Emma was panting, feeling the electric urge to back off and run as Groygar approached. She didn't heed it, not because of any mental effort to resist though. She was just too tired. Thrudvarg, continuing her proud habit of being the fucking MVP, got off a wicked haymaker into the back of the Demigod's head. Apparently he'd thought she was down for good, bad mistake to make. But not that far from the mark, unfortunately. His axe twisted around and slid cleanly through her belly, cutting more shallowly than it might have—through luck alone—but still more than enough to drop the giant.

It bought Emma enough time to move and gather her magic. Move centimetres, that was, and gather approximately enough of her magic to kill a small child who was already suffering from the bubonic plague. She sent an energy lance—more of an energy toothpick really—which succeeded in pelting Groygar directly in his cunt face just as he turned around. The explosion was pathetic, smaller than a normal man's body, let alone her target's, and not even fazing him.

Fortunately, it had also been more of a diversion than anything. Just as the Demigod paused to blink, probably at the light and surprise more than anything, Emma finished fishing out her final potion and began downing it.

The change was instantaneous, but weaker than last time. Emma had thrown a twist into making these Alchemical brews, favouring speed of action rather than gross effectiveness. Her body began quickly and painfully repairing itself just as a surge of new energy rushed through her, letting her arms come up, her mind focus, her magic crackle. Emma had thought her tank was running low, now she felt certain the entire ravine would get blown up if she wasn't careful about using it. Had her potion restored her reserves of power?

No time to ponder that, Groygar was coming right at her.

An energy lance, a matter javelin, and another explosion of Energy to send Emma back up into the air and hovering over him. She'd spent a great deal of her training time practicing just this, and it was proving itself worth the effort now. Altitude seemed to be as big an advantage in this world as it had been in her own.

Unfortunately, there was more than one way to get some. Groygar didn't miss a beat before just leaping up off the ground and shooting straight for Emma like a damned rocket. She threw a barrier up, even as she shoved herself to one side with a burst of Energy. There just wasn't enough time. Not with an enemy this fast.

His axe clipped her, the blunt-end. It barely made a difference. Emma's armour held and broke up the impact, but she was still sent uncontrollably spinning off. The world was nothing but blurry images and inconsistent wind currents for a few seconds, then she landed hard. The stone actually cracked where Emma smacked into it, so she guessed Groygar's swing had driven her downwards rather than letting gravity alone cause her fall. That was about as much thought as she had time for.

She wrapped herself in more hardlight, a cocoon of it. Emma might have just died then and there if she hadn't, because Groygar'd axe came down before she could have possibly reacted and bit clean through most of it. The edge continued, chewing apart her armour and biting into enhanced flesh.

Emma let out a scream, staring up at Groygar as he drew his axe back. There was gore clinging to the edge, glistening red and misting in the air. Emma felt the pain burning around her side, clutched at it and found herself unsure how bad the damage was. Groygar didn't look like he was planning on allowing her to find out.

That was when Vari's axe hit him in the chest, flying with all the speed of an arrow and actually cutting the Demigod's skin where it thudded hard against the centre of his breast. Emma watched Groygar step back, and took all of a quarter-second to decide that not being in melee range with him any longer than she had to was the better part of valour. His distraction gave her the chance to throw herself away with another burst of Energy.

This time, her back snagged on the ground and sent her tumbling over herself to land in a clumsy heap. Thirty metres away, though. And that distance was what counted.

Vari rushed to Emma's side, hauling her up as he readied his magic hammer and glowered at the Demigod. She was pleasantly surprised to see the Sculd still moving, he must've been even tougher than she thought.

"Get back." Emma hissed, staring down at her wound and gauging its severity. It was shallow, aching a lot but barely bleeding. She'd just been a pussy it seemed.

"What?" Groygar was charging, they didn't have long.

"The painting!" Emma snapped, discharging the energy lance she'd been powering up and aiming low. Groygar leapt over it, as she'd expected, and right into the wall of hardlight she threw up in the air. Had he been running, and prepared for it, he'd have smashed through without even slowing down. Caught in the air with such an awkward rush, and with the wall angled just right, he was sent veering off to land still shy of her.

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Emma didn't have time for an energy lance, so she settled on another matter javelin. This one was lucky, hitting an open wound and cutting it even deeper. Groygar screamed in agony, in rage, and Emma decided to harass him with a few bullets of iron shelled in hardlight. They didn't do much against him, as she might have thought, but they bought a few precious more moments while he tried to clear his tearing-up eyes and regather his scattered wits.

She couldn't win, that was a basic fact of this fight. Emma was not going to hurt Groygar until he fled or proved too weak to continue attacking, but she could buy more time for Vari. And if they got incredibly lucky, that would let her see tomorrow.

Groygar lunged, and the time to test her luck was upon Emma.

Lengths of jagged iron were conjured before her, then anchored down into the stone as Emma drove them deep using Energy and Matter. Spears, propped up and ready to skewer Groygar with his own momentum. They didn't manage it of course, half of them being dodged entirely and the other half just snapping before they'd cut him deeper than the skin. Still, it was a few more moments added onto Emma's lifespan. She threw herself back into the air and kept raining magic down on the Demigod, watching his rage boil. Good. If he thought clearly and went into this with any semblance of strategy, she was fucked. If the dumbass let himself get and stay angry, though, Emma might just have a chance.

Groygar jumped again, but Emma was already readying to throw herself back down as he left the ground.

You tried this already, moron, why did you think it'd work again?

The ability to leap dozens of metres high was certainly useful, but it was no substitute for Emma's anti-gravitational or Energy propulsion. Even without the mastery to actually fly rather than just suspend herself in the air between brief, uncontrolled lunges Emma owned the skies in this bout.

She decided to let the Demigod know that while he was still stuck in them, watching him shoot up, gauging his trajectory as she charged an energy lance, and firing it off right when the moment was perfect. It struck dead in the small of Groygar's back, sending him spinning off to land uncontrollably on the hard stone.

Emma wasn't optimistic—stupid—enough to think the fall had actually injured her enemy, but it couldn't have hurt her efforts. Groygar erupted to his feet, screaming. He seemed fine. Of course he did, everything in Emma's life was horrible.

He came again, a landslide of muscle. The iron spears didn't slow him this time, and as Emma tried to shoot herself high into the air he leapt faster than she'd expected. Emma threw herself to the side, as before, and saw too-late that Groygar had a large stone held tight in one hand.

He punted it at her.

There was a limit to how fast a head-sized rock could be thrown, there had to have been. Whatever it was, though, the speed of sound was apparently not over it. Emma heard the whip crackwhipcrack of supersonic motion reaching her ears just an instant after the stone did, and by then she was already hurtling back.

It was the sort of impact which would have instantly killed her before, Emma was almost certain of it. This time the collision met more resistance, putting all of her new armour to the test. Her mana was dwindling, but the improvements still remained strong. Matter hardened hardlight put up enough resistance that the stone just exploded on impact, the outer shell of blue cracking but remaining strong while the undersuit of yellow deformed and compressed to disperse the impact.

It was, however, still a fucking supersonic boulder. There was only so much a few inches of deceleration and a square metre of area could do to limit that. Emma blacked out for a second, even with the potion still burning away in her, and when she came to she'd already landed hard in the stone.

That at least was something her armour could handle without issue, even damaged. Emma sat there blinking, groaning as she tried to sit up. Her whole body hurt. Whatever healing her fast-acting potion had done was done already, and judging by Vari's mobility he'd already used his own too. Aexilica was still nowhere to be seen. Groygar was though, he was standing over Emma before she could get up.

She jumped, cried out as his foot came down on her chest and pinned her. The Demigod didn't seem to even be exerting himself.

"You made a fight of it." He growled, smirking now that he thought he had her. Emma couldn't have really made an argument against him, even if he'd taken the damned boot off her. She was so fucking tired. Whatever healing she'd done was over, her mana was still being drained away to repair and maintain her armour. Everything hurt. Everything was hard. Everything was coming to an end.

"Fuck…" Emma gasped, her chest hurt. It wasn't the sharp, stabbing pain of broken bones and lacerated innards. She was winded. Just winded, but that didn't make much of a difference now in any case. "Fuck you."

Groygar grinned wider.

"Your heart will make an excellent prize."

One day, Emma was going to stop being at the mercy of giant viking-expies who wanted to hold her down and cut her chest open. But it seemed that day would not be this one. She closed her eyes, wincing back from the blow she knew was coming, and waited for the end.

It didn't arrive.

"HEY!"

Emma heard Vari's voice as a deep, distant thing. It rang through her, gritted against her wits and dragged her back into the present. She snapped her eyes open and turned to stare off to one side, where the Sculd was now standing just ten metres away.

There was no weapon in either of his hands, because both were taken up by raising the painting he now held. It was just as Emma remembered seeing it, save that it was missing a single character. Groygar.

"It's over, bastard!" Vari roared, brandishing the painting like he was repelling a vampire via crucifix. "Go back to where you came from!"

For one, terrible moment Emma found herself certain the magic of the painting had been limited to simply holding the Demigod. That Groygar would simply laugh and kill her.

Then he started being dragged towards it.

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