Suddenly, just before they were about to hit the ground, their fall was halted and they touched down on the ground as gently as a feather. Before Zorian could ask what happened, a huge swarm of flaming missiles erupted from somewhere behind him, annihilating the entire iron beak flock.
«You know, Zorian,» Zach said behind him, «sometimes I wonder if you have a death wish. How do you get yourself into these kind of situations? You’re almost as bad as me!»
«I don’t know what you’re talking about,» mumbled Zorian, climbing to his feet and helping Briam and Tinami rise as well. Strangely enough, they didn’t seem angry at him for what he’d done. Shaken by the experience, but not angry. Maybe they didn’t know he dismissed the disk on purpose?
«Well then, I’m glad to see another group of survivors, but we should really get going,» Zach said. «It’s not safe staying out in the open like this. Come, I know a place where we’ll be reasonably safe.»
Zorian looked around him. A surprising number of students had survived the attack and were dutifully following after Zach. Actually, they probably survived precisely because they were following after Zach. In any case, Zorian and his group decided there was no harm in joining the group — it’s not like they had a better idea anyway.
They didn’t get far before the attackers returned in force. Zorian heard Zach swearing something about bad luck and scoffed. This was no bad luck — the attackers were clearly tracking his movements and targeting him directly. Did Zach even take any precautions to make sure it took something more than a couple of easy divinations to track him down? Knowing Zach, probably not.
But Zorian had other things to worry about, because while Zach was occupied with another flock of iron beaks, a giant brown worm erupted from the ground and started wreaking havoc right in the middle of the student throng. Zorian had only met those things four times so far in the various restarts, and he already hated them — they could move through earth almost as if it was water, and their hide was utterly impervious to physical force. They weren’t particularly vulnerable to fire, either. Zorian watched impotently as the worm single-handedly shattered student formations, sending them scattering in panic so they could be picked off one by one by the winter wolves circling the throng.
Tinami apparently didn’t want to just watch. She fired one of her purple beams at the worm and finally achieved some results. Namely, she got the worm to scream out in pain before immediately swinging its toothy maw in her direction, its murderous attention now firmly focused on her. Uh oh.
With a roar that promised revenge, the worm dived back into the ground. Zorian immediately closed his eyes and tried to block out the sounds of battle, focusing on his mind sense, trying to track its movements. It wasn’t too hard — even if the worm wasn’t psychic, it was the only mind that was below ground, and thus easy to pick out from all the rest. He opened his mind, keeping track of the worm’s mind as it swam underground. Tinami seemed rooted to the spot, aware that she couldn’t separate too far from the group lest she be picked off like the rest of the students that made that mistake… and therefore couldn’t really escape the worm.
Just before the worm was about to surface, Zorian wrenched Tinami to the side and dropped an explosive cube where she was just a fraction of a second before. The worm erupted from the spot only a moment afterwards, its toothy maw snapping shut around the clump of earth… as well as the explosive cube. Even as it swung its head in their direction, Zorian activated the cube and the worm shuddered and started screeching and thrashing like mad before violently vomiting some of its pulped innards. Tinami was hit by its tail as it thrashed around and was thrown to the outer periphery of the battlefield, where she lay unmoving. Zorian quickly ran up to her and was relieved to see she was still breathing and had no obvious wounds. He shifted his attention back towards the worm, hoping that it had finally died while he had not been paying attention to it.
The worm swayed in the air as if drunk, and for one sweet moment Zorian thought he’d won… but then the worm swung its toothy maw straight towards him and roared out a challenge. This time it didn’t bother to dive into the ground, stretching out to an impressive length far faster than a creature of such size should be able to.
He didn’t die. The worm stopped a hair’s breadth away from his face, straining against some invisible bonds before suddenly turning to the side and biting down on the winter wolf that had been trying to sneak up on him while he was distracted.
[I was just in time, I see,] the voice of the matriarch spoke into his mind, and then she physically appeared, jumping out of the shadow of a nearby tree like it was the most normal thing in the world.
«Thanks,» Zorian said. «But I’m not sure why you’re here. I thought we agreed there should be as little contact as possible between us during the invasion.»
[I decided that updating your memory packet with the information we found out today is more important.]
Zorian sighed and glanced around. Everyone was too busy fighting for their life to pay much attention to them, and it wasn’t like the aranea was easy to spot in the gloom of the night.
«Make it quick,» Zorian said, and the matriarch immediately set to work. Anything that tried to sneak up to them was dealt with by the giant worm, which was apparently still under the matriarch’s control.
And then, after five minutes, she was gone again, and Zorian picked up Tinami and tried to rejoin Zach again, but he had barely made five steps before a jagged red beam filled his vision, plunging his world into darkness.
Chapter 022
Complications
Zorian woke up in his bed in Cirin, Kirielle wishing him a good morning in that charming manner of hers. He was annoyed both at himself for not paying more attention to his surroundings and at the unknown attacker that did him in. It figured that he would survive all those close calls and near-death situations, only to get killed by a simple sneak attack.
He passed the train ride sketching magic item blueprints in his notebook. Most of them were trivial things, like plates that kept the temperature of a meal constant or explosive traps that triggered on their own when certain conditions had been met, but he was toying with the idea of designing a practice dummy. He had found a combination of alteration spells that should allow him to construct a dummy out of wooden scraps and soil, but making the animation core was no simple task. And then, even if he managed that, he would have to design a warding scheme to etch into the dummy’s surface, lest it disintegrate when he started hurling spells at it… possibly in an explosive manner, showering him with wooden splinters and shrapnel. He should probably also add at least a weak self-repair function, to prevent the dummy from falling apart from micro-fractures and such…
He didn’t expect to finish this project in the current restart.
In any case, this time Zorian didn’t wait much before contacting the aranea. Upon entering his room, he spent an hour crafting a rod of magic missiles for basic self-defense and then promptly marched off in the direction of the nearest Dungeon entrance.
Unlike his previous attempts to look for aranea, he wasn’t simply walking around, waiting to stumble upon their scouts — he was trying to sense their minds with his brand new mind sense. Sadly, he sensed nothing except an occasional rat and-
He stopped, sensing a mind of unusual strength from one of the rats ahead. He mentally ordered his floating light to intensify for a moment and was rewarded with a disquieting sight of a rat missing the top of his head.