Deciding the best idea would be to get back to the surface before something decided to finish them off, Zorian promptly cast the floating disc spell and piled his three unconscious teammates on top of it before making a beeline towards the dungeon entrance.
He just hoped his head would stop killing him by tomorrow.
Zorian woke up very confused. A part of him was wondering what he was doing in a hospital, of all things, while another part was surprised he hadn’t woken up back in Cirin with Kirielle wishing him a good morning, just like every time he started over. A few seconds later his mind cleared up and he remembered what had happened yesterday. He didn’t start over because he hadn’t died in the tunnels — he just had his mind scrambled. This was actually far more worrying than merely dying, since any damage to his mind carried over across restarts, but it would seem he didn’t suffer any permanent damage.
He vaguely remembered the doctor concluding the same when he was brought in yesterday, before shoving him into this room and telling him to sleep it off. Some doctor. He didn’t need a hospital for that. He wondered how Taiven and her two friends were faring — they had been still completely comatose when he had stumbled out of the Dungeon entrance and the guards had rushed them all to the nearest hospital.
«Finally awake I see,» Ilsa’s said from the doorway. «Do you feel up to talking or should I come back later?»
«Miss Zileti?» Zorian asked. «What are you doing here?»
«As our student, the Academy is obliged to represent you in legal matters,» Ilsa said, approaching his bed. «This qualifies. How are you feeling?»
«I’m fine,» Zorian shrugged. He didn’t even have a headache anymore. «I might as well go home once you finish questioning me.»
«Questioning you?» Ilsa asked. «It sounds almost sinister, the way you say it. Why would I be questioning you?»
«Err, well…» Zorian fumbled. «The police tend to be hard-asses towards witnesses in my experience. Just in case they’re hiding something and all that.»
For a moment Zorian thought she would ask him where he got that kind of experience with the police, but she instead just shook her head and chuckled.
«Well I’m not the police,» Ilsa said. «Though I did come to ask you what happened. Your friends don’t remember anything substantial, having been hit with that sleep spell right at the start of the attack.»
«Are they alright?» Zorian asked.
«Yes,» Ilsa confirmed. «They woke up yesterday with no ill effects. Your injuries were far more serious, medically speaking.» She gave him a wry smile. «I think it was their pride that was hurt the most. A third year resisted a spell they could not and saved their lives. Cyoria’s Dungeon boundary is infamously… porous. If it weren’t for you, they probably would have been dead by morning.»
Zorian looked away uncomfortably. Is that why Taiven had never contacted him after that initial invitation to go with her at the start of each restart? He thought she was being callous.
How did he resist that sleep spell, though, if Taiven and her two friends didn’t? And what happened afterwards… it hurt, and it was unpleasant, but he had a feeling it wasn’t an attack. His attacker could have finished him off at any particular time but chose not to. The words, the images… it was as if something was trying to talk to him but didn’t know how to communicate with humans properly.
Considering the number of webs in the alien memories he had been bombarded with, it was probably the spiders. He never heard of any sentient spiders with access to mind magic, though.
«I’m not really sure what happened,» Zorian finally said. «After the sleep spell failed, I was immediately bombarded by a barrage of images that almost made me black out. It was very painful and disorienting. After it stopped I tried to get my bearings to respond to further attacks, but after a minute or so I realized none were coming and decided to hightail out of there. I have no idea why the attackers stopped.»
«Hmm,» Ilsa hummed. «There are lots of possibilities. Maybe, instead of walking into a deliberate ambush, you simply stumbled upon someone who didn’t want to be seen and they moved to incapacitate you so they could slip away unnoticed. Maybe someone left a spell trap in that section of the tunnels for whatever reason and you set off the trigger. Maybe you resisting two spells in a row intimidated them into leaving. We may never know, I guess.»
Yes, all valid possibilities. It certainly wasn’t giant sentient telepathic spiders, no sir!
«Oh and Zorian?» Ilsa continued. «You’re forbidden from going down in the tunnels until further notice. I get that you wanted to help a friend, but it was still a foolish thing to do.»
«Err, yes professor,» Zorian agreed. «Understood.»
10 minutes after Ilsa left the nurse came to tell him he could go home.
«This is boring!» Taiven complained.
Zorian cracked one of his eyes open so he could glare at her.
«You said you wanted to make it up to me,» he reminded.
«But I meant teaching you some kickass spells, not…» she scowled at the bowl full of marbles in front of her. «…throwing marbles over your shoulders. Shouldn’t I at least aim a couple at your forehead? I bet you’d be a lot more motivated to get it right that way.»
«If you do that, I’m going to track you down to your room and suffocate you in your sleep,» Zorian threatened heatedly. The whole reason he was having her do this was so that he could practice this stupid trick without suffering through Xvim’s methods.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. After a few seconds he felt the mana-charged marble pass in the vicinity of his face but couldn’t pinpoint over which shoulder it flew.
«Left,» he tried.
«No, right,» Taiven. «Now you’re just guessing, aren’t you? Just give it a rest for today, you’re not going to get anywhere once you get frustrated.»
«No, I just need a couple of minutes to calm down,» Zorian sighed. Taiven groaned in response and he opened both eyes so he could properly glare at her. «Why are you being so difficult about this, anyway? You know I can’t ask anyone else to do this for me, right? I don’t know anyone else who can aim their throws precisely enough, and none of them could keep charging marbles for more than half an hour without depleting their reserves.»
«I know, I know,» Taiven sighed. «And I’m glad you asked me for help. It’s the least I could do after… well, you know. But you’re not taking advantage of me properly!»
Zorian raised an eyebrow.
«Err, that came out wrong,» Taiven chuckled nervously. «What I meant was: I can do much more than this. My accurate marble throwing skills aren’t my only gift. I know I must seem pretty pathetic for getting knocked out by a single spell but come on!»
«I never thought of you as pathetic because of that, Taiven,» Zorian sighed. «But alright. What can the great Taiven do for me?»
«Teach you how to fight, of course!» she grinned.
«The magical way, I hope,» Zorian remarked warningly.
«You should never underestimate the usefulness of a fist to the face, even in a magical duel,» Taiven grunted. «But yes, I meant the magical way. Were you telling the truth when you told the old guy who hired us you can cast magic missile, shield and flamethrower?»
«Of course,» Zorian said.
«Well, let’s see them,» Taiven said, waving towards a duo of dummies on the other side of the room.
«Err, won’t your parents mind if I wreck their training dummies?» Zorian asked.
She rolled her eyes. «The whole reason I told you to come to my place was so we could train here. The whole room is warded, and those dummies especially. You won’t even scratch them, trust me.»
Shrugging, Zorian quickly cast a magic missile, shaping it into a piercer and weaving a homing function into it so it would hit the head of the dummy. The bolt of force sped across the room and struck the dummy square in the forehead. The faceless wooden head of the dummy bent backwards with the force of the blow in a manner that would snap a real human’s neck in several places, but then promptly snapped back to its default position as if nothing was wrong.