Sworded Affair

[I can confirm fifteen minutes, and twenty two seconds outbound. Two minutes and seventeen seconds inbound.]

"We\'re not even moving that fast," Emma protested, watching the world drift by at a leisurely thirty miles an hour. "The convoy should have overtaken us immediately, but they\'re nowhere to be seen."

[Best not to think about what\'s beyond your control. Focus on the palace.]

"Right…"

Emma shook her head, did another check of her inventory, and tried to take Edith\'s advice and refocus. As they retraced what was by now a very familiar dirt footpath, she took the time to draft and send a short note to Noah, explaining that Woodstock was best avoided in future. A precaution, in case the convoy never returned to pass on her warning. With that last bit of business taken care of, Emma returned her gaze to the horizon, head held high as she prepared for round three against the palace doors. Of course, it couldn\'t be that easy…

"Where\'s the palace?" Emma groaned, feeling yet another phantom headache as she stared at the empty patch of land before her: no palace, no gardens, just fallow fields with a crater at the centre.

[Blenheim Palace was destroyed in the first week of the apocalypse? Hold on a minute. Switch Null Zone off.]

Emma did so, and the familiar front garden faded back into view.

[Blenheim Palace was untouched by the apocalypse, and remains standing, albeit abandoned, to this day.]

"You okay, Edith?"

[Yes, but the System is not. I can see activity and reconnaissance logs updating themselves in real-time, retroactively. This is most perplexing.]

Hearing that, Emma couldn\'t help but turn Null Zone back on, then off again, then on, then off again, her surroundings flickering with every change.

[0.5 EXP gained for being annoying. Now your status page looks untidy: enjoy!

EXP: 8065.5/10000]

"Sorry," Emma apologised immediately, feeling a twinge of agony as she beheld her updated EXP gauge. "I won\'t do it again?"

[0.5 EXP gained.

EXP: 8066/10000]

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Emma heaved a sigh of relief at sanity being restored, before turning her attention back to the enigma that was Blenheim Palace. She ordered the Earthbound Immortal to bring her within a few steps of the front doors, as she considered the best course of action. After a minute of considering, a familiar, unsettling weight became noticeable, pressing against the edge of Emma\'s mind. Turning Null Zone on and off again got rid of it, but after waiting another minute it came right on back.

[Null Zone (Toggle: ON)]

This time, Emma turned it on and kept it, allowing Blenheim Palace to fade away, and leaving her in a crater once more.

"That was the same presence as before, and whenever I lit a Hallowed Candle, it ate the candle and sent us back to the village." Emma deduced. "The Hallowed Candle is supposed to repel hostile entities, but has no effect on time, so we can assume the transfer is a defensive reaction to being attacked. If we can\'t get rid of it, we\'ll just have to live with it."

Her decision made, Emma began to backpedal, while ordering the Earthbound Immortal to remain at the door. A little over five metres later, Emma\'s summon vanished from sight, but, crucially, remained active.

Open the door.

Emma had a brief moment to wonder if the command had gone through, and then…

[Earthbound Immortal defeated.]

"That confirms it, there\'s two instances active, overlapping in the same area. Blenheim Palace, which exists only where there is magic, and the wasteland that exists otherwise. Null Zone keeps me and anything else nearby in the latter, but my summons can venture into the former and still act independently, within the regular rules of summoning."

[According to the System logs, the Earthbound Immortal is currently alive, dead, summoned, inert, recharging and awaiting orders. Wonderful. I\'d advise waiting a bit before dropping Null Zone, in case whatever killed your summon is still around.]

"How long should I wait? Five minutes? Ten?"

[Ninety percent of magical traps disperse in less than ten hours.]

"Eleven hours it is then," Emma sighed. "You know, when I agreed to participate in this emergency operation, I wasn\'t expecting quite so much standing around."

[Hurry up and wait, soldier. Hurry up and wait.]

—

Some time ago…

[Irregular System broadcast incoming, by order of Overmind.]

Astrid Rosén looked up at her notifications, absently wiping her blade clean on the fur of a massive Mammoth Demon that lay dead at her feet.

"Overmind?" The name was familiar to her, as it was to every child born and raised as part of the magical community, but it wasn\'t one Astrid had ever expected to encounter. "I didn\'t know she was an Administrator."

[She\'s not. She does, however, have elevated broadcast privileges, allowing mass communications to those under her jurisdiction. There are others overseas with similar privileges: the official term for such individuals is Faction Leader.]

"I see."

Astrid breathed in, drawing the power of the distant Sun into herself, cleansing her body of poison and fatigue. She exhaled, a rippling wave of light that struck down three lesser demons trying to take advantage of her momentary stillness.

"Three down, and a hundred to go," Astrid huffed, feeling the ground tremble beneath the hooves of a vast, incoming horde.

[Reinforcements required at Blenheim Palace. Situation is unknown, proceed with caution. Class A rewards to be distributed to all participants once the crisis concludes.

You are: 75 miles away.]

"Class A rewards?" Astrid whistled, raising her sword to impale a swarm of bat demons with beams of light; the blade shattered, its duty done. "The highest I ever saw before today was Class C."

[The rewards are justified, given the danger involved.]

"Then I won\'t waste any more time here," Astrid decided, reaching into her inventory and pulling out an ancient stone ring, placing it upon her finger without hesitation.

[Don\'t Be a Stranger activated: Taking on the form and powers of a fallen ancestor.]

From one moment to the next, Astrid vanished and Princess Astaroth returned.

"We\'ve got a lot of ground to cover, and not much time to do it; but first, let\'s take out the trash."