“I need to take a break,” thought Ray. “I need some food to recharge. I thought for

sure we could take her.”

Her reflexes and mastery of her abilities is better than yours.

“I guess so since we blew her up and she still walked away,” thought Ray. “Nice

explosion, by the way.”

Could not produce a true nuclear explosion in the middle of the city. Too much

collateral damage. Target rode the shockwave like we did.

“No problem,” thought Ray. “I just wanted something I was sure she couldn’t block.

I was wrong about that.”

Affirmative.

“Tracking?,” asked Ray.

Negative. Marking cloud was rendered useless by the explosion.

“I guess see what you can do about putting the fire out while I try not to pass out,”

thought Ray.

Affirmative. Blue flame dropped over the crater that had once been a townhouse.

When it faded away, the fire was out. Smaller domes starved out other fires that had

spilled over on the neighboring buildings.

“Good job,” thought Ray. “Let me find a place to eat, and once we recharged, we can

figure out what we’re going to do from here.”

Affirmative.

Ray picked himself up. He didn’t see any wounds. The lamp’s shield was better than

what he had thought. He still had to get to some place to eat and rest.

The lamp might have healed any wounds while he was trying to pick himself off the

ground.

“She still has time to produce something, doesn’t she?,” asked Ray. He decided to

stagger away in a direction that might be toward the Blue Oak.

Affirmative. The constellations are still moving in alignment.

“There has to be a way to break that shield,” thought Ray. “She’s holding us off with

it. Until we can do that, she can run away and try again over and over.”

Affirmative.

Ray struggled along. He needed some bed rest and food. Once he had those, he could

get back out there and think about how to stop his nemesis. At least now he knew

who he was looking, but expected she could change her appearance any time she

wanted.

He wondered if she could change her appearance, but put that down to it didn’t

matter. Hunting her down before the deadline was the only way he could pay his debt.

Averting disaster was a poor second place.

And second was the first place of losers.

He was glad he didn’t explain to Sandra how the library had been destroyed. That

wouldn’t have been a pleasant conversation. He felt a little guilt over sticking Johnny

Mac with the job, but it wasn’t enough to go back and apologize.

His rabbit butler would help smooth things down.

Ray smiled at that. He doubted Buble knew the meaning of the words smooth things

down.

He walked into a closed market and took his bearings. How far away from the Oak

was he now? He thought maybe a couple of miles, but he wasn’t sure.

He had spent a lot of his time walking through this other world, but didn’t quite have

the directions he needed to go yet.

The place needed a better version of Google maps.

A weak blue marker lit up in Ray’s vision. He nodded in thanks as he made his way

through that part of the market and out in the streets beyond. Once he had some food

in him, he could deal with the rest of his problems.

At least none of his guys had gotten killed. That was something to be happy about the

way things were going. The loss of a champion didn’t seem that big a deal to the

powers that be, but he was glad it hadn’t been because of him.

He was definitely glad he didn’t have to inform the McHenrys and the Lightners their

boys had been blown apart in a fierce struggle over a can of worms in another

dimension. He just couldn’t see that going over well.

He hoped Woad would explain things to Barbara about how he had been blown up

by an ancient librarian crone.

Affirmative.

Ray smiled when he saw the Blue Oak ahead. He squinted. It looked closed to him.

He weighed breaking in against burning himself up as his arm kept drawing power

from him that he didn’t have. He was going to have to break in.

He paused when he got to the door. He tried the knob and found the door had a

lockbar in place to keep ruffians like him out.

“Can you open the door?,” asked Ray.

Affirmative. A blue slice of flame slid in the crack between the door and the frame.

It knocked the lockbar out of the way. Ray pushed the door open and entered. He

closed the door and put the lockbar back.

He walked behind the bar and pulled a clean mug out of its place. He opened the tap

and poured what the locals called tea into the mug. He sipped the drink and let it

revive him a little.

Now he needed to think about raiding the kitchen for something to eat.

Ray poured himself another mug of tea before violating the kitchen. He nodded when

he saw the fireplace and the cooler. He figured the locals were able to keep food cold

with magic of some kind.

It was too bad he wasn’t an expert in the stuff. That might go a long way to helping

him out of his current jam.

He found some eggs. He started a fire in the fireplace and grabbed a clean pan off its

hook. He cracked the eggs in the pan and threw the shells out the back window. He

slid a shelf in place over the fire to put the pan on. He looked around but didn’t see

a spatula. He decided to scramble his eggs with a long knife.

He found some cheese and shaved bits off to add to his eggs. He stirred everything

up with the knife. He sniffed the air as he watched his eggs cook.

It was too bad they didn’t have ketchup. That would have been great with the eggs.

He decided the continent didn’t have a grasp on spices yet. That would change

eventually, unless cooking was in stasis.

Ray sliced a loaf of bread up and dropped his eggs on top of two slices. Should he

cook more eggs, or look for other things in the pantry?

He went back into the cooler and found sliced meats. He put those in the pan and

made hot sandwiches six inches high. He took his snack into the dining room, getting

another mug of tea from the keg as he went to his table.

He needed to leave Stella money and a note to cover the food he was consuming. He

hoped she understood.

He devoured his plate of sandwiches and drank his tea. He concentrated on that

instead of what his options were to chase down the librarian.

He didn’t see any options, but he put that down to being tired. He knew the lamp

could search the city almost instantly with its scanner beam. She would probably

realize that and block the beam with her magic.

Did she have a backup plan? That worried him a little. She had been in the city long

enough to have two walls built to her specifications. Did she have another wall

waiting to go in case her primary plan was blown up by a MMO operator and two

aggressive kids?

Would she leave town? She might, but he thought she would wait around at least until

the stars aligned. Maybe it would give her a boost to her powers that she could use

to accomplish some secondary goal.

He would at least try to get rid of one of the three guys that had crashed her party.

And that one guy would probably be the guy who tried to burn her alive on his own.

He didn’t have a problem with that. He wanted her to come at him. That would give

him another shot at her so he could wrap things up.

He didn’t want to come back in fifty years because he had let her get away.

He definitely didn’t want to pass things down to some other poor schmo caught in the

extradimensional warfare with no way of getting things done.

He decided he needed another plate of sandwiches and another mug of tea. He felt

better, but still tired. He needed to charge up now before he dropped off.

His mind went over finding Sandra and Sam tied up in the library. What had that been

about? Had the librarian tried to jumpstart the spell command with them?

Was a blood sacrifice needed to jumpstart things? Had she been trying to stop him

from stopping her by doing the spell first? Was her scheme even possible?

Converting a dimension into an energy source to make you a god seemed a bit crazy

to him but he didn’t know how magic worked. Maybe eating dimensions was how all

pantheons became pantheons in the first place.

Motive didn’t really mean that much any way except as a way to figure out what she

was doing and what her next step had to be.

The thought that she might have a secondary plan rolled through his head and he

didn’t like that direction of thinking at all.

Ray fixed another plate of sandwiches from eggs, ham and cheese. He tried to enjoy

the aroma of the cooking while he thought about what his next move could be.

At some point he was going to have to tell Lord Brian what he thought about

everything, what they had done to try to stop things, and how everything had gone

south. He wasn’t looking forward to it, but it had to be done. The representatives of

the city had to know how close they had been to no longer having a city to run, much

less fight to protect.

He should tell the rest of his crew that he was going to do the rest of this alone. He

had a target, and he had the means to chase her down. He didn’t want to get them

killed while he tried to clear his own debt.

And he felt like he would get them killed if they followed him back into the fire.