since i was a woman, and better at multitasking, even as i dispatched my goblin i circled the charm's blast with a heavy blanket of damp air. as i did so, i pulled more moisture out of the drenched maine atmosphere, until the blast was cocooned in water.

[do as nell taught you,] came the creature's voice in my head. even as it told me what to do, it showed me, and i smiled.

some of my first lessons from the gnome had been about recycling power. so, when i did things like create a mage light, instead of letting it fizzle out when i was done with it, she taught me to reabsorb the power.

and this charm was really just a massive, fuck-off powerful mage light.

i went deep in my power, grounding myself as i opened my channels to shunt off all that crazy force. feeling the foreign power whoosh through me, i immediately boomeranged it back at where i knew graeme was hiding between the fire station and the post office. it came out like a blast of light, clipping the corner of our fire station and blasting away a third goblin that had launched itself from the shadows.

i moved to the right, still streaming that power, until graeme's alley no longer hid him. he took off running, screaming something incomprehensible, but i felt an answering pull of air power above me.

harpies, i thought grimly, knowing that kaya and kaori must be near. ryu shouted, pointing upward. dark shapes darted above us and then a single, magically charged feather came drifting down - but this one had the punch of a missile from a b-52 bomber.

it landed at our feet, and i shielded it even as we separated, throwing ourselves away as we amped up our own individual protections. it exploded in a riot of magic, blowing out the front of the fire station. our dazed local firefighters - volunteers mostly -poked their heads around a corner, and i begged the creature for help. like marionettes with their strings cut, the firefighters slumped to the ground, put to sleep by the creature's power.

and that's when i got pissed. it was one thing to attack me, but it was another thing entirely to attack the town of rockabill. morrigan was hitting way too close to home.

graeme was holed up in the front piece of the restaurant a few doors down from the post office. he must have thought it was a good place to hide, but he was wrong.

because that building - owned by stuart grey's nasty parents - was the one building i didn't mind destroying.

'take the harpies!' i shouted at ryu. 'i'll take graeme!'

ryu gave me a startled look, since he'd not seen the evolution of jane true into someone who took people on, rather than just taking things from buffets.

he looked even more shocked when i pulled the labrys from wherever it hid, waiting to be called.

i swept it through the air a few times, calling to its power even as i remembered my lessons with anyan with a pang. it responded eagerly, lighting up with a savage gleam. i grinned, admittedly rather maniacally, at graeme, and started to walk forward.

graeme shouted gibberish again, lobbing a few mage balls at me, and out stepped ... something.

i'd never seen anything like it. it was squat, about three feet tall and as wide across. it appeared to be made of ... mud? brown and lumpy, it sort of resembled a toad. or the nasty brother that gets turned into an actual pile of shit in weird science.

its grotesquely wide body shuffled forward on stupidly tiny, spongebob legs. it might have been humorous, except that with every step it took, earth power boomed forward. the ground shook like we were having a quake, and i stumbled.

'it's a golem!' ryu shouted.

i cast him a look, letting him know i had no idea what he was talking about, even as i pulled more water out of the air, pushing against the golem thing.

ryu lobbed a few mage balls into the air, and we heard a satisfying squawk, before explaining.

'they're basically walking charms, charged with the element of the person who made them. but that person has to be enormously strong.'

the blood drained from my face as i realized the implications of ryu's words.

the thing was using earth power. anyan's main element was earth. anyan may have charged this thing.

and sent it to kill me.

forcing down a lump in my throat, i told myself that this was inevitable. anyan wasn't anyan anymore. and although i had to believe he was somewhere inside of that damned dragon, that didn't mean he was in control.

which meant the white did this. not anyan.

and i was the champion, not just jane anymore.

so this time, when the earth golem took another waddling step forward, looking a bit like a new zealand rugby player performing the haka, i was ready.

i pushed forward with the labrys's power, meeting the golem's own expenditure of energy halfway. i then arced it up, so it dissipated in the air rather than causing another tremor.

i moved forward, too, until i was close enough to see that it had a creepy version of a face. mud eyes stared blindly forward, above a crude mud nose and mouth. its small arms flailed as it called forth more power.

'how do i kill this thing?' i shouted at ryu, who was now peppering the sky with a barrage of mage balls. we heard another noise from the heavens, this time a cry, and something fell onto the roof of the post office.

one harpy down, one to go, i thought.

ryu dashed over to where i stood, trying to keep the golem from taking another of those earthquake-inducing steps. he started to pour his own power into mine, but i felt him withdraw it as he gave me a shocked look.

'most of it's the creature's,' i said, knowing he'd realized just how much force i now wielded. 'power's not the issue; how do we stop it?'

a mage ball hit our shield from above, and ryu started peppering the sky above us to keep the remaining harpy away.

'golems haven't been created for centuries, so i don't know how it can be killed. but if it's earth, i'd assume use a contradictory element?'

i nodded, narrowing my eyes at the golem. graeme was behind it, his lips still moving.

he must be controlling it, i realized.

'if we don't know how to destroy it, we should just try to stop it,' i told ryu, a plan forming in my head. 'then we have to take out graeme.'

'getting it to stop would be a good thing, yes,' ryu said as he scanned the skies, sending up a few more missiles.

'i meant stop-stop, like freezing it...' i stopped talking. freezing it. yes, freezing would work.

the golem was mud, after all...

once i had the idea, all i had to do was execute it. unfortunately, what i wanted to do took way more focus and power than i'd thought it would. so the moment i went in - seeking out all of those fat, lovely water molecules holding the dirt together and making it mud - i lost control of the golem. it took another haka-step forward, and both ryu and i stumbled, then dove out of the way as a light pole snapped and fell from right above, threatening to crush us. i lost my grip on the golem's water, and it took another step, even as a dark shape hurtled down from the sky at ryu.

graeme shouted exultantly, no doubt some command for the golem, and i decided i'd had enough.

clambering to my feet, using the labrys as a crutch, i sent one arc of power that knocked the harpy out of the air seconds before her taloned feet found ryu's throat.

with another wave of power, i clumsily, if effectively, pushed graeme over, shields and all. and then i went for the golem.

instead of pulling the water out of it, i focused on its chemical structure. it took only a few tweaks, and a fair bit of the creature's mojo, and suddenly it froze.

and i mean froze - its water turned to ice; it couldn't move. like a great frozen turd, it squatted smack in the center of rockabill's main street. it'd take a while for it to thaw.

ryu was up and engaged in a firefight with the downed harpy. caught on her two feet, rather than in the air, she was severely handicapped and i knew that fight would be short.

which left graeme up to me.

the incubus had gotten to his feet, looking dazed, when i struck.

my first blast peeled away his outermost defensive shields with a surge of power so raw, so undiluted, that even i was surprised by it. but as if some other jane - some rambo jane - were in control, i struck again instantly.

another raw flood of power kept graeme from reforming his shields, even as i started chipping away at his stronger inner shields. they were no match for my fury.

for being angry with someone was one thing. but being angry with someone because they'd been part of a process that took everything from you ... that was another thing entirely. i'd never wanted to destroy something as badly as i wanted to destroy graeme, in that instant. he'd been such a nemesis for me, but it wasn't just because of all our past encounters that i wanted to squash him like an insect. it was because he'd helped take away my anyan, and helped replace my lover with someone who sent mud-people to kill me.

he'd also helped kill my friend.

at the thought of blondie, i suddenly saw her, lying on the funeral pyre before it was lit. it was like a rage bomb went off inside me, and if i thought i was strong before, i was now ruthless in my strip-mining of every available ounce of power around me.