Fundaments:

Energy 4, Matter 3, Force 3, Entropy 1, Cognition 3, Space 1, Time 1

Crafts:

Alchemy 1, Talismans 2, Enchanting 1, Animacy 1,

Cores:

Attunement 18, Mastery 9

Emma didn't think the sight of her numbers going up would ever stop being satisfying, even if they never did quite seem to go up nearly as fast as she'd have liked. Then again, she'd have liked to wake up one day with a million points in everything so she could promptly make her way back to wherever Larry came from and kill the stupid dicks responsible for stranding her in this hell-hole in the first place.

Still, patience was a virtue.

The journey was what let Emma gain her extra level in Energy, blasting the stuff out constantly tended to do that, but those few days still remaining for her after she'd advanced it were useful for figuring out what her improvement would manifest as. It came in the form of her energy constructs, firstly. More specifically in the form of a new variety. Yellow stuff.

Emma considered coining a more creative name, but for the time being she had far more interesting things to be done with it. This yellow stuff was not quite as strong as the standard blue energy, at least as far as she could tell. Aexilica could snap thicker bars of it than she could ordinary energy, as could Vari. What distinguished it, what made her realise it had a lot more use, was the elasticity of the stuff. Properly bouncy, properly springy. It could perhaps have served as a trampoline, a cushion, a means of storing tension…Any number of other things.

The particulars depended on her own needs and focus. When she wanted something more like rope, it became rope. When she wanted a solid mass to deform and bounce back, it was that. Like all magic, the reigning tenet was obedience to Emma's will. She got a lot of practice in enjoying this new trick while she sailed to the new land.

Aexilica and Vari got practice, too. Training every day more or less. Whatever bitterness remained between them after his attacking of the town and capturing of Emma had not vanished, but it seemed the sheer usefulness he'd displayed on the island had at least sanded the edges down somewhat.

For Aexilica, Emma was still pissed of course and considered the chip on her shoulder a badge of honour.

They arrived at an actual port, this time, which Aexilica said made for a much smoother docking than they'd enjoyed at the shore of their island, and Emma found far more agreeable than concussing herself by falling off the ship. As the vessels were tied and secured, they bid the Battle Bitches farewell and made their way off.

It almost felt strange to see a real landmass again. After so long at sea, Emma had gotten accustomed to the emptiness. To feeling herself surrounded on all sides by…nothing. The island had broken that trend only somewhat, small thing that it was she'd been able to see both ends of it while the ship was still adjacent. But this was a country, a continent, this was the skin of the world.

And it was full of work, work Emma had to do because someone had stolen all her fucking money.

They made their way hastily to the town nearest the docks, and it was no great surprise when the place turned out to be some kind of merchant settlement that was more than willing to trade for relics, magical artefacts and the other sorts of things an incredibly lucky person might seize as loot.

Whatever their fortune, they did still have a few…artefacts. Emma, Aexilica and Vari the Idiot made their way from shops to stalls to shops again, asking around with different traders and bouncing offers off them as they inquired about the worth of their equipment. Aexilica's sword, it seemed, was something everyone was eager to buy. In the end she decided not to sell it, and Emma wasn't surprised in the least. During their voyage they'd done cutting tests with the thing, and it proved able to take chunks two or even three times the size of her previous blade's out of Emma's energy constructs.

She'd suggested selling Aexilica's old one, given that mundane metal in such a volume was still worth a pretty penny, but the woman had gotten testy at that and refused. Sentimentality, Emma figured. Sculd dad, Sculd weapon, Aethiqi upbringing. It was probably something of familial value, so she left the matter as it was.

Vari's mail also remained in their possession, simply because it could self-repair. Emma took about half a second to realise how useful that would be on a piece of apparel, given how many times the same feature had saved her life in her Talisman, and the metal being somewhat sturdier than normal was just a nice bonus.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

All of that was expected though. What wasn't was what happened with Emma's ring.

Not a pretty thing, even after polishing. It looked like gold, but they soon found out it was some less-valuable alloy. Smooth, unmarked, unblemished. Simple. No jewels, no complicated craftsmanship, no decoration or articulation. It was just a simple ring of not-gold. Hopefully more valuable than a rusty one, though, so Emma asked around and was soon directed to Miss Laraveig, one of the local merchants who specialised in more innocuous-seeming artefacts.

Inside the shop was a great deal more jewelery, and other things too. Quills, stone slabs, paintings. The latter fact sent a shiver down Emma's spine, she'd had quite enough of fucking paintings already. She wasn't sure how the hell Larry had convinced her to keep hauling around the one Groygar had crawled out of, but the sooner they could dump it in a volcano the better.

"Can I help you?" The woman at the counter asked her, Laraveig Emma assumed. She was short, aging, but had one of those stares that left you perpetually wondering if she'd already pulled a fast one on you, and quite sure she'd manage to do so sooner rather than later in any case. Emma was on edge instantly as she approached.

"I need this ring appraised." She replied, setting the metal down on the counter and waiting. Watching.

Emma didn't have a whole lot of hope for whatever would happen next, she'd already showed the ring off to enough people that she was well aware of its perceived valuelessness. Not a scrap of magic in it, and it didn't seem to have any artistic worth either. It was a thing to inspire dull, bored examinations. So it was quite the shock, then, when she saw an abruptly animated stare of widened eyes and licking lips from the woman instead.

It didn't last long, only a second. It lasted long enough.

"Worthless." The woman told her with a sigh, tossing the ring carelessly back down on the counter. "I could give you…say, three silver pieces? There is gold in there, which is worth a bit for the metal alone if I can have an alchemist separate it, but even that's not very pure. And extracting it would cost me."

"Liar." Emma noted, taking the ring, studying it, sighing. "And here I heard you knew your stuff."

It was a total bluff, whatever stuff there was that would find relevance with this ring—Emma herself certainly didn't know it. But people often got loose-lipped when they thought they were being dismissed or underestimated. This person, Emma soon found, was not so different than most in that regard.

"Wait!" She snapped, but Emma didn't wait. She turned and started for the door, got another two paces before Laraveig's voice rang out again. Less desperately, but far more nicely. "Okay, hold on, I have a better offer."

Emma stopped at once, then turned back to her. She didn't say anything, just stared and waited. Silence, too, often made people loose-lipped compared to babbling. Very few enjoyed a room quieter than they were.

"Ten silver." Emma turned again, kept walking.

"Fifteen. Twenty, thirty!" The woman's offers didn't stop, her voice growing more desperate by the step. Emma kept waiting for the hint of strain that would betray her approaching the limit of what she'd be willing to spend, but it just…didn't come.

It was only when she'd promised her an entire ounce of pure gold that Emma finally halted and turned back around.

"What is this?" She asked her, raising the ring up, examining it with new eyes. "It's magic, right? It has to be, you wouldn't be offering a third this much if it wasn't."

As a fact, Emma didn't know that at all. For all she knew there was some historic or cultural importance to the trinket that inflated its value beyond any material equivalence. The woman's answer, though, told her that she'd gotten lucky enough in her first guess. Nodding, then a reluctant pause, then a verbal confirmation that came more reluctantly still.

"It's the Ring of Daqin-Durr." She replied, saying the name as if it meant something. That told Emma that it was probably a commonly known-enough thing for her to stand out by professing ignorance.

"What is that?" She pressed, deciding that not knowing was worse than being seen as an idiot. For her part, the woman recovered quickly enough and, once prodded by the threat of missing out on her sale entirely, told Emma all that she knew about the fabled artefact.

Really, she had her at "fabled artefact", and everything Emma heard after that was just cream on top.

The Ring of Daqin-Durr was, supposedly, forged by some ancient wizard who'd sought to overcome the singular weakness that plagued all of his kind. Getting the shit physically beaten out of him. To this end, he had decided to try infusing much of his magical power into a small piece of metal—a trinket really—into which he poured all of his cruelty, his malice, and his will to dominate all life.

Admittedly, Emma had stopped paying attention by the end and just started filling in the blanks herself. She got the gist though, enough to be very confident about what she'd do next.

"Not for sale." She told Laraveig, and left the shop before a string of burning curses could ignite her back. Emma found somewhere nice and secluded to examine the ring further, and a nearby alley proved suitable.

Even knowing what she did, it didn't look special. Not physically, not magically. Her pondering halted before long as something interrupted her, sound at the alley's mouth.

Emma looked up to see several men approaching her in unison, smiling, big, armed. Dangers. Old reflexes kicked in fast, a lifetime of living as nothing more than a tiny woman in a big man's world flooded her with terror long before her conscious brain could recall the power now protecting her.

But the reminder came, and she smiled when the first of them spoke.

"Alright there sweetheart." He smiled. "Hand over your valuables, and we don't need to make this any harder than it needs to be."

By the way the other one was looking at her, Emma had a feeling something was already a bit too hard as things were. She let herself smile, and slipped the ring on.

Everything became…Desaturated, dull. The world turned nearly monochromatic, and Emma giggled as the two men stared and stumbled back in surprise.

"What the fuck?!" One snapped.

"She…Vanished!" The other gasped. Emma watched them scramble away like they were retreating from a devil, listened in as they kept yelping and babbling. It took less than a minute for them to be convinced they'd almost mugged a ghost.

Perhaps she should've left it at that, but Emma was still in a bad mood after losing all the treasure. Oh, the invisibility ring was nice, but what sort of consolation prize would it really be if she didn't enjoy it?

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