Apparently, none of the three people who'd first saved Emma intended on doing the mind-reading themselves. She wasn't sure whether that was because they weren't able or because they feared some potential consequences, but it didn't really matter much either. She had no reason to fear her thoughts being scanned.

They took her to a chamber for it, the sort a person might have been tortured in. That was reason to fear, but Emma tried to keep the feeling from her.

"This is bad." Larry noted, silently. "Emma, you have to listen to me, this is bad." They had a few spare minutes, it seemed, alone, or at least Emma thought they did.

"How come?" She snapped.

"Because I didn't send these people here."

Emma paused at that, frowning. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that whoever sent them here, it wasn't me. Which means it was probably my rival—on the other side. The Enemy. And there's a fucking lot of them, too, three at once is…Shit, I could never have done that, the other side would've interfered and stopped me. Emma this is bad, these people are your natural enemies. And they'll be as powerful as Milt—"

—"I don't care." Emma cut in, earning a moment of stunned silence from Larry as her words seemed to just crash into his mind like a derailed train.

"W…What?" He groaned, trembling now. With rage or misery, she couldn't tell.

"I didn't listen to this shit when you were trying to give me magic powers, why would I listen now?"

Larry glared at her.

"You didn't listen then because you went fucking crazy and tore my head off. You still haven't apologized for that, by the way."

"Because I'm not sorry." Emma shrugged. "Anyway, none of this affects me."

"What do you mean it doesn't affect you? You fucking dumbass, it affects everyone! It—" Larry was cut off as the door opened, and several people entered. Isolde and Emma's other two saviours, Eric Malcavor—the man—and the red-headed Marceline Thorne.

"Alright," Isolde beamed, "we're ready to test you. Don't worry, this won't hurt a bit. Though it might feel a bit strange for a while, it shouldn't last too long. A few minutes at most—if even that."

There was something about the way she spoke, or more specifically about the way her boobs wobbled with every syllable, that left Emma mysteriously relaxed. Truly, life would never cease to surprise her with yet more wonders and shocks.

"Alright, go ahead." Emma offered, bracing herself as a new figure stepped forwards. They were robed, though didn't meet her eye, and before she could so much as consider asking them a question she was already feeling their magic at work. A presence closed in around Emma's mind, odd. It felt uncomfortable, intimate without cause. Overly forward and invasive, though she did as she was told and didn't resist. It seeped in deeper, deeper. Then stopped abruptly. Emma blinked as the person dropped down to their knees, screaming, vomiting and thrashing around like someone was tasering them from behind. She took a step back in genuine shock.

"What the fuck?!" Emma gasped, watching as the convulsions only grew worse and more violent.

"What did you do to him?" One of her saviours, Eric, growled, stepping forwards and glaring at Emma with unhidden suspicion. She found panic rising at that, suddenly aware that in close quarters like these there wasn't a lot she could have done to stave off one of the superhumans, let alone three.

"I didn't do anything!" Emma tried, eyes still flitting to the twitching man as her head raced.

"Bullshit!" Eric growled. "You—"

—"I think I can illuminate what happened here." Larry said, helpfully. Except not really, because he was Larry. He'd waited as long as possible to maximize Emma's fear, and of course had no intention of giving any single-edged answers even now.

Eric turned his fiery gaze to the head now, but it was Isolde who spoke.

"Explain." She ordered Larry. Larry smiled.

"Emma here is what is known as an Untethered, the source of her magic is a bit different than yours. Her mind is just disconnected from the world around her, to some extent. The rules that are solid for you are more pliable for her. There are limits, particular ways in which she's able to tweak reality, and a limit to the amount of tweaking she can do, but the result is that her consciousness is pretty hard to actually look into for normal people. You're just not equipped to see the shit that's going on in her head."

Isolde's eyes narrowed at that, and she glanced across the room to another hooded man standing besides a humming crystal. The man gave a fractional nod, and the woman seemed to relax somewhat.

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"That's very…Convenient." She noted. "How about your head?"

"Give it a try!" Larry beamed, sweetly.

"Uh, I don't think you should—" Emma's warning was cut off as Isolde raised a hand, and another of her subordinates stepped forwards to reach out his mind just as the one who'd tried to enter Emma's had.

Not even a second passed before his head exploded.

Fucking exploded, like a grenade had gone off inside. Bits of brain matter and skull fragments ended up everywhere, blood too of course, and Emma felt a piece of his scalp stick to her face.

Everyone stared as the now-headless body remained standing for one second, then slowly toppled to the ground. The shrieking came next, though none of it from Emma's three saviours. They just stared.

Eric looked enraged again, Thorne curious, while Isolde was more exasperated than anything.

"For fuck's sake." She groaned, burying her face in one hand.

"Gosh." Larry grinned. "Who could've seen that one coming?"

Emma was not, fortunately, unilaterally executed because of Larry's dumbassery, because it turned out direct mind-reading had only been one of several tricks at work in that chamber. The other, sourced from the big crystal, had been a basic deception-recognising spell.

Well, they said basic. It seemed pretty complex to her, certainly not an effect Emma could replicate—yet—but it did its job of clearing her name at least. She didn't plan on killing them, or spying on them, or anything else like that. And Larry was, if not a non-hostile, at the very least genuinely unable to grow a body and make himself a direct problem in the meantime. With that seen to, Emma was finally given dispensation to wander around and examine the place.

Even better, Isolde accompanied her.

"We are the Legion Nocturne." Isolde told her, as they went, "And you have arrived in Nocturnal Nation—our home."

Emma looked around. They were outside now, though still on the battlements. She found a great many shitty houses sprawled out in the settlement built around the castle, none of them seeming at all well-kept and all striking her as somewhat cramped.

"And you built all this?" She asked.

"More or less." Isolde grinned, licking her lips as she looked at Emma. "You're so pretty."

Emma's next question fell over and died at that, her mind blanking for a few moments as she tried to look the supermodel in her eyes—and not something else—while desperately fighting to maintain higher cognitive function. It didn't work. Mysterious and cosmic mind, indeed.

Isolde laughed. "It's easier for us to construct things than normal people, you've seen our physical abilities already. But Marceline has incredible power over stone and fire, among other things. Magic of the earth basically. While Eric can lift a hundred times his weight and not even exert himself. The two of them combined are better than any modern construction team I've seen."

Emma finally managed to pierce the fog of sexual hormones to ask something resembling an actual question, allowing for a few false-starts where she mainly just grunted like a cavewoman.

"It must've taken you a while then, still," she noted. Isolde grinned again.

"Clever, too!" She reached out, cupping Emma's cheek and gently stroking the side of it. Whatever her answer actually was, Emma literally did not remember it, and would never remember it. Her brain just kind of stopped taking information in for a few seconds while the most attractive woman she'd ever met caressed her face and called her a good girl.

"Why are you at war with that other group?" Emma managed at last.

Isolde frowned.

"They're nazis." She told her. "Want to help us kill them?"

"Yes." Emma said instantly, watching Isolde smile and feeling the world go right again.

"Splendid." The woman grinned. "I'll leave you to wander a bit, I have something to attend to." She took her leave quickly, and once she was gone Larry wasted no time in piping up to ruin everything as usual.

"She's playing you." He told Emma. "You do realise that, right?"

"I love her." Emma whispered.

"What? Oh fuck off." Larry snapped. "You met her hours ago."

"You've never heard of love at first sight, then." Emma snapped back.

"Of course I have, it doesn't exist. What, you're feeling a deep emotional connection to her cleavage? Her ass? Love at first sight is just horny humans trying to turn their animalistic rutting into something bigger than it is, that hasn't changed in five thousand years and it won't in five thousand more."

"I'm done with this conversation." Emma told him, which inspired another surge of cursing and abuse from Larry. None of which she listened to. It wasn't long before Isolde made her way back, cutting through the air with that same effortless speed she always did. Emma still hadn't gotten used to the sight of her in flight.

"Have you made your decision?" Isolde asked, dropping down to land weightlessly before Emma. She didn't even bend her knees as her heels hit the stone, joints seeming immune to the deceleration. Emma forced her eyes up away from the woman's legs, though, and back onto her face.

"I…Have a few questions first." Emma replied.

Isolde smiled.

"Of course you do." The way she said it was ridiculously patronising, deliberately encouraging to an absurd degree that made Emma feel distinctly like a dog being praised for doing a new trick. It probably shouldn't have been so much of a turn-on, but she figured that was Isolde's fault for dressing all gothic in the first place. She must've known.

"So…Can I ask them?" Emma needed to give her brain something to do before it atrophied, turned to liquid and started dribbling down to make her underwear even moister.

"Of course!" Isolde beamed.

"Right. Technology, this place seems roughly early twentieth century?"

"Late nineteenth." Isolde corrected. "The wider region around Nocturnal Nation is called Gorgoschia, for future reference. The cities around ours are pretty similar to Victorian-era Europe. They've had a long-standing rivalry with their neighbours, Curgundry, who are the ones with twentieth century stuff."

"Then how is it competitive?" Emma asked. "That's, what, a fifty year tech gap almost?"

"That's the weird part." Isolde frowned at that. "Technology seems to be inversely correlated with magic in this world, have you seen any of the really primitive places? How common is magic there?"

She thought to Aethiq. "A dozen or more practitioners in a town of a few hundred. Basically, uh, Aztecs. Not a lot of metallurgy but reasonably advanced architecture and pottery."

Isolde nodded. "That sounds about right. Magic is more like one in five hundred here, and for our Curgun neighbours it's closer to one in a thousand. We're not actually sure yet ourselves, but things seem to naturally balance themselves in that way…We lost a friend before figuring that out." Her throat tightened, face suddenly harder. "It was the so-called Fuhrer leading those bastards in the attack you interrupted, another of his was more successful about a year before."

Emma found herself suddenly bereft of questions at that, taking a step forwards.

"Then let's go and punch some fucking nazis."

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