Gamer Girl Isekai

It was not, in the end, Vari's chest wound that threatened to kill him. That was certainly a surprise to Emma, given that it had turned his breastbone into a makeshift cup-holder, but apparently physical injuries, even magical ones, were not beyond the regenerative powers of Curgundry's rare magic users.

No, what was threatening to kill him was a little thing. A dainty, tiny stab wound he'd gotten halfway into the fight. It wouldn't have killed a rabit, Emma thought, except that this one bore some kind of poison that not even magic was working to undo, and his life was being quickly eaten by it.

She moved fast, grabbing Larry, aiming him at Vari.

"He's dying, poison, what do we do?" It was all Emma could do to keep her voice steady enough for the questions to remain coherent. Larry, of course, did not have a care in the world.

"Oh, well—"

—"Larry this is fucking serious!" Emma snapped, glaring at him now then, reluctantly, laying him down. "Please I'm…I'm begging you."

Larry hesitated, studying Emma for a long moment at that before he finally answered.

"There's nothing I can do," he told her frankly, "but I think I know someone who can help at least. Maybe. Possibly."

Emma stared at him, buried the urge to start using the unhelpful prick like a football, just waited for him to say more. He did, slowly. Taking his time. It was deliberate, Emma thought. Spiteful. It had always been funny how cruel and evil the little fuck was, but now Emma suddenly felt a stark awakening as to how it would feel being truly under his power.

She silently thanked her luck to have had that psychotic episode during her Untethering, even as Larry kept speaking.

"Kruger," he began, "can you fly?"

***

Most of Kruger's body hurt, though he knew by now that the injuries would not last long. Since coming to this new world and arriving in Curgundry, he'd healed faster than ever before in his life. It didn't matter that medicine was flawed here, his body compensated.

Day one, a cliff had collapsed under him. Kruger had fallen maybe a hundred metres, then felt a boulder bigger than he was drop down onto his leg right after impact. It had broken. He'd been miles from civilisation, unable to set it properly. It hadn't mattered. His body healed cleaner as well as just faster, and within that same day the bone had repaired itself enough for him to walk unimpeded.

Vari was not quite as physically powerful as Kruger, but he was potent enough that the wounds he'd suffered should have knitted fast once the initial stabilisation of his condition had been completed. They had not.

Or rather, physically they had closed to some extent. But the poison in his system seemed powerful enough to offset even his preternatural vitality and leave him falling ever closer towards death. That was why Kruger and Krummer were where they now were, in the hangar awaiting the requisitioning of an aircraft capable of taking them and their allies where they needed to be.

"You can still say no," Krummer told him, "still stay here. The people need you Fu-...sir."

Kruger ignored the slip, and kept his face steely.

"Vari needs me," he said instead. Odd that. He'd known the man for a few days but…No, there wasn't anything strange about it at all. Vari had fought for him, bled for him. Saved his life more than once, Kruger suspected, however hard the chaos of combat made it to know such things for certain. Kruger could not say no, not while maintaining any of his dignity and convictions. Vari was owed this by him.

"Then I'll come with you," Krummer began. He fell silent as Kruger turned his face sharply towards the man.

"No. You're needed here, Curgundry is still vulnerable—last night's attack proves that more than anything else. You need to stay here and watch over our people."

Our people.

Kruger had said it without thinking, it had simply felt right and, he realised now, was right indeed. These were his people. He'd been here long enough for that to become true. He couldn't have said when, or how. Only knew that it was. These were his people, and as much as it wounded him to leave them it would wound him far more to let one of their saviours die when he had the means to stop it.

Krummer may have understood without needing to be told, or else he was simply willing to accept Kruger's words alone. He backed off quickly.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

It was always something Kruger appreciated in his subordinate, his friend. The willingness he had to put his faith in others, to respect what they had to do or had to keep from doing. He only wished he had the words to fully articulate it now, as he did not Kruger focused instead on the task at hand.

***

"I'm dying, aren't I?"

The way Vari said that was the worst part, worse than the words alone by far. There didn't seem to be as much emotion as Emma would have expected, though of course the fear was there in buckets. By his voice, it sounded like something he'd already seen happen. Like he'd made up his mind about it and was just waiting.

"At the moment," she replied with a voice that felt suddenly, terribly tight. Emma cleared her throat. "Currently, technically, yeah. We're working on fixing that though, you'll be fine."

Vari was staying in one of Curgundry's finer infirmaries, nice and comfy. It was a small mercy compared to his organs currently decomposing, but it was also the most they could actually do for him. Currently, at least. He smiled weakly. Emma hated that smile, missed his old one. The annoying, idiotic old one that told her he wasn't about to keel over right in front of her.

"I'm scared of it," Vari croaked.

Emma's first thought was scorn. Scared of dying? You don't say!? Her gushing asshole of a mouth was already opening to respond before she could think to restrain it.

"You won't die," Emma reached out, wrapping her hand around his, squeezing. What the fuck? "You're going to live, I'll see to it."

Vari met her gaze, and Emma was surprised to see gratitude frothing back from it. He swallowed, smiled weakly.

"I loved travelling with you," he sighed, and now she could hear a whistling in his voice where something awful happened back down in his lungs, "on the whole I mean. Not…Not a lot of it. Not being drowned, or fighting things twice as big as me, but…I loved it."

"Why?" Emma asked, finding her own voice was now cracking dangerously close to a pathetic show of tears. "I was…" A total bitch who constantly called you an idiot, even after you saved my life.

"Because with you and Aexilica, I got to just be me. Vari. I could be an idiot, and it didn't matter." A tear rolled down his cheek, and Vari put his head back, eyes closing.

"I'm sorry for—" but Emma's words fell on deaf ears. He wasn't dead, just sleeping. And she had to leave soon if she was going to have any chance at all to save him.

***

"Is it ready?" a new voice rang out, though one Kruger recognised instantly. He turned to see Emma walking over, perhaps limping still, and scowling the way she'd taken to doing almost perpetually.

"It is." Kruger illustrated his answer by seizing one side of the great tarpin covering their vessel, then pulling. Twenty feet of material shifted as one and uncovered the plane in a single go.

As far as Curgungdry's aerial technology went, this was more or less the pinnacle. That did not, by any definition, make it a good plane. What it did mean was that it could sustain a speed in excess of one hundred miles per hour even in bad weather, had a range of over one thousand miles, and would not instantly explode if somebody were to shoot it with a pistol. It also had a gun on the front, rather a big one. That mattered less for Kruger than his countrymen, however, as his ability to materialise M60s within a second meant that early-twentieth-century light machine guns did not have nearly as much to offer him in the field of raw killing power.

"Aexilica is saying goodbye," Emma grunted as she wriggled her way to the plane, "she'll be a few more minutes at most." Kruger nodded, seeing a raw worry in the girl beneath her shallow veneer of irritation and knowing better than to poke at it.

Sure enough, and rather fortunately for Kruger, Aexilica did make her presence known, and the three of them were all soon packed onto the plane, taking off immediately after.

Flying a Curgundry aircraft was always an exercise in luck, even with one as well-made as this. Kruger braced himself for disaster as it began its plodding path down the runway, wincing and waiting for a complication to ruin their take-off. It seemed fortune was on his side this time, however, because they accelerated promptly and took off within another minute, slowly gaining altitude.

That was where things became rougher, not smoother. Because the aerodynamics of Curgundry's vessels were best compared to a thrown brick. Turbulence was a constant thing, and made the vehicle rattle so much that, had any among their number had a true fear of flying, they might have been killed by their own panic-induced spasms. Fortunately all three were driven in what they set out to do now, and the plane gained altitude until the landscape was far beneath them.

Of course, they had parachutes this time. As confident as Kruger was in all of their ability to survive a fall from even miles in the air, Emma especially, he did not want to test that more often than was strictly necessary.

Emma herself was the major point of concern. Though she was easily the most powerful of the group in combat, she had certain disadvantages Kruger and Aexilica did without. Her body was, beneath the woman's defences, still just human flesh. It did not heal faster than any others. The healing magics of Curgundry, exhausted by the effort of repairing Vari's mangled chest, still managed to undo most of the harm to her leg, but that limp was worrying.

She hadn't had time to brew more potions before they left, and there was no space upon the plane now. The odds of Emma being their weak link in combat were distressingly high. The odds of them encountering serious combat, likewise, were virtually one hundred percent.

But they were still more than a few hours from concerning themselves with that, and shortly into the journey Emma began resting at the back of the plane, leaving Aexilica and Kruger alone.

He'd worried about what he might say to the woman, once alone. Their dynamic had shifted in a way Kruger found it hard to accommodate since they first met. No longer was he the ruler of Curgundry, and no longer was she only an outsider. There was much to discuss.

He had never cared for such discussions, always found himself awkward and clumsy during them. The words he spoke never quite did what he wanted them to, confusion arised, misunderstandings. Just thinking about it now needled him, brought the bubbling froth of worry up to swell at the base of his consciousness. He did not find it distracting, not regarding his flight, but still…

It was far from pleasant. But he needn't have worried.

Aexilica broke the silence first, and banished all his concerns at once.