Chương 170: 84. Enough Is Never Enough

Oh blood and acid—the ship is headed straight for us. Rather than docking at the harbor, Captain Jira looks ready to charge straight through it. I panic, trying to think of something to do, but that moment of hesitation is all it takes for the deceptively fast vessel to reach us. Crud on a stick! Do I jump? What about Msshi? What if I miss? Oh heck, what if we don't?! It's going so fast I'll probably just splat.

Without time to properly consider my options, I'm about to go for it anyway when Jira's resounding bellow interrupts my thoughts." [All Aboard]!" My vision bends and twists in a disorienting blur, and between one heartbeat and the next I find myself somewhere else. The effect is nauseating, and I immediately drop to my knees on the wooden deck, resisting the urge to hurl. I do not succeed.

"Bahaha! Welcome home, little [baddie]!" Jira shouts over the roar of wind and the clamor of working sailors.

"And you, young hatchling—welcome aboard!"

"I'm twenty five," Msshi mutters next to me, having handled the sudden shift of inertia much more gracefully than I.

"Bah! Might as well still be suckling on your mother's teat!" she jeers, twisting the wheel to avoid crashing straight into the docks.

"Wait—you haven't got those, have you?"

"Teats or mothers?" I croak.

"Either," Msshi hisses with amusement. Well I'm glad someone's having fun. I try to get back onto my feet, but almost collapse a second time at the lancing pain in my chest. Someone catches me, and I look up gratefully as our first friend helps us to our feet.

"Maev, I'm so glad you're okay," Talla breathes.

"In a manner of speaking," I groan.

"I've been better." Been a lot worse too, but getting impaled through the heart isn't a bar I'm keen on lowering.

"I..." she trails off nervously.

"I'm sorry for not being there. I shouldn't have listened to Mother." I start to shake my head, but my heart isn't in it. She's right. I don't blame her at all, but I wish she'd been there. I wish things had gone differently. I wish...

"Draga," I whisper through clenched teeth, tightening my grip on her arms.

"H-he—""I know," Talla interrupts, pulling me into a hug.

"I saw it. I'm so sorry, Maev." I return the hug with a desperate embrace, ignoring the pain in my chest and burying my face in her fur.

"We couldn't stop it," I weep.

"We couldn't do anything. Why can't I ever do anything?" Talla strokes my hair gently, her breath catching as she holds back tears of her own.

"It's not your fault. You did your best." Did I? Did any of us? There are so many things we could have done differently. Why did we even come to this stupid city? Because I was bored and lonely? If I'd just paid closer attention, noticed the threats sooner, acted instead of reacted for once in my stupid idiot fricking moron life! But all I wanted to do was play around. I wanted to go to fancy parties and wear nice shoes and make friends with Rara. I never took it seriously.

Even after Mira hit me, after someone tried to shoot us in the street, after getting kidnapped from a party just because some rich lady wanted to chat— I never respected how much danger we were in!

"Time for that later, girls!" Jira calls out from her place at the helm.

"We aren't out of the dungeon yet!" I release Talla and wipe my eyes, turning my attention to our surroundings as they rush past. The Sagaa river is huge. So big that it's hard to see from one side to the other in places, with plenty of room for even a ship as large as Jira's to speed through with impunity. Which means that the two ships rapidly closing the distance must be doing it on purpose. Neither ship is as big as Jira's, but they are fast, and both fly the same pair of flags.

One flag is a green triangle split by a line of blue, surrounded by the same delicately branching antler design I once saw carved into the doors sealing the convergence point. Just below it is a white flag with a golden circle around a starburst.

"Good news," Jira shouts.

"That's not the imperial navy!" She swerves out of the path of one ship, but the other moves around to cut her off, forcing her to approach one or the other until inevitably we'll end up flanked by the pair of them.

"Bad news," she continues sardonically.

"They're full of angry inquisitors and I can't outmaneuver them." That's a peculiar way to phrase it, and if I hadn't been doubling down on my Fa'aun studies lately, I might have missed it.

"Can you outrun them?" I ask. The captain spits to the side.

"In a straight line, or on open waters, sure," she replies.

"But those are my tribe's work—interceptors. They'll have the advantage in shallow waters or winding sections of the river."

"What if you didn't need to worry about them boxing you in?" Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. She looks over her shoulder at me with a wry smile and a mad glint in her eyes.

"I reckon I could figure something out, little [baddie]."

"Talla—?" She shakes her head immediately.

"My spells are about precision, not power," she preempts me.

"I might be able to blind their helmswoman or set a few fires, but by the time we're close enough for that they'll be boarding us." Dang. At least they don't have any cannons. Although now that I think about it, I suppose we do. Oh, this is gonna suck.

"Vi, Mags, I know we've done a lot," I mutter under my breath, "but do we have enough left in the tank for one more trick?"

"Why the fuck not?" Maggie chuckles darkly.

"We're running on fumes, but that's never stopped us before. Leave it to me!"

"No," Violet countermands her.

"Last time we let you cast while already strained, you blew us up by accident."

"The last time we got blown up it was because you did it on purpose!" Mags counters.

"I've been working on my spells for a reason," I sigh.

"If now isn't the time for them, then when is?" Talla furrows her brow in concern.

"Maev, you've already done enough. Don't strain yourself further."

"Enough is never enough," I sigh.

"I'm tired of just surviving." Fargo, Msshi, and Talla watch as I limp my way to the side of the ship. The starboard, I think? What matters is that it's the side that has both the closest ship and the furthest shore. Jira spares me a glance, but she and the rest of the crew are too busy keeping us moving to stop and stare. There are a lot of people on that ship. Dozens, at least.

Probably not as many as a hundred, but seeing them gathered on the deck, preparing to swarm us as soon as they make contact, it feels like a hundred. If this works, it's going to kill them—probably a lot of them. That's not what gives me pause, though. I've killed people before— today, even. What bothers me is how easy it is. The [World Engine] gives people so much strength, but for all that, lives are still so fragile.

Lady Faarah took a bullet to the head before she even knew it was happening, and she was supposed to be a high level warrior. No wonder people are so blase about it. I hate that it's so easy. It feels like it should be difficult. Like I should need more than the will to do it and a few traumatizing experiences with explosive laser reptiles. Though when I put it like that... Fire gathers in my palm as I channel [Pyrobolt], feeling pleasantly warm and slightly heavy, but not burning the way it looks like it should.

In practice, I just fired the spell off and that was that. It was made so that I could do that, and I had this mental image of flinging harmless little darts of flame at pursuers. So stupid. We all keep doing that—trivializing the things we can do and the consequences they can have. As if I don't know full well how difficult it is to put out the magical flames, or just how disturbingly long it takes to immolate a person. It's a bad way to die.

And I'm about to inflict that experience on dozens—maybe even a hundred Fa'aun. People. Men and women—some of whom might even be good people. They've probably got families, probably think they're doing the right thing. I keep pulling power out of the spell as the ball of flames grows in my hand, dripping liquid embers that fade before they touch the deck.

"Violet?" Talla approaches nervously.

"I think you're overdrawing that spell a bit." Of course I am. That's the thing about magic, isn't it? Maggie had it figured out from the start. There's no actual limit. No finite pool of mystical energy within to draw from. Oh, it can be shaped and stored in things like the mana crystals or the candles—or even Nipper. But that's just for ease of access, or refined purpose.

The ball of fire is more like a miniature sun in my hand now, the heat of it uncomfortable on my own face as it shines brightly enough that Fargo and Msshi have to shield their eyes. Not Talla, though, she just stares solemnly as I continue drawing power. Touching that limitless well of potential hurts. Magical strain isn't a physical thing, even though it has physical effects, but it still hurts. Skills are a buffer—a shield between us and the mind-shattering realities of infinity.

The [World Engine] is a thing of numbers and measurements. The power it grants is always so precise and exacting, but people are greedy. We always demand more. We think we know better, that we can take it. As if a mechanism created by an actual god wouldn't know exactly how much power it can grant without breaking us. And it lets us. It resists, of course, tightening its grip more the harder we pull.

Maggie is clever, going around its back to find different levers, different methods that don't rely on its cooperation. I'm not good at that. I operate best within a structured framework—something with clearly defined rules and boundaries. But I'm stubborn. What I can do is just put in more. More effort, more persistence, more fire. Because what I'm realizing about magical strain is that it's a soft cap. The well never runs dry, it just shrinks.

But if all I've got the energy for is one spell, I might as well give it everything I have. The other ship is close enough now that I can see some of them aiming weapons at us. We'll be in firing distance soon—it's time. The fireball in my hand is the size of a beach ball and hurts to look at. It's heavy despite having no actual physical substance, and I know that when I was drawing power I put everything into the force and fire. It has no speed of its own—I need to throw it. Good thing we've got a skill for that.

I wind back, nearly overbalancing because despite the weight I feel in my hand it doesn't actually translate to my body, then pull one last time from that well of infinity to empower my [Explosive Throw] with everything I have. The shockwave of the throw rocks the boat slightly, and Jira curses venomously as she tries to correct for it, but that was just launch. The actual payload is a brightly glowing ball that follows an oddly slow arc for how hard I threw it, and for a second I worry that it's not going to land.

That slowness works out to my favor, as it turns out, the bright flare drifting down towards the approaching ship as inquisitors scatter to get away from its projected landing point. It alights on the deck of the enemy ship like a butterfly touching down on a flower petal. Then a second sun comes into being in the middle of the river. The spell explodes with a blinding flash of light and enough force to rock our ship the other way.

A shower of water and flaming debris pelts the ship, and cursing sailors rush to fling the burning splinters into the river before anything catches fire. As my vision clears, I see the aftermath of my "quick and reliable" spell. The middle of the ship is just gone—scattered across the river in splinters too small to identify. What remains of the bow and stern are just burning wreckage, completely engulfed in flames. Between them, the river itself is on fire, burning corpses drifting on the surface.

Those are the lucky ones. A few figures thrash helplessly in the water, unable to put out the flames engulfing them. I wish I could feel bad for them, but at best I'm just numb to it now. At worst... a little bit satisfied. That's for Draga. I attempt to turn back to the others, but the motion doesn't quite cooperate with me, and I topple sideways into Talla's arms.

"Blood and acid," she mutters in awe, staring out at the wreckage.

"How the fuck are you only tier two?!"