Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

The other two creatures weren’t that far behind, though. The blue tiger-lizard thing used the distraction created by the whip-orb to charge at him, preparing for a jump. Zorian flicked a spell marble at the thing, creating a large detonation right in its face and blowing in back with ease. The creature slammed into the already damaged road and promptly burst into liquid.

A mere moment later, the blue puddle of slime started to come together again, and a few seconds later the tiger-lizard thing was intact and once again gunning for him.

As for Zorian himself, he was too busy trying to avoid being engulfed by the house-sized blob of acid to worry about finishing the tiger-lizard thing off for good. The giant ooze was completely unlike most oozes, and moved with speed and dexterity that no natural ooze should possess, let alone one that size. It constantly sprouted pseudopods that lashed out at Zorian, leaving corroded cobblestones whenever it hit, and its great weight and power allowed it to simply smash apart buildings if they were in its way or it thought the rubble might inconvenience Zorian.

All three were working seamlessly together with one another, and showed both signs of human-level intelligence and detailed knowledge of human spellcasting. Though one might mistake them for some kind of exotic magical creature at first, Zorian knew he wasn’t looking at a natural creation. If Zorian had to guess, he would say these beings were something akin to living potions – an alchemical liquid animated by either captured souls or elemental spirits. Possibly both – a multitude of captured souls for providing abundant mana, and water elementals for actually controlling the liquid.

A grating, cackling laugh rose into the air behind the giant ooze. Silverlake seemed to be mighty pleased at how her minions were faring against Zorian.

"You shouldn’t have sent your metal toy away," she crowed. "Maybe you’d actually have a chance against me and my lovelies if you had this Mrva at your side."

Zorian said nothing, simply scanning his surroundings for a way he could bypass the potion elementals and strike at Silverlake. It didn’t look like he did, but that was because he was primarily looking through the eyes of a small flock of iron beaks circling the skies above the battlefield rather than trying to use divinations in the middle of a battle.

The whip-orb tried to rush at him again, but Zorian fired a thin line of force at it that speared it right through. It immediately burst into a cloud of electrified potion droplets, causing Zorian to wince. This wasn’t a good way to hold the orb at bay, it seemed.

This is so frustrating, Zorian lamented in his head. I spent a decade inside a time loop. You’d think I would have encountered every type of enemy there is!

"I hope you realize we found out where you stashed your little sister and her cat shifter friend to keep them safe. Our forces are attacking them even as we speak," Silverlake said, punctuating her threat with her usual annoying cackle.

Zorian narrowed his eyes at her, but did not let her distract him. This was a blatant attempt to demoralize him, and he wouldn’t fall for it.

Not that he thought she was lying. He had known for a while now that Kirielle and Nochka were being besieged in their hideouts, but there was little he could do. He could only hope that the Taramatula guards and mercenaries Daimen hired would be able to protect them, or that the miniature bodyguard golems he made for them would step up if they couldn’t.

"I hope you realize the Cult of the Dragon Below hasn’t even begun their ritual," Zorian fired back. He knew he shouldn’t talk in the middle of the battle, but her mentioning the attack on Kirielle how he was essentially forced to ignore it struck a nerve and he couldn’t help it. "Look around us. You clearly can’t deal with me and neither can your allies deal with my allies. You won’t win anything by keeping us busy."

As if by some cosmic joke, his statement was punctuated by a loud detonation as an ominous purple sun exploded in the sky nearby, casting the entire city in a deep purple glow for a moment. An aftershock of Quatach-Ichl’s battle against Daimen, Xvim, and Alanic.

Jornak and Zach were also having their own fight nearby, though Zorian could not see it. Jornak had used some kind of strange ability granted to him by Panaxeth to shroud an entire section of the city in thick white mist that no spell could penetrate into. Offensive spells simply sank into the mist and disappeared without a trace, and divination spells went awry when directed at the area.

Zorian wasn’t terribly worried about Zach, though. Zach had shown himself to be noticeably stronger than Jornak in their past clashes, so he doubted this move was enough to tip the scales. More likely than not, this was just Jornak stalling until Quatach-Ichl and Oganj could finish off their opponents so they can gang up on them three-on-one.

"You are such a fool, Zorian," Silverlake said. A bunch of fire spells on parabolic trajectories came flying over the giant ooze and straight at Zorian, but he dispelled them with ease. "We could have both profited off this if you had agreed to work with me. We could have opened a small crack in Panaxeth’s prison and then immediately mended it. My oath to the primordial would have been technically fulfilled, and the city would be left standing. Hell, we could have sabotaged the whole invasion from within. Imagine how many lives that would save. Instead you insist on staying with a dead man compromised beyond all belief. Are you gay? Is this what’s going on?"

"There is no way to fix Panaxeth’s prison once it cracks," Zorian told her, not rising to her bait. He telekinetically seized a large piece of a nearby ruined wall and hurled it at the giant ooze. It failed to punch through and instead got stuck inside the green slime that made up its body. "You’re just comforting yourself with nonsense. You took Panaxeth’s offer because you thought it was a sure thing, as opposed to our own escape plan, which would have required you to trust another human being for once in your life. Now that this sure thing is screwing you over, you’re grasping at straws."

"It’s still a sure thing! You think we need those shifter children for the ritual?" Silverlake cackled. "Have you forgotten these bodies me and Red Robe have are made by Panaxeth? Both of us contain enough of Panaxeth’s essence to form a link to him and crack this prison open. We kept the child sacrifice just to distract you."

Zorian scowled. That… made a disturbing amount of sense. The shifter children collectively had only a tiny amount of primordial essence in them, so a mass sacrifice was needed to get enough material to form a key, but Jornak and Silverlake were specifically incarnated into the real world by Panaxeth to help his release. He probably had no shortage of his own essence and it was of no use to him in his prison.

Any response he might have given was postponed as a veritable rain of alchemical bombs rained down from the sky around him, forcing him to dodge and shield himself from their effects. Worse, some of the alchemical mixture reformed themselves into tiny liquid animals soon after detonation and started attacking him. Smaller version of the three creatures he was already dealing with, obviously. So annoying.

"You’re the one controlling the birds above us, right?" Silverlake continued. "You can see through their eyes, so I’m sure you can tell how Oganj’s battle is progressing."

Zorian glanced at the battle in question and sighed internally. The performance of Eldemar’s eagle mages was praiseworthy. Any compulsion Zorian might have placed on them had long since worn off, but they kept fighting Oganj regardless and they held their own admirably.