Elfhome

Maybe if Oilcan hadn’t spent his childhood playing lab assistant to a mad scientist determined to bend the hell out of reality, he might be clueless to how to hurt Iron Mace behind his shield. It was just a matter of hitting the male fast and hard with the right series of spells.

Out in the parking lot, Oilcan snapped through a set of spells. Alone they were utilitarian and innocuous; combined by a mad scientist, they reduced asphalt to a frictionless surface. It had taken all three of them days to copy over the glyphs and spell rings to convert a driveway to a hockey rink. The massive power of the Spells Stones transformed hotel’s expansive parking lot to glassy sheen in the matter of seconds.

The broken rubble of the hotel rumbled, heaved, shuddered, and then exploded upward, disgorging Iron Mace in a roil of dust.

“Lying brat!” Iron Mace shouted. “You said you didn’t know your esva.”

“I just need to know physics!” Tinker had explained about the strength of domana shields, how they redirected kinetic energy around the caster and were nearly impenetrable. Oilcan had been paying attention when his grandfather taught him physics. He just rarely had any need to apply the principles. “This is all science.”

And science was all about experimentation. Taking out the floor supports told him that he could control the ground under Iron Mace’s feet. He pulled—yanking the elf onto the frictionless parking lot. Still pulling, he added his momentum to Iron Mace by running forward, hitting the edge of the shining surface and slid.

In a frictionless environment, things in motion, stayed in motion — including elves.

They slide fast toward at each. Oilcan tried a blast against Iron Mace’s shield. The force was redirected without changing Iron Mace’s angle of motion. Iron Mace twisted as they passed each other like two freight trains, and blasted the ground ahead of Oilcan. A great crater appeared.

Oilcan ignored the oncoming disaster to keep Iron Mace focused tightly on him and not on where he was heading. A childhood of racing go-karts on the island had taught Oilcan to never lose track of the river’s edge. It was a lesson Iron Mace learned the hard way when he flew off the end of the parking lot and out over the water. Like a flat stone, he skipped three times before sinking.

It turned out that tumbling into a massive crater at twenty miles per hour wasn’t painful when Oilcan had his shield spell up. He scrambled quickly back up to the edge of the crater. Iron Mace’s shield was still active under the muddy water, drifting downriver like a massive hamster ball. It was possible that the elf could save himself but he was against a ticking clock — there was only so much air trapped in the shell with him. Iron Mace cast a scry spell. The river and its currents were mapped out, bisected by the Emsworth Dam and the powerful undertow beyond it.

“Yes, bastard,” Oilcan whispered. “You need to get out before you hit that.”

The current was going to sweep Iron Mace across the river and up against the high walls of the lock on the far bank. Annoyingly, there was even a ladder there for someone to scramble up from a boat. It would be impossible for a human to climb it with one hand, but an elf’s longer reach meant Iron Mace could do it and maintain his shield.

Oilcan slid to edge of the parking lot and took off running for the dam. Tommy was right about needing the strength to do the hard thing because this fight was to the death. Iron Mace had to kill Oilcan and anyone else that might know about what he’d done. He had dug a deep, deep hole and the only way out was to fill it with bodies. Oilcan had to be sure that the elf never got out of the river. He held close to the anger thrumming through him, hot and heady. So how did he kill this bastard?

There was no way Iron Mace could go near the sluicegates without being swept over the dam. Beyond the gates was the dangerous undertow that would pin Iron Mace under water. The only safe way out was the ladder. It was the same heavy steel as the catwalk, bolted solid into the cement wall of the lock. If Oilcan hit it with a force strike, it would blast the entire ladder to shards.

He could mark Iron Mace’s position by the circling jumpfish. Oilcan reached the end of the catwalk and scrambled down to the lock’s wall. At the top of the ladder, he cocked his fingers, brought his hand to his mouth, and then paused. If he blasted the ladder now, Iron Mace might just find another way out of the water. As long as the male maintained his shield, he was safe to find another way. If Oilcan waited and cast the spell while Iron Mace was holding onto the ladder…

The result would be awful and utterly necessary. It went against everything Oilcan tried to be, but he wouldn’t have a second chance to take Iron Mace while vulnerable. So he waited, hating himself, trying to hold tight to his anger. This male had attacked him in his home. Had left his kids defenseless. Had come to Neville Island to kill Tinker.