“You!” Once I had set Rei gently aside, I leapt to my feet, staring down my assailant.

“Don’t you take that tone with me,” snarled Maggie. “Not after what you did to poor little Rei.”

“What I did? You’re the one who doomed her!”

She looked down at the body, tsking with disapproval. “I’m not the one who shot her straight through the heart.”

“She wouldn’t listen to reason. Your poison ran too deep; her last words were even Humanity First. You should be proud of her!”

Maggie kept her hands at her sides, ready to start casting. “At least I had one loyal follower. Though there’s barely a mark on you! How useless.”

“Useless?” I had to stop myself from charging in, sword swinging. Maggie had positioned herself well, standing on the opposite side of the cluster of circular tables. If I tried to rush in, I’d be an easy target.

The same was true for her, of course. We were both playing it cautiously. For all our bluster, we were both starting to hit our limits. I had cast more spells, but she had just walked up dozens of flights of stairs. We were stuck in a classic wizard’s standoff. The human (or even the demonic) body can’t absorb the raw punishment of magic designed to split the hull of a tank. Wizard duels are won by-split second decisions, so we waited for the other to reveal their hand.

I decided to keep her talking, since as far as I knew, she hadn’t mastered Tachibana’s technique for silent casting. “You should really consider throwing yourself on the mercy of the League. The good… no, hang it all, the Dark Lord knows they’ll have more than me.”

Maggie flinched as though slapped at the mention of the master of the Grim Horde. “So your true colors come out, demonkin.”

“No sense hiding it now, though I don’t see why you’re surprised. Did you actually start believing the lies you told the other brothers? After everything you pulled? All the torture, all the threats, all the-”

“Ruhspont!”

She had caught me mid-rant, much like I had hoped to do to her. I was saved by her desire to make me suffer; a Magic Bolt would have caught me, but I was just able to avoid the splatter from the demonic spell.

The same couldn’t be said for the towering bookshelf behind me. Dozens of magical tomes vanished in a heartbeat, and I just avoided being crushed as the smoking remains pitched forward.

“Svalinn’s Wrath!” Being mindful of my diminishing magic reserves, I made a broader blade in a similar shape as the lost scarf. The glittering red energy structure would have to act as both sword and shield. Now that she had taken her shot, I decided I was better off closing. I leapt onto the nearest table, thankful for the Headmaster’s lavish spending when it held my weight.

Maggie backpedaled, runes swirling around her fingers. “Ice Spear!” A narrow projectile as long as my arm flew out, shattering uselessly against the Svalinn’s Wrath.

“Is that all you’ve got?” I crowed as I landed on the other side of the tables.

“You overuse that spell,” she said, drawing her own fabricata-enhanced sword to block my slash. The force drove her back further, but the magical protection saved the weapon. “A proper wizard needs to be flexible.”

“I must have had an awful teacher,” I said, probing at her defenses with the sword’s tip, finding the weightless weapon was a bit too broad for the task. It was time to use my free hand. “Spectral Web!”

She dipped out of the way of the blue net, but a few stray strands trailed from her sword. “Flashbang!”

I briefly wondered what kind of an idiot would use that sort of utility spell at short range, an instant before my eyes and ears were rendered useless. I spat a curse in High Demonic, glad that I could finally express myself.

I focused inward, trying to see if I could make her out with my Mimic Sight. No such luck; this close to the roof, the discharging batteries still completely scrambled my senses.

Instead, my focus let me feel Maggie’s footsteps as she approached from my left. I released the sword to free up my hands. “Diamond Shower!” I had almost used a Fireball Barrage, before remembering that libraries tend to be rather flammable.

I could barely hear the feminine grunt of pain over my ringing ears, but my attack hadn’t dissuaded Maggie one bit. A shadowy figure rushed forward in the sea of whiteness, and an arcing slash opened a shallow wound on my chest. Not deep enough to hit anything important, but that didn’t make it any less painful.

I grabbed onto that pain, using it to supplement my flagging magic. “Bahadour!” This blast wasn’t anywhere near what I had used to vaporize Ratte, since I was fighting blind. I didn’t want to accidentally give Tachibana the same fate. That would have been a dud of a rescue mission.

“You shouldn’t have abandoned your uniform,” said Maggie, more clearly than before. I could finally make out her smug face as she pressed the attack. Her blade bit into my forearm, but didn’t stop me from drawing my regular blade. “The mask protects you from effects like that.”

“Isn’t that just special,” I grunted, finally finding my footing. “Does it protect you from demonic magic?”

“No, your bad aim does that,” she snapped.

“I missed these little heart-to-hearts,” I said. “From back before I had to pretend to give a kobold’s ass about you!” Our blades crossed, flashing yellow as our magic reinforced them. Once I wasn’t half blind, it was my fight to win. Maggie was taller than Rei, but I still had an advantage in weight and reach.

“So much for your nonsense about being my only friend in the world,” she spat.

“What nonsense? I was!” I replied. “Just not for the reasons you thought. You were useful for my goals.”

“Then explain!” I slashed at her as she withdrew, my sword hitting her metallic chest plate. We both winced at the impact. “You demanded we attack today, and then you betrayed us just as we were about to triumph.”

“Kiyo and the others were off limits,” I said, not wanting to get into my mission from Fera. “That was always my price.”

She put her free hand on her hip. “Jones, Jones, Jones! It always comes back to her! What does she have that I don’t?”

“A soul, for one,” I said.

“We’ll see how long that lasts,” she said. “She’s cute and innocent now, but once you throw Jones and Cooper and all the rest into real combat, they’ll see how hopeless the war is.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said, flashing her a smirk. “She’s fought the Brotherhood three times and she seems okay so far. Perhaps you’re just too sensitive?”

“Yes, because stabbing your boyfriend is so normal,” she said.

My free hand traced the newest scar on my stomach. Healing magic has a way of making life-threatening injuries slip your mind. “You’re the one who drove her to it!”

Maggie’s cackle almost made me break our momentary truce. “It was so easy, too! I always knew there was something off about Kiyo. She was a school shooting waiting to happen.”

“You keep her name out of your mouth,” I snapped, surging forward. I decided I was too close to cast a spell without risking being stabbed while my hands were occupied.

Or, perhaps I wanted to be up close and personal when I ended her. Probably a mixture of both.

“Oh, did I strike a nerve?” She parried my strike, and the melee began again.

“I’ll strike more than your nerves!”

Maggie wasn’t the most technically proficient swordfighter I had ever faced, but she was a wily one. She was hard to bait, and I nearly fell for at least three of her feints.

The back and forth had to end at some point, though. My sword’s tip slashed across her stomach. The runes traced the path in yellow, but either the suit or her magic was overstressed, leaving a reddening slash.

Her sword fell out of her grip, and I used the opening to follow up with a gut punch with my left hand. She toppled over with a pained grunt.

I was tempted to deliver some bon mot to see her off to Our Father Below’s loving embrace, but my heartbeat roared in my ears. I leveled my sword at her, ready to deliver the coup de grâce instead.

A shooting pain in my thigh brought me up short. “What the Hell?” An unseen spear pierced through to my knee, sending me to the floor.

“Thanks for bringing your smartphone,” she said. “Everybody always underestimates Glassblower as an affinity.”

“Of course you would have an affinity for blowing,” I said, trying to focus on something besides the blinding pain. It didn’t work; the bitch had reshaped the glass into a barbed hook. I didn’t have the focus to keep both eyes open, much less cast a spell.

Maggie rose to her feet, leveling her hand at me. “Fitting last words for you, you traitorous little pervert.”

My retort was interrupted by a deafening boom. Maggie was knocked prone again, her metal breastplate glowing so brightly it hurt my eyes.

Kiyo stepped into view, loading another bullet into Lucile’s chamber. “You’re lucky that was rubber.”

“And you wonder why I called you Angel,” I said.

Kiyo fixed me with a steely side-eye. “Yeah well… if you hadn’t tried to talk Rei down, that bullet might have been for you.”

“Just how long were you watching? Why didn’t you help?”

She shrugged. “It was a Holy Brother fighting another Holy Brother. No matter who lost, I won. But I still like you more than her. Sorta.”

I grit my teeth, remembering just what Maggie had cost me. It was time to extract my pound of flesh.