The tower's interior kept sloping downwards, sharply enough that Emma started wondering whether she'd even done anything more than cost herself time by avoiding the horrible, screamy-fally death pit. It probably wouldn't have even hurt her that much to fall, thinking about it. A quick whip of energy and she could make at best a parachute, and at worst a soft-ish cushion.

"How fucking big are these offering sites?" She growled, glaring at Vari now. "Why do your people have to make them so deep?" Emma's legs were getting tired, and unlike before she couldn't just ignore the problem by leaning on magic. She might actually need it to fight. Ugh.

"I've never seen one this big." Vari replied, surprising her with the awe in his voice. "I've never seen one like this at all, actually. That trap back there, that's new."

"Huh." Emma considered that. "So…Is this place not Sculd, then?"

He shook his head. "No, it is. The markings we've seen on our way in make it undeniable."

"So what's going on here?" She snapped, finding that an incomplete picture bothered her as much in this world as it ever did back at home. More, really. It was far less likely to kill her there than here.

"I don't know." Vari snapped back. He tended to do that, Emma had found. Seemed to think he had the right to get prickly with her after throwing away her fortune and almost drowning her. Asshole. It wasn't fair that Emma was stuck with him, wasn't fair that she was stuck poor, wasn't fair that she was on Murder Island instead of fucking…Big-Breasted Stripper Island.

Wasn't fair that she didn't still have enough money to actually make Big-Breasted Stripper Island if someone else hadn't already. Everything was horrible and terrible, the whole world was against her, and it was all infuriating.

There was not, Emma thought, a single person in the entire universe whose life was harder than hers.

***

Aexilica had not been tied up, and somehow she was left wishing she had been. At least then she'd have had some semblance of peace. Her current state, with the garulkan propped on her back and leaving their jaws primed to bite down into her neck the moment she moved, relaxation was but a distant memory. She couldn't even stop worrying in her defeat.

"You know, all things considered, I've been in worse situations." Asgrim grinned as he spoke, but Aexilica saw for the first time a certain fragility to it. He was scared, just like she was. Hiding it behind a smile and bravado, but scared nonetheless. They'd been trapped and left at the mercy of an enemy.

And Asgrim was the one who'd insulted him.

It wasn't hard to imagine the unique kind of pressure he would be feeling, but everyone else was far from pleased at their situation too. Except Sade, of course, who kept excitedly babbling about whether they'd be torn apart by the garulkan, or executed in some even more inventive way.

Despite herself, and Sade's insanity, and the situation and, really, life in general…Aexilica smiled. She laughed at Asgrim's jokes and grinned at Sade's antics and found herself…Liking them all.

Perhaps Emma had worn down her resistance to the charms of an endearing idiot. Perhaps she was just going mad.

So lost in her own thoughts was Aexilica that she didn't notice the sneering face of Milton, the man who demanded he be called Lord Grave, until it was mere inches away from her own. She turned her head, stared up at him. Then leaned back in disgust as he inhaled sharply enough to make his nostrils almost inflate.

He leaned back, grinning.

"You are one of the more beautiful 'moids I've seen in this world!" He declared, then stared at her expecting…What? Something from Aexilica, clearly. Gratitude? Did he expect her to be pleased? She was too busy trying to figure out what a "moid" was.

"Your breath stinks."

Aexilica just said it, then enjoyed the sight of Lord Grave's—Milton's—face twisting like cloth being wrung out. First he stared, then he glared, and then he practically stumbled back while seeming to choke on his own tongue and teeth. She made the most of it while it lasted.

"Bitch!" He snapped. "You fucking—"

—"We were talking, weren't we?" Cut in Larry, just as Milton was drawing his arm back for some sort of strike. Aexilica wondered if it would actually hurt, or if controlling those creatures was the man's only power.

She never found out, because soon enough the beast-tamer's eyes flitted back down to his other arm. The one with Larry slung under it.

"...Right, yes." He replied, sounding almost reluctant to. "It's been quite some time, hasn't it?"

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"Yeah." Larry answered. "Didn't think I'd ever be so glad to see your face."

"What?" Milton frowned, perplexed. Larry's face twitched into another position so quickly that Aexilica barely remembered what its first one had been.

"Nothing." He added hastily. "I misspoke, this has been a disorienting few months for me. Can we talk somewhere in private?"

The man named MIlton looked around, scowled, then turned to the two women standing silently behind him.

"Battle Bitches!" He declared, nodding to Aexilica and the other prisoners. "Watch them while I see to the angel."

Both women nodded in response, and said nothing to argue, but Aexilica could see by the stiffening of their features that they were far from happy.

Soon enough, Milton was gone and Larry was gone with him. Aexilica felt a stab of primal panic at that—it was one thing to be captured, seeing her associate simply snatched out of sight was quite another. Larry had volunteered to go with him, had suggested they leave in fact. In doing so, he'd taken the beast-tamer out of the equation. That was advantageous.

But was it intentional? Aexilica knew the severed head well enough to know that his odds of genuinely turning against her were far greater than zero, she doubted even Emma could've predicted what he'd do next.

She gave an experimental shift of her body as the beast-tamer disappeared, and instantly felt the garulkan's jaws come closer. Closer to her neck, closer to closing, closer to her own death. Aexilica froze, felt it lean ever so slightly back, and resisted the urge to exhale all at once. Apparently the beast-tamer's instructions would remain in the creatures minds even when he was out of sight.

Not so much of an advantage, then, his absence.

Stop that. If she kept moping about and fearing for her own doom, then she'd meet it. Aexilica had to focus. If she didn't have an advantage, then she'd make one. That was what Emma would do, that was her trick. Turn the situation inside-out and twist everything around herself to suit her own ends.

Aexilica just had to be clever.

"Who are you?" She asked the two women ahead, deciding that, absent a poorly-controlled pack of predators, they were Aexilica's next-best pick.

For a moment she feared they wouldn't even answer, as the two of them just met one another's eyes and held their silence.

"I'm Thyra, this is Noelani." The pink-haired woman replied. "We're…mercenaries." The way she said that last word had a hint of disgust and force to it, Aexilica imagined there was a story behind it. For the time being, though, she knew better than to pry.

"Why did you say that word with so much vitriol?" Asgrim asked, not even masking his open curiosity and blundering into the topic with all the grace of a drunken pig. Aexilica had to hide her own wince as the two women hardened at once.

"None of your fucking business." The one called Thyra snapped.

"Are you both beastfolk?" Haruki cut in, looking at them more with idle curiosity than grinning fascination. "Forgive me if this is a rude question, but I could not help but notice your ears. You with the rabbit ears, and you with the cat ears." He nodded to Thyra and Noelani respectively as he named them. Aexilica hadn't heard of either of those animals, but it was no surprise to her that someone as travelled as Haruki had a bit more insight.

Another pause, then Thyra sighed.

"Well shit, it's not like we've been ordered not to tell them, right?"

"Right." Noelani agreed, though with far less confidence than her friend.

Thyra turned to Haruki, paused, sighed. Then scowled as she answered him.

"We're not "beastfolk", whatever those are. Milton just makes us wear these stupid fucking things." Her lip curled as she reached up and plucked what Aexilica now saw was a pair of false ears from the top of her head, secured by a metal band and made to subtly hide under her hair.

"What the fuck?" She gasped, answering before she could think to stop herself. "Why!?"

Again, the woman's lip curled.

"Same reason he calls us his "Battle Bitches", it's some bizarre perversion of his."

"He makes me call him "senpai", whatever that is…" Noelani added, practically trembling with revulsion, "And he keeps asking me to…Stick my tongue out and roll my eyes back in my head."

Aexilica found herself going cold as they talked, and was soon left with only a single question burning in her mind.

"Has he…Touched you?" Aexilica asked. "I mean…you know, against your—"

—"No." Thyra cut in, somewhat hastily. "I don't think he could if he wanted to."

"Too cowardly." Noelani added. "He walked in on us while we were changing once by accident, and he passed out on the spot. Took an hour for us to revive him and then he started complaining about his "funny walk-in scene being ruined". I don't even know what that means, he's insane."

Aexilica was starting to piece things together now. The weird manner of speaking, his recognition of Larry, the constant references and turns of phrase that seemed drawn from the mind of a madman…

"Why do you put up with him?" Sade asked, abruptly cutting off Aexilica's thought. She seemed particularly offended by the story.

At her question, both women's faces fell and their eyes went cold.

"Becuase he has a lot of money, and gives us high level gear to accompany him." Noelani explained.

Thyra was practically trembling as she replied.

"Gives us it for a long contract, and he's keeping all our owed wages until the entire thing is up and we've compensated for what he considers to be slights against him."

Aexilica winced, but wasn't at all surprised. Such tactics were common in Aethiq, albeit without any sort of currency to constitute wages. She wasn't shocked to see them continuing in other lands and other people.

"If we don't do any of his perverse demands then he threatens to take away our equipment, and we need that to…you know."

Aexilica did know, she'd have done an awful lot to get her hands on the near-glowing arms and armour she saw on them now, too. Before meeting Emma, before getting options.

"Then you should join us!" Asgrim declared. "We'll pay you, not as well perhaps, but we'll actually give you your money. You also won't be forced to do fucked-up sex things, or be called bitches, or anything else of the sort. The Storm-Eyes would be thrilled to have fighters as powerful as you aboard!"

It was clear that Noelani was tempted, and she opened her mouth. Perhaps to accept, perhaps to ask questions, but clearly to consider it. Thyra cut in, far more coolly.

"No." She replied, knocking the wind out of Asgrim's sails.

"Why?!" He frowned, baffled more than anything. "You can't actually like this job."

"It's not about liking or disliking." She told him, carefully, and with more control than Aexilica thought she'd ever seen deliberately exerted over a voice. "Milton has powers we don't even understand, he could overpower both of us at once and then some. He claims to be from another world entirely."

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