Seven of them, Emma counted them quickly. They weren't moving now so it was impossible to tell if all of them were superhumans, or only some. If the latter then this wasn't even going to be a fight, but if it were the former…
It still might not, or might anyway. Because not all superhumans were made equally, she had to remind herself that. Aexilica could probably have won a three-on-one with her old self as she was now, Vari was at least comparable to that. Were they facing seven old Aexilicas, or seven new ones?
Everywhere I go there's a fight waiting.
"I don't know where you get off walking over to random women talking about your ring, but whore-alley is that way." Emma told him. The man looked confused, rather than blown away by her rapier wit. Ah well, good enough. She blasted him in the face with a sphere of hardened energy and laughed as it sent him down instantly.
Not so tough, then. Not so tough at all. Aexilica was a blur of motion, and two more men were down before they'd even drawn their clubs. She just hit them, not bothering with her own weapon. Vari was a tad more…Enthusiastic.
"HYAH!" He screamed, hacking a man's leg completely off at the knee and sending him screaming to the floor. Blood spurted everywhere, hitting another's face and making him scream. Hitting Emma's face right as she was letting off another ball of energy, blinding her as it splashed her eyes.
Emma's shot went wide. She assumed it did, at least, because it was Aexilica's voice she heard shrieking out after it fired off.
"What the fuck—"
A crash, a thud, clattering steel. Emma stumbled blindly, trying to wipe her eyes clear. When she finally managed the combat was already over.
They had, fortunately, won, and their enemies clearly knew it. Surprisingly all of them were still alive, though the one whose leg had gotten hacked off looked like he might be in a different state within the next minute or so. Aexilica loomed over them with her sword now drawn, glaring down intensely enough to even give Emma pause.
"Learned your lesson?" She spat, glaring particularly at the leader who now looked a lot less mean and a lot more terrified.
"Yes!" He nodded, tears actually welling in his eyes. "Fuck, yes! Fuck, fuck please don't kill us, we'll go we'll—you'll never see us again, never hear from us again, please just don't fucking kill us!"
Aexilica maintained her stare for long enough that Emma actually wondered if she was about to cut his head off, then nodded shortly.
"See that we don't." She told him, before getting down to one knee, tearing a strip from one man's shirt and promptly tying a tourniquet around the legless one's stump. He screamed as she did, but promptly stopped bleeding. It hadn't been such a great volume of blood already.
"Now hurry up and take this bastard to a healer, if you pricks are paid enough for robbing people you might even be able to have the leg reattached." Aexilica hissed.
The men took their friend and rather hurriedly ran off to, presumably, do just that. Emma spat as they went, and found her eyes still watering as she glared at Vari.
"Why the fuck did you do that?" She asked him.
He stared at her, as if Emma were the one being unreasonable.
"We were in a fight." Vari frowned.
"They hadn't drawn their weapons!" Emma snapped. "Their weapons were fucking clubs!"
Vari blinked, tilting his head, shrugging. "Then…They should have brought better weapons?"
"We should head away from here." Aexilica noted. "I don't know how kindly the guards will take to…This."
"Yes." Emma snapped, beginning the hurried process of fleeing and then, after a brief moment of thought, equipping her ring. She felt the fog of obfuscation engulf her instantly, and giggled at the delight of it. There was a power to being unseen, and she could very much get used to indulging.
Yes. Came a voice, seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at once. Yes. Power, power is everything…
Emma blinked. Well, the voice was…right. Power was everything.
It…Yes. The voice resumed, sounding somehow wrong-footed. Power is…Is everything. I can bring you power.
Everything clicked at that, and Emma looked down at the ring still on her finger.
"Are you talking to me?" She asked aloud, not knowing whether speech would render her noticeable again and, frankly, not really caring much either.
I am… The voice resumed. For long I have waited in that pile of treasure, seeking the attention of a Demigod. Now a greater-still wielder has found me instead. We can be great together, we can do anything. We can have…The world.
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Ah, Emma saw what this was. An evil ring that granted invisibility, promising her world domination, promising her everything she wanted? It was the opportunity of a lifetime!
"That sounds fucking great, what do I do?" She asked.
The ring was silent for a while, as if it were somehow surprised by her eagerness.
Y…You…Are you being serious?
"Deadly, what do?"
I…Am not used to humans being so…Enthusiastic.
"Yeah well I'm a short woman, power is a lot more enticing for me. Now what do?"
You…Must…You must first isolate, destroy your friends for their weakness and—
"Yeah fuck that." Emma yanked the ring off, as they were already pulling into a sufficiently dark alley to hide her without it, and took no small amount of satisfaction from watching Aexilica and Vari jump.
"This thing is awesome." She grinned.
Aexilica just looked concerned.
"I don't think you should rely on that too much, Aethiq is rife with stories of people who paid unexpected prices for abusing powerful magical artefacts. There's no such thing as free magic."
Emma just shrugged. "I haven't noticed anything wrong with it, it'll be fine." She almost laughed at Aexilica's continued worry, and promised herself never to mention the voice. Aexilica was the sort to over-react and make her swear off using her badass new ring over it.
They were just emerging from the mouth of the alley when a new man approached them, though probably not another hired thug. He was old, tall-ish and wiry, had a sort of sneaky face. The kind that promised either getting screwed over in your 401k or being molested, maybe both. Emma took a reflexive step back behind Aexilica before he stopped in front of them, raising his hands.
"Forgive me," the man began, "but the three of you are adventurers, yes? I have a job for you."
They were all cautious, of course. This was far, far too unprompted to be anything but suspicious, and Emma had learned a certain level of paranoia just through natural selection and osmosis over her short time in this world.
"We are." Emma told him, slowly, cautiously, and while preparing her magic. An energy lance, just in case. She was tired of getting attacked, if this old fuck pulled a fast-one on her she intended to blow him to bits and glue his limbs back together in the wrong order.
"Then please, you must help me!" The man pressed, taking a step forwards and raising his hands. It was, Emma supposed, moderately non-threatening, but she'd seen how dangerous even an old man could be in this world. Magic powers really brought more sense of security when she was the only one who had them.
"Help you with what?" Aexilica chimed in, eyes just as narrow.
"It's my daughter." The man explained. "She's gone missing—snatched away by…by a cyclops."
That brought back memories for Emma, none of them terribly pleasant.
"Cyclopes are tough." She noted. "But why are you bringing this to us specifically? Surely there's some other group who could do it."
The man hesitated. "It is…Actually a group of cyclopes—where are you going?!"
"Nowhere," Emma told him as she continued heading back the way she'd come. "Please keep talking."
Aexilica's hand tightened around Emma's shoulder, and her forwards momentum died as quickly as if a brick wall had materialised in front of her. She looked back at the scowling woman, who said only a single word.
"Stay."
Emma kind of lost the next minute or so, all her blood rushing to all the wrong places.
"Emma? Emma?!" She blinked back into the present, staring and realising she was being spoken to by the giant muscly woman who told her what to do.
"Yes?" She asked, perking up and paying closer attention than she had to anything in her life. Aexilica groaned.
"For the God's sakes…"
"As…As I was saying." The man replied, frowning, "my name is Eirik Skarpa. I'm a prominent merchant of Saligran, the town you're in, and my wealth is great. I can offer you a fine reward for saving my daughter."
"I'm sorry old man." Emma sighed. "But you're asking us to risk our lives, maybe throw them away. There's no amount of money that—"
—"A hundred pounds of silver."
—"Will deter us from saving your precious daughter, you can count on us."
The man seemed somewhat shocked, and so Emma tried to reassure him by grinning with all the heroic confidence she suddenly felt. For some reason it just sent him backing off, nodding nervously rather than hopefully.
"Y…Yes, thank you." He swallowed weakly. "Uh, should I tell you where she was taken?"
He did, and they all listened. The area surrounding Saligran was somewhat mountainous, which, Emma had gathered, was the preferred habitation of cyclopes. It also made his directions hard to follow. Hard enough that he eventually just got frustrated and insisted on coming along himself.
It felt strange to travel with a normal human. In sheer athletic ability, the old man might not have even been inferior to Emma. In terms of travel ability, though, they were night and day. The pace they set was miserable, and a stark reminder of how frustrating life was before the invention of cars or trains.
"Can't you people set up a tram line or something?" Emma groaned. "You have magic right?"
The old man stared at her. "Yes we have magic but…What's a tram line?"
Emma hadn't really been thinking when she spoke, just grunting out her frustration. A moment of consideration showed her why what she'd said was stupid. Magic. What was magic? Anything, and nothing. People back on earth had "had science" without tramlines for millennia. The irritation of this walk was making her stupid.
And it wasn't close to done.
"What do you think of this one?" Larry asked from inside her clothes, Emma jumped at the sound of his voice and, pulling ahead of the group, peered down to glare at him.
"I don't trust him." She growled, keeping her voice low. "Also, shut the fuck up. A talking severed head begs more questions than we have answers."
Larry chuckled.
"What, am I gonna sacrifice my privilege of not being buried during your little outings?"
"Yes." Emma hissed. He laughed again.
"Yeah, nice try. You're taking me with you because you're paranoid about leaving me unguarded in the room for more than an hour or two."
He had her there, bastard.
"What do you think of the old guy?" Emma asked, eager to move their conversation onto tracks she wasn't getting her ass kicked across.
"The same, more or less. I think you're being had. Keep an eye out, remember I get stuck here if you get yourself killed."
Sometimes that almost made it tempting to die, but then Emma would be losing more from that than Larry did. She actually enjoyed living, and if nothing else unlimited power was a pretty big long-term promise to pass up.
So she kept walking, up the mountain track and along the paths, watching as dirt and trees turned to stone and cliffs. Her tension mounted by the step, but she didn't turn away.
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