Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"You did?" Orissa asked curiously. "How strange. I don’t remember fighting anyone while you were around. Still, while I thank you for the compliments, the simple counterpoint to your claim is that our House doesn’t have several dozen mages like me. I am very much exceptional, both in talent and the amount of resources that have been spent on me. Most of the members of our House aren’t particularly good at fighting to begin with. Most of them are primarily trackers and surveyors, using their bees purely to find things and fighting only as a last resort."

"Ah," said Zorian, wincing a little internally. Yes, he probably shouldn’t take someone like Orissa to be the benchmark for your average member of the House. "So why did you insist on making this attack, then? Why not just defend your estate like I advised you to?"

"There is too much risk involved in that," Orissa said. "If our main hives are damaged in the fighting, it would be a huge blow to our operations. But more importantly… the elders want that portal."

Zorian raised his eyebrow at her. The portal… of course. The base Jornak made for this operation connected Koth directly to Altazia, bridging the vast distances between two continents with a permanent dimensional connection. The value of this was incalculable.

"And… you think you can take out this force, which you aren’t sure you could defend against effectively, in such a way that you can seize the portal intact?" Zorian asked her curiously.

"There is a chance, yes," Orissa told him with a mysterious smile. "In a direct fight, I wouldn’t be too confident of my chances, but thanks to your information we have a chance to take them off guard. If we can sneak in enough bees into their base without them noticing, then their first indication of an impending attack will consist of getting swarmed by hundreds of magical bees each."

"You’d have to make sure to get them all or the whole thing will fail," Zorian pointed out. "If even one survives the initial attack, he will close the portal."

"Of course," Orissa. "That’s why it’s important to be patient and do this slowly. You said there was no rush, yes?"

"None," Zorian admitted. This fight was relatively irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. If the Taramatula could really seize the portal, Zorian supposed they could send in some of their forces to the other side to assist them, but that was unlikely to be decisive in any way. "In fact, I wholly support your decision to be careful."

"Less chance of your needing to pull us out of the fire if we flounder?" Orissa asked knowingly.

"I’m just a moderately talented teenager," Zorian said. "I could hardly turn the tide of battle all on my own."

"Yes, I’m sure," Orissa said. "How many living people did you say were in the base?"

"Twenty eight," Zorian said with barely a thought. He then quickly pointed out to her where exactly everyone currently was so her forces wouldn’t waste time scouting the base for no reason.

"You know exactly where everyone in that base is, even from this distance," Orissa said lightly. "But you’re just a moderately talented teenager? Your brother should have taught you how to lie better."

"It’s just a standard mind sense that all psychic people have," Zorian protested. "Just an innate ability, nothing more."

"I’m quite sure that Daimen couldn’t replicate what you just did, despite being way older than you," Orissa said.

Ugh. Why was he so bad at this look relatively normal thing? This was going to be a real problem in the future, he could already tell…

"You know what? I’m shutting up now," Zorian sighed. "You have a surprise attack to plan, so you should get on that, and I’ll… just stand on the sidelines and let the adults handle everything from now on. Please protect me, Daimen’s fiancée. My brother will never forgive you if you get his beloved little brother killed."

She set loose some of her bees on him for that.

Zorian was in the tunnels beneath Cyoria, he was in Koth, and he was even in the academy in Cyoria, setting things up in case things failed to develop as they hoped.

But mostly he was at Iasku’s Mansion.

In fact, Zach, Xvim, Alanic, Daimen, and most of their forces were also at Iasku’s Mansion… because that’s where the Ibasans held their kidnapped shifter children.

It was a bit of an obvious choice, in retrospect. It was heavily defended, it was really far from any other civilization, and it had a gate connection to the Ibasan base beneath Cyoria.

However, there had been lots of obvious choices when it came to the place where the Ibasans held the shifter children, and the cost of attack Iasku Mansion was huge. It wasn’t something they would be willing to commit to unless they knew there was something of critical importance there.

Well, now they knew, and the mansion and its surroundings had become the site of a bitter battle. Zorian’s real body was here, standing on the back of Princess as the forest burned and shuddered around them. Thousands upon thousands of undead were charging at them, ranging from simple undead boars to towering mountains of stitched up flesh that could rival even the biggest of Zorian’s golems in size. Zorian’s golems took care of most of them, tearing into them with grenade throwers and dismembering them with giant blades, but there was just too many of them…

Fortunately, Princess was unafraid of the horde of the walking dead, and her eight heads were ever-vigilant. Any undead that dared approach her was immediately dealt with, with Zorian not having to do anything.

Immediately behind the undead horde was a rapidly approaching mass of monsters – mostly war trolls and winter wolves, with a huge swarm of iron beaks hovering above them, cawing ominously. Some rock worms were moving invisibly beneath the surface of the earth, but their controllers were wiser than the ones beneath Cyoria and made sure the worms avoided Zorian like a plague and stayed as far away from him as possible.

And in the distance, perched on the roof of the mansion, were three dragons staring intently at them.

Three live, perfectly healthy dragons, completely unrelated to the skeletal monstrosity hidden in the depths of Iasku Mansion.

Oganj and his two students, Zorian was sure. They weren’t doing anything for now, but Zorian knew this wouldn’t last as they got closer to the mansion itself.

The attack was meant to be a surprise, but their enemies had clearly been ready for them anyway.

Well. It would have been nice to catch their enemies completely off-guard, but he had never really thought this would be an easy battle, anyway.

After some back and forth with Zach, Zorian gave a silent signal to the menacing mass of iron beaks in the sky and suddenly the whole flock swerved to the side as one, before letting lose a massive volley of knife-like feathers at the seemingly empty patch of land.

Distant screams filled the air as the mages who were moving there under the cover of invisibility suddenly came under attack by the forces they believed were on their side.

Before the enemy mages could regroup, Zorian ordered Princess to charge forward towards the mansion. She did so with relish, but not before letting lose a challenging roar from all eight of her heads at the trio of dragons in the distance. Clearly riled up by the provocation, one of the dragons shook and almost flew up in the air to intercept her, but the biggest of the dragons casually slapped him down with his tail and gave him a silent glare. Visibly chastised, the smaller dragon immediately backed down.

Zorian was impressed. Although Oganj was clearly the biggest and meanest of the trio, the other two were still adult dragons. They were not known for accepting such clearly subordinate positions lightly. Oganj must be more than just a good mage if he could convince a pair of adult dragons to follow his orders like that.