Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Even better, every once in a while the angel tree would maneuver the fight to get close to Iasku Mansion and then ruthlessly start pounding on the defensive wards of the building, causing them to visibly strain. The wing balls that followed it contributed to this in their own way, firing intensely bright, lightning-like blasts of energy at the ward scheme. Although the demon torso did everything it could to repulse them from the area, it wasn’t doing a good enough job, and eventually Quatach-Ichl and Oganj had to abandon the protection of the mansion in order to help the demon torso suppress the rampaging angels.

This was too good of an opportunity to pass for Zorian and the others, and they decided to join the fray and help the angel tree prevail. After all, they didn’t even have to overpower their enemies – if they could simply push Oganj or Quatach-Ichl into the angel’s waiting embrace, its lethal branches would take care of the rest for them and they would have one less heavy-hitter on the enemy side to worry about.

Zorian mentally ordered the defensive barrier of his defense cube to become flatter and more tangible at the bottom, and to spread itself out over a larger area, and the cube automatically rearranged itself according to his wishes. Sigils inscribed on its surface glowed, mechanical pieces whirled and moved into alternate positions, and soon enough Zorian was standing on a large, heavily shielded, flying platform. He signaled to others to jump on the platforms, and when they did, the platform shot towards the scene of the battle with great speed.

Sadly, Mrva couldn’t fit on the platform, so Zorian could only order his beloved creation to follow after them on foot. Not that it mattered much – Mrva was all but unstoppable. He had so much weight and speed that just about anything that tried to stop him was simply shoved aside without impeding him much. A regimen of black-armored demons made the most credible attempt, using their great numbers and military-like discipline to slow him down for a time, but even they were ultimately thwarted when Mrva jumped into the air to bypass most of them.

As they approached, they had a great view of the titanic battle in front of them. With the support of Oganj and Quatach-Ichl, the demon torso had been given a chance at a comeback. It was pouring a stream of dark purple lightning at the angel tree, forcing the celestial being on the defense for the first time in the fight. Jagged rays of red light rampaged through the angel’s branches, temporarily unopposed, actually severing some of them and leaving deep gauges on its trunks. As for Oganj, he appeared to be busy fighting off the wing balls that accompanied the angel tree, which were frantically firing their blue lightning blasts at the dragon mage in an attempt to keep at least one opponent away from their leader.

Zorian would have ordered the platform to go faster if it wasn’t already flying as fast as it possibly could.

Then, disaster struck. Some of the lesser demons noticed their advance and decided to stop them. Zorian didn’t take them seriously at first, as it was just that flock of disgusting, grub-like creatures that he had noticed floating around the edges of the demon horde when it had first been summoned. He had taken them to be just one more group of minor demons brought in to fill out the numbers, but now that they were attacking him, it quickly became obvious they were one of the more dangerous demon varieties for him personally.

That stupid glowing saliva they were drooling all over the place was actually insanely damaging to force shields! The little wretches were capable of spitting globs of it over surprisingly great distances, and they were really quite fast and agile when they tried. And there were a lot of them.

As much as he didn’t want to, Zorian had to slow down his advance in order to deal with these little pests…

Mrva was still continuing forward, of course, but the demon horde had a solution for him as well, it seemed. The ground in front of the charging Mrva suddenly erupted, and a multitude of thorny, ropy tentacles shot forwards and wrapped themselves around the golem’s limbs and torso. Zorian ordered Mrva to simply charge through and use his great weight and momentum to break free, but to his surprise, this didn’t work. The thorny tentacles refused to break or lose their grip on the golem, and managed to stop its charge.

Like an ominous figure, a large rose demon rose out of the earth, tall enough to tower even over Mrva. Zorian remembered seeing it near the epicenter of that initial clash between the angel tree and the demon torso, after which it disappeared. He had thought it died back then, but apparently it simply took shelter under the ground and waited for a convenient moment to reveal itself.

Considering it could stop a charging Mrva in his tracks, the demon rose was likely quite powerful.

They had only spent a few moments engaging the grub swarm and the demon rose when Zorian received a telepathic message from a familiar voice.

[What are you doing?]the angel tree thundered in his mind. The voice was calm and collected, but the mental volume of the communication was painfully high and the tone was accusatory. [Stop wasting your time here and get out of this place. You need to stop Panaxeth from breaking free of his prison, or else all this will be irrelevant.]

[What?] Zorian protested, feeling rather wronged at the implication he was willingly wasting time. He glanced at the yellow barrier boxing them in and, sure enough, it was still very much intact. [But the barrier-]

[It’s for our enemies only,]the angel tree said. [It will not stop you.]

Ugh, and the damn tree only felt like mentioning this now ? Why not at the very start of this thing, when it was first erected? This had to be deliberate. The angel had some kind of private plan that involved them staying inside this box for a while, the manipulative bastard.

[Fine,] Zorian told the angel. [I just need to get myself and my golem out of this situation and then I’ll-]

He hadn’t even finished the sentence when the air in front of the platform warped strangely, scaring everyone currently standing on it, and a massive black branch wreathed in orange flames suddenly appeared in front of them, striking down. The grubs harassing them were caught completely off guard by the sudden attack and promptly got speared, bisected, and burned. It was a total wipeout, with the handful of surviving grubs fleeing the scene immediately.

The branch continued downward without pause, aiming at the demon rose tangling with Mrva. The demon shook and swayed, impossibly agile and flexible, and managed to avoid being speared or cut by the twigs and sub-branches even once… but it could not avoid the flames. The strange orange flames separated themselves from the branch at the last moment, forming into ghostly images of snakes, claws, and jaws, and engulfed the hapless demon rose. It let out an unearthly screech, writhing in pain as it caught on fire, and then retreated underground so fast Zorian thought for a moment it simply disappeared.

Apparently the angel tree could casually warp space to strike at opponents way outside its usual range. Just how powerful was this thing?

[Go,]the angel tree urged him, and then immediately severed its contact.

There was a roar of triumph, and then the dragon mage was holding a rather thick black branch in one of his claws, its fires sputtering and fading. The angel had paid a high price for this timely assistance, it seemed.

Zorian immediately ordered the flying platform they were standing on to change directions and proceed towards the nearest barrier wall at maximum speed.

"Wait, what are you doing?" Zach asked, alarmed. "Have you gone crazy!? You’re going to ram us straight into the barrier wall!"