Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Or he could take a risk and try to eliminate the simulacrum for real – something that would force the enemy to shift even more resources on this conflict, but had a high chance of blowing up in his face if his simulacrum ended up being destroyed in the clash. All of the human recruits that followed him to this place would die soon afterwards, and the Ibasans would once again be free to focus their effort on the city above.

The indecision only lasted for a moment. He swiftly ordered his golem army into motion and then created a swarm of tiny projectiles around him. Each one was smaller than his thumb and glowed with bright orange light, circling around him like a river of stars. Though seemingly weak, each of the little orange stars contained a force of a fully-powered fireball. They were fast, maneuverable, and Zorian could hold them in reserve until he needed them. He immediately sent three of them at Jornak on curved, complicated trajectories and then followed it up with a lance of force aimed straight at his head.

Jornak’s reaction to the small army of golems trying to tackle him surprised Zorian, however. Rather than use magic to evade them or wasting huge amount of mana to batter their spell-resistant bodies, he simply… punched them away. The simulacrum Jornak send here was clearly special in some way that Zorian did not understand, because he possessed downright incomprehensible physical strength. His mere punches send man-sized golems flying away like discarded dolls, and a well-placed kick could easily snap a knee joint and render the golem useless. Worse, Jornak’s simulacrum seemed able to regenerate its ectoplasmic body with minimal effort on his part. Twice Zorian managed to severely damage him, blowing off his arm once and piercing a big hole with a force land in his torso the other time, and in both cases the damage went away in mere seconds.

Zorian ordered his bodyguard golem to join the fray, hoping to use its size and powerful wards to simply overpower Jornak with raw strength, but this quickly backfired. Jornak took out three grenades out of his pocket and three them above his head before teleporting out of the huge golem’s reach. Before Zorian could order him to withdraw, the grenades detonated without the slightest sound. A web of hair-thin dimensional fractures flashed faintly in the air, space itself shattering before the magical grenade blast, and enveloped the golem.

As potent as the great golem’s defenses were, very few things could stand up to the cutting power of dimensional fractures. The thin black lines went through the golem’s bulk with hardly any resistance, snuffing out its animation core and cutting up its bulk into hundreds of tiny pieces.

Zorian could only helplessly watch as his creation, one which had been crucial in his coming this far so easily, fell apart in front of his eyes.

Okay, now he was kind of angry.

He launched all of the fire stars he had circling him straight at Jornak’s simulacrum, forcing him on the defensive, and then physically charged straight at him. The enemy simulacrum hesitated for a second, no doubt wondering what had possessed Zorian to do something that stupid, before deciding this was too good of a chance to pass up. He charged as well, rushing to meet Zorian head on. Jornak’s simulacrum was clearly far more powerful up close than Zorian’s.

Just before they slammed into each other, Jornak’s whole body became shrouded in arcing red electricity that reminded Zorian of Quatach-Ichl’s favorite spell. In a blindly fast movement, Jornak’s hand flashed forward and punched straight through the chest of Zorian’s simulacrum. Despite being made out of metal and alchemically treated materials, his body provided very little resistance before the ectoplasmic hand, which passed through him like a very sharp blade. Damaging red lightning immediately began spreading itself through the chest cavity of the simulacrum, irreparably damaging sensitive components.

Zorian ignored the damage. Instead, he reached out with both hands and firmly gripped the hand sticking out of his chest. Realizing that something was wrong, Jornak’s simulacrum tried to wrench its hand free of the grasp, but he wasn’t fast enough. Hundreds of mana threads erupted out of Zorian’s palms, burrowing themselves into Jornak’s ectoplasmic flesh.

Jornak’s simulacrum shuddered and twitched as it tried to move, but failed to wrench itself out of Zorian’s grasp. Even as Zorian’s chest started to flake off around the hand stuck in it, internal components seeping out as fine black sand, Jornak’s own form was getting blurrier and more indistinct. Moreover, the degradation of Jornak’s simulacrum was clearly progressing faster than that of Zorian’s own puppet body, more and more mana threads spreading throughout its ectoplasmic form and disrupting it on a fundamental level.

"You…" Jornak croaked incredulously, before his entire body, red cloak and all, warped and flickered like a badly-made illusion and collapsed into smoke.

Zorian’s own simulacrum body then promptly collapsed on the floor, now that Jornak’s hand was no longer keeping his body standing. His internals were far to ruined for him to move his limbs anymore, and just about the only thing he could still move was his head.

Eventually, the human soldiers under his command decided to check things out and cautiously approached the place of the battle.

"Hey," Zorian suddenly called out from the ground, where his crumpled simulacrum body lay motionless. A bunch of people looked at themselves before the closest soldier pointed to himself curiously. "Yeah, you with the beard. Cut off my head."

"I beg your pardon?" The man asked, shocked.

"I can’t move my body so it’s mostly just useless weight at this point. Sadly, none of my golems are too good at fine manual dexterity, so it’s up to you to cut off my head and carry it with you. You’ll be my official head carrier from now on."

The man gave the body on the floor a strange look before sighing.

"This is not what I signed up for," he mumbled under his breath.

At the same time, one Zorian was fighting in the tunnels beneath Cyoria, but he was also in Koth, preparing to participate in the assault on the Ibasan base there. Jornak had made a portal link to Koth earlier in the month, in order to eventually take Zorian’s friends and family hostage, and now there was a small Ibasan base hidden out there in the jungle, relatively close to the Taramatula estate.

Zorian couldn’t tell if Jornak still placed any hopes on this plan. On one hand, the base was still there and the portal connection was not shut down – surely their enemies would not have done this if they knew that Zorian had opted out of using the Taramatula estate as his sanctuary? On the other hand, the base looked pretty small and understaffed to Zorian’s eyes. Just a single regiment of war trolls and a small horde of undead, led by a handful of human mages? This was a pretty half-hearted operation.

Or that’s what he thought, anyway. Orissa and the other Taramatula around him apparently did not share his sentiments.

"What a nasty surprise these people had planned for us. This would have been a disaster if the attackers had caught us off guard," Orissa commented.

"I’ve seen you fight," Zorian said, frowning. "A House with several dozen mages like you should have no problems repulsing a force like this, even if the war trolls and undead are more resistant to bee attacks than most targets."

Since most of their attention was placed elsewhere, Zorian was here only as a simulacrum. Moreover, he did not have any army of golems with him like the simulacrum beneath Cyoria did. He was here mostly as an advisor than anything – the Taramatula would be the one who did all the fighting.