Chapter Eight?

  Freya's First

  Freya ran, she arranged some of the power within to ward off her exhaustion, it didn't take much. The trio stopped at the river's shore. It wasn't a small river, easily as wide as the northern Mississippi. Several downed trees sent water crashing around them. They couldn't cross this thing, it was a deathtrap.

  "Shit!" Zora pulled up the map. "How far off are we?"

  The footsteps in the dark were so close now. Freya feared her heart might beat out of her chest. This was her first taste of true danger. Roman dropped his bags, then shot up into the air. He hung in the space above the treeline. A few bolts hurtled toward him, only to be met with a few of Zora's would-be magic missiles. With a muffled thud he hit the ground beside them.

  "Not far, but we need to go. They are just-" Roman shoved Freya toward the river. "Watch out!"

  A man in a dark red padded leather uniform caught Roman in the arm with a spear. Another of his companions descended from the road. Zora blasted the man with a fireball the size of a small car. He fell back onto the rocky shore, eyes staring out at nothing. Freya grabbed Roman who was muttering some particularly colorful obscenities, and handed him off to Zora who was suddenly looking haggard herself.

  "Get him out of here! I'll be just behind you."

  "Those are the Tsar's troops, they are dangerous."

  Freya turned away from her to the two soldiers closing in on them. "Good, we've got that in common."

  Zora had probably expended quite a lot of energy with that fireball, it was seriously doubtful she had another in her. She hesitated, but then ran down the coast with all haste.

  Did the descriptions windows work on people? Maybe if they did she could get some kind of useful information. Freya sensed a menu she could open for each of them, but when she tried she felt the pages within her strain. There must be something more to that.

  Keeping her front to the soldiers, Freya backed onto firmer ground. It was right about now she was cursing herself for not getting a better handle on her magic before leaving The Mind's Mirror. The way the soldiers moved was evidence enough that they were not going to be as easy to best as Roman. They kept distance, trying to circle her. Freya deftly batted away a few of their testing strikes. She kept one eye on the road, but it didn't seem any more soldiers were coming. At least not right now.

  This needed to end quickly, lest she get overrun. It seemed the soldiers knew that as well, they were in no hurry to advance on her. Damn. Freya thought. Why couldn't they have been fools? The three played at each other for a short while longer, but then Freya saw her chance. She forced one of the soldiers back onto a patch of sand, then sank in the ground he was backpedaling onto. Before his companion knew what was happening Freya had stabbed him clear through his free foot. He fell, then let out a yelp that was choked with a stomp on the throat. This lead the other, a woman, who seemed to have greenish skin, to act the fool just as Freya had hoped. The orc jabbed at her in a rage. The wild strikes let Freya close the distance and end it with a smooth thrust through the throat.

  Apparently she her time off didn't dull her skills as much as she thought.

  Freya looked down at the pair of corpses, corpses she had made. Coldness crept up through her chest and into the space just behind her eyes. They were going to kill her, they almost killed her friend. Why would they live in this wonderful world and attack people? A screaming voice at the back of her mind told to her feel guilty. Why wasn't she crying bitter tears at what she had to do? Did she want to be a monster? It shouldn't feel this easy.

  The voice gained no ground against the cold.

  Freya knelt and rummaged through the pockets of her victims. A strange looking knife that had brass knuckles for a handle. Bits of dried fruit and meat. Then a couple worn silver and bronze coins with a crude face stamped into one side. The reverse bore differing images, a broken hammer on the bronze coins, and what seemed to be a burning city on the silver coins.

  A small glowing window popped up when she turned the knife over in her hand. It cast a cool white light on the bodies.

  Item: Tsarist Trench Knife

  Description: A combat knife with a set of iron knuckles set into the handle. Standard issue in the Legions of the Bluffs. Developed by a man with serious childhood trauma who loves a good war crime or two.

  "Shit shit shit!" Freya tapped at the big red X in her Windows XP-like description window.

  The window closed, extinguishing the light. She stuffed the bloody loot into her bag quick as she could. She couldn't afford another one of those windows popping up and giving away her position. Something caught her interest as she was turning away. The woman who Freya had assumed was some kind of orc, was wearing a leather strap across her chest. Three stone soldiers hung from metal loops in the leather. They were thick and heavy. Freya turned over the woman and pulled the strap free. The cold burned her up inside. This wasn't what she thought it was. It couldn't be.

  The reality of what she had done threatened to destroy her. Three stone figures, toy soldiers. That this woman held in a place of honor on herself. There weren't many reasons to carry them like this, not outside of the one she dreaded. The strap was heavy in her hands, heavier than should have been possible. She wouldn't admit what she had done in killing this woman. But she would carry this with her as a reminder of what was really at stake. The strap tightened easily across her chest.

  Warm wind blew, carrying screams up the river. The trees beside the road rustled. It was death to stay here. Freya ran down the beach as fast as her page-enhanced stamina would allow her. As if to confirm her thought, voices called out behind her. Freya looked back and wished she hadn't. A dozen soldiers circled the corpses of their dead comrades. All of them had their eyes locked on her.

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  Half of them took off after her. Those that remained back loosed a few crossbow bolts. They missed by a good margin, but Freya didn't intend to let them get another volley in. She sunk three barely perceptible trenches into the sand and rocks behinds her. It wasn't much, but even slowing her pursuer by a half second could save her. Her only hope was getting off the beach and trying to lose them in the patches of trees beside the road.

  While she worked her way up the slight incline back to the road, she considered her pages. Her powers took up hardly a quarter of her pages, she needed to make use of the rest, and fast. Roman had given her a hundred fresh pages, none of which were seeing any use. She could probably make something more substantial with this.

  Earth manipulation would have to be it, her existing pages allowed her to compress dirt and sand, it shouldn't be that much more complicated to work out something a little more useful. Hurling rocks at these bastards would be a good start. She imagined Toph from Avatar the Last Airbender and set her pages to work. They seemed receptive to the idea, folding her existing page structure into the effort.

  Freya made it to the trees, the soldiers on her heels. She didn't dare slow herself looking back. This wouldn't be as easy as losing Brick. They were just as fast as she was. Boots snapping branches and pounding into the dirt surrounded her. They were trying to circle her, just like the first two. Freya cursed her attempt at heroics. What had she been thinking? Two days into this realm and suddenly she was ready to hold off an army single-handedly? Freya thought on the heroes she so longed to be emulate. The Courier from The Perfect Run wasn't afraid. Aragorn would never find himself being chased like a dog in the woods. Percy Jackson faced down literal gods.

  Freya stopped cold. The figures moved ahead and behind her. This was a world based on Fantasy novels. Most of the time, those novels ended with the hero winning. And if there was one thing Freya was certain of, it was that she could be a hero. She slid her off-hand into the brass-knuckle handle of her looted knife. The soldiers closed in on her. It was six on one. She dove at the closest soldier, a boy with a face too young for his uniform. He had barely gotten his spear up when Freya ran him through.

  "Jun! You son of a bitch!" The voice was that of another boy who seemed too young for all this.

  The rest of the soldiers came at her. Freya was good, but not good enough to parry five blades at once. She knocked three away when the forth sliced through her stomach, the fifth got her in the leg. The pain was blinding, unlike anything she had experienced. The wounds felt surprisingly like being burned. She steeled herself against the fog the pain brought on. She had always been told she had an impressive pain tolerance. It was time to put that to the test.

  The boy who had shouted at her got too close, just as he opened his mouth for some over-confident gloating she introduced his throat to her knife.

  The remaining four soldiers backed off, leaving their companions bleeding into the grass. They poked at her, for each set of blades she countered, another took away pieces of her. Freya pulled in one of the soldiers when they stabbed at her, her sword took him in the thigh. He went to one knee but before she could finish him the others had pushed her back. They were getting smarter. She just needed to hold them off until her pages were ready.

  This very likely wasn't the Tsar's a-team. From what Freya could tell, this area was pretty much untouched by war. It wasn't likely they had received any real resistance up until now. A group of six experienced soldiers would have cut her to ribbons by now. Freya spared a glance for her bloodied body. This group wasn't doing such a bad job of that themselves. They attacked again, this time a little more weary. Their hesitance gave her some desperately needed breathing room. She allowed the fight to slow down. They probably thought she was just tiring.

  What sounded like another group of soldiers started shouting in the distance. Freya's heart lurched. They couldn't get reinforced, not before-

  Freya's pages settled in her stomach, there were no unused pools of energy, just one large well for her to draw from. She smiled.

  "You are so fucked," Freya said.

  The ground opened up beneath two of the soldiers, swallowing them up to their knees. She didn't have the pages to moves tons of earth yet. But this was a damn good start. She made short work of the two buried soldiers.

  "Fable-Walker!" This voice was older. Probably their leader.

  Both of them turned and ran. Freya ripped a pair of toy stone soldiers from their clips on her chest, then used her power to fling them at the retreating soldiers. The crack their skulls made ensured they wouldn't be telling anyone what direction she went. It didn't take much power for stones those size to do some serious damage. Why did she bother with all the fancy sinking in the ground crap when she could have opened with that?

  Freya slumped against a tree, her strength leaving her as quickly as it found her. She pressed the back of her head against the bark, using the rough ridges to give her something to focus on. I am the hero. I am a Superwoman. I matter. It was the mantra she repeated to herself anytime things got hard. Freya knew she had the strength to amount to something important, she just needed to remind herself sometimes.

  She started limping in the general direction that Zora and Roman had run in. The pain of her wounds wanted to pull her to the ground, she gritted her teeth. Not today assholes.