Roy slashed at the bubble with his sword. It bounced back into place with a cartoonish boing and rebounded, knocking him all the way back into the corner. Next, he tried a stab, a short, quick one because he was pinned against the wall and didn’t have enough room for a proper thrust. The filmy surface deformed a little further before rebounding. Better. Clearly, penetrating attacks were the way to go here.

  He stabbed again and again, holding his blade overhand and using it like a hammer, trying to hit the same spot each time, even as the bouncy film kept forcing his arm back.

  On the other side of the room, the wizard shot comets from his star wand. Kyle flipped a table just in time to take the hit aimed at him, and Casey ducked behind the remaining section of the bar counter.

  The wizards laughed and waved at Roy, taking their time, confident they’d created an inescapable trap.

  Outside the second, larger bubble that filled half the saloon, Bastion was scrambling. “Just wait there, Roy. I’ll find a way to bring this down.”

  Roy didn’t exactly have much of a choice but to wait there. He was cocooned like an insect. Forced to watch as the wizards did whatever they wanted.

  Bastion took a crossbow shot, which pushed the bubble so far inwards that a few of the wizards had to leap out of its path, before rebounding so hard it sent the saloon doors swinging as it shot out of the building.

  “Did you see that?” asked Bastion. “It almost worked. A faster impact should do it, I just need more resonance.”

  Then Bastion looked to the swinging doors and ran through them. The prospectors looked puzzled at this, but Roy had an idea of what Bastion was trying to do.

  Across the room, Kyle leapt, diving into the barrier from the inside. He held his fists out as he went, delivering a double punch that definitely looked theme-powered. On the other side, the cheerleader started hitting it with spinning batons. Both attacks only did about as well as Roy’s sword had against his own, smaller bubble, and Kyle barely made it back behind the upturned table before another star blast shot toward him.

  “Whew. You’re fast,” laughed one of the wizards. “Probably strong too, right? Did you see those fists of fury just now?” He mined punching, and the other wizards laughed. “No good here though. Magic beats muscles.”

  Roy wanted to point out how that didn’t make any sense, that Kyle’s theme relied on the appearance of strength, and so his muscles were magic. Though he’d have felt pretty dumb saying that while trapped inside a magic bubble that he couldn’t force his way out of.

  A moment later, Bastion stormed back into the room, swinging both doors open as forcefully as he could. He pulled out his dragoon, and for a second, Roy saw doubt on the wizard's face.

  Click.

  “Damn,” said Bastion. “Let me try that again.”

  He ran back out of the room, and the wizards chuckled.

  “Oh, man. I was actually worried there. Guns are good against wizards, but the only other guy around here who has one can’t walk, and your friend’s doesn’t even work.”

  Roy looked around the rest of the saloon. A few prospectors were ineffectually trying to pierce the barrier with chairs. Of those with stronger themes, the old guy didn’t even look up from his video game, and the garbage-covered guy didn’t react at all. It looked like Roy couldn’t count on any immediate help coming from the outside.

  He did the only thing he could do: he thought, mentally running through the wands. The fireball hadn’t been used again yet, which likely meant it couldn’t be used again. If the wands worked like the stars on his sword, they’d only have a certain number of charges, and the fireball wand had stopped glowing after its first use.

  The bubble wand had also stopped glowing. That left the star, skull, and flashing water gun. He still had no clue what the latter two did, so he watched them closely.

  “Hey,” said the wizard with the water pistol wand to the one with the star wand. “Shoot that action hero guy if he pops us from behind the table again. I’m going to try a trick shot. Walter loves hearing about creative kills, and I want to have a good story to tell.”

  He stepped closer to the bar and aimed his flashing squirt gun over it. “Here we go.”

  A torrent of blue liquid sprayed over the counter, and Casey started coughing and spluttering from behind it. Whatever that was, they’d gotten her good with it.

  The smell hit Roy from across the room, and he took note that the bubbles were permeable to gases and particles in the air. Syrupy-sweet yet sharp, he’d tasted that flavoring once before. Synthetic chemicals. The taste of blue.

  “Huh,” said the shooter. “Blue slushie. Try again.”

  As he went to fire a second time, Casey popped up from behind the counter armed with her own squirt gun. Her hair and face were stained blue and glistening with blended ice. Her orange pistol was dusted with a layer of debris from the explosion.

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  Both water pistols fired at once. The small squirt of Sharp Citrus passed just below the high-pressure firehose blast from the wand-pistol. This second liquid was the orange-brown of fall leaves, and it knocked Casey off her feet, but not before her own attack had burned into the wizard’s wrist.

  “Aargh. Oh, shit. What the hell was that?”

  “Looks like acid,” said the wizard with the skull wand. “Let’s hope that’s what you get next time. You aren’t having good luck so far.”

  The water-gun wand wizard peered over the counter. “What did I get that time?”

  From the overpowering sweetness, Roy guessed it was something harmless.

  “Maple syrup, I think,” said the skull-wand guy. “At least she’s stuck there. Now you can keep trying liquids until we get something lethal.”

  “Yeah. If you don’t run out of charges first,” said the one with the fireball wand. “I don’t get why you chose such a crappy wand.”

  “It’s fun.”

  “She’s stuck in place. Just let me finish her with the skull.”

  “No. I want to do it in a cool way, with my wand. I never get any fun stories to tell.”

  “You’ve had enough chances. I’m using the skull, that’s always funny to watch.” The wizard with the skull wand walked around the edge of the counter to get a clear shot at Casey.

  Roy tried stabbing the bubble again, faster, trying to keep his hand steady against the recoil. He hated this. Being useless. Being reduced to a spectator, watching things happen instead of making them happen. He held on to that thought as he hammered the point into the bubble.

  Right as the skull-wand wizard took aim, light glowed around the edge of Roy’s blade, and sparks flew from the tip.

  The bubble popped like a balloon, leaving him damp as it fell around him.

  He was on his feet instantly. Sword and shield in hand.

  The wizard started in surprise and whipped the skull wand around to point it at Roy instead. It glowed brighter, and a green phantasmal skull began to emerge—then collapsed into a gooey pile of ectoplasm on the floor.

  “Damn,” said the wizard. “A dud.”

  The wand lost its glow. That was his only shot, Roy thought, advancing on him.

  As he approached, the star wand wizard turned and fired. Roy grabbed onto a hanging torch and swung from it to escape the blast. How many damn charges did that one have?

  The answer turned out to be far more than he’d have thought.

  A shooting star shot towards Roy, and he vaulted to the side of it. Rushing in had given him enough resonance for that at least. After that, he narrowly ducked a second whizzing over his shoulder.

  He copied Kyle’s trick and upturned a table, only to watch it melt in front of him. It seemed the water pistol wand had finally produced some acid. This one looked different from Casey’s sharp citrus: a transparent liquid that dried out the nearby plants. Roy was glad of his visor when all the wizards broke out in fits of coughing.

  Roy made the most of the distraction and ran back to try to cut the outer bubble. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make the sparks come out again. Kyle ran out and started punching beside him just as Bastion returned through the doors.

  This time, he was keeping his stance as wide as possible, with his hands gripping the air over his hips. Posing like a gunslinger, he raised his dragoon again.

  “Time to burst your bubble.” Click. Bastion’s face fell. “I don’t know what to do, Roy. I already wasted my best bubble pun, and you told me the lines don’t work as well if you use them a second time, and—look out!”

  Roy spun around at super speed, barely getting his shield in front of the star blast. Sparks flew from the sides, and liquid metal dripped from it. Damn. This is not a favorable match up.

  He ran, using tables as cover and watching them get reduced to splinters, throwing plastic ferns to block the blasts.

  One of them deflected straight into Kyle’s head, knocking him to the ground.

  Five against one. At least only two of the wizards still had spells ready to go.

  The pistol wand was firing too. One random liquid after another, altering the battlefield each time a new surface landed. First, it was a big puddle of hot tar making the center of the room impassable, then molten gold settled on top of it, making the air even hotter. Roy took a direct hit from the next spray, but it turned out to be watery glitter-glue, which actually gave him a small resonance boost, which meant he was just fast enough to avoid the next star blast and the next liquid, which turned out to be fizzy soda anyway. The next thing to splash Roy was blood, which gave him a hell of a lot of resonance. He needed it, because after that came a liquid so bad Roy hadn’t even known it existed.

  A smoking, greenish-yellow chemical poured through the floor as soon as it landed on it. It set fire to everything it touched. After a few seconds, the watergun-wand exploded in the wizard’s hand and ignited his robes. Choking gas bubbled up from beneath the floorboards, forcing the wizards back.

  The only threat now was the one with the star wand. He fired at Roy through the gas cloud, which ignited into a fireball that rivaled the first one in size. A wave of heat emanated outwards, toxic fumes saturated the air, and when the smoke cleared, the wizards were clutching their eyes as they doubled over, coughing.

  Roy’s visor protected him, and he kept looking to confirm something he’d desperately been wanting to see: the skull wand had gone dim. That was it, they were out of spells.

  At this point, though, it hardly mattered. If Roy didn’t get that bubble down soon, he’d choke to death on toxic fumes anyway. A motorcycle helmet wasn’t a gas mask.

  “Wait!” shouted Bastion. “I know what I’m missing.” He ran to the old prospector, still playing a video game in his booth. “Give me that hat.”

  He grumbled in response, not looking up.

  “Hat, Now.” Bastion grabbed it straight off his head and put it on with a single fluid motion. Then he turned and aimed his dragoon.

  Bang!

  The blast was thunderous, piercing the bubble and a wizard’s skull in a single shot, leaving a small plume of smoke rising from the barrel.

  “Oh. Fuck yes.”

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

  Four shots. All within a single second as Bastion fanned his revolver. Every one of them was a headshot.

  Roy gave a thumbs up as Bastion pumped his fists in the air.

  “Yes!” shouted Bastion. “I knew the dragoon would be great, Roy. I fucking knew it. Five dead wizards, and I didn’t even have to use my last bullet.”

  The crowd cheered for both of them even as they backed away from the fire.

  Roy cheered too. This was his kind of town.