Emma was pleasantly surprised to find the corridor growing lighter as she continued. It was sugar on top of the sunday that it had also stopped sloping downwards, though had not yet started heading back up.

Then again, an upwards incline might've been more than she could manage in her current condition. Another half-hour had left her mana reserves to replenish somewhat at least, but Emma was now almost-pathologically waiting until they topped off entirely. Something told her she'd be looking forwards to a far deadlier-than-normal fight in this tower, and she wanted all the energy she had when it came.

Vari seemed to have a similar philosophy, having drawn his weapon a while ago and spent the duration of their walk practically molesting it. Emma would've made fun of him, if she hadn't needed all of her precious oxygen to keep up the damned walk.

Ahead, the light grew stronger. But not just that, something else accompanied it. Sound. Emma hurried, somewhat. Eagerness displacing her fatigue, drawing her on. Light and sound were the hallmark of human presence, after all.

Okay, sure. They were also the hallmark of a nuclear fireball, pit of magma, remote tribe of fire-wielding cannibalistic apes and a great number of other things, but the odds of this being the Storm-Eye Crew were good enough to urge her on.

She reached the light, stepped out into a big, surprisingly well-lit chamber and…Saw nobody.

Nobody that she knew, that was. Because there was someone there. A short, greasy-looking guy with long, black hair that fell in a big tangle from his scalp. He was pale, had a bad case of "gamer slouch" and didn't seem to have noticed Emma just yet. She kept her eyes on his pimply face for a few more moments. He was talking, to himself? Odd, but then this world was full of weirdos—

—No. No. Not to himself at all.

"Larry!" Emma yelled, getting the man's attention and, simultaneously, that of her pet severed head. Hell must've been frozen, because Larry actually looked pleased to see her.

"Emma, holy shit I thought you were dead!"

The man looked between them, scowling.

"You know her?" He asked Larry.

Larry blanched. "Uh, kind of. A little bit, yeah. An acquaintance really."

The man sniffed with distaste. "I see." He turned to Emma now. "I've claimed the angel's head as my own, you can just run along now and keep yourself busy with something else."

Emma decided in that single moment that she didn't like this man very much.

"Fuck you." She replied, turning to Larry. "Who is this dick?"

Larry hesitated, glancing to the stranger, then back to the man. In that pause, the man spoke on his own behalf.

"I am LORD GRAVES!" He roared, as if Emma were supposed to recognise his name.

In fact, she did.

"Wait, you're that asshole from WOW classic who kept following me around and yelling stuff in chat?"

He froze, staring at her.

"You…Wait, you know WOW classic? You…You were on WOW classic?!"

She grinned, enjoying herself now.

"Yeah, yeah Lord Graves. Everyone knew you right? I can't even remember why you started yelling at me."

"YOU'RE PIXIESTICK!" He cried out, actually taking a step back as his eyes shot up with realisation. "You—YOU!"

Emma was almost impressed at him figuring out her handle, but far too amused for anything but more laughter.

"Oh, I remember now!" She grinned. "You lost that deathroll to me."

"I WON!" The man roared. "I WON TWENTY THOUSAND GOLD FROM YOU, AND YOU JUST REFUSED TO PAY UP!"

"I don't remember that at all." Emma sniffed, eying Larry now. "Larry, this is one of the other idiots you sent through to this world?"

"Emma, be careful—"

—"Shut it, Larry." Lord Graves snapped, tossing the head to one side and rounding on Emma.

"You know," He began, "I had to put up with people like you everywhere back home. I shouldn't be surprised that you're a woman, it was obvious from how you felt entitled to my money. Well guess what, bitch? I have the power here. I have MAGIC. And it's payback time for you disrespecting—"

Emma's blast of conjured sand hit him right in the face, blinding him as the debris lodged itself in his eyes and filled them with tears. He cried out, stumbled back, and gave her precious moments to charge an energy lance.

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…But that'd probably kill him, and however much of a dick he was Emma didn't think he deserved that.

She pelted him in the gut with a ball of energy instead, made solid-ish and hard-ish in the same way that a ball of thick rubber was. It deformed just enough, she thought, not to do any permanent harm as Lord Graves was bowled over and left puking on the ground.

"Ha!" Emma laughed. "You have power here? I'm Untethered you dumb asshole, nice try!" Emma punctuated her gloating with a few pelvic thrusts, feeling the same rush of excitement she did every time a male proved himself unable to match her.

It was, however, premature. She saw movement in the corridor behind Graves a moment later, and recognised the approaching Garulkan an instant after that. Vari's sword was out, posture defensive. Graves was laughing between heaves.

"You stupid cunt!" He laughed louder. "I'm the Beast Tamer, LORD GRAVES!"

Emma turned to Larry as she backed off from the garulkan, and he seemed to hear her unasked question.

"I was trying to warn you, we gave him a bullshit Isekai power! You can't fight him, not yet!"

Well, shit. Why couldn't the stupid dick have spoken up sooner?

One of the garulkan lunged, interrupting Emma's detailed critique of Larry's tactics as it came flying like something fired from a catapult. Her armour was up already, and she bolstered it with a barrier of energy. Same thing she'd done last time, almost.

The difference now was that her barrier was only an outer shell of energy, filling its inside was hastily-conjured sand. The energy broke, tore apart by sharp talons and fangs. The sand did not, because sharpness didn't matter when the thing you were cutting into was already pulverized.

Emma watched the garulkan smash into her barricade and sort of bounce off it. The other two came flying forwards, so she used her old trick. Hardening the energy into brittle fragility for a brief moment and then blasting it forwards with a wave of kinetic energy. The shrapnel didn't fly with enough speed, mass or energy to do serious damage, not to creatures covered in natural amrour, but she certainly made them think better than attacking for a few minutes as they staggered back wiping at their cut faces.

Vari was fighting one, too. Backing away and parrying its unrelenting attacks, that left her to take the other three. She decided to leave his enemy, her hands were full enough already.

Emma's energy lance struck one of the recovering garulkan just as it readied another pounce, sending it fully across the chamber and briefly reducing her number of opponents to two. The others, unfortunately, were coming on too fast for her to repeat it. Emma blasted out another jet of sand and let it blow one of them off course, the other came down onto her directly.

Her armour gave, of course. Talons biting through and nicking Emma's skin. That was all the garulkan had chance to do before her hands closed around its head and her magic started moving. Emma felt the scales and skin, directed Matter magic into them both and felt them weaken. Then she just squeezed. With grip strength, yes, but with will too. That much kinetic energy following that much weakening was more than the fragile body could take.

Scales gave in, skull followed a moment later, brain matter a moment after that. The blood exploded out like juice from crushed fruit, bits of brain coming with it. Emma got some in her mouth. Not pleasant.

More pleasant than being mauled, though. She started to try and shove the thing off her before realising its limp corpse was simply too heavy, then the other garulkan circled around and bit for her head. Force wrapped around Emma, dragging her out from under her enemy and sliding her off along the ground. She felt real clever for that escape, right up until her own magic smacked her to a meaty stop against the far wall.

Emma's armour stopped her from crumpling like a tin can, that was about the extent of its contribution to her continued existence. She got up, felt dizzy and immediately plopped back down onto her face. The garulkan—both of them, now—were charging all over. She had maybe a second before they cleared the ten metres separating them and started slashing away.

Those talons could go through her armour at the best of times, they'd certainly get through it now that cutting and collisions had weakened the stuff further.

No time for anything fancy, Emma just waved a hand and threw as much will out into the air as she could manage. It took the form of wind, rushing through the chamber and sending both her enemies off-course. Something grabbed her hard around the arm, and Emma was halfway into attacking it blindly before she recognised Vari the Idiot hauling her up.

"We need to run!" He spat, dragging her along as he started his sprint. Emma followed without argument. It didnt' take much thinking to decide that they did, in fact, need to run. And so she added a Force effect to her body and took off down the corridor alongside him. They were probably moving faster than any olympic sprinter ever had, maybe faster than any racehorse.

But not as fast as the garulkan, all three of the creatures were chasing them down and gaining by the stride. Inevitable as the grave.

"Run while you can!" Graves called back. "The tables have turned now, cunt! You can't hide behind society and accuse me of being sexist here, ha!"

Emma had about a million retorts for that, but lacked the breath to spare on any of them. She just kept running, reached out with her will to send blasts of hardened energy into walls and ceilings in the hopes of putting up a dust-wall behind her. It didn't work, barely even scratched the stone, so she tried something new instead.

Not creative, but new. Emma blasted sand out ahead of her, letting it pile up. The recoil actually slowed her, somewhat, which was one of the more terrifying things she'd experienced recently given the circumstances. But she kept it up all the same, didn't have much choice in the matter.

"What are you doing?!" Vari cried, seeming just as terrified as she felt. Probably more, he didn't have the luxury of knowing exactly what Emma's plan was. And she didn't have the luxury of wasting her precious breath to fill him in, so she just kept spewing out the sand and let it pile up.

Weeks ago, it would've taken her at least half a minute to fully fill the corridor. But her power had grown since then, and grown exponentially. After only five seconds Emma was already mostly done.

Mostly, that was the critical part. She'd left a half-metre of clearance at the top of it.

"Over!" She urged Vari, picking up speed now that the recoil was gone and, for good measure, picking up even more by intensifying her Force effect. She jumped, heightened the Force more and let it carry her fast and high. Almost scraping the ceiling, Emma winced as the tip of her own sand-dune came rushing towards her.

She passed over it, and under the surface above. Half a metre was really quite a lot of clearance, even if her energy armour left her with about as wide a profile as most grown men. Vari came next, clipping the dune and dropping down clumsily to land at its base. Then Emma was firing out more sand before the monsters could follow.

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