Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

Glass!” Bastille swore, grabbing me by the arm and towing me to the side. The Librarian thugs all stooped down, bracing themselves.
    And the air suddenly began to crackle with energy. My hair raised up on its ends, and each footstep zapped me slightly with a static charge.
    “What’s going on?” I cried to Bastille.
    “Oculator’s Duel!” she cried.
    I noticed Grandpa Smedry raise another Lens to his eye. He kept his left eye closed, placing both lenses together over his right eye. The first Lens he had placed – the reddish pink Oculator’s Lens – remained in place, hovering in front of his eye.
    Blackburn raised a third Lens to his eye. The room surged with power, and Lenses on the walls started to rattle. I recognized this one – it was a Torturer’s Lens. I could feel that it had been activated, yet it seemed to have no effect on Grandpa Smedry.
    “Those Oculator’s Lenses you wear,” Bastille said over the noise. “They’re the most basic Lenses for a good reason. A well-trained Oculator can use them to negate his enemy’s attacks.”
    Grandpa Smedry slowly raised a third Lens to his eye. All three remained hovering in the air in front of him. The new one made a screeching sound that hurt my ears, though most of the noise seemed directed at Blackburn.
    “Why are they using multiple Lenses at once?” I said as Blackburn added a fourth Lens. The room grew colder and a line of frosty ice shot forward toward Grandpa Smedry.
    Bastille crouched down farther. Wind began to churn in the room, ruffling my hair, whipping at my jacket.
    “They’re countering each other’s attacks,” Bastille said.
    “Adding Lens after Lens. However, it gets increasingly hard to focus your power through all those Lenses at once. The first one who loses control of his Lenses – or who fails to block an attack – will lose.”
    Grandpa Smedry, arm beginning to shake, raised a fourth Lens to his eye. The hovering line of Lenses trembled in the wind. Grandpa Smedry was no longer smiling – in fact, he had one arm up, steadying himself against the wall.
    Blackburn added a fifth Lens – one that I recognized. It didn’t have a little monocle frame like the others, and it had a red dot at the center.
    My Firebringer’s Lens! I thought. He did recover it.
    Sure enough, this Lens began to spit out a line of fire.
    The beam shot forward, moving alongside the line of ice. But, like the ice line, the Firebringer’s line puffed into non-existence near Grandpa Smedry, as if hitting an invisible shield. Grandpa Smedry grunted quietly at the impact.
    I could see Sing a short distance away, struggling to his knees. The large man raised a gun, then fired at Blackburn. I could barely hear the gunshots over the sound of wind.
    Flashes of lightning shot from Blackburn’s body, moving more quickly that I could track. I’m still not certain what happened to those bullets, but they obviously never reached their mark. I glanced at Sing, who sat cradling a burned hand, his gun smoking slightly on the floor.
    Grandpa Smedry finally managed to place his fifth Lens. My ears popped, and it felt like the air was growing more pressurized – as if some force were pushing out from Grandpa Smedry, most of it slamming into Blackburn.
    The Dark Oculator grunted, stumbling. However, I could see a glistening spot appear near the knife-hole on Grandpa Smedry’s tuxedo pants, and a small pool of blood began forming at his feet.
    The wound from the torture chamber, I thought. He’s too tired to hold it back any longer. “We have to do something!” I yelled over the wind. Lenses were toppling from their pedestals, some shattering to the ground, and scraps of paper were churning inside the vortex of the room.
    Bastille shook her head. “We can’t interfere!”
    “What?” I asked. “Some stupid code of honor?”
    “No! If we get too close to either of them, the power will vaporize us!”
    Oh, I thought. Blackburn, whose arm had begun to tremble with strain, raised a sixth Lens to his eye. In his hand, he still held the spectacles he’d had forged from the Sands of Rashid. Why doesn’t he use those? I wondered. Is he saving the best for last?
    Sing managed to pull himself over to Bastille and me. “Lord Leavenworth can’t win this fight, Bastille! He’s only using single-eye Lenses. Blackburn’s trained on those – he put his eye out to increase his power with them. But Leavenworth is accustomed to two eyes. He can’t –