by nobody103
He could do better than that. But better how?
"Independence," he eventually answered. Raynie gave him a curious look so he hurried to clarify. "My family and I don't really get along. I want to get away from them as soon as possible. Buy my own place, get a source of steady income to support myself, things like that."
All true, except that he already had the skills to achieve all of that easily. But it was the best answer he could come up with on such short notice.
"I see," she said. "I apologize if I'm overstepping my boundaries, but why aren't you getting along with your family?"
"It's a bit personal," Zorian sighed. "And also a long story. But the short version of it is that my parents have never cared much for me. I am the third son and a disappointment."
"A disappointment?" Raynie asked curiously. "Do I want to know?"
"You probably already know this, but I have a really famous older brother," Zorian said.
"Yes, Daimen," she nodded. "What about it?"
"I'm not him," Zorian said simply.
"Ah," she said, drawing the word out. "It's that kind of disappointment. But shouldn't your other brother have the same problem, then?"
"He does, but he's more charming and social than me," Zorian shrugged. "He'll never measure up to Daimen, but he's ultimately alright in their book."
Also, Fortov was a selfish asshole and could go straight to hell for all that Zorian cared.
"Interesting," she said. "Let me present you with a hypothetical situation. Imagine it was not Daimen who came first. Imagine it was you, and your parents treated you as their chosen son. But then Daimen came about, and they promptly switched their favors to this new wonder child. Your time in the spotlight is over, and your parents fully expect you to move aside for their new darling. Do you think you would still have the same attitude you do now?"
Oh boy. He had a feeling this wasn't really a hypothetical situation at all.
"Well…" he said, swallowing heavily. "Truthfully, I don't think it's possible for me to know what this hypothetical me might think and feel. So much would change in my life that I wouldn't be the same person sitting here today. However, assuming someone magically switched me with this alternate version of me… yes, I would have the same attitude."
"You wouldn't try to fight for your birthright as the firstborn?" she asked.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "The alternate version of me, having experienced my parents' favor, might see some value in trying to get it back. I would still seek to strike out on my own as soon as possible. The scenario doesn't change anything for me."
"I see," she said, lost in thought.
Not long afterwards, they finished their talk and went their separate ways. As he walked back to Imaya's place, he wondered whether he'd answered her 'hypothetical situation' correctly.
She agreed to meet with him next week, so perhaps she would eventually explain what that was about.
✦ ✧ ✦
He spent the rest of the Saturday working on the next golem with Edwin. This one was going to be a little more ambitious, being made out of steel and much bigger than Kosjenka – though not nearly as big as he had originally wanted, since Edwin had informed him that construction of golems taller than a meter in height was prohibited unless one had a special license. He had already broken that law in a previous restart, and he was definitely going to break it again in future ones, but there was no need to do so right now. He didn't think Edwin would report him, but he probably wouldn't want to help him break the regulations so brazenly. Them being arrested would be but a brief inconvenience for Zorian, but Edwin wouldn't think of it that way.
The next day he immediately left the house in the morning and descended into the tunnels below Cyoria. One way or the other, the magic research room was getting opened – if he could not bypass the wards on the entrance, the Filigree Sages were going to break down the door to get in, consequences be damned.
He didn't really agree with this decision. It had been less than a week since the Filigree Sages had started their salvaging operations, so he didn't see why they were in such a rush to get it open. Well okay, they did explain why they were in such a hurry – the Cyorian underground was highly coveted territory among the aranea, being a center of their magical and technological revolution and all, and they were worried that the neighboring webs would swoop in and muscle them out any day now. Of course, Zorian knew from previous restarts that the neighboring webs weren't going to come any time soon, but he couldn't exactly tell the Filigree Sages that he had seen the future and that their fears are unfounded.
But no matter, even if they ended up destroying the contents, it wasn't some great harm, at least from his perspective. He could always try again in future restarts.
He approached the dead settlement and he reached out telepathically to the guards posted by the Filigree Sages, announcing his arrival. Circle of Fortune and Golden Dust, the overseer of the Filigree Sages' expedition, moved to greet him.
[Welcome back, Zorian Kazinski,] the aranea greeted. He had told her previously to just call him by his name, but she hadn't taken him up on that. [Any news from the surface?]
[Nothing too important,] he said. [The monster incursions are beginning to peter out so the number of monster hunters stalking the Dungeon should see a sharp drop soon.]
[Good,] she said. [This place is outside their usual patrol routes but I still worried some of them would stumble upon it. Are you ready for the attempt?]
[I guess. I still think you're rushing, though.]
[We are,] she admitted. [I am not casting aspersions on your combat skills, but you're still just one mage. If nothing else, you cannot be in more than one place at the same time. We have to work quickly.]
They soon arrived at the room that held the research room. Six more aranea were already inside, two of them analyzing the wards while the other four waited for a command to break down the door. After conversing with the two aranean ward breakers for a few minutes, Zorian created a floating disc of force to stand on and lifted himself towards the hole in the ceiling where the entrance stood.
He took out the ward analysis device from his jacket – the 'pocket watch' that Taiven had been hired to retrieve so long ago, and whose absence clued him in to the existence of the treasury. He had located it inside the treasury uncovered by the Filigree Sages and, while he fully intended to dismantle it to see what makes it tick, for now it was more useful to him intact, serving its intended purpose. He channeled a divination spell through the device and got to work.
From what he and the aranean ward breakers had been able to tell thus far, there were three main layers of defenses on the entrance. The first one would electrocute anyone touching the walls of the entrance. The second one would superheat the air inside it to lethal temperatures. The third one would bring down the entire ceiling on top of wannabe looters. All three had complicated and hidden trigger conditions, tied to a detection layer that neither he nor the aranean ward breakers could figure out.
Obviously, the third defense was the priority to disable, but it also appeared to be the defense most sensitive to attempted tampering. The Filigree Sages had worked out a way to neutralize it, but doing so would no doubt trigger all other defenses – both the two they were aware of, and any further ones they had yet to detect.
The ward analysis device really showed its usefulness, though – the detection layer, so byzantine and obscured from scrutiny in the past, simply unraveled under its power. It was… not as bad as he feared. He could do this. He contacted Circle of Fortune and told him he thought he could disable the defenses. The aranea in the room exploded into a flurry of activity, mostly vacating the room in case he overreached and brought the whole room down. Circle of Fortune and the two ward breakers, however, remained. The ward breakers would help him in the attempt, while Circle of Fortune simply announced that she 'had to be there'. He didn't argue with her, too absorbed by the task in front of him.
Over the co
urse of the next hour and a half, he and the two aranean ward breakers slowly and carefully neutralized the detection layer and then moved onto unlocking the door itself. The door itself had some additional defenses, relatively minor in nature but strong enough to really ruin their day if they triggered any of them – it was to his immense relief, then, that they managed to get it open without setting off a single one.
Unfortunately, that's when the defenses inside the room itself, completely separated from the main ward scheme and therefore undetectable from the outside, activated. If Zorian hadn't reacted immediately by erecting a shield in front of them while simultaneously directing the force platform they were standing on downwards at maximum speed, the incoming explosion would surely have killed them on the spot. Even with that, they ended up crashing painfully on the floor of the cave, dazing them for a couple of crucial seconds.
There was no time to sit down and recover, though, because the ruined entrance to the research room was starting to pump sickly yellow gas into the room and Zorian had no intention of seeing what effect it had when breathed in. He held his breath and quickly sealed the entrance with a bubble of force, stopping more gas from pouring in, before casting a spell he'd seen Kyron cast once during the invasion. He raised his hand into the air and concentrated on the gas, causing it to surge towards his outstretched palm, where it flowed into a small, compact ball.
Moments later, once he was sure he'd gotten all of the gas, he restructured the churning ball of poison gas into harmless, inert dust and took stock of the situation with Circle of Fortune, who was lucky enough to escape the incident without consequences. The two ward breakers were not so lucky – they weren't dead, but it was close. It turned out that aranea could not hold their breath like humans, so they ended up breathing in some of the poison gas in the room before he neutralized it. They would recover, but not any time soon, so Circle of Fortune asked him to drop them off back at the main Filigree Sages' settlement and pick up a new pair of ward breakers as replacements.
He later sent some ectoplasmic eyes and other remote sensors into the room to check it out, and found it completely wrecked by the explosion and coated in some dangerous looking green slime. Circle of Fortune just mentally shrugged, pronounced the entire thing a bust and ordered the entrance to the room walled off with alteration spells to prevent any further surprises coming from there.
[Don't beat yourself up over this failure,] Circle of Fortune told him. [If we had gone through with our original plan, those defenses would have still gone off, probably killing the entire assault team assigned to breaking down the door. Plus, we'd also have had to deal with other traps you ended up disabling before you ran afoul of that last set. This is a much better outcome.]
Well, that was one way of looking at it. He left Circle of Fortune to deal with the final cleanup of the situation and went off to find his mind magic teachers among the aranea.
It didn't take long for him to track them down to one of the isolated corners of the dead settlements, where the three of them were huddled together and engaged in telepathic conversation.
Before this restart, such intra-aranean conversations were completely opaque to him – telepathy was not language-independent, so unless the aranea 'spoke' in manner he could understand, he was out of luck. Now, however, one of those teachers had begun to teach him how to understand and use the aranean telepathic language, so he could actually understand a few snippets. He was still a rank beginner at it, of course, but it was enough to understand the general topic of the conversation. They were discussing the three strongest neighboring webs – Burning Apex, Red Brand Bearers and Deep Blue – and the threat they would pose to the expedition if they decided to send a war party to Cyoria. Sadly, that was about as much as he could figure out from the conversation. The details totally escaped him.
He made a mental note to see if he could find something about the neighboring webs in the records room. It might be a good idea to visit them sometime and see what they had to offer.
[Greetings,] he sent to all three of them. [Am I interrupting something important?]
[We're just killing time,] Voice of Peace answered for them. She was the teacher that was supposed to help him learn how to interpret aranean senses, thoughts and memories. She'd decided on her own initiative that this included teaching him the aranean language, claiming he would never be really capable of making sense of the aranean mind without being fluent in it. She was also the most enthusiastic of his three teachers, often willing to work with him beyond their officially allotted time or go beyond the strict boundaries of what she was assigned to help him with. [Are you here for your daily lesson?]
[Yes,] he confirmed. [I know I'm a little early, but the project to open up the magic research room was a bit of a disaster.]
[We've heard,] said the aranea known simply as 'Hammerer' – an rather apt name, considering the aranea in question specialized in telepathic combat and favored powerful, unrelenting assault. [Circle of Fortune was always the reckless sort. At least you made sure nobody died. I must admit I didn't expect much from you when I heard you were supposed to guard us, but it seems you are actually useful from time to time.]
[Hammerer!] Voice of Peace protested.
[I just say it how it is,] Hammerer responded, not in the least bit contrite.
[Let's not bicker in front of our student. It sets a bad example,] said Memory of Sublime Glories, the last of his three teachers. Zorian got the notion that she resented him somewhat and considered the job of teaching a lowly human to be beneath her. Or maybe teaching in general, he wasn't really sure. Either way, she was too professional to let that get in the way of her job, so he had no cause to complain. [Are we following the same program we did the last time?]
[I don't see why not,] Zorian said.
[In that case, we will continue where we left off yesterday. As an aside, I will not be able to help you further unless you acquire someone to serve as a, ah, practice subject for our next session. You indicated this would not be a problem?]
[No,] Zorian stated. [It won't be.]
It should be trivial to ambush one of the cultists and drag him down here for interrogation and memory magic practice. The only thing he was unsure of was whether to go for a low-ranking member who probably didn't know anything but whose disappearance would go largely unnoticed or if he should aim higher. He would have to think about it some more.
[Before we start though, I'd like your opinion about something,] Zorian said.
[Oh? What about?] Memory of Sublime Glories asked. [Is this about that massive memory packet lodged inside your mind, perhaps?]
Ugh. This was a problem with learning memory manipulation from the aranea – he had no choice but to let Memory of Sublime Glories inside his head somewhat. He was pretty sure he would detect any serious breach of trust on her part, but it was hard to prevent her from taking a sneak peek at his thoughts every now and then.
[I thought you said you'd refrain from doing that?] he asked her, annoyed.
[I barely looked,] she protested. [An aranean memory packet inside a human mind, especially one of that size, is just very noticeable. Besides, you were just thinking about letting me examine it in more detail, so why are you complaining about that? I'm about to get a much closer look at it anyway.]
Zorian sighed in defeat. He hated it when the aranea responded to his thoughts before he actually put them into words. It was just rude. Still, she was essentially correct – he needed her to take a look at the matriarch's memory packet and tell him what she saw, because to his own amateur mental senses it seemed to be degrading already.
If that was true, then he needed to know how much time he had.
After a bit more back and forth he reluctantly opened his mind to her and agreed to let her take a closer look at his mind so she could figure out what was happening with the memory packet. Thankfully, she seemed to behave herself, so the explosives around his neck remained inert and undetonated.
Eventual
ly she withdrew from his mind and gave him the verdict.
[I'm afraid you're correct,] she said. [The boundaries of the memory packet have indeed begun to fall apart.]
His heart sank. That was precisely what he was afraid of. He wasn't ready. If he opened the package now, he doubted he would get anything out of it. But if he waited…
[How long do I have?] he asked.
[Hard to say. I've never seen a memory packet that big, so it's hard to judge how the decay will progress. It can stay stable for another three months, I think. Maybe four. If you really want to be certain, though, you'll have to open it within the next two months.]
[Isn't there anything that can be done to stop, or at least slow the decay?] Zorian asked desperately.
[Repairing memory packets is fairly easy if you're the one who made them,] Memory of Sublime Glories said. [Far less so if somebody else did. I don't think I could repair something that elaborate, and you would never trust me to tinker that deeply with your mind, anyway. I will teach you the basics of the skill, if you wish, but to get good enough to repair that thing you will have to secure a better teacher.]
[Any idea where I could find one?] Zorian asked.
[The Luminous Advocates probably have what you need,] she said. [I heard they can be hard to deal with, though. They drive a hard bargain.]
Ugh, those guys. Well, desperate times called for desperate measures. If nothing else, getting enough money to pay for their outrageous prices should be fairly trivial at this point.
[In that case, I'd like to postpone our current lesson plan for a bit and concentrate on memory packets and how to repair them,] he told her.
[Of course,] she agreed easily. [Here is what you do…]
✦ ✧ ✦
He returned home later in the evening, tired and depressed. He had hoped to do some more work after his visit to the Filigree Sages, but between the failure to secure the contents of the magic research room intact and the confirmation that the matriarch's memory packet had begun to unravel, he didn't feel like doing anything.