The Clock rewinds and Emily finds herself back aboard Calypso in full trol, guiding the ship towards Erenmoor from the engine room. She breaks her meditation, opening her eyes that glint with a cold, calg light.

  There’s no way I actually block that spell if he aims it at Calypso. Even a gng blow instantly tore through my boot, so none of my spells will be enough to block it, but I may have a ce to reduce the power.

  Emily stands up and starts walking through the ship to her workshop.

  He ’t not attack us because it will look bad for his family, and he ’t ht miss for the same reasons, but what if I indicate the least vital area of the ship, the up some barriers to reduce the damage that gets through? That may work.

  She steps into her workshop and looks over the tools set up against the walls.

  “I may have to rely a little on luck for this,” she mutters, one of her hands resting affeately on The Clock’s pouch as she pulls up her system and firms that the extra requirement on her quest has reset to not plete. “Good thing I keep trying till the dice fall in my favour.”

  ***

  Emily spends the night w on the ideas in her o hahe ing battle before passing trol of the ship back to the crew as day es, instrug them to set down near Erenmoor once again.

  Instead of sleeping, Emily meditates aers the Spellweave to tinue w on a spell for the ing assault. She leaves the engine room six hours ter and calls everyoo their stations to set off before activating the ship’s array once again.

  The flight towards the border is uful, the only difference being that this time Emily spots a well-camoufged outpost hidden in the sands as they pass over it a few hours before the first scouts arrive. She ig and keeps her eyes on the horizon, waiting for the scouts to show up.

  The moment she spots the faint outline of five ships in the distance, she leaves the bridge and makes her way to the drop hatch. She steps out, plummeting to the sands below before breaking into a sprint, boosted by lightning step. The ships in the air spot her approad hatches open oher side of them as ten armunmen lean out to fire on her.

  Emily weaves between their shots with ease, the distaween them quickly closing as she uses air walk to rise up towards their ships. Panic grows on the soldiers' faces, but they’re helpless to stop her as Emily reaches them and dives straight into the first scout ship through the open hatch, tag the shooter to the floor.

  She nds straddled on the woman’s chest, pinning both of her arms to the floor with her khe poor soldier fruitlessly tries tle against Emily’s immerength, but Emily quickly pulls a hollow needle from her belt, filled with a potion brewed from a sominal bomber’s venom, and stabs it into the woman’s neck. Her eyes lose their focus almost instantly, and a few moments of slowly weakening attempts to escape ter, her eyelids flicker shut as she falls into a deep slumber.

  Emily pces her fingers against the soldier’s neck, sending a pulse of maa into her body to s her, cheg the effectiveness of the sleeping potion and adding more data trowing colle of information on the human body.

  “She should stay asleep fht hours,” Emily mutters with a satisfied nod. “I dilute it more attempt if I want, I only hem uo pursue me.”

  She rises from the sleeping woman’s chest while sending a strong pulse of maa into the ship below her feet, quickly uanding its blueprint so she make her way to the cockpit. Lightning sparks between the floor and her feet as she shoots through the narrow fines of the small ship, arriving in the cockpit in the blink of an eye.

  The pilot tries to fight back, pointing his revolver at the door and unloading six shots into the hallway behind as he hears her footsteps approag, but Emily easily weaves through the shots. She watches his eyes and barrel, slipping to the side each time he pulls the trigger and dodges before each bullet leaves the barrel.

  “Shit! Mar-” the pilot screams as Emily charges into the small trol room, springing up and smming her ko the man’s chest, cutting off his call for help and knog him bato his trol panel without any air left in his lungs.

  As he’s stunned and wheezing for breath, Emily jabs him in the neck with another full needle, knog him out. The footsteps of the final two members of the crew ring through the ship, quickly approag, so Emily sets the pilot down in his seat again and tucks herself in beside the door, waiting just out of sight.

  “Lazlo, where I-” the first soldier starts as he charges into the room, cutting off as Emily’s fist sms into the side of his ribs, knog him aside.

  The sturdy metal ptes of his armour protect him from the brunt of the damage, since she didn’t use her full strength, but her he nor the man in the corridor behind him have time to react as two needles are thrown out, digging into their necks and delivering a dose of sleeping potion directly into their bloodstreams.

  Emily gnces out of the window, seeing Calpyso still far ahead of the ships, before turning bad dashing to the hatch to leave the ship. She opens the vents on the balloon with her maa, starting the scout on a steady dest before leaping from a hatch towards the closest ship.

  It doesn’t take her long to repeat her process, sending all five scouts down to safely rest on the desert floor, and she returns to Calpyso before it even passes them. A g her mana and maa reserves raises a satisfied smile to her lips for a few moments.

  They should be almost back to full by the time we reach the main army.

  Emily settles on top of the ship in the open as they fly quickly towards the soon-to-be battlefield, pulling the Whisper from her belt and ying it in her p. She gently runs a hand over the intimately familiar body of the gun with maa sparkiween her fingers and the etal, feeding her information about its internal dition.

  She’s starting to see quite a bit of wear. I should give her some mainteer this fight, especially given how much I’m gonna use Overdrive.

  She racks back the bolt, catg the bullet that flies out of the breech as she does before sliding the magazi and pg the bullet bato it. She tucks the old ammunition aulls out anazihis oh an engraving of a small ice crystal on the side, gently sliding it into pce before pushing the bolt fain.

  Emily lifts the stock to her shoulder, ying her cheek against it and staring through the scope as she watches the horizon for the waiting army with her trigger fi against the gun’s body.

  She remains motionless for the rest of the flight to the shore, perched above the ship like a gargoyle until the moment the distant defensive formation es into view. The instant she clearly make out the mounted artillery ons on the ground, Emily takes a long, deep breath.

  She feels the wind against her skin, the thinness of the air entering her lungs, and the dry heat dist her distant target as her mind burns through calcutions and she slowly adjusts her aim, her eyes sing across all twenty of her targets. A mier, as the ons finally enter her raill far from theirs, Emily pours maa intun, flooding it with over two hundred units of the buzzing energy for the first shot alone.

  The gun crackles with power as Emily flicks it into full and pulls the trigger before quickly rag the bolt and meically moving the barrel to a new position. She keeps firing until all ten rounds in her magazine are flying through the air leaving crag trails of electricity in their wake.

  The bullets shoot forward at dazzling speed, falling in teical ard ploughing into the firing meisms of the grounded artillery ons before the mages standing on guard beside them have time to activate their defensive arrays. The bullets crumple and burst against the metal structs, releasing the magic payloads within and instantly c the ons in a thin yer of frost.

  The soldiers manning the artillery stare at the rge guns in disbelief, gng up at the ship far in the distah fear as cold as the ice beside them at the deadly efficy of the shooter, but Emily herself doesn’t bat an eye. Instead, she calmly drops the magazine from her gun and sms a new oo pce.

  This time, instead of targeting ten ons at once, she only targets five. She sends two bullets towards each of them, one riding the tail of the other a few metres behind. Expectedly, before her sed volley of shots d, tehen domes rise to surround the remaining funing ons. However, the defences prove futile when a single normal bullet punches a small hole ihat the ice bullets ehrough, hitting the ons and freezing them up all the same.

  Still not rexing, Emily repeats this o time, binding up all twenty artillery empts before l the Whisper with a small, satisfied grin.

  Step one plete.

  She reloads her gun with a magazine of modified fire rounds before stepping off the front of the ship and falling to the ground. She softens the fall with an updraft of wind before casting lightning step and running towards the army ahead.

  o deal with the bombers. This step would be a little easier if I kheir blueprints, but I don’t trust them not to blow themselves up the moment I get close, and that explosion looked like it would hurt.

  As she runs across the open sands, she sees the bombers and boarders separating from the floating interceptors to start approag Calypso. She lifts the Whisper, sliding to a halt and dropping to the floor just out of the infantry’s range, waiting for the attag ships to pass over her.

  The moment the bombers pass her, Emily begins firing at their rear propellers. All five rounds smash into their targets, lodging into the tral shafts of the spinning bdes propelling the ships forward before superheating, turning into small moltes of metal within seds. The propellers all bee unstable before two fall off and the other three seize up as the bullets run out of power and cool down.

  The suicide bombers start to lose speed, but just before all of them find themselves floating dead in the sky, one of their propellers mao unjam itself and start moving again. Unfortunately for them, a sed shot from Emily quickly crushes any hope the pilot had left of tinuing his mission.

  The shots that went just behind the shaft and its e to the ship worked the best.

  The five bombers begiing steam out of their balloons, dropping to the floor to meet Emily as she reloads a fresh magazine full of high explosive rounds. She points her gun at the backs of the ten boarders heading for Calypso as a few small bullets ay onballs nd in the sand around her.

  The ground troops have pushed towards me. I o make this quick.

  She pours more maa into her rifle and unloads the magazio the sky. A single shot flies into the circur exhaust on the back of each boarder, detonating inside and taking part of the ship with it. Half of the ships simply lose a few of their propellers and slow down drastically while shuddering unstably in the air, but the other half have much rger detonations as rge fires burst through the hull at their backs, ripping all their propellers off and killing a few crew members inside.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  -Leave the try without killing any of your pursuers (Failed)

  _____

  “Shit,” Emily mutters without a visible rea on her face. “This may take a few tries, but it should work. They aren’t fast enough to catch Calypso any more even if I just remove their boosters and a few props.”

  She turtention away from the useless ships and over to the rge remaining force.

  I may as well practice taking down the big ones.

  Emily sends the Whisper into her belt as she pushes herself up from the sand, scrambling forward and to the side to avoid the hail of bullets flying towards her previous shooting position. She calls upon her elemental e as she runs, and after a few moments a familiar azure glow seeps from her eyes as lightning crackles along her skin. She pours power ints as she shoots into the nearby infantry formation before they blink, fog oerceptor ships that have moved forwards tet her as well.

  The shooting from overhead stops as their target eheir ranks, but Emily easily weaves between the melee ons the soldiers draw to try and hold her down. She ducks under every bde and sidesteps every heavy mace, only struggling slightly when the soldiers close ranks arouo try and use their bodies as a shield.

  It would be easier if I could kill them… But I shouldn’t get into the habit during my practice.

  She leaps off the ground and over the grouped soldiers, exposing herself to their gunfire again as she rises above the crowd. Not batting an eye, Emily produces solid footholds of crag charge and tinues rising up towards the interceptors above, still weaviween the bullets trying to catch her and taking a few shots to the torso that her armour blocks.

  She reaches the front of the first interceptor with only a few bruises and gs onto the hull just above the bridge. She sticks her feet and her left hand to the ship using the lightning crag around her while drawing back her other fist. A thin film of crag psma s her fist like a gau before she thrusts it forward, drilling a hole in the ship.

  The lightning c her fist floods into the trol room below, stunning everyone and preventing them from fighting back as Emily pulls a grenade from her belt. She pulls the pin and drops it through the hole she created before setting the ship to desd with a pulse of maa and leaping towards her arget.

  She doesn’t stay to watch as the greonates with a muted pop, filling the bridge with gas and sending the stunned crew to sleep. The rge ship plummets to the floor, and the soldiers below start frantically running to escape the falling heap of metal, pletely fetting about their enemy dang above their heads.

  Emily takes down three more of the interceptors before the first ploughs into the sand below, and a satisfied grin transforms her features as she hears the heavy impact.

  This will work. This is enough chaos for Calypso to fly right over without me even on board. Everyone has time to avoid death as long as they react quickly. Now all that’s left to worry about is Virgil.

  Before she feel too pleased with herself, Emily hears the grounded artillery begin firing, sending several shells towards Calypso. Her grin vanishes, and she quickly activates The Clock while gng over at the mages holding an array of fire spells up to the magical ig the ons.

  And maybe I’ll make those bullets a bit stronger.

  KeroKeron