Savia had taken flight as Gilliam readied himself, letting him do his thing without affecting her. Darting forward Gilliam barely saw Kintas move before the next thing he realised was that he was on his back looking at the sky.
"Oh.. wow... You're bad." Kintas smiled as he reached out a hand to help Gilliam up.
Gilliam was well aware that he was bad but he didn't have to rub it in that much, he still took Kintas' hand to get up.
What happened to the spark, was it just adrenaline? If so, that was duuumb. Stupid body...
His smug and better-than-thou facial expression changed a bit as he looked Gilliam up, still holding onto his hand in a handshake of sorts.
"You can still be trained, but it might take a bit longer than the other students. I don't know your situation but most of them have at least held a sword before. I get the feeling that you haven't?"
He was right on the spot. Gilliam always liked looking at specialists in a field, they had interesting input and could 'see' things normal people could not.
Though, that said, it was probably not hard at all figuring out that Gilliam was absolutely not skilled in this field.
"What gave it off? The fact that I suck or the fact that I told you 10 seconds ago?" Gilliam replied a bit cheekily, this man was half-scummy but in a bearable way so Gilliam couldn't not respond in kind.
"Both." Kintas smiled. "But you can still be trained. It'll just take a bit longer than some."
This time he sounded proper, almost like an actual teacher and not like a bully having fun on other people's behalf.
"Though, to be honest. Based on what I saw back then, I think you should stick to magic for now. I might be able to stall for time against the big ones but even I couldn't take down that gate." He gave Gilliam a brotherly pat on the side of his arm saying this.
One of his students chimed in suddenly. "Can I also just focus on magic?"
Based on the young boy's bruises he was not doing too well in the combat class.
"Absolutely not-" Kintas replied as he took the training sword from Gilliam, handing it to the boy. "-You will be fighting even more!"
The boy looked like he was about to cry, this was clearly not his forte. Kintas clearly reacted on this and went in a bit closer.
"Consider this, you might not be good now, but you're already way better than this guy." Pointing with his thumb over his shoulder he clearly referred to Gilliam.
And though that was most likely true, it was somewhat sad...
"Though this guy might have 'amazing magic' or something-" the tone of amazing magic was incredibly taunting and fake sounding. "-If you stab him as he's channelling a spell he'll go down like anyone else, so this is a good skill to have."
Gilliam nodded at Kintas' teachings to another student, it was the same that Jial mentioned before as well. Which made a lot of sense, there were plenty of tropes back home in that the good or bad guys often let the other side charge up these doomspells that take valuable seconds if not minutes to get ready. When back home a gun could take care of this problem very easily, a crossbow, sword or simpler spell could do the same here.
Hell, if you consider the winning spell that Gilliam used against the demons a few days ago, though it had to be created there and then, it took like a minute or something, and he needed several people to protect him. So though it's a kind of obvious common sense thing, it's still incredibly valuable information.
Being compared to Gilliam seemed to do the trick for the kid, he was not entirely into it but he calmed down and seemed at least willing to tolerate continuing.
For now, Gilliam decided to leave the combat area, it was true that he needed training but he also needed to get better as a mage. Given that he had a gift in the latter it became a priority for now. He knew how magic circles worked and could apparently make them on the fly but he needed to properly plan out a few and learn them by heart. Though with his mana reserves he could rely on unstructured spells when needed like that, it was not optimal. He also wondered how hard it was to learn teleportation, if he could at all, that sounded very practical.
So much to do, potentially little time and not even knowing where to start.
As he was thinking of what to do, Aeris teleported in next to Gilliam, giving him quite the startle. Letting out a sudden startled swear hinted strongly that he's not used to this.
"Good gods... Do you have to do that?" He asked Aeris, she seemed like a little troll but she should learn how to behave a bit...
"Yes, I do." She smiled, like this was a stated fact.
Taking a look at her now she seemed to have a healing wound on the side of her head. There is an area that barely has some scarring, clearly healed well, but it's missing hair. This hints that she had a wound that was magically healed but the hair needs to grow back on its own.
"What happened to you?" Gilliam asks, a bit worried as he squats down to the young girl.
She fidgets when asked about it and rather seems to subtly change the subject. "Jial said he needed to speak with you right away. I can take you to him."
Holding out her hand like the other times she teleported him, this seemed somewhat urgent.
Since she popped up here to find him odds were they knew where he was, some tracking spells on the badges seemed plausible, they were named after all. They could have walked over and talked to him but sending Aeris felt like it was either urgent, or they were far away.
Gilliam held his hand up in the direction of Savia, she took this as an invitation and landed in his hand, taking up her normal position of hugging an available finger.
Taking Aeris' hand without prying further into what happened to her, he prepared to be temporarily blinded. And as expected a bright light later he was indeed blinded for a second before it faded back properly after a few seconds.
He found himself in a rectangular unfurnished room, there were two doors, stone walls, floor and ceiling, a desk to the side and two doors.
This felt a lot like the room the woman was waiting in when Gilliam did the familiar ritual. In the room was Jial, some white haired kid and a short man Gilliam had not seen before.
"Ah, good, Gilliam." Jial reacted to them landing there, though he turned to Aeris right after. "Thank you, Aeris. You can go now" He had an oddly warm smile to it when he spoke with her.
She smiled and teleported out, after which Jial's face returned to the normal emotionless stare as he turned back to Gilliam.
"Now, this is Nolis-" he motioned for the white haired kid, who's badge had a silver plate and only the black field colored in, showing that he's a 2nd year Dark mage. "-And this is Ghaos, our Master Battlemage."
Ghaos was a short man, some 150cm (~59inch) tall, though he was made only of muscles and more muscles. Though he was balding he had shoulder long brown hair, calm brown eyes and a large nose. He was wearing an open robe of sorts showing some of his chest, with what you could see of his hands, face and rest of skin; he's covered in tattoos.
He almost looked a bit dwarf just with human proportions, he was carrying a stick looking like a metal quarterstaff covered in runes and engravings.
His badge had a white disc, but no colored fields; more like some weird golden wavy lines? They almost looked like golden threads floating in the air.
Ghaos just nodded when he was introduced.
"Now, I heard about your language testing in Wing 4's mess hall today-" Jial started explaining.
Gilliam was not surprised, the rumours would most likely have spread and there could have been some teachers in the mass of people, if nothing else the people working as servers were part of the faculty somehow, no?
"-Though we don't exactly understand it, the tests done in our class and earlier today could mean that you understand many more languages." Jial had a slight smirk to his statement.
"Yes... I have no idea how it works but... why does this feel weird?" During his reply Gilliam felt something weird. It was almost like he had some odd muscle ticks in his jaw as he was speaking.
"Interesting-" Jial replied, now looking at Gilliam with a very intrigued expression. "-I changed language three times during that explanation and you understood it all, in fact it seems you replied in the last language I used without even realising it."
He kept looking at Gilliam and said a few random words, before continuing a full sentence.
"I sense some mana in you change when I change language. It feels almost similar to our language extraction spells, just.. Different. Somehow."
Gilliam pondered this for a moment, and things started making sense. When he arrived in this world he did have a worry about not understanding language. Either whatever gave him the Heptagon magic also gave him some autotranslator thing, or like the other spells he has been using; he's doing this subconsciously somehow.
"It could be a subconscious unstructured spell?" there was a heavy questioning tone to that sentence. Though it could make sense based on how he knew unstructured spells working.
Their strength is their versatility and the possibility to just work as long as you can imagine it properly. And with common media, translators and stuff like that; imagining a translation spell was surprisingly simple. The odd part is that he didn't know any of the languages. No translators did this on the fly, it was always a lookup function.
Jial pondered for a few seconds. "That could make sense but how do you understand the words? Unless... Repeat the words after me exactly as you hear them."
Gilliam nodded and again Jial proceeded to say a few random words like table, door, grass and so on.
Gilliam replied the best he could and after a few seconds Jial summed his findings.
"You're not using the exact words I am. Your spell might be translating their meaning instead of the literal words. Interesting."
Jial seems to want to continue this but Ghaos clears his throat in an attention seeking way.
This snaps Jial out of it and apparently back to the matter at hand. "Yes, right... I suppose we can look into how it works later, for now. We need that ability of yours."
As his sentence neared the end he moved for the door, Ghaos entered first but Jial and Nolis followed right after.
Savia flew up into Gilliam's hair rather than staying in his hand, she clearly liked his hand but she seemed to like the warmth and isolation of the hair more.
Gilliam was a bit uncertain about the situation, the aid they wanted was language based but he was not entirely prepared for what was in the next room.
Entering he first noticed that the room was covered in runes and magic circles, he didn't have the time to read into them all but the few he managed to understand was relating to material strength and messing with teleportation and remote events.
The room itself was the same size as the rectangular one they came from but it was rotated 90degrees, so they entered on a short side and walked down a long room.
At the end of this room, where there were no engravings at all, but the existing runes seemed to affect that area as well through some... thing... Gilliam didn't understand yet.
In the end was a cage, barely large enough to stand upright in, but inside the cage was the matter at hand.
Chained up in the cage was a woman, she had blue and light purple skin riddled with scars and old wounds, long white hair with some hints of purple undertones reaching her chest, literally glowing blue eyes, horns extending from the front-top of her head, curving around in a spiral shape not unlike certain goats. The horns go around a single full rotation in their helical shape. Her ears are pointed like Gilliam would assume elves have, she had a very fair complexion save a healing wound across her nose.
She has a long and slender tail ending up in a spear-point shape, it has the same colour as her skin. And finally she has digitigrade legs ending up in hoofs.
She had chains fastened to her legs, arms, her tail as well as her horns. Seems they didn't take any chances at all with her.
As soon as they entered she started shouting out to them, wanting to be let go, how she would muder them all as soon as she got loose, how they were all going to fall to her master in the next wave. They were, in her words; completely fucked.
Gilliam looked at Jial a bit confused, clearly wondering why they had a.. Demon woman? Captive.
"Her capture was a weird stroke of luck. Although not the best event. Aeris were bringing us to the field. Teleporting back and forth. Though one teleport landed her in the wrong place and she was hit in the head. Knocked out instantly. One of the demons brought her back through the gate. We spoke with her and... she was understandably terrified but when she woke she saw a fire hellscape, jagged mountains, death, heavy air. Much like we'd assume a demonic hellscape to be. She reacted and teleported back to the academy. Seems like teleportation works through the gate as well. This brought the one carrying her at the moment along for the trip. She landed in the Energy field. Luckily Ghaos was there and instantly knocked this one out. Aeris was taken to a healer right away and will be physically fine."
He motioned for the captive when he mentioned 'this one'.
Gilliam pondered for a few seconds over this, it would explain the head wound that was healed and her hesitance of speaking about it. It must have been a traumatic event being kidnapped like that.
During the explanation the demon woman was shouting things about how they were all still going to die, how she was going to feed them all to her master.
"Well, the good news is that the translation thing seems to be working." Gilliam made sure to speak to Jial and not look in her direction.
"It doesn't seem like she knows that I can understand her, but currently she's just saying that she will kill us all when she's free. How she will feed us all to her master. But the concerning part is that we will die during the next wave.... I think there will be more gates."
Gilliam rapidfire translated the things she had said, but the second wave part was the worst aspect of this. The threats they could ignore for now but the confirmation of at least one more wave was... not good.
Jial pondered for a few seconds. "Well, we've already gotten some more information out of her. That's a good start. We need more. Since you're the only one that can talk to her. See what you can find."
Gilliam saw that one coming, but didn't like it. Though it made sense and this was a literal war, he still didn't like that someone was chained down to this helpless level.
Well, he just needed to talk, that was no danger. And just making sure that he didn't spill anything to her, just the other way around.
"Besides sharing info, and clearly not allowing her release, is there anything I can tempt her with if needed?"
Jial considered for a few moments. "Food as long as it won't hurt anyone. We can ease some of the chains. If she's willing to submit to a forced slavery brand we can let her properly loose."
That last one ticked Gilliam wrong. "... Forced... slavery brand?"
He had asked before he realised that he could guess more than he really wanted to know about it.
"It is what it sounds like. It is a mental compulsion spell that forces the target to become the slave to a person. They are compelled to do anything and everything the owner orders them to. They cannot harm them even passively. It is... an evil spell. We do not like considering it but. Mr. Gibson, let me remind you that this is war. I will defend myself and mine."
The latter part of his explanation was... true.. But he said it with a forceful tone, he was willing to go where he needed, Gilliam was certain of that.
So if they needed to commit evil on someone for the greater good, he was sure that if Jial would see it as needed he would not hesitate.
"Let's hope we don't need that." Gilliam managed to reply as he turned to the demon.
Sure, she was an invader but it felt a bit much to go that way.
Walking over to the cage, but stopping out of range of anything she could do even if she did get loose he let her complete her rambling of swears, threats and explanations of horrible things she would do to them.
"You know, it's not really going to help your position if you keep throwing shit like that." he talked to her. He had no idea if he was using the correct words but based on testing it seems that he would reply in the language he's auto-translating.
She suddenly stopped mid-sentence, she was baffled, taken off guard and simply unsure what to do with this.
Now that she wasn't angry or yelling at them, all demon things considered she didn't look half bad. She would probably look better cleaned up and smiling but...
"So, first... Let me just say that I don't know what has happened to you the last few days, all I know is that you hurt and were kidnapping a friend of mine. You already said there was going to be a second wave, mind sharing when that is going to be?"
Gilliam was polite, laid out the details and wanted to start on a flat surface, as it were.
"You... can understand me?" she replied, sounding more surprised and calm than Gilliam expected.
"Yes, it might not be perfect, so I might miss a few words, but I can understand you fine." He didn't want to get into it too deep, there was no need, but it was probably a good idea to pre-warn her about some words being off, just in case.
"Please, please don't kill me. I was just yelling and being mean to try and have it to be over with quicker. I didn't think anyone could understand me, I thought this was the only way out of being tortured. I'll tell you whatever you want, please..."
Her voice broke several times, she started crying a little and she sounded genuine. Unless this was a pretty good lie she... was compliant?
Gilliam was incredibly confused, he expected more anger, more... well... not this.
In a weird way this felt more unsettling than when she was angry and yelling at them.
"Err... Excuse me? You.. I.. Wait. No.. hold on. I honestly thought you were going to be super angry, yell at me and we would have to start some negotiation thing... I... I'm fine with this but... It's hard to believe."
He was still confused, but at the same time he was just not certain if this was part of a lie or true. Again it looked true but a good liar would make it sound like that.
"They... My people are not good people.. We open portals into other realms, kill and take resources before we do it again. The weak of us are tortured, wounded and treated horrible. I just want this to end, but..."
She seemed to have pulled out some bad memories as she actually started crying. Given that her body was riddled with old and healed wounds it matched so far.
"I just did as I was told, if I was good they would let me eat, if I didn't listen I would be punished and left to my own... Or eaten..."
"So... you're a victim of your own race?" Gilliam asked, it kind of felt that way but she had clearly done bad things.
"But you attacked and kidnapped my friend, the girl."
"No, no. I didn't do that.. Well... I'm not innocent but.. One of the imps knocked her out and brought her through the portal. I was tasked to move them to the temple."
That sounded like it made sense, Gilliam couldn't remember anyone of her apperance on the battlefield although... he didn't exactly have a chance to look around properly.
"And then what was going to happen to them?"
He had an unhappy questioning tone, he kind of had an idea, with the whole feeding to her master thing.
She was hesitant in answering, stopping herself a few times but seemed to persuade herself somewhat.
"We... We took them to the temple of our master, he eats them to gain power."
She wanted to tilt her head forwards but the chains attached to her horns stopped her.
Pushing the horror of that thought aside, Gilliam needed to know more.
"What... What is your master, what do you mean he gains power?"
He was a bit taken back, are there things that gain power from just eating other creatures?
"He is Lord Vozellath. He looks something like the gate-master that went through the gate into your world. The large one. Just that he is twice as large as him. Our race can gain power by eating others, or eachother... Growing larger and stronger, healing more and more. If lucky they can inherit some powers from the ones they eat. Certain of us has gotten magic that way."
Her head was still held up by the chains but it was easy to tell that she wanted to dip it forward.
"The gate your people closed was just a scouting portal to see if... there was.. meat here... There will be another one in not long."
Gilliam was a bit horrified, he had read stories of monsters being able to do things like these but... Having it be real was just... wrong.
"Though... All things considered, I'm sure you can understand that it's hard for me to just believe you like that. You might just be a very good liar for all I know."
He wanted to see her reaction to this, if she was a good liar there would most likely not be any reaction but... it was too good to be true, that Aeris brought back a compliant enemy. If it's true it's great, naturally, but...
"What.. what can I do to make you believe me? I'll do anything, just... don't kill me or send me back..." She was honestly crying at this point.
Turning to the others he realised they were looking at him with extremely hopeful eyes. But before he got to say anything she broke in again. "Slavery, that's right! We did that all the time. Your people are good with magic, you know how to do the magic slave spell?"
She sounded... hopeful.. She was actually throwing herself into this.. She suggested this herself and... Wow.. She must have had a terrible life...
This time turning around again without replying, he faced the others.
"So... She's completely compliant, she wants to help as they treat her like shit in her world. I think her scars are from her own people. They enter worlds to get 'meat', which are us, to feed to their demonlord 'Vozellath', who apparently grows physically stronger and larger with this... He can also inherit powers from their 'food' if lucky. The gate from a few days ago was a scouting portal to check viability, now that they know it's a good place they will return soon..."
Gilliam winced a bit at the next part, as he kind of knew where this was going. The others were waiting with a mixture of uncertain and horrified eyes at the explanation.
"To prove that she's speaking the truth she's willing to go into a forced slavery thing... As long as we don't kill her or send her back she doesn't care..."
Both Jial and Ghaos thought to themselves for a few long, long seconds. "I say we do it" Jial broke out. "She wants to do the ritual. And she's willing to give us information. We can spare some food for that. And she's willing. It's not that bad then."
Ghaos thought a few seconds more. "Well... Is it really? I mean... normal slaves can try to say no to certain things At least they can resist if you are telling them to do something bad. A mind-slave contract... If you told her to kill herself she would do so without hesitation."
Gilliam disliked this the more he heard about it.
Jial didn't seem phased. "She might be a prisoner of war. She goes into this willingly. And she was feeding our people to be eaten. I'm fine with this."
He seemed determined, Ghaos seemed like he was still not happy about it but being persuaded.
Gilliam turned towards their prisoner with a weird sad and dissatisfied face. "They are contemplating doing the forced slave spell on you. You do know this will make you unable to go against their orders, right? No matter how bad..."
She nodded, eagerly, which caught Gilliam off guard. "Yes, but the will not hurt me, right? They will feed me as long as I give info and answers?"
Ah, this actually made sense now. With the slave thing she could not resist and would do as told, something she would do willingly anyway. Back in her home she would have to do as told, or be physically wounded, beaten or even just eaten by her lord... With the slavery thing she would belong to someone completely but at least she would be cared for...
Gilliam hated to admit it, but in her specific case, this was actually a win-win situation.
"I suggest we have Gilliam do it." Jial suddenly said to Ghaos.
"WHAT?!" Gilliam's head whipped around fast enough to almost have Savia fly off, looking at the two men talking amongst each other.
"You want me to do this? Why?!" Gilliam could not see why he should do it, if Jial wanted this so much then why didn't just he d*... Oh yeah... no... that made sense.
"It's because I can talk to her... isn't it..." He realised it after complaining. It made perfect sense, you couldn't order anyone that can't understand you, and even if they do answer you... you can't understand that either.
Jial nodded. "You are correct. If it was any of us then you would have to follow us anyway. This way you get an aide at the same time."
Oh, Gilliam hated this... He understood the importance of it. "Why is me getting an aide a selling factor to forcing someone into slavery?!" An aide he could find anywhere, from the school information at some point there was going to be a Circle recruitment thing where he could somewhat hire or get people willing to work under him.
"Oh, no. This sounds more interesting-" Ghaos smiled. "-Most mages have an aide, like Jial here, but who has a demon as an aide? The Heptagon Mage, of course!"
He toned it almost like he was Gilliam's hypeman, that this now became a reputation thing.
"Imagine the publicity that will give not only you, but the school? A student not only shut down the gate but turned one of them into his servant?!"
He actually seemed to be having fun with this.
Jial nodded in agreement, not as jolly or fond of roleplaying; he didn't do things like Ghaos but he was agreeing.
"If there are to be more of these gates. It will be a good idea to have some poster-boy Hero." Though he had a point, morale and whatnot, this was...
"Why am I getting pressured to force another person into the ultimate slavery?"
Gilliam wanted out of this, but at the same time he did see the logic in it so he kind of needed to persuade them for his own sake as well.
"No, no pressuring or forcing. She wanted this, right?" Ghaos smirked.
Gilliam let out a deep groan as he turned towards the chained up demon.
"So... They are pretty set on this, since I'm the only one that can talk to you, they want me to do it..."
Inhaling deeply and exhaling, slapping his cheeks having Savia be super confused about what was going on, Gilliam had to confirm it with her again.
"We will be fighting your people, we will be killing your people. You will be forced to help with this. You will most likely be ridiculed and have all kinds of slurs thrown your way, depending on the hate they might also attack you... I might have to travel around so this is unavoidable... Are you still sure you want this?"
Gilliam wanted to paint this in a bad picture, have her reconsider, demons are attacking the world so if someone would throw rocks at her in the streets it wouldn't actually be that weird.
"... Will you try to stop them? Will you feed me?" she asked, looking more curious about the food and trying to stop them rather than the stuff going to happen to her.
"Well, of course you'll be fed. And though I cannot guarantee that I'll be able to stop anyone I'll of course tr*" He didn't get to complete his sentence before she nodded as far as the chains allowed her.
"Then I'll do it! My people are fuckers that deserve to die. I... deserve to die.. But if you try to stop them, you will feed me. I will help you stop, kill or whatever you want."
There were a few things in her voice, she seemed happy to kill them... Given the scars that Gilliam could see just here and now, this made sense. Food was apparently a problem in her world and.. Well.. This did still seem like a good idea for her.
"I can see her nodding!" Ghaos commented, almost like this was some weird bro-frat-party thing where someone is sent to ask someone else out.
"Then we're proceeding with this." Jial added.
So... this was happening then...
Fuck.