As the sea of imps came crashing down, Sloan hurled her machine gun aside and backflipped onto the wall, latching onto the cabinet handles. Immediately the creatures scrambled after her. Her levitating machine gun seared ranks to cinders at her mental beck, but the ceaseless tides only multiplied. One dropped onto her head, digging ratty claws into her scalp. She slammed it against the wall and sent it plummeting to its fellows.

With one graceful leap she pushed from the wall, bounced atop her floating gun, and bounded onto the next tower of cabinets, grabbing the handles for support. The imps came crashing after her, hurtling the gap in a lemming leap, plunging to the ground and crawling up the new wall. She jumped back to the first wall, gaining a little height and a momentum and barely pausing before leaping again across the divide. The imps toppled after her. She only fired at the few who got close, using her gun more as a platform for her acrobatics as she caromed between the walls like god damn Super Mario. The pillars of cabinet shelves had to have some top. If she could reach it she would gain vantage over the library and find her companions and salvage at least some scrap of competence from her latest mistake.

But as she continued her trapeze act and the ground grew distant, the cabinets only continued to soar into the void above. The imps had fallen further behind, but Sloan perceived no end in sight. She quit jumping for a moment to survey the vertiginous surroundings.

(Chapter 5)