by nobody103
"You done yet?" Zorian asked the other boy. Kael ignored him for a moment, staring at some passage in the book in front of him, but then shook his head and pushed it away from him, massaging his eyes.
"Yes, I'm done," he said. He pointed at the notebook placed on top of a large stack of books. "The notebook is there. Everything is ready on your end?"
"Mostly," Zorian said. "I still have to write down some stuff I found out today."
Kael raised an eyebrow at him. "I thought you said you were taking a break from the cult today?"
"I did," Zorian said. "Doesn't mean I did absolutely nothing, though."
"Oh?"
"Basically, I was thinking about warding, and how the upper level cultists all lived in warded houses that were a pain to break into and was thinking of how to speed the process up. And then I remembered that there is not only already a type of tool to do that present on the black market, I actually know where to find one for free. The aranea had stolen a ward scanner from one of the invaders a while before the start of the time loop, and the device was surely still in the destroyed colony."
"You said you don't like going there," Kael noted.
"I don't," Zorian sighed. "The place is… it has too many bad memories. And the corpses of the aranea are literally scattered all over the place, so it's hard to go there and not be reminded of that whole fiasco that saw them destroyed."
"I still think they somehow ejected from the time loop rather than soul-killed," Kael said. "I agree with what other people told you – souls are indestructible. There has got to be a trick there."
"Yes, well, time travel is supposed to be impossible too," Zorian pointed out. "Though I'll admit that I'm hoping you're right. Never mind that for the moment, the point is that I went there to find the ward scanner… and I couldn't find it."
"So?" Kael asked.
"So, that means that either somebody already took it or that there is some secret part of the aranean complex that I'm unaware of. And frankly, I think it's the latter. I mean, once I thought about it a little, the sheer emptiness of the aranean settlement was very suspicious… The Cyorian web was very wealthy and surely had a sizeable treasury. The matriarch often implied they have some kind of storage full of trade items and such. But I never saw anything like that when I checked the settlement out earlier, probably because I was very uncomfortable there and in a hurry to leave."
"You think there is something important there?"
"Time loop related? No, probably not," Zorian admitted. "But I need every advantage over Red Robe I can get, and there could be a lot of useful stuff there. Who knows what the aranea have squirrelled away over the years?"
"True," Kael agreed, rising from his seat and popping his spine. "Well, I'm tired. I think I'll go to sleep now. Is there anything else we need to talk about?"
"There's nothing pressing I can think of," Zorian said, shaking his head.
"I see. Just so you know, I'll be taking Kana with me on a trip to a nearby village on the day of the summer festival. I don't really want to be in Cyoria when the invasion comes, and I'm even less enthused about Kana being caught up in the invasion."
"I understand."
"I'm glad. If you want, I can take Kirielle with me," said Kael. "I know you've been agonizing about what to do with her for a while now."
"Yeah," agreed Zorian. "I don't want to leave her alone for the invasion, but at the same time I need to be able to move freely if I am to investigate what's happening with the invasion after all these changes. You think she'll agree to go with you?"
"I don't know, that's up to you," Kael shrugged. "All I can do is make an offer."
"Fine, fine, I'll talk to her," Zorian sighed. "That'll be a lovely talk, I can already tell."
"Notify me what you decided by tomorrow evening," said Kael.
And just like that, the restart was already almost done. Tomorrow he would see how the invasion of the city proceeded this time around.
✦ ✧ ✦
Zorian looked over his things, trying to remember if he had forgotten something crucial in his rush to finish the preparations in time. He couldn't think of anything, but it would be just like him to forget something blindingly obvious while worrying about the irrelevant minutiae.
He still had several hours to burn until the start of the invasion, however, so he left the preparations alone for a now and left his room to find some quick diversion. Remembering that Imaya kept a whole miniature library of exotic works in her house, he set off to browse its shelves in search of a good time waster. He found Imaya already there, though, staring at her collection with a faraway look.
"Miss Kuroshka?" he asked worriedly. He was getting some worrying feelings from her with his empathy. "Are you alright?"
"Hm?" she mumbled, before her brain rebooted again and she truly focused on his presence. "Oh, Zorian. How long have you been standing there?"
"I only just came here. Been looking for a book to pass the time with, but you looked…"
"Don't worry," she sighed. "I'm just disturbed by the sudden quiet in the house. It looks so… lonely."
"Huh. I thought you'd be glad to have some peace and quiet for a change," Zorian said.
She snorted. "I think you're projecting your own attitude here a little," she said.
"Probably," admitted Zorian. He always did like to have some space from everybody else, and would have probably welcomed a situation like this in her place. "But Kael and the girls are only gone for one day, so it's hardly a big deal. You could have gone with them, you know?"
"I know. But if there really is rioting during the festival, like you said there might be, I don't want to leave my house to the looters. It's… it's the only thing I have left."
"Oh…"
"Sorry, getting a little personal there," she smiled. "Is there any particular book you were looking f-"
There was a loud knock on the front door. Imaya and Zorian both raised their eyebrows at each other – apparently neither of the two knew who might be coming for a visit in this time of day. Most people were getting ready to attend the summer festival somewhere, either at some friend's house or some other venue. Imaya hurried towards the door to see who it was.
There was a brief pause where Imaya had a brief exchange with whoever was at the door, after which Imaya called out at Zorian to join them.
"Zorian, your date is here!" she yelled.
"My date?" he asked incredulously, more to himself than to anyone else. How could he have a date when he didn't-
She didn't.
But she totally did. As he came to the front door to see what Imaya was talking about, the frowning face of Akoja greeted him from the doorframe.
"Hello, Ako," Zorian said blandly. "What a surprise to see you here. I suppose Ilsa had something to do with this?"
"I, yes," she fumbled, her composure breaking for a bit. "Miss Zileti told me to accompany you to the dance, since we are both without a partner."
Now wasn't that interesting. How the hell had Ilsa known that? True, Zorian had no date for the dance, and in fact had no intention of attending the academy dance at all, but she shouldn't have been aware of that! Zorian had never told her anything to that effect, nor did he hint at that to anyone except… Imaya. Damn.
He gave his landlord a dirty look before refocusing back on Akoja. This was not part of the plan. He was supposed to roam around the city, observing the invaders in action and noting the changes to their tactics as a result of the various changes arising from the destruction of the aranea and that unfortunate mercenary band he'd hired to participate in the ambush.
Sometimes he hated his empathy. Without it, he would never have known just how much this meant for Akoja and how hard blowing her off to do his own thing would hit her.
"We still have several hours before we have to be at the dance hall. Come inside and wait with Imaya for a bit while I run some urgent errands in the city," he said.
"What?" she stammered, confused, as Zorian sq
ueezed past her through the door and began walking into the city. "Wait, you can't just-"
Zorian quickly cast the teleport spell and let the city's teleport beacon draw him into Cyoria's teleport access point. He had lots of work to do and only so much time to execute it.
✦ ✧ ✦
"What were you in such a hurry for, earlier?" Akoja asked as they slowly made their way towards the academy. She was surprisingly calm and polite, all things considered. Zorian had thought she'd be more annoyed at him because of his 'emergency exit' earlier.
"I had something already arranged before you arrived. I had to take care of some things when you came knocking at Imaya's door," Zorian said. "Cancel some things and adjust others."
Specifically, he was placing marker stones in various parts of the city to make scrying easier. Watching the invasion forces move through the city was not quite the same as ambushing isolated battlegroups and rooting through their minds, but at least it was something.
Maybe it was better this way. His original plan was kind of ambitious. Possibly too ambitious…
As they talked, Akoja told him a little about how the rest of his classmates handled the changes to the restart. It was mostly just idle chat, though it did remind him that he hadn't paid much attention to his class in this restart. There was just so much to do in this particular restart that interaction with his classmates sort of fell by the wayside. Considering that one of his motivation for coming back to Cyoria had been to see and talk to them again, that was something that should probably be remedied in the near future.
The night proceeded far more smoothly than the last one where he'd had Akoja as his date – she seemed to have far more respect and concern for his wishes this time around, though Zorian couldn't for the life of him figure out why. In some ways he had actually been a bigger jerk now than he had back then. Regardless, once the flares started hitting the city, he snuck away from her and started scrying the city for information.
The initial barrage of artillery spells was different this time around. While the old artillery barrage used by the invaders specifically targeted critical buildings whose destruction was calculated to send the city into chaos and cripple its ability to organize a defense, the new barrage was… uninspired. Oh, they still targeted the central police station, the city hall, and other obvious targets, but things like backup government buildings and armories were left intact. In fact, a lot of the flares seem to have been aimed completely at random, demolishing unremarkable clusters of houses and civilian apartments – something that would admittedly greatly increase the number of deaths in the invasion, but was of questionable strategic benefit. Bizarrely, every single temple in the city was the target of at least one flare – Zorian had no idea what the invaders were trying to accomplish there, and it definitely wasn't something they did in their previous invasion plan.
The fights around the city were far fiercer than they had been in Zorian's previous restarts. Partly it was due to the defenders being in a lot better shape this time around, courtesy of the invasion's poor choice of targets for their initial strike, but there was more to it than that. The invasion forces seemed a lot less coordinated than he remembered them being. They moved a lot less purposefully through the city and often blew off their apparent goals to rampage through the undefended civilian neighborhoods. That happened sometimes in the past as well, but never in such high numbers.
As far as the initial attack on the academy went, the invaders chose their actions there just as poorly as they did elsewhere. The new barrage targeted the academy building directly instead of aiming for the less well defended dormitories and support buildings like the old barrage did. Consequently, the flares simply splashed harmlessly off the heavy wards protecting the main complex, doing minimal damage. With no need to render aid and run damage control in the peripheral part of the academy, the teachers were free to keep their forces concentrated and organize the evacuation of the student body and other non-combatant employees much more competently than they had before.
Funny, he originally thought the academy was massively incompetent for leading the students into massive underground death traps, especially since that involved going over vast swathes of open ground where they would be completely exposed. They didn't look so dumb right now. The evacuation went off without a single problem, and no one attacked them when they were shoved inside the shelters.
Zorian was pretty sure at this point that he was looking at what the invasion was really like – what it would look like had Red Robe never given them any help. When he really thought about it, most of their 'mistakes' can be chalked up to being far less well informed and lacking the ability to bypass every ward and defense they encounter because they've been either keyed into them or knew how to counter it quickly.
It would appear that Red Robe really did abandon the invaders in this restart, right down to the very end. Was this a one-time thing or did Red Robe suddenly decide not to meddle in the invasion anymore?
His musings were interrupted by Ilsa coming to the shelter and demanding that every combat-capable student come with her to defend the academy. Thanks to him participating in monster hunts with Taiven's group, that included him as well, so he got up from his spot on the floor and joined the group of students following her outside. There, he saw what had gotten Ilsa so concerned that she was recruiting students as defenders – the invaders were massing just outside the academy wards, preparing for an all-out assault. Entire regiments of war trolls, winter wolves and skeletons were present there, supported by their mage handlers and thick flocks of razor beaks. More unusually, there were a couple of flying drakes mixed in among the deadly corvids, and two bulky, elephant-sized lizards stalked in front of the miniature army.
"Thunder lizards," Ilsa said distastefully from beside him. "Immensely tough and very destructive. They can breathe arcs of electricity in a straight line in front of them, so try not to fight them from the front if you are forced to engage them at all."
Lovely. He never saw those in any previous restarts. Maybe this was something they never felt like committing to the battlefield because they never felt they needed them?
But the time for considering such things was over. Although clearly not fully assembled for attack, the commander of the monstrous horde urged his forced to charge ahead. Maybe he felt that waiting for the rest of the forces would be a bad move since the academy defenders were busily fortifying their positions, or maybe he was just impatient. Either way, they surged ahead, thunder lizards leading the charge.
Zorian knew he could offer very little by simply pouring some more offensive spells into the attacking horde along with the rest of the defenders, but he had a better idea anyway. Focusing on the two thunder lizards, he felt their simplistic minds and was overjoyed to find out that they were far less magic resistance than he had feared. He suspected that might be the case – the invaders were probably controlling those things with mind magic to begin with, so it would only make sense that they were not all that resistant to it. Regardless, this meant he could manipulate them. Not to the extent of directing them like puppets, but enough to negate their attacks.
Sure enough, when the lizards started approaching the makeshift barricades that the teachers had made out of the ground via alteration spells, the two lizards opened their toothy mouths and tried to blow up the barricades with their thunder attack. Zorian quickly seized control of their movements and made them angle their heads towards one another, their thunder attacks colliding with each other's bodies. A surge of anger flooded the minds of the two thunder lizards, and they halted their charge in favor of roaring at each other, too dumb to realize their actions were caused by outside influence. Zorian seized on this opportunity, amplifying their wrath and urging them to fight each other, and the two of them promptly collided with each other and began fighting to death.
To their credit, the rest of the invading forces simply flowed around the two battling behemoths, unconcerned with their failure. The battl
e was joined.
✦ ✧ ✦
Zorian stared at the battle site full of corpses, more than a little bit dazed. He had been in a fair amount of battles ever since he'd gotten pulled into the time loop, but nothing quite like this. The fight had quickly turned chaotic once the two forces seriously started engaging one another, and even now that it was over Zorian still wasn't sure what exactly happened there.
They won in the end, repulsing the attackers – the mages decided to flee when enough of their monster minions got killed – but they lost far more people in the attack than Zorian had thought they would. Zorian himself was surrounded by a pack of winter wolves at one point and only survived thanks to no less than five blasting rods he had smuggled into the dance hall with him. Well, that and Kyron's timely arrival with reinforcements to drive the attackers back.
He jumped in fright when someone's heavy hand clasped his shoulder suddenly, almost blowing their head off with a reflexive piercer before he realized it was just Kyron.
"You're the one that was messing with the heavy-hitter monsters during the whole fight, aren't you?" his combat teacher asked.
"Yeah," Zorian shrugged. No need to keep it a secret this close to the end. "I felt that was the most effective way of contributing to the battle that I was capable of."
"Well, that flying drake would have roasted poor Nora alive if you hadn't made it plow into the ground suddenly, so thanks for that. Though we're really going to have to talk about how you learned how to do that and what exactly your limits are…"