Vol.4 Ch.65 – The Librarian II
Chapter 65: The Librarian II
Kaja turned around to see if the cadets they'd brought were ready to fight and then winced at their worried and dubious expressions.
The fact that Kaja had tried to avoid conflict with the giant monster in the library might have given them the idea that she'd been worried about their chances but that hadn't been the case at all. This was what Omega and her did. Fighting Outsiders was the thing they were best at. The reason she'd wanted to try and avoid conflict had been that she hadn't wanted to alert the Necromancer too early. To be fair, shattering the glass doors might have ruined that plan already but if the Necromancer was too focused on his ritual he might not have noticed that. However, he would definitely notice if that monster died. After all, you didn't keep a guard dog around only to ignore its barks.
But no, she wasn't worried. Even without backup from the cadets she was sure Omega and her had this. With them this would likely be barely a fight.
“Alexis and Abigail,” she said, keeping her voice calm and casual, “I doubt it needs its torso so please aim for its head. Cassie and Ophelia, please do your best to defend against any Darklight it might conjure. And, Abigail, we could use some music.”
She summoned her own bow and gathered light and ice to herself. She couldn't cast the spell that got her her nickname here – Radiant Prism was an anti-army spell, after all – but that didn't mean she couldn't use the same principle that made that spell so infamous. And so she created prisms out of ice and scattered them around the floor, then nocked an arrow made of light and began calculating angles. Omega, meanwhile, was going directly for the throat. Not literally, mind. His most famous Named Spell, Acheron Vector, was a terrifyingly efficient and deadly piece of magecraft, certainly, but it worked best on creatures that had a distinct neck.
But that didn't mean he was out of options.
He drew shadow and water to himself, cloaking himself in the shadows and wrapping a sheen of water around his greatsword and his feet, and dashed forward.
The water under his feet reduced and friction, letting him skate forward and build speed indefinitely, while the shadows distorted his silhouette and could reach out and yank him this way and that to avoid attacks. The water swirling around the sword moved fast enough to chew through plate steel and the sword underneath that water could hew through anything the water failed to sever in time.
The monster regarded the angel rushing at it and for a moment Kaja thought the beast didn't know it was under attack. But when Omega swung his sword at the creature with the approximate force of a railgun shell the attack bounced off a translucent barrier, iridescent concentric circles blooming outward from the place he'd struck. The sheen of water blasted off the blade and Omega rushed to dismiss it but even so it had chewed holes into the hardwood floor wherever it had struck.
“Kindly avoid spilling water in my library,” the creature rumbled, sounding more worried about its books than its own life.
Omega growled in response, the iron greatsword already elongating into a spear, the better to pierce the barrier.
Personal barriers came in all shapes and sizes but the ones the Outsiders and their worshipers used tended to all behave the same. Their shield bubbles could withstand a concerning amount of damage and they could even be shattered in places without losing their structural integrity instantly. However, in this case that might actually be better for them.
Kaja felt a massive wave of power building behind her and rushed to recall her ice prisms, not quite knowing but strongly suspecting what was about to happen. And the first thing that did happen was... singing.
Abigail's high, clear voice rang out, singing of stories and freedom, and as it did Kaja felt speed and power flood into her. This was not like the paltry blessing she could bestow upon the faithful. This was like the blessing of Michael or Uriel, martial and thrumming and unfettered, a power she could feel pulsing in her bones, her body rising to meet the beat of the song. And a moment later, as the gathering power reached a breaking point, she heard Alexis' voice ringing out:
“Shatter!”
A magical spear hurtled toward the creature and pierced the shield bubble with a sound that set Kaja's teeth on edge, boring a hole a foot in diameter into the bubble, piercing through the creature's sternum and exiting the bubble out the other side.
Kaja was about to send her ice prisms inside the shield bubble and then loose her arrow when she realized the spear Alexis had thrown had neither embedded itself in the wall nor pierced through and flown outside. Instead it had simply van...
Her spells shattered as Cassie tackled her to the ground just in time to push her out of the way of Alexis' spear. Again the spear vanished and appeared...
“Watch out!” Kaja shouted at Ophelia but the vampire was faster, twisting out of the way of the magical spear.
The weapon vanished once more and Kaja chanced a look at the monster, which was weaving a spell with one of its myriad arms, and Kaja would have bet everything she ever owned on that bit of spellcraft being some variation of a tentacle portal, a portal spell crafted to catch and redirect Alexis' spear until its momentum was exhausted.
Ophelia had clearly noticed the same thing because a moment later she started drawing magic to herself, growling: “That's enough of that.”
The power Ophelia had gathered launched itself at the creature and as it struck the portal spell shattered with a sound that set Kaja's teeth on edge.
Kaja didn't spare a thought on finding Alexis' spear. Instead her mind was whirling. If that monster could redirect projectiles her best spells were all but useless. Of course that didn't mean she was helpless but it did mean she would need to improvise. Project Omega's slashes so they hit thrice with every swing of his sword? An ice spell strong enough to freeze the whole bulk of the creature? Or just use dual aura spells to imbue Omega with light and shadow?
But before she could decide on something to do she noticed a dozen of the thing's hands making arcane gestures and she'd studied Outsider spellcraft long enough to know the thing was spinning Darklight beams together.
“Darklight!” she called out. “Get ready to defend!”
Almost instantly a barrier of ice exploded outward, separating their team from the monster. Normal ice was about as useful for Darklight protection as sheet paper but Kaja knew that Cassie had some kind of ability that made his ice actually able to reflect the stuff. Even more, a moment after the ice barrier had sprang up a ball of purple fire launched itself at the creature, swallowing the budding Darklight spells and chewing through its barrier.
She could see some of the more spindly arms withering under the purple flames but then the creature clapped two hands together, a wave of force smothering the flames in an instant.
“Fire?!” it boomed, sounding angry for the first time. “In my library?”
The ground around the creature exploded in tiny little portals and the slime mold it had for a lower body exploded in pseudopodia that reached through those portals. Kaja didn't want to know what it might do with them and drew light magic to herself, then did something that, for any other mage and working with any other element, would have been beyond risky. She cast aura magic on every single person present, their bodies exploding with light.
The creature's pseudopodia, made almost entirely of Outsider matter, seared away on contact with the light bodies and the beast shuddered all over, its top-heavy body shaking alarmingly but retracting the slimy tentacles to nurse its wounds.
“Never... do that again,” Ophelia wheezed and Kaja winced in sympathy. She had just infused a vampire's body with light magic. Even if sunlight didn't hurt them, it did aggravate the beast inside them and turned off their preternatural abilities for a time. But it had kept the tentacles at bay.
“Sorry,” Kaja squeaked, then took a deep breath and focused on the monster.
It was getting angry now and an angry Outsider hybrid was a dangerous Outsider hybrid.
“Enough,” Omega growled, his swords melting together into what looked at first glance like a weird sword but was actually meant to be an oar. He swung the oar through a wide arc and water magic gathered around him, then launched itself at the creature as he growled: “Stygian Assault.”
Three enormous pillars of water snapped into existence around the monster, the water swirling fast enough to rend flesh from bone in a flash, and began to close in on the creature.
The beast frantically wove whatever spells it could together but Ophelia launched another ball of purple fire at it and when the water pillars began to make contact, shredding its shield bubble and its flesh alike, Kaja fired the arrow she'd been trying to launch since the start of this encounter.
Omega's water pillars weren't as good at refracting her light arrows as her ice prisms but they were good enough. Water shredded and light seared, exploding into a kaleidoscope of colors that enveloped the creature in a rainbow as it was torn to pieces.
“Is it over?” Cassie asked.
“Yes,” Omega rumbled.
**
Freeing the civilians was much easier than Elaine had feared.
At least the ones that hadn't been processed yet – Elaine absolutely did not want to know just how much of a euphemism that word was – were still on the ground floor, in examination rooms that had been turned into prison cells so neatly Elaine wondered if the hospital had been in Caulder's hand since long before the Invasion. Each was guarded by at least one cyborg but at this point individual cyborgs didn't even register as a threat anymore. They had been scary back when it had been just Cassie and her in an abandoned building but here, like this?
This was just an opportunity for Evelyn to find out just how hard she could hit things if she had enough of a run-up. The cyborgs she hit didn't so much shatter as they exploded, their metal parts scattering across the linoleum floors and their bodies exploding like swatted flies. And thanks to the water magic Evelyn had recently gained access to the showers of black blood and gore were barely a mild inconvenience to her. It was a nasty way to kill these things but it was undoubtedly effective.
The only issue was: What were they going to do with the civilians? She could ask Prudence to come pick them up but she would still be busy with the civilians from the bunker. Asking any of the other teams for help was possible but they had their own jobs to do. And taking the civilians with them wasn't going to happen. She already had reservations about bringing the resistance mages along. Completely helpless civilians were out of the question. But unless they wanted to delay the mission even further...
“If you want, I can bring them to the safe house,” Sylvia said.
“Are you sure?” Elaine asked.
“So long as I can take them one at a time it won't be too exhausting,” Sylvia said. “Fighting's not really my thing. Evacuating civilians, though? I can do that.”
“Thanks,” Elaine asked, feeling guilty about leaving helping the civilians to, well, a civilian, but also aware that this was the best option.
As Sylvia began to peel off with the civilians Elaine watched them go. She didn't pray for their safety because praying wasn't something she was in the habit of doing but she did hope for the best.
As she did she felt a small hand grabbing hers and looked down to see Alexis smiling up at her. The cute blonde could always put her mind at ease, even if she barely felt her touch through the suit of armor.
“Will they be alright?” Elaine asked. Alexis didn't know, couldn't know, but still she reassured her:
“Of course.”