point, attempted to kill her. Maybe not directly, but they'd fought on the side of Hagor and risked their lives for the goal of getting her tied down and eviscerated. A few hadn't, but not many. For the most part Emma was surrounded by former enemies. That sat heavy in her gut.

Then there was just the memory of everything. However robust Emma liked to think of herself as being, she got more nightmares in the days after defeating Hagor than she had for all the other nights of her life combined. Apparently there was a limit to even her mental resiliance.

Aexilica seemed to be handling things about as well. Maybe Emma should've been proud to have taken everything in the same way as a woman whose entire career consisted of repeatedly throwing herself at near-death experiences and fighting free of them. Instead she just wished for a bit more solidity in her companion.

Granted, Aexilica was a good deal more productive than Emma despite it all. She trained, almost obsessively, and Emma watched her. Mostly for good reasons, of course. Out of academic interest, and the knowledge of how tactically useful it would be to gauge the limits of her companion.

"Can you stop staring at my ass?" The Aethiqi asked her, quickly snapping Emma's gaze back up to her eyes as she turned.

"No." Emma replied quickly, then winced at the look on Aexilica's face.

"Then you're sparring with me, to keep your face where I can see it."

And so she did.

Sparring with Aexilica was, to put it bluntly, terrifying. Granted Emma's touches with actual combat certainly took the edge off, but she found herself gaining a new appreciation for the sheer physical prowess of her friend by facing off against it herself. A sobering reminder that Aexilica was still one of the deadlier things she'd yet to encounter.

And getting deadlier.

It took a while to actually notice, but Aexilica was clearly benefiting from the training opportunities. The weighted equipment, the actual sparring partner, everything. Emma found her ally growing faster, stronger, tougher as they went. That would be good for her, long-term. Short-term it just meant a lot more bruises, even through her armour.

They were just killing time, ultimately, but they were killing it somewhat usefully. Before long Aexilica had healed, the castle had calmed down more, and some semblance of order was returning to everything. Emma and her were both ready to start heading off in search of greener pastures elsewhere.

It wasn't hard, there was a reason, after all, that the Sculds tended to make their money by robbing and kidnapping people rather than growing things. Not that such things were particularly uncommon in this world, Emma was quickly realising that it was a status quo alarming numbers of nations fell into. Supposedly all of the neighbouring ones except one had, at least, and so it was that one she now planned to head for.

She and Aexilica.

Funny, they'd never really spoken to each other about heading out together. Not directly. Emma had asked Aexilica what she planned to do, and Aexilica had told her.

"I have no home now," She'd said. "Not in Aethiq, and certainly not here. Not after what happened. So I say we find somewhere new."

Emma had agreed with that, and neither of them had felt the need to check that the other would come with them.

It felt strange. Emma had never really known what people were talking about when they described silent, unspoken communication with others. She still didn't, really. Whatever this was, it was nothing so intense and intimate as that, but…still, she'd never had it with anyone else either.

Funny that. The closest Emma had ever gotten to another person, and it was someone not even born in the same universe as her. Seemed danger really did hasten bonds.

Emma thought about it a while longer, then decided quite pointedly to stop thinking about it. She had too much on her mind for bullshit like that, anyway. If there were only one advantage to being an unemployed, misanthropic shut-in—and there were, in fact, many—it was that she didn't have to bother with emotional tedium like that.

She saw no reason to break her winning streak so soon.

Aexilica packed her things—almost nothing—and Emma packed her own things—absolutely nothing—and before long they were both about ready to set off. In their quarters, now cleared out, and stuffing what travel supplies they could into the smaller chest they'd procured for just such a purpose, Larry along with them, much to his chagrin and Emma's amusement. It was all going well, really. Uneventful, mundane.

Obviously, something had to go wrong. And in what she was coming to realise was true Scurlgan fashion, it was something cataclysmic.

Guards burst in, eyes hard, faces harder. The grips around their weapons were hardest of all. Aexilica was moving before any of them even were, crossing the room almost faster than Emma could react and swinging faster still. One of them was dead in an instant, the other in two more. More guards flooded in, and things quickly degenerated from there.

Emma overcame her shock less quickly than Aexilica, who seemed to think in some magically accelerated timeframe while the adrenaline was flowing, and turned her powers to helping. A volley of bullets tore through the rows of guards, clearing the way as Emma took the small chest and Aexilica the big one. Her Talisman active, Emma tore down the hallway with a sprint aided by Force.

Not again. Not fucking again. Why me? Why does everything always happen to me, and why can it not happen more slowly?

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