LSRO: Chapter 22 - Kajaro (Patreon)

Soooooooo - this was a fun scene to write. Chapter... whatever.

What do you think about Kajaro? I want those powers. 

Rough Draft as per usual - let's just be honest. At some stage I'll update all the rough chapters - but you're basically getting the chapters hot off my brain (press), get it?

Enjoy!

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Chapter 22

Kajaro

Kajaro's lightning only missed Quinn because Malakai pulled her out of the way in time. To be fair, Quinn had never been the most coordinated person, but she had been fast. She'd always thought that being able to run away from incidents if she couldn't defend herself well enough, would be much more useful than trying to teach herself self-defense combinations.

"Sorry." She muttered, going into a crouch and getting ready to run.

Except that wasn't going to work, was it? Realizing her own mistake, she stood up and glared at the man who was, well, to put none too fine a point on it - being a dick.

"Just give me the book and we'll leave you to play with your little octopus friends." She put a hand on her hip hoping to display more confidence in her words and her threat than she actually felt.

Kajaro's cackle rang through her ears like a high-pitched squeal. She winced. He didn't say anything, and there was no preamble, so she wasn't sure how she managed to dive out of the way to her left just before a bolt of electricity hit where she'd been standing half a moment before. She blinked and rolled automatically again, dodging yet another hit.

Kajaro laughed again as the sand splashed up and around his target points. "This is fun. At least the Library found a good replacement this time," he said.

She wanted to ask what that meant more than anything, but this wasn't the time. She pulled her shielding around her, making sure it was tight and snug. It felt like a layer of invisible material that provided protection, which was good because it was the only thing she could use right then. She knew from the depths of her soul that the fatigue she felt right into her bones was because she'd already overused the magic she had. All she had left were physical manifestations, like the shielding spell.

She paused, glancing up at Malakai. She could have kicked herself looking at him because Kajaro had been occupied with watching where she was moving and aiming for her. In the meantime, Malakai was sneaking up behind Kajaro.

While Quinn thought the snake could probably tell where her adventure partner was, she didn't know for certain but with her eyes gravitating toward Malakai's location, it gave away where the elf was standing. Kajaro turned, shoving an electricity-wrapped fist directly into Malakai's solar plexus as he was getting ready for an overhand hit with his sword.

She could hear the thudded impact as it contacted his chest and sent the elf flying back about 30 feet right into one of the rock walls. He hit it and slumped to the ground.

"Excellent," Kajaro said, wiping his hands against his robe. "One down, one to go."

"What do you have against the library?" Surely she could at least try and stall him for time. Wasn't time what magic needed to regenerate in games?

Kajaro cracked his neck from side to side and jiggled around like he was about to have a boxing match, getting ready for a fight. "I don't hate the Library, as such. It really is a wonderful depository of knowledge. The Library has everything I want, all the knowledge, all the power. It just doesn't let me have it all to myself, or even all at once. I don't like that."

He glanced down at his hands, with a frown, moving the fingers slowly. "Looks like my hands didn't like that ice spell of yours. How did you cast that? You shouldn't have been able to wield ice."

Quinn just shrugged and filed his ranting to the back of her mind. She had no idea what he was talking about or why she wouldn't be able to wield ice or any of the other spells. She was the librarian. Wasn't she supposed to be able to do it all or something?

She shook her head and said, "Well, I can and I did and it wasn't cheating." She definitely sounded like she was confident. Much more so than she felt.

"Where did he get you from?" Kajaro began to move his hands again, this time coaxing much larger spheres of electricity. The visual reminded her of those plasma globes that they'd had years ago, where his hands were the center of the globe and the electricity just drifted out from it in larger and larger spikes.

She backed up and her foot hit water this time. She wondered if that meant that the octopus was coming out of his stasis as well. It wasn't just ice anymore, it was like stepping into slush. She couldn't go back that way, so she began to sidle along the beach for want of a better word and move her way around toward the other tunnels.

She couldn't afford to look at Malachi, she just had to hope that he wasn't dead because that would definitely put a dampener on her plans. And this time, as long as she didn't look at him, maybe she wouldn't give away his position if he did manage to get up and execute a plan.

It was difficult to remain upbeat what with Lynx's statement before they left. Kajaro was immortal. But there was something about that tugging at her mind. Still, there were other things to occupy her thoughts right then.

The thing about heat and sand is that, if warmed up enough, it gives you glass. This was starting to pose a very difficult scenario for Quinn. Running was all good, dodging was pretty fine, but the more she did that, the more glass appeared on the floor. Glass was not something her current footwear could gain any purchase whatsoever on. She found this out the hard way when she jumped to the side in a place that she'd been not five minutes earlier and slid unceremoniously to the ground, smashing her right elbow as she caught herself. Wincing in pain and getting her dark hair really badly singed by the lightning that only just missed the rest of her, she cried out, "Shit!"

She jumped up again, scrambling to find a foothold as she leaped toward Kajaro this time. He stumbled back slightly, not as graceful as he usually moved, seemingly surprised by her frontal attack. She still didn't think he had feet, probably a snake body. She wasn't about to lift up the robes to try and find out, but she did try to gain the upper hand.

Not using any powers for the last six or seven minutes, she hoped that it worked like it did in a computer game. Even though she wasn't out of combat as such, she should have regenerated some power.

Unless every game she'd ever played had completely and utterly lied to her.

A brief notification flashed in front of her eyes.

Mana 78/642

Okay, maybe full regeneration only happened with sleeping here. At least she had something, she'd figure out the rest later, along with everything else that Lynx hadn't told her. But before she could second-guess herself, she flung her arm out and cast Icy Blast again.

The frost shot out of her hand and she remembered to close her fist again, lest she waste some of the precious energy that she'd regained. It stuck to the cowl that covered his face, reaching inwards and blistering his skin. Even as she dove back out of the way, as he tried to rip the hood from his head, the icicles spread farther and farther into the fabric, gaining traction as they shot down.

Mana 63/642

All it took was a thought, but that still cost more time than she liked right now. Training. She'd train like the dickens when, not if, she got back to the Library.

Maybe it wasn't that she had continuously let the power out. Perhaps the spell was just this powerful. It spread all the way down his robe and when it touched his hands, it began to encase his fingers. The sparks of electricity around them petered out, smoke wafting from the tips. Kajaro screamed, but it wasn't just in pain, it was more like frustration. A distinct smoky smell, oddly like roasting chicken, rose up from his arm where the icy burn was causing friction with some of the electrical sparks running along his skin.

Now she knew what roast snake smelled like.

It was enough of a diversion for Malachi to get himself up and out of vision to do whatever he needed to. All she knew was that he wasn't against that wall anymore. That was fine. Quinn was absolutely okay with being a diversion, as long as Malachi was going to jump in and do something quickly because he hadn't been doing anything for the last ten minutes.

Everything in her body ached like she'd been thrown against the wall back when the engorged bookworm did just that to her. The thing was, it was just exhaustion. It was like she was pushing herself beyond the limits that she knew she had. And the other thing was that she didn't have any choice.

"Here," Malachi tossed her something, and not even Quinn was sure how she managed to catch it. It was a tiny vial filled with an oddly aquamarine liquid. She raised an eyebrow. "Are we kamikaze-ing out of this?"

"I don't know what that means," he said. "Just drink it while you can." He was binding his leg, which she realized belatedly must have broken or been cut somehow because there was a lot of blood soaking the otherwise pale pants that he had been wearing. "Give me a few more minutes. We can do this."

She took a swig of the vial, draining it in an instant and felt immediately better. Not completely, but it helped. She felt replenished.

Meanwhile, Kajaro was still ripping at his face, but the ice had by now begun to stop spreading, and she knew they had very little time. As far as she knew, there was no way they weren't going to be able to kill this man. He was immortal, right? But she'd do her best to distract him. Maybe if they brought him to a stalemate, he'd give them the book.

"Kajaro, stop screwing around and just give me the damn book." She didn't even have to act that much frustration out. She was getting really pissed off. All she wanted to do was collect a book from the guy, like it was that hard to return something that wasn't yours, even if you were a greedy bastard.

"Give it to me," she yelled.

"No," he screamed. "I refuse. You don't deserve it."

"I don't deserve it? I've been a librarian for five days and I just burnt your skin with ice and you're telling me I don't deserve to take my book back?" Now, she was really pissed. Hauled out of her decent life to fight a snake man for a book?

He stopped and looked at her through ice obstruction. "Five days." And for just a few seconds, she thought maybe she'd won him over.

Except, she was wrong. With his hood thrown back, she realized that he really was mostly a snake man. His face was barely even humanoid. He looked like a snake standing upright like a cobra did when it was warning before an attack. His eyes were black right through to the sclera, and his tongue flickered out with a forked end.

She didn't want to get anywhere close to that.

"Five days is more than enough. You should be better than this." There was something about his tone that told her it was all bravado.

Quinn knew he was lying. She glared at him, and raised her hand to throw another ice blast. She had a few more in her if the Mana cost had been correct. "I'll do that again. I'll use more power." To be frank, she had no idea why she'd hesitated in the first place.

"You'd have to hit me first," he said.

"Fine." She only hoped the bravado didn't extend to herself. She raised her fist and released the icy blast. A gust of very pointed icy wind jettisoned toward him, only to be swallowed by what appeared to be a vortex directly in front of him.

Quinn stumbled back, and Kajaro cackled yet again. He really needed to stop doing that. He was starting to sound really evil and get on her nerves. Not to mention he'd just summoned something that simply sucked her spell away.

She managed to sidestep a large sheet of glass that had formed on the floor and moved to the side. His arms crackled as he broke more of the ice embedded in his scales, and sparks of electricity began to emerge again.

"See," he said, his S's long, "it's not just a matter of having skills. You have to know how to use them."

"So I'm guessing the reason you won't give the spatial distortion book back is because you feel you should be able to use more than that little parlor trick you've got right there." She attempted to goad him. Something had to work. She had no idea how she was managing to speak like that because right now the very core of her soul was shaking so much she was surprised it wasn't reverberating through her feet and making the whole mountain or whatever this subterranean area was tumble down and bury all of them.

Kajaro grinned, and a snake grinning wasn't exactly the sort of thing that she wanted to see. It sent shivers down her spine.

"It's just one of the reasons," he said. "Tell me," he spoke as he began slithering toward her, boxing her in toward the lake.

There was almost nowhere left for her to run. There were too many rocks around the right-hand side. She should have kept going to the left.

She had no idea what Malachi was doing, but Kajaro, was bearing down on her. "So tell me. Do you know how the library found you? Out of all the planets in all the universes, he shouldn't have been able to find anyone. So how did he discover you? Perhaps the better question is where." His snake eyes gleamed in their non-blinking way as he slithered closer to her.

"What do you mean?" She asked, not just to distract him but because she wanted to know. Why shouldn't he have been able to find her.

"Exactly what I said. There should be nobody who can link with the library and once I kill you, well, then there won't be, will there?" Despite him being snake-like, she could tell he was smirking.

The cold sensation that spread down her spine this time wasn't just a shiver. It was a portent of her very own death. Kajaro was so close now, and the electricity was beginning to really sizzle around his skin, just like it had been before she'd attacked him with ice. And it was far too close to her for comfort.

She brought her fist up in front of her again. The icy blast was the only thing she knew how to attack with. It was all that she had. She had to try it. She opened her fist, directing it directly toward his face, and it spun forward even faster than it had the last time.

She saw his vortex. far too close to her, begin to spring to life, and suddenly an arrow protruded through Kajaro's eye socket. Followed closely by another in the second. The surprise on his face just before the ice hit his skull as well, was almost comical if blood hadn't spurted all over her from the wound.

~~

Because blood, am I right?

Maybe next time Mr awesome cosmic powers, you should pay attention to your surroudnings.

Perception check failed

Much love

KT