Numbers can help a lot of things. Numbers built castles and kingdoms, brought prosperity to small towns and dictated markets all over the world. Numbers wage war and build garrisons and stock them with soldiers like sardines and lemmings, willing to throw themselves away in the blink of an eye for their kings and queens and wives and kids. Numbers dictate the fabric of the universe, and grant knowledge and magic and rot and break all living things into dust, and dust into nothing at all. Numbers are truly some of the most powerful things in this world and beyond it.

But numbers can't solve everything.

As fire crackles in her hands and lightning shoots from her fingertips, the soldiers around her, crowding her like children with their sticks and stones falter for just a moment.

And a moment was all she needed.