First, the doors closed. That was more or less expected. Emma had seen already that they had a self-opening mechanism, why not one in reverse? And, if you were going to trap your own treasure room, you may as well use such a thing to keep whatever would get caught by your trap from fleeing it.

She'd anticipated this, and thrown out a length of hardened energy to force the bronze doors apart and keep them from closing. Yeah, fat chance of that. Emma's magic could do many things, and her raw power was expanding by the day. But even by combining natural hardened energy with her Matter-based ability to strengthen materials…Tens of tons of fast-moving bronze was a bit of a fucking ask. The would-be blockage just exploded into pieces, and might have even shredded Emma with the shrapnel if she hadn't carefully disintegrated it in mid-flight.

Then her, and all other, eyes turned to one corner of the room, to the large painting she'd seen when she first entered. Milton was backing away from it, and elsewhere in the room his remaining garulkan and Battle Bitches were doing much the same. Emma found that she was, too. It just happened, instinctive. Fascinating.

And probably not good.

Air warped, like in a heat wave but…more. Denser, thicker, broader. Great ripples of something running through the very atmosphere, across the room, through Emma's bones. Her teeth rattled, heart pounded, panic mounted.

Seeing the man in the painting move and start crawling out. That, that was Emma's fucking limit. She screamed, and fired as many bullets at him as she could muster. The projectiles shot across the room, striking him dead-centre and…Doing virtually nothing. Sparks exploded outwards where they ran into his skin, tiny spurts of blood emerged but…The wounds looked as if he'd made them himself getting clumsy with a shaving razor. By the time Emma had regathered her wits, the man was emerged fully.

He was tall. Silly thing to say, basically all men were tall. This one was fucking tall. Seven feet, maybe, close to one-and-a-half times Emma's own height and quite possibly a literal order of magnitude more than her weight. Every inch of him seemed to have been constructed from muscle, with maybe a few fingers, facial features and other little details thrown in to pad space. There was a look in his eyes that she'd seen before of course, and it was about the worst one he could've given.

Primal madness and battle-hunger, the exact same as Herag.

He had red hair, long, and dark eyes, sharp. His face was handsome, and paired with the twelve-pack abs and biceps as thick as Emma's waist she might've gotten a lot of fun-time out of remembering his appearance later. For now, though, he was a threat. The man took a step forwards.

"You have awakened Gloygar." He spoke with a sound like coliding cliffs, his voice rough and jagged, harsh in a way that made Emma wonder how long it'd gone without use. Weeks? Months?

Years?

There was something about him—many somethings—that made her feel fighting here would be a very bad idea. A prickling against her will, a taste of magic on the air. A lot of magic, really. As if all the magic she'd felt before now had been beams of moonlight, and staring her down now was a fucking solar flare.

"Sorry about that." Asgrim grinned, taking a step forwards with no less swagger than usual. It was impressive, Emma supposed. In the same way a rat sprinting towards a cat was impressive. "We didn't even know you were in that painting, we just came—"

—Stop you idiot.

—"For the loot." He finished, like an idiot, and remained silent while his words sunk into Gloygar.

Gloygar moved, his shoulders shifting like great trees in the wind, arms tensing and relaxing. He tilted his head.

Emma did not see the backhand, but she saw its consequences. Asgrim shot across the room like he'd been fired from a trebuchet and hit a pile of silver, distributing its contents across every inch of the sprawling treasure-hall and disappearing under that fraction which remained roughly where it was. Before anyone could even scream, Gloygar was roaring.

"I AM A DEMIGOD!" His voice cut out like a blade. "AND THIS IS MY OFFERING! ONE OF MANY!" A pause while the echoes of his booming voice finished rebounding from walls and shaking the fucking room, then he sighed almost…sadly. "You have desecrated my place of worship, and I can see by the pitiable strike I just landed that my strength is nine-tenths gone…"

Oh, okay, good. He didn't want to fight, he—

—"I must replenish it and avenge myself by wringing the blood from your broken bodies!" Gloygar roared, and just sort of came flying forwards like the giant, deranged axe-murderer he was.

Axe-murderer.

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Yes, there was an axe in his hands. A ridiculously oversized weapon that looked taller than he was and with a head made up of two blades, either of which likely weighed as much as Emma on its own. The speed it moved with, too, was considerable. And it was coming right for Aexilica.

Emma's magic was moving before her conscious thoughts were, a great ram of softer energy-construct smashed into her and sent her flying. She would, Emma hoped, be fine, maybe a giant pillow would break a normal person's bones at such speeds but Aexilica was tough.

She had also been the only person closer to the Demigod than Emma herself, and he took exactly zero seconds to adjust target. No time for an energy lance, no time for a matter-javelin, which was only slightly quicker, no time for much thought at all. Emma sprayed water at the ground.

Either she got absurdly lucky, the Demigod was clumsy as shit, or this "slipping" thing was a great deal more useful than Emma had previously thought, because Groygar's foot slid out from under him so quickly it was like someone had tied a rope about its ankle and yanked with more strength than he himself had. He was moving fast enough, though, that a little thing like "no longer running" did not fucking stop him, or even do much to slow him down. He kept coming.

And coming, and…going, then going some more after he finally slid past her and kept tumbling until a sufficiently large pile of silver stopped him. Emma laughed, then it turned to a scream as coins exploded high into the air with the Demigod's emergence.

By then, he was being engaged by some of the actual melee-specialists. Haruki closed in with his yari spear—which would still be a million times cooler if it was a katana—and started thrusting. Little light, testing blows drawing the Demigod's guard one way before he struck the other while Sade closed in more, got inside his reach and started taking chunks out of him with her knives.

That was the theory, at least. But the reach advantage of a short-spear became a great deal less pressing when one's opponent was more than a foot taller, had arms like a chimpanzee and was wielding an axe big enough for Mothra to use it as a strap-on. In moments the two had halted their attack and started falling back from the Demigod, now fighting to live rather than kill. Emma got to work fast, finding herself rather eager to keep her allies alive and, more importantly, distracting the enemy.

Haruki and Sade lasted just long enough for an energy lance to hit the bastard in his chest, as clean a connection as Emma had ever seen. He shot back, went head-over-heels, landed hard enough that she thought the ground actually shook with smoke blistering from his chest and blood trickling down. Then he started to get up.

Emma hadn't expected a one-shot, of course. But she'd expected a wound. The Demigod barely looked injured. Whatever his body was made from wasn't flesh, it couldn't be. She'd have cored a stone statue twice his size with the shot he took, but there he was completely fine save for the roughly circle patch of missing skin and tattered muscle. The air reeked of cooking meat, all Emma had to attest to her even damaging him at all.

The Demigod glanced towards her.

"Always hated casters." He growled, remaining blessedly still for a moment. "After I kill your allies, I will take you as my slave and break you in my bed."

Emma had just enough time to realise that she'd just been threatened with rape when he started moving again, a blinding explosion of muscular strength and kinetic violence. She couldn't even follow him with her eyes.

It was fortunate, then, that Haruki and Sade could. They put themselves between Emma and the Demigod, keeping him from advancing unimpeded with flashing knives and a whistling spear. Those precious moments were enough for two things to happen.

Ahead of the Demigod, Aexilica recovered from Emma's launching and descended from her own leap to join the fight. With her strength added to the others, it was suddenly a lot less one-sided.

Behind the Demigod, Asgrim Storm-Eye emerged from the silver he'd been thrown into, stumbled to his feet, took a few moments of bleary staring to figure out what was happening, and then ran up behind the enemy and slashed him in the back of his knee. Groygar the Demigod was not pleased by this, and his displeasure shook the room around him as he began engaging the fighters with more fervor.

Emma could've helped, and she would, but she knew there was one thing that took priority. The only thing that might let everyone present live. She looked around, located Milton, and sprinted over to him.

The idiot seemed to have invented a new shade of white with the palour of his face, and was trembling in one corner behind both Battle Bitches and his last garulkan. He jumped when Emma approached, fucking pussy.

"W-What do you want?" Milton gasped.

"To live, idiot." Emma snapped. "And we're not going to if that giant asshole back there gets to fight us all individually, he said already he wants us dead right? So once he's finished with us, you're next. We need to work together and take care of him first, then we can rip each other apart as much as you want."

Milton took agonizingly long seconds to respond, wasting yet more of Emma's precious time. She heard the fighting behind her, but couldn't even risk an over-the-shoulder glance. The dumbass might actually use that as an opportunity to attack, and then they'd all be screwed.

"How do I know you won't double cross me?" He asked.

"IT'S A FUCKING DEMIGOD!" Emma screamed, turning now. Her time was up. "Either help us or don't." She began building her magic for the latest energy lance, and paused only as she heard rapid footsteps behind her. Emma whirled, saw the garulkan lunge—

—right over her head. It landed metres beyond and kept running, closing in to join the fight just as Haruki went flying out of it. The creature's talons raked across Groygar's arm and drew blood. Again, mere drops. Little crimson pearls of ichor welling where the skin was scratched open.

A start.

It was followed by something of a setback, where the Demigod headbutted the garulkan and kind of just caved its skull in. This gave an opportunity to the humans present, though, and three blows fell upon his torso almost at the same time. Skin parted, blood welled. More tiny little paper-cuts, irritants and harassing blows. Emma had to remind herself that there was finite blood in a human's body, if they kept cutting away then eventually he'd go down. The red streak where ichor had lazily dribbled from the energy-lance's impact site told her that he wasn't quite as invulnerable as he looked.

Then he punched Sade and reduced his three-on-one further into a two-on-one. She got to work on another attack.

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