"What was that?" Vari gasped, leaning against a wall and almost hunched over. His lungs sounded like some great big machine, and Emma swore she could actually feel the air moving from across the corridor where he was disturbing it with every breath. One day, she had to figure out how to give herself more permanent superhuman strength. Or at least start carrying around her enhancement potion.

The sand dune shifted, and Emma hastily threw down a wall of energy over it to lock it in place before turning back to the Sculd.

"We can't stay here talking." She noted, "Let's make ourselves scarce." She demonstrated the wisdom of her own advice by following it, scurrying down the hallway before either of the garulkans could claw through their obstacle.

"What is going on?" Vari asked after a while, still panting but, Emma suspected, more from fear and adrenaline than physical exhaustion. He seemed to do that thing Aexilica did where his stamina lasted long, recovered fast and more or less matched his ridiculous healing rate. Even the scrapes he'd gotten a mere hour ago were already closing up.

Emma really needed to start carrying around more potions. Or some, at least.

There were issues of course. As Larry had helpfully told her, making potions in advance was a limited tactic. They didn't last long—a week, at best. And probably less with her level of skill. That, and she couldn't guzzle too many too often anyway without giving herself magic cancer or something. Ugh. Everything was bullshit with magic.

"Are you listening to me?" Vari pressed. She blinked, frowned.

"Yes." Emma lied. "Repeat everything you just said though."

He growled the words out, and to Emma's surprise she'd actually heard them already. No wonder she got lost in her own thoughts with a question that stupid.

"Obviously, Aexilica has been captured by someone from…My own land. He's powerful, in a way that only Larry could really explain. Larry is gone though." That wasn't good at all, awful in fact. Emma needed Larry to tell her stuff about her powers.

"Okay…" Vari seemed to calm down for some reason. Had he not pieced any of that together himself? Ah, yeah he probably hadn't. Idiot. Emma had forgotten for a second there.

"Okay." Emma nodded. "So what do we do next?" She was pacing now. They'd stopped running, somewhere along the way. She hadn't even noticed when. Wasn't noticing a lot, now, there was too much else to think about. All of it ahead and above.

"You go ahead and free Aexilica." Emma decided at once, then turned to look…Back the way they'd come. Shit.

"Why just me?" Vari frowned.

"Because one of us has to distract that idiot while you do it." She sighed. "And I don't think you'd last half as long as me."

Vari did not contradict her.

They moved out, sticking together for the time being only because Emma didn't know another way they could take to reach Aexilica. Even the way she was taking was based on more suppositions than she'd have preferred.

Emma was soon back on the other side of the sand dune, and she paused beside it to listen. No sound from the other side. Which didn't tell her much, of course. It was thick enough that any sound short of active thrashing and clawing would have just been smothered. She studied the pile. Considered it. If she strained herself, Emma could probably shove the top portion over. It was more than a few tons, but as long as she didn't need to fully lift and throw the weight it shouldn't be a problem for her powers.

But did she want to burn precious mana on doing that?

Yes, the risk of finding a trio of garulkan waiting for her on the other side was just too great not to.

Emma did shove the sand, and it did topple over with a noise like…Well, like several tons of sand falling very hard. She heard a short, sharp set of shriekds from the other side which told her she was not, in fact, wasting her mana. Before the source, or sources, had chance to rise, Emma threw down a platform of hardened energy atop the sand pile, then buried it under another mass of silica to keep them pinned.

Again, she was faced with a decision. Did Emma leave them immobilised and head on ahead or not?

Again, no choice in the matter. She couldn't have a threat like this at her back. Extending as much will and power as she could, Emma's Energy shot through the sand and heated it up enough to leave waves of heat visibly radiating through the air. It was only Emma's second time burning something to death while simultaneously burying it alive, but in her rather limited experience she liked to think she was getting quite good at it. The garulkan were durable, but not that durable. Not "trapped under a bonfire but lives" durable, at least.

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The screaming stopped shortly after bloody steam started hissing up from the sand.

"I…Heard that was how you killed Hagor." Vari breathed, staring at the conflagration.

"Let's hurry." Emma growled, annoyed already to have wasted so much time with Aexilica being held prisoner. She thundered on down the corridor.

It was, she thought, too much to hope that her next fight would begin as an ambush too.

Emma found herself wishing the corridors would lengthen ahead of her, because every step she took down them left her more uneasy than the one before.

Earlier on, she'd found the journey stretching out as she urged it to end. Now she was fearing for her life, it became vanishingly short. All in accordance with the laws of physics, naturally. She reached the end of the corridor, she found Lord Graves standing right where he'd been left.

Their eyes met, and he had just long enough to look surprised and pull a stupid face before Emma's energy lance came burning towards him.

He dove aside, the bastard. Emma watched her beam of screaming energy shoot wide and hit the wall behind him, basically killing it instantly and abruptly filling the chamber with opaque clouds of dust and hissing globules of molten stone. Emma had been half-expecting that kind of speed, she figured Larry wouldn't be anywhere near as nervous about her fighting someone without a degree of survivability. Given how common superhuman physicality seemed in this world it was one of her first guesses.

But there wasn't time to cycle through any of the others, Graves was rising and twisting. His hand moved in a way Emma didn't quite know how to make sense of, but she'd been in enough fights now to not stand still and let him do whatever he was trying to. She dove to one side, too, and threw out another barrier for good measure. Grave's attack hit it so hard that Emma felt her teeth rattling from the force of it.

She landed, rolled, came up and then cried out. Her wall of energy fell away in two jaggedly-separated halves, and her leg burned with pain where the weapon responsible had blasted through, penetrated her armour and still boasted enough left-over energy to cut into the muscle.

Emma didn't stop to examine the damage, just felt her leg buckle and applied a hasty Force effect to hold herself up and overcome it. Her hands moved almost faster than her eyes could follow, fingers dancing and magic pouring out. The air was soon alight with it.

But Lord Graves only grinned.

***

There was a rumbling in the walls and floor, Aexilica could hear it clearly with how tightly she was being pressed against the hard stone beneath her. The source was beyond her reckoning, but it didn't seem to be relenting.

Atop her, the garulkan shifted. A few of the creatures had peeled off before and made their way down the corridor. Aexilica hadn't dared move, even then, because there were still a good few of them—more now that several others had entered to partly replace the three which had left. Aexilica strained her ears, but the sounds from down the corridor betrayed nothing new to her. She was left pressed down to lie in her frustration for some seconds more before more of the garulkan peeled off from the group and began heading down the corridor.

At the same time, Thyra and Noelani approached their prisoners with chains and shackles. Shortly, Aexilica and the Storm-Eyes were all bound in metal rather than violence.

"You don't need to do this!" She called after the women, realising soon that they had tied the group up because they were about to leave. Them and the garulkan, in all. Rushing off to whatever was making the sounds. Battle, Aexilica gathered now.

Battle with Emma, the only person she knew—save perhaps from Herag—who may have impeded a monster like Milton for so long.

Neither of the women heeded her words however, neither even looked back at her. Perhaps that was a good sign for persuading them in the long term, but whatever lack of conviction kept them from meeting her eye did nothing to dissuade their leaving.

It wasn't until another few minutes, filled by the sounds of rattling chains and grunting exertion, that new footsteps echoed through the chamber. Aexilica turned her head, and found perhaps the least-expected person she might have imagined entering.

Vari. The idiot. He didn't look much the worse for wear, all things considered. Certainly better than she probably did, the bastard. But he didn't waste time gloating or posturing either, simply rushed straight for Aexilica—the nearest prisoner—and raised his axe high.

She winced, then felt herself falling as the blade cleaved clean through the chain suspending her. Aexilica landed with a gasp.

"We don't have long." Vari urged, swinging again—not bothering to give any more warning this time— and bifurcating the thick iron holding Aexilica's arms at her back. She was freed, instantly. For a moment she just moved, testing her joints and feeling them ease back into smooth motion. The Sculd was moving onto their associates now, and Aexilica started to join him. Paused. She looked around for her sword instead, freedom wouldn't mean anything if she just got overpowered and captured all over again.

"What's going on?" She asked as she searched the room. Aexilica knew her sword was somewhere in it, and though the place was large there weren't so many crannies it could've been stashed in. Sure enough, it was soon fitting within her hand. Heavy and reassuring, edge blunted by hard use but still sharp enough to do its work.

Vari explained everything with admirable speed, and every word left Aexilica more eager to rush away and help Emma than the last. She had to actively exert herself just to stay and free her other allies first, using the pommel-end of her sword to smash down on their chains and break them apart. No use in ruining the blade even more against solid metal.

Everyone was free in under a minute. It felt long, too long. A minute was time for so very much to happen in combat, and Aexilica's friend was the one it would all be happening to. She turned and sprinted.

Her brief period of captivity had, if nothing else, given her chance to recover. The knocks and scrapes of combat still stung where they rested in her body—would probably continue to for at least a full day—but the simple fatigue of her exertions was practically gone. Aexilica was as close to full strength as she could hope to get, and tore down the hall atop legs that carried her three of her own body-length with every stride.

It did not, at that speed, take long to arrive. But that did not mean it didn't take too long, either.

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