Gods, I hope my spine isn’t broken, Alicia thought, flying upward to gain distance. The Denton manor shrank under her, along with the city of Santo Descanso. In a matter of seconds the place she’d spent her entire life seemed tiny and insignificant.

Everything diminished, save the two Inquisitors, who took to the air in pursuit.

Damn! Even by a rough estimate, she was certain the inquisitors had more Intelligence than she did, which amounted to a longer flight time. Trying to outrun them in the air would be folly.

So don’t outrun them.

Alicia angled herself toward the sun, forcing the Inquisitors to squint as they chased her. Still no sign of Maggie.

She pointed Cunning toward the desert sky and formed a wall of thick clouds above her head, vanishing into it as the Inquisitor’s caught up with her.

Alicia juked left as the was entering the mist, then right once it become too thick to see. She took one of Garth’s ‘performance enhancing drugs’ out of her status band and guzzled the vial down before tossing it aside. It tasted like lime.

I don’t care if these men eat Gorath hearts for breakfast. I’m getting what I came for.

Alicia’s heart began to pound in her chest, her arms and legs shivering with anticipation. The bruises seemed to disappear from her senses, and the worrisome tingling in her legs faded away.

Her vision tinted red around the edges.

***Garth***

“Ooh, she took the Baller Special.” Garth winced. It made sense though, she was trying to win, not struggle lamely and then get caught.

“What was that?” Fred asked as the cloud above the city began flaring up with streaks of lightning.

“I don’t think there’s a scientific name for it, but I like to call it the Garth Baller Special.” Garth said, tapping his feet and taking another handful of popcorn. “It basically triggers ‘mommy mode’.”

“What the hell is mommy mode?” Juan asked.

“You’ve never hear stories about women lifting cars to…or I guess wagons, to get to their kids when they’re in danger?”

“No, but I heard of a woman killing two slavers who were trying to kidnap her twelve year old son.”

“There, close enough,” Garth said, passing the popcorn around. “I always wanted to know how mommy mode affected people in a world where attribute values are a thing, so this is an excellent case study.”

“Well, mommy mode seems pretty damaging to the body,” Zack said. “She just broke her hand on that guy’s armor.”

“There’s a powerful regenerative effect. I don’t make defective goods.” Garth spoke around a mouthful of popcorn. “And it’s the Garth Baller Special.”

“Mommy mode,” Fred said.

“Mommy mode,” Juan agreed.

“Bah.”

****

Alicia impacted the Inquisitor with the force of a meteor. She felt like some divine being had drawn her back and shot her forward like an arrow. The impact tore the younger inquisitor away from his partner and got her inside the range of his sword.

She hauled back and slammed the wedge tip of Cunning against the man’s side as hard as she could.

There was a horrifying crunch, and when she looked down, she spotted her wrist twisted at a horrific angle, her wand jammed several inches into the man’s armor. With a grin, Alicia unleashed a bold of lightning straight into the inquisitor’s chest before kicking him away.

He gave a scream and tumbled away, heading at breakneck speeds for the cobbled streets of Santo Descanso.

The other one.

Alicia whipped around and leveled Caitlyn’s toy on the charging Inquisitor, squeezing the trigger. The bullets shot out of the gun with a crack of displaced air as the steel ball bearings broke the sound barrier.

The Inquisitor put his golden gauntlet in front of his face as he sailed across the distance between them, earning four new dents in the obviously-not-gold armor.

“Should’a worn my helmet,” The bearded one growled. A second later, Alicia saw a strange, nearly invisible man wrap itself around him in a bubble, concentrating itself.

Then the Inquisitor started moving faster. Much faster.

He forced himself into range of Alicia, and unleashed four blindingly fast stabs at her chest and arms.

She only had enough speed to block half of them, and so she reflexively used Caitlyn’s gun to knock aside the two aiming for her vital organs.

With quick, precise strikes, the inquisitor punctured her shoulders with Guile, rendering her arms unusable. The inquisitor wobbled in midair as he cast a silvery chain at her, just a bit too fast for her to outfly.

A screaming animal inside her told her to bite and scratch every inch of the way. She still didn’t know if she’d done what she came here to do, and she wasn’t leaving without settling the score.

“Hold…Still!” The Inquisitor tried to knock her out with a golden gauntlet to the face, but he was back to normal speeds, and she swayed out of the way before lunging forward, aiming to bite him on the neck.

He caught her neck with his armored forearm, but he lost concentration his Fly spell, plummeting toward the ground.

Alicia was pretty proud of that, until the chain wrapped around her body went tight and dragged her screaming down to earth as well.

The fucker was heavy.

They landed in a crowded street two blocks over from the Denton manor, halfway to the city market. Alicia coughed and blinked, amazed that the fall hadn’t killed her.

The chain was still there, though. Damn.

She wiggled, trying to get out of it before the Inquisitors recovered from the fall, looking like a grub or some kind of human-faced caterpillar. Alicia tried to cut through it with raw lightning, channeling every ounce of Mana she could scrape up through her wand.

She experienced a moment of blinding pain as the bearded inquisitor slammed his foot down on her broken wrist before prying the wand out of her hand.

“AAAGH!” Munasei, stop distracting me!

***Garth***

“Paul, do the thing!”

“working on it,” Paul growled through the microphone as Garth watched the second Inquisitor rejoin the first, not wearing his armor, and clutching his wounded side. “How was I supposed to know they’d start flying?”

She really made them pay for it, Garth thought as he inspected the two wounded Inquisiors. If it had been a one-on-one fight, she would have won the moment she took the drugs.

So proud of my little classless monster.

“Hurry up, hurry up…” Garth said as they patched their wounds and made to bundle her up and start limping back to base.

***Alicia***

She was considering trying her teeth on the summoned chains, when Aunt Maggie appeared out of a side alley, trailing Benedette and Kyle.

My three favorite people all in one place, Alicia thought, eyes narrowing. If there was any time to pull the strange core out of her storage, it was now.

“Sweetie, I’ll do everything I can to help you get released, you just need to cooperate with them,” Maggie said, smiling gently as she walked towards her. Aunt Maggie’s favorite ring, a gaudy piece of work with a strong poison hidden in it, was spun backwards on her finger, presumably so she could put some on her thumb and rub it in a cut or in Alicia’s mouth.

Just get a little closer, you bitch, and I’ll fry everyone here, starting with you. She had seen what Garth could do with the golden orb things. It was a shame there had only been one. She didn’t know where the others went, but one should be plenty.

“Ma’am,” the bearded one said, standing between the two of them. “I think it’s better if you don’t approach her.” he said sternly, taking a pointed glance at Maggie’s hand. Maggie smiled and nodded.

Her tells were pretty well hidden, but Alicia knew she was seething on the inside. Alicia was too.

I don’t want her to be upset, I want her dead!

Alicia summoned the golden orb into her hand and tried to draw mana through it to create lightning and incinerate the woman responsible for every misery she’d endured.

Everything went white.

….

There were distant sounds, but they barely registered. Voices down a long hallway.

…….

Alicia felt someone pry the thing away from her hand. She forgot if that was important or not.

There was a strange tickling, itching sensation beneath her nose, at the corners of her eyes, in her ears.

She couldn’t seem to pin any single thought down. They were like slippery eels, impossible to hold onto, blending in with the other squirming thoughts under the surface, and not giving you the bread you were looking for.

***Garth***

“You sure putting a Mythic Core where she could find it was a good idea?” Mrs. Banyan asked. “Because to me it seems callous and wildly ill-advised.”

“Noted, watch the artistry unfold.”

Alicia was lying on the ground, bleeding from the nose, eyes and ears, but her eyes were still moving a little, her hand twitching. She had been strong enough to not die instantly, and the Garth Baller special in her system was rapidly fixing the damage.

Probably.

“I’m in position.” Paul said.

“Deliver the package.”

***Alicia***

Alicia was starting to recover, the sounds were still dim, but the meaning behind them was becoming clear.

“Keep pressure on it!” the Bearded Inquisitor shouted, kneeling in the corner of her vision, clamping his hand above the younger one’s severed foot. There was a glowing spider web of white-hot stone that seemed to emanate from around Alicia.

Luckily she wasn’t lying in any of it, but her face was staring into a thick line of white hot stone bit about three inches away. she could feel the heat on her cheeks.

People were screaming, she could hear that distantly. Alicia noticed the lines of hot stone acutally went up the sides of buildings, too, but they seemed to have just ceased to exist, tearing through the wood walls in the characteristic pattern of lightning.

Lightning. I can make lightning.

Did I make this?

The fog was slowly lifting. She remembered she was in a fight, she fell, and then…

Maggie appeared above her.

“Oh, sweetheart, are you all right?” she asked, wiping a bit of blood off Alicia’s split eyebrow with her thumb.

Something about that registered as a bad thing.

Her aunt had the look she got when she was winning.

Poison. She poisoned me.

SHE POISONED ME!

Alicia’s clarity came back quickly and brutally. There was no way she was going to accept an end like this! She had to kill her somehow!

She struggled against the chains, tried to summon an ounce of mana, but that jjust caused her vision to go white again, causing her whole body to shake with pain.

“Gah!”

“I’ll see if I can find someone to help you,” Maggie said, swiftly standing and moving away, following the golden rule of poisoning: Don’t get caught standing next to the target holding poison.

“I’ll kill you!” Alicia shouted as she felt her heartbeat become erratic.

“I don’t think you will, my dear.” Maggie said, allowing herself a small smile.

“Hey!” the Bearded Inquisitor said, a jagged line of his armor missing to reveal a heavily muscled chest as he approached. “Stand away from her!”

Too late, you dolt, she already got me when you were busy with your friend’s stump. Alicia’s body began to shiver and sweat as the fast acting poison began to make itself noticed. Maggie was already halfway across the street.

There was a strange hissing, followed by a Crunch of shattering stone, drawing everyone’s attention.

In the center of the street was a single adamantium bolt. A Crownkiller bolt, with a single sheet of paper wrapped around it.

Maggie turned pale as the bearded Inquisitor untied the paper and scanned it.

“Turnabout is fair play

-E.” He spoke aloud.

“Either of you know what this means?” he asked, glancing between Maggie and Alicia.

Alicia started to chuckle.

“heh, heheh, hehehehahahHAH!”

“Don’t you dare-“ Maggie started shouting.

“It’s ours!” Alicia said, giggling, shivering and dry-heaving as nausea began to overwhelm her. All the nausea in the world couldn’t dampen her spirits “It’s made by the Dentons! We steal Adamantium off the books, make them and sell them to the Prima Regula and whoever else wants them for a huge profit!”

Crownkiller bolts were 95% lead, and paid for as if they were entirely adamantium, netting the producers a huge profit. Creating them was an offense punishable by death, not just of the person involved, but their entire family.

The Inquisitor’s gaze traveled between the two of them, and she saw him make the connection.

Maggie knew it too. Her veneer of civility sloughed off, and she snarled like a cornered animal before turning and sprinting away, her dress ripping along the sides as she presumably ran to cover up their family’s misdeeds, or perhaps simply try to escape the city.

“I told you I’d kill you, you…” Alicia fought through a wave of disorienting spinning. “bitch!” It wasn’t as personal as she’d hoped, but Maggie was marked, now. she’d either die in a gutter or drawn and quartered in the capital.

Nobles can live a long time while being split in half.

“Let’s get an official statement back at the precinct,” The bearded one said, pulling the armor enchantment off her back and removing her Status Band.

“Suck my cock.” Alicia muttered. Suddenly losing the Status band meant losing its boost to her Endurance, the only thing barely keeping her awake. She blacked out.

***Garth***

“That was exciting and all, but don’t they have a Mythic Core now?” Mrs. Banyan asked.

Garth paused putting popcorn in his face.

“Oooh, that’s why I did that.”

“What?”

“Well I was wondering why I let her take one. It’s not for her, it’s for the Inquisitors. It’s the bait.”

“Explain.”

“The letter I sent earlier might have some draw, but if they get reports that someone is handing out Mythic cores to eighteen-year-old girls like candy, that’s gonna turn some heads. It’s my bait. To get a reaction.”

“I don’t get it.”