Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  "Well, what's done is done," Zach shrugged. "But I'm here now, so you have no excuse to keep being stupid. When do we start?"

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  In the end, Zorian decided there was no reason to delay things – they would be going after their first web the very next day. In the meantime he went back to Imaya's place and talked to Kirielle. She claimed to believe him when he said he was a time traveler, but Zorian could sense she wasn't entirely convinced yet. Even after he recreated a stack of her drawings from his mental storage and showed them to her.

  Though that part did seem to make his story a lot more plausible to her.

  "I'm relieved," She told him before going to bed for the night. "You were so nice to me, it was really scary. I was afraid you were replaced by some kind of shape changer."

  "Go to sleep, Kiri," Zorian sighed.

  The next day Zorian located one of the smaller webs in the vicinity of Cyoria and took Zach there. He wasn't entirely convinced the operation would go as smoothly as Zach had promised, but Zach soon made all his fears groundless: the aranean web in front of them was subdued with terrifying ease.

  There were no fancy tactics involved. Zach simply walked up to the settlement's main entrance tunnel and started raining down spells on the ill-prepared defenders. Waves of translucent blue force battered them against the walls, animated serpents made out of lightning electrocuted them and grasping ectoplasmic threads entangled them and stopped them from simply fleeing. When they realized that Zach was immune to mind magic, the aranea turned to traps, ambushes and mass attacks – but Zach simply punched through them, barely slowed at all. Magical traps were dispelled, non-magical traps disabled with alteration spells, the mass attacks and ambushes Zach simply tackled head on and won anyway.

  In less than half an hour, every aranea that did not flee was incapacitated or dead. Aside from actually locating the web, Zorian hadn't done much and had just stood back and watched the carnage.

  Zach was absolutely terrifying.

  "Do you think this will be enough for you to work with?" Zach asked, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet and giving him an expectant look.

  Zorian gave him an annoyed look. He could sense at least fifty aranean minds around them. The asshole knew well enough that this was more than Zorian could have subdued in an entire week of non-stop attacks on aranean patrols. This was just him taking a 'subtle' swipe at him.

  Then again, considering the level of skill Zach had just displayed, maybe he deserved to be a little arrogant.

  "Yeah," he said. "It's plenty."

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  After talking about things for a while and exchanging information, both Zach and Zorian agreed that neither of them knew all that much about the time loop. Like Zorian had long suspected, Zach spent most of his time trying to think up a way to counter the invasion and had not put much thought into what the time loop actually was. According to him, he always thought he had to find a way to counter the invasion in order to end the time loop. He could not explain why he thought so, since his memories were full of unexplained holes, but he felt very sure about that.

  That could be a confirmation of Zorian's earlier theory that the release of the primordial was what triggered the restart, but it could also be a compulsion that Red Robe had put on Zach to screw him over. After all, the release of the primordial in the previous restart involved very visible cracks in space heralding its coming… something that Zorian had never witnessed before. And it wasn't like he had never observed the area around the Hole during the last moments of previous restarts. Why had the release of the primordial never caused such dramatic symptoms in the past?

  Regardless, they both agreed that opening the matriarch's memory packet was their best bet for getting some solid answers. Accordingly, over the course of next week, most of their time was spent on tracking down and attacking various aranean webs. They attacked a new one every single day, and the amount of experience in reading aranean minds that Zorian had accumulated was incredible. Zorian probably read more aranean minds in that one week alone than he had in the entire two previous restarts combined.

  The especially important part was that Zorian was no longer just reading the minds of random guards and patrol aranea, but also the minds of their leaders and even matriarchs. Not only were these higher-ranking aranea especially hard to read (and thus gave the most useful experience), their thoughts were also an entire order of magnitude harder to interpret. There seemed to be a method among aranea to turn their mental powers inward onto their own minds, and most higher-ranking aranea had at least some expertise in it. Zorian wasn't exactly sure what those techniques were designed to accomplish, but they altered the thoughts and perceptions of the user immensely.

  As a matriarch of a powerful web, Spear of Resolve was doubtlessly a user of these techniques as well. If Zorian had tried to interpret her memories without having taken this into account, he would have likely been in for a nasty surprise.

  At Monday, when classes began, Zorian visited Xvim's office to try and bring him into awareness of the time loop again. In the previous restart, Xvim had been very suspicious of him and his overtures hadn't gone anywhere. It was difficult to know how much that had to do with his approach and how much of it was a product of all the arrests in Cyoria at the time, but Zorian was not taking any chances this time. He suspected he had tried to move a little too fast in the previous restarts, so this time he was more conservative.

  He waited until Xvim was in his office before visiting him, tried to reduce his arguments to bare essentials and then finally handed him the code the man made him memorize. Xvim still told him to come back at Friday in the end, but Zorian had a feeling things would end up working better this way.

  He was right. At Friday, Xvim tentatively accepted his story and once again decided to help Zorian grow by honing his dimensional magic and shaping skills. For now he just tested Zorian's abilities to see where he stood, but he promised to have something more substantial for him next week.

  Considering how busy this restart promised to be, Zorian was perfectly fine with that kind of pace.

  The first week also reminded him how much more Kirielle focused on him when there was no Nochka around to distract her. Without a friend of similar age to spend most of her time with, Kirielle focused most of her attention on trying to monopolize Zorian's time as much as possible. He had almost forgotten how clingy and annoying she could be, and now resorted to building all kinds of magical toys for her to amuse herself with and leave him alone for a few minutes. Thankfully, she liked puzzles, and there were a lot of magical puzzles described in old spell formula books – mages loved inventing them for some reason.

  Later in the week, when Kael and Kana moved into the house, some of that attention shifted onto Kana. In the restarts where Zorian introduced Kirielle to Nochka, Kana inevitably ended up as something of a third wheel to the two of them. They played with her, sure, but in any group of three people, someone was going to get pushed to the side… and Kana was much younger than Kirielle and Nochka, and silent to boot. He kind of suspected that Kana was happier with just Kirielle around.

  Since Kael was always informed of the time loop the moment he arrived at Imaya's house, and since Zach often visited the place to speak with Zorian, the two of them finally had the opportunity to meet and talk with one another. Although they did discuss the time loop a little, Kael had yet to fully absorb the content of his notebooks yet (that was getting harder and harder as the number of past restarts and the number of notes in them increased), so that didn't really get anywhere. Instead, they mostly talked about alchemy. And the Weeping. Zorian would have thought they'd shy away from the topic, but apparently they were perfectly fine with bonding over their shared tragedies.

  Currently, both Zach and Zorian were sitting beneath a tree in the middle of nowhere – a small copse of trees surrounded by farmland in the vicinity of Jatnik, not really a notable area in any way. Zach was currently trying to mak
e an unbroken crown of daisies (and failing hilariously) while Zorian stared at the map of Eldemar that had every web they had located marked on it. Thanks to the memories of various matriarchs and aranean diplomats that Zorian had recently viewed, he now knew the locations of hundreds upon hundreds of new webs. Deciding where next to attack was actually quite a dilemma at this point.

  "Hey, Zorian," Zach suddenly said, discarding the daisy crown he was building in a huff after accidentally tearing it apart again. "I know you're on a time limit, but do you think we could take a few days to find a specific aranean web?"

  Zorian gave him a curious look. Truthfully, he found their current pace very demanding and stressful, and would have probably begged for a break soon enough anyway.

  "I could, yes," he nodded, pointing at the map in front of him. "I won't say the map we have is really comprehensive or anything, but even if the web you're looking for isn't on it, it can probably point us in the right direction."

  "Yeah, that's why I'm bringing it up," Zach said. "I originally wanted to wait until you opened the matriarch's package before mentioning this, but the more I think about it, the more I think we should check this out now. Maybe it will be crucial in understanding what the matriarch was thinking."

  "What is it?" Zorian asked.

  "Spear of Resolve told me back then that if anything should happen to her, I should go talk to the 'Ghost Serpent Acolytes' web," said Zach. "She refused to say where they are or how to reach them, though. That's why I have been visiting the aranea webs ever since then."

  Zorian frowned. Ghost Serpent Acolytes? The web that refused to speak to him because their spirit told them he was 'bad news'? Could it be that they or their spirit knew something about the time loop?

  Well, the time loop did sever the link between the material plane and the spiritual ones, and the Ghost Serpent Acolytes worshipped some kind of snake spirit. Even if it was a native spirit, and thus lived in the material world, maybe it still had some kind of connection to the spirit planes and knew something important.

  "I know where they are," Zorian said. "There is no need to search for them. I can just tell you where they are."

  "Oh," Zach said. "Wow, and I spent so much time looking for them… I can't believe I could have just popped over to you and asked you where they live. We really should have met sooner than this, it seems."

  "Yeah," Zorian agreed. "Anyway, it's probably best if I just point you in the right direction and don't come with you. Every time I tried to talk to them in the past they said their spirit doesn't like me and that I should go away. It says I'm bad news."

  "That's weird," Zach frowned. "What did you do to piss it off?"

  "Nothing," Zorian said, shaking his head. "I even tried visiting them soon after the restart began, before I ever interacted with any aranea. They react exactly the same way. I don't know what's up with that, but it's best if you go there alone and don't give them any indication we're related."

  After listening to Zorian's directions, Zach immediately teleported away to meet with the Ghost Serpent Acolytes and Zorian himself returned home to wait for him and get some much-needed rest. However, it was only several hours later that Zach returned to Cyoria as well and came over to Imaya's place to talk to him. He walked up to the table Zorian was sitting at and sat down next to him, an unreadable expression on his face.

  "They wouldn't see me," Zach said. "Their spirit says I'm bad news."

  "Really? So we're both bad news," Zorian hummed, tapping his fingers against the table. "Did they say why you're bad news?"

  "No," Zach shook his head.

  "Do you think we should just attack them and read their memories?" Zorian asked. He was all for being considerate, but it was obvious at this point that Ghost Serpent Acolytes held some important piece of the puzzle in regards to the time loop.

  "No," Zach said quickly. "If they know we're time travelers, perhaps they have some method of perceiving the restarts. Attacking them might forever sour their opinions of us. Maybe we try going there at the same time and refuse to leave until they agree to speak with us?"

  Zorian arched an eyebrow at Zach.

  "What?" Zach defended himself. "It's worth a try! Don't underestimate the effectiveness of being annoying for extended periods of time."

  In the end, Zorian agreed to go along with Zach's plan of annoying the Ghost Serpent Acolytes into talking with them. He notified Kirielle and Imaya that he'd be gone from the house for a while and then left with Zach to visit the suspiciously judgmental web.

  The moment they approached the aranean settlement, they were immediately ushered inside. Zach and Zorian gave each other an incredulous look and tried to ask their aranean guides why they were admitted so readily when Zach was turned down earlier in the day as bad news. They were simply told that the Ghost Serpent wanted to see them and that they neither knew what was happening nor cared. They just did as they were told.

  Eventually they were led into a large circular cavern filled with water. There was a large rocky outcropping jutting from the center of this miniature underground lake, and a stone bridge connected the entrance to the cave to his rock. The ceiling of the cave was covered in small clumps of glowing white crystals, giving it the appearance reminiscent of the night sky full of stars, and the waters of the lake were dark and still.

  All in all, the cave gave off a very eerie feel to Zorian.

  Floating in the middle of this underground lake, just above the rocky outcropping, was a giant, milky-white, translucent snake. The only spot of color present on the ghostly serpent were its eyes, which had a soft pink glow. Spirit names were often very fanciful and poetic, but it seemed that the Ghost Serpent was exactly what it advertised itself as.

  The moment he and Zach entered the cavern, the Ghost Serpent focused its large slitted eyes on them. A wave of pink light rippled across its ghostly scales, travelling out from its eyes and down to the very tip of its tail, and then it spoke.

  "Leave us, leave us, leave us," It said, it's voice soft and melodious, not a trace of a hiss in the pronunciation. Why it felt the need to repeat the order three times was anyone's guess, since the aranea immediately began leaving the chamber after it had instructed them to leave.

  The Ghost Serpent waited for the aranea to leave and seal the entrance before it began to speak again.

  "How?" It demanded. "How can there be two of you? I know the rules well enough – only one can enter and only one can leave."

  "We don't know what you're talking about," Zach protested, folding his hands across his chest. "Why don't you start from the beginning, okay?"

  "You cannot order me, Branded One!" The Ghost Serpent snapped, coiling through the air angrily before fixing its glowing pink eyes at Zach again. "I hate you, hate you, hate you! Thief and murderer! Liar and egg smasher!"

  "Hey, that's slander!" Zach protested. "We don't even know each other! This is the first time we've met!"

  "Is it? Is it really, really, really?" the Ghost Serpent asked with narrowed eyes, once again employing the unnecessary repetition in its words. "I wouldn't know, even if it is, would I? I know how this works. You both bear the Brand." It glanced at Zorian for a second. "That is the only reason I'm talking to you. I know the Brand and I know what it means. Most have forgotten it, dormant as it has been in the past few Cycles, but I am older than the mountains and rivers, and I remember. I remember the crimes they did – the way they made me fall. And if they behaved as they did at the End, who dares even imagine what they did in the In-Between? But the Branded Ones are one and there are two of you. This makes no sense, sense, sense!"

  "Ghost Serpent, you must understand that we understand very little about what is happening," Zorian said. "I have gathered from your words that you know about the time loop, yes?"

  "The time loop?" Ghost Serpent repeated slowly, as if tasting the words. "An interesting choice of words. But nobody remembers the In-Between. Only the Branded One. This is something that has happened again and agai
n in the past. It is not difficult to understand."

  "Then please shower us with your wisdom and explain it to us dumb people," Zach said, rolling his eyes.

  "You're saying there have been more time loops in the past?" Zorian asked hurriedly, before Zach had the chance to piss of the Ghost Serpent for good. Fortunately, it seemed that while the Ghost Serpent knew about the time loop, it did not actually retain the memories between restarts. It just knew that it was stuck in the time loop and could recognize them as time travelers due to their marker… which meant that this situation was possibly reproducible, and even if they bungled things up, it should still be possible to retry this conversation again.

  "They were regular like the progression between night and day," Ghost Serpent replied. "Every four hundred years, whenever the planets aligned. But the Gate has been lost for some time now, or perhaps the Key. Alas, it seems someone has finally enacted this wretched thing again. May he burn in the molten heart of the world forever, ever, ever!"

  The Ghost Serpent writhed in the air for a moment, seemingly overcome with anger and outrage at the person responsible for the time loop. Then it focused on them both once again and spoke.

  "I remember. Do you not?" It asked. "Do not answer, I can see it on your faces. I do not understand how the Brand can be shared, but clearly it has happened. I do not wish to talk to you anymore."

  "Please, oh great spirit of this cavern," Zorian knelt, hoping that flattery and some humility may buy them some time. "I can see you have been wronged grievously by the Branded Ones in the past. We do not dispute your grudge. But we have been thrust into the time loop unknowingly and without any say on our behalf."

  "Flattery is good, but useless here," the Ghost Serpent said. "I know how this works, works, works… you will come here again and again, sucking me dry of any knowledge and wisdom, learning of my fears and weaknesses, and you will take, take, take until there is nothing else. The only thing to do is not to engage you at all. What can you do to me, after all? Today I die, and tomorrow I live once more."