I could either attack or defend. Not both. This would be it. Magnolia Green was at its very last limit. There was nothing left except its core and one last root, too weak to break through the floor and reach me.

I dropped the dome, shaping my magic into a needle-thin beam of brilliant green and stabbed at his chest with it.

The corruption slapped me and tore right into my soul.

There was no word for that kind of pain…

My magic struck him. He screamed and yanked his power back, whipping the corruption about him in a tight spiral, forming his own shield. My green beam bore at it but couldn’t penetrate. I couldn’t get through it.

There wasn’t enough power. I didn’t have enough.

I failed…

Sean burst through the wall, a huge, enraged beast, covered in slime and blood.

A single whip of fetid darkness snapped from the corrupted innkeeper’s dome and lashed Sean, cutting a bloody gash in his shoulder.

He ignored it and cleared the distance between me and him in a single leap. He landed in a crouch, gripped my broom with one clawed hand, and drove the other into the floor. I felt his magic stream from his fingers into the floor. It was just like my own, the power of an innkeeper accumulated and nurtured over months of taking care of the inn.

The floor under our feet split. The last remaining root of Magnolia Green broke through and wound around us. Power punched me, nearly taking me off my feet.

I fed it all into my beam. The corrupted shield popped like a dirty soap bubble. The green beam struck the corrupted innkeeper in his chest, right into the source of his power. His robe tore. For fraction of a second I saw the smudge of the innkeeper’s true face and his eyes brimming with fear.

He screamed and hurled something behind him. White lightning tore from the cube as something drained the zero-point energy generator’s power in a flash. The fabric of space split, and through the ragged tear I saw trees the color of blood.

No! No, damn it, no!

He dove through the dimensional rift, the tatters of his robe spinning around him as he vanished. The tear snapped shut.

He got away. He escaped. Aaaaaa, he escaped!

The generator’s cube turned dull. The pearlescent light dissolved into nothing. The dome around us creaked as Karron took the mining facility into its mouth and bit down.