Mallory points out the larger familiars as they run past. "Those are the ones at risk of escaping and eventually becoming new witches; we'll need to immediately canvas the area after destroying this witch, to try and catch any fleeing ones."

The center nears.

They come upon a room like the entrance hall but twice as large: vast and circular and endlessly high.  There is an enormous music box in the center, the size of a monument; the spinning figurine of a ballerina in the center is twice as large as a human.  It spots them, and stops spinning; the figurine cracks around its joints, fractures spiderwebbing up and down its limbs, like it's breaking itself free of its dance.

The sound of the music box is so loud and piercing that Lianne can feel it rattling her teeth.

Cracks spread across the figure's face, shards rearrange the beatific smile into a snarl.  Its hands and fingers crumble entirely into ceramic shards.  It floats gently away from the music box and alights on the ground in front of them.

This is the witch.

Mallory summons six truly massive guns (she's really stretching the definition of the word 'gun' here), which all fire a single shell that explodes on contact.

Sophie starts summoning and throwing enormous spears.

Alex dodges to the left, then enlarges her bow until it's too big to fire vertically. She starts firing arrows as fast as she can, some of them glowing faintly or trailing wisps of fire. 

Lianne: does not have a ranged weapon, and she doesn't want to jump at the witch through everyone's attacks.

...Throwing her sword can't be that much different from a discus, can it? Especially since its properties always seem to be convenient.

She separates a bit from the others, spins, and flings her sword as hard as she can, aiming the blade at the witch's knees, then summons another sword and braces herself.

Shells explode, take out chunks of its torso and part of its left arm.  Spears and arrows stick inside it or spin off it or blast straight through and leave gaping, cracked holes.

Lianne's sword spins through the air and cleaves the witch's left leg in half.

Every single shard of ceramic separated from the witch's body shoots straight at the attacker and buries itself in their flesh.

Mallory draws her pistol, which suddenly grows almost comically large, and fires at its face. 

Alex backs up a bit and in a smooth, practiced motion, touches a grief seed to her soul gem. She tosses it to Sophie, then, who'd switched to a more defensive position after being hit. Sophie clears her soul gem as well, then braces herself to react to the witch's movements.

Alex draws her bow, focuses, and greats a single large, crackling arrow, which she aims at the witch's center. 

Lianne is healing herself almost without noticing it. She flings a second sword at the witch's remaining leg. 

The witch's head is vaporized.  Alex's arrow blows an enormous hole in its center, which reorganizes into a shard-toothed maw.

Its left leg is chopped cleanly up, and the shards that used to compose it start whirling around what remains of its body.

It lunges toward Alex, newly-created maw agape.

Mallory keeps firing.

Sophie, having caught her breath, starts flinging spears at the witch again, while Alex leaps back and away from the witch, firing another few arrows.

Lianne flings a third sword, aiming for the mouth.

The more damage is done to the witch, the less it looks like a broken figurine: by now it's a swarm of jagged ceramic shards in the shape of a three-legged predator.  Fragments are blown aside by Mallory's shots, spears and arrows are chewed up by whirling shards.  It screeches, and vases and statues from the display cases on the walls rush toward it and explode, adding to its bulk, extending its limbs, widening its mouth.

When Lianne throws her third sword the witch catches it in its mouth and swallows it whole.

"Get clear!" Mallory shouts, refreshes her soul gem with a grief seed, then summons two dozen massive guns, in a wide semi-circle in front of her. They're almost humming with energy, and each looks incredibly ornate (her soul gem dims noticeably, about a third of the way). 

They're barely even aimed, all pointing explosive shells at the witch's center-mass. 

The other girls all back off a good bit, though Alex fires off another large, crackling arrow. 

(The goal here is pulverization. The area around the witch might also get blown up some.)

That's when the glass cyclone catches up with them.

As the shells go off, the girls are momentarily blinded.  At the same moment, approximately every shard of glass in the world rains down out of the air above them.

The smoke clears; the witch is gone, not a single shard remaining, the floor where it was standing charred black.

The labyrinth shimmers out of existence.  A handful of display-case familiars are huddled in the corners of the warehouse.

"No kill like overkill, I guess," Lianne mutters, picking a glass shard out of her arm. It doesn't hurt like it should. "So we fight the familiars now?"

Mallory calmly starts healing herself and nods. "Though take this, you've been using a lot of magic. Doesn't hurt to be cautious." She hands Lianne a grief seed, then almost idly picks her targets from among the familiars, preparing to fire. "We'll need to move fast so none escape."

And the fight can start again.

Alex takes aim and fires a single large arrow at one of them, while Sophie prepares her boar spears in a circle around her, Lianne clears her soul gem and then steps forward and prepares a swing, and Mallory fires her pistol several times in quick succession. 

The familiars seem more interested in running than fighting.

Mallory's targets go down.  So do Alex's and Lianne's.  After the battle with the witch it feels a bit anticlimactic.

One slips past them, though, sprinting for the door.  These ones seem less clumsy than the weaker ones.

Yeah Lianne's not gonna let them go and kill more people.

She's in track, she's magic - she sprints as fast as she can, aiming to beat the familiar to the door and plant herself in front of it.

(Seeing that they aren't charging, Sophie switches to throwing spears, joining Alex and Mallory in shooting the fleeing familiars in the back.)

She succeeds.  Her familiar, now the last one remaining, stops and glances behind itself, then charges her.

Well then it can meet her sword, how about that.

It shatters.

Does Mallory sense any other familiars?

Not a one.

"We're clear. Good work, girls. That was... A harder fight than usual."