Leareth is considering whether he should actually relocate to the hallway! It would in some sense be harder to shield, but also he would have less to shield, and he would have mobility - some of those creatures are fast but a lot of them aren't as fast as him, and he could Gate-hop around - 

- no, that's not a feasible defense plan for multiple candlemarks. 

Also, this is where the girl is, with her absurdly overpowered shield, and if - when - he's visibly getting exhausted, she might be more willing to let him siphon some mage-energies from it. 

:Noted. I think I can keep them from damaging your door or wards. ...Need to focus now: 

And he does, directing nearly all of his attention to tracking the attacking monsters through his scry, letting the stationary lightning-shield handling small ones but trying to nab the bigger and more powerful ones before they can shove their way through and make him have to patch it. The hallway is starting to become seriously obstructed by dead and scorched bodies. The beasts do not seem to care. 

I can fix my door and wards! Just don't let them come in here faster than we can kill them.

:All right: 

The ones that can get past him are mostly the ooze kind that can totally ignore levinbolts or fire and slip right under the door. And compulsions are slow, especially as he starts to tire; he prioritizes the insubstantial creatures, those seem pretty hard to stab. There are some monsters that look almost as though they're made of molten metal, or maybe just liquid mercury, shifting and reforming into amorphous limbs and eyestalks; the shield doesn't stop those either.

It's getting harder to tell what's going on outside the door, even with scrying; there's a pall of smoke over everything, from the burned bodies of creatures he had to set on fire because they ignored lightning, and there's also just a lot going on, as new arrivals fight over the dead before flinging themselves at the shielded door. 

Eventually - gods, how long has it been, a candlemark? a day? five minutes? he can't tell anymore - something very big shows up, with too many jointed limbs and teeth in places that should really not have teeth and a mind too simple to compulsion. It takes down his entire shield. The snapped threads of magic rebound on him, ouch - and he has to frantically try to pin it in a force-net while he pummels it with enough levinbolts to stun it. And then frantically weave together the shield again. He throws up a thin wall of flame in front of the door, in the interim, but he's way too busy to try to stop the half a dozen smaller monsters that make it through that and claw their way under the door, most of them slightly on fire but apparently unperturbed. 

Well, she has a shield too, bright and incredibly powerful and it's mostly to protect her from him but she is well aware that won't do her any good if these things eat her, and she holds it between her bed and desk and the door where the monsters are coming through - the shieldholder holding it mostly steady - while she stabs things with the shortsword and the dagger, and she takes a nasty cut on one hand and a bite through her pants and has to retreat to slap a bandage on it and take some antitoxin but by then none of them are moving and he's doing things again. 

Leareth is breathing hard from the effort and his head hurts, but he seems to be uninjured so far. 

:I hope there are not too many like that: and he sends her a mental image of the enormous teeth-creature. :That was - tiring. I am all right for the moment - outer shield is back up - how much longer now -?: 

It's 4:52. Do you want some stimulants, you can swap me a good look at some of your protective artifice.

If he uses stimulants to push through magical exhaustion, he's going to crash so hard after this. 

:Yes: Leareth decides. :You can look - later, when we are less busy? ...And I would very much appreciate if you did not try to murder me once curfew is over and I am very tired: 

A whole crowd of the insubstantial cloud things are showing up again. Leareth tries compulsioning them to turn around and bother the more embodied creatures arriving behind them. 

He can have his pick of her cocaine tabs ("you snort these ones, acts faster and the high is stronger") and her Adderall ("this one's, like, safe"). Once curfew's over it's not to my advantage to kill you, assuming you have a plan to not be here again tonight? She could try it just to steal his stuff but even if he's exhausted, probably the outcome of trying to kill an adult wizard is getting killed herself and that's not worth it if she's not definitely screwed anyway.

He will accept the second one. Casting while experiencing a strong unfamiliar stimulant high sounds risky. 

:Are you going to get in trouble from the teachers about the enormous pile of dead bodies outside your room?: he asks her. 

Is that a joke. She's not really in a joking mood. 

:- No? I am - I think I am missing a lot of context about - this entire situation: 

School doesn't have teachers. My neighbors might ask what happened but I'll tell 'em I slept normally and they'll have to ask Lee. The bodies'll be gone by midmorning anyway, there are lots of mals that eat mals.

A school without teachers seems like...not really a school in the most relevant sense? 

Leareth decides that he can resolve that confusion LATER. For now, he's going to focus on holding his shield, and trying to take down anything really big before it reaches the barrier and damages it again, and on compulsioning whichever monsters he can and trying to get them to cause chaos for the others, and also on warning the girl about the oozier or just more resilient creatures that can wriggle through his shield intact. 

That's a lot of things to track and he's getting a headache just from the sheer mental effort, to say nothing of the growing magical exhaustion. He's still unhurt, though, and there can't be more than a candlemark to go now... 

If Lee's dead, she says during a relative lull, and you've got ten feet of range on whatever spell you used to step right under my wards and into the middle of my room, you could try going to his? Then we won't be breaking curfew and the mals might leave off and it'll make it easier to arrange robbing Lee's body first thing in the morning, if the mals have already cleared out and she has an accomplice in the room. Of course, he might take Lee's stuff for himself? No, he's an adult, what'd it be worth to him - except the mana, which is what she really wants - well, too late, she already suggested it -

....Oh. That's a good thought. 

Of course, if the kid isn't dead, then he's in a significantly worse position; in a room with presumably weaker and already-damaged warding, without anyone else to shield or cover him, and tired from a Gate. And he can't check, not for sure; he could feel the kid with Thoughtsensing before and can't now, but that could just mean he's unconscious or weakened, there's a LOT of interference in the way of his Othersenses. 

:- It seems worth a try: he sends, after fifteen seconds of considering it. :If he is injured but not dead, though, I - would be inclined to Gate both of us back here, since I imagine his wards would be more damaged than yours: 

(Feelings about this are for having LATER when the emergency is over.) 

Are you offering to pay for healing him or are you thinking that once he's bleeding on my floor I'll fork out for free, 'cause I won't.

:...I am not sure what people here use for money? I am not Healing-Gifted but I do know basic field first aid, and I would not expect you to - cover anything you cannot afford. ...He has possessions that he would presumably endorse trading for healing, if it meant he survived?: 

I don't know him, I don't know if he'd be good for it. You offered me your spare artifice, that'll probably pay for whatever you want. If you're not paying for it, that's fine, no one else is either, I just didn't want you thinking I would.

That - makes sense, in a general way, but also seems incredibly bizarre in the context of this, apparently, being a school? 

:I suppose we will know soon enough: Leareth tells her. :- If this goes badly for some reason I am going to come right back here. If not, I ought to be able to reach you with Mindspeech from across the hall: 

- actually, pause. He can get more information before going in, at the cost of briefly losing situational awareness of the hallway, by seeing if he can move his scry-point into the room. Very briefly, and after he throws a spinning wind-spell infused with lightning and force-daggers. It's higher power than the rest of what he's doing, enough that the power-drain makes him sway on his feet, but it should buy them a few seconds of breathing room. 

Can he get his scrying spell through the other student's wards and into the room? 

The wards are pretty shredded. There is half of a student (the lower half) on some bloody sheets.

Leareth relays this to the girl, tersely and with no emotion at all. 

(He should have tried to guard the other door - except that he's already pushing up against the edge of his abilities, it's not, actually, realistically that he could have oriented any faster or done any more.) 

:- It seems worth checking if the creatures do leave us alone: he concedes. :I will need to focus on shielding myself, though, since the wards on the room are no longer functional: 

And he starts building a Gate-threshold - in midair, just in case that makes it harder for any of the incorporeal creatures to notice and try to wriggle through, he's pretty sure they sense magic and go after it. 

They do sense magic and go after it!

She can put her shield in the way while he's in the middle of - what is that - the coolest - no, focus.

Leareth does it as fast as he can, for an unscaffolded Gate, which is just under five seconds from the first flicker of magic to the threshold snapping down with him on the other side. It's considerably less power-efficient this way, unfortunately, and now he's very dizzy. 

Focus. He flings more power from his dwindling reserves into personal shields, then a basic barrier across the damaged door. Vaguely wonders if it's possible to get any blood-power out of killing those monsters - maybe at least the smarter ones - though it'd take concentration to test the idea, and he has precious little of that to spare - 

Lee's room, like Annisa's, has a box in the corner that is just - full of mana.