Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

The missile swarm crashed into Zorian’s shield like a hammer. If Taiven had been facing old Zorian, the one that existed before the time loop, then this would have been the end — any shield he may have erected to defend himself would have been sloppily done and would have broken like glass under the onslaught. But she wasn’t. She was facing Zorian the time traveler, who had spent quite a lot of time repeating this month. Almost two years, by his count.

In the great scheme of things, two years was not a huge amount of time. Nonetheless, that was still two years of continual combat magic practice, most of it focused on a handful of spells — including shield. His shield spell was nearly flawless. The plane of force was practically invisible when not under strain, and Zorian could overcharge it a great deal to strengthen it further.

The shield held. The missile swarm crashed against it ineffectually, causing the nigh-invisible surface to turn opaque under the strain but doing little else of note.

Before Taiven could collect her wits and try another attack, Zorian sent a mana pulse at the vial flying towards her. The vial shattered in midair, as if crushed by some unseen fist, and a thick white smoke billowed forth from the spot as the liquid turned to gas.

The vial wasn’t anything special, just a simple alchemical mixture that caused coughing fits in whomever inhaled it, but it was enough to incapacitate Taiven, who stumbled out of the smoke dazed and off guard. Zorian mercilessly used her moment of weakness to send a smasher straight into her torso, hoping that was the end of the fight but half-expecting Taiven to throw a shield at the last second to save herself.

Something, perhaps his empathy, warned him to dodge when Taiven suddenly thrust her staff towards the incoming missile (and by extension, him). It was a good thing he did, because she didn’t cast a shield — she launched a massive battering ram of force that batted his attack aside like a snowflake and continued towards him unimpeded. Sadly, his dodge was only partial, and while he avoided the main thrust of the attack he was still caught in the outer area of effect. The attack sent him spinning like a rag doll and he soon found himself crashing head-first into the cold, unforgiving floor of the training hall. It was probably only because of the cushioning wards in the room that he didn’t end up with a cracked head or a concussion at the end of it.

Since Taiven seemed to be more interested in coughing her lungs out than trying to finish the fight, he remained on the floor for a while, waiting for his head to stop spinning. Apparently he made the coughing gas a bit stronger than he intended. He laboriously climbed back to his feet and walked towards the recovering Taiven.

«You have a very strange definition of non-lethal,» he told her.

«Serves you right, you *cough* cheater!» she growled.

«I got you good though, didn’t I?» Zorian smiled.

She huffed and swung her staff at him lightly, obviously expecting him to dodge the slow-moving object. In the interest of showing off, Zorian erected a shield instead, causing the staff to bounce off and wrench itself out of her hand.

Taiven looked at the shield curiously and gave it a couple of good hard knocks. The plane of force didn’t even turn opaque, much less give way to her hits.

«What the hell is that shield of yours made of, anyway?» Taiven asked. «It took 5 missiles without breaking and it looks… different. It’s almost entirely transparent; I can see it only because I’m standing so close to you at the moment. Back when we were fighting, I didn’t even see it until my attack hit. I thought you were trying to shield yourself with your hand or something at first.»

«It’s just a shield spell, just greatly overcharged and superbly executed,» said Zorian. «I spent a lot of time practicing that spell.»

«Still wouldn’t have helped you without that stupid trick you pulled,» Taiven scoffed. «This was supposed to be a spell battle, dammit!»

«You said you wanted to see how I fight,» Zorian shrugged. «By the way, how did you know where to fire that attack of yours? You had your eyes shut pretty tight from what I could see.»

«Oh. That’s just a little trick one of my teachers taught me,» Taiven said. «I doubt it would help you much, though — it’s pretty wasteful in terms of mana usage.»

«What do you mean?» Zorian asked.

«Well, it’s a pretty simple move that involves expelling a large quantity of mana and saturating the area around you with it. You can then sort of sense your surroundings through the resulting mana cloud. The information you gain is very rudimentary, but you can easily spot concentrated mana constructs like that magic missile you threw at me. I actually didn’t know where you were, even with the aid of the mana cloud, but I figured that if I aimed in the direction from which the attack came from I’d probably catch you as well.»