The floor took significantly longer than I expected. Bob ended up going through the floor four times until he found a way across.

 

I couldn’t exactly blame him for that. Well, I could blame him for wrecking the floor in the first place, but not for his pathfinding. Each attempt seemed to be solid right until the floorboards splintered and sent him plummeting back to the entrance.

 

Although the delay was annoying, it did give me enough time to recover. The painful churning feeling alleviated, leaving nothing but an itchy bright pink line across my abdomen.

 

The next level didn’t have much to challenge us either. There was another book swarm, but since I’d recovered enough to use my rifle Spooky and I were able to work together before they could even get close.

 

“Is everyone good?” I asked once the annoying paper pinatas were taken care of.

 

“I’m clear here,” Spooky replied, before glancing in my direction. “You stopped firing right at the end there, did you trust me that much or…”

 

“While I do trust you,” I replied, slipping the gun strap off my shoulder and chucking the weapon down the stairs. “My gun’s spent.”

 

“Why leave it here? You hate letting your tech get into other people’s hands, and you can always reload it when we get back!”

 

“Bob…” I sighed. “First of all, this is just a reproduction, my real gun is back on my body. Second, even if someone could retrieve the thing, the grip still has the built in identification system so they can’t use it, and finally… an empty weapon will just weigh me down.”

 

Bob stared at me blankly for several seconds before nodding. “Okie!”

 

“I hope we’re not going to need it in the next couple floors,” Spooky muttered. “We’re so close to clearing this wing and getting someone back… it would suck to fail at the last hurdle.”

 

We continued up the steps to a heavy wooden hatch that blocked the way to the final area. After Bob casually pushed the thing open I popped my head inside to see what we were dealing with.

 

The area kind of reminded me of Lanivia’s study, with bookshelves stretching as far up nearly infinitely. Tomes were constantly floating down, and settling into the various bookstands around the room, and in the middle was… something.

 

It was hard to describe. It looked like a thick thundercloud with a massive maw with thousands of needle-like teeth, and which appeared to open to an endless void. It also had dozens of eyes constantly being engulfed by the main body, only to emerge elsewhere.

 

Occasionally a burst of purple electricity would light up the inside of the cloud, illuminating the internal eyes, before being collected in a single eye and shot out like a beam. The creature floated between the books, reading them so fast it was just a blur of pages, before abandoning them to read something else.

 

I ducked back down and stared at Spooky for several seconds.

 

“I blame you for this,” I grumbled.

 

“What? Why?” the bear exclaimed.

 

“You tempted fate, before I could,” I grumbled. “Any ideas on how to fight an angry magical thundercloud?”

 

Spooky shook his head, but Bob threw his hand up at the question.

 

“How about a librarian with thousands of shifting eyes?” I asked. Spooky shook his head again.

 

“Oh oh oh oh oooooooohh…” Bob quietly exclaimed, hand still in the air, bouncing back and forth from one foot to the other.

 

“Yes Bob,” I said, finally acknowledging the giant bear.

 

“Can I punch it?” he asked.

 

“I have no idea…” I admitted.

 

“I’m going to punch it!” he exclaimed, sprinting up the stairs before I could stop him. There was a moment of silence, then a frightening zap that lit the room with purple light, and made the area smell like ozone.

 

“Ugh… Try and shoot the eyes, and look for an opening,” I told Spooky before finally following Bob up the stairs.

Bob was standing in the middle of the room, punching uselessly into the creature’s gaseous body. The monster roared in response, attempting to bite down on one of Bob’s arms, while its eyes focused on the bear.

 

I watched in horror and fascination as the eyes constantly cycled, emerging from the mass only to release some sort of magical spell or effect before being reabsorbed by the mass again. It didn’t seem to be that accurate, the cloud appeared to be lashing out blindly ironically enough, but between the rate of fire and Bob being so close it was having no trouble blasting off Bob’s covering.

 

“Stop fighting back and let me punch you!” Bob growled.

 

“Try punching the eyes,” I yelled to the bear. As soon as I did, a set of eyes began to emerge from the side of the cloud nearest me. I threw myself to the side, taking cover behind the nearest lectern just as several elemental blasts scorched the area I’d just been standing. “Attracting its attention is a bad thing. Noted.”

 

A sickening squelch echoed around the room, followed by another roar. I risked a peek, to only find one eyeball splattered on the far wall.

 

“One down, lots to go!” Bob declared.

“Focus!” I shouted, before ducking down to avoid another volley of eyeblasts. “Maybe I’ll just stay here for now.”

When Spooky emerged from the stairway the fight finally began to shift. Every shot he took popped another eye, slightly decreasing the size of the cloud and decreasing the number of spells being fired back at us.

 

With Spooky taking some of the creature’s focus, I poked my head back out and inspected the cloud. It was shrinking quickly now, it was already half its original size and the blasts were coming out much slower. It seemed like each eye was not only a wound the cloud couldn’t recover from, but permanently reduced its damage.

 

“Big damage up front, strong drop off over time, huh?” I muttered.

 

Bob continued bouncing around, swiping at the gaseous mass until he accidently bumped one of the book stands, spilling its contents on the floor. The creature froze for a moment, all eyes focused on the fallen book, before they all flicked back towards Bob.

 

“My bad!” the bear announced, a second before the creature let out a blood curdling scream.

 

For the first time all fight, all its eyes emerged at once, focused on Bob and released a massive magical blast that completely engulfed Bob in a storm of elemental energy. It began to scream in triumph, but before it could, Bob's fist emerged from the storm of energy and smashed the cluster of eyes, sending them flying in all directions.

 

With most of its eyes destroyed the cloud slowly dissipated, evaporating into nothingness.

 

“That was fun! I haven’t had my skin peeled off in a while,” Bob declared.

 

“Don’t put it that way,” I groaned. “It ripped off your facade, it’s not like it flayed you alive.”

 

Picking myself up I glanced around the room, until I found Spooky behind an overturned table. His fur was smoking in several places, but he seemed to be in one piece.

 

“You okay?” I asked.

 

“A little singed, but I’m fine otherwise,” he replied, holding up his rifle. “I’m out of ammo though.”

 

“It’s fine, the rifles did their jobs and got us through this fight. We can always bring back someone with a near full magazine. Maybe Dusty, he should be fine as long as we don’t run into a third giant creature to crush him,” I said.

 

“Although he’s got the most ammo, I have a better idea. Bring back Bandit,” Spooky suggested.

 

“Why…?” I asked.

 

“Because we’re about to go into the ‘mental challenge’ wing, and no offense, but you could use all the help you could get,” he explained.

 

“I don’t see how he’ll be better at puzzles than Deadbeat,” I said.

 

“Well, if we planned to compete honestly, he wouldn’t be. But with all the advanced auditory, olfactory, and visual sensors packed into Bandit’s head, he’d be the best one to give you hints,” he paused. “Or help you cheat.”

“Bandit it is!” I declared.

 

As I brushed myself off, and prepared to move towards the glowing exit on the far side of the room, I paused and looked at Bob. “Everything okay over there? You haven’t moved from that spot since the fight ended.”

“Absolutely fine! There’s no problem at all,” the bear declared, turning slightly so he could look at me. As he did the boards under his feet groaned. “Uh oh.”

 

The floor under him sagged, and before he could get off it cracked and shattered, dumping Bob back down onto the floor below.

 

I just held my head as his voice echoed up from below. “I’m okay!”