Zorian stood slightly behind Alanic as they were situated around a large table filled with various officers of the Eldemarian military and battle priests sent by the Triumvirate church. He was dressed in a feature obscuring robe, and he spoke through an orb which interpreted his thoughts into speech.
While all attention was on Alanic as he briefed the various officials, Zorian could feel the minds of the people in this room regularly wandering over to him as they were filled with suspicion, admiration, and a fair amount of fear.
The degree to which they were intimidated by his presence went far beyond what it was the first time he'd taken up this role. This was, in part, due to the fact that now Zorian had openly allowed Alanic to accredit the wealth of information they had on Sudomir's mansion to him, giving them the impression that he'd been actively investigating Iasku mansion and the errant mayor of Knyazov Dveri for some time under deep cover.
The raiding of Iasku Mansion with the cooperation of the Eldemar military had become something of a go-to method when it came to teaching Zach in the ways of various combat magics, ranging from wards to more straight-forward attack spells. This was for multiple reasons, not the least of which was the fact that it allowed him to face Zach off against one of the more durable opponents he could be faced with in any given restart in the form of the dragon construct.
The major reason for taking this route, however, was because this was the second easiest way to take control of the ritual to release the primordial, and to hijack it to create a portal out of the lesser time loop. Having Sudomir fall in this way gives them access to the man himself. This will give them a valid excuse to feed more information to the Eldemar officials in regards to the Cult of the World Dragon and the invasion, sparking a severe crack-down. This will, in turn, spark the invasion to begin early.
The cult and the Ibasans will be in a panic, and will not have time for their usual careful preparations. This will enable Zorian to alter the minds of the cult leaders and have them incorporate him and Zach into the ritual, allowing them to make the adjustments that will transform it into a portal.
Unfortunately, the easiest method was something Zach had specifically vetoed for this greater loop. That being, to simply give Quatach-Ichl a temporary mark, play nice with him, and have him help out in the effort to punch through into 'normal reality,' under the condition that he gets to come along for the ride. Not only would the lich be a great asset to their efforts, being easily the world's foremost master of dimension magic outside of the increasing mastery Zorian had gained in his many restarts. His presence and participation would also confuse Panaxeth and delay his aggression against them as they conducted the ritual.
Their plan for after leaving the time-loop involved contacting the angels, after all. There was a pretty good chance that bringing a copy of the lich out with them would severely damage their relations with said angels if they were to go that route.
Not that Zorain felt there would be any more success doing it this way. He'd never told Zach about this, but the real reason he hadn't gone to the angels before now was because they would always kill him on sight these days. Before even having a chance to speak his case to them, they would always erase his soul, sending him right back to the beginning of the greater restart.
He didn't feel like going through this with the boy, however. Zach seemed pretty enthusiastic about this plan. That enthusiasm would keep him engaged when it comes to learning magic. It will be better for him to find out when the time comes rather than dashing his hopes early.
The command group for the raid team seemed suitably impressed by the depth of information Zorian had provided. Included was the information on the warding scheme, the details on the iron beaks, trolls, and winter wolves Sudomir had under his control, as well as the undead flesh golems. And, he also provided information about the skeletal dragon.
He even revealed the matter of Sudomir harboring the Ibasan invaders, but stated that it would be expected that the invaders he was harboring would be escaping via their permanent gate that they had set up in the mansion.
In fact, it was actually part of the plan that the raid be done at a reasonably sedate pace to allow the invaders time to escape, reasoning that taking the mansion too fast would force the invaders to join the fight, which would lead to unreasonable casualties among the comparatively small raid team they'd managed to arrange.
There were two more things that Zorian also provided to them. The products of some "secret magic research" that his "division" had apparently seen fit to contribute.
One of these things was a magic tool for discrete long-distance communication. In addition to fitting right in with the persona he'd crafted, this would also be fairly helpful in coordinating between the main body of the raid team and the advanced team that would be setting up an anti-teleportation ward. The ward would not stop them from using the gate, but failing to put up such a ward would draw suspicion. And, they also knew that Sudomir would not be leaving the mansion anyway.
The other was a spell staff. For all intents and purposes, it looked from the outside to be inscribed with a formula for artillery magic. These outside inscriptions, however, were just a camouflage to ward off questions. The reality was that this staff was made up of several thin cylindrical layers of metal, each engraved with layers upon layers of some of Zorian's best magic formulas.
This staff, which held so many functions it could rival the power of some divine artifacts, was Zach's training staff. The purpose of this staff was to assist Zach in pulling off some of the spells that would be considered "basic" at Zorian's level. It even included a divinity battery and an assisted guidance program for the stabilizing layer and ambient mana integration layer of his snowballing ambient mana accumulation formula.
This staff had been re-made by Zorian at the beginning of every restart, and each time he would intentionally omit certain portions of the spell formula on the staff that had been there in the last version, forcing Zach to compensate by doing the shaping work himself that would have in the previous loop.
The decoy formation on the outermost layer was crude by comparison to the masterworks that Zorian had placed in the deeper layers, but it was still regarded as impressive by the commanders who were looking at the staff. It displayed a spell formula that would allow a single person to launch artillery magic with nearly zero preparation time. However, the individual using it would still have to supply the magic themselves.
This, of course, made for the perfect explanation as to why Zach was being included in this operation. Zach had been introduced as Zorian's apprentice, and his outrageous mana capacity and ability to fire off the staff's magic alone without assistance were reason enough to incorporate a "child" like him into such a mission.
Once the meeting was concluded, Zorian and Alanic left the officer's tent at the staging area and quickly found another figure dressed in a form obscuring robe nearly identical to Zorian's sitting outside and practicing his shaping magic, forming a filigree of light in an intricate pattern resembling the complicated engravings on many spell items, far outstripping the complexity of a simple spell boundary.
This was a set of shaping exercises Zorian had created himself for the sake of practicing the ambient mana fueled spells. Much like the basic shaping exercises, these specialized ones he'd created were arranged in stages of increasing difficulty. Creating a spell formation with light was the first and easiest of the exercises. One of the later ones would involve shaping with divine mana, a feat which requires a great deal of subtlety and finesse, but also a certain firmness and strength. The two contradictory approaches would need to be combined to get divinity to behave as you wanted it to, and the skill involved in this would require a great deal of practice and exercise.
Zach was actually well past the basic exercise he was engaging in now, but he was keeping it up anyway in order to keep the involved skills fresh for when he needed to go into the more complicated exercises. Plus, if Zorian knew his companion's way of thinking, he was quite sure he was also doing this to show off and freak out the Eldemar special forces guys who were watching him with mouths agape.
Zorian sent a disrupting wave of his own mana at Zach's formation, just calculated to be enough for him to handle. The boy's face scrunched up in focus as he tried to maintain the formation against this assault, injecting a little more power into it without loosing the formation. This was a higher stage meant to progress a step toward the later handling of divine mana. This was the step Zach was still working on, and Zorian had made sudden ambushes like this a normal part of their training lately.
Zach managed to weather the first disruption, but then Zorian threw another three at him in quick succession, each calculated to attack different areas of weakness he had noticed in Zach's first attempts to keep the formation steady.
This was finally too much for the boy to keep steady. The formation wavered for a few crucial seconds, and then it snapped and fell apart completely.
Zach breathed a sigh of defeat. "Ok, you definitely were not playing fair with that one," he grumbled as he stood up. "Hey, finished with the meeting then?" He said. Unlike Zorian, Zach was not using a voice orb. He spoke with his natural youthful voice. Most of the Eldemarian soldiers did not ask questions about this as the 'apprentice with a lot of mana' cover story already explained away this part.
"Yes, and also, it should not be beyond your capabilities to maintain a stable formation under that sort of assault. I used a low amount of mana, it was simply targeted at the weakest points in your formation that I saw you were slowest in responding to the first time. Consider it a pointing out of the areas you need the most improvement on," Zorian said.
Analic shook his head with a wry smile, and Zorian was getting signals of a mix of admiration at their dedication to training despite their already high skills and also exasperation at just how ridiculous it was they could engage in training this advanced.
"We will be moving out shortly. Are you set for what comes after this?" He said.
"Yeah," Zach said. "You're sure one to talk though, he's been training me for this for decades worth of subjective time. This is only your third restart under the temporary marker."
Actually, Zorian found it quite admirable the battle priest could maintain such a demeanor even when he was this far out of his depth. It seemed to be him simply finding the things in the current situation that paralleled best with things he was already familiar with in his life, but those parallels proved rather appropriate to the current situation. The veteran's mind-set, it would seem.
"What comes next will be a practice run," Zorian said. "The real thing will come next restart, or perhaps later depending on our performance with this one. That said, Mr. Zosk, I do not believe this is the best place to be having such a conversation."
By that, he was referring to how they were out in the open in front of all the Eldemar soldiers. Not that he particularly cared, he could easily just make someone forget if they heard something that would significantly alter their behavior.
"I guess you're right," Alanic nodded. "I suppose I just feel a little impatient. My time in this whole business is a lot more limited than it is for the two of you, after all."
"Well, that was the whole idea behind starting this practice business early," Zach said. "And besides, we really only have one loop more than you do, and that's just in case things really go catastrophically wrong."
"You two really do like making me work, don't you? Please, at least use a privacy ward if you insist upon talking about sensitive information," Zorian said. He immediately followed this up by throwing up said privacy ward.
It was actually easier for Zorian to correct people's thoughts than it was even to cast the privacy ward, but he was feeling a little strange about how Alanic had been behaving since they gave him the temporary marker. This kind of carelessness was expected from Zach, he'd never been too careful with time-loop related information even before the point at which Zorian joined the loop.
Alanic, however, is someone who's always been a lot more serious. Something has changed this loop, however, and Zorian wasn't entirely sure what it was.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
He had his suspicions the battle priest was simply behaving this way in order to deliberately mess with him, likely in response to the information on just how long they'd been in this loop and how routine everything was to them. While the man would act seriously when he needed to, it has always been within his character to act as he liked, and would often go to extremes to get what he was after. In this case, perhaps what he was after was Zorian's reactions.
In other words, Alanic was testing this highly capable Zorian Kazinski. This had been the first time in quite a while they'd made anyone else a temporary looper, and now the battle priest was trying to feel Zorian out, to see how he'd react to various things. If that was the case, perhaps the purpose this time would be to see whether he preferred preventative heading off of information leaks, or reparative mind-magic to remove the leaked information.
Alanic nodded and seemed satisfied and a little less tense with the privacy screen up, which fit well with this hypothesis of him testing Zorian's willingness to jump to mind magic as a first solution. It seemed perhaps he'd made the right choice in this case.
"Yes," Alanic said. "You two have five loops left to get out of here before this whole thing collapses compared to my four before I loose my temporary marker. So, this round is something of a full dress rehersal. We do everything except the ritual. Take down the sick megalomaniac necromancer, turn his mind into mush, and use it as an excuse to give the Eldemarian authorities all the information on the cult and the invasion by accrediting him as the source and then infiltrate the cult as all this is going on so we can subvert the ritual when they try to start it in conjunction with the invasion."
"Exactly," Zach said. "Right now, 'master Zorian's' simulacrums should be setting up the formations we'll need and is planting false memories in the minds of the higher ups in the cult. They're going to believe we're already members of their leadership even before anything starts, and he'll also supplant the knowledge of how to perform the ritual in their minds. That whole child sacrifice ritual will be wiped from their minds and replaced with the version that involves the gate as the catalyst."
"Sounds like all the hard work is being done by 'your master,'" Alanic said with an amused smile as he mimicked Zach's almost mocking use of the term 'master.' "The way I understand it, he actually is teaching you to do some pretty impressive magic. Maybe being the same age in terms of outward appearances changes things, but if he's the teacher then maybe you should be treating him with a bit more respect."
Zorian couldn't help but notice the irony in this comment. When he'd started out, Alanic was one of the people who had trained him, taking a role of his master. He would have rolled his eyes if it weren't for his mental enhancements quickly dismissing the subject of their banter as irrelevant and not worth getting emotional over in any way.
"Nah, Zorian doesn't mind. Do you Zorian?" Zach boldly declared.
"Hmm..." Alanic eyed Zach suspiciously.
At that moment, Zorian gently reached into the battle priest's mind and nudged his thoughts away from a particular direction he'd picked up on. He'd been monitoring the man's thoughts out of habit and so he picked up on the fact that Alanic had noticed something in Zach's behavior that was tipping him off to the fact they were hiding something from him.
They had made the decision before giving him the temporary mark they would not tell him about the greater time loop. They would get better cooperation out of him if he thought escaping the lower time loop would mean he'd really escaped. But, this also meant they'd have to hide the fact all this would be meaningless when the greater loop reset from him as well.
Keeping this secret was proving difficult for Zach, which had lead him to acting overly happy around Alanic on several occasions. Of course, being experienced and incredibly suspicious by nature, Alanic easily noticed there was something off about Zach's behavior. This meant that Zorian had to be almost constantly monitoring the man's thoughts in order to nudge them like this every single time him and Zach talked to each other.
-break-
They had become very well practiced at the raid on Iasku Mansion by now, and having Alanic as a temporary looper only improved the coordination with the Eldemarian military.
The raid started with an advance team going out to set up their anti-teleportation ward. Thanks to Zorian's assistance and the information he provided about Iasku mansion's warding scheme, they knew the moment the ward snapped into place it would alert the inhabitants of the mansion. Therefore, they made their preparations accordingly. As the ward neared completion, an overseeing communications officer from the team used the magic tool Zorian had given them to send word back to the main forces.
The rest of the forces teleported in the very moment before the ward went up, and the army was organized and ready when the forces inside Iasku Mansion went into high alert and started sending out all their forces like a kicked-over anthill.
The barrier team went into place immediately, defending against enemy assault and giving the rest of the team time to orient themselves, and then the iron golems stepped forward in time to meet and begin turning Sudomir's flesh golems into paste.
Two fire vortexes were kicked up, fueling themselves on the souls of the undead as they were consumed. These fire vortexes were something of an ultimate weapon against hoards of undead, and they quickly mowed through the ranks of the enemy. In fact, the Eldemorian forces were mobilized so effectively that they had to be told to hold back by their commanders in order to avoid overtaking Sudomir's forces too quickly.
The officers in charge of this unit were experienced, and they also had the added help of Zach and Zorian giving them tips based on their years of experience in repeatedly practicing this exact raid.
The slow rate of advancement combined with the disciplined use of barrier magic managed to aid the military in achieving their objective without suffering any casualties among the 40 mages, equal numbers of battle priests, and around 200 regular soldiers. Meanwhile, Sudomir's undead and sick experimental creatures were being ground to dust.
"Well, guess it's my turn now. Watch this. I'll get it in the dragon's mouth," Zach bragged as he stepped forward and held up his training staff. He created a small sphere of magic, forming what from any outside perspective appeared to be a common magic missile spell. However, this spell did something strange. Instead of zooming off to strike the enemy, it began flying around Zach like an orbiting planetoid.
As it zipped around him in a tight circle, the small sphere of magic became brighter and brighter, while also slowly expanding in size. Mages who had a sufficient level of mana sensitivity would be able to notice a drop in the ambient mana, especially near Zach. Meanwhile, this spell only continued to grow in size and power.
As this was going on, the roof of Iasku mansion suddenly exploded, revealing the form of a large skeletal dragon. Almost in sync with this explosion, Zach launched his orbiting sphere of magic into the air and straight at the dragon. The magic attack flew faster than any artillery magic, and with a far more frightening density of destructive force.
As the dust was still settling, and right as the skeletal dragon was turning to let out an intimidating roar, Zach's magic missile struck the dragon right in the open mouth. The overpowered magic missile immediately exploded, taking the dragon's entire head with it.
"Yess!" Zach cheered.
Zorian could only shake his head. He knew Zach had been practicing the timing on that maneuver every restart. He'd gradually built up quite the high success rate in doing this too.
Alanic glared at Zach. This time, the subject of the man's ill thoughts toward the boy were not of the dangerous sort. He merely thought Zach was being overly frivolous in his behavior. As such, Zorian did nothing to curb those negative thoughts.
Despite the missing head, the dragon still continued to move. It jumped down off the mansion and stood in front of the main entrance where it began thrashing about violently. While the control components which gave the dragon life were located in the core body, the head still contained an optical sensor that was meant to feed information to the controller. Since the controller was Sudomir, who happened to be a Necromancer, he was still able to detect nearby souls through the dragon and thus was able to at least give it some rudimentary guidance until he could find other means of perceiving the battlefield enough to guide the dragon. No doubt he was running back to his scrying tool this very moment.
The nearby officers who'd also heard Zach's comment were looking at him in amazement. None of them could tell how this youth who concealed his appearance beneath those robes was able to know it was time to begin preparing for the dragon, but with how precisely he'd timed everything it was quite obvious he really did know it was coming.
"Now would be a good time to use your living metal rounds, commander. It will not take him long to figure out how to control that dragon while headless, and then he will begin mobilizing it against your men," Zorian said, snapping the officers back to attention.
"Ah! Yes! Men! Advance! Fire the living metal rounds," the officer said.
Zorian's mental enhancements once again had to kick in to prevent him from wanting to heave a sigh. It would usually be Alanic who would call out the order for the living metal rounds, but it seemed like he was too distracted with trying to figure out Zach and Zorian.
With the dragon grounded, it was easy for the gunmen to pelt the dragon with the living metal. Having been informed about the dragon in advance, they were sure to bring along an abundance of the stuff and had plenty on hand to keep piling on more and more of the silvery liquid that was quickly forming itself into a tight metal net against the dragon's struggles.
Had they brought the standard amount, the dragon would have the strength to struggle out and break the strands. However, after piling on so much that it seemed enough to coat the entire external surface area of the skeletal dragon, it proved far harder for it to get out as the net held it to the ground.
"Alright! Secure the perimeter!" Alanic shouted, his attention now back on the battle at hand.
All the timing thus far had gone exactly to plan. And, by the time the soldiers finished mopping up the remaining undead, requiring them to go through the motions of preparing to breech the front door, Sudomir announced his surrender.
-break-
The next week proceeded exactly as expected. With the identities Zorian had made for them, he, Zach, and Alanic all infiltrated the cult of the world dragon just in time for them to start preparations for the emergency early launch of the invasion. Under the threat of their members all being arrested and the investigation applying increasing pressure on the top members who knew their number would come up soon, they had no choice but to act fast.
Deep within the hole, Zorian's simulacrum along with a few members of the cult were setting up the Imperial Gate on top of the floating platform that placed them around the entrance to Panaxeth's seal.
"So, this is it, is it?" Zach asked as he admired the fruits of all their efforts. Explosions rang out overhead as the invasion forces were pushing through the city in an effort to wreak havoc in order to distract from what was going on down in the hole.
"I'm raising the containment barrier. Once it's up, nobody from the outside will be able to detect us," Zorian said, and then promptly activated the formation inscribed upon the platform itself, immediately sucking all of them into a pocket dimension layered immediately on top of Panaxeth's prison.
The sounds of battle still resounded from outside, but visibility was one-way so far as this pocket dimension was concerned. They could see out, but nobody could see in. They were now effectively undetectable from the outside. The only people who knew they were even there were the Ibassans, and they were woefully short-handed to be causing any disruptions should Quatach-Ichl somehow realize there was something off about their actions.
"Well, I guess that's it then," Alanic said as he stepped forward. "Are you going to go through the motions of the actual ritual itself, or is just getting everything ready like this enough?"
Despite the presence of the cult leadership nearby, Alanic spoke without a single care as he knew Zorian would simply prevent any of them from noticing. About the only reason he didn't just wipe their minds an puppet them at this point was because it was easier to just re-write key sections of their thoughts. It required less constant concentration anyway.
"We need to go through the entire ritual for the sake of practice," Zorian said. "I've designed this platform to simulate the energies of opening the door to Panaxeth's prison, as well as the spell that punches through to our reality and creates a stable bridge. Those runes on the center of the platform will light up in accordance with our progress. The outer circle will light up with white runes to indicate which phase of the process we are on. The inner circle of red runes will light up if there's a problem, and they will also indicate the nature of the problem. Of course, I've left out a key portion of the spell formula to prevent the spell from actually affecting Panaxeth's prison. We don't want to tip him off. We are inside his body, after all. He can influence us if he realizes what's going on."
Zach shook his head as he continued to eye the Imperial Gate. "Heh, still, it's hard to believe this artifact that was collecting dust in the Noveda vaults all that time had this sort of power. I mean, we've been experiencing it's power first hand, and Zorian told be all about it practically the first day he... well..."
He glanced back at Alanic, realizing he'd just messed up. Zorian quickly edited the last few seconds of Zach's words in the man's memory to be something more in line with them having discovered this information themselves later on during this greater restart rather than Zorian telling him about it. The battle priest shook his head as Zorian finished, noticing the mental lapse, but Zorian had long since placed a compulsion on him to ignore such lapses of mental ability. While most people would ignore it as a matter of course, viewing it as a matter of course, Alanic warranted special treatment due to his suspicious nature and how alert he tended to be toward anything that was out of place, even going so far as to come up with contingencies to detect manipulation of his own mind by creating secret codes he could give to his future self after a mind-wipe.
"Err... right," Zach said as he noticed Alanic displaying the external signs of Zorian's mental editing. "Umm... anyway, this is the first time I'm seeing this gate myself since learning about all this," he said as he took another two steps closer and then placed his hand on the gate.
"This is the source of all our current issues, and also the solution to it all," Zach said, and then looked back over his shoulder. "I...
At that exact moment, Zorian's simulacrum reached forward to inscribe a few final touches to the spell formula, linking up the engravings on the platform with those that were etched onto the gate. The moment the simulacrum's fingers touched the gate, everything went black.
Zorian's mind immediately went on high alert. He looked quickly from side to side, not finding any sign of his fellow time looper. All that was in front of him was the guardian, but something was very wrong. It appeared as though it's entire body was made of tongues, and strange misshapen mouths were visible in the empty blackness around him.
Zorian's gaze focused in on the strangely misshapen guardian. He knew exactly what this was.
"Panaxeth!" He said.