Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«I don’t know what you’re talking about,» mumbled Zorian, climbing to his feet and helping Briam and Tinami rise as well. Strangely enough, they didn’t seem angry at him for what he’d done. Shaken by the experience, but not angry. Maybe they didn’t know he dismissed the disk on purpose?

«Well then, I’m glad to see another group of survivors, but we should really get going,» Zach said. «It’s not safe staying out in the open like this. Come, I know a place where we’ll be reasonably safe.»

Zorian looked around him. A surprising number of students had survived the attack and were dutifully following after Zach. Actually, they probably survived precisely because they were following after Zach. In any case, Zorian and his group decided there was no harm in joining the group — it’s not like they had a better idea anyway.

They didn’t get far before the attackers returned in force. Zorian heard Zach swearing something about bad luck and scoffed. This was no bad luck — the attackers were clearly tracking his movements and targeting him directly. Did Zach even take any precautions to make sure it took something more than a couple of easy divinations to track him down? Knowing Zach, probably not.

But Zorian had other things to worry about, because while Zach was occupied with another flock of iron beaks, a giant brown worm erupted from the ground and started wreaking havoc right in the middle of the student throng. Zorian had only met those things four times so far in the various restarts, and he already hated them — they could move through earth almost as if it was water, and their hide was utterly impervious to physical force. They weren’t particularly vulnerable to fire, either. Zorian watched impotently as the worm single-handedly shattered student formations, sending them scattering in panic so they could be picked off one by one by the winter wolves circling the throng.

Tinami apparently didn’t want to just watch. She fired one of her purple beams at the worm and finally achieved some results. Namely, she got the worm to scream out in pain before immediately swinging its toothy maw in her direction, its murderous attention now firmly focused on her. Uh oh.

With a roar that promised revenge, the worm dived back into the ground. Zorian immediately closed his eyes and tried to block out the sounds of battle, focusing on his mind sense, trying to track its movements. It wasn’t too hard — even if the worm wasn’t psychic, it was the only mind that was below ground, and thus easy to pick out from all the rest. He opened his mind, keeping track of the worm’s mind as it swam underground. Tinami seemed rooted to the spot, aware that she couldn’t separate too far from the group lest she be picked off like the rest of the students that made that mistake… and therefore couldn’t really escape the worm.

Just before the worm was about to surface, Zorian wrenched Tinami to the side and dropped an explosive cube where she was just a fraction of a second before. The worm erupted from the spot only a moment afterwards, its toothy maw snapping shut around the clump of earth… as well as the explosive cube. Even as it swung its head in their direction, Zorian activated the cube and the worm shuddered and started screeching and thrashing like mad before violently vomiting some of its pulped innards. Tinami was hit by its tail as it thrashed around and was thrown to the outer periphery of the battlefield, where she lay unmoving. Zorian quickly ran up to her and was relieved to see she was still breathing and had no obvious wounds. He shifted his attention back towards the worm, hoping that it had finally died while he had not been paying attention to it.

The worm swayed in the air as if drunk, and for one sweet moment Zorian thought he’d won… but then the worm swung its toothy maw straight towards him and roared out a challenge. This time it didn’t bother to dive into the ground, stretching out to an impressive length far faster than a creature of such size should be able to.

He didn’t die. The worm stopped a hair’s breadth away from his face, straining against some invisible bonds before suddenly turning to the side and biting down on the winter wolf that had been trying to sneak up on him while he was distracted.

[I was just in time, I see,] the voice of the matriarch spoke into his mind, and then she physically appeared, jumping out of the shadow of a nearby tree like it was the most normal thing in the world.

«Thanks,» Zorian said. «But I’m not sure why you’re here. I thought we agreed there should be as little contact as possible between us during the invasion.»

[I decided that updating your memory packet with the information we found out today is more important.]

Zorian sighed and glanced around. Everyone was too busy fighting for their life to pay much attention to them, and it wasn’t like the aranea was easy to spot in the gloom of the night.