Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  The undead dragon's beam impacted the wall and blew a huge crater in its surface, easily digging through more than half of its thickness. However, the nearby material in the rest of the wall quickly flowed into the hole, filling it up in a matter of seconds. Soon, the whole thing looked as if it had never been damaged in the first place.

  The dragon fired the beam two more times, trying to overwhelm the defense by targeting the same spot on the wall through continuous fire. It failed. It simply could not deal enough damage to counteract the wall's regenerative abilities.

  Undaunted by the failure, the skeletal dragon continued flying towards the command area. The two fire vortexes that were created to deal with the initial undead horde, still going strong, moved to intercept the creature. The dragon actually swerved from its trajectory to confront one of the vortexes, breathing some kind of massive dispelling wave at it. Although the flame of the vortex grew noticeably dimmer in the wave's passage, it resisted dispersal. At the same time, volley after volley of spell projectiles started homing in towards the undead dragon as it entered the range of defending mages. The spells hurled at it were very diverse – just about every one of them was different from the rest in some fashion. After a while Zorian realized that they were testing the dragon's wards to see if there were any obvious weaknesses in its defenses.

  Unfortunately, the attack spells hurled at the skeletal dragon were about as successful as the dragon's long-range attack on the command area was – which was to say, they weren't. Part of the problem was that the skeleton dragon was surprisingly agile, swooping through the air with incredible grace, and a part of it was that it had its own forcefield to protect itself. It was just a simple force aegis, nothing fancy, but there was a reason why the aegis series of spells was so popular among mages – they worked pretty well. A layer of force like that could stop anything that a physical obstacle could… and most spells couldn't go through solid objects.

  Still, the spell volleys continued to come, and the two fire vortexes did their damnedest to engulf the dragon and drag it into their fiery depths. Though the vortexes looked like energy constructs, they could evidently exert plenty of physical force, because they managed to completely halt the dragon's advance. Their attempts to do actual damage nonetheless proved completely ineffectual. The skeletal dragon seemed to possess inexhaustible quantities of mana for the purposes of powering its defenses, and everything that connected with it was shrugged off. It was probably powered by captured souls, much like the mansion it was defending.

  But the skeletal dragon's advance had been halted, and no defense was truly perfect. One of the mages found a spell that was remarkably good at burning through the thing's shield (some kind of disc made out of purple fire that glued itself to the surface of the shield and kept draining it) and eventually the first layer of the skeleton dragon's defenses fell. Unfortunately, the undead dragon seemed to have realized it had found itself in an unenviable position and promptly intensified its struggles. It fired one attack after another at the fire vortexes, occasionally sending an attack or two at the other threats targeting it, causing both vortexes to disperse.

  And then it fired its yellow beams again, but this time it didn't aim them directly at the command area or the rest of the Eldemarian forces. Instead, it fired the beam at the ground in front of its targets, dragging the beams across the landscape. Huge amounts of dust and gravel were thrown into the air, reducing visibility and disrupting many the spell volleys coming after it. Many of the spell projectiles fared poorly when aimed through dust clouds, detonating prematurely or veering off course.

  By now, Zorian was completely certain that he was not dealing with a mindless automaton like most of the undead were. The decisions made by the skeletal dragon clearly indicated there was a sapient mind driving its actions – either the construct itself was not as mindless as your average skeleton or Sudomir was personally piloting it through some remote link, much like Zorian had been piloting his golems the last time he'd invaded Iasku Mansion.

  If the dragon was not mindless undead, then that meant it was potentially vulnerable to mind magic. He tried to extend his mind sense far enough to check up on the idea, but the dragon was still too far away for that.

  "Can you lure it closer?" Zorian asked Alanic. "I know it's dangerous, but I might be able to disable it if I can get close to it."

  "We're already working on it," one of the mages close to them said suddenly, cutting into the conversation before Alanic could say anything. "We have a surprise of our own prepared for it once it gets close enough, but we can't be too blatant about luring it here or it will realize something is wrong and keep its distance. What do you have in mind?"

  "I want to try attacking its mind," Zorian admitted.

  "Oh? A mind mage, huh?" the man asked him rhetorically, giving him a speculative look. "Could work, I guess. Tell me when you think the moment is right and we'll try to give you an opening."

  Zorian didn't really understand what kind of opening they thought they could give him when it came to mind magic assault, but he nodded in assent anyway.

  While most of the mages had been trying to deal with the undead dragon, the rest of Eldemar's forces had been busy dealing with the iron beaks assailing them. At some point, isolated packs of winter wolves and war trolls had joined the iron beaks in their counter attack, but somehow Eldemar's forces were still holding. After a few minutes, Zorian noticed that some of the mages were teleporting away and returning with extra forces and realized how – apparently Eldemar had been prepared for the possibility of the assault going wrong and prepared reinforcements to be brought in as needed. A small but steady stream of new mages and mundane soldiers constantly kept trickling into the area to strengthen the existing forces.

  "It's coming!" the mage that had previously spoken with Zorian shouted. And indeed, the undead dragon had clearly decided it was done playing around and made a beeline straight at the command area once more. The man turned to Zorian. "We'll hit it with a dozen paralysis bolts the moment it comes close enough. It probably won't do anything, but it should tie up some of its mental defenses. The moment I give you the signal, do your thing. You have one attempt, and then we'll go with our plan."

  Zorian concentrated at the approaching enemy, extending his mind sense as far as he could in the skeletal dragon's direction. The dragon fired beam after beam at the barrier protecting the command area, and the damage done to the wall was noticeably growing more severe as it got closer. At point blank range, it could probably cut through the wall of ectoplasm and deal actual damage to the command area… provided it still had enough power to punch through the rest of the defensive wards that had been erected around the area when the place had been made. Still, even if the wards could hold out against the beams for a time, they surely would not last long. It was best to stop the thing as quickly as possible.

  The skeleton dragon accelerated as it got closer, clearly intending to ram the wall with its entire mass, trusting its durability. The moment it had entered Zorian's psychic range, however, he knew he had it. He could sense the mind behind the dragon clear as day. It was shielded, but Zorian could immediately tell it was not enough to stop him from breaking through. He didn't have much time, though, the dragon was traveling pretty damn fast and-

  Twelve bright blue bolts suddenly converged at the approaching skeletal dragon, cast by the mages around Zorian. This close, their target could not dodge, even with its amazing aerial acrobatics, and its force aegis had been exhausted long ago. The moment the bolts had struck the undead dragon, their combined force smashed the mental shield protecting its mind like a hammer striking an egg. For a fraction of a second, the dragon's skeletal form even grew rigid, continuing to fly forward due to existing momentum but temporarily paralyzed by the combined effect of those twelve bolts. But although the paralysis itself had been shrugged off almost instantly, that was immaterial – the important thing was that its mental shield had been stripped away from it, leaving i
t completely unguarded.

  Zorian immediately launched a barrage of psychic knives straight at the mind that controlled the dragon. The controller recoiled in pain and shock, caught by surprise by the brutal assault, and Zorian took advantage of its weakened influence on the undead dragon to seize control of it for a moment.

  In an instant, the skeleton dragon changed direction of its flight downward, plowing straight into the ground with all of its considerable speed. Mountains of dust and gravel erupted into the air as it dug a deep trench into the ground below, slamming into several trees (the trees came out worse in the collision) before gradually coming to a halt some distance from the command area.

  For a moment, everyone around Zorian halted and turned towards him in silence.

  "Holy hell," somebody said. "That actually worked."

  "It's still intact," Zorian said tersely. "And the controller is still fighting me for influence. All I can do is keep it still for the moment, and even that isn't going to last long."

  Indeed, while the undead dragon's controller had been caught off guard by Zorian's move, the fact was that trying to attack a controller through the puppet they were controlling was not as easy thing to do, even for him. It greatly lowered the speed and power of Zorian's mental attacks, and the controller had already restored their mental defenses by now and was doing his damnedest to reassert control over the skeletal dragon. The blasted thing clearly had some kind of powerful control array built into it, because Zorian was quickly losing the battle for control over it.

  "You've done more than enough," Alanic said, before turning to one of the army leaders around him. "Fire the living metal rounds."

  Behind the command area, four hidden artillery emplacements opened fire, each one unerringly hitting the immobile skeletal dragon. Instead of exploding, the projectiles erupted into a tangled mess of silvery threads that wrapped themselves around the skeletal dragon, seeking to entangle it firmly.

  "Originally we wanted to use this to force it down to the ground," Alanic told him. "But this is even better. Once the living metal roots itself into the ground, that thing will never set flight again. How long do you think-"

  Zorian felt the mind behind the dragon finally wrench control of the body away from him, and the immobile form of the skeletal dragon suddenly began to struggle and thrash against the metal threads.

  "Nevermind," Alanic sighed. "I guess we'll have to do this the hard way."

  Though the undead dragon struggled fiercely, the metal threads appeared unbreakable. They writhed and coiled like some kind of metallic worms, constantly seeking purchase on the long-dead bones. Far from freeing itself, the dragon's struggle seemed to only leave it in direr straits, as the threads took advantage of its shifting and thrashing to bind it more firmly. It tried to render the threads inert by breathing a dispelling wave at them, cycled through four different magical fields (also doing nothing to the threads), before finally trying to fire its deadly yellow beam at the nearby command area. Unfortunately for it, the threads had restricted its movements too much by that point, and it could no longer point its head in the proper direction.

  Frustrated, the dragon roared, much like it had when it had first revealed itself. This close, its roar was more than just an intimidation tool – the sound was loud enough to rupture one's eardrums and the kinetic shockwave created by the roar itself could easily send an unprotected man flying. Fortunately, the command area was warded against such relatively minor damage and Zorian simply had to endure some painful ringing in his ears in the aftermath.

  Eldemarian forces started to rain spells and artillery shells at the dragon, apparently unconcerned with the possibility of damaging the living metal threads that were keeping the undead dragon chained to the ground. For good reason, it turned out, as nothing seemed to do any damage to them. Or perhaps any damage dealt to them was immediately healed – the living metal thing they were made of seemed to be a very morphic, malleable material.

  Sudomir didn't seem to like the predicament his fancy undead superweapon found itself in, because not long after the attack barrage started, several massive magical projectiles were launched into the air from Iasku Mansion. They ascended high into the sky before descending down to the earth again, travelling across a parabolic trajectory and crossing immense distances in the process – far beyond what normal magic was capable of.

  Zorian was reminded of that very first invasion (that he could actually remember), and the fake fireworks that served as a beginning of the invasion. It was the same thing. He could instantly tell he was dealing with artillery magic. Spells like those took a long time to cast and used incredible amounts of mana to power them, but they had both extreme range and extreme damage potential.

  Zorian wasn't the only one who had immediately figured it out. Almost immediately, the leadership of the assault force decided to abandon their current position – two of the projectiles were aimed at the command area, and nobody was sure whether the existing defenses would hold out against even one. Fortunately, artillery spells like these ones were very slow, making it easy to move away before they hit. Fundamentally, they were intended to be used against static targets, and were ineffective against things that could move out of the way. But Zorian suspected that Sudomir never intended for them to actually die – he just wanted to disrupt their attack on his pet undead dragon. A ploy that was quite successful, as Eldemarian forces scrambled to get out of the way of the descending artillery spells.

  But Eldemarian mages didn't just passively run away. Even as they shifted their forces to escape from the blast areas, they began to cast artillery spells of their own as retaliation. Soon, several new artillery spells rose in the air, targeting Iasku Mansion. Sudomir had still struck first, though, so by the time they were halfway to their target, the artillery spells that had been launched from Iasku Mansion reached their destination. One of them was, amazingly enough, targeting the skeletal dragon. It seemed Sudomir was gambling on the idea that his dragon was tougher than the living metal threads that kept it restrained.

  The world erupted into fire, light and noise.

  Almost immediately afterwards, the skeletal dragon flew out of the dust cloud created above its former prison. It was missing one of its legs, and some of its bones were cracked, the spell formula inscribed on them growing dim, but it still moved. Some of the living metal threads still clung to its bones, stubbornly refusing to let go, but there were too few of them now to do anything more than annoy it. It seemed that Sudomir had gambled correctly.

  The world exploded again as Eldemarian artillery spells reached their destination as well. A shining golden dome of force intercepted the projectiles, shielding Iasku Mansion from devastation, but it was left dim and flickering in the aftermath.

  The undead dragon immediately turned back, retreating towards Iasku Mansion. Its retreat seemed to signify a general retreat, because the surviving winter wolves and war trolls also fled back into the safety of their base.

  As for the iron beaks, their numbers had been cut down to less than half, and the moment they saw the skeletal dragon fleeing from the assault force they scattered into every direction, flying away from Iasku Mansion at maximum speed. Scanning the minds of several frantic iron beaks flying above him, Zorian could tell they had no intention of ever returning to this place. Whatever force Sudomir had used to keep them on his side was apparently insufficient to make them ignore the massive losses they had suffered in this battle.

  The first battle for Iasku Mansion was finished, but nobody was fooled into thinking the rest of the siege would be easy.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Over the course of the next several hours, Sudomir did his best to stall Eldemar's forces as much as possible. His surviving forces launched constant raids on the assault force, doing little damage at this point but successfully breaking the army's forward momentum. The skeletal dragon, in particular, was still a menace – it no longer made bold, frontal attacks like the one it had performed in the
beginning, but it made sure to go after any perceived weakness or recklessness. In addition to that, the area immediately around the mansion was full of hastily erected traps, both magical and mundane, as well as ambush parties composed out of those familiar black-clad undead corpses that Zorian had met before in Iasku Mansion. Finally, the defensive wards on the mansion were running at maximum power, burning through whatever mana reserves they had stockpiled to resist the constant artillery bombardment that was being directed at it ever since Sudomir had launched his artillery spells at the assault force.

  At first, Zorian felt that this kind of stalling action was a perfectly sensible decision on Sudomir's part. He was probably buying himself enough time to evacuate his Ibasan buddies back to their other bases through the dimensional gate in his basement, and would probably escape through it himself at the end. But as hours went by, it became obvious that Sudomir really intended to fight the assault force to the bitter end for some reason. He could have surely escaped ages ago if he really wanted to.

  Regardless of how determined Sudomir was to defend his mansion to the end, the outcome had already been decided at the end of that first battle. As hours passed, the noose kept tightening around Sudomir's neck. The forest around the mansion was burned down to cinders to prevent further ambushes and traps, Sudomir's stockpile of undead minions eventually started to run out and the mansion's wards were clearly on the verge of breaking.

  And then Sudomir did something that Zorian would have never expected him to.

  He surrendered.

  Even more amazingly, his surrender was not some kind of trap like Zorian suspected it was when he first heard about it. In the end, Sudomir really did open the gates of his mansion and powered down the defensive wards, letting himself be captured. That… just didn't make sense to Zorian. He could have escaped easily enough – the Ibasans inside the mansion certainly hadn't stayed – Eldemarian forces found plenty of evidence that a lot of people had been living inside the mansion until very recently, but no-one other than Sudomir himself was still present. Even if the Ibasans had shut the gate on him, Sudomir could have surely just rode into the sunset on his fancy skeletal dragon.