With the Knights at one side of the building, the shears were gradually moving toward them. All the Barber had to do was emerge and drop down onto them.
I dove, and Evan flew with me. Evan gave me a push, extra speed.
I landed early, landing in a kneeling position, because I knew my one foot wasn’t wholly intact. I had to grab the silence rune in my teeth to free my hand.
My shins skidded on that same track of blood and mucus that had helped the Barber on his way. I drew the Hyena, winced as a stray arm from the worm struck me, nearly knocking my aim off, and swiped my blade at the shears.
Not aiming to damage them, but to strike them, send them flying over the edge. To give us room. Time.
Between the moment my arm started to move and the moment the blade touched shears, the Barber manifested. Flowing into existence with a cloud of noxious air, the nose of his horse’s head pointed at the ground, shaggy mane hanging down to either side, blood dripping from the base where the horse’s neck draped over the human portion.
The Hyena’s blade hit shears, and the presence of the Barber’s hand on the shears meant they didn’t budge a hair. He didn’t raise his head.
I dragged the blade across the shears, hard, aiming to score the metal, to damage it.
Nothing.
He caught me by the sternum, fingers digging into and through the ribcage.
I stabbed him in the side of the throat with the Hyena.
No more effective than the lance or the fire had been.
The demon rose to a standing position, and he brought me with him, still holding me by the ribcage.
There was no help like this. Not with the worm’s passage keeping the others from even clearing seeing me, let alone acting. A blur.
He brought the shears my way, and I brought the Hyena up, driving the blade into the ‘v’ of the two long blades.
To my right, the worm slowed. It wasn’t a clear slowing, not slow motion, nor was it a simple loss of forward momentum. It stuttered, and flickered, a bad video image, skipping ahead from moment to moment.
The individual bodies that made up the one hundred or so segments were obese, maybe three to five hundred pounds each, but where they’d been moving past too quickly and too unpredictably to see past before, they were now moving at a crawl.
Time magic. Not true time magic, but a trick of perception.
Which still worked wonders, even if it was being used to assist. As the forward section bucked and twisted, a heavier section dropped to press along the roof. I could see over the ‘worm’ to the main group.
Alexis was saying something, but the words had no sound. She held a silence charm.
I could see the shape of her lips, but I couldn’t make out the actual words.
She pointed a rod at me and the Barber. It was wrapped in paper and charms.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. The Barber wasn’t going to be affected by much.
Which left me as the only viable target.
I realized what the words had probably been just as the lightning struck.
The visible flash was brief, easy to miss. There was no explosion, no crackle of thunder. Both the sender and the target were carrying runes of silence. All I felt was an awe-inspiring impact, and the curious sensation of my chest being torn to pieces.
I dropped from the Barber’s grip. The Hyena slipped from its position between the blades of the shears, and the blades snapped closed. Given where I was and where the shears were, I knew that they’d closed awfully close to my own forehead, or just over the top of my head.
In trying to scramble back, I felt the lack of structural integrity. I knew right away that I couldn’t fly. If I could glide, it would be with Evan’s help, and it would be a steep glide. The front half of my torso had been largely blown away.
My eye fell on those shears.
I brought my wing in front and hooked it around my front, for protection and in hopes that if I started to fall apart, my wing could help hold me together.
With my free arm, I reached out, and I stabbed the worm.
Blood and mucus sprayed out, spurts, as the blade caught the passing flesh. The spray was in slow motion, stuttering, discordant.
The Barber didn’t flinch. Didn’t treat it as anything unusual. Blood sprayed and spurted to cover him.
Covering the shears.
Evan moved, flying close, and gave me a nudge.
Putting me just out of the way as a passing arm carrying a stick swung by. Had it hit me, it might have clobbered me and sent me flying into the Barber’s grasp for a third time.
The timeless armor, on the left side of the roof, hopped up onto the moving worm, riding it toward us. Holding the lance in one hand, it leaped, bringing the lance down in conjunction with forward momentum.
The Barber moved away, bending low, the shears slashing at the surface of the roof.
Once, twice. A triangle-shaped cut
The lance came down, stabbing it, but it hardly seemed to care.
The timeless armor landed on the sliced section of roof and froze in place. Unmoving. Tilting forward as though it were going to fall, then stopping, mid-tilt.
The action had cleaned a part of the shears. Again, I stabbed the surface of the passing worm. More spray, more spatter.
The shears were dirtied once more.
As forms of attack went, it was mild at best. The shears got bloody in the course of the Barber’s day to day.
But so long as they weren’t reflective, I could hope that the Barber couldn’t enter the shears. So long as the Barber couldn’t do that much, it was more limited in mobility.
The Barber paced toward me. I backed away. I was still damaged. Still hurt, I reminded myself.
There. Behind the Barber. Movement. I thought it was Others, or more lost souls. It wasn’t.
Ellie had climbed the face of the pillar, opposite the main group, climbing up so she was right next to the bridge. Her head and shoulders were visible. I saw her eyes widen as she saw me. Saw the violence, the gore, the worm, and the group on the far side.
She started to look toward the Barber, and I made a quick, violent motion.
The Barber stopped, watching me. Not understanding.
Ellie resumed climbing.
She bent down, and she gave Christoff a hand, blocking his view with her body.
I watched as the two of them ran the length of the stairs, along the roots, and into the middling ground. The outside of the Library.
Out. Free and clear. Or as close as one could hope to get.
Would the angel stop them? Would they wait?
I shook my head a little.
I was squaring off against the Barber. The worm separated the others from me. The timeless knight was incapacitated by its own design.
But we were buying time, weren’t we?
Alister was drawing his diagram.
I just had to keep him occupied.
The Barber swung the shears around in a circle, one finger in the loop of the handle. The blood and gore was sent flying. Cleaning the blades with the force of the spin.
I flinched every time the point came around in my direction. If he let go, let them fly forward… I probably wouldn’t be able to dodge. But if I could, it would be over.
It was worse because I couldn’t watch it directly.
The noise in my head momentarily got worse. I was struck with a vision of me clawing my own eyes out. Letting the Abyss provide replacements.
Eyes the Barber couldn’t occupy.
No, I thought.
The Barber’s head turned toward the others. To Alister in particular.