"There's nobody around outside," I whispered to Ambrose, and he remained expressionless as he waited for my next words. He didn't even ask how I knew, and for the better, because I didn't want to reveal my Far Sight to him.
anwhile, I continued to move my point of view around the place, looking for any movent or surveillance, but I found none. The corridor outside was also still a bit vaguely defined, but considering that the restroom was getting more solid by the second, I figured that would change with ti. A few frantic Magi ca by twice since I changed the door, and only the second group tried to co in. They gave up pretty much imdiately after finding out that the door was stuck and they ran off sowhere else, so at least it wasn't a completely wasted effort.
More importantly, there were three problems I had to face now.
Number one, I had to limit my Phasing to the bare minimum. It was still my ticket out of this place when push ca to shove, but short-distance teleporting wasn't great for my stomach. Or the spatial integrity of this place, which might've been a bigger deal objectively, but my guts still took priority in my eyes. That ant no blinking around like I did in the Abyss, which made exploration and stealth a bit trickier than usual.
Secondly, based on my observations so far, this School was also following the example set by the one back at Critias and was built underground. The maximum distance I could cast my point of view wasn't huge, so I could only see a couple of hallways, so storage rooms, as well as the large hall from whence we ca. The latter was a bit surprising, as it seed to be just a really fancy neo-roman style atrium with a bunch of columns and classical marble sculptures lining the walls. The Critias School of Conjuration also had a few large spaces like this, but none felt this, for lack of better words, pointless.
Due to the limited area I could cover, I couldn't quite grasp the layout of the facility, and Lord Ambrose wasn't much help either. Neither of us had any idea where to look for a Grimoire Key, but my hunch was that we just had to search for the most magically fortified spot we could find, and it was probably there. It was also most likely where the local arch-mage's office was, with her inside, but I figured I'd cross that bridge once I got there.
For now, we had to deal with the third and last of the imdiate problems.
"It's not budging at all," the arch-mage by my side hissed as he tried to work the doorknob. "How does this even work? You said it's an illusion. No matter how good it is, once you know it's not real, it should be easy to dispel or even just ignore, but why doesn't this go away?"
I partially shared Ambrose's frustration, but I tried not to show it in my tone when I responded.
"I told you, didn't I? The best illusion magic doesn't trick the mind, it tricks the world, and if the world believes it, then it's as good as real."
That was my canned explanation for whenever I did sothing impossible and used my alleged illusion magic to obscure it, but it didn't quite work this ti.
"What kind of hogwash is that?! If you could do sothing like that with illusion spells, it wouldn't be an aetheric school of magic!"
He huffed and puffed and then closed his eyes before grabbing the doorknob again. He muttered sothing about how 'illusions aren't real', then he simultaneously turned the handle and lurched forward, slamming into the door with his shoulder…
"Sunova—!"
… Only to effectively bounce off, lose his balance, and fall squarely on his butt.
"Cut that out. You're going to reveal our position."
"You said that there was nobody outside!"
"That doesn't an they won't hear you bursting through a door like that." I stifled a groan. "Also, this door opens inwards, so it wouldn't have opened either way."
"I… I knew that! I was just testing the illusion!" the man continued to fu while straightening his robes. "Could you please undo it so we can move on?"
It was a question that made fall into a pensive silence.
So, the third problem was that my 'temporary retcon' (as I called it, despite only being retcon-adjacent at best) turned out to be rather permanent this ti around. It was likely due to the undefined state of this part of the world, but as of this mont, the fake door in front of us was treated as the entrance's 'natural state' by the Simulacrum, so I couldn't open it either.
Or rather, I only knew of one way to do it, and since I couldn't see any other option, I quietly resolved myself and gingerly extended a phantom limb. The sa scene played out from before, with the infinitely expanding fractals of doors everywhere, but this ti I made sure to be very, very careful as I picked a normal door and veeery carefully overlaid it on the first one.
I'm not exaggerating or anything. I really was as careful as possible, trying not to accidentally… well, do whatever I did not too long ago. I still wasn't entirely clear on what happened, because The Girl didn't explain jack about it other than 'You made holes!', which wasn't helpful. I didn't want a repeat that, or to see her show up and start nagging again, so I made sure to be as gentle and painstaking as humanly possible, slowly moving the replacent door to its destination before overlaying it on the original.
At last, the two snapped together. I held my breath (taphorically speaking) and stayed vigilant of any 'holes', but there was no crisis or side-effect this ti around, so I withdrew my phantom limbs and relaxed my shoulders. Then, I waited, just in case The Girl decided to show up again anyway, but there was no floaty portal in sight. Good riddance.
"Okay, let's move out," I whispered while grasping the doorknob, my eyes on Ambrose. "Keep quiet, and stay close to , just to be safe."
"Oh? Are you going to put us under an invisibility illusion?" he asked back, and I couldn't decide if he was sounding more curious or dismissive of the idea.
"No, I just need you to be close in case we need to retreat," I answered curtly and pulled the door open.
"What if we get discovered?"
"We improvise," I told him offhandedly, but Ambrose not only didn't take offense at my tone, he let out a pleased hum in return.
"Improvise, huh? I like that."
We stepped out into the well-lit hallway, and I'm not going to lie, I started to feel a bit woozy again when I looked at the subtly shifting walls. The floor under my feet feeling unstable, like I could fall through it at any mont, also didn't help, but I steeled my nerves and gestured for Ambrose to follow .
"Just to be sure, do you really have no idea which way the arch-mage's office could be?"
"I told you, I don't have an earthy clue," he admitted, morosely, his eyes scanning the far end of the corridor. "But even if I knew, I don't know where we are right now, so it wouldn't help. Don't you have so spell to find it?"
"No. Do you?"
"Don't be ridiculous." He crossed his arms and looked at like I just asked sothing offensive. "The School of Invocation is not dealing with frivolous things like tracking spells! Leave those silly things to the aetheric schools."
In other words, he was a dead weight. Lovely.
On the bright side, while he wasn't exactly helpful right now, I could at least rely on him in a fight. I would've preferred if we could avoid any battles, but it was best to expect the worst, so I gestured for him to tone it down. "I'll lead the way. Prepare so offensive spells in advance, just in case."
"Right, not a bad idea," he murmured and hunched over. "I was caught flat-footed the last ti, and without a catalyst, I didn't have the ti to hit them before they sicced those stoneheads on ."
"I was aning to ask…" We sneaked down the hallway and, after scanning our environnt with Far Sight, I glanced over my shoulder. "Isn't this a School of Restoration? Why do they have golems?"
"How should I know?" Ambrose hissed back at , followed by a less irate and more speculative, "This is a rich School. They probably bought them from the Tower of Conjuration, or sothing."
Based on what I gathered from the arch-mages on Critias, the Magi had six branches of magic, known as the lowercase 'schools'. The heart of the Assembly was in Glasgow, Scotland, and it had six 'Towers', each corresponding to a branch of magic. I had no idea whether these towers were literal, taphorical, or so archaic terminology left over from a ti when they were literal, but that was beside the point. Each Tower managed its own upper-case 'Schools', which were Magi research- and educational institutions.
While they were all technically under the umbrella of the Assembly, the Schools were mostly autonomous for the most part, and so they differed greatly in scope and design. The Critias School of Conjuration was on the larger side, while most other Schools were a bit more modest, and so didn't even have an arch-mage leading them. While on paper they were all equal, so of them were more equal than the rest.
It was kind of like universities, now that I thought about it. While they all handed out degrees and they were all equally accredited and accepted on paper, there was a huge difference between the prestige and the resources of Oxford and a no-na college from the countryside. If so, based on the décor and the size of this place, we were probably sowhere in the ballpark of… um… Cambridge? Yale? Note to self: look into universities to make better analogies.
"Okay, so we have golems," I moved the conversation along while listening to the sound of so distant footsteps. Once I was sure they weren't getting closer, I looked at Ambrose again. "What else should I expect?"
"What kind of question is that? This is a School of Restoration, so you should be wary of restoration spells." I raised a brow, with the implied question of 'What? Are they going to heal to death?', but he was dead serious, so I didn't voice it. He soon continued in a grave tone, telling , "Just to be clear, make sure you don't let them touch you. It's dangerous even to soone like you or I."
"Noted."
I had many other questions in mind, but then everything in my vision suddenly flashed in negative colours before settling into a familiar violet hue.
"Oh. They brought down a Purple Zone," I noted a touch absently.
Ambrose, on the other hand, let out a string of stifled curses, ending with an emphatic, "Shit! We're in deep trouble now! They not only cut us off from the outside world, but if they managed to pull us into a Restricted Zone, it ans they know our general location!"
"That's a pickle."
"It's not a 'pickle', it's a disaster! We need to start moving, before they—!"
As if on cue, the floor under our feet shook, accompanied by the deep rumbling of sothing big falling apart.
"That didn't sound good," I noted, and just as Ambrose was about to yell at , he was cut off by the ground shaking again and a large crack showing up on a nearby wall.
"They're trying to bring the whole place down on our heads! We have to move, now!"
Before I could get a word in, he abandoned the previous spell he was preparing and started chanting a new one. The ground under his feet began to undulate (more than it normally did, at any rate) and he was suddenly speeding away from , riding a wave of transford floor tiles. It wasn't the first ti I'd seen him do that, but it was still such a peculiar form of mobility, it made do a double-take. My shock only lasted for a heartbeat though before a second realization hit .
"Wait! I told you not to move too far from !"
"Then hurry up, before they—!"
He couldn't finish the sentence, because he was interrupted for the third ti in a row by the purple-tinted wall completely breaking and a vaguely humanoid dark grey creature erging from the hole. It was slightly bigger than Petra, the class rep's usual summon, and this one had smooth, angular features with enormously oversized arms and shoulders, plus a featureless face with only a single, brightly glowing red eye. Its head was both tiny and round, so it was different from the one I saw in the hall upon my arrival, but about as big. Then it started to move with a roar, even though it didn't have a mouth.
Now, the first question that ca to mind was 'Why would a golem roar?', but then I rembered that both the Chiras and the Colossi I'd encountered were prone to do the sa. Maybe it was an occupational habit? I wouldn't know, because I wasn't a bloody humongous monster, but it sounded plausible. More importantly, while I had a hunch that Cal would've been hyped to fight it, discretion was the better part of valour right now, and I had other things to consider. Such as…
"I told you to slow down!"
… catching up to the retreating arch-mage. To his credit, at least he activated the two laser-drone-spell-thingies he prepared in advance, but while that was a comndable initiative, they had little effect on the stone creature pursuing us. It was surprisingly nimble, despite its size and weird proportions, but it couldn't gather full steam due to the hallway being a bit too narrow for its bulk. Still, that only slowed it down, but didn't stop it.
Besides, this whole situation made feel all kinds of conflicting emotions of the depressed variety, mainly because I was feeling… nostalgia probably wasn't the right word, but sothing adjacent. Reminiscence? Sentintality, maybe? Whatever the case, goddammit. Other people were nostalgic for stuff like their first day in school, or their first kiss. Maybe a special holiday or sothing, not being chased around by big honking monsters!
"Hey, can I bother you for a mont?"
I nearly stumbled at the sudden, casual words sounding right next to , and when I glanced over, it took inhuman effort not to throw my hand into the air.
Great! Perfect! Now I was also getting randomly interrupted in the middle of it all too! Just what I needed! Argh!
I glared at The Girl, only her head and shoulders visible, and she nonchalantly stared back while her floating portal casually tailed even as I was trying my best to catch up to Ambrose. He just rounded a corner ahead and I didn't want to lose track of him, but I also had to pay attention of the golem behind , all the while The Girl was expectantly staring at , as if none of this was her business. In other words, this was rapidly shaping up to be another one of those situations.
"No! Didn't I tell you I was in the middle of sothing?" I yelled at her, only to fall silent when I also rounded the sa corner and my danger sense scread at . "Whoa!"
It took so ntal effort to stop myself from Phasing out of the way, so I just rolled under the incoming projectile. By the ti I was back on my feet, I was startled to see that we sohow ended up in the sa hall as before, except this was the purple-tinted fake version.
"Look out, Leonard! This one has a rocket punch!"
"I noticed, thank you!" I barked back at the arch-mage, but he didn't get the sarcasm at all.
"Don't even ntion it!" he responded, all chipper like we were playing catch in the park.
His words were followed by a series of loud booms. He picked up so debris at so point, compressed them into javelins, and he was now firing them out of so vague magical construct. His target was the one-ard golem standing in the middle of the hall, similar to the one chasing us but with slightly different proportions, and while the first two missiles only did glancing hits, the last one embedded itself into the creature's shoulder, nearly breaking it off.
While that was impressive, the problem was that there wasn't just one golem in the hall, but before I could start counting…
"Listen, I see that you're having fun, but this is important!" The Girl continued to bother , completely disregarding the precarious situation unfolding around us.
"If it's so important, then why didn't you think of it before you kicked out?" I growled at her, and her large eyes blinked in confusion.
"Are you still holding a grudge over that? It happened so long ago!"
"No, it happened—!" I started, only to imdiately replace the end of the sentence with a groan. "Right. Different concept of ti."
"Shit! How many of these things did that shrew buy?! Leonard, I need backup right nooooahhh?" Ambrose was so shocked by The Girl's reappearance that he nearly fell off his floor-wave-magic-or-whatever, so I gestured at him to drive the point ho.
"See? You're distracting us."
"But this is really, really important!" she continued to argue, sounding less birdsong-y by the second.
anwhile, the golem that broke the wall caught up with and raised its oversized arms over its head to do a ground-pound on top of mine. I was half-tempted to push the top-heavy bastard, just to find out if it would topple over, but seeing that Ambrose was getting surrounded, it was more important to back him up.
I backed out of the way and into the hall and then broke into a sprint towards the closest golem. It may or may not have been the first one we encountered, based on the shape of its head, but since it was in the way, I swept my phantom limb at it. I figured that since it was a magical construct, unlike the more bio-weapon Chiras and the weird, spongy Colossi, doing that would be enough to disrupt the spells or enchantnts keeping it together.
Instead, I was startled when I was dragged into the fractal-space, and had to frantically pull out before it could fully manifest. If I had to venture a guess, the golems themselves weren't one hundred percent 'solid' either, like the rest of this place. That made them easier to temporary-retcon, and I almost accidentally did just that. My second attempt was more successful, as I aid at its extremities instead of its body, and once I scrambled its magical circuits, one of its arms popped off like it was an oversized action figure.
I only managed to disrupt that part of it, as the rest of its body moved to intercept , but it still gave the opportunity to slip by it and close the gap with Ambrose. He was already in the process of forming more spell-constructs even as the rest of the golems continued to encircle us.
"Which part of 'keep close to ' was hard to understand?" I hissed at him with undisguised exasperation, but it was like water rolling off the back of a duck. Instead, he pointed up, towards the ceiling.
"It was a tactical choice. Here, they can't collapse the area on us and box us in, and we have a better line of sight for long-ranged combat. Also, you're next to again, so it's all the sa."
"No, it's not all the—!"
"Okay, so let's try it this way." My words were cut off by a voice coming right next to my ear, and when I looked over, I found The Girl's portal. Except it was tiny, about as wide as three or four fingers, and she was nowhere to be seen. Her voice was as clear as ever though. "I won't distract anyone like this, right? So, listen, I had to look into the ****************** of the Simulacrum after the thing you did last ti, and I found so weird discrepancies. It's as if a large portion was completely **************. Was it you, or was it the Crowned Coalescence? Or maybe the…?"
"Could you please not discuss this in the open? Or at least use terminology I can understand?" I snapped at her. By the looks of it, Ambrose was too busy focusing on the other end of the hall to listen in on us, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
"But this is important! It's like what you did the last ti! You know, when the Predator Moon found you, but it looks much more covert-like. I'm pretty sure I would've noticed if you did sothing big like this again, so what gives? Hello? Are you listening?"
"Are you listening, Leonard?!" The Girl's voice was overlapping with the arch-mage's and it made blink in mild disorientation. He was pointing at one of the many doorways leading in here, or rather, the people rushing through it. "Shit! It's the School's combat response squad!"
Let be honest for a mont: I had a fairly stereotypical image of the Magi in my head. In my defence, they were pretty consistent so far. Academic types wearing robes and fancy suits, with the occasional staff or magitech tools. Sophisticated people with an air of scholarly elegance hiding dangerous power underneath. That kind of stuff.
What I never in my wildest dreams would've expected was a group of seven or eight Magi wearing gym clothes, all of them at least as tall as and about as well-built as Sir Duncan, and instead of magic wands or staves, they were wielding knuckle dusters and heavy gauntlets. If soone gave them a few gold necklaces and so sunglasses, they would've passed for generic thugs any day of the week.
"They aren't a good match for you," Ambrose declared one-sidedly and let out a growl. "I'll keep them busy. Can you take care of the golems by yourself?"
"Slow down. I told you to…" 'stay close to , no matter what!' is what I would've said if Ambrose hadn't just launched himself out of our encirclent without even waiting for my answer, leaving alone in the middle of half a dozen golems.
Or… well… not entirely alone…
"Um… Am I disturbing you?" a new voice entered the fray, and while it was hard to recognize him with all the background noise, I was pretty sure it was The Boy. "Are you talking to soone?"
"N-No? I an, yes, but…" Sputtering, The Girl whispered, "Act natural! Act natural!"
"Who are you talking to?" the voice on the other side of the hole kept inquiring, sounding less suspicious and more weirded out by The Girl's reaction.
"A friend! Just a friend? Right, friend?"
So, just to summarize, Ambrose was clashing with the muscle-bound Magi at the other end of the hall, the golems were visibly preparing to rush at all at once, I was still a bit nauseous, had to be mindful of Phasing and using my phantom limbs, and on top of all this…
"Is this a prank?"
"No! I'm really talking to soone! Co on, say sothing!"
That.
"Jesus Tapdancing Christ… What did I get myself into this ti…?"
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