I didn’t speak as I raised my eyes to meet Hans’. To my core, now, I understood that I was surrounded by my enemies. I didn’t want to oppose them before; not really. I wanted a simple answer where everyone would be happy together, or if unpleasantries happened, they’d happen out of my sight.

But that was the coward’s way.

If these men died, it would be because of my choice. Action or inaction, their lives, their futures, were on my shoulders. And they were my enemies. Though part of me screamed, I accepted the idea that I may kill them all in the next moments.

I reached out and took Lou’s hand, squeezing it reassuringly. She relaxed slightly, but her hand was still trembling..

“I need to understand the situation I’m in a little better,” I said, trying to keep my voice level as I held my other hand out to Hans. “I need to speak to my mother, please.”

Hans was suspicious, though he didn’t show it visually. He handed over the radio microphone with a smile.

“Mother, are you still there?” I asked.

“Of course, Aera,” she said.

“I need to know exactly what your deal was with Germany,” I said.

My mother wasn’t fooled for an instant.

“Aera, it is beyond foolish to oppose us,” she said. “If the portal stands open, you have no chance. If you destroy the portal, it would be years of work lost, and we may never find each other again. Don’t throw away your life for foolishness. Just come home.”

Throw away my life? Like Nicholas had done?

“If I understand from what you’d said earlier, if Germany ceases to exist as a country, or it surrenders, you will no longer be bound?” I asked, swallowing.

“Yes, but Aera, please,” my mother said. “Don’t put us in this situation. We’ve spent years trying to bring you home. We miss you. Your brothers want to tell you all about their wild adventures, and want to hear all about yours. You can’t just throw away your family, not after all we’ve gone through. Please, just come home.”

“I have more than one home, now,” I said. “I cannot, will not, abandon Earth.”

“You know our mission,” my mother said, with a hopeful sound. “Perhaps Earth is suitable? We’ll finish up this situation with Germany, and spend however long we need to on getting the portal ready. Then, we can move there. There’s no reason you have to abandon it.”

Tears started gathering in my eyes again, and I took a breath. My mother sounded so earnest. She wanted me home. Despite all the issues, all my failures, she loved me and was willing to relocate to an alien world if that’s what it took to bring our family together.

Hans was frowning by this point, and put his hand out to me.

“The radio, please,” he said.

I considered briefly and then ignored him. I needed a moment where nothing was happening to think, and I wouldn’t be able to do that if I were paying attention to Hans and my mother talking.

I closed my eyes.

What do I want to happen here? I asked myself, frowning.

No easy answers came to mind, but I’d expected that. Talking my mother into reneging on a deal, which would put our entire family at serious risk, was out of the question. Joining Germany, likewise. I was pretty sure it’d be impossible to persuade Hans and the other Germans here of the error of their ways.

What I wanted, outcome wise, was simple enough. I wanted my mother’s deal annulled; this contingent of soldiers captured, ideally, or killed; and finally, Lou’s and my safety.

Having the portal intact would be nice, but honestly, it didn’t matter much. Now that I knew how they’d be looking for me, I’d be able to find them. It might involve seeding the entire damned planet with detection enchantments, but I’d have no issues doing that, time consuming though it may be.

Attacking, though, would be betraying the spirit of my arrangement with Hans. At the very least, I should warn him that our truce was over before attacking.

I swallowed. Was that what I was going to do? Declare my intentions, assault the portal to destroy its magic, and then force the German base into surrender? A chill ran down my spine, stabbing my heart with a flicker of terror as it went, my mind going to the warm feeling of Lou’s hand in mine. Lou was here as a preventative measure to keep me from attacking. As gentle as I preferred to be, neither of us thought it’d actually come to that, else she’d have never come along.

And I couldn’t ask her. Well… technically I could, but I’d never gotten good at telepathic communication.

Swallowing again, I realized I didn’t need to. I remembered her yelling at me scarcely minutes ago that choosing to save her over stopping Hitler was the wrong choice.

Tears began to well in my eyes, and I destroyed my tear ducts.

“Mother,” I said slowly, taking a deep breath. “I love you all, I love you so much, and I’ve missed you. I will see you again. I’ll look, once it’s time, now that I know what to look for. Just know that I’m doing what I believe is right.”

I turned to face Hans, keeping the connection open so my mother could hear.

“Hans. You promised safe passage to my friend, Lou, and I, in exchange for my aid in fulfilling your part of the deal with my family,” I said. “That includes protection from any attacks via the portal. We officially have a truce, until I declare otherwise.”

Hans’ eyes narrowed, but he nodded slowly. I let go of the button, in case my mother wanted to respond. Now that she had the message, I began drawing forth my power as intensely as possible.

“Ah, my daughter,” she said, and I was startled to realize she sounded proud. “I suppose I was foolish to imagine you as still only seventeen years old. Do as your heart demands, my darling. While I, and I alone, will oppose you once your truce ends, all of our hearts are with you. Let them burn at your will.”

Hans blanched and I spoke again.

“Of course, you’ll only know the truce is broken if Hans tells you,” I said, and swallowed. “I love you, and goodbye for now.”

“Goodbye for now, my darling,” my mother said, a smile thick in her voice.

I turned to Hans. Part of me was desperately looking for some solution that didn’t involve killing them all. It occurred to me that I could just…

“Hans, I’m trying to find a solution to my current predicament that doesn’t involve killing you all,” I told him, and Lou half laughed, half snorted in disbelief. “In case you decide to break the truce immediately, keep in mind that you’re in range, and you’re the obvious first target. I’d prefer your surrender, and if that’s not an option, I’d like to hear alternatives.”

I’d lied to Hans, sort of. He was the obvious first target, sure, but the portal was my actual first target.

As I spoke, I soaked magic into the ground around the portal. It was like I was starting to create a highly unstable enchantment. The portal would resist random explosions and idle tinkering, but it wasn’t exactly robust. Still, it was the sort of thing I’d need to succeed at on my first try, else things would go very poorly for me.

“Aera,” he said, his voice cold and unyielding. “Do keep in mind that Lou is in range, and is the obvious first target. My men are under orders to shoot her, aiming to inflict the maximum amount of pain, if hostilities emerge, with the aim that her screaming would distract you.”

I flinched, but Lou said, “One; fuck you. Two; it won’t stop her. Three; I’d even end up surviving, so that’s fine by me.”

I smiled. Now that my preparation work was complete for the portal, I turned my attention to Lou. She still had her enchantment to protect her from bullets - bullets, fire, and almost nothing else. Now that I knew that all of the magical abilities of the Germans were clever, but weak enchantments, I knew how to defend against them. Some hair was drawn in from my head and slowly fashioned into a ring of diamond around Lou’s finger. Her hand clenched in surprise, but since I was holding that hand, it looked like she was seeking or giving comfort.

“You wouldn’t likely survive if you were shot in the stomach, and Aera couldn’t immediately heal you,” Hans said, his voice still ice cold. “She can’t heal brain damage, and if your blood is badly poisoned by the filth in your intestines, she won’t save you in time.”

“Oh, well,” Lou said, her voice oddly cheerful. She sounded… honestly, almost delighted.

I wondered if she’d gone into shock.

“Secondly,” Hans continued, ignoring her and returning his attention to me, “If your mother fights you, then you lose everything. If you delay your attack on us long enough to damage the portal, then we will defeat you. We know that your defenses cannot hold up against a sustained assault. Even then, we can repair the portal afterwards. You cannot win like this, Aera.”

I nodded in understanding, though not agreement. I’d already noticed that it was modular, which meant it would be trivial to repair, as long as they had the other parts. Based on the design of this portal, they could probably build at least one more, since I doubted any of these was one of the original modules.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said, shrugging. “Even if you are, if I give it a try, you will not survive.”

The diamond ring was complete. I began pouring magic into it. Once activated, it would briefly provide resistance to all forms of magic. It wouldn’t hold up against anything remotely powerful, or anything designed to overcome magical resistance, but I’d already noticed that flaw. My family hadn’t given them enchantments that could threaten magic users. Besides, Lou - and, unfortunately, Hans - had been exposed to enough magic to develop a minor amount of innate magical resistance. All my ring had to do was boost it.

“You think me a coward?” he asked, looking honestly offended, though magesense revealed that he was fighting his own fear. “What I stand for is worth dying for. And my death would gain you nothing, save the deaths of your friend and your compatriots at the American base.”

“So, we both think that we are assured of victory, trying to talk the other into surrender, because that victory would be costly,” I said with a sigh.

“It seems we are a bit of an impasse, then,” Hans said calmly. “I still have hope for a peaceful resolution, Aera. You and your friend need not die this day. You can return to your family.”

“What you mean is, you’re not as sure of your victory as you pretend,” I said, smiling a little.

Did he not realize that I was stalling for time? The ring was charged to the point that I was fatigued. Unwise, perhaps, since I probably needed all the strength I could manage for what came next. Still, I… I had to. It was Lou. I couldn’t completely abandon her. The ring was an abominable piece of work that would only provide mediocre resistance for perhaps a scarce minute, but that should be enough.

“You insult me,” he said haughtily, and I saw he meant it. “You are surrounded. We have the advantage in numbers, in total magic, and in weaponry, without even considering the advantage of the portal. You are not a soldier, so perhaps you don’t understand the position you’re in. It would be vastly more advantageous for both of us if you would understand this simple fact. To kill you is to lose an irreplaceable opportunity, else you would already be dead.”

The ring was done enough, I supposed. I squeezed Lou’s hand reassuringly. It was slick with sweat.

“I apologize for any misunderstanding,” I said coolly. “You underestimate me, and you underestimate my family. I have been passive because I trusted in the wisdom of others, and because I prefer it, not because I lack knowledge of how to fight. And as for that magic you wield?”

I laughed, getting ready to release the buildup around the portal.

“Did it not occur to you that my parents would put weaknesses into those enchantments that I might exploit, in case of your betrayal?” I asked. “It is time, Hans. Decide. Surrender or die.”

“Fire,” he barked in German, just as he activated a defensive enchantment and jumped back.

Gunshots began to fill the air as I activated Lou’s enchantment. She began to glow with a blue light, evidence of my inefficiency of magic. It was beautiful, though. She looked like some sort of gun-wielding angel, the bullets tearing trails through the pulsing blue aura.

An explosion of force, mud, and wind slammed into me from the portal, as my gathered energies discharged. The self-assembling base was utterly destroyed, and the modules were flung in all directions.

Annoyingly, both Hans and Lou weathered the explosion better than I did. I found myself face down in the dirt, covered in minor scratches, but otherwise fine, while they were still on their feet. I supposed Han’s defensive enchantment covered explosions, and Lou’s enhanced resistance to magic handled the wave of force. They’d both tried to go for cover, though only Hans succeeded. We were surrounded, after all, so Lou could do nothing but crouch, trying to make herself a smaller target.

Lou’s blue aura was already fading under the assault of Hans’ spells hitting her. Weak they may have been, but they were numerous. Neither of our bullet enchantments would hold out long, either, at this rate. I wasn’t under as much fire as Lou - it seemed Hans had been telling the truth about that - but I was still taking enough that I felt the enchantment straining.

I didn’t have time. I thought about building a wall of dirt to protect us, but that’d take too long, and too much of my remaining strength.

Of my enemies, only Hans had developed any degree of natural magic resistance, so I ignored him for the moment.

The soldiers had anti-bullet enchantments, so only a shot that originated within the barrier had a chance to work. Aeros flowed from me into the minds of the soldiers around me. Lou started making pained sounds, the blue aura almost entirely fading as the magic resistance began to wear off, but it still protected her enough that the damage was superficial.

The mind magic was ready, but I hesitated with the command, despite knowing what I had to do. Killing someone like this… using mind magic to force them to kill themselves… my heart screamed in protest, and magic cannot act without commitment. Seconds passed as I strained to force my will to align with what I knew must be done.

Then Lou started screaming. I glanced over and saw wounds tearing open in her flesh from the gunshots, her body falling to the ground.

My heart tore out of my chest at the sight, and its protestations halted. My will steeled and death entered the minds of the soldiers. One at a time, as I focused on each in turn, they turned their guns around, put the barrels in their mouths, and fired. For every second that passed, another soldier fell. But there were so many...

Hans ordered the men to attack me as soon as he realized what I was doing. Bullets slammed into my barrier, but despite the discomfort, I was relieved. Lou wasn’t being fired at any longer.

I pushed myself up, still focusing on killing the soldiers as best as I could, and flopped onto Lou’s prone body, ensuring I blocked any shots from reaching her head or heart. She was gasping in shallow, agonized breaths, bleeding out from over a dozen shots.

I ignored the soldiers just long enough to cut off blood flow in Lou from everything that wasn’t absolutely critical for short term survival, and patched up the bleeding from areas that were. I twisted her nerves such that they couldn’t feel any pain, anywhere. Her breathing slowed to a restful rate, and I could tell she was on the brink of passing out. If left alone, she’d lose both arms, both legs, and everything below her diaphragm, but she should survive the next few minutes.

By the time another five soldiers died of forced suicide, my own anti bullet enchantment started to buckle. I preemptively cut off my blood flow from my own extremities, silenced all my nerves from pain, and redirected the anti bullet enchantment to only protect my vitals. My legs and arms were pulped in scarcely a second, but my heartbeat remained steady.

I’d not even gotten a fifth of the soldiers, and I was already in desperate straits - crippled and under intense assault, on top of a nearly unconscious, defenseless and helpless Lou. My method was pretty fast - it’d been perhaps a single minute since the portal’s explosion - but it wasn’t fast enough. I wasn’t skilled enough with mind magic to speed up. What could I do?

A sick feeling overcame me as I realized there was precisely one type of magic with which I was fast and skilled enough to affect groups with any degree of significant effect or precision. Biological alteration magic. Normally used for healing or flower sculpting, but…

Bile rose in my throat as I unleashed the command, a simple inversion of a magic I’d just done. If it weren’t for Lou’s weak gasping beneath me, I never could have found the will. A small change was easier than a large one. To destroy, to dissolve, took more strength than a slight twist of function.

The soldiers began to scream as all of the nerves in their bodies suddenly twisted such that they only spoke of pain. Every type of pain imaginable, in every part of the body that could feel pain, at maximum intensity, all at once. Torture, more complete and intense than any that could be conceived by mortal means. I watched as bodies contorted and fell, flailing and seizing, as they desperately tried to escape. Their voices rose to an inhuman pitch, occasionally broken off by one soldier or another, as they retched and soiled themselves.

Dorothy had told me of the Christian hell, of the tortured souls in the lakes of fire. The story became more real to me in that moment, as a sound that felt as though it could only have come from such a cursed place filled the air from their throats. My soul twisted in pain from merely hearing it, and that was with my mind desperately trying to go blank and pretend that it didn’t exist.

A few managed to find the presence of mind to desperately grab their guns and end their own suffering.

“What…?” Lou gasped, her eyes regaining some degree of life. “What’s happ...ening…?”

“What have you done?!” Hans shrieked, looking half mad from the inhuman screeching.

He ran up to me, shoving his gun into my face.

My spirit was in tatters. The sounds filling my ears and the feel of their spirits would haunt me for the rest of my life. All I could make myself desire was for the sounds to stop, for their pain to end, and I just couldn’t make myself focus on Hans. I should stop him, too. I had to, he was still a threat, but…

My own muscles were seizing up, my mind both screaming and blank, refusing to understand and unable to not understand the horror of what I had just done. The sounds the soldiers made were not sounds that a human mind could bear. At the deepest level, at the most primal of instincts, my mind rebelled against any reality that could create such horror.

“Undo it!” Hans screamed at me, his eyes wild, kneeling and shoving his gun into my mouth. “I will kill you, I will torture everyone you have ever cared for, vile witch!”

An absolutely idiotic part of me wanted to die, to escape from the sound, to escape from the knowledge, from the horror. The voice of the coward. My jaw clenched, which only served to make me bite his gun.

“Make… it stop…” Lou hissed, her face contorted into a grimace.

I tried to focus. I had to stop Hans, and then I could free the soldiers from their suffering. I reached my spirit towards Hans…

But I didn’t have time.

Bullets ripped holes in my mouth, deflected by my barrier before they reached my brain, but still filling my mouth with blood. I jerked at the sensation.

“NO!” Lou screamed, with far more force than her battered body ought to have managed. “You CANNOT fucking KILL her, you FUCKING LUNATIC!”

My need for air compelled my attention, and I opened a hole above my collarbone to breathe out of in the meantime.

A part of me cursed myself that I could focus enough to fulfill my own, selfish need to breathe, but not focus enough to push past Hans’ slight magic resistance.

Lou’s spirit blazed beneath me, filled with a desperate will to move. She didn’t care that her nerves had been cut off, that her muscles were frayed and useless. She needed to move…

And so she did.

Flamus filled her broken flesh, pouring out in uncontrolled wisps of unearthly light, as she burned her spirit in single minded determination.

She twisted, throwing my near-corpse to the ground beside her, and her hand grasped Hans’ throat with inhuman speed. He tried to fight her off, but her fingers dug into and through his skin as she squeezed, crushing his trachea into lumpy pulp. Her eyes widened and she jerked back in shock, staring in horror at the bloody mess in her hand, as Hans gurgled wetly, falling to the ground.

With her determined rush thwarted by surprise, her scant hint of magic fled her shattered body, leaving her to collapse again. She made a deeply annoyed sound.

Without Hans demanding my attention, I was free to focus on the soldiers. The primal shrieking was distracting to a maddening degree, and I strained to get my exhausted, shaken, battered spirit to align with my intention.

“Be alive, Aera,” she hissed from the ground at me. “Be alive, and make it stop!”

Her body was twitching unnaturally, as her chaotic control over her newly awakened magic kept almost being focused enough to force proper movement. After hitting me with awkwardly limp, blood soaked limbs a few times, I realized she was desperately trying to shake me awake.

As beset by guilt as I was, I couldn’t possibly force an intention of killing the soldiers. I wanted them to know peace, and so they did. Their nerves were twisted back to their natural states, and a strange silence filled the chill night air. Raspy, shaky breaths could be heard, with occasional hints of whimpering. I forced myself to look at what I had wrought, and saw perhaps a hundred men collapsed in puddles of blood, urine, feces, and vomit, helplessly shaking in shock.

“So you are alive,” Lou said, and her Flamus-assisted movements ceased. “Good. That means I can fucking kill you myself. What the fuck did you do to them?”

I still couldn’t speak, as my mouth was still in shreds from Hans’ point blank bullets.

Just two more bits of magic, and I was done. I just had to heal Lou and myself.

My vision was growing black around the edges from exhaustion. Did I even have strength enough to heal us both?