Lemma the Librarian: The Choosing One, Part 6

“You love this, don’t
you?” Brea hissed in my ear. “I saw it, smelled it before,
with that arrogant lordling, my wayward child, that Hragulf fool. I can smell
your arousal now. You kick and scream and deny, but you love being held
helpless, love seeing human minds molded like wet clay… The only thing
you like more than seeing it done is having it happen to you… but you don’t
get that until you agree to serve. Swear to obey me and I will mold you into
the sexual puppet you have always craved to be…”

She was wrong, obviously. I didn’t
get off on this kind of thing! That was just the sick, twisted fantasy of an
inhuman monster. The warm, wet feeling in my panties was just about how good a
kisser Iola was. 

Speaking of, Iola broke the kiss,
and I gasped for air. “I could make them rape you,” Brea said.
“I could overwhelm them with desire for you and let you toy with them as
you please. I could make them love you. I can do anything to them–and how do
you feel about that, my little puppets?”

“Stop this!” cried Iola.
“Never–I swore never again. I’ll never be controlled, never be some
creep’s sex-toy again! You know that, you m–mo–m–m–”

“Having trouble saying
‘monster’?” Brea laughed. 

“M–” Iola struggled, her
face turning purple with frustration and rage. “M–mo–mi–Mistress!”

Brea laughed again. “You see, I
know what hurts Iola more than any torture ever could. And I know what hurts Iason,
forced to stand still and silent while his dear little sister is tormented by a
monster like me. And I know what hurts you, Lemma, what scares you,
is weakness. You have to always be the strongest and the best, don’t you? Well,
I’m stronger than you, better than you, more powerful than you–and I’m taking
your toys away.”

Her eyes suddenly filled the world.
It happened too fast for me to close my eyes–before I knew what happened, I
was lost in that warm, beautiful blue sea, sinking slowly into blissful
darkness. 

When I woke, it was morning. I was
fully rested, relaxed–and alone. 

There was no way I was going to wait
until nightfall to fight her again. Sunlight might not slow her down much, but
it had to have a little effect, and I was going to need every little
advantage I could find to stand a chance. After all, if I failed… I didn’t
know what making Iason and Iola beg to death entailed, but I imagined it
wouldn’t be something they could recover easily from even if I did defeat Brea the
next day.

I spent the morning making sure I
was properly warded against as much of her magic as I could and reading the
last of The Rite of Uncreation. The previous day I’d gotten to the
purely theoretical possible failures–things nobody had ever seen the Rite do,
but which it might if it went really, really badly awry. So I
picked up where I left off: how to (probably) tell when the Rite was about to
cause magic to stop working for precisely one-quarter of a second. I shuddered
as I imagined what that meant. Every spell being cast at that moment would
fail, of course, but that was the least of it. Every building held up by magic would
fall. Every enchanted object would lose its power–and when the magic returned,
it would have nowhere to go, and just explode outward as a pure manifestation
of whatever type of magic it was. And every living thing which depended on
magic to live–every sorcerer sustained by age spells, every dragon and elf,
every vampire, unicorn, and phoenix–would die instantly, gone forever. 

And the book still had eleven pages
left. Eleven possibilities even worse than that. But I had to know
before I faced Brea, because I wasn’t sure I had anything else which could hurt
her. 

Although… That thing about
interrupting magic did give me an idea that might just work…


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