Emma had to say, Vari the Idiot's stamina, if nothing else, was…commendable. She'd fully anticipated a lot of infuriatingly dumb requests to take breaks and slow down, but he just kept powering on through the island as if he hadn't just swam a kilometre while weighed down by fifty kilos of iron and unconscious woman. It was actually somewhat infuriating, and probably would've been a lot moreso if she herself hadn't been using magic to ease her own journey as well.

Nothing particularly new, save for an experimental application of Force. Emma could apply it to herself, now, and apply it upwards.

Not to fly. She'd learned that much painfully on the ship, flight was, apparently, quite fucking complicated. It wasn't enough to just reverse gravity, that was falling upwards. Nor did simply ignoring gravity and propelling herself through the air with periodic bursts of Energy work either, Emma found that one of the most disorienting experiences of her life.

At the end of the day, the fundamental limit wasn't her magic at all. Not directly at least. Humans just weren't cut out to maneuver their own bodies through the air. All the thousand instinctual adjustments and balances Emma's limbs and torso made on a moment by moment basis to navigate the ground were useless in the air.

And she sure as shit wasn't doing the equivalent through conscious mental labour.

For now, the skies were beyond her reach. So Emma just made herself lighter instead.

It was amazing how much easier walking became when she had a quarter of the weight to move. Much less than that and Emma started to struggle even gripping the ground with her feet, not that she was mostly moving by muscular strength of course. With every step she sent herself along a bit with Energy too.

Emma was very aware of the dangers that came from exhausting her mana too quickly, especially if she got tangled up in a fight. Vari had, despite his idiocy, actually saved her life, and seemingly watched over her while she was unconscious. Emma was fairly sure she hadn't been molested by him either, so she actually could probably trust him. But that didn't mean she could trust him to win if they got jumped out of nowhere.

"How did you even learn magic?" Vari asked her, abruptly. Emma turned to him, frowning.

"You're not my friend."

He scowled at that. "I'm glad I'm not your friend, but I'm still curious."

"Well tough shit." She snapped back. "You don't get an answer from me just because you're curious."

It was interesting that he didn't know already, or at least didn't know what she'd told his father. Perhaps the Earl hadn't been so communicative with his older son. That sparked Emma's curiosity.

"I was born with them, but they only awakened recently. It's not something anyone can learn." She reluctantly explained.

Vari nodded along at that, seeming transfixed.

"And what do they do exactly, I've seen you make heat without fire, movement without wind. Throw out sand, and cast stones, not to mention that strange ice you conjure that isn't cool to the touch."

Ice? Oh, her energy constructs. It sort of did look like ice, Emma supposed. If you didn't have "science fiction hard-light" as a reference. But Vari's questions were too tedious for her to deal with all at once.

"How about you give me a few answers," She countered, "and I'll respond with a few more?"

This was, of course, the plan from the beginning. Emma was hardly going to give him knowledge for nothing, not when she was suddenly curious herself and with such a large remainder of their damned walk still left.

"Fine." Vari grumbled, seeming on edge. Suspicious. Suspicious of Emma? It was unthinkable, she was such a bastion of goodness and honesty that it ought to have had him struck down by the heavens themselves to even humour such a notion.

"What's the deal with you and your brother?" Emma asked at once. "How was it that you ended up…" She felt her blood boiling. "...Being forced to escape as you did."

Apparently noticing the latest surge in her anger, Vari was very wise in taking care how he responded. Emma could appreciate, if nothing else, a fellow believer in self-preservation.

"Herag always hated me." Vari scowled, suddenly self-pitying. Emma found that somewhat repulsive, but knew she'd only prolong the whining if she interrupted. "He was a mad fucker even as a boy, don't let him tell you otherwise. He'd have…Periods of insanity, violent insanity. Some thought the Gods whispered to him but…" His lip curled. "They didn't. No God would whisper the sorts of things that a boy like that must have heard. It was all him."

That actually left Emma somewhat unbalanced, and she found a sickly fear welling in her as she thought back to sharing a carriage with the apparently violent insane man.

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"What sort of stuff did he do?" She asked, mouth dry.

Vari took a moment before responding.

"When I was eight, he tore the head off a dog. Tore, not cut. With his hands. It was a bear-killer hound, bigger than he was."

Emma didn't really know what to say at that, and Vari grinned as he saw her reaction.

"Yeah, that surprises everyone."

"Not that surprising though." She noted, thinking back to the sight of him fighting. "He definitely strikes me as the sort of person who'd do that. Weirdo."

Vari grinned again, but whatever he was about to say next disappeared beneath the sudden sound of snapping wood and crashing strides. Both of them turned at once to see the creature lunging for them.

It wasn't so much bigger than a person, Emma thought, but it moved like something a tenth of its weight. Long body, long limbs, long head and fucking long talons and teeth. Its frame was protected by glittering scales, and smoking drool drizzled from its open maw.

Naturally, it went straight for her. Animals just did that, perhaps mistaking her for a child and acting on hunting instincts. She acted on instincts too, calling on her energy armour—thankfully still accessible thanks to her Talisman remaining attached in the ocean—and threw up an external shield of energy for good measure. Emma was treated to the sight of her defences impacting the creature in a great, meteoric smash before it burst through.

Then she was flying.

Emma's brief transit through the air ended with a painful crunch as she hit one of the tropical palm trees that seemed to be growing everywhere on the island. Coconuts fell down on her, naturally, but compared to the initial collision they didn't even register at all. Her armour was cracked all over, buckled inwards at both the point where the creature had butted her and the section where she'd smacked into the tree. Everything hurt, her head was feeling foggy, and she was pretty sure her period was starting. That last one didn't seem likely to be the cause of this new magical creature, but at this point Emma was looking to blame about everything she could on the fucking thing.

She rose quickly, with a burst of Energy to raise her up to her feet, just in time to see Vari the Idiot go flying too. Emma saw him land, bounce and land again before rolling to a stop. The big monster-thing was still closing on him and she knew it wouldn't take long to kill the idiot. He was, at the moment at least, also a useful idiot, so she got to acting fast in order to prevent that.

Her bullets struck it right in the flank, all bursting from the same shotgun-barrel she'd spent so long at sea practicing. Emma discovered, right then and there, several new benefits to her practice.

The first, of course, was her raw power. The second was the heightened momentum of her now iron-cored projectiles, and the third was the reduced waste of launching them and how it converted directly into more speed. All of these combined meant that the armour plating that covered the creature just shattered apart, flying from its body in miniscule, pulverised bits of chitin. Her projectiles stopped only when they were lodging deep into the creature's actual flesh, drawing forth yellow blood and inspiring perhaps the loudest scream Emma had ever personally heard.

It turned to her instantly, of course. Just in time to catch another shotgun spray into its face, then it was on her.

Emma hadn't thought to repair her armour, and that thought bounced around in her head as she stared up into the monster's jaws and realised they might be the last thing she saw. With one bite it started cracking through the hardened energy of her right shoulder and upper torso, sending great breaks running along the substance and widening them by the second. Emma struggled, screamed, temporarily forgetting her magic together in the throes of a raw and animal panic. Of course, it did nothing. And by the time she'd gathered her thoughts for a more coherent attack she could feel the pressure beneath her armour, and feel it growing.

Vari hit the thing with a rock.

That wasn't really doing justice to his attack, he didn't just hit it with a rock. Vari hit it with a bigger rock than Emma had ever seen a human being lift, let alone swing. The thing must've been half again the size of her own torso—almost as big as a normal person's even. Apparently, whatever selective pressure had made this monster evolve superpowers for some reason, one hundred pounds falling down on its head from a full metre above, plus interest from super strength, was past the limit of its resilience.

Particularly when one of the stone's sharper edges crunched down into a patch of scales that'd been damaged by Emma's attack.

She heard it shriek, watched it back away and start thrashing and screaming. Yellow ichor spattered everywhere as its limbs convulsed almost randomly, then it was rounding on Vari. Emma knew better than to give it the opportunity to turn its terrible strength and devastating talons on him. It got no more than two strides before her energy lance plowed into its flank.

The forest actually caught fire.

Emma had known she'd gotten more powerful, but it was something else entirely to see that demonstrated as she unleashed said power with her deadliest attack. The heat it put out ignited wood and leaves, flash-boiled the moisture around it and left Emma feeling scorching waves even through her thinning armour. The force was similarly dramatic, simply tossing the creature back into a tree just as it had Emma. When it landed, she saw a great burn weeping blood right down the side she'd blasted. Scales had been blown entirely clear of the monster, too, and most of that side was now exposed.

It was still moving, still moving angrily, but limping, weakened, slowed. Giving her the perfect opportunity to finish things. Emma conjured another cylinder, and fired her kinetic javelin.

Giving cool names to her attacks made it a lot easier to remember them, like some mnemonic aid. And this attack in particular was the one where she accelerated a length of stone with Force and Energy. Except it wasn't stone, now, but rather energy-jacketed iron, and when it hit the monster it dug through its exposed flank, dug through its torso, exploded out through the other side and, apparently, sunk deeply enough into the tree behind it that Emma's target was fully nailed to the trunk.

For a few seconds, it just remained stuck on the end of the misshapen, impact-twisted iron. Thrashing around and squealing in agony, foaming at the mouth and throwing itself at both Emma and Vari in regular intervals, never seeming to quite realise that it would be going nowhere fast with the javelin sticking out of it.

Then, at last, it died. Emma felt quite proud of the fight, grinning as she stood there and panted. Right up until several more of the creatures emerged.

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