Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Ugh.

"Both ideas were already discussed and soundly rejected, and not just by Zach and Zorian," Xvim pointed out.

"We were already taking a huge risk by dealing with the lich as much as we did," Zorian said. "Even a minor mistake could easily burn all of our remaining restarts away."

"The old bag of bones would be more likely to ruin us than help us," Zach added. "Without us, his plan probably succeeds and Cyoria is leveled to the ground. Why would he want to risk that by helping us escape?"

"Bah!" Silverlake spat. As in, she literally spat on the ground to express her frustration. "I can see when I’m outvoted. Besides, it’s too late to change things now… though I still say our chances are too low? Surely there is something more that could be done?"

"Well, you did say we just need more time," Daimen pointed out. "If the project to turn the palace orb into a Black Room succeeds as well as expected, we should get another couple of months in a time dilation room."

"We already turned the palace room into a time dilation chamber two times by now," Silverlake pointed out. "It was impressive, but the effectiveness was little better than that of a regular Black Room. It just had larger volume. Why expect this attempt to be any different?"

"Well, if Krantin and his staff are to be believed–" began Daimen.

"I’ll believe it when I see it," Silverlake cut him off. "In the meantime, I have another idea…"

Although Silverlake could be very abrasive and unpleasant, her skill at dimensionalism was undeniable and many of her ideas were quite insightful. Some of them were even perfectly ethical and legal, shockingly enough.

Thus, the group eventually returned to Cyoria, peacefully discussing various plans along the way…

The search for the imperial staff was long and frustrating. For a long time, they didn’t have even the slightest clue how to even narrow down their search. Zorian was almost willing to write off the entire endeavor as a lost cause and focus entirely on the exit portal project. However, Daimen felt it was beneath his pride to let the expedition end in failure, and eventually found a clue.

One of their earliest leads for the staff was a dragon mage called Violet-Eyed Disaster, or just Violeteye for short. However, she was almost as hard to track down as the staff itself, and there were plenty of other candidates around, so they didn’t focus on her in particular. In time, however, a curious fact became obvious – Violeteye seemed capable of instantaneously teleporting herself across vast distances. There was simply no other way to explain how she could get around so quickly and evade pursuers. Dragons were fast flyers, but her speed was unearthly. This idea was reinforced when Daimen and his group caught sight of her and pursued, only for her to disappear when they briefly lost sight of her.

This was significant, since dragon mages had huge issues trying to use teleportation. Dimensional magic was nearly unknown among dragons, and the sort of teleportation Violeteye was performing would be shocking even in a human mage.

She was most likely using some kind of divine artifact to pull it off. And by following after her and repeatedly provoking her, Zach and Zorian eventually confirmed it was a simple, unadorned staff.

Deep in the jungles of Blantyrre, atop a small mountain, a fierce battle was raging between Zach and Zorian on one side and Violeteye the dragon mage on the other. Shattered remains of Zorian’s combat golems littered the mountainside, and several large craters lay scattered around the place. Smoke and dust covered the skies.

Roaring in outrage, Violeteye swooped down on Zach’s position, opening her jaws and breathing fire at him. The jet of flame was unnaturally hot and concentrated, even for dragon breath – a white-hot incineration beam that set nearby bushes on fire just by passing near them. Without flinching, Zach placed an opaque black shield made out of spatial forces in front of him. The incineration breath sank into the shield and harmlessly disappeared, as if it had never existed in the first place.

Moments later, he was hit by a gust of magically-enhanced wind. It looked rather ethereal, a gentle rainbow goal suffusing it, but the moment it reached Zach it caused the black shield to collapse into nothingness and almost sent him tumbling down the mountain side.

A trio of stone cylinders flew in the air towards the dragon, shining with dangerous blue light. She managed to knock them away from her before they exploded, but it disrupted her charge and allowed Zach to regain his balance.

She sent a quick glare at Zorian, who was standing in the distance with a gun-like cylinder-launcher in his hands, before judging Zach a greater threat and smashing her tail towards him like a flail.

Zach didn’t try to dodge or put some distance between them. He merely cast another spell, causing huge hands of stone to erupt from the ground beneath her, reaching towards her.

Her eyes narrowed imperceptibly, but she continued her attack, trusting her strength and vast reserves of magic. She was justified in her confidence when trading blow for blow with a human, since they could never match a dragon in terms of toughness.

However, her attack… missed.

Her eyes widened in surprise, not understanding what had happened. This wasn’t the sort of rookie mistake she could ever make.

If one had looked really closely, though, one could have seen space itself subtly shift around Zach just before the tail slap had descended upon him…

The stone hands closed around the dragon, pulling her downward. She manifested huge ectoplasmic claws to crush them into powder, but the moment of weakness was enough for Zorian’s simulacrums, who immediately teleported into the vicinity. Just as she was about to turn her ectoplasmic claws towards the simulacrums, her mind swam in sudden vertigo and her vision grew blurry. When she finally regained her clarity of mind, she found a glittering crystalline spear flying at her, courtesy of Zach. Arcs of red light sparked dangerously on its surface, promising pain and disintegration to anything hit by the spear.

Invading the mind of a dragon was not an easy thing to do… but it was within Zorian’s capabilities, if only for a moment.

Roaring, Violeteye conjured an omnidirectional sound wave that hurled all of the simulacrums away from her like a bunch of rag dolls and destroyed all nearby obstacles. The spear continued to fly, but it was knocked off course and only glanced off her flank, tearing out a chunk of her flesh but largely leaving her intact.

She launched herself in the air and tried to flee. She didn’t teleport away like she had the first few times Zach and Zorian had tried to corner her, presumably because the staff she was using had run out of charges by now. However, she was still a dragon, and few things could catch her in flight if she fled at maximum speed.

Zach and Zorian were nearly out of mana by this point, and Zorian was starting to run out of bombs and other items, too. Even Zach, with his immense mana reserves, could not compare to the stamina of the dragon. They could chase her down, but if she kept stalling and disengaging, she would eventually wear them down and maybe even turn the tables on them. She probably knew that and was deliberately using that as a tactic. Considering that she was armed with a convenient retreat in the form of the teleportation staff, this was probably how she usually fought. Wearing down the enemy by repeatedly retreating and coming back was likely second nature to her by now.

Unfortunately for her, Zach and Zorian weren’t alone. Before she could get very far, she found Alanic, Xvim and Daimen waiting for her in the distance. A roar of frustration echoed across the entire mountain while Zach and Zorian sat down to recover their mana reserves and catch their breath.