Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Zorian had a good feeling about this, though. This could work, he was sure of it. The only question now was whether Raynie was capable of doing her part.

The necessary blood magic itself wasn’t that difficult. Blood magic was famously easy to perform. Too easy, according to some. Additionally, blood magic tracking spells were a very common use of blood magic and there was no need for Zorian to reinvent the wheel to make one. There were plenty of tried and true methods that Raynie could use for her attempt.

It was still blood magic, however. Raynie would have to ritually cut herself during the casting, and remain clearheaded despite the resulting pain. The mana shaping requirements for successful casting were low, but Raynie was a total beginner when it came to magic, so even that may be too much for her. Finally, whether she succeeded or failed, she would be severely weakened for at least a week after the attempt, and the traces of primordial essence in her blood would be spent.

She had one try. Not one more. If she made even a single mistake, the whole ritual would be ruined, and that would be it.

So Zorian’s simulacrums patiently waited, not trying to hurry her up in any way.

Likewise, on the edge of the ritual room, Rea, Haslush and the simulacrum that actually looked like Zorian patiently waited as well.

Well, simulacrum number one patiently waited. Haslush and Rea were clearly anxious as hell about the eventual result of the ritual.

"The center of the ritual circle is protected from sounds, right?" Haslush softly asked simulacrum number one. "They can’t hear us if we talk?"

"Yes," the simulacrum calmly said. "It’s also protected against outside mana intrusion and the like. Unless you really go out of the way to make yourself known, you shouldn’t be able to disturb them."

Of course, simulacrum number one was always mentally connected with his fellow simulacrums and the original, but the two simulacrums participating in the ritual were too experienced and skilled to be distracted by something like that.

"What’s up with you, kid?" Haslush complained, glaring at him slightly. "Are you made of ice or something?"

"I’m just naturally stoic," the simulacrum bragged, puffing his chest up proudly. "It’s okay, old man, you’ll learn how to be as cool as me one of these days."

Haslush clacked his tongue at the response and no longer bothered to talk to him.

"I’ve looked into your classmate’s family situation," Rea commented idly.

"Oh?" the simulacrum said, raised an eyebrow at him.

"It seems Raynie’s relationship with her family is… less than harmonious," Rea said, cocking her head to the side and closing her eyes as if listening to something. "Her brother essentially replaced her as the clan heir when he was born. There are rumors that she was extremely resentful about it."

Simulacrum number one said nothing.

"You knew," Rea said after a while.

"Yeah," the simulacrum admitted. "Yeah, I did."

"You think she’s going to purposely botch the spell?" Haslush asked, frowning.

"Quite the contrary," Rea said calmly, shaking her head. "I think she’s desperate for it to succeed. She probably wished ill on her brother a lot, and now that it finally happened she feels guilty and responsible for it. Shifter tribes have a somewhat superstitious view of curses and wishing misfortune to someone in your head is not just harmless catharsis to a lot of them."

"That’s true for a lot of regular people, too," Haslush shrugged. "It’s just mages that really disdain that kind of thinking."

Rea hummed thoughtfully, but did not respond. The whole group suddenly became silent as it became obvious that Raynie was finally ready to begin with the ritual.

The red-headed wolf shifter started chanting, softly at first but getting more confident as time went one. Her hand trembled as she raised a dagger above her palm and slashed into it once, twice, trice… the motions were crude and she cut a little too deeply than was really necessary, but simulacrum number one supposed that was better than being too timid.

She held her bloodied hand above the simple-looking pottery bowl and dropped blood into it. The bowl promptly lit up with glowing blood red lines and diagrams, and a barely perceptible magical pulse spread out from the golden cube upon which the bowl sat. The white stars above them dimmed and brightened like a hundred tiny hearts.

Thin, hair-like streams of blood, barely visible from where simulacrum number one was standing, rose from the bowl and reached for the tiny dimensional gates above it. Raynie loudly gasped and swayed unsteadily as some of her life force left her, some of the threads reaching for the wounds on her hand like dozens of hungry leeches. Overwhelmed by the pain and vertigo, she dropped her dagger and almost collapsed face-first into the bowl in front of her, but with the support of two disguised simulacrums and her own willpower she managed to retain consciousness. Gritting her teeth, she started slowly making gestures with her healthy hand.

Finally the last gesture of the spell was made and everything snapped into place. The dimensional gates floating above them shone with blinding light, forcing Haslush and Rea to shield their eyes, and a flood of information entered the minds of the three simulacrums present.

So much information. Hundreds of places, most of them completely disconnected from each other, all of them mixing together into a giant incomprehensible mess. The spell, too vast in scope, struggled to narrow down the search on its own. It passed the task to the caster of the spell. If Raynie was doing this alone, she would have outright failed here… a beginner mage simply wasn’t capable of controlling a spell of this sophistication and magnitude. But she wasn’t doing this alone. Zorian’s simulacrums were present, and they were capable. In fact, a single one of them would have sufficed. Having three of them do this together was just overkill.

After a few seconds, simulacrum number one smiled. Almost immediately afterwards, a quick message was sent to the original by all three simulacrums. It only consisted of a single word.

"Success," simulacrum number one mumbled.

Sitting next to a table full of battle maps, surrounded by Zach, Xvim, Alanic and the rest of the members of their little conspiracy, Zorian suddenly became alert and cleared his throat to get the attention of other people in the room. They immediately stopped whatever argument they were having and turned to him.

"We found them," Zorian said. "Start the attack."

On a peaceful and sunny day, just one day before the summer festival, the city of Cyoria suddenly went to hell. It was around noon when, without warning, dozens of places in the city suddenly launched volleys of magical artillery projectiles to some unseen targets just outside the city. These targets, almost as if they had been expecting something like this might happen, almost immediately responded with a magical artillery barrage of their own. In a matter of minutes, the city was burning. Numerous buildings had been partially or completely destroyed, and rogue fire elementals started wandering the city, setting everything they encountered ablaze. Neither of the two sides were done yet, though, and the exchange of magical artillery continued on for quite some time.

Then the monsters came. Skeletons, war trolls, giant lizards, massive flocks of iron beaks… all of these came pouring out of the local underworld, spreading chaos as they went. A lot of these invading monsters met a grisly end, triggering hidden traps when they tried to move through upper levels of Cyoria’s underworld, almost as if someone had foreseen their invasion routes. A lot more were held back in the depths of the earth, fighting some unseen enemy beneath the city. But even the fraction of the forces that reached the surface was nothing to scoff at.