Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  "Damnit," Zach swore, kicking a nearby rock in frustration and beginning to pace around the place. "Damnit! Why!? Why is it always like this!? I finally, finally get some answers about this shit and of course I'm three steps behind some asshole who is doing his best to screw me over! Zorian, please tell me you have some sort of idea where the exit is."

  "This is just a wild guess, but I suspect it might be in the time magic research facility beneath Cyoria," Zorian said. "Spear of Resolve was very insistent on making sure I learned its exact location, putting multiple redundant copies of that section of the map. There must be something important there."

  "That's great!" Zach said, brightening up. "When can we go there?"

  Zorian snorted derisively. "Not for a long, long time. The place is insanely well secured. Even Quatach-Ichl refused to attack the place without army support."

  "Damnit," Zach swore. "Of course it couldn't be that simple."

  "I'm hoping that the matriarch's memory packet contains some crucial information about the topic," Zorian noted. "At the very least, it should tell me what about that place is so important. That way we can at least know whether or not to waste our time on the place."

  "Well that's something at least," Zach sighed. "Hopefully we don't find the exit, only to see Red Robe just about to leave when we get there."

  "Don't tempt fate," Zorian told him. "Anyway, I just have to ask. Suppose we find the exit and Red Robe isn't there…"

  "I already told you. No one is getting left behind," Zach said, correctly guessing Zorian's question. "Once we confirm where the exit is, we'll mess up Red Robe until he's no longer a problem, and then we sit down and figure out a way to get both of us out. And if we can't figure it out ourselves, we'll find someone who can. It's a big world out there, someone must know a way to help."

  Zorian stared at his fellow time traveler, a bit humbled by his optimism and sense of ethics. He kind of wished he could sense emotions off the boy, though, because he couldn't help but wonder if Zach was feeding him a bunch of idealistic rubbish while quietly planning to leave the time loop at first opportunity. How much could he afford to trust the boy?

  And in the back of his head, a small, treacherous part of his mind whispered: how much could Zach afford to trust him?

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  After that talk, Zach and Zorian threw themselves into aranea hunting with newfound fervor. Day after day, week after week… in all honesty, the different webs were already starting to blur together a little in Zorian's mind.

  But it was effective – his ability to interpret aranean memories was growing by leaps and bounds, and he had even identified what the high-ranking aranea were doing with their own minds.

  They were manipulating their own thoughts, doing things like filtering distractions out of their senses, blunting inconvenient emotional highs and placing compulsions on their own behavior. It seemed to be a way to be a way to increase productivity and ensure better decision making.

  It was also incredibly dangerous. Improperly done, this sort of mind magic could render one dead, catatonic, irreparably insane or worse… and it was a branch of magic that was easy to do incorrectly. Nobody truly understood their own mind, after all.

  Despite the danger, Zorian found the idea fascinating. It wasn't literally an intelligence boost, but it almost functioned like one. He would probably try to dabble in it at some point… but not now. He had his hands full at the moment. He just hoped that Spear of Resolve's mental manipulations weren't as radical and convoluted as some of the other aranean elders he had seem recently.

  Zorian's lessons with Xvim proceeded without incident. He decided not to tell the man about his latest findings about the nature of the time loop, as he still didn't know what to think about that himself, and was worried about how Xvim would react to finding out he was just a copy. He was a remarkably calm and collected man, but that would be quite a revelation. He did, however, ask Xvim about pocket dimensions.

  Unfortunately, Xvim knew virtually nothing about them. The secrets of their creation were rare and closely guarded – only the greatest of mages could make even a tiny one, and they did not share that knowledge lightly. Xvim had claimed he had never seen one in his entire life, despite talking to a lot of capable mages, which made Zorian a bit amused. Technically, Xvim was looking at a pocket dimension right now, he just didn't recognize it as such.

  Between his interaction with Zach, aranea hunting and lessons with Xvim, Zorian was constantly busy. It was tiring, and he opted not to do many of his usual routines from previous restarts. He never went to hunt monsters with Taiven, for instance, and never told her about the time loop either.

  Finally, as the end of the restart began to approach, Zorian decided he had prepared as much as he could. He informed Zach he would try opening the matriarch's memory packet soon and that he was taking a two day break from aranea hunting to get some rest before the attempt.

  Kirielle, at least, was ecstatic about that. She could finally have him all to herself for two whole days… or at least that's how she seemed to interpret his decision, anyway.

  It was currently the second day on his self-imposed rest, and he was lying on his bed, reading a rather silly piece of fiction dealing with time travel. It was a book about a man who went three years back into the past to prevent a devastating war and save his lost love. The story was more amusing than Zorian thought it would be when he started reading it, but that was probably just him – the story was supposed to be a romance, not a comedy, it's just that he personally couldn't take it very seriously.

  The time travel spell was powered by love, of all things – what kind of magic was that?

  Kirielle interrupted his fun by jumping on top of his bed (and him) and elbowing herself in by his side, where she pretended to read the book with him for a while.

  "Can I ask you something?" she suddenly asked after a while.

  "Go ahead," Zorian said, turning the page. Kirielle quickly stopped him and turned the page back where it was. Huh, maybe she actually was reading along…

  "Do you always bring me along when you go to Cyoria?" she asked.

  Oh. That question again…

  "No, not always," Zorian admitted.

  "Why?" she asked immediately, outrage creeping into her voice. He could tell she kind of expected that answer, but definitely didn't like it.

  "Because it's dangerous," Zorian admitted. "Zach isn't the only time traveler beside me. There is a third person looping, and he is after us. Truthfully, the sensible thing would have been to never bring you along-"

  "No!" Kirielle protested.

  "-but I'm just too damn nice to do such a thing," Zorian finished.

  "Mom says that praising yourself is in poor taste," Kirielle informed him.

  Zorian gave her an annoyed look and promptly dropped the open book on her face. She sputtered indignantly for a moment before lifting the book and trying to use it as a bludgeon against him.

  She gave up quickly when she realized it wasn't very effective. And when she noticed Zorian was trying to distract her from her questions.

  "Why don't you call the mage guild on this guy if he's so dangerous?" she asked.

  "Because he's a time traveler and they would be of no help," Zorian said, rolling his eyes. "I doubt I could even get them to believe me. And even if I could, it would just be a huge clue for the jerk as to where he can find me."

  "That sucks," Kirielle declared.

  "Yup," Zorian agreed.

  She fidgeted nervously for a moment, setting the book down beside her on the bed.

  "Am I of no help?" she asked.

  "You help keep me sane," Zorian told her.

  "That's it? I totally defended you from Zach back at the train station," she pointed out huffily.

  "Okay, you definitely have a point there," Zorian admitted. Even if he hadn't been in any real danger, Kirielle's actions were still glorious. "But really, what are you getting upset about? Are you afraid if I don't bring y
ou along every single restart, I'll get bored of you or something?"

  "Yes," she admitted. "Daimen and Fortov both went to the academy, got themselves new friends and forgot all about us. Then you went there as well, but couldn't get any friends and I know it's kind of mean, but I was glad for that because that meant you didn't forget about me-"

  "Kiri…" Zorian sighed.

  She ignored him and continued with her explanation, quickly spilling out word and word and barely pausing for breath, as if it was all going to disappear if she stopped.

  "-but you were still getting so distant and you were always, always annoyed at everything. And then you bring me along and you're suddenly nice, but now you suddenly have this Zach who is a time traveler like you and he will remember and I won't and-"

  "Kiri, there is no way Zach can replace you," sighed Zorian, hugging her to stop her from getting herself even more upset, and rolling his eyes at her when she could no longer see him. She got worked up over the dumbest things sometimes. "The guy is almost as annoying as you are, and he doesn't even have an excuse of being nine years old."

  She proceeded to hit him in the back for that comment. Well, at least she wasn't crying.

  "I'll forgive you for not bringing me with you sometimes," Kirielle eventually decided. Very generous of her. "But you're not allowed to forget me!"

  "Sure," he agreed easily. What kind of request was that anyway?

  But the more he really thought about it, the more he realized he might not have a choice in the matter. If Red Robe decided to leave the time loop and collapse this entire world behind him, what would the future have in store for him and Kirielle? The real Zorian and Kirielle, that is, since the Kirielle he was looking at was just a copy, same as he was…

  And that was another thing. He was just a copy of the real Zorian. If he found a way to return into the real world… what was going to happen to the original? Ugh… he was getting a headache just thinking about it. He'd kind of have preferred it if the time loop simply switched his soul with that of the original – that would mean he was killing the original Zorian by exiting the time loop, but this looping world had effectively killed hundreds of such Zorians already, so what difference would one more make?

  Would the original Zorian agree with such assessment? Would he accept that it was okay for him to die so that a future version of him might live? In all honesty, probably not… but there was no way that would stop him from performing the switch if he had to.

  Tomorrow he was going to finally open the matriarch's memory packet. He really hoped it had the final pieces he needed to figure out this puzzle once and for all.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  "Alright," said Kael, handing him a vial full of glowing yellow liquid. Inspecting it closely, Zorian could see that the glow was not uniform, but instead came from tiny glowing motes swimming inside the liquid. "This is the potion I was talking about. The potion of self-awareness. It's meant to improve a person's ability block out distractions and focus inwards. It's typically used to help train people's ability to sense their mana reserves and souls, but I suspect it will help for this type of mind magic to work as well."

  "How reliable is your information about this stuff?" asked Zorian suspiciously, swirling the liquid inside the container. "Did you test it somehow or…?"

  "This is what my teacher used to help train my… abilities," Kael said. "It definitely works for its intended purpose. And while I'm not entirely sure it will help you in your task, it definitely won't hurt to take it. Zach volunteered to test the potion a few times, so I know for a fact it doesn't interfere with mind magic."

  He pointed towards the boy in question and Zach promptly gave Zorian a thumbs up and a bright smile.

  Ugh. The jerk refuses to drop his mind blank around him for any reason, but he blithely drinks a bunch of strange potions made by a junior necromancer he just met. Sometimes he just didn't get that guy.

  "Fine. Here goes," said Zorian, quickly downing the liquid.

  Almost instantly, Zorian's mind sharpened to an incredible degree while, paradoxically, the outside world began to feel distant and indistinct. It wasn't that his senses suddenly grew worse, because they were as sharp as they ever were, but what they were telling him suddenly became a lot harder to focus on.

  He stopped struggling against the effect and let his mind turn inward. He could sense his heart beat, his muscles shifting as he fidgeted in place, the blood coursing through his veins… he could sense his mana reserves and the way they reacted when he tugged at them… his personal soul sense, normally so faint and sluggish to respond, suddenly seemed to much easier to understand…

  Damn. Why hadn't he asked Kael for something like this earlier? This would have been incredibly useful back when he was trying to develop a personal soul sense.

  No, he couldn't get distracted – he discarded these visions and instead dived into his own mind where the matriarch's memory packet stood. He did not feel the same sense of increased clarity this time – probably because his mind magic was already too good for the potion to improve – but that was okay. He mentally grasped the decaying memory packet and began to carefully take it apart.

  Not carefully enough, it turned out. The packet, already on the verge of falling apart completely when he began, couldn't tolerate Zorian's still somewhat inexperienced touch. It violently burst apart, momentarily dazing Zorian with a burst of confusing images (some kind of defense mechanism, maybe?), and the memories contained within began to rapidly fade away from his mind.

  Swearing internally at his failure, Zorian scrambled to access some of the memories before they all faded away.

  Previously, Zorian had been hoping that Spear of Resolve hadn't delved as deeply into the mental self-manipulation as some of the other aranean elders had. Now he could safely say he was an optimistic fool. The memories currently floating in his mind spoke of an absolute master in the field that made all the other 'expert' araneas look like total underachievers in comparison. Spear of Resolve seemed to have found a way to turn part of her mind into a magical calculator, could somehow temporarily separate her mind into multiple parallel threads of thought and could integrate perceptions of multiple araneas into a unified, coherent whole. And that was just the stuff he could figure out in the short time he had been given. Even if Zorian had been given several extra years to get better at reading aranean memories, he doubted it would have helped him interpret the memories locked inside the memory packet.

  And yet, despite all of this, there was one particular memory that Zorian could easily understand… because it had been made understandable specifically for him.

  [If you are reviewing this memory,] the matriarch's memory echo said, [then in all likelihood, our plans were foiled and things went awry. It also means you have gotten good enough at mind magic to dive into the memory packet and read some of my memories. Well done. I hope you have had the courtesy of respecting my privacy and leaving the rest of my memories alone.]

  Zorian could literally feel the smugness in her words. As in, she had made sure to attach that particular emotional impression to that particular section of the message. She knew damn well he had no hope of interpreting the rest of her memories.

  Even in death, that spider was mocking him.

  [I know you think I had it coming by rushing into this, but hear me out. I have sought out every clue about the time loop I could find. Most of what I'm about to tell you comes from the patron spirit of another aranean web – the Ghost Serpent Acolytes. Seek it out if you haven't already, though be warned that the spirit might not be too happy to see you.]

  What an understatement. Did the matriarch not realize the depth of the Ghost Serpent's hatred of time travelers, or did she simply think her warning was sufficiently informative?

  [Other sources include the researchers at the time magic research facility beneath Cyoria – you can find its location in the map I've attached inside this message – as well as some of the invaders that had the chance to int
eract with our mysterious time-traveling foe. It seems the invaders were quite curious about their new informant and have invested considerable time and effort into figuring him out.]

  Damn. His investigation into invaders never seemed to produce any results as far as Red Robe was concerned. Then again, by the time Zorian was able to investigate them properly, Red Robe was no longer interacting with them at all.

  [What I have gathered from all this is that this time loop is some kind of… fake, parallel world. We're real, but we're not. It's hard to understand. Or maybe accept. The problem that arises from this is very simple: the time loop is degrading. I can't tell how long it will be before it collapses entirely, but I do know that simply waiting for it to end would be disastrous. One has to deliberately leave this place. And everything I've gathered about our time-travelling foe from the invaders suggests he is completely unconcerned with finding the exit or leaving. I do not believe for a second that our foe is too stupid to see the importance of this or too complacent to make it his priority. The obvious conclusion is that he has already found the exit, and he can leave at any time. Thus, stopping him was of utmost importance. No matter what, he couldn't be allowed to leave the time loop.]

  Oh this was bad…

  [And also, if I am honest with myself…] The ghostly memory of matriarch hesitated, as if wondering whether to say the next part at all. [If I am honest with myself, I had been hoping that I could find out how our mutual foe joined the time loop. So I could join it as well… and then, eventually, leave it before anyone else could.]

  Wait, what?

  [I'm not heartless, mind you. I would have done everything in my power to help the alternate version of you on the other side. Zach too, for that matter. But I had essentially been planning to betray you. The amount of good I could do – for my web, for my species and yes, maybe even for myself… it's so very irresistible. I hope if you ever get out of this place, you will not blame my other self for my own weaknesses, but I simply cannot see how I can make any other choice. It's nothing personal, but there can only ever be one winner in this game. I am truly sorry.]