Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

The borderline invisible barrier barely even reacted. Anyone standing close to Zorian would see a handful of gentle ripples emanating from the points of impact for a fraction of a second, but these quickly subsided and left no trace of damage on the shield.

To his credit, the ancient lich wasn’t shocked by the sight. He simply launched into one spell barrage after another, burning through gods know how much mana to launch a multitude of spells at Zorian. Zorian was kind of worried for Daimen at this point, since this kind of onslaught could probably kill his older brother very easily if the lich decided it would be good idea to kill the distraction first. Thankfully, Daimen quickly realized the safest place to be right now was next to Zorian, being protected by his shield, and promptly retreated behind him so that Zorian’s cube could protect him as well.

And protect them both the cube did. The cube was not a simple spell aid or ward stone like most such tools. It was closer in nature to a golem, and was just as expensive and complicated to build as Mrva had been. Although no magic item could truly cast a spell, only maintain one indefinitely, Zorian’s cube did a pretty good job of mimicking spellcasting. A dizzying amount of protective spells were constantly maintained by the cube. By amplifying some of them and suppressing others, the cube could adjust its protections from moment to moment, creating custom shields to counter specific type of spells. It did that mostly autonomously, because Zorian had animated it in the same manner in which one would a golem. None of its operation required any mana, or even much of attention from Zorian. Thus, none of the Quatach-Ichl’s attacks were effective.

Projectiles slammed into the impenetrable, ever-shifting barrier created by the eight small cubes orbiting Zorian, producing no effect. Larger, slower attacks were dealt with more actively, by one of the little cubes firing marbles at them. The marbles all charged with various spell bombs, and each cube had a pocket dimension absolutely packed with them, making it unlikely they would run out of marbles any time soon. Once the marble detonated next to an attack, it would be either dispersed or weakened enough for the barrier to negate it with ease. Attempts to send ectoplasmic constructs or animated earth at them were dealt with by Daimen, who picked them apart from the safety of the cube’s defense. The shield was sufficiently sophisticated that it would let Daimen’s attacks pass through without obstruction, even though that was not normally possible when attacking behind another mage’s shield.

Silverlake and Jornak had recovered by this point and did their best to help Quatach-Ichl, but while Mrva was being distracted by the crocodilian skeletons, he wasn’t fully tied down. As such, the two had to keep the colossal golem at bay without Quatach-Ichl’s help while trying to help him. It wasn’t very effective.

Eventually Quatach-Ichl realized this wasn’t working and that attempting to overpower Zorian in this manner was just him burning through mana for nothing. Zorian wasn’t even spending any mana on defending himself, so the lich’s attacks weren’t even wearing him out.

"Oganj!" Quatach-Ichl suddenly shouted. "Help me crack this turtle’s shell!"

"Get these idiots off me, then!" Oganj responded, trying to swat away the milky sphere flying around him out of the sky.

The ancient lich crouched and jumped, and immediately shot up into the sky like a bullet.

Daimen looked torn between pursuing the lich, even though he knew this would take him out of the safety of Zorian’s shield, and trying to put more pressure on Jornak and Silverlake. He eventually decided to try and kill Jornak.

It was probably a smart decision and Zorian fully supported it. While countering whatever Quatach-Ichl was doing would probably be more useful, it would probably result in his death. Zorian would rather face more danger than see Daimen die here. Visions of pale and bleeding Daimen, near-death after he had sacrificed his life force to allow Zorian to save himself, momentarily flooded his mind, his control over the summoning spell slipping…

No! No, focus… focus… He pushed these thoughts to the side, just like he had pushed them aside this whole month, and focused on the matter at hand. The angel summoning. It had to work, or else the enemy is going to have a whole bunch of demons on their side, and they would have nothing to counter them with.

The battle in the air intensified. Somehow Zach and Alanic found a moment to do some spell interruption of their own and directed a barrage of projectiles at Quatach-Ichl’s simulacrum standing on the roof of Iasku Mansion, trying interrupt his demon summoning. They failed, both because the flying Quatach-Ichl interfered on behalf of his copy and because Iasku Mansion still had reasonably intact defensive wards, despite all the fighting occurring around it.

But then, a disaster struck. Quatach-Ichl managed to distract Zach enough to let Oganj face just Alanic and Xvim for a moment. Rather than try to kill one of them – an action that could work, but would probably fail – the dragon mage decided to instead try to kill Zorian.

Zorian could see the logic of it. Dragon battle magic basically specialized in huge, mana-hungry spells that rivaled human artillery magic in power, but with none of the drawbacks that branch of magic usually had. Quatach-Ichl couldn’t overpower Zorian’s defenses by sheer number of spells, but a powerful piece of dragon magic could surely crack any kind of shield outside of dedicated building wards like the ones centered around Iasku Mansion.

Time seemed to slow down to Zorian as he watched Oganj finish his spell. The dragon’s yellow, slitted eyes seemed to radiate pride and contempt as he thrust his scaly, clawed hand towards him, and a huge ball of incandescent flame came screaming down at Zorian.

Literally screaming. Zorian didn’t know if the old dragon mage added that effect purely for the sake of surprise and intimidation, but the massive fireball created a sharp screaming sound as if flew through the air.

Zorian still didn’t move to dodge. The eight little cubes stopped orbiting around him, causing the shield around him to collapse, and flew towards the incoming fireball with great speed, quickly arranging themselves into a ring-shaped formation. Jornak and Silverlake tried to take advantage of Zorian’s momentary defenseless position to kill him before the fireball hit, but Daimen and Mrva stopped that from working. As for the fireball, it flew undaunted towards the ring of cubes flying towards it, even though Zorian was sure Oganj could control its flight and try to get it to dodge. He supposed that the dragon mage was confident his spell would overpower whatever defensive effect the cube possessed.

He was bound to be disappointed. As the fireball got close to the ring of cubes, it seemed to enter a zone of literal slowed time. A temporal dilation bubble that made time pass slower on the inside than on the outside. Oganj’s eyes widened as he tried to pull his spell out of the temporal mire, but the cubes would never allow that. The ring of cubes passed around the burning projectile and it simply… disappeared.

Then they immediately turned around and re-established the defensive field around Zorian.

It was as if the cubes pulled an invisible bag over the fireball and carried it off. Which… wasn’t that far from the truth, really. Oganj’s massive fireball was currently safely stored in the cube’s special, time dilated pocket dimension. It wasn’t quite frozen in time, but it was close. Very close.

Oganj gave him an angry, hateful look, but was in no position to do anything to him anymore. The moment Quatach-Ichl had given him had passed, and Zach was back in the fight and angrier than ever.