Behind the silly façade he was putting up, Edmund was fuming. He was forced to sit between two strangers, who were invading his personal space with their bodies, assaulting his nostrils with their body odor, and all this in the heat of the inside of the covered wagon. Barely any air made its way through the fabric, and the air inside was stale and reeked of sweat and other things he didn’t want to think about. The big guy was literally squishing him with his superior size, all the while the diminutive elf was still shaking from the earlier manhandling he received.

Which, to be honest, infuriated Edmund all the more since he knew the real identity of the guy. How could someone fall so low? Well, maybe I am being too harsh on him, considering what happened to me.

He wondered for a moment what the guy was thinking of him, seeing him in this state. He felt his blood boil. Plus, for the last few hours his head felt like it was splitting open, and waves of pain were washing over him like destructive shockwaves, disrupting any concentration he might have had. He knew it was due to the nanites slowly rewiring his brain, but couldn’t help but feel annoyed at the stack of bad things happening all at once to him.

He swore, there and then, to once again refocus on getting as strong as possible in as little time as possible. There was a theory he had, one that was all but confirmed and only needed real world testing, that could potentially turn the tides of his bad predicament. However, it was still in the works, and he doubted there would be any use even asking Praetor if there was any progress on it. He still made sure to send the AI his ruminations, so that it could ruminate on them as well and maybe pull some trick out of its digital bag.

Edmund’s mulling over magic, Hume energy, their convertibility and compatibility was suddenly interrupted by another wave of pain.

He raised his chin to stare at the elf. He could see his reflection in the shaky glass of his spectacles, but quickly refocused his vision to focus on the eyes of the elf, rather than on his reflection, just as a wave of discomfort passed through him. He ignored it.

He began flexing just the smallest amount of Hume energy, careful to watch for any reaction from the members of Shiningstars. Luckily, as long as he didn’t make it obvious, they seemed to ignore the unfamiliar energy. Probably because they had no idea what it is, or what it can do. Ah, if they only knew.

He only needed to make the guy in front of him understand who he was beyond any reasonable doubt, and make it clear that he was about to do something.

"Item number: SCP 001. Entry proposed by…” he paused. “Doctor S. D. Locke."

He felt the woman beside him shift, while the big one didn’t seem to care. Meanwhile, the elf's eyes widened. The woman, a mage, observed the exchange with interest but said nothing. Edmund kept going.

"Object class: Apollyon."

Suddenly he heard a cry. "No, no, no!" The thin elf, dressed in green, had let go of his large tome and was now rocking back and forth, clutching his ears. “No!” he got up, and yelled loudly.

He threw himself out of the moving wagon, still screaming in agonized terror. He landed in the dirt and tumbled, but quickly got up and to his knees, where he stood immobile. Looking up, he stared at the sun, and cried. The light was burning his eyes, focused by the curved lenses, but he didn’t care. He stared and stared, as if waiting for a judgement from an evil god. Ironic.

The wagon came to a screeching halt. Edmund sent a sideways glare to both Toora and Lisa, then shot to his feet just as the others began to react.

“Where do you think—” the muscular guy began to scream, but suddenly a hammer that wasn’t there the moment before hit him square in the jaw.

The garbed guy vanished. The woman began to talk in a low voice, eyes closed. Toora immediately reacted, and manifested her staff out of what must have looked to the other team, thin air. They didn’t know that nanite weapons could shapeshift, and were hiding in plain sight wrapped around their users’ bodies, like a thin transparent film. Edmund knew neither Toora nor Lisa stood a chance against their counterparts, but he didn’t need them to. They were only a distraction.

Edmund rushed for the elf, and before he even got out of the wagon he yelled: “Vytryat look at me!”

The elf stared at the sun. Edmund tried to lunge at him, but felt something grab his foot. He twisted in mid-air, burning through his miser reserve of Hume energy. The atoms making up his left leg became momentarily loose, the electromagnetic forces holding them together suppressed by a world-altering force. It was but a split second, an absurdly dangerous move, but when the foot restored itself to normal integrity, Edmund was free.

He landed on the opposite seat, now empty, and kicked. The brute’s face received his foot without flinching, and a humongous fist descended from above. It slowed down, just a bit, then a bit more while both Edmund’s and the fist’s owner face were locked in a grimace of struggle and strain. Lisa, who had just recovered from being flung across the room, held her weapon aloft. The hammer transformed into a sword, and she swung it down at the almost immobile arm. When they touched, the sound was the deafening ring of a bell, and she found herself staring for a moment too long at the arm that hadn’t budged an inch, before a shower of sparks from destroyed nanites set the flammable fabric of the wagon’s covering on fire.

Release all Humes. The sword suddenly glowed with a golden hue, and the dent disappeared. Edmund nodded to Lisa, before kicking himself up and out of the wagon through a gap where the fire had burned the cloth. A scream came from behind him, and it was with unexpected relief that he realized it was neither Lisa, nor Toora.

He bolted for the elf, and slapped him so hard his glasses flew off.

“Hey! What the fuck are you doing?”

The elf looked at him, shaking.

“Vytryat! For fuck sake! Get a hold of yourself.”

Nothing.

“If you don’t help us now, I swear to god I’ll do it. I’ll make the day break. I swear I will.”

Vytryat slowly shook his head. “I- I can’t.”

“You can’t?” Edmund roared. “You are a fucking god! Act like it!”

Vytryat’s head was shaking so fast, he was giving himself a concussion. “No… no…”

“Ah, fuck it.” Edmund cursed, and released the spell he had on Lisa’s sword. Feeling the Humes return to him, he grabbed Vytryat by the neck and lifted him up.

His other hand glowed blue. “Look at me,” he said, “listen wel—”

Right at that moment, an explosion from inside the wagon sent him flying a few meters away. He immediately spun around, but felt that his reality-bending energy reserve was empty. His panicked eyes saw Toora and Lisa being flung out of the exploding wagon, followed by a shower of debris and wood splinters.

“I can’t hold her off any longer!” Toora said as she landed.

All this time, she had been concentrating on dispelling her opponent’s magic rather than fighting her, relying on her own superior technique and tools, but soon their rank disparity proved to be too much. From the cloud of smoke, the hulking figure of the fighter and the petite mage appeared as silhouettes. The trio fell into battle stance, each thinking about what they could do against the superior enemy.

Praetor! I need anything. Everything you can give! Proceed with Human Generator! Proceed with Matter-Energy! Everything! I greenlight everything!

Edmund pleaded to the AI, but even if it decided to sacrifice everything, it couldn’t give him more than one or two single units of Hume energy at this moment. The plans he was talking about were not in motion yet, frozen by Edmund’s inability to come to a decision. The moral choices of the days before felt like a mass of impossible neutronium weighing down on him. And now it was too late.

It was looking grim, and in his mind he could feel the cold sweat of defeat. The silence of a lost fight, without any glory or salvation. Only defeat. Utter and humiliating. Death.

He felt a knife pressed against his throat, held by a black hand covered in fluttering dark cloth.

“Surrender.” A voice said. He saw a light, maybe death was not the only outcome.

“I… I surrender!” he immediately replied, and motioned to the girls to stand down as well.

Right at that moment of defeat, another idea came to his mind, and he smirked.

“What?” The mage said, noticing him. Edmund felt a rush of cold dampness stain his clothes. “Think your… friend there can help you?” she was looking at Vytryat, the elf, as he was still cowering on the ground. Relief washed over Edmund, who nodded, still smirking.

“He’s too weak.” Said the leader of the team, who had appeared beside his other two teammates while Edmund wasn’t looking.

Then, everything went black.

***

“They took our weapons.” This was the first thing he heard when he came back to his senses.

He slowly sat upright, distractedly taking note of the soft flesh of Toora’s thighs supporting him like a pillow as he got up. He put that thought aside, and cleared his head of the brain fog of a blow to the head he hadn’t even seen coming. Luckily the nanites had restored him to near peak despite the concussion.

“It’s fine.” He groaned.

“It’s not fine!” Lisa whispered aggressively, almost as if trying to shout while whispering.

“It is.” He said.

He took note of another fact: they were alone inside the wagon, and he could feel that there was a spell surrounding them.

“The, uh…” he motioned with his finger.

“It’s a containment spell. We can’t get out.” Toora said.

“I see.”

“Wouldn’t make sense to even try. We got overpowered with the weapons, and now we are without!”

He chuckled. “You really miss your hammer, don’t you?”

“Yes!” she snapped. “I am naked without it! And why are you laughing!”

“Nothing. It’s cute.”

She growled.

“Also, you’re making a show for nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wait,” Toora said, “you can’t be serious. Do you mean to tell us that this feeling…”

He nodded.

“Why didn’t you tell us earlier?”

Lisa was confused. “What are you talking about?”

Edmund ignored her. “Because I wanted you to find out by yourself. If it comes naturally, it’s that much more powerful of a bond.”

“You…” Toora said, and immediately closed her eyes in meditation.

Lisa almost jumped on top of Edmund, demanding attention. He paid no mind to the fact that she was rubbing her ass on him, knowing that she wasn’t even aware of that.

“Tell me! What feeling was she talking about?”

He pondered whether to mess with her or not, but chose not to. He wasn’t feeling it, despite how much he knew this would have been prime time to mess with her.

“Your weapon. It has bonded with you. The how is irrelevant, has to do with a nanite implant you now have in your brain, but what matters is the bond. You know how you can change the shape of the hammer at will? How do you think that happens, huh? Through the bond. A bond which, even at the current pitiful level of both you and the hammer, has quite the considerable range.”

She grabbed his face. “Shit. You mean to tell me that I can control the hammer from here?”

He nodded slowly, while prying her hands off his cheeks with considerable effort.

“For now, just try to get a feel of it. Do not use it, or even move it. But be ready for my signal.”

She nodded, jumped off of him, and sat down with her eyes closed. He exhaled.

It’s a hell of a gamble.

“Alright so, uh…” he said as soon as both girls were out of their trance. “As you can tell the bond can reach out of the spell they put on us, probably because it’s technological in nature and uses the EM spectrum to transmit data. Now, this means that we have the weapons, plus a little thing I planted on their leader while he was threatening me. From what I gather the nanites have reached the brain and multiplied, and are now moving towards their designated locations. In a few minutes, I will be able to kill him on the spot if I so choose.”

“What about the others?” Toora asked.

“I have nothing on them.”

“And Vytryat?”

Edmund threw his hands up. “He’s a total unknown. Now that he knows I bluffed with the whole SCP thing, he will not believe my threats anymore.”

“No,” Lisa shook her head. “It’s too dangerous.”

They all sat back down. “I wasn’t expecting you of all people to say that.”

She shrugged. “I like living. I’m not that crazy, you know?”

“So now what?” Edmund asked.

“We wait and see. They said they have orders to escort us safely to the city, right?” Toora said.

He nodded. “Because of the guild. I vote we see what they want with us. What do you say?”

Toora shook her head.

“What?”

“Edmund,” she smiled. “You’re the leader. You said this yourself back when we met. We don’t vote. You decide, we act.”

He sighed. “Alright, what about constructive criticism?”

Lisa raised her hand. “I think it’s a bad idea, but we don’t have a choice, which makes it the only bad idea in a sea of awful ideas.”

“Alright… makes sense. Toora?”

Toora just nodded, and they all sat in silence.

“I have a question.”

“Go on.”

“Who is Vytryat? Why did you know him?”

“Oh,” he smiled. “How about I tell you a little story?”