«Zorian, I really hope you’ll be done soon, because this position is rapidly becoming untenable,» Taiven shouted.
Zorian ignored her, carefully inscribing the last set of explosive runes on the walls of the corridor behind them. You didn’t rush this sort of task, unless you fancied blowing yourself up before the enemies even got to you. A minute later he finished the set and rose to his feet, his knees cracking painfully from the long period he spent crouching.
«Done!» he shouted. «Everyone retreat through the corridor!»
Just as Briam, Taiven and Tinami covered him while he set up the explosive runes, he now focused on covering them while they fled deeper into the mansion. Technically one of the unknown boys helped him in this endeavor, but he wasn’t very good at it — his only offensive spell was magic missile and he was firing them at the war trolls charging on them (who could soak such hits easily and keep going) instead of at the robed mages supporting them (who were a lot more vulnerable and had to concentrate on spellcasting). Zorian, aware that he didn’t have the mana reserves to tank the entire enemy assault force, decided to take out the mages out of the equation first. Thus, he raised the spell rod he smuggled into the mansion and fired a weak disintegration beam towards them. He didn’t aim at the mages themselves — that wouldn’t have done much — but at the floor in front of them, which had no spell resistance to protect it. The beam gouged a jagged line in the floor sending billowing, irritating clouds of dust in the air. That should at least mess up their aiming.
He then turned his attention to the rapidly approaching war trolls. There were very few tricks he could do to stop a war troll charge, and none of them could be done on a moment’s notice. Thus, he decided to simply sacrifice a good portion of his mana reserves and hit them with an overpowered flamethrower.
It didn’t kill them — Zorian’s flamethrower wasn’t strong enough, and these particular war trolls seemed to be particularly tough ones, brought to deal with them after Taiven cast that flaming vortex spell — but it broke their charge, and Zorian used that momentary reprieve to conjure another cloud of dust with his spell rod and fled down the corridor after the rest of the students. The other boy had broken his position and run ages ago, the useless coward, so he really hoped their confusion would last long enough for him to gain some distance. He wasn’t fast enough to outrun a war troll.
A furious screech erupted around him, and he could suddenly hear one of the war trolls rapidly gaining on him. Damn it, he hated dying.
A sinister purple beam suddenly cut through the air next to his head, hitting the war troll behind him. The monster screeched again, this time in pain, and collapsed to the floor. Zorian gouged another line in the floor with his spell rod, cloaking the corridor in more dust, and then he was inside their newest sanctuary.
«Thanks,» he said, breathing heavily.
«Um, you’re welcome,» Tinami said, fiddling with the silver amulet she was wearing and watching the dust cloud covering the corridor for any sign of movement. The amulet seemed to be the spell formula she was using to cast the purple beams.
«Here they come,» Briam said.
«Remember the plan,» Taiven said. «Let them all advance into the corridor before triggering the explosive runes.»
«What if they notice the trap?» one of the unknown girls asked.
«Then at least they’ll be hesitant to push forward so insistently,» Taiven said.
They didn’t bother closing the door — that would just result in them being pelted by wooden splinters and shrapnel when the mages forcibly broke down the door. They had lost two students before they learned that lesson.
Sure enough, there was a barrage of concussive beams and battering rams preceding the war troll charge. After Briam and Taiven repelled the initial charge with a fairly anemic defense, the mages moved into the corridor to provide support, sensing that victory was near. That’s when Zorian released a mana pulse towards the nearest cluster of explosive runes and the entire corridor collapsed in a deafening explosion. A huge plume of dust and gravel rushed into the tiny room they currently occupied, but Taiven was ready and immediately created a large-ish bubble of clear air to stop them from choking to death.
«Well,» Taiven coughed, having been too slow to shield them all from all of the dust that was obscuring the room. «That should stop the attacks for a while. Still, we have a bit of a problem. This room is a dead end. The only exit is this corridor and the window to the outside.»
«The outside is swarming with enemies,» Zorian said.
«We don’t have much choice, though, do we?» Briam asked rhetorically. «We can’t stay here.»
«How are we going to get down?» one of the unknown girls asked. «We’re on the second floor, we can’t just jump out of the window.»
«Hmm… alright, how many of you know how to cast the floating disc spell?» asked Taiven raising her own hand.
Zorian was the only one who raised his own hand to match.
«Ugh. Fine, that will have to do, I suppose. Okay Zorian, I’m going to go first and get these four dead-weights down and you follow after me with those two.»
«Hey!» one of the dead-weights complained.
«Sorry, but I call it like I see it,» Taiven said pitilessly. «Let’s go, before even more of these assholes converge on our position to see what the explosion was all about.»
And so Zorian created a large floating disc of force outside the window and jumped on it, closely followed by Briam and Tinami. At first it seemed like everything would go flawlessly — there were no enemies waiting for them at the bottom, Taiven had successfully touched down, and his disk was not giving any indication of failing under the combined weight of people standing on it. Then a flock of iron beaks suddenly appeared from around the corner and Zorian swore angrily.
There was really nothing he could do to deal with a flock of iron beaks, and Briam and Tinami weren’t much better. There were about 50 of them, so even if he could snipe a couple off the sky it wouldn’t mean a thing. Tinami probably couldn’t make that pain beam of hers home in on a target, and iron beaks were very agile flyers. As for Briam, his attack options seemed to be strictly limited to his fire drake, and there was no reason for the flock to approach close enough to be caught in its fire breath when they could just rain their iron feathers on them from distance.
He fired off a homing piercer anyway, and noticed out of the corner of his eye that Taiven had launched a small swarm of 7 homing magic missiles. Eight iron beaks fell, but it was a drop in the bucket, and then it was the iron beaks’ turn. The air in front of them blurred, and a cloud of glittering feathers was launched at them.
Faced with the choice of trying to tank several hundred magical iron feathers and trying to survive a fairly dangerous fall, Zorian knew which one he wanted to chance. He immediately dismissed the floating disc and all three of them promptly plunged towards the ground.
This would probably be the end of this particular restart — knowing his luck, he was going to break his neck when he hit the ground — but on the bright side he managed to evade the deadly feathers! As he tumbled through the air, his eyes briefly met with those of Briam’s fire drake, and he couldn’t help but think it was glaring at him. It was hard to tell when that thing was angry, though, since it always looked pretty pissed off to Zorian.