It was hard to tell if it was simply a consequence of his hearing being damaged, but he noticed the faint sounds of celebration had stopped. Looking over the city he noticed that what happened to the residence building wasn’t an isolated occurrence — wherever one of the flares hit, it left devastation in its wake. He only had a few seconds to ponder this before he noticed another batch of flares start ascending into the sky from the distance. This particular barrage was not masked by fireworks, so it was pretty obvious that they were artillery spells. They were under attack.
As the flares started dropping back to earth, Zorian began to panic. What the hell was he supposed to do!? Running away would be pointless since he didn’t know what the flares were targeting. He could very well be running straight into the area of effect if he ran blindly. Wait a minute, why does he have to do anything? There are a bunch of capable mages in the building, he should just notify them and have them handle it. He rushed down into the dance hall.
He had barely stepped on to the stairway when he ran into Ilsa and Kyron.
«Zorian! What are you doing here?» Ilsa demanded.
«Err, I just went out for some fresh air,» Zorian fumbled. «But that’s not important right now!»
«I agree,» Kyron said. «Kid, what was that blast? Don’t tell me this is something you did?»
«Hardly,» Zorian said. «Some kind of flares are falling all over the city, destroying everything they hit. Looks like some kind of powerful artillery spell.»
Ilsa and Kyron shared a look between each other before turning back to him.
«Go join Akoja and the others in the dance hall,» Ilsa told. «We’ll see what is happening and teleport everyone into the shelters if necessary.»
The both pushed past him and rushed to the roof, leaving Zorian to stumble into the dance hall in a daze. Akoja… Akoja wasn’t in the dance hall. She left. Because of him. She was out there, maybe even already dead…
He shook his head and banished such thoughts out of his mind. He took out his divination compass and quickly cast a divination spell to locate her. He wasn’t sure if it was going to work, since the spell he used could only find people you were ‘familiar with’ — in other words, friends and family. Thankfully, it seemed that being classmates with her was enough of a connection for the spell to work.
He took a deep breath to steel his nerves. He was liable to get himself killed, but… well, it was kind of his fault. He didn’t think he could live with himself if Akoja ended up dead because of him.
Like an intangible ghost, he weaved between agitated students and foreign dignitaries, ignored and unhindered, until he was near the exit. He slipped out of the building and then broke into the run in the direction indicated by the needle of his divination compass.
Trolls were pretty nasty creatures. There were several subspecies, but all of them were large 3-meter tall humanoids with tough leathery skin and supernatural regenerative abilities so strong they were able to reattach severed limbs simply by holding them to the matching stump for a few moments. The most numerous and famous subspecies was the forest troll, which had vivid green skin and roamed throughout the great forested expanse in the north. As Zorian watched a troupe of trolls strut through the streets, smashing windows and howling unintelligibly, he reflected that it was fortunate the acrid smoke wafting from the nearby burning buildings masked his scent. His textbooks all said a forest troll’s sense of smell was frighteningly good.
Normally he would have wondered what such a large gathering of forest trolls was doing in the middle of a human city, relatively far away from their native lands, but the blades and maces they were holding told him all he needed to know. Those were weapons too advanced to have been produced by the trolls themselves, who were highly primitive and lacked such high metal working skills. They were war trolls. Somebody armed these creatures and set them loose on the city.
Once they were gone, Zorian relaxed a little and tried to figure out what to do. He was such an idiot. Why, oh why did he have to run off without getting some help from the teachers first? Then again, he assumed the flares were the only danger, in which case getting to Akoja wouldn’t be an issue, assuming a stray flare didn’t get him. Instead he found the city overrun with monsters. This wasn’t some kind of a terrorist attack like he assumed, it was a full-blown invasion! Sadly, the option to return to the dance hall was closed to him — a lot of the invading forces were converging towards the academy, cutting off his retreat path. With that in mind, Zorian set out towards Akoja. He kept himself in the shadows, knowing the invaders would quickly notice anyone caught in the open, such as that boy standing… over… there…
Is that Zach?
«Over here!» Zach shouted, waving his hand in the air. «I’m over here you stupid animals! Come and get me!»
Zorian gaped at the reckless stupidity of what he was witnessing. What the hell was that idiot doing!? No matter how talented a student he was, there was no way Zach could stand up to the sort of monstrosities that were stalking the city at the moment. But it was too late to do anything — attracted by Zach’s shouting, the trolls came running back, giving a single collective battle cry before charging at the boy foolish enough to attract their attention. Zorian could tell from Zach’s posture that he intended to fight the trolls, which he thought was pretty crazy — what could he do against a creature that regenerates from virtually any wound done to it? Only fire and acid could do permanent harm, and they didn’t-
Zach grasped his staff firmly in his hand, his other hand outstretched in the direction of the charging trolls — a roaring fireball erupted from his hand and exploded right in the middle of the troll formation. When the flames cleared, only charred corpses remained.
Zorian was shocked. A proper fireball like that was a 3rd circle spell, and required a sizable amount of mana to cast, much more than any academy student had. Even Daimen could not have cast that spell when he was Zach’s age. Yet not only had Zach successfully done it, he didn’t even appear drained from the action. Indeed, when a flock of iron beaks attacked soon after, raining their deadly feathers at the boy, Zach simply erected an aegis — a freaking aegis! — around himself and peppered the birds with tiny fireballs that homed in on their targets, like magic missiles made out of fire. Zorian was transfixed by the sight of his classmate effortlessly fighting off hordes of monsters single-handedly. So much so that he almost failed to notice one of the winter wolves attacking Zach had stealthily broken off from the main pack and was sneaking up on him. Almost. Thankfully, some primal instinct alerted him to the danger and he threw himself to the side, narrowly avoiding the creature’s deadly pounce.
Zorian cursed himself as he watched the winter wolf reorient itself with startling ease for something so large, ready for another pounce. He really should have expected to be targeted, considering the amount of attention Zach was drawing to himself. He should have used Zach’s fighting as a distraction and fled while he had the chance. Now it was too late — Zorian knew he was not fast enough to outrun a winter wolf, and he had no combat spells with which to defend himself. Or rather, no spell rods and such. If he survived the evening, he would definitely learn a few combat invocations, obsolete as they may be. It was a big if, though.
A shining bolt of force slammed into the winter wolf’s head, causing it to explode in a gory mess of blood and bone fragments. Zorian didn’t know whether to be disgusted that he was showered by some of the bloody mess or relieved he would live for a little while longer. He also noted that the effects of the bolt were a bit strong for a regular magic missile. He supposed this was just another example of Zach’s baffling proficiency with combat magic.