Aexilica hadn't missed the crater on the beach, but even if she had the Storm-Eyes would have caught it anyway. It was Emma's doing, of course. Putting aside how it matched almost exactly the kinds of impacts Aexilica had seen from the girl's energy lances, she was simply the only human occupant of this island that they knew of.

Which made it a promising sight, flooding Aexilica with confidence and actually bringing a smile to her face. She was almost shocked not to see her mood mirrored in much of the Storm-Eyes.

Captain Asgrim was perhaps the most cheery, despite, for the moment, seemingly fully absorbed by his command as he ordered the ship carefully secured and put together the party of their finest. Haruki, Sade, himself and Aexilica would be the ones to survey the island. That was fine by Aexilica, she'd not have chosen anyone else to have her back in a fight at this stage. That they'd brought around ten others, too, was just extra cause for confidence.

And Larry, of course. Aexilica had elected to take him if only out of fear that the island was unknown, and keen awareness that his strange senses and knowledge might help. Larry did not seem happy about this.

"Why do I have to get dragged through leach-land just because that idiot got herself knocked out?" He snapped. "Just leave me on the ship."

Fortunately, Larry did not have any arms or legs, so Aexilica could more or less take him where she pleased.

They departed into the forest shortly, and didn't take long to uncover more signs of Emma's presence. Some deliberate—marks in trees, arrows burned into the wood and other such things. Some…Less so.

Aexilica imagined the five hundred pound, armour-plated monster pinned to a badly scorched tree by a giant length of iron had probably not been put there as part of some premeditated effort at catching her attention.

"This island has gurulkan!" Asgrim laughed, clapping his hands. "Brilliant!"

"Gurulkan?" Aexilica frowned, as they followed the trail of what Haruki believed was an impressively large man and extremely large rodent being pursued by several more of the beasts. Emma, no doubt.

"Shelled predators." Sade explained. "Mad with magic. The one back there is about average. Poisonous blood, hunts by sound and smell, talons that hold an edge better than cold iron and scales that provide as much protection as scale armour."

Aexilica did not see where any of their enthusiasm was coming from.

"You said a pack of them was after Emma?" She croaked.

"Yes." Haruki confirmed, and Asgrim laughed again. Larry laughed too, but for different reasons.

"We need to remember where this one's corpse is!" The captain announced. "Garulkan scales sell for half their weight in iron, we'll have a wide profit if we flay the lot of them."

Aexilica just tuned the madman out. The Storm-Eye pirates, she had learned, did not generally fear death, and would quite readily march towards it if they even suspected that some form of profit would await them on the other end. Asgrim embodied this tenet more than the rest of his crew combined.

They followed the trail with the sort of reckless abandon that Aexilica would have expected only madmen to possess, and, of course, were soon attacked by some of the creatures.

Shelled predators. It felt somehow insufficient, for these armoured war-engines. Three of them attacked at once. Sade and the ten men-at-arms tied up one of the beasts, the woman snaking in and striking at it with her long-knives while subordinates harassed and repelled it with ceaseless spear-thrusts. Aexilica and Haruki had their hands tied up in fighting the second. Either of them might have killed it alone, at the cost of grievous injury and a great exertion of time and effort. With both at once, now familiar with how each other fought, they made short work of it. Coaxing out blows and striking in the openings the other made, they soon hacked it down and left arterial blood leaching from it into the jungle floor.

So it was a surprise when they looked up to find the third garulkan, one attacked by captain Asgrim alone, had already perished. A single scratch rested over the captain's left ear, beside that he seemed unhurt. He was barely even breathing hard.

"Bracing!" He grinned. "Alright everyone, remember where we left these, let's keep going."

Aexilica was without words, so she just followed in silence. Larry of course had more to say.

"So what exactly was it that gave you the idea to travel with these people?" He prodded. "I guess it could be worse, they don't seem particularly rapey as far as pirates go, but—"

—"I really am not in the mood for this now, Larry." Aexilica snapped, glaring at the head. One relieving thing about the Storm-Eyes was that she did not, apparently, need to hide Larry from them. None of the pirates cared about her and Emma travelling with a talking severed head, and Asgrim had outright told her he'd seen worse and weirder. Larry's conversation, though, was its own punishment.

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As they made it through the jungle, as they crossed into a clearing, and as they all paused to stare up at the structure now revealed by the canopy disappearing from overhead.

It was a tower, or part of one. Aexilica found the term almost ill-suited to describe it. The thing stood taller than the castle back in Vichin, and thought it was carefully cramped atop a hill it was wider than any three of the buildings back at Tepetlmoseua. Stone, she thought, was its main construct, and though enough vines hung down its sides to betray a great length of time left unmaintained by man, it seemed rather well preserved.

The trail continued towards it.

"Emma." Aexilica breathed. "She'll have gone there, I know it."

"Treasure." Asgrim grinned. "It'll be stashed there, I know it!"

She glared at him, which the captain didn't seem to notice.

"Probably traps, too." Sade whispered, longingly. "And some giant, horrible monster. I bet we won't even be able to put up a fight at all before it kills us. I doubt our corpses won't even be recognisable." She licked her lips, seeming to grow more excited by the word.

What the fuck was wrong with these people?

"What the fuck is wrong with you people?" Larry snapped, staring at them all and being promptly ignored. Aexilica found that funny enough to distract from her lunatic companions, but not from Emma.

"We need to keep going." She urged, hurrying on and, almost to her own surprise, driving the group forwards herself now.

"You seem awfully stressed." Asgrim noted, as they hurried on, "Are you alright?"

What? What?

"What?" Aexilica stared at him. "My friend is missing and we're wading through murder island, why would I be alright?"

Laughter rang out at that, mocking. Directed to her.

"Relax." Asgrim grinned. "This is nothing, a pleasant stroll. We've been through worse scrapes, haven't we men?"

"Aye!" They called in unison, still laughing. One of the larger ones chose to speak up then.

"Maybe her highness should stop being such a whimp if a little bad weather and a few angry critters can frighten he—" His foot came down on something, a vine, perhaps. Instantly a great plant stem erupted from the ground and impaled him, entering up through his groin and bursting out through the top of his head. Blood and brains sprayed in all directions as the kicking, jerking corpse spent a last few moments in spasmodic trembles, then was dragged down to disappear beneath the ground.

Everyone was silent for a second, and that silence was broken only by Sade.

"No!" She groaned. "That was such a cool death, why did it have to be fucking Henri? I'm right here!"

I'm going to die on this island. Aexilica decided.

***

Somehow, Emma managed to lose the creatures. It was more luck than strategy, she had to admit. And more magic than physicality. By the time she'd actually escaped her feet were spending perhaps five percent of the time actually in contact with the ground, mostly she'd just ragdolled herself on ahead with Energy and Force while trusting in her armor to keep her from dying if she impacted any obstacles that proved particularly hard and unyielding.

It was actually kind of cool, just throwing herself across the island. And the effect was only somewhat spoiled when Emma realised that Vari the Idiot had somehow kept pace. Asshole. With his stupid, gazelle-like legs. Watching him sprint was like watching some sprinting machine. Emma hated tall people. Hoped they all died actually.

"We lost them." Vari grunted.

"Wow, observant aren't you?" Emma snapped, pacing, scowling. She'd seen the tower of course, seen that for two glorious seconds while continuing her sprint. Now, at last, she had the chance to talk about it.

"That'll be the offering site you mentioned?" Emma asked, nodding up to the thing. It was awfully close now, maybe a kilometre or two away at most. Telekinetically fastballing herself through the woods for several minutes tended to have that effect on things, she supposed.

"Yes…" Vari replied, testily. "Are you planning on looting it?"

Emma grinned, didn't answer, and started for the tower. The way they'd run had left them somewhat out of its way, and their options for reaching it now were between doubling back—and getting the world's pointiest gang-initiation from those weird predators—or half-climbing the hill.

Emma's mana was dwindling, not enough to be a hard limit but enough that she didn't want to exhaust it any more. She sighed, and started walking on mundane legs.

***

Heading for the tower had been no question at all. Aexilica didn't know Emma that much, or rather hadn't known her for that long. No more than a few months. But the things they'd been through together, and the time they'd been forced to spend together, had made those few months quite intense as far as bonding experiences went. She fancied that she knew Emma rather well by now.

Well enough to be very confident she'd head straight for the tower, which was well enough in this case.

"Onwards!" Asgrim roared. "Come on, onwards straight for the tower!"

The pirates were at least as enthusiastic about treasure as Emma, despite not having recently lost a fortune. Aexilica didn't think she could've persuaded them away from their current course if she'd tried. So on they went.

It actually wasn't so hard a trek, either. The path up to the structure was far from maintained, but it was straight and relatively flat. They reached it within another quarter-hour, and were soon examining the tower up-close.

Much of what they'd seen from afar remained true now, save that the stone was eerily untouched. Not just well-preserved, seemingly invulnerable to the ravages of nature.

"Magic stone." Sade frowned, touching one of the walls idly. "And lots of it, this would've been…Expensive."

"Expensive enough to bankrupt kings." Haruki added, as Asgrim seemed to become temporarily incapable of speech.

"On—war—sgrah!" He choked, practically swallowing his own tongue with excitement as he more or less sprinted into the dark. The rest of them followed, Aexilica reluctantly, Haruki dutifully, everyone else…enthusiastically.

Even Larry was suddenly less talkative, as if he'd been struck mute by the surprise at discovering this new order of idiot. Aexilica felt strange to actually agree with him about something.

"We should wait for Emma!" Aexilica snapped after the captain, who only laughed.

"Better to clear the tower out first so we have a safe retreat when she arrives!" He countered.

"Also, we might die!" Sade added.

Aexilica steeled herself for the very real possibility of dying here, surrounded by these people, over nothing. And had just barely begun to let it settle in her mind when the first attack came.

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