Wissinger waited for almost two hours, but when she stepped out of the doorway, he immediately knew that he had made a mistake. This wasn’t Zurfina—at least it wasn’t the Zurfina he knew. This was a mere girl, and yet she looked like the woman that had twice visited the writer in the ghetto and once more on the S.S. Waif des Vaterlands. And that similarity went beyond the bizarre leather clothing. If she wasn’t Zurfina, she had to be associated with her somehow—her daughter maybe, or her sister.

The girl was accompanied by three men and a boy, who surrounded her like a cordon as she walked through the street. She carried a bulging carpetbag in her hand and Wissinger was bothered that none of her male companions offered to carry it for her. The five of them stepped out onto what passed for a main thoroughfare in St. Ulixes, and Wissinger followed along right behind them.

No sooner had they turned the corner, than there were several loud cracks of rifle fire. Two of the men with the Zurfina girl were shot, the older man though the chest and the younger man wearing a fez, right through the head, spraying both the girl and the boy with blood and brains. Before the two bodies had even fallen, bolts of magical energy shot from down the street at the remainder of the party. More rifle fire followed.

“On the roof!” shouted Wissinger involuntarily when he spotted half a dozen men with rifles on the roof across the street.

The girl raised her hand and a massive ball of flame shot from her toward the riflemen. The entire building on which they were perched exploded. She gave Wissinger a quick glance before turning her attention to the attack coming from down the street.

Human beings and trogs alike fled the area, some diving into open doorways, others simply running for their lives. Walking down the center of the street were three men. Wissinger felt a little thrill of fear as he realized that Von Grieg was one of them. The others were the two Reine Zauberei that he had seen at the train station. They waved their hands and bolts of energy shot from their fingertips. The girl waved her hand and the bright blue balls of magic ricocheted away, crashing into buildings and starting more fires. She waved again and thick black smoke rose from the ground which, added to the smoke from the fires, quickly engulfed the entire street.

“Come here,” she called, and it took Wissinger a few seconds to realize that she was talking to him.

He ran over before the smoke made it completely impossible to see.

“Help them get him off the street.” She pointed to the man who had been shot through the chest, and the writer saw that he was still breathing and awake.

Wissinger took one arm and the boy took the other. They dragged him away as the remaining man fired off his own magical missiles through the smoke in what could only have been the most general direction toward his enemies.

“Come on, Geert!” called the boy. “If we can get him back to the lodge, we have healing draughts for him.”

The young man pushed Wissinger aside and took his place with the wounded man.

“We’ve got him,” he said to the girl. “You need to get out of here.”

“Right,” she replied. “You have fire wards, I trust?”

“Yes,” he said, now thirty feet down the alley. “Good luck.”

The girl grabbed Wissinger by the shoulder. Even though he was several inches taller than her, it seemed as though he was looking up at her. “You stay with me.”

She took three steps back out into the street, stretched her hand out into the smoke filled air, and said “Uuthanum uluchaiia uluthiuth.” Another gigantic ball of fire shot down the street, but this time it ignited the thick black smoke. The buildings burned. The very air burned. It was as close to the Kafirite description of Hell as Wissinger ever wanted to see. He could hear people screaming close by and further up the street.

“Gott in Himmel!” he cried, as what had once been a man, but now was nothing but a torch ran past him. He hoped it was one of the Reine Zauberei. He wouldn’t have wished such a fate on anyone else.

“Come on then,” said the girl. She led him down the alley after the others, but turned down a different direction. “Who the hell are you, anyway?”

“Um, I… I’m a friend… of Zurfina.”

“Huh,” she said with a frown.

“Are you her daughter?”

“Kafira no,” she said. “I’m her apprentice, Senta.”

“I’ve never seen magic like that before.”

“Well, it was no Epic Pestilence, but it was all right.”

Most of the lizzies popped back inside. One who didn’t had rifle butts smashed into his face by two soldiers who rushed forward from the line. One lizzie made the mistake of stepping outside while holding an obsidian encrusted wooden sword. He was cut down by at least five rifle bullets, even though he had made no move to raise the weapon. The rifle shots were the signal to all the lizzies outside the perimeter of human soldiers to get away and get away as fast as they could. Senta suddenly realized it was a signal for something else as well.

“Uh oh,” she said, stepping over to the doorway where the dead lizzie was making a large bloody puddle in the dirt.

“Get back here,” hissed Staff, but his attention was pulled away from her.

“We have contraband!” called one of the constables.

Senta ignored the others. Stepping onto the body of the dead lizardman, she pushed aside the animal hide door and peered into the hut’s interior. It was dark, but not so much that she couldn’t see. Four large lizzies stood against the walls, watching her, but she paid no attention to them. At the far side of the room was a fifth aborigine, his back turned to the girl, but when the light flooded into the room around Senta, he turned to look at her. He was shrunken and shriveled, and his skin had faded away with tremendous age or maybe disease. He wore a necklace of human hands held together with woven grass. In his own hand he carried a small lizard, its four legs sticking straight out, mounted on a stick like some strange lizard lollypop.

“Kafira’s Tits!” shouted Senta. “I know you!”

She did know him too. The dried-out old creature was none other than the chief shaman of Suusthek, the great city-state that had sat two hundred miles southeast of Port Dechantagne until Zurfina had called down a meteor strike to wipe it off the map.

The shaman suddenly held up his lizard talisman and hissed. Senta felt herself fly out of the doorway, sailing through the air to smash into the back wall of another hut. All the air was knocked from her lungs and her ears rang. She climbed to her feet just as the witch doctor emerged from inside.

Several riflemen fired at the old lizzie, but he simply waved the lizard on a stick and the bullets ricocheted away. He raised his other hand and a stream of magical energy bolts shot toward the young sorceress. Senta snatched one of the glamours floating invisibly around her head, activating it just in time to counter the witch doctor’s attack. The ricocheting energy bolts flew in every direction. The lizzie hissed and a blast of frost and snow flew from his fingertips directly at the girl.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she said, countering. “That was the first spell I learned. See what you do with this. Uuthanum uluchaiia uluthiuth!”

Senta stretched out both hands and a small ball of flame formed, shooting directly toward the shaman. In the scant score of so feet between the two, it grew to a diameter of ten feet. The witch doctor held up his talisman as the fireball engulfed him and he remained safe within a little bubble as the flame exploded outward, setting fire to a dozen or more of the lizzie homes. The buildings popped and sparked and burned like they had been soaked in kerosene. In a few seconds, every house within sight was at least partially ablaze.

“Oops,” said Senta. She could see lizzies running in every direction and hear the soldiers calling to “fall back!”

The lizzie fired back again with a spell that Senta didn’t know, but she knew it wouldn’t be good for her if it hit her. She blocked it with a shield spell that also protected her as the burning building behind her popped and spread burning embers all around.

“Time to put you down for good,” she said. “Uuthanum uastus corakathum paj.”

The shaman raised the hand with his lizard talisman, but then hissed in pain and surprise. His hand, talisman and all, crackled and hardened, turning to stone. The transformation followed up his arm and then across his shoulders, down his body and up to the top of his head. In a brief moment, the lizzie had been turned into a statue.

“One final bit,” said Senta. “Uuthanum uastus carakathum nit.”

The stone statue that was all that was left of the lizzie shaman, changed color as the stone turned to mud. It slowly collapsed down upon itself until all that remained was a puddle with the vague shape of a head and a hand on the top of it. The mud turned white and cracked under the heat of the fires.

Watching the mud remains of the witch doctor reminded Senta that her own skin was under assault from the surrounding heat.

“Uuthanum rivah-necht,” she said, casting a spell to protect herself.

Then she walked between the burning buildings, navigating the narrow paths through Lizzietown, which was now completely engulfed in flames.