21 - Family
Berix
Toa of Twilight
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
happy tuesday everyone
Zorian
Zach's sphere touched down in the middle of the street just outside Imaya's house. Fortunately, it was very early in the morning. The sun was still rising on the horizon, and there was almost no one around. Zorian barely had a second to get his bearings before Zach practically tackled him off his feet with a full-body hug.
"Where the hell have you been?" Zach had an odd expression on his face. "You're lucky I'm not punching you in the face right now."
"I-" Zorian got halfway through answering before a massive hand grabbed his shoulder.
Artur's eyes were still locked onto his son's body. It lay limp on the cobblestones. The other Anastans were gathered around it, ashen-faced. Talia's arm had been cleanly sliced off, just above the elbow. Sabae's healing had stopped the bleeding, and part of Hugh's shirt was wrapped around it as an improvised bandage. Sabae's hands were now on Godrick's temples, and strange currents of mana were pulsing through her fingers.
"Is there anything ye can do?" Artur's voice was heavy with emotion, but he spoke clearly.
Zorian shook his head. "Godrick's soul departed before I got to his body. Even if he could be physically healed, he couldn't be restored to true life. At least as not as far as I know - I'm not an expert in healing."
Artur grunted. "Yer friend?"
It was a good question. Although neither of them had particularly focused on the area, Zach definitely had the edge in terms of healing skill. The other looper had manoeuvred himself to stand part way between Zorian and Arthur, who loomed almost two heads taller than both of them. Zach couldn't understand Ithonian, of course, so he was watching the exchange with a tense look on his face.
"Zach? Is there anything you can do for Godrick?" Zorian gestured at the stone mage's prone form.
Zach knelt down and touched Godrick on the forehead. He winced. "His skull has been completely shattered in two places, and bone fragments have torn through nearly to the other side of his head. If that wasn't enough, the grey hunter venom was injected directly into his brain. It's mostly dissolved already. I don't think the best healing magic in the world could do much for him now. His soul has departed too, so there's nothing to be done there…"
Zorian pinched the bridge of his nose. If he'd been better prepared, there were a thousand things he could have done differently. With a material focus for the sphere-spell, the exorbitant mana cost would have been less of a constraint, and they might have simply been able to rise out of the Hole with no issues. If he'd taken the time to re-create more simulacra before ascending, then he might have been able to maintain better control over the battle. Even after the fact, things might have still been salvageable - if he'd reacted quickly enough to Godrick's death, he could have tried to make some kind of trap to anchor the soul, like Sudomir did for his wife (not that it had worked out for Sudomir very well).
Or he could have simply refused to let Kanderon send the children with them through the labyrinth to begin with…
"I'm sorry, Artur. I don't think there's anything we can do."
Artur looked lost for a moment, then he remembered something and turned to face Rain. There was a desperate edge to his voice, and he spoke low and quickly. "Harry did something on his world, he saved his friend. Brought her back from the dead. Alustin, ye said it was in their history books."
Alustin tilted his head to the side. "The books weren't clear on what happened that night, or if Harry was even actually involved. I don't know how reliable Earth history books are - it's possible the whole thing was just an urban legend that grew out of control."
Zorian coughed uncomfortably. "I… I actually saw those memories, when I had control of Harry's mind. The resurrection was definitely real. I don't fully understand what happened, but I'm pretty sure the technique he used required the brain to be cooled immediately."
"Alright," Artur said, and knelt down. His deep voice was uncharacteristically shaky. "Who can cool things down? Rain, one of yer auras, right?"
Rain's eyes flashed with recognition. "Cryonics? So about five degrees celsius?"
Zorian nodded, and Rain knelt down next to Artur. The air around them cooled suddenly, and within a few seconds Artur's breath was visible in the now-frosty air.
It was clear Artur was in serious emotional distress, so Zorian tried to keep his voice as gentle as possible. "Artur, I think the low temperatures are supposed to prevent damage to the brain. Godrick's brain is pretty much completely destroyed. I don't think this will work."
Artur didn't even look up. "Rain, get Harry on yer communications machine. I want to know the details of this process."
Rain nodded, and his eyelids flickered for a moment.
Zach put his hand on Zorian's shoulder and whispered into his ear. "Who are all these people? And what language are you all speaking?"
"One second." First, Zorian did a quick mental scan for any onlookers. A curious delivery boy was hidden in an alleyway watching the commotion. A quick mental nudge encouraged him to move on, and a moment of memory editing erased the last few minutes from his mind.
Then, he cast the simulacrum spell. The simulacrum didn't speak, only turned back to stand with Rain and Artur by Godrick's body.
Zorian gestured to Zach, and walked up to Imaya's front door. The simulacrum was going to help the others bring Godrick's body inside in a moment, but he figured it was better to greet old friends without a corpse in tow.
His mind sense told him there were three people inside the house. Imaya was reading in her study. Kael had just woken up in his bedroom upstairs, but his daughter Kana was still asleep.
Imaya opened the door, and did a triple take when she saw Zorian.
"I'm sorry to bother you at this hour," he said. "Is it alright if we borrow a few rooms?"
Her mouth was still hanging open. "We all thought you were dead! We had a funeral!"
A funeral. Zorian's mind point-blank refused to picture that. So he just stood there for a moment while Imaya surged forward and embraced him.
"Have you seen Kiri yet?" she asked.
"No, that's next on the list. Although now I need to have a very urgent debrief with Zach, if that's alright. Do you mind if we use your study?"
"No, of course not. Should I bring you some tea?"
He managed to quickly shake his head before Zach grabbed him by the arm, bodily hauled him into the study, and shut the door behind them.
"Let me say it again, because clearly you mustn't have heard me the first time. Where the hell have you been, Zorian?"
The pair of them sat down on Imaya's couch, and Zorian launched into the brief history of his last four weeks. Zach didn't interrupt once, which was honestly pretty impressive. It was clear Zach was practically bursting with curiosity.
By the end, Zach had sunk back into the couch cushions, and was looking at Zorian with wide eyes.
"You're telling me you got sucked into an alternate reality, knocked out the living defence systems of a random empire, got stuck in a reflected version of yet another reality, designed a spell to follow lich-connections through dimensions, and helped build a magical healing system for an planet of eight thousand million people? Did I miss anything?"
Zorian just shrugged. "We might have triggered a war with a multiversal faction we know pretty much nothing about."
"Do you think they're the ones who sent those spiders after you?" Zach asked contemplatively. "They looked mostly like grey hunters, but I've never seen anything with that kind of regeneration."
Zorian stood up, and paced across the room. "No, those were just waiting in the dungeon when we got there. And I think we have seen that kind of regeneration before. You remember the body the primordial gifted to Silverlake? It's not exactly easy to prove, but I think that was the brood spawned by the spider that drained her essence."
Zach exhaled. "Honestly, that makes my last four weeks look pretty tame by comparison."
"I was meaning to ask." Zorian gestured at the crown resting jauntily on Zach's head. As soon as they'd landed, Zach had cast a simple invisibility spell to hide it from passers by. Since Zorian already knew it was there, it wasn't hard to spot the mana threads of Zach's imperfectly constructed spell. "How did you get that?"
Zach looked at the ceiling. "You have to remember, I thought you were kidnapped, or taken, or something."
"...Zach? What did you do?"
"Spear of Resolve and I figured out Falkinrea had nothing to do with your disappearance fairly quickly, so we didn't start a war with them at least. That's good, right?"
Zorian narrowed his eyes. "Does that mean you did start a war with someone else?"
Zach sighed. "I should probably just start at the beginning too. After we ruled out Falkinrea, Quatach-Ichl was our first suspect. You foiled his plans less than a month ago, destroyed his body, took his crown and traded it away to a dragon-mage, yada yada yada. Plenty of motive to want you out of the picture. Plus he's one of a pretty small number of people who are likely to know enough weird dimensionalism to suck you out of this reality. Spear of Resolve didn't want to touch that one, so I kind of… handled it myself."
"What does that mean?"
Once again, Zach was studiously avoiding eye contact with Zorian. "I may have teleported to Ulquaan Ibasa and started blasting holes in his fortresses, loudly demanding to know what he did with you."
Zorian winced. "And how did that go?"
"Honestly, could have gone a lot worse. After they figured out I wasn't going to die to a stray disintegration beam, his underlings mostly stayed out of my way until the old bag of bones showed up. In retrospect, I think he was mostly just confused? At the time, I wasn't the easiest person to negotiate with."
Zach dismissed the invisibility spell, took off the crown, and started turning it over in his hands. "He was surprisingly reasonable, actually. He swore on his soul and his honour that he didn't know what had happened to you, and even if he's a murderous bastard, Quatach-Ichl isn't the type to lie like that. After we cleared that up, he helped me check the rest of the Ibasan isles in case some other necromancer kidnapped you without his knowledge."
"That's oddly cooperative," Zorian noted.
Zach pointedly looked at his shoes. "I may have helped him dispose of a minor necromancer revolt in exchange," he explained quickly.
Zorian just gestured for Zach to go on. Better to wait for all the revelations before asking Zach what the hell he had been thinking.
"Quatach-Ichl did ask a very good question before we parted ways. I think it was his way of trying to be helpful. I'm actually ashamed I didn't think of it myself."
"What's that?"
"What other faction has made it clear they'd prefer a world without you in it, and have demonstrated the power to grab people out of this reality at will?"
Zorian thought for a moment, then swore under his breath. "The angels."
Zach nodded grimly.
It was an unfortunate red herring, of course. Unless the angels had somehow deliberately let Kanderon's Exile Splinter intrude into Ersetu - which was possible, albeit unlikely - then they didn't have anything to do with his sudden disappearance. But from Zach's perspective, with Zorian gone, the angels would have seemed like an awfully plausible explanation…
"You are a forbidden existence, and you have committed grave sins to be where you are right now," the angel had said to him, when he and Zach had finally escaped the loop and negotiated for his life.
"I don't have your perfect memory," Zach said, "but I think the angels just said they'd be willing to look the other way. I'm pretty sure they didn't say 'we promise we definitely won't get rid of Zorian after he stops being useful to us'. I think I'd remember that part."
Zorian shook his head incredulously. "So what did you do? Wage a one-man war on the Triumvirate Church?"
Zach laughed. "I'm not quite that reckless. Murderous liches are one thing, but I doubt I'd last a day if the Church and the angels seriously decided they'd rather not have me around. No, I tried to get an audience with the angels. I figured I'd just ask 'em if they'd done something. Like Quatach-Ichl, they're not the type to lie lightly."
"And what did they say?"
Zach leant forward. "Took me a week of negotiating and busting down doors to get into a room while the Church summoned an angel. Alanic stuck his neck out for me too, I'm pretty sure it'd have taken a lot longer without him. And the angel said this."
Zach put on a comically low and booming voice, trying to imitate the sound of an angel:
"We did not act against your friend. We do not know who did, although we know they are outside of our reach. We know that he was not killed, but taken. Wherever he is, we cannot help you now."
Zach sat back in his chair. "And then the damn thing vanished. Not much information to go on, is it? So then I figured you'd been taken, trapped in some other place, where angels can't observe or interfere. I can only think of a few places like that. Black rooms, and there are few enough of those that Spear of Resolve and I could check them fairly easily. And the Sovereign Gate."
Zorian nodded. "The inner workings of the Sovereign Gate are opaque to us," the angel had said. While Zach's conclusion was incorrect, the reasoning he'd followed mostly made sense.
"Wait a second," Zorian asked, "the Gate only operated in a single instant in time. If I was sucked in, then even if I was subjectively in there for hundreds of years like Shutur-Tarana, then I'd have come out at basically the same time I went in."
Zach gestured helplessly. "Maybe things work differently if the Gate is activated outside of a planar convergence? Or maybe the Gate has another mode that can be used to trap someone indefinitely? I don't know, I just couldn't think of any other possibilities. It wasn't like I was about to sit back and just accept that you were gone. Anyway, like we suspected, now that we're outside our loop, the soul markers that identified us don't give us any special ability to interact with the Gate. I tested that pretty extensively. So failing that, there wasn't really any option apart from-"
"Collecting the pieces of the Key," Zorian finished for him. "So that explains why you have the Crown. But how did you get it?"
Zach started levitating the Crown above one of his hands. He was clearly pretty proud of it. "Well, there are five Imperial treasures, five pieces of the key. I have the Dagger already, courtesy of Red Robe, the slimy bastard. The Ring I could probably get from the sulrothum high priest if I asked, at least as a temporary loan. The Staff is with Violeteye. After the battle in Cyoria, Oganj and his students flew back into the north with the last two Imperial artefacts you generously gave him. If figured I'd go after those first, since both the Crown and the Orb would be useful for going after Violeteye, but the staff wouldn't get me much I can't do anyway. Teleporting back to recall points doesn't really help you chase other people down."
"Anyway," Zach continued, "Spear of Resolve didn't want to help me go after Oganj either - 'a fool's errand that would end with my corpse dissolving in a dragon's stomach', she called it. But she did point me in the direction of the Silent Doorway Adepts."
The Silent Doorway Adepts were one of the aranaean webs - clans of giant telepathic spiders that mostly lived underground. After the Cyorian web led by Spear of Resolve, it was probably the web Zorian knew the best. Their knowledge of the Bakora gates had proven invaluable both inside and outside the loop. That was only one of their relative advantages over other webs. The other was a notable talent for acquiring objects without the previous owner's knowledge or consent. Theft, basically.
Zach went on. "Their ward-crackers helped me bypass the protections on Oganj's roost. I never really learned too much about wards, since I figured I could mostly rely on you for that." He looked a little embarrassed. "I was lucky there was someone else I could ask for help.
"Why would they help you?" Zach and Zorian had both worked closely with the Silent Doorway Adepts, but their relationship wasn't so strong that the web would stick their necks out like this without something in it for them.
"I offered them an open-ended favour and figured I'd deal with that later."
Zorian raised his eyebrows. "That might come back to bite you. So they did the actual heisting without you?"
Zach snorted. "No way. Their best ward-cracker said she wouldn't go near Oganj in a million years. They helped me plan things and gave me some webcraft tools to neutralise the wards, but I did the heist myself."
"That reminds me," Zorian said absent-mindedly. "Did you get the Orb as well?"
Zach didn't say anything, and just pulled the Orb out of a pocket and tossed it over.
Zorian caught it with one hand. "Good, I need a better home for Zach."
Zach gave him a quizzical look.
"Not you, I named my pet snake… whatever."
Zorian lowered his hand to the coffee table. Zach the snake slid out of a pocket dimension anchored to his sleeve, and coiled up on top of a book.
Zorian cast a quick spell on the Scottish adder. It wasn't anything major, just a simple shield that would stop other creatures from harming him until Zorian could come up with a more permanent solution. Then he teleported the little snake into the Imperial Orb. Hopefully the jungles and ruined palaces inside the massive pocket dimension would be a better home than the tiny space Zorian had been keeping him in - even if the climate was a pretty far cry from the cool forests around Hogwarts.
Zach was still giving him a funny look. "Zorian, did you get an animal sidekick and name it after me?"
Zorian went a little red in the face. "It wasn't me, one of my simulacra… never mind." He stood up. "Anything else I should be aware of? I need to find Kiri."
Zach pulled a newspaper out of one of his pockets, and passed it over. The headline read:
Oganj continues rampage. Hundreds dead as fifth village destroyed.
Zorian pursed his lips. "Doesn't sound like he reacted particularly well to the heist."
Zach shook his head. "No he did not."
Zorian paced across the room. "That's something we need to deal with as soon as possible. Do you think he'd be willing to back off in exchange for us returning the artefacts? Now that I'm back there's no point trying to mess with the Sovereign Gate."
"Worth a try." Zach tapped his foot on the carpet, humming in indecision. "I'd hate to give them up, but it'd be worth it if he took the deal. I'm not certain he'd accept, though. He seems like the type to take this as a grievous blow to his reputation or honour or something, and we don't have an angel to help facilitate the contract this time."
Zorian nodded, deep in thought. If Oganj wasn't open to negotiating, then there were probably other ways forward. Either way, it was clear what he needed to do first.
Zorian started summoning simulacra. Simulacrum One had brought the offworlders into Imaya's guest room, and Rain was still sending through more mana than Zorian could easily use. There was a lot that needed to happen now that Zorian was back in Cyoria. So Zorian kept going after the fourth simulacrum, and continued until eleven identical copies had formed out of mist and either teleported away or walked out the door.
By the sixth simulacrum, Zach looked intrigued. By the tenth, he looked incredulous.
"Who are you really, and what have you done with Zorian?"
Zorian ignored the sarcasm and answered the implied question. "Some of the offwolders that helped me get home are quite powerful. One of Rain's abilities is to funnel his mana into others, and his personal mana regeneration is higher than any mage I've ever seen. It's some quirk of what he calls the 'System' on his world, I think."
The simulacra had a lot to get done. One of them was heading north to the last known location of Oganj and his students. Two of them were now in one of Zorian's hidden workshops, getting started on some essential crafting projects. Five were making contact with allies, and the rest had various other goals. But there was one visit he needed to make personally.
"Where's Kiri?"
"In Cirin, with your mother." Zach swallowed. "Since your funeral, I've been visiting her when I get the chance."
My funeral. There was a bitter taste in Zorian's mouth.
"Are you coming?" Zorian offered Zach an arm.
The other boy took it, and the pair of them vanished.
-]l[-
Hugh
According to Rain, Harry was asleep. Whoever was manning the multiversal communication station on Earth must have woken him up quickly though, because within a few minutes Harry started responding with the information they needed. He confirmed that an intact brain was essential to the method he'd used to bring his friend back to life. Artur didn't respond verbally to the news, but his shoulders slumped slightly, and his eyes looked somehow hollow.
After that, Zorian's simulacrum led them up toward a nearby house, where a kindly-looking woman with dark hair opened the door. Godrick's body followed them, levitating on one of Zorian's force-discs. Artur was walking by its side. Zorian seemed to know his way around, and led them into a well-furnished room. The simulacrum lowered Godrick's near-frozen form onto a wooden table, and the rest of them sat down on chairs arrayed around it.
After a few minutes of silence, the kindly woman knocked on the door, and came in with mugs of hot chocolate. Even though Hugh was still queasy with aether sickness, it was a nice gesture. Sabae and Alustin attempted to say thank you. After a moment of confusion in which the language barrier became clear, the simulacrum started translating by sending mental messages whenever anyone said anything. The woman was called Imaya, apparently, and was a friend of Zorian's.
"I'm sorry for your loss," she said in the strange foreign language. "Is there anything I can do?"
Artur shook his head mutely. She wavered at the door for a moment, then left.
After a few minutes of enchanting, Zorian's simulacrum created a small pocket dimension attached to an iron ring. Even in these circumstances, it was a fascinating process to watch. Hugh's planar affinity sense, normally dormant, lit up as Zorian created a precise boundary around a region of space and pinched it apart from the rest of reality.
With Artur's permission, he stowed Godrick's body inside. Time, the simulacrum explained, passed dramatically slower inside the compressed space - so if they eventually discovered a method by which Godrick could be restored to life and health, his body wouldn't have decayed in the intervening time, and would be in more or less the same state as now.
After the process was finished and Godrick's body was gone from the room, Artur picked up the ring and slowly turned it over in his hands. His face was still expressionless.
"It's my fault," Talia said into the silence. "If I hadn't detonated my arm, Godrick wouldn't have been separated from Rain and Sabae."
Artur looked up. "I'm going ta cut ye all off here," he said firmly. "Talia, it wasn't yer fault. Ye did the best ye could, and I'm proud of you. Godrick would be too. And if anyone else tries to jump in and claim it was all their fault instead, I'll knock ye out of yer chair. It's what Godrick would do if he were here."
It was a timely warning, because Hugh had been about to do exactly that.
"Actually, there's something I do think I need to say," Alustin said after a short pause. "Talia, am I right in concluding that you triggered an explosion in a piece of your own skeleton?"
"That's right." Talia gestured at the stump of her right arm.
Zorian's friend - the boy who had saved them - had noticed the rapidly spreading venom and reacted quickly, severing the contaminated flesh with one of his strange conjured blades. Now, instead of the ragged tear left by the spider's mandibles, there was a perfectly clean cut just above where Talia's elbow would be, sealed by Sabae's healing magic.
"We were lucky. Incredibly lucky." Alustin's face was grim. "What we saw was a fraction of what it could have been. I can only assume that the venom from the spider-creatures has some kind of magic-dampening effect?" Alustin looked queryingly at the simulacrum, who nodded.
Turning back to Talia, Alustin asked: "The first rule of bone magic?"
Talia frowned. "It's most effective on your own bones," she said. "You said experimenting with that would kill me. But the bones I acted on were severed-"
Alustin's face was controlled, but a hint of his anger - or was it fear? - still bled through into the words. "Did you ever wonder why I refused to let other bone mages teach you? It's not just that it would kill you. The explosion you created only cascaded for a matter of seconds, presumably thanks to the spider's venom suffusing the bone tissue. If your magic hadn't been suppressed, the chain reaction would have been far more impressive. Odds are, it would have overwhelmed Hugh's shield and moved on to consuming the rest of your bones, triggering further exponential growth. Not only would we all be dead, so would everyone in the city we're now in. The explosion would still probably be expanding now."
The room went deathly quiet. Talia sat back in shock, and Hugh reflexively put his arm around her shoulders.
"We were kilometres underground," Rain said incredulously. "That doesn't even sound remotely possible."
Alustin looked at him sharply. "How many cities have you seen levelled?"
Rain abruptly shut his mouth.
"Magic is dangerous," Alustin said. "And yours far more so than most, Talia. Never do that again."
"Understood," she said quietly.
"Speaking of which," Alustin said in a lighter voice, "is your magic still affected?"
Talia nodded. "The venom is worse than aether sickness. I can't access any of my affinities at all. I have a splitting headache, and my mind's eye feels scrambled, like someone shoved an eggbeater into my ear and started turning it."
Alustin frowned. "That doesn't sound good. How long does this usually last, Zorian?"
"Grey hunter venom hasn't been particularly well studied, and the creatures we fought were far from typical examples of their species," responded the simulacrum. "My understanding is that it remains effective for a matter of weeks in most cases. I'm hoping Zach cut off the injection site quickly enough to prevent most of the spread."
The simulacrum paused to think for a moment. "I have an alchemist friend who might be able to make an anti-venom. That might help."
"Thanks," Talia said, and lifted her hot chocolate to her lips with her one remaining arm. Reminded that it existed, Hugh picked up his mug from the table. It was warm and sweet, and he felt his roiling stomach calm a little.
There was a long pause. Then, the simulacrum's head abruptly jerked toward Hugh, and spoke: "You can create enduring wards that deflect attention?"
Hugh nodded.
"Good. Can you come with me? There's a project I need your help with."
In some sense, it was a relief. Something he could do with his hands would be nice. Anything to distract him from the sickening feeling that someone was missing.
Hugh squeezed Talia's uninjured shoulder. "Call me if you need me, yeah?"
She smiled and squeezed his hand in return, then Zorian's simulacrum led him out of the room.
-]l[-
Zorian - Simulacrum Four
Tracking down Taiven was surprisingly difficult.
He started by visiting her parents' place, where she lived - and where she'd enjoyed beating him up in their sparring sessions, before he'd grown skilled enough to make any conflict between them trivial.
Her parents didn't know where she was. According to them, since the funeral of one of her close friends, Taiven had been beset by terrible moods and stayed out almost all the time, returning late at night and leaving as soon as she woke up.
Fortunately, the simulacrum was wearing a long cloak which partially concealed Zorian's face, so Taiven's mother didn't recognise him - not that that would have been particularly likely anyway, since he'd only met her a few times. A surface level mental probe revealed some additional information: when Taiven returned, she was usually covered in grime, and smelled awful.
That alone wasn't conclusive, but it suggested Taiven was taking out her frustration on Dungeon delves.
Searching the Dungeon alone was a ridiculous proposition, even for someone like Zorian. Despite Taiven's self-destructive tendencies, he doubted she was going lower than the surface levels, but even then, there were probably thousands of different entrances and exits scattered across Cyoria. The local underworld had more holes than a sponge. Fortunately, Zorian didn't need to search alone.
Simulacrum Six wasn't too far away. He was currently debriefing with Spear of Resolve, the matriarch of the Cyorian web. Across their mental connection, Simulacrum Four could feel the palpable relief of the aranean leader as she found out that Zorian was still alive.
Simulacrum Four sat down on a park bench, and waited patiently for a few minutes. It was understandable that Spear of Resolve had a lot of questions, and she deserved some answers before Zorian started asking his own. Even though Taiven was only a little older than he was (physically, at least - mentally he was probably ten years her senior), she was a formidable battle-mage in her own right, so it wasn't like there was a huge rush in finding her.
Eventually, Simulacrum Six decided the question was appropriate, and asked the matriarch if she'd observed any unusual activity in her web's territory by people matching Taiven's description.
To her credit, the matriarch didn't miss a beat, and sent across a mental map of Taiven's recent expeditions before continuing with her own questions about Zorian's missing four weeks.
Examining the memory packet, Simulacrum Four raised his eyebrows. Taiven was really walking on the wild side. Her forays into the Dungeon weren't going nearly deep enough to encounter the primordial grey hunter brood, but they were still putting her in dangerous territory. According to the map from Spear of Resolve, one of Taiven's recent expeditions had ended with her dragging a pair of rock-worm carcasses back through aranean territory to the surface.
The simulacrum stood up hastily. Perhaps it was better to find Taiven sooner rather than later.
After a little under an hour of searching, Taiven's distinctive mental signature showed up two tunnels across. The simulacrum sighed with relief. Her mind was shielded, albeit somewhat crudely, but the simulacrum could tell she wasn't currently in combat.
Making contact was probably going to be a little tricky, since she thought he was dead. The simulacrum carefully unwrapped the cloak from his face so it was clearly visible. A quick cleaning spell removed most of the accumulated dirt and grime from his body and clothes. Then, he walked the last few metres into Taiven's line of sight.
"Hello, Taiven."
Taiven whirled around instantly. Her dark hair was tied up in a ponytail, and was splattered with what looked like a mixture of grit and monster blood. There was a twisted scowl on her face. Without missing a beat, she raised a hand, and a vortex of fire surged forward.
"Taiven!" he yelped, and quickly conjured a shield. With Rain still refilling the original's mana, blocking the blast was fairly trivial - but it had still been quite a shock. Taiven kept up the assault, and launched a swarm of magic missiles which tore through the air. The simulacrum deflected one of them into the wall where it shattered the bricks, sending stone fragments and dust through the air. One was absorbed by his shield, and the rest crashed into the ground around him.
"Taiven! Stop it, it's me!"
She growled, a low, guttural noise. "If you're going to try to trick me with an illusion, you should really pick someone that's still alive." She leapt forward, punctuating the sentence with a fireball that detonated on contact with the ground at the simulacrum's feet, sending flame roaring across the entire tunnel. She followed it up with a disintegration beam directed at the ceiling above the simulacrum's head.
She was muttering under her breath - the simulacrum could barely hear the words. "Failing that, at least pick someone I don't want to melt into a puddle. And you couldn't even remember to make the illusion dirty. Sloppy."
Ah, so Taiven thought he was an illusion based on some information plucked from her brain. That wasn't a bad theory - aranea did occasionally play tricks like that when they encountered a foe they couldn't easily defeat with raw force. That explained why she was using spells that affected a large area - so she had a chance of hitting the invisible mage that was conjuring the illusion. It was a good strategy.
He frowned. Given the intensity of the emotions he could feel radiating from her, there probably wasn't an easy way around this miscommunication. So after counterspelling the disintegration beam, he reached past her mind-shield and froze both her body and her magic.
"Phew." He wiped a hand across his forehead. Simulacra didn't actually sweat, but it suited how he felt internally, and some of the habits he remembered from having a physical form were hard to kick. "You scared me for a moment there, Taiven. Sorry about holding you still. I promise I'll release you in a moment, as soon as I can sense that you're not planning to jam a fireball up my nose."
A simple cleaning spell purged some of the dirt from the tunnel floor, forming a circle of mostly-clean stone bricks amidst the filth. He mentally directed Taiven to sit down cross-legged, and sat down next to her. She was fighting like hell to get free, still under the impression that he was some kind of psychic monster that was ensnaring her senses.
"Um, alright. How do I get around this? I'm not dead, nor am I an illusion. I'm clean because I just cast a cleaning spell on myself, not because the illusion caster forgot to add splashes of dirt."
The simulacrum sighed. "Pretty much anything I could say, you could guess I'm plucking from your brain to manipulate you. So I guess there's not much I can do to persuade you that it's really me. I'll try anyway, I suppose. I really am your friend Zorian, who you sometimes call 'Roach' for unclear reasons."
He paused. Well, even that was in some sense a lie. If he was trying to be honest with Taiven, it might be better to properly commit.
"Alright, I'm not technically Zorian, I'm one of Zorian's simulacra. But that's mostly the same thing, since I share a soul with the original and am in constant mental communication with him."
The simulacrum waved a hand dismissively. "That's not really important. Anyway, about a month ago, you and I both fought to repel an invasion of Cyoria. Shortly afterwards, I vanished, and people assumed I was dead. I wasn't actually dead, just trapped outside this reality, which is a long and very interesting story that you can ask questions about if you promise that you won't immediately try to kill me if I release you."
There was an internal battle going on inside Taiven's mind. Well, really there were two internal battles. One was against Zorian's mind-magic, in which Taiven was desperately trying to regain control of her body. The other was between her anger at this illusion that was wearing Zorian's face, and her curiosity as to whether it was really him, and if the insane things he was saying were true.
The curiosity won out, and he felt her resolve to at least ask a few questions before restarting her assault. Satisfied, he released her.
She leapt to her feet, but didn't immediately attack. "If you're Zorian - or a simulacrum, or whatever - why did you come down here to find me? You could have waited at my parents' place for me to get back."
The simulacrum shrugged. "Why wait? I got back about an hour ago, and I wanted to know you were safe. Plus there's a plan I need your help with."
Oddly, the simulacrum could sense that the request for her help did more than anything else to make Taiven feel comfortable. She brushed some dirt off her leather cuirass, shook out some of the detritus from her hair, and warily sat back down next to him.
"So where have you been?"
"Sucked into another reality, then trying to find my way home."
She looked a bit taken aback. "C'mon Roach, you can come up with a better lie than that. And since when can you cast the simulacrum spell? Since when do you know any soul magic? Or those defensive spells? I could have killed you."
He just shrugged again. It was probably for the best that Taiven didn't know quite how advanced the simulacrum spell was. "There's no reason for me to lie. Some people from other worlds helped me get home, they're at Imaya's place now. You can come meet them soon if you'd like."
"And you want my help with a plan, huh?" Her expression was still hard, but his empathy could feel that she was starting to believe him. She snorted. "What is there that you could possibly need my help with?"
"An alibi."
She raised her eyebrows. "Why do you need an alibi? Have you been robbing banks or something?"
"No," he said, then remembered his forays into the reflected Earth's bank vaults with Rain. "Well, not exactly. At least, that's not why I need an alibi. It's just that when I go back to the Academy and they ask where I've been, I don't want to have to say 'I was sucked into another reality'. I have a feeling that might raise more questions for them than it answers."
Taiven looked sceptical. "You came to me because you want an excuse for missing school?"
"Wow, that really makes me sound fifteen, doesn't it? But yeah, basically. That, and I wanted to make sure you were alright."
Taiven looked away, and stood up. She gestured toward the route out of the Dungeon. "We can walk and talk, right? I promise I won't try to kill you anymore." She reached out and gently punched him in the shoulder.
"Thanks," the simulacrum said dryly. "I promise I won't try to kill you either."
An hour later, Taiven and the simulacrum stood together in front of Professor Ilsa Zileti's desk in Cyoria's Royal Academy of Magical Arts. Taiven looked a little messy, with streaks of dirt still in her dark hair and bloodstains smeared across the surface of her cuirass.
The simulacrum looked terrible. Although he couldn't get bruises the usual way, a few layers of illusions gave the impression of a massive, purple-yellowish mark stretching up the right part of his body. At Taiven's suggestion, he'd also given himself a collection of illusory scars too: one just below his right eye, and another down his left arm.
Taiven had gleefully participated in the part of their plan that required him to look like he'd been stuck underground for four weeks. At first, she'd been disappointed that punching him wouldn't work, since his ectoplasmic form would shrug off the damage, or just dissolve entirely if a certain threshold was reached. Instead, she'd happily resorted to magically pouring sewer water over him until his hair was sopping wet and he smelt disgusting.
Now, she stood next to him with her hand reassuringly on his shoulder.
"So when you found Mister Kazinski in the Dungeon, he'd been trapped there for four weeks?"
"Yes, ma'am," the simulacrum said quietly, doing his best to appear shaken. "I tried to follow the path the invaders used to attack the city. I misjudged my abilities and got lost. It's only because Taiven found me that I'm still alive."
Ilsa looked incredulous. "Four weeks? What did you eat?"
The simulacrum froze. What was there to eat down there? He couldn't say he ate monster corpses. That was both ridiculous to begin with, and it would imply combat abilities on his part that would invalidate their entire story. He really should have planned out the whole narrative in advance…
Fortunately, Taiven jumped in. "He ate mushrooms that fed on sewage, Professor."
The simulacrum barely managed to keep a straight face, and nodded. If the Academy bought this story, it would no doubt start some rumours that would really annoy the original. Ah well, sometimes sacrifices had to be made.
Ilsa wrinkled her nose in distaste.
"Well Taiven," she said, "I have to commend you on your tenacity in searching for Zorian well beyond the time anyone else would have given up. That said, you should really have alerted the authorities rather than taking matters into your own hands. And Mister Kazinski," she said, turning to him with a stern expression, "your reckless behaviour has endangered not only yourself, but also your friend. You're lucky Taiven's combat abilities outstrip your own."
Taiven was practically preening next to him.
"Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry, ma'am."
"Now, it looks like Zorian here urgently needs medical attention. For that matter, you might as well, Taiven. I'll teleport you directly to the hospital." She stood up and started to walk around the desk toward them.
The simulacrum frantically shook his head. If he was taken to a hospital and they discovered he was made of ectoplasm instead of flesh, this whole plan - along with Zorian's whole cover story, and probably the simulacrum's body itself - would go up in smoke. "Uh, no Professor, I think we should probably walk. Teleportation makes me very queasy, and it's not very far."
Ilsa looked a bit sceptical of that, but nodded and backed off. "Alright. Taiven, ensure his wounds are dealt with. Mister Kazinski, when do you think you'll be able to return to school?"
The simulacrum made a show of coughing into his hand. "I'm not sure. I think I should leave that up to the healers and doctors. Maybe we can see if Professor Xvim is willing to visit me while I'm recovering, since he's my mentor?" Since Xvim was already in on most of Zorian's schemes - and Simulacrum Ten was currently filling him in on the rest - it didn't hurt to borrow some of his credibility.
Ilsa nodded. "Alright. Send a message when you can, and I'll ensure your absences are retroactively excused. End of semester exams are coming up soon though, so you had better study hard while you're recuperating."
That wouldn't be an issue. After sitting through the Academy's classes dozens of times - and becoming an accomplished archmage - he could have taken the exams in his sleep. Possibly literally, given his mental enhancements. "Yes Professor. Thank you."
With that, Taiven and the simulacrum left the office and headed outside into what was shaping up to be a lovely summer's day.
"So," said Taiven, stretching her arms. "You said there were offworlders I could meet?"
"Yeah, but not looking like this," the simulacrum retorted. "You really outdid yourself with the sewage. I'm impressed Ilsa even let us into her office."
She laughed, pulled him into an alleyway out of sight, then cast a quick cleaning spell that ejected the filth from their clothes. "Alright, no more excuses. Or were you lying about the whole thing, huh?" There was a challenging tone to her voice, and the simulacrum couldn't quite stop himself from rising to the bait.
The original wouldn't approve of bringing Taiven to Imaya's place. He knew from experience that she wasn't the type to react well to Zorian's sudden immense skill, and getting her mixed up with Rain and the Anastans was a bad idea for a whole host of other reasons. Still, there were some benefits to being a simulacrum. Being able to pass off future social complexities to another version of himself was one of them.
"Alright. Grab on." With a thought, he dismissed his illusory wounds. Then he extended an arm to Taiven, who awkwardly took hold of it, and they were gone
-]l[-
Zorian
With some trepidation, Zorian stood outside the front door of his house in Cirin.
Zach was by his side, standing a little back. Teleporting here had taken a little while, and they'd spent a further few minutes discussing the cover story amongst themselves.
Zorian's eyes flickered across to Zach.
The other boy looked at him reassuringly, and patted him on the back. "Hey, you fought your way through three realities to get back here," he said. "Whatever your mother's going to throw at you, I reckon you can probably take it."
"I'm not really worried about seeing my mother," Zorian said.
Zach looked confused for a moment, then nodded in realisation. "Kiri will understand. She's a good kid."
There really wasn't any way to make vanishing for a month look normal. The story that Simulacrum Four had cooked up with Taiven might satisfy the Academy, even if it was a little distasteful. But even with a plausible explanation, asking his parents to put Kiri in his care again… he really didn't know how it would go.
More importantly, would Kirielle even want to come back to Cyoria with him? After years of neglecting his little sister and seeing her as a nuisance and a distraction, for the last month outside the loop Zorian had finally done close to his due diligence as an older brother. He'd connected Kiri with friends her own age, built her a state-of-the-art companion golem, encouraged her art, and even started teaching her some beginner magical techniques. And then he'd vanished with basically no trace.
It was difficult for him to imagine the effect that would have on a nine year old. If Kiri didn't want anything to do with him, well, that would be unfortunate. But it would be understandable.
There wasn't any point waiting. Inside the house, Zorian could feel two mental signatures. Kiri was drawing in her bedroom, using some of the art supplies Zorian had bought for her before he'd been taken. Their mother was in the kitchen, looking over accounting figures for the family business.
Zorian took a step forward and knocked on the door.
There was a brief pause as his mother got up to open the door.
"...Zorian?"
"Yes mother, it's me."
Another two seconds passed in shock before she unfroze. "You're alive! Where have you been? What's going on? How did you… We had a funeral! What were you thinking?"
"If you stop talking for a moment, I can explain."
"You had better explain! This is absurd! I can't even begin to imagine-" She reached out to touch him on the arm, as if to make sure he was real, then pulled him into a brief and uncomfortable hug.
"Zach, can you explain what happened to my mother? I'm going to talk with Kiri."
His mother tilted her head to the side and looked at Zach. "Wait, Zach Noveda? Heir to the Noveda estate? You were at the funeral too. How do you know-"
Zach discreetly rolled his eyes at Zorian, but nodded and started introducing himself. He looked across to Zorian and mouthed: "Go, I've got this."
Grateful, Zorian turned toward the stairs. He could tell from her mental signature that Kiri had noticed the commotion, although she hadn't yet recognised his voice.
He knocked on her door. "Kiri? May I come in?"
There was a flare of hope from the mind inside, followed by a deliberate, practised pessimism. The pit in Zorian's stomach grew deeper.
She opened the door, and looked up at him with wide eyes. Even in such a short time, she'd grown appreciatively. It made sense - for a subjective decade, he'd seen her frozen in time, reliving the same month over and over.
She rushed forward and hugged him around the waist.
"I knew you'd come back," she whispered with her face pressed into his shirt. "I knew it. I knew it. I knew it."
There was a lump in his throat, and he couldn't quite get any words out. "Kiri, I…"
She squeezed him tighter, then let go and pulled him into her bedroom. She pushed him to sit down on the bed, sat by his side, and wrapped her arms around him again.
"What happened?" she asked quietly. Her voice was impressively composed.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I got caught off guard, and I was taken somewhere far away. It took me this long to find my way back."
She squeezed him again. "Whoever made you go away, did you beat 'em up?"
Zorian frowned. "Well, no, not exactly. They didn't do it on purpose, so that would have been a little unfair." He thought of Kanderon's massive form floating above Ithos. "And actually, I'm not sure I could if I tried." Even though Kanderon hadn't intentionally stolen him from Kiri, she still had a lot to answer for.
"Have you been feeling alright, in the last month?" he asked. "How have mother and father been treating you?"
Kiri stood up and looked out the window. "I'm okay."
Zorian furrowed his brow. "Okay? Has she been bothering you? Does she let you do what you want?"
She sniffed. "It's okay. I'm glad you're back."
"Do you want to come back to Cyoria to stay with me?"
There was a sudden dreadful pause as Zorian felt a spike of anxiety from Kiri, but Zorian relaxed almost immediately as the cause became clear:
"Do you think mother would let me?"
Zorian slipped off the bed to kneel on the floor. Kirielle had been growing fast, and from this height, the difference was especially apparent. He put his hand on her shoulder, and turned her around so she was facing him again.
"Listen, Kiri. If you want to stay with me, it will happen. You don't have to - if you'd rather stay here, or go somewhere else, we can make that happen too. But you don't have to worry about mother."
Before his unexpected trip to Ithos, Zorian would have been very cautious around statements like that. But a month of forced exile and innumerable near-death encounters did wonders for a sense of perspective. Keeping a low profile was important, and so was preserving his relationship with his parents, to an extent. But some things were more important. Much more important.
She hesitated for a moment. "Will Kana and Nochka be there too? And can you keep teaching me magic?"
"Kana will be there, although I can't guarantee she'll stay indefinitely. Nochka is in the area, I'm sure she'll visit. And of course I'll keep teaching you magic if you'd like."
A small grin spread across her face. "Then yes. I want to come."
He released a breath he didn't know he was holding. "That's good."
She leant forward and hugged him again. "I'm glad you're back."
"I'm glad I'm back too, Kiri."
He wasn't really sure what to do next. What would a good big brother do in this situation?
He reached out to ruffle her hair, and she squealed and dodged away.
"Alright," Zorian said, and stood up. "I've already told you more about my time away than I can tell most other people, including mother. If that information got out, it would be really bad news. Can I trust you to keep it quiet?"
Kiri nodded firmly.
"And…" This part was a bit more complex. "Can you wait here while I talk to mother about what happens next?"
Kiri nodded again, and turned back to her desk to continue drawing. The artwork she was working on was clearly visible - it was a drawing of Kosjenka, the golem-doll Zorian had made to protect her, standing bravely atop a chest of drawers and fending off a horde of nightmarish spirits.
Zorian quietly stepped outside, and closed Kiri's bedroom door behind him. Zach and his mother were talking loudly, but the sounds washed over him.
Zorian took a deep breath. There was a chance his mother would be reasonable, and would allow some kind of shared custody of Kirielle. But if she wasn't - and tried to stick to her plan of marrying Kiri off to some rich merchant or noble - then there were some lines Zorian might need to cross that he'd tried hard to avoid crossing until now.
"Zorian," Zach called out to him from the kitchen table. "I was just telling your mother about the potential arrangement."
Zorian blinked. "I'm sorry?"
His mother looked at him expectantly. "You know, the contract? With Zach?"
Zorian completely blanked. "What?"
Zach turned back to his mother. "Don't worry, you know your son has always been a little scatterbrained. He has a great mind for business, though. That's what made me so interested."
Zorian walked down the stairs on autopilot and took a seat with his mother and Zach at the kitchen table. Zach had pulled out a piece of paper and was part way through drawing some kind of diagram - although it didn't look like any ward schematic Zorian had ever seen.
"So," Zach said, gesturing at one of the boxes. "These are the assets I've managed to successfully recover from Tesen - that's the scoundrel who was in charge of my house until recently. You might have read about that affair in the papers. Fortunately, despite all the plundering, those assets are still quite substantial. The sensible thing for me to do now is to ensure that my house is on a good financial footing for the future."
Mother nodded, and Zorian nodded too, although he had no idea what Zach was talking about.
Zach drew another line connecting that box with a circle he'd drawn nearby. "This is the Kazinski family business. Purchasing grain in regional areas, transporting it to population centres, and reselling for a profit."
"And this," Zach said, gesturing toward an 'X' in the centre of the page, "is Cyoria. Recently half-destroyed by an invasion, with supply lines in disarray. Existing business arrangements are in chaos, and at least a quarter of the population is struggling to find enough food."
Zorian squinted at Zach. What was he talking about?
Zach leant over the messy diagram, and gestured to Zorian. "Now, I don't really have a head for markets and numbers and things like that. My classmate and good friend Zorian, on the other hand, has been explaining things to me, and suggested that the funds at my disposal could be most efficiently put to use by seizing the opportunity in front of me."
He leant back into his chair. "I want to establish a monopoly over grain distribution in Cyoria. For that, I need business partners. People who have experience in the cereal markets, and who can quickly supply the vast quantities of goods necessary to undercut other producers. As the asset-provider, I'll of course be providing the funds necessary to supply the grain at below-market price until we can establish a collective monopoly." He drew a circle around the whole diagram for emphasis. For good measure, he did a quick sketch next to it of what was probably supposed to be a stack of gold coins.
He flashed a charming smile at mother, who was clearly eating all of this up. "And then House Noveda will once again be the envy of the other Houses, and together our consortium will have developed quite a tidy income stream."
He gestured to another piece of paper, this one smaller, which sat between him and mother. "I've taken the liberty of drawing this up. It's a provisional contract, but time is of the essence, and I think we should get it signed as soon as possible."
Zorian craned his neck to see, and things started to fall into place. Even at the barest of glances, the contract was horribly unfair. Zach was on the hook for any expenses incurred in the process, while Zorian's parents would take the lion's share of the eventual profits.
Zach was trying to buy them off.
Mother's eyes were wide with a mixture of greed and surprise. "Well, I'll have to talk to Andir. But I think I can confidently say that our company is interested in the deal." She reached out for the pen, and Zach gave it to her. It took her a matter of seconds to sign her name to the handwritten contract.
Zach picked up the pen and started chewing on one end thoughtfully - but didn't sign yet. "Of course, there is a small logistical difficulty. I'll need to be in Cyoria to supervise the enterprise, and I'll want to have Zorian there with me, seeing as he's my financial advisor. And Zorian has made it clear that he won't stay in Cyoria in the long term unless he can spend enough time with his young sister - Kirielle, is it? So that could pose difficulties. Hmmm…"
Mother took a few seconds to digest Zach's implied meaning. She glanced across at Zorian, then back to Zach. "...I'm sure we can work something out. Kirielle has been wanting to see more of Cyoria lately, isn't that right, Zorian?"
Zorian nodded mutely.
"Well," said Zach with a winning smile, "I'm glad we could sort that out."
A few minutes of negotiation and bag-packing later, Zorian and Zach walked out the front door with Kiri in tow, leaving behind a signed-in-triplicate contract and a hefty bag of gold coins as an initial investment on the kitchen table.
Kiri was walking between them, holding onto one of each of their hands. She was skipping.
Zorian wasn't quite sure what to say. "I honestly can't believe you did that, Zach. They're not going to let you get out of that easily. Couldn't you see the look in my mother's eyes?"
Zach grinned. "There are worse things to spend money on." The grin slowly faded away. "Besides, I know you well enough to see where things were going if I didn't find a way to resolve things amicably."
Zorian sighed. While the idea of Zach throwing away money on his behalf didn't sit right with him at all, Zach was right that Zorian had been considering some far more questionable approaches. This was probably for the best.
"Thanks, I guess. Where did you pick up that business jargon anyway? And did it mean anything, or were you just making it all up?"
Zach shrugged. "You'd be surprised how much of that sort of thing came up while I was trying to recover the assets Tesen stole. I've been in enough business meetings to last a lifetime." He grinned again. "And yeah, I was pretty much making it up. Was it that obvious?"
Zorian rolled his eyes. "Well, you definitely sold the role of 'overconfident young noble, ripe to be cheated out of a fortune', if that was the goal."
He pulled out a bag of holding - one of the ones they'd looted from the reflected Diagon Alley - from a pocket of his robes, and tossed it across to Zach. "If you're going to run around throwing away fortunes on my behalf, then I better make sure you're well compensated."
Zach caught the smallish bag with one hand and squinted at it. "That's a strange looking pocket dimension. What's in here?"
"About two tons of gold bars."
Zach almost tripped.
"Don't worry, I didn't steal it or anything," Zorian said. "It's from the reflected version of Earth. Don't spend it all at once though - Harry spent a while warning us about something he called 'inflation'. If gold suddenly becomes valueless, I know whose fault it is."
Kiri was looking up at both of them with wide eyes. Zach mimed a shush-ing motion to her, and tucked the bag into one of his pockets.
With that, they rounded the corner, and were out of sight of the Kazinski house. Zorian took a moment to prepare a group-teleport spell, and then they were gone.
-]l[-
Zorian - Simulacrum Eleven
The trip to Knyazov Dveri was pleasant. He and Simulacrum Twelve teleported together, since the other simulacrum was mostly going in the same direction.
As they arrived in the town, they split off, with Simulacrum Twelve continuing north, and Simulacrum Eleven making a final short-range teleport to Alanic's temple.
Unfortunately, the priest didn't seem to be home. There were no mental signatures inside. That wasn't conclusive, since Alanic had always been skilled with mind shields, and there was some chance he was inside but under the effects of a Mind Blank spell. A brief physical search led to nothing either, and the temple itself didn't look like it had been recently visited. There was dust on the tables, and Alanic's clothes and personal items weren't here.
That was inconvenient, but not massively so. Thanks to the teleportation beacon in Cyoria, reversing the journey he'd made with Simulacrum Twelve was much easier than making it in the first place. After briefly checking with the original to authorise the mana expenditure, a single teleport took him back to the centre of Cyoria.
Tracking down Alanic was going to be a little more difficult. There were dozens of temples scattered around the city, and most of them were hives of activity. Large chunks of Cyoria were ruined, and for whatever reason, the Triumvirate Church had been hit harder than most other institutions.
In the end, the simulacrum simply teleported to Cyoria's largest church and waited a few minutes until a mid-ranking priest went on a bathroom break so he could ask about Alanic.
Apparently Alanic had been very busy. During the loop, they'd created a dossier for Alanic, detailing the location of a number of hidden necromancers and blood magic cults across Eldemar.
According to the information from the priest, Alanic had been on a rampage. After helping dispose of Red Robe's wraith bombs, he'd been put in charge of a squad of warrior-priests, and had already been responsible for the destruction of a gang of necromancer pirates and a primordial-worshipping cult. Luckily, it seemed he was between missions, and was currently recuperating at a smaller temple near the centre of the city.
The simulacrum finally found him eating breakfast in a pub near the temple. The battle-scarred priest was alone at a table, and the simulacrum simply walked up and sat down opposite him.
Alanic looked up, and the colour drained from his face.
"Zorian."
"...Yes." The simulacrum was taken aback. Surprise was expected, but the look in Alanic's eyes was clearly more complicated than that.
"So the message was about you."
That was new. "The message?"
Alanic pushed aside his food and put his palms flat on the table. "This morning, the high priestess of the temple relayed a message from the angels. She said it was meant specifically for me."
The simulacrum groaned. Of course the angels were going to find a way to complicate this further. "What did they say?"
Alanic looked meaningfully at the rest of the fairly-busy pub. The simulacrum took the hint, and cast a series of privacy spells. The sounds of the other patrons died away, and Alanic continued:
"Those who arrive, cannot stay. Do not fight them, because you cannot. But they cannot stay."
"Oh," said the simulacrum. He paused for a moment, and idly drummed his fingers on the table. "You know, I don't actually think that's talking about me."
Alanic looked sceptical. "Someone I cannot fight, who's suddenly arrived? You don't think it's you?"
"Well," said the simulacrum, "I'm not an 'arrival' exactly, am I? I think the angels would have said something like 'the one who returns' or something like that if they meant me. Or they could have just used my name. I'm sure they know it by now." He frowned. "Besides, I have some other ideas for who that message is about. I think you should probably meet them as soon as possible."
A single teleport later, and Alanic and Simulacrum Eleven were on the front porch of Imaya's house. A few seconds later, there was another pair of arrivals by their side - Simulacrum Ten and Xvim, arriving from the Academy.
"Xvim." Alanic reached out a hand to the professor, who shook it. "Good to see you again. I see Zorian is gathering his allies?"
Xvim smoothed out his clothes. "It would seem that way. Zorian, the dimensional boundary on that teleportation spell was imprecise. You're out of practice."
Simulacrum Ten looked a little offended. "I already told you, I've just returned from offworld, and shaping the mana there required subtly different approaches. I'm still adjusting to the difference now that I'm back."
Alanic jolted with shock. "What? Offworld?"
Xvim raised his eyebrows genially. "I see you haven't been filled in yet, Alanic."
Simulacrum Eleven shook his head apologetically. "Sorry, you were a bit harder to find than Xvim. He mostly just hangs around his office."
Alanic shook his head violently, as if to dislodge something. "Nevermind about that, I need the whole story. Zorian, how about you start over from the beginning?"
Xvim inclined his head. "I think that might be best."
-]l[-
Zorian - Simulacrum Twelve
The final version of Zorian had drawn the metaphysical short straw.
While some simulacra were spreading out across Cyoria and Eldemar to check on friends and allies and others started work on crafting projects, he was heading north, to where Zach's newspaper said Oganj and his students were rampaging across the countryside.
In time, he made it to the site of the most recent attack. It was a village called Tarmata, a few days' journey north of Knyazov Dveri - at least on foot. He covered the distance in about half an hour.
The site where the map said the village should be was completely annihilated. Not just the centre of the town, which was only recognisable by the density of scorched stone, but also the entire valley surrounding it. The trees had been either crushed or set aflame, and in the hills overlooking the town some fires were still burning. There was no sign of any of the inhabitants.
Unsurprisingly, the army was here. They'd set up an outpost next to the river. It looked like there were only about fifty soldiers though, which wasn't even close to enough to threaten Oganj. The soldiers hadn't noticed the simulacrum either, since he was invisibly hovering hundreds of metres above the ground.
The army's presence was probably mostly for show. Eldemar's government couldn't be seen to entirely neglect their northern provinces, especially not against a threat as dangerous as a dragon-mage. But regional towns like Tarmata were just too far from anything important for the government to really care. Tensions were still high with both Sulamnon and Falkinrea, and the recent invasion from Ulquaan Ibasa had doubtless made the Eldemarian government even more paranoid than they usually were. Looked at from that cynical angle, it was a wonder that there were fifty soldiers here at all.
Neither Oganj nor his two dragon-students were still in the area, unfortunately. Tracking a flying creature wasn't the easiest. There were no physical marks on the ground to follow, and even though dragons were phenomenally powerful magical creatures, any traces of their passing in the ambient mana tended to fade within a matter of minutes.
Fortunately for Zorian, he had experience tracking a far more elusive dragon-foe. Violeteye was one of the few dragon-mages who might be able to rival Oganj for strength. Unlike Oganj, however, she still possessed one of the Imperial artefacts - a staff that allowed her to set recall points at will, and use them to teleport across distances far greater than others could even contemplate. That was both the reason Zach and Zorian had spent so long trying to track her down, and the reason they'd needed to develop a suite of dragon-tracking divination magic that would make the army weep with jealousy.
Under the cover of invisibility, the simulacrum lowered himself to the peak of one of the nearby hills. It took him a few minutes to magically carve the required ritual diagrams into the stone, but after that, the ritual itself only took a few seconds. It seemed Oganj didn't take half as many pains to keep his location hidden as Violeteye did.
The simulacrum smiled grimly as the divination spell fed him details on Oganj's location. The dragon-mage might come to regret his indiscretion.
Two hours of mid-range teleports later, Oganj's massive body came into view. The dragon was perched atop a stony mountain, and seemed to be resting. One of his students was a few kilometres away, curled up on a smaller peak. The other was nowhere to be seen.
This was supposed to be a diplomatic mission, so the simulacrum didn't make use of the element of surprise. Instead, he simply dropped his invisibility spell, and gradually lowered himself in front of Oganj's massive head.
The dragon-mage noticed him quickly. His enormous wings spread out, and Oganj flapped twice, raising himself to the level of Zorian's disc.
"You," Oganj snarled. Twisting beams of light were already emerging from the dragon's claws and forming a cage around the platform where the simulacrum stood.
"Me?" asked the simulacrum. It was a serious question too - for security reasons, he was wearing a completely new face.
Oganj growled, and a tuft of smoke emitted from his mouth. "I would recognise the stench of your magic from miles away, contemptible thief. You promised me the Imperial artefacts, and now you've gone back on your word. The lives of many a human are lost because of your treachery." The dragon-mage spat the words.
If the subject matter hadn't been so grim, it would have been almost amusing that Oganj was trying to pin the blame for the massacred villages on Zorian. Still, his goal here was to make peace, not throw away more lives.
"Oganj, great dragon," the simulacrum began. "I agree you have been wronged. The theft of your rightfully owned artefacts by my associate was a grievous misdeed, and will be rectified as soon as possible. If you agree to return to the north with your students and end your rampage, they will be returned, along with an additional artefact - the knife of the Ikosian emperor."
There was a shine of greed in Oganj's eyes that mirrored how he'd looked when he'd first taken the bargain with Zorian in Cyoria. But it was clear that the greed was tempered with something else. "Agreed. Give me the three artefacts and I will take my students back to my roost and leave your squalid species in peace."
Ignoring the cage of force that was slowly shrinking around him, the simulacrum shook his head. "I won't return the artefacts until after you've pulled back. You have to understand our position here. We can't simply give you the crown and trust that you'll keep your word. Otherwise, we'll have just given you a powerful weapon that you can use against us. I will return the artefacts in a week, provided that there are no further attacks on human settlements in that time."
Oganj growled again, a deep, rumbling sound, and brought his massive head closer to the forcecage. "Of the two of us, only one of us has broken our vows. Give me the artefacts now, and I will retreat. I will not trust the word of one who clearly values his bond so little."
The simulacrum folded his arms. "If you recall, I did exactly what I promised - I gave the angel the artefacts, who then gave them to you. There were no agreements made about what would happen afterwards. And besides, the whole situation only occurred because you were willing to break off your deal with Jornak and Quatach-Ichl. So I'd say there's no particular reason we should trust your word more than mine."
Oganj paused. "Then it seems we are at an impasse."
The simulacrum frowned. "We could try to summon another angel? That might be difficult, but if we can, then we can both trust them to stick to their word?"
Oganj looked contemplative. "I doubt an angel of sufficient rank would bother with our little scuffle. It's a reasonable thought, but I have a compelling counter-proposal."
The simulacrum raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"
Oganj lunged forward, and the simulacrum sighed as Oganj's person-sized teeth closed around his body. He informed the original of his failure, and magically triggered the pair of explosive cubes he was wearing around his neck. Working with Hugh and Talia, he'd managed to make these devices a decent chunk more powerful than the explosives he'd used previously. It still probably wouldn't do more than damage Oganj's mouth a little, but it was worth a try. Sometimes the old tricks were the best.
-]l[-
Zorian
"... and nevermind, he ate him." Zorian sighed. "I suppose diplomacy is off the table."
"He ate him?" Taiven asked incredulously.
"Yes," said Zorian patiently. "He ate him." Taiven really shouldn't be here. Simulacrum Four was being duly punished for his misdeeds - he was sitting next to the offworlders, and had been allocated as their translator. Impressively, Rain had already started picking up some Ikosian, although his accent was pretty terrible, but the Anastans were still completely reliant on mental translation.
Taiven's eyes were periodically flickering between the other people in the room. She was squeezed onto Imaya's couch next to Xvim and Alanic, both of whom looked grimly focused. Across the room, Talia, Alustin, Hugh, Artur and Sabae were sitting on stools, holding mugs of hot chocolate. After Imaya had found out about Godrick's death, she had taken the offworlders personally under her wing, and there wasn't a moment they could have their hands free before she would pass them a biscuit or another mug.
Mackerel was gently hovering between Hugh and Rain, and the armoured mage was giving the crystal spellbook scratches along its spine.
Spear of Resolve was one of the few people in the crowded room who had a little space to herself - although that was more due to the humans' discomfort with the giant spider than thanks to politeness. Fortunately, aranea looked dramatically different to grey hunters. Aranea were jumping spiders, with larger eyes and relatively larger abdomen, while the long-legged grey hunters were huntsmen. The difference was pretty visually apparent, but then again, Zorian had spent a lot of time with spiders, and the variation between species might not be as obvious to others.
As such, Zorian had made sure to check carefully with the Anastans before bringing Spear of Resolve into the room. It would be understandable if they had traumatic reactions to giant spiders right now. But they handled the unfamiliar experience well, and the spider was being unfailingly polite. Since she already spoke in mental communications, she was the only one here who didn't need to have her words translated for the Anastans to understand.
Kael was in the next room, watching his daughter Kana play with Kirielle. He had immediately proven himself useful by putting together an antivenom for Talia. He'd described it as 'crude' and 'far from my best work', but Talia's headache had subsided shortly afterwards.
One of Zorian's simulacra had gone through the stabilised Ibasan gate to Koth and brought back Zorian's brother Daimen and his fiancee Orissa. The pair of them had been overjoyed to see Zorian alive, and Orissa had joined Imaya in trying to make the new arrivals feel at peace. She was sitting next to Talia, and Daimen stood by his fiancee's shoulder, playing with a strand of her hair.
On the whole, most people here had taken Zorian's story in their stride. There wasn't much question of it being the truth, given that he had six offworld mages and a flying crystal spellbook as physical evidence. That said, believing wasn't quite the same thing as 'coming to terms with'. Daimen still looked like he hadn't fully accepted that this was happening yet, and Alanic was casting sidelong looks at Rain.
Zach was standing by Zorian's side. "So I guess we're back to square one? If Oganj isn't going to back off, then there's not much we can do but fight him head to head. How tough would you say these guys are?" He gestured at Rain and the Anastans, clearly sizing them up.
Zorian raised a finger. "Head to head? Not necessarily. Hugh has some warding techniques that make ambushes a lot more plausible - if they work on dragons. Do you know if they do, Hugh?"
Hugh nodded and responded in Ithonian, which Simulacrum Four translated for the others: "Attention wards worked on the dragons on my world. I don't know if they're the same species as the ones here, though."
Alustin spoke up. There was an eagerness to his voice that was almost inappropriate given the context. "Galvachren's Guide thinks they are the same species, which is fascinating. Galvachren notes that the ones here are uniformly large. There's a greater range of sizes on Anastis - a few larger, but most smaller."
Zorian nodded appreciatively. "In that case, I think we have a way forward. Rain, can-"
The armoured mage's face looked like it had drained of blood, and his eyelids were fluttering the way they often did when he moved in and out of his soul-space.
"Rain, are you alright?"
Rain breathed out and put a gauntleted hand over his face. "I'm sorry, I know this is a really bad time, but I need to get home. Now."
Zorian was taken aback. "Now? What happened?"
Rain responded to the question with a mental image. The thing that had pursued them across the Anastan seas was on Ameliah's world. It had allied with Ascension's enemies, and it was hunting the people Rain cared about - with the might of an empire behind it. It hadn't found Ameliah yet, but that wouldn't last forever…
Zorian could feel Rain's tension. The man was ready to run back down the Hole and fight his way through the labyrinth by himself if necessary.
After a moment, Zorian realised everyone in the room was looking at him.
"So what do we do now?" asked Alanic.
"Now?" Zorian took a deep breath. "I think it's about time for some multiversal diplomacy."