Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«Um, you’re welcome,» Tinami said, fiddling with the silver amulet she was wearing and watching the dust cloud covering the corridor for any sign of movement. The amulet seemed to be the spell formula she was using to cast the purple beams.

«Here they come,» Briam said.

«Remember the plan,» Taiven said. «Let them all advance into the corridor before triggering the explosive runes.»

«What if they notice the trap?» one of the unknown girls asked.

«Then at least they’ll be hesitant to push forward so insistently,» Taiven said.

They didn’t bother closing the door — that would just result in them being pelted by wooden splinters and shrapnel when the mages forcibly broke down the door. They had lost two students before they learned that lesson.

Sure enough, there was a barrage of concussive beams and battering rams preceding the war troll charge. After Briam and Taiven repelled the initial charge with a fairly anemic defense, the mages moved into the corridor to provide support, sensing that victory was near. That’s when Zorian released a mana pulse towards the nearest cluster of explosive runes and the entire corridor collapsed in a deafening explosion. A huge plume of dust and gravel rushed into the tiny room they currently occupied, but Taiven was ready and immediately created a large-ish bubble of clear air to stop them from choking to death.

«Well,» Taiven coughed, having been too slow to shield them all from all of the dust that was obscuring the room. «That should stop the attacks for a while. Still, we have a bit of a problem. This room is a dead end. The only exit is this corridor and the window to the outside.»

«The outside is swarming with enemies,» Zorian said.

«We don’t have much choice, though, do we?» Briam asked rhetorically. «We can’t stay here.»

«How are we going to get down?» one of the unknown girls asked. «We’re on the second floor, we can’t just jump out of the window.»

«Hmm… alright, how many of you know how to cast the floating disc spell?» asked Taiven raising her own hand.

Zorian was the only one who raised his own hand to match.

«Ugh. Fine, that will have to do, I suppose. Okay Zorian, I’m going to go first and get these four dead-weights down and you follow after me with those two.»

«Hey!» one of the dead-weights complained.

«Sorry, but I call it like I see it,» Taiven said pitilessly. «Let’s go, before even more of these assholes converge on our position to see what the explosion was all about.»

And so Zorian created a large floating disc of force outside the window and jumped on it, closely followed by Briam and Tinami. At first it seemed like everything would go flawlessly — there were no enemies waiting for them at the bottom, Taiven had successfully touched down, and his disk was not giving any indication of failing under the combined weight of people standing on it. Then a flock of iron beaks suddenly appeared from around the corner and Zorian swore angrily.

There was really nothing he could do to deal with a flock of iron beaks, and Briam and Tinami weren’t much better. There were about 50 of them, so even if he could snipe a couple off the sky it wouldn’t mean a thing. Tinami probably couldn’t make that pain beam of hers home in on a target, and iron beaks were very agile flyers. As for Briam, his attack options seemed to be strictly limited to his fire drake, and there was no reason for the flock to approach close enough to be caught in its fire breath when they could just rain their iron feathers on them from distance.

He fired off a homing piercer anyway, and noticed out of the corner of his eye that Taiven had launched a small swarm of 7 homing magic missiles. Eight iron beaks fell, but it was a drop in the bucket, and then it was the iron beaks’ turn. The air in front of them blurred, and a cloud of glittering feathers was launched at them.

Faced with the choice of trying to tank several hundred magical iron feathers and trying to survive a fairly dangerous fall, Zorian knew which one he wanted to chance. He immediately dismissed the floating disc and all three of them promptly plunged towards the ground.

This would probably be the end of this particular restart — knowing his luck, he was going to break his neck when he hit the ground — but on the bright side he managed to evade the deadly feathers! As he tumbled through the air, his eyes briefly met with those of Briam’s fire drake, and he couldn’t help but think it was glaring at him. It was hard to tell when that thing was angry, though, since it always looked pretty pissed off to Zorian.

Suddenly, just before they were about to hit the ground, their fall was halted and they touched down on the ground as gently as a feather. Before Zorian could ask what happened, a huge swarm of flaming missiles erupted from somewhere behind him, annihilating the entire iron beak flock.

«You know, Zorian,» Zach said behind him, «sometimes I wonder if you have a death wish. How do you get yourself into these kind of situations? You’re almost as bad as me!»