Eryth was officially out of her element.
An aggressive alarm awakened and started screaming out into the air of the cargo hold, coupled with a dull red light that rhythmically rolled over every surface. The combined effect was almost enough to overload Eryth's senses and make her dizzy.
Out of the disorienting space came lead protector Arnett, forging his way over to the trio of couriers with confidence and an air of authority that Eryth hadn't seemed to notice in their previous interactions. As he approached, he seemed to appraise them, narrowing his eyes in some consideration.
At least, until the thud of a muffled explosion jostled the nearby cargo, and Eryth thought she saw his eyes turn determined and grim.
"You three!"
His sharp tone made Eryth jump, and she noticed Arnold get spooked just like her.
Sam, naturally, didn't move at all, which Eryth would have been more impressed by if she had been paying any attention to her rather than to the suddenly intimidating protector now standing in front of them.
"You all are users? The Post Guild has certified you all for this journey so I'm guessing you all have some ways to protect yourselves."
He looked over each of them with a firm gaze before he continued.
"We are currently being attacked. I am hereby temporarily deputizing you three to help in protecting this caravan. You will be reimbursed upon arrival at our destination."
"W-what?" Arnold squeaked. "Um, sir, I thought you said we wouldn't be attacked by anyone… that we'd be safe since it's just food and that there was nothing to w-worry about and that your company had never lost-"
"I said, you are currently being deputized to help defend this caravan." Arnet's voice was iron, cutting off Arnold's bubbling protests.
He then lowered the intensity of his gaze, which had been boring its way out through the back of Arnold's skull, and looked between the three of them.
He pointed at Sam.
"You, Miss Tillard, take Mister Younger and Miss Cassidy up onto the roof and try to pick off what enemies you can. Station up at the rear and help cover the cockpit of the wagon behind us. Understand?"
"Yes, sir!" Sam nodded, taking the sudden role shift from passenger to impromptu defender in stride.
"Good."
Arnett immediately turned and started striding his way through the maze of cargo, barking out instructions to protectors who were just now making their way out of the living quarters.
Arnold was shaking.
Eryth started to smell ozone and see lightning.
Her hand started to strangle her pistol in a death grip that left her knuckles white.
That's when Sam slapped both her and Arnold in the face and crossed her arms across her chest.
"Hey! What the hell, Sam?" Eryth rubbed her stinging cheek.
Sam just raised an eyebrow at her.
"You two looked like a couple of dead fish. Which is something not particularly known for being useful in a fight."
Arnold was still rubbing his face, evidently adequately distracted.
Eryth saw Sam grin at the sight.
"Alrighty ya lumps, let's get a move on! Whatever happens, just stick with me, and you'll be fine. Once, I managed to defend a broken down treadwagon from endless waves of vis beasts for a cycle straight. This, pfft, this is nothing to worry about."
She waved her hand dismissively in the air as if dispelling whatever potential doubts the other two couriers could come up with.
Arnold scowled deeply at Sam's newest claim of her competence. Sam's bravado was clearly working to calm him down already.
And, if Eryth was honest with herself, it was calming her down too.
The trio quickly clanked and clacked a path through the cargo hold towards the rear of the wagon, passing and being passed by sprinting protectors who were getting their asses to wherever their assigned station was.
How they could maneuver their way through the maze with such confidence, Eryth would never know, especially with the blaring alarm and shifting maroon shadows. In only a few minutes, though, they reached the rear roof access ladder, and Eryth clambered up first and popped open the hatch.
A chaotic scene of heat, sound, and sheer pressure assaulted Eryth's senses and filled her brain.
Close to thirty people were set up all around the edges of the wagon's flat roof under the blazing sunshine, all dressed in woven lightweight armor to deal with whatever bullets the raiders were throwing their way. A dozen or so of them were all wielding rifles, filling the air with the sharp crack of ballistics and the faint hum of energy blasts in equal measure. The marksmen were crouched at small cutouts in a wall that encircled the textured steel of the roof, taking shots from behind cover and ducking away from the openings to cool or reload their guns.
The other twenty or so fighters were all users, and they filled the air and sky with so much light, sounds, and sheer force that Eryth's head spun.
She had never seen so much movement, so much energy being burned, aggressively tearing through the air, nature simply bending into whatever shape the vis users decided it needed to be in.
And in the middle of it all, screaming his head off yet looking entirely in control of the situation, was lead protector Arnett. Apparently, they had taken longer than him to find their way up to the roof.
Fuck, he looked kinda terrifying.
No sign of the warm and easily amused man who had welcomed them aboard the wagon.
Eryth was jolted out of her dazed observations by Sam, who lightly punched her in the thigh from her position below her on the ladder.
"Move your butt Eri, you may be tiny, but you're still blocking the way."
Too caught up in the violent whirlwind around her to snark back, Eryth scrambled out of the hatch and stepped out onto the roof, followed by Sam, and she assumed Arnold as well, but Eryth was too out of it to keep track of him.
Once she had gotten closer to the wall, she saw six defenders already stationed there, either taking cover or returning fire. Pings and cracks rang out from the metal battlements, and in places, the wall glowed cherry red where some energy weapon or vis user had momentarily focused fire.
Next to them was a protector covered in sweat and looking slightly pale. He would poke his head out and glare at something in the distance before slumping back down again, looking exhausted. A plume of dust rose high enough to be visible over the top of the wagon as he gulped down oxygen. He didn't say anything to them when they arrived other than to nod in their direction between pants.
Eryth drew her pistol to help steel herself and peeked through the peephole.
The entire caravan was bracketed in tiny plumes of dust, swirling around each other and filling the bright air. Speeding buggies, treaded bikes, and even a goddamn tank, stripped of heavy armor for speed, were all racing along beside the treadwagons. They were dotted across the distance like ants, and by sheer numbers, Eryth could hear the roars of their engines occasionally rise above the near-deafening rumble of the wagon beneath her feet.
As she stared across the scene, a hand gripped her shoulder and tugged her backward sharply, followed almost immediately by a chorus of pings against the covering wall they were ducked behind. A spot of wall Eryth was still resting her hand against became red-hot, burning her.
She pulled it away with a start.
"What the fuck are you doing?"
Sam was burning her with her gaze. Eryth hadn't seen her legitimately angry before.
"Don't fucking space out while shoving your head out of cover."
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As she spoke, Sam twisted around a strap slung over her shoulder, bringing a heavy-looking satchel to her side. Undoing the buckle holding it closed, she revealed what looked like hundreds of tiny metal balls, each about twice the diameter of a blueberry.
Still making aggressive eye-contact with Eryth, Sam spoke.
"Pop out and fire then duck, alright? No sightseeing. If you can't get a bead, duck back into cover and wait a bit to try again."
As she was talking, three of the metal balls resting in the bag shot out and hovered about a foot over Sam's head before rotating around each other in a circle. They started slow, but rapidly picked up speed until the stinging whine of wind being shoved violently aside rose in pitch and volume to the point of competing with the chaos all around. They blurred into a singular shape, forming a gray halo that bounced sunlight directly into Eryth's eyes and made her blink.
"I know you're freaking out, but keep focused. If you get your face blown apart by some uppity rock-slinger and make me sort through all your deliveries, I will hunt down a necromancer so I can beat you up post-mortem." Sam's tone started slipping back into her usual lightness as her attack revved up while hovering above her head.
Suddenly, Sam leaned into the cutout and, with a loud whistle, released the projectiles spinning above her through the hole, followed by a prompt ducking away.
Eryth heard a scream from somewhere below and to the side of the wagon, as well as a couple disorganized cracks from returning fire against the wall near them.
Sam looked down at Eryth, who was nursing her burned hand, and smiled cheerily.
"Like that, alright? Quick and easy, lemon peasy."
Eryth stared at her for a moment before nodding. Apparently, life and death-situations really didn't put a damper on whatever gave Sam her Sam-ness.
"Right…" She murmured.
Eryth took a deep breath and centered herself.
Or, at least, she tried to center herself. The sounds of mortal combat, the smoke and dust she just inadvertently inhaled, and the stinging pain in her now burned hand made that a little more difficult than it would usually be.
Trying to keep calm anyway, she gripped her pistol in her thankfully unburnt dominant hand and peeked through the cutout to get a proper lay of the land. Restricting her scan to only what she was supposed to be covering, she checked over the cockpit of the trailing treadwagon.
They had their blast shields up, covering the otherwise extremely vulnerable cockpit windshield. Only a couple thin slits in the front of the wagon were left exposed for navigation, almost like a welding mask. Of course, a shield can still be broken, and the raiders trying to drill through the shielding with sheer volume of fire were giving it an honest try.
Quickly counting up the enemies as best she could through the dust clouds thrown up by all the vehicles, Eryth thought she counted four machines swarming the wagon's cockpit. Two bikes, some kind of buggy, and a treaded truck with a flat platform on the back with some sort of big gun thing slapped on top.
According to her decidedly un-expert analysis, that could be a problem.
She immediately ducked back from the opening, the whole process only having occupied a second or two now that she was a bit more grounded.
"Hey, Sam!" Eryth shouted, only to jump upon turning to find Sam standing beside her.
Apparently, she hadn't been confident Eryth wouldn't space out again.
Sam's face held an amused smirk as she replied. "What's up?"
Eryth chose to ignore Sam's smirk and mild embarrassment because she was just that magnanimous. She also chose to ignore the fact that being magnanimous had nothing to do with ignoring the aforementioned. Once again, because that's just how magnanimous she was.
"There's a truck with a turret near the cockpit."
Sam nodded and smiled. "Are you perhaps requesting my boundless expertise?"
Eryth rolled her eyes. The longer she talked to the absurdity that was Sam the less she seemed to be thinking about the fact that they were currently being attacked by an entire raider convoy and oh wait she suddenly remembered about that part.
Eryth shook her head to clear the thought. "Can you do anything about it or can't you?"
Putting on an air of faux offense, Sam haughty replied. "Have my tales instilled nothing in your admittedly undersized brain? Of course I can single-handedly take down an entire truck at range."
Trying not to bury her face in her palms out of exasperation, Eryth closed her eyes momentarily and took a deep breath.
"Oh, but I will need you to thin things out a bit so I can discharge everything after I build up my vis. "
Eryth debated whether she should mention that it wouldn't really be single-handed if she needed help, but instead, she just said "Sure." and raised her gun.
After her earlier scan, she already knew the general area where each vehicle would be, so she immediately locked onto one of the two bikes and sighted it. The driver probably thought weaving would make him harder to hit since he was swerving back and forth like a madman while his ride-along fired what looked like waves of pure force from his free hand. She could only tell the user was doing anything because of the distortion left in the dust clouds and little fragments of cracked metal that flaked off the cockpit shielding after each strike.
Unfortunately for the driver and his attempts at evasion, Eryth had had nothing better to do with her life the past few years than practice shooting. Thankful the pain from her burned hand wasn't enough to throw off her stabilization as she supported her dominant hand with the other, she fired a quick burst of four rounds. Using up a quarter of her magazine immediately.
The first shot was low, bouncing off the small windshield at the bike's front and spinning off who knows where. But that was fine since Eryth had been counting on recoil to push her aim up. The next two shots landed square in the driver's chest, instantly jerking his arms to the side and throwing the bike out of control. The last shot missed the driver entirely but nailed the ride-along right in the arm he was using to throw his vis attacks, causing him to shout out.
Of course, he probably forgot about the whole bullet-to-the-arm thing when the bike started tumbling over itself and crushed both him and the dying driver, throwing a huge ball of dust and debris (including what looked to be a helmet and various bits of sheet metal) in the air.
Eryth quickly ducked back before a veritable whirlwind of return fire buffeted her section of the wall. She felt very seen.
She had a strange feeling of satisfaction worm through her adrenaline-addled thoughts. She was actually getting some use out of her shooting skills. Sure, there had been the fight back at Breakwater, but she had more or less just been reacting in the moment to try to stay alive. Here, she may have been defending the caravan, but she had managed to take down two raiders easily, with her being the aggressor. She felt justified and even a little proud for a moment.
Then she realized that she had just killed two people.
Was that okay? Could she just do that?
That didn't seem right.
That sense of pressure from before ruched back, and it was like she couldn't balance properly. She had pushed it out of her mind, but hadn't she killed the user back in Breakwater, too? It had just been self-defense, but she had killed him. It was like a cold stone was sitting deep in her stomach, slowly gaining gravity as the sensation intensified.
While she was grinding through her sudden inner conflict, the fire she had attracted by shooting the bike punched a hole through the metal shielding that made up her cover. The spot had been weakened by consecutive hits from an energy weapon enough to let a couple classic ballistic projectiles through.
Eryth was knocked into the present moment and to the ground as she was struck. She gave a short shout of surprise and pain as her arm felt like a dagger had been stabbed into it.
Looking at the arm in question, however, revealed that to be inaccurate.
Something had been ripped out of instead.
Where her cheap burner matrix used to cling to her arm was now an open wound with jagged flesh and a couple of twisted bits of brass golden-colored tubing peeking outwards at odd angles. Each rhythmically dribbled a bit of blood in time with her heartbeat as her body tried to pump through the metal extensions of her veins.
It fucking hurt.
Holy fuck, it hurt worse than when that stupid lighting user fried her leg.
"Shit, Eri!"
Eryth heard Sam call out for her.
Eryth wasn't paying attention.
She was staring at the spot on her arm where her matrix used to be. She was staring at the blood. At how it was moving.
Then she snapped out of it.
"Fuck!"
Eryth shouted out and started clumsily tearing through the pockets on her vest, dropping her gun in the process since moving her left arm wasn't an enjoyable prospect.
"Eryth! You alright?"
Eryth finally noticed Sam standing above her with worry scratched onto her face.
She didn't stop rummaging around her vest while she replied, Not really making any progress with the buttons holding them closed but still moving just to not be still.
"No! Fuck that hurts. I took a hit in the matrix. Can you help me with the leftover tubes?"
Sam crouched down and looked at the tear in Eryth's arm.
"Hmm, well, I have been letting my emergency matrix-removal-surgery skills get kinda rusty. It'll slow down my build-up for dealing with the truck."
Eryth finally found what she was looking for in her vest and pulled out a roll of bandages. Processing what Sam had said and remembering that there was a raid going on, Eryth looked at Sam's matrix to see it glowing with an intense, violent red light—visible despite the bright sun above.
"You can hold that much vis while pulling the tubes out?" Eryth wondered.
Eryth may not have had any personal experience using vis, but she knew that managing to do fine manipulation while also building up and holding a bunch of vis in a matrix took extreme skill. It was like running a marathon while drawing a detailed picture.
Eryth was brought back to the fact that she was actively bleeding from a huge gash on her arm thanks to the highly uncomfortable sensation of Sam tightening a tourniquet around said appendage. Clearly, Sam knew more about first aid since Eryth hadn't even thought to pack one in her vest. Even less pleasant was the feeling of the remnants of her matrix being guided free from her flesh and tossed onto the ground. Less pleasant, in this instance, meaning it felt like molten lead being squeezed through her veins. After a good wrapping of bandages and a good amount of highly colorful cursing, Eryth was up again.
A user who came over from the middle of the roof and numbed Eryth's arm by directly manipulating her nerves may also have contributed to Eryth's readiness.
"Do you have enough vis built up now?" The shock had distracted her from her moral panic, and now she was trying to distract herself from the shock by focusing on Sam's plan to take out the truck, whatever that plan was.
By now, Sam's matrix was glowing so intensely that the red was visible, casting light on her dark skin and the metal around her.
"Yup, I figure this much juice should buy quite a bit of fun."
Eryth just nodded, but before she could head to the spot she had just drawn a bunch of attention to earlier, Sam added a little detail that eroded the faith in Sam's abilities that had just been engendered in Eryth after the earlier display of battlefield surgery.
"Hopefully, I can actually discharge it all since I've never actually let it build up this much. My whole body is all tingly!"
Eryth started moving to her spot much faster. Further away from the Sam-shaped bomb of compressed psudo-magical potential.