I didn’t wait for the smoke to clear. I launched another iron ball at the Ikon. Behind me, there was another click as the demons pulled back another explosive arrow on the massive crossbow mounted on top of the city walls.

If we’d had more time, I would have made a bunch of those things. It didn’t have the best range, and wasn’t very accurate at hitting moving targets, but was easily guided with a little bit of air magic. Kelser was standing right next to the demons who were moving and reloading the weapon. Kelser was not only guiding the projectile, but also lighting the fuse on the little rudimentary explosive that was attached to its tip. It was a very simple and inefficient type of gunpowder, but it was a powerful weapon against unsuspecting targets. The Ikon would likely not take the next arrow head on.

The iron ball cut through the smoke but the Ikon had sidestepped it, possibly with the same magic that made their silver glow flare up. I attacked the Ikon with more slingshots, timed to coincide with the exploding arrows coming from atop the city walls, but the Ikon’s strange magic helped them sidestep everything. By this point, the Ikon was close, breathing heavily, and moving forward at a snail’s pace. On my side, I had only expended a small amount of energy, but I was quickly losing projectiles from the top of the walls, since most of them had been lugged across the country with our army and we could only have carried so much. The exploding arrows would run out soon, as well. But they had served their purpose. An exhausted Ikon should be manageable, I told myself, as I took a deep breath and prepared for the next stage of the battle.

I materialized a third magic hand, letting the other two continue the bombardment of the Ikon. The third magic hand grabbed a small metal pellet and brought it right behind my body. In my mind, I pictured what was happening in the air right behind my chest, hidden from the Ikon’s view. My slingshots were getting more predictable but the tired Ikon would probably assume that I was just getting tired as well. I made sure to breathe a little harder too, to sell the act a little better.

The calculations for the next spell were complicated. A bead of sweat dripped off my eyebrows, clinging to my eyelashes, before falling to the edge of my lips. Salty. The Ikon was getting closer. I fired the final iron ball at the Ikon and turned my undivided attention to the spell taking shape behind my back.

A Lorentz force is the combination of electric and magnetic forces on a point charge in an electromagnetic field. In simpler terms, it is a force created by an electromagnet. If one understood this force, as well as certain properties of electromagnetism, they could perhaps hide two long metal rails down the back of their clothes as they jumped off a tall city wall and waited for their enemy to get closer to their position.

And if said person was to place those metal rails parallel to each other behind their back, held up firmly with magic hands nailed deep into the ground with earth magic, they could aim one end right into their own back while positioning themselves in a straight line in front of their enemy. Then, after carefully utilizing electric and magnetic magic, in conjunction with a bunch of math, experimentation, and a healthy love for science fiction, this person, who is by now clearly a hypothetical stand-in for myself, could create a powerful weapon beyond even the capabilities of early twenty-first century humans on Earth.

The Ikon dodged my final iron ball. The arrows on the city walls stopped flying as well. Kelser and the humans resumed their magical bombardment, but the Ikon was able to safely charge right through it. Exhausted, but with their first target within reach, the Ikon rushed towards me, raising one hand as if aiming to grasp my neck. Perhaps it was only now that the Ikon realized that I had stopped firing magic at them, although the Ikon might have assumed I was preparing for a physical close range battle.

Instead, I stepped to the side and fired my railgun.

The metal pellet served as the bullet. The metal rails were destroyed by the powerful current that had passed through them and created far too much heat for them to handle. Even my magic hands dissipated immediately after the bullet was fired, although they managed to keep the railgun steady when it fired. The Lorentz force on the bullet, created through clever use of electromagnetic forces and charges traveling through a conducting rod connecting the metal rails, propelled it forward at incredible speeds. It was a rudimentary design, and my electric and magnetic magics were not very powerful yet, but it the bullet was traveling at an incredible speed, comparable to a bullet fired from a gunpowder weapon. Yet, the production of the railgun had been much easier and simpler than trying to create a gunpowder weapon, and the results were much more satisfying as well.

First, there was the sound. The strange crackle of electricity, the harsh sound of metal on metal as the rod and pellet moved through the rails, and the terrifying whoosh of the bullet as it cut through the air like butter.

Then, there was trepidation. When I fell to the side, felt the bullet pass overhead at horrifying speeds, and pictured it accidentally passing through my skull if I had mistimed the speed with which I fell out of its path.

Finally, there was expectation. Time seemed to slow down as the bullet approached the Ikon, who was now so foolishly close that there was absolutely no time to react at all. Even the silver glow could not flare up quickly enough, and even if it did, this attack was unlike the iron balls or the exploding arrows. The speed of the projectile was nearly instantaneous, the power with which it would slam into flesh, inconceivable. In this realm of slowed time, the hooded Ikon’s face was still hidden, but I could just picture the expression on their face based on the panic that was evident on their body. The Ikon didn’t have the time to stop walking forward, to turn their body to the side, or to brace for impact. They couldn’t cast a spell, plead for mercy, or even pull out a secret card. Everything since the Ikon’s appearance had been to lull them into complacency, to bring them close enough to me for this attack to work and to strip them of the mental or physical guard necessary to react to an attack of this caliber.

Time slowed down.

The movement of the bullet flagged, like it was moving not through air but a viscous jelly, palpable and tangible. The Ikon was moving with a similar lethargy. My own eyes seemed to blink like two massive garage doors shutting sluggishly, each a reflection of the other, until the sight in front of me was hidden by my own eyes. When my eyelids creaked open, the bullet was in front of the Ikon’s head, about to make contact with the silver glow, the rags, the hidden face beneath. About to end the servant of my most dangerous enemy, somebody who had at least some hand in my continued absence from my home world and who had ruined the relationships that I had tried to build here, as if to spit on my hard work, my convictions, my struggles. The servant themselves was responsible for the elimination of what was almost an entire nation’s worth of sentient beings. I would be doing this world a favor by killing this monster.

A beam of light snuck past the cloud cover. A rainbow formed in front of the Ikon’s head, suspending in a blurry sphere, a blurry sphere that looked like a soap bubble. The bullet glinted inside the bubble, frozen in a sunbeam like a mote of dust on a calm and lazy afternoon.