EMMA

  Emma was still busy gawping up at the monster corpse pinned to the cliffside when the Venatrix hit the ground less than two meters away.

  "Run, child."

  The order startled Emma out of her daze. She needed to find Calen and Mirri.

  They had gone right, along the cliffside, but Mirri had looked like she had a firm grip by the time the chaos above distracted Emma. Seeing how easily the monster just had been dispatched by the gleaming silver huntress that had just reached out a hand for her shoulder, Emma regretted letting the distraction take her eyes away from—

  Emma was yanked off her feet and tossed like a toy, sliding down the rain-slick slope on her back.

  The bedrock that had been below her feet was shattered by a descending slab of metal masquerading as a sword, wielded by a slab of muscle sized to rival the Venatrix.

  The gray-scaled dragonborn must have leapt from the cliffside too, barely arriving after Mahira, who had stalled her own momentum with her wings to finish killing the snake.

  Emma only had that an instant to see her attacker, before the Venatrix hurled a curtain of flame between them, but she swore she saw a second grin stretch beneath his silver-flecked eyes.

  The first grin she thought she had seen was a necklace of fangs framing a single metallic feather.

  She blinked, and she was facing the other way with the wind driving rain into her face. Emma almost stumbled before she realized she was already running, every step a choice between a painful impact of bare skin on exposed bedrock, or a sliding hazard in the deepening mud.

  The keening screech behind her drove Emma back to her knees less than three steps into her flight.

  Clutching at her head, she turned.

  The Venatrix had caught the Warlord's mottled blade on her shield, and the weapon was screaming.

  Not 'metal screeching against metal', literally screaming, the thrumming vocalizations vibrating Emma's bones the same way as the Seraph's voice. The anguished sound piercing her ears was unmistakably a person, or something that had been one.

  The shield gonged, followed by one blessed instant of silence, which broke the spell.

  Emma saw the silver slab on the Venatrix's arm vibrate with static in the moment a phantom force hurled the fighters apart. Mahira skidded to a stop next to Emma, her boots dragging streaks of dead wildgrass and mud across the stone.

  "I didn't say stop," The Venatrix barked, barely turning. "We're in range of the cliff, move!"

  Emma turned as she rose, and got almost four steps this time.

  A blur of gray scales reached out, the weapon sweeping in from the right just as she got up to speed.

  Emma's kneecap buzzed with an explosion of static that only turned to pain when she was halfway back to the ground.

  A blur of burgundy scales and shining silver flew past her as she fell. Another screech reached her ears.

  Wet gravel slammed into Emma's cheek, the impact of the rising ground nothing compared to the pain shooting up her nerves from a kneecap that couldn't possibly still be intact.

  Emma rolled, clutching at it by reflex, and found her leg whole. Pressing with her fingers revealed a dull ache, and not the blistering pain of shattered bone she had been expecting.

  Her other kneecap found the turf after a half-roll, but the injured leg betrayed her before she could rise all the way. She wanted to scream in frustration. She still needed to move, to stand, to—

  Flames hissed in the rain in time with a cracking detonation above her. A fist-sized rock, one of dozens, pattered to the ground, scattered by the same fireball that had Emma flinching away from the heat above her head.

  Emma wasn't particularly listening, but the meaning of the words crept into her skull anyways as their gray-scaled assailant roared.

  "Leave the bait!"

  Emma decided that crawling was enough movement.

  She might get away, let the huntress finish her duel uninterrupted, if only she stopped attracting attention.

  First one palm, then the other, then a wince as her injured knee took weight, but Emma was moving.

  A three-taloned silver boot wedged itself under her stomach anyway, and then she was flying again.

  She had just been kicked out of the way, gently this time. Her momentum spun her in the air to see the Venatrix turn and catch the twisted blade on her shield.

  Another screech followed, but Emma was ready for it this time, ignoring the keening to tuck and roll as the ground abused her again.

  Static rolled up her hip, down an ankle, vibrated up an elbow, and then there was a rock, right in front of her forehead.

  A raindrop struck her left eyelid, and the darkened sky was blurry until she opened her eyes and blinked it away.

  Static thrummed through the cotton clogging her head. Another raindrop struck the contusion, stinging in the scrape. Emma rolled, trying to rise again.

  Her limbs all worked, maybe. None of them stopped her from dragging her torso off the ground when the screeching cut off once more.

  She had to get out of this field. Emma didn't know why she had to get out of this field, but she did. There was a bad cliff and a good cliff, and she needed to go to the good cliff. Calen would be at the good cliff.

  No, Calen wasn't at the good cliff. He fell off the bad cliff and lived. Or maybe that had been a dream.

  The grass under her palms felt wrong, and the air smelled nothing like home. There was no iron oxide washing out of the dirt in the unseasonal rain beating against her bare scalp. Her head throbbed with the familiar pain of a concussion.

  She needed to move, needed to get out of the rain because...

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  "Why?" Emma croaked aloud when she realized she didn't know why she was running.

  There was danger, she could feel her limbs buzzing with adrenaline. She had aches and pains all over her body, but she hadn't done any serious sparring for a long time. Certainly not outside, with no padding, in street clothes.

  Where was Calen? Where were—

  Guttural speech pierced the cloud hovering over Emma's thoughts.

  "The morsel makes a point, you know," A scratchy chuffing sound punctuated the question that followed. "All this for a skyborn Null?"

  The monster that had tried to kill her inside the tower was treading sideways through the mud. Asking questions, and idly waving around a sword almost as big as Emma.

  No, it was a different monster, with different clothes, and no hole in its throat leaking red all over the floor. There were stones sewn into its silken clothing, instead of bloodstains on battered furs.

  Emma remembered where she was again. When she was.

  A lance of violet light met a silver shield, leaving it humming with static. Mana. Emma was looking at whatever energy Calen had called mana. And the green scaly lady, Mirri. She had called it that too.

  The rest of the day crashed down over Emma's head as the tingling in her skull faded. She swallowed a sob, because the world was over, magic was real, and an alien she couldn't outrun wanted to eat her.

  The Venatrix replied to the taunt with a fireball, and hissed out something Emma didn't understand, or even hear through the rain. She had forgotten to listen with mana.

  A ball searing plasma drew another scream from the sword, mana flexing again to send half of the superheated air burrowing into the now-scorched ground after the too-wide blade batted at it. Static rippled across the gemstones embedded in the warlord's layered silks as the rest of Sariel's attack was eaten by the 'armor'.

  "Pressure the Seraph," The order rolled across the narrow valley, pounding through Emma's ears like a drumbeat as she found her feet. Then, quieter; "You'll get your turn, Sariel, but not yet."

  Stones took flight from the cliffside as the dance began again, and this time Emma got to watch the Warlord begin his assault. The oversized blade looked like a toy, a poorly formed slab of metal with the barest attempt at a honed edge, but the inertia of the object was its own worst enemy.

  At least, until the weapon was already moving. After that, all that swinging mass was only one half of a deadly spiral, counterbalanced by tearing claws, tossed horns, and pearly-white sawteeth embedded along an open maw.

  The only self-defense rule that applied here was distance, and at first, Emma thought the interruptions to her flight were coincidence.

  The arrow kicking up turf with enough force to throw her sideways could have been aimed at the Venatrix.

  The sweeping cut coming in from her left was just a hair too slow by luck, leaving just enough time for Mahira to jam her shield in the way and take a glancing blow across the snout instead.

  Stumbling away from the fighters and about to navigate jutting rock formation, nearly dead-center in the pass, it was the hail of stones that all landed on Emma's right that tweaked her perceptions, even through the haze of panic.

  None of them would have hit her if she hadn't been interrupted in her path. She had only just decided to move that way.

  They had been thrown before she even made her decision.

  She was being herded deeper into the pass. Away from the Seraph and the other fighters, towards the taller sections of the cliffside. The ones she couldn't reasonably climb, or even be thrown upwards at.

  Emma dove to the right anyway, more out of spite than any real choice.

  Her sweatshirt yanked at her throat when someone caught her by the hood. The air was driven from her lungs, but she tucked her chin well enough that her head didn't snap back against the ground.

  Purple momentarily washed away Emma's vision with a thrum like a sunburn against her skin, and a buzzing arrow bisected the space she had just been yanked out of, pulverizing the topsoil again.

  Emma looked away from the spotless silver boots in front of her face, but her view of the rumbling sky was interrupted by the lightly armored-huntress reaching down to get a firmer grip.

  Mahira's wounds had stacked up rapidly in the last minute. It was hard to tell what was blood and what was just running water over burgundy scales, but the two were mixed everywhere Emma looked.

  The silver beneath her wings and strapped to her arm was still spotless, the shining armaments wicking away water and blood alike, even when it flowed into the recently-dug gouge across the humming shield.

  Emma's feet briefly left the ground as she finally reached neck level with the Venatrix, and a snout was pressed to the side of her head.

  For a moment, she thought it was the prelude to a bite.

  "Play the game a little longer." The huntress hissed in Emma's ear, and then she was gone, turning to meet her recovering counterpart, and Emma was flying.

  The Venatrix threw her left, this time. Not giving her the choice to make the mistake again.

  Emma rolled as best she could when she met the ground, feeling only a few bursts of static where she impacted buried rocks or almost twisted something at a bad angle.

  She realized the problem as she eyed the opposite cliff. Even if they were almost out of range of the slingers, the archer could kill her at any time.

  She was alive because she was the bait.

  The Venatrix was stepping into the trap of saving her every time, taking a hit or ceding the initiative without hesitation. On purpose, even, or she wouldn't be encouraging Emma to play along.

  Another indigo lance pulverized the rock formation Emma was hiding behind, leaving only a rocky dip and a shower of gravel for shelter. She pressed closer to her remaining cover, staying low and hoping no one had seen her.

  It was a terrible plan, but she didn't have a better one, and the Venatrix had told her to play the game. Mahira must have a plan, or she would have simply left Emma behind, instead of taking all those wounds.

  Unless she couldn't leave Emma behind, for some reason.

  For the fifth or sixth or seventh time since she had started running, Emma wished Calen was with her, chattering about what was going on.

  Even if half of what he said would be stupid speculation, the other half might make sense.

  Another fireball detonated with a crack while Emma stared at her hands and tried to pretend she was part of the dirt.

  The gold-scaled dragonborn in the tower and the cannibal had both called her a 'Null', but Mahira had told the gold-scale he was wrong. She had checked Emma's hands. Told her to keep them secret.

  The discolored veins of static running down her fingers weren't visible anymore, but according to the Venatrix, they were still there, just... hidden somehow. Buried under durability.

  She might not be entirely helpless here. If the Venatrix had one of those leather patches, Emma might be able to fix her.

  Maybe that was the game. Draw out the fight, recover, counterattack.

  Emma's head crept over the shelf of partially-obliterated rock, and a dot of violet met her gaze from atop the cliff.

  A deep gong resounded, and the Venatrix and the Warlord broke apart again. Runic patterns on the silver boots skidding backwards towards Emma's face lit, and she was saved again as the arrow shattered on the shield, haloing Mahira in violet splinters.

  "Throwing you to safety is getting tiring," The dragonborn panted, stepping backwards over Emma. "Please walk. Run, even."

  Wafers of slate detached from the soles of the silvered boots all at once when the runes went dark. The shield was already thrumming again.

  "I can help," Emma said quickly. "If you have any more of these."

  Mahira ignored the offer, cradling a fireball in her claws as Emma held up the last broken patch of leather from her pocket.

  "Move, he's on his feet again. He wants Sariel to watch me be ground away with *that*," The Venatrix ordered, gesturing to the sword and spitting on the ground. "They'll kill you if you interfere with the duel too much."

  Blood, mud, and saliva mixed around a needle-thin fang that hit the ground when the Venatrix spat.

  Emma scuttled backwards on her elbows and knees, giving the huntress space to move. There was another gully, a few more meters away. If she was behind something, the archer couldn't force Mahira to block for her.

  The Warlord inched closer, levelly swiping at the air in a hypnotizing dance with the oversized blade. The erratic movements were punctuated with jerks of speed and uncharacteristically smooth jabs that fell just short of Mahira's guard, only to accelerate away.

  Another shower of fist-sized sling stones descended as the Warlord danced left, exposing his back to the direction Sariel's bolt had come from.

  Emma watched the Venatrix make the mistake.

  The fireball she had been cradling flew skyward, scattering another loose formation of stones before they could finish descending.

  At the same time, Mahira met the Warlord early, lunging with her left foot and backhanding the shield towards her opponent, absorbing one of the sweeping attacks that would have fallen short.

  Briefly, both combatants were robbed of momentum by the clash.

  The shield discharged with the same ringing gong as before, going dull and lifeless to Emma's manasight. The runes on the Venatrix's boots lit, anchoring her as the gray-scaled terror was hurled away, dragged into an uphill tumble by his grip on the screaming weapon.

  It was then, when the huntress was fully extended, shield far from her body, no fireball ready, with her feet anchored to the ground, that light flashed from the clifftop once again.

  The violet streak bisected Mahira's right leg below her hanging skirts, splattering those clawed silver boots with a flood of red in an instant.

  Newton's three laws of motion are principles within classical mechanics that describe the relationship between an object's motion and the forces acting on it.

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