Kajaro, it seemed, wasn’t about to let Quinn or Malakai off easily. He obviously intended to make it as difficult as possible.

Quinn focused the main portion of her mind on attacking and keeping Kajaro under control. She did this by penning his movements in with ice darts, allowing precision to keep him at bay, since hitting him as easily as she had last time didn’t appear to be possible.

Meanwhile, Malakai darted in and out, distracting him, breaking concentration so that Kajaro couldn’t finish one of his vortex. Perhaps not the best strategy, but it worked until they could figure out precisely how to defeat him.

In the back of her mind, though, she knew the others might need her, could need Malakai, given any set of circumstances. Multitasking on a battlefield wasn’t on her bingo card, but she had to make it work.

Hal fought Hoody, or Devishk, or whatever his name was. The Aracnios fought against the remaining imp, Garon, as well as Nishpa and the Firionas that Quinn just hadn’t gotten around to scanning. The Sedimentites were occupied by Ikeshal with Erik as backup.

Quinn had to tear her attention away from how Ikeshal could take multiple blows and suffer no damage whatsoever. How he reflected the damage back.

Kajaro’s shielding this time was next level. She needed that skill. She’d find the book on that when they finally got the combat section open.

But it was the Petraligno versus Escadril that really distracted her. Their fighting style involved ripping the ground up, churning the surrounding nature. Except Escadril did it in such a way that enhanced the natural properties, like utilizing the roots to confine and restrict his opponent. But the Petraligno seemed to be more destructive about it, twisting things that were already broken or ripped apart and making something new and vulgar from them.

He used the torghud carapace in just such a way. As it screeched and scraped while being molded, Quinn cringed.

“Librarian, it’s like you’ve never been in a fight,” Kajaro drawled. Her attention hadn’t been completely split from him, but she admitted even to herself that she might have been slightly distracted watching the rest of them fight. “Your opponent is me.”

She raised an eyebrow as she narrowly avoided what seemed like a half-hearted electrical pulse directed her way. “It’s not like you’re challenging or anything. I’ve already killed you once. Do you have nine lives?”

Kajaro didn’t laugh. He looked somewhat perplexed, and his brow pinched with worry. “How did you know I have nine lives?”

Quinn did a double take. “Well, you don’t have nine anymore. You’ve already died at least once that I know of,” she said, trying to figure out how a Serpensiril had nine lives, where the adage that she knew was about cats having nine lives.

But apparently Kajaro didn’t like her comeback because the next thing she knew, he began casting one of his vortex spheres that she remembered intricately from their last combat encounter.

“Dive to the right,” Malakai yelled out at her. Quinn did so without thinking simply because of the amount of training she and Malakai had put in together. She knew that when he called out for her to move, she needed to do it. In her spot, a pool of lava opened up. She didn’t feel any fear at the sign of the liquid rock but she was glad she’d rolled away because whether it caused her discomfort didn’t negate the fact that even if she was marginally impervious to heat, it would probably have burned like buggery.

Kajaro stood there cackling as he cast his vortex between his hands, the electricity swirling. It gave her flashbacks of that first fight, back when she’d literally known nothing, not understood how things worked, and basically only survived out of sheer dumb luck.

Now she wasn’t that same girl anymore. She’d grown in knowledge and power now. As she reached out, sensations flooded through her, the knowledge of simply how to stop the electricity, how to siphon it off.

“Acquiesce,” she said, and the lightning jumped from the vortex Kajaro had been creating and leapt into the lava pool, imploding it in upon itself and sealing it away into hardened rock.

Kajaro looked at her with his mouth open. “That shouldn’t be possible.”

Quinn put a hand on her hip and played with three large ice balls in her hand. She twirled them and they floated as if she was juggling them with one hand. She looked at him. “Why shouldn’t that be possible? Everything can be blended together, if I want it to, right?” At least that’s how it worked. She thought he didn’t need to know that she wasn’t 100% certain about it.

Lightning passed through Kajaro’s dark eyes. The black that bled to the edges of the sclera seemed to bleed even farther now, darkening his facial features. Electricity zinged around his body like an outline, electric, deadly. She didn’t think that was a type of electricity that she could simply divert from its original intention. No, the current of electricity running around him belonged to Kajaro.

“You’ll pay for that,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be here. You should be dead and the Library along with you. And this time, I’ll see the job done properly. Because I’ll do it myself.”

Quinn felt shivers run down her spine, even as Malakai had backed up and was firing non-stop shots, trying to find an opening in Kajaro’s defences, but he’d learned and this new shielding was nigh impenetrable. She couldn’t figure out how to damage him. Unmaking a personal shield was a far more advanced level of magic than Quinn was ready for.

Wasn’t it?

She held up her hand to get the elf to stop. “It’s just a waste of arrows.”

“Have unlimited arrows,” Malakai grumbled, rolling his eyes, but Quinn couldn’t pay him attention because she needed to find the opening that was in Kajaro. He had multiple lives. Even without that revelation, she’d already figured it out, considering she was fairly certain he’d actually been dead last time.

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She could see, could sense through her extended reach, that Hal and Dravishk were sincerely evenly matched, and that worried her. How did an ancient primeval satyr not have an edge over Hoody? She was almost certain who Dravishk was though, she just didn’t want to admit it to herself yet.

They had to win this fight, but right now, it felt shaky at best. She could already sense that Nishpa and her crew, as well as Ikeshal, Escadril, and Erik, that they were falling behind. None of them had expected this type of power. They’d been foolish, they’d thought they had the upper hand.

Being able to process all of her thoughts as quickly as she wanted to might have been a major advantage most times, but she felt like she was lost in her head. She needed to concentrate; she needed to stop them, and she needed that bloody book back.

Calmness leeched through Quinn as she reached into her thoughts and let herself breathe. It was more that her mind had come to the conclusion that she was required to perform at her utmost. To do so, she needed to minimize distracting thoughts. Bravo, brain, she thought, but really, she was grateful. It allowed her to analyze the area and try to find holes in Kajaro’s defenses.

Kajaro sent out electrical shocks toward her and Malakai. She dodged out of the way, using her ability to hover, to blink, and to be in spots that he wasn’t expecting. That he couldn’t foresee. It threw him off every time, and his eyebrows twitched in frustration.

Malakai used the same tactic and slowly but surely, they began to chip away at the Serpensiril’s shielding.

Quinn, knowing how to unmake her own shielding, began to leverage her ice attacks with a slight hint of what she would call an acid attack. It wasn’t actually acid, but it was like a tiny spark that started a hairline, spiderweb-type fracture in his shield. Frankly, the skill was originally intended for breaking into strongholds during siege battles.

But she felt Kajaro was stronghold enough for her to use it as subtly as possible. She hoped that by the time they cracked through it, he would still be unaware of what she was doing.

Off to the right, she heard Nishpa gasp. It took all of her concentration not to look over and run to help. It was a pained sound, but she knew Nishpa was more than capable of taking care of herself. Just like Hal’s fight would end the way they needed it to, just like Ikeshal and Escadril were going to be fine. Because they all had to be.

She could only hope that Eric was actually staying out of the fights enough that he wouldn’t get further injured.

“Librarian, you’re learning tricks,” Kajaro said, his tone forever mocking her. “Not too many months have passed, you shouldn’t have learned this many tricks yet.”

Quinn shrugged, not letting him interrupt her concentration or take away the calm mood that she had managed to submerge herself in. It was the best way to keep herself together, to not give in to the emotions while also not completely getting rid of them. It was a compromise for both her, the Library, Aradie, and Lynx. She didn’t want to go back to that place, even if it meant she could be ruthlessly effective.

A massive roar echoed from over in the left-hand corner where Hal and Hoody were fighting. Quinn glanced briefly, her focus taking in everything at the time. Hal gripped Dravishk under the chin and turn him around as if he was going to wrestle throw him off a ways. The growl was Hoody, incensed because he was being manhandled.

Quinn took a breath, her complete focus back on Kajaro as she picked away at his shielding with her spiderweb-like cracks. It was rinse and repeat. She distracted him; she entrapped the shielding at the same time that Malakai did and then she felt it.

She knew it was about to give.

I need you to aim just in front of his underarm on his chest to the left side; she said to Malakai.

Malakai gave one nod and loosed the arrow.

The effect was dazzling.

It hit just under Kajaro’s left arm and the shielding literally cracked like somebody had thrown a pebble through a glass window. Even the sound carried over the entire combat area. The spiderweb solidified, breaking everything forcibly, and pushed the Serpensiril to the ground as the shielding fell away.

Kajaro screamed and held his head for a second. The backlash hitting him strongly.

Maybe he thought too much of himself, maybe he thought too little of Quinn. She couldn’t exactly be sure, but she’d done it, she’d broken his shielding.

Concentrating, she levied an ice attack to spear him in the chest with three more coming from behind that she really hoped he wouldn’t see with the pain currently doubling him over.

Only just as they were about to hit him, he stood upright and drew himself up larger than she’d ever noticed. He stood taller than Malakai now, at about seven feet, and his eyes were fully blood red. The blood leaked down his face with this greenish tinge to it, like she’d noticed the Serpensiril’s had.

“Enough!” He screamed.

There was power in that word.

She could tell everybody had stopped and was watching them, that the command wouldn’t let her look away either to check on her comrades.

“I’ve had enough of you. You have thwarted me at every single possible turn,” Kajaro said, “and I will no longer allow it.”

“You don’t have a choice,” Quinn said. “Do and say whatever you want. But you’re going to give me that damned book back.”

“You’re not getting any more books, Librarian, because I’m going to kill you. But first, you’re going to watch all your little friends die.” Something swirled in his eyes, it churned all around him like a vortex but a different one.

It swirled in tiny increments so fast around him that Quinn couldn’t quite comprehend. She reinforced her shielding and everything she’d put on everyone else. She heard Malakai yell out a warning across the battlefield and she hunkered down, bolstering those shields repeatedly, knowing that in a split second everything was going to change.

Her stomach flip-flopped.

Nausea threatened to overwhelm her, but she held on grimly.

When Kajaro released the spell, Quinn wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting.

These small, mini-frisbee-sized disks of electrical vortexes simply exploded out from where Kajaro stood, zooming toward every single individual, not even picky about what side they were on. She could hear them as they impacted, ripping through everybody, regardless of their shielding. She could feel it as they thunked through flesh.

The cries and the screams made it to her, and because she was shielding everyone, she could feel the damage done to every single person.

She looked up as she saw the vortexes whirling toward her, and dug down, knowing she’d get one chance to drop them like miasma drones.

But she didn’t expect Malakai to dive in front of her.

Not only did he get the electrical frisbees that were meant for him, but he intercepted the ones intended for her. His scream cut off as he plummeted to the ground.

Quinn shrieked out. “Malakai”, and Kajaro cackled gleefully.

Inside her, it was like a click resounded through her entire being, teetering on the threshold of something just out of reach.

Screams echoed through to her, pain resonated in her senses.

Something inside her shattered.

Every single emotion fell away, every single one except the pure need to rectify the situation.

Quinn looked up, barely noticing that her scales had ripped portions of her armor away, and now coated some of body. She felt like a very protective helmet now encased her face.

She focused her gaze on Kajaro and held out her left hand, palm forward, before speaking, “That was a terrible choice.”