Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Finally, the simulacrum noticed something he felt merited his attention. On the edges of the main battlefield, a small group of friendly soldiers was being overwhelmed. Of the original fifteen, most were already dead. Only six still lived, and only three of those six could walk and fight properly. The simulacrum telepathically alerted the original to the situation, but was told everyone was currently busy and that sacrifices have to be made in situations like these.

The simulacrum then pointed out to him that one of the survivors was Taiven. The original immediately changed his mind and told the simulacrum to go and help them.

The simulacrum wouldn’t have actually obeyed an order to leave Taiven to her fate, but it was nice that he and the original were still on the same page in this regard. He teleported next to the group and immediately intercepted an incoming fireball with a well-placed dispelling wave. Taiven’s shocked face was kind of priceless.

"What are you waiting for?" the simulacrum asked the group. One of the Ibasans tried to sneak up on them by kicking up a cloud of dust with a misaimed spell and using it as a cover for his approach. He received a force lance to the face for his trouble. "This position is lost. Why haven’t you regrouped elsewhere?"

"We can’t leave them!" Taiven protested, pointing at the three wounded soldiers next to her.

"I told you to leave us here," one of the wounded soldiers said. "Just go. We’ll stall them to buy you some time."

"We’re not leaving anyone behind!" Taiven insisted.

The other two healthy soldiers said nothing, but the simulacrum could see on their faces that they didn’t want to leave the wounded soldiers behind either. They were probably friends.

"How about this – you go and take these people to safety, and I’ll hold the Ibasans at bay?" the simulacrum offered.

"Zorian…" Taiven started, sounding both a little annoyed and a little worried.

The simulacrum wasn’t listening to her anymore, though. He could feel the Ibasans moving towards the group again so he conjured two large severing discs above his palms and launched them forward in front of him. The first wave of Ibasans literally fell apart before the discs, screaming horribly as they were effortlessly sliced apart by the two buzzing spell constructs. The commander of the Ibasan group tried to restore order to his unit, shouting orders and threats so loudly the entire base must have heard him. He fell silent when his own bodyguard slammed a knife in his eye socket, killing him instantly. The apparent betrayal (which was actually the result of Zorian puppeteering the man’s body, not genuine betrayal) further sowed chaos in the Ibasan group, stalling the attack.

The simulacrum then shifted his attention back to Taiven and her group, only to find the soldiers gone but Taiven still present.

"Let me guess," the simulacrum sighed. "You sent the rest of them to safety but decided to stay behind with me?"

"I told you," she said. "We’re not leaving anyone behind."

In retrospect, he really should have made it clear he was a simulacrum right from the start.

"Listen," he started. "I’m actually–"

[Stupid simulacrum!] the original’s voice thundered in his mind. [What the hell are you doing down there!? The rest of the soldiers are back but you and Taiven aren’t? Stop fooling around and spending all our mana, dammit! I need that to defend the gate!]

The simulacrum winced at the angry tirade in his head. The interruption left him confused for a second, unable to remember what he was doing right before the original contacted him.

He was further distracted when another volley of spells erupted towards the two of them, roughly half of it directed at him and the other half at Taiven. Taiven blocked her share of projectiles easily enough, and the simulacrum was just about to do the same for himself when he felt his mana reserves rapidly drain away. Apparently the original had decided to blow his entire mana reserves on something, leaving them both defenseless for a while.

"Damn it, original," the simulacrum quietly grumbled.

Then the spell volley hit him, tearing straight into him and blowing his ectoplasmic form into rapidly fading pieces.

As his tattered remains started to unravel, he spared one last look at Taiven, who was looking at him with an absolutely horrified look on her face.

Only then did he remember what he had been trying to tell her before the original contacted him.

His last fading thought was that he really, really should have made it clear that he was just a simulacrum right from the start…

In the end, they managed to extract the gate stabilization frame out of the Ibasan base safe and intact. The frenzied attempts of the Ibasan forces to stop them had petered out after a while, the surviving soldiers retreating back to their base and allowing them to withdraw in peace. The forces assembled by Alanic and Zorian had paid a heavy price for this success, however, being cut nearly in half by the end.

Only time would tell if the researchers Xvim gathered would find out anything useful about the recovered gate stabilization frame.

As they suspected, Quatach-Ichl showed up not long after they finished their retreat, having received a call for help at some point in the fight. Zach and Zorian had been on edge for a few days after this, expecting the Ibasans to launch a premature invasion of Cyoria, much like they had in that one restart where Zorian prodded Eldemar into attacking Iasku Mansion… but what happened instead is that the remaining Ibasans started to withdraw from Cyoria entirely.

The invasion, it seemed, was being canceled.

After the attack on the Ibasan base had been concluded and it became obvious that no immediate invasion would result from it, Zorian proceeded to re-establish his link to Koth. Since he had dismissed his simulacrum in Koth before the attack, he had to rely on Daimen’s help for the second time in the restart. Although it kind of bothered him that he was forced to rely on Daimen so much, he had to admit his help made things a lot easier than they would have otherwise been.

He didn’t expect any problems to crop up and, in a way, there really hadn’t been any. The dimensional gate opened just fine, after all. The problem was that it opened directly inside the Taramatula estate. Instead of finding some out-of-the-way location in the jungle, like they had agreed on beforehand, Daimen had decided to simply open the gate inside a heavily warded room meant for receiving teleporting visitors. While a dozen or so Taramatula family members stood around the edges of the room and watched.

Zorian, who had stepped through the gate first, was so shocked at the sight that he immediately halted in his tracks. This caused Zach, who was coming right behind him, to crash into him. Thankfully, they managed to keep their balance instead of falling to the floor in a tangle of limbs. That would have been awkward.

"Hey, why did you sto– Oh. That’s a lot bigger reception that I was expecting," Zach said, looking around.

Zorian didn’t bother responding to Zach’s feeble attempt at humor. Instead, he zeroed in on his older brother and gave him an outraged glare. "Daimen, what the hell were you thinking!?"

To his credit, Daimen actually winced at the question, looking properly guilty.

"I’m sorry," he said, waving his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. "I didn’t have a choice, okay? I can’t leave the Taramatula estate anymore and I couldn’t just open a dimensional gate in their home without their knowledge or consent. It was either this or aborting the whole thing entirely."

Zach and Zorian were quiet for a second, processing that statement.