Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

If he knew anything about how Taiven thought — and he did — she would immediately go on the offensive. Her battle philosophy basically boiled down to ‘attack hard and you won’t have to defend to begin with’… though she could defend too, if pressed. He had no way to win a protracted fight with her, even if he was technically a better mage than she was, so he would have to resort to trickery if he wanted to prevail here.

It would be nice if he could eke out a win against her — her face when she lost against little old ‘Roach’ was bound to be absolutely glorious to behold.

A blink and suddenly there were 5 magic missiles homing in on him. He let them crash uselessly against his shield and responded with a somewhat exotic electrical spell. A beam of electricity shot towards Taiven, who erected a basic shield of her own to tank it.

Half-way towards its target, the beam split into three smaller beams — one pivoted to the left of Taiven, the other to the right, and the third one straight above it. And then they all changed their paths again and crashed against her from three different directions, completely bypassing the shield in front of her.

It wasn’t enough. Somehow, Taiven managed to smoothly transition from a single-direction shield to a full aegis before the beams managed to reach her. Zorian threw a couple of smoke bombs around the training hall to blind her, relying on his mind sense to tell him where she was, and started casting a complicated spell that wasn’t etched into his spell rod the moment his location got obscured by the smoke.

Taiven responded by casting several gusts of wind to disperse the smoke and hopefully catch him in the area of effect as well. She had just about stripped him of his smokescreen when he finished the spell and felt his mana reserves drain almost completely dry.

‘If this doesn’t work, then that’s it for this fight,’ he thought.

A bright beam of concentrated force shot out from his hand and slammed into Taiven’s shield. The shield flared at the point of impact, shattering almost instantly, and Taiven was lifted off her feet by the impact and thrown violently against the floor. She didn’t get up, rendered unconscious by the impact.

«Oops,» Zorian said quietly. «I think I overdid it just a little — that could have easily killed her if the wards hadn’t worked properly.»

After casting a few divinations to make sure she was mostly okay and not bleeding internally or something like that, Zorian allowed himself to smile. He would have to work on his restraint, but it was a victory. And she hadn’t been any gentler towards him in their previous fights, so she hardly had any right to complain about excessive force. He couldn’t wait to see Taiven’s face when she woke up.

«Come on, Roach,» Taiven growled. «Find those spiders of yours so we can be done with this mission. I’m getting sick of this place already.»

Zorian sighed and refocused on scanning his surroundings. This would be going faster if Taiven stopped snapping at him every so often — talk about being a sore loser.

«Hey,» a male voice whispered into Zorian’s ear, breaking him out of thoughts. «What happened between you and Taiven to get her so bothered, anyway?»

Zorian glanced at Grunt and considered how to answer for a second. He decided to be blunt and truthful.

«I beat her in a spar,» he said. «She thinks I cheated.»

Grunt gave him a considering look. «You beat Taiven in a spar? Aren’t you a third year?»

«Sure am,» Zorian agreed, before he noticed a familiar presence on his mental map. «Oh hey, there they are.»

After the initial introductions were done, Taiven immediately moved onto the reason they were down in the tunnels in the first place, only to get disappointed.

«So you don’t have the watch?» Taiven asked.

«Alas, I’m afraid the next group of attackers managed to break into our treasury and escaped with a great many of our artifacts… the watch we claimed from the thief being among them,» the matriarch said regretfully. «I do know where their base is, however.»

This was all a bunch of bullshit, Zorian knew. The watch was indeed somewhere else — specifically in one of the forward outposts that the invaders used to launch attacks on the aranea — but it was there because the aranea had put it there. The idea was for Taiven and her group to stumble onto the outpost, realize they’re stumbled onto something big — bigger than they could handle — and then report it to the authorities.

It was Zorian’s job to make sure Taiven and her group survived the encounter with the invaders.

«How convenient,» Zorian scoffed, «that getting the watch involves taking out one of your enemies in the process.»

«A happy coincidence,» the matriarch said easily. «We both get something out of it, after all — you get the location of the watch for free, and I get to deal with one of my problems without risking my Web. Now… do you want the location of the base or not?»

«Just who are these enemies of yours, anyway?» Taiven asked.