“Lamp, locate the Librarian,” thought Ray. “Let’s get this over with before she

wrecks the city.”

Affirmative. Blue flame revolved around Ray as the arm tried to comply with his

wishes. Location unknown.

“She’s not where the light can see her,” said Ray. “It looks like the library is the right

choice.”

“She’ll probably have the place walled off,” said Johnny Mac. “She loves that stuff

more than Star Trek.”

Ray nodded in agreement with the assessment. Nothing said you’re not invited like

a wall of letters blocking your way.

“So we see if she has her wall up, then try to get inside,” said Ray. “I’ll take the lead.

Hang back and look for a shot. She’ll probably have her personal shield going too so

she might be bulletproof.”

“She blocked both our shots earlier,” said Johnny Mac. “Those rockets ripped the

place up, but her shield kept stopping the explosions.”

“We don’t have to kill her,” said Ray. “We just have to keep her busy until the others

get here. Lightner is a big distraction on his own.”

“Too true,” said Johnny Mac. “Are you ready for this?”

“I think so,” said Ray. “I don’t think I have really wanted to murder someone before

now.”

“I have, and it would have been so easy too,” said Johnny Mac. “It’s too bad I

missed.”

“Really?,” asked Ray. He glanced at his partner.

“He was driving away,” said Johnny Mac. He shrugged. “I didn’t have a great shot.”

“All right,” said Ray. He asked the fire to look for other people on the campus. The

flame reported they were alone as far as it could tell. “All the faculty and students are

gone as far as the flame can tell. So it’s just going to be us.”

“Good,” said Johnny Mac. “That means we don’t have to worry about where the

bullets go when we start shooting.”

Ray nodded. He pulled the conjured pistol the lamp had built for him earlier. He took

aim at the library in the distance. He fired at the building. The bullet blew up on

impact.

“She’s running her shield like we thought,” said Ray. “She’ll probably expect us to

tunnel in. Any thoughts?”

“Can you move the building?,” asked Johnny Mac. “That might throw her off if the

place starts walking away, or something else that rattles it.”

“Lamp, see if you can move the building inside the shield,” thought Ray. “See if you

can flip it upside down.”

Affirmative. Blue flame surrounded the building. It exerted force to lift the building

straight up. The aura turned the library until the roof faced the ground. Then it

slammed the thing down on its foundation.

“All right,” said Johnny Mac. “That was better than I thought.”

“We still need to get inside before she can turn her attention on us,” said Ray.

“Let’s see if the bottom is covered, or if she forgot it again,” said Johnny Mac. “She

might have thought she wouldn’t need it since we were outside the city.”

He ran to the upside down building and tried to scale the wall to get to the exposed

basement ceiling. Orange letters rebuffed his efforts.

“So she learned to protect the floor from attack,” said Johnny Mac.

“But did she learn to protect it from flight?,” said Ray. “Remember, we don’t have to

actually fight her to win. We just have to keep her from doing her summons of the

Abyssal.”

“How many times can you do something like that?,” asked Johnny Mac.

“Let’s see,” said Ray.

“Lamp, I want you to launch the library into the dome until the situation changes

enough to matter,” thought Ray.

Affitmative. Blue flame wrapped around the upside down repository. It hurled the

building into the sky. They could see the impact against the inside of the dome before

it fell back to the ground with a thunderous crash.

“I don’t know how long I can keep this up, but let’s see what she does as long as I am

doing this,” said Ray.

“She’s going to come out here and try to kill us,” said Johnny Mac. “She’s going to

be pissed.”

“You better take cover,” said Ray. “As long as she has a supply of spell stones, she’ll

have power. I don’t know how long I’ll last, but as long as she is trying to kill me,

you should be okay to shoot her in the back if you can.”

“Got it,” said Johnny Mac. “I’ll set up over at the dorm Ishvar burned down. That

should be okay unless she comes out hard and knows where I am as soon as you stop

bouncing her against her own forcefield.”

“It probably won’t be long,” said Ray.

Johnny Mac ran to the shell that remained of the dorm that Ishvar had burned down.

He hadn’t asked what had happened. He expected some kind of trap had gone off. It

just hadn’t worked against the golden goddess.

He set up so he could shoot across the campus when the library settled in one place

when Ray couldn’t slam it against the dome any more. Orange letters angrily glowed

in the air on each impact.

He recognized the strategy. If you couldn’t get at someone, sometimes you had to let

them come at you.

He hoped Ray was quicker on his feet than some of the players he had seen try that.

Ray stood in the middle of the central square. Blue markers told him where his people

were. The clock still ran down in the corner of his eye. He didn’t know how much

longer he could throw the library against the dome. He wondered what the Librarian

was thinking.

As long as her shield kept the rectangular cube of her headquarters intact, she didn’t

have to come out to deal with him. She just had to deal with bouncing around inside

her lair.

He doubted she would put up with that for much longer. She couldn’t work her spell

if she couldn’t put the motions together. She had to come out to stop him.

All he had to do was hold her off until the constellation broke up, and then refuel for

the next night, and the one after that. Then it would be some other poor schmo’s

problem.

She couldn’t afford to wait when her victory was so close.

What kind of tactics would she go for when she saw he was alone? What should he

be ready to counter?

He decided that some type of energy blast would be in character for his enemy. He

might have to deal with some kind of monster. He couldn’t think of anything else she

might use, other than the omnipresent shield walls.

He smiled because he had just the tactic that would allow him to buy time.

“Lamp, when we engage with the Librarian, keep putting force cubes around her,”

said Ray. “It doesn’t matter if she breaks them apart. We just want to use them as

delaying tactics.”

Affirmative.

The library crashed down. Ray imagined the books that hadn’t been destroyed or

scattered during their first fight being scattered by his juggling act. Sandra was not

going to like what he had done.

If he saved the city, he could fix it with the blue flame before he was recalled. He

didn’t know how long he had before Woad yanked him to Transition so he would

have to act quickly.

The door of the library exploded from something inside blasting it away. The

Librarian stood in the hole, anger burning off of her in heated orange air.

“Lamp, speed up my thought processes and reflex speed so I have a chance,” said

Ray. “Start dropping the cubes too.”

Affirmative. Ray nodded as time seemed to slow down around him. He couldn’t

match natural spell working, but he could close the gap so he could use his lamp

almost as fast. It was the best he could do until his brain naturally took command of

the lamp and he wasn’t sure that was going to happen in the short time they had to

win the fight in front of them.

A cube of blue flame appeared around the Librarian as she raised her hand to throw

a spell at her enemy.

“I just wanted you to know you’re stopped,” said Ray. “I think a talk with the ruling

council and the magic people are in your future.”

She broke through the cube. She raised her hand to fling a spell at her enemy. A blue

cube wrapped around her. She glared at the cell.

“You’re done,” said Ray. “As soon as the others take your wall and dome apart, I’m

turning you in to the authorities. They will love to know how to counter your plan in

the future.”

The Librarian raised both hands. A wave of orange letters blasted out. Ray raised his

metal hand to create a shield to deflect the blast. It still rocked him off his feet.

“I’ll never be done until I have finished my plan,” said the Librarian. “If I have to kill

you along the way, I am fine with that.”

Another blue cube surrounded her. She fumed at the hindrance.

Ray smiled as he picked himself up. He had found a tactic he could do all day with

little energy expenditure.

And he was burning precious time doing it.