Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"I guess that’s fair," Zach shrugged. "I mean, I’ve really taken a liking to this thing, but he does sort of have a legitimate claim on it, and he’s your brother to boot. You owe me, though."

"I owe you?" Zorian said, raising his eyebrow at him. "Owe you what?"

"Another portable palace like this, of course," said Zach, waving the orb in front of Zorian’s face. "You’ll be trying to get crazy good at pocket dimensions soon, no? Surely, a measly little pocket dimension like this is no big deal."

Measly , he says. Information about pocket dimension creation was scarce, but what Zorian had found suggested that this orb was near the top end of what was possible to achieve. There were examples of bigger hidden worlds, but not many.

"Correction," Zorian said blandly. " We’ll be trying to get crazy good at pocket dimensions soon. Are you seriously telling me you’ll pass by the opportunity to learn how to create one?"

"I’d never pass up the opportunity to learn something so useful," Zach said with a grin. "But you’re the one who’s good at creating things, while I am more the kind of guy that breaks them. Plus, we’ve already established that you owe me. I’ve magnanimously decided to let your brother claim the orb outside the time loop as a favor to you. As recompense, you need to make another portable palace for me when we finally get out."

"We’ll talk about that later, when we find out how feasible the idea actually is," Zorian told him lightly. "However, I can tell you right now that you’re never getting an actual palace."

"Whaaat?" Zach whined. "Why not?"

"Because pocket dimensions don’t create matter," Zorian told him. He pointed at the orb in Zach’s hands. "If you want them to contain a piece of land like that one does, you basically have to steal it by enclosing an actual place into it during the creation process. So if you want a portable palace… well, you first need to build the palace in question. Putting aside the actual costs of such a project, which are bound to be astronomical, I just don’t have the necessary skills to design and build a palace."

"Oh," Zach said. "Yeah, that makes sense, I guess."

"Now, if you want a tastefully hollowed out rock or a nice wooden cottage… that I can definitely help you with," Zorian told him. "Hell, I might even be able to fit in some actual glass windows if you want me to be extravagant!"

That triggered a lengthy argument about what kind of building would be possible for a single mage to build on his own, using only natural materials. The argument eventually culminated into a building competition where both Zach and Zorian did their best to construct the most luxurious residence they could with the materials they had on hand.

If any jungle explorer were to stumble upon the site several hours later, they would probably be baffled by the series of towers, ziggurats and blocky houses scattered throughout the entire region. Alas, this part of the jungle was very remote and no such explorer would ever come before the restart ended.

The bats and other animals that moved into the buildings after a few days definitely appreciated their new accommodations, though.

Zach and Zorian floated in the black void. The black sky that surrounded them was omnidirectional and featureless, containing only one point of interest – a roughly humanoid entity with softly glowing eyes. The Guardian of the Threshold.

It had been a while since they visited this place. They tried not to interact with the Guardian too much, lest they accidentally trigger some kind of safeguard and it realized there were two Controllers inside the time loop and that it should do something about that. However, now that they’d gotten their hands on a piece of the Key, it only made sense for them to come and visit the Sovereign Gate to see how it would react.

"Welcome, Controller," the Guardian said, its voice just as soft and devoid of emotion as Zorian remembered it to be. The entity gave no indication it remembered their last visit to this place.

"We have questions for you," Zach told the Guardian bluntly.

"I will do my best to answer them," the Guardian agreed placidly.

They didn’t ask it about the orb immediately. Instead, they first confirmed the number of restarts they had until the time loop collapsed, just in case. They had 42 left, exactly as it should be. After that Zorian summoned a list of questions the two of them had prepared for the Guardian over the previous restarts, concerning Red Robe, the mechanics of the time loop and so on.

They didn’t get anywhere with that, of course. The Guardian either didn’t know how to help them or flat out refused to do so when they asked things they weren’t authorized to know. They had expected that, but it was still frustrating to be foiled so thoroughly. In any case, once they had exhausted their prepared list of questions, they finally moved onto to the main purpose of this visit.

"Guardian, can you tell us more about the Key now?" Zorian asked.

"To find out about the Key, please bring me the Key for inspection," the Guardian told him.

"Yes, yes… in order to find out about the Key, we must first have the Key. A perfectly logical requirement," Zach said, rolling his eyes. "But we’re not here for that. Our question is this: if we bring you a single piece of the Key, does that count for something? Do we get to ask you questions about it?"

"Having only one piece of the Key will result in information about that part only," the Guardian noted.

"That’s fine," Zach said dismissively. "We brought you one of the pieces, so why don’t you take a look?"

"I do not see it," the Guardian told him immediately. "Are you sure you have connected it to the control room properly?"

"Wait, we have to do what ?" Zach asked incredulously.

As it turned out, simply having the pieces of the Key on them when they connected to the Sovereign Gate wasn’t enough. The Guardian neither knew nor cared what they had on their person when they entered this void it inhabited. Instead, it was up to Zach and Zorian to connect the orb to the Sovereign Gate so the Guardian could inspect it and confirm its authenticity.

How were they supposed to do that? The Guardian was naturally of no help whatsoever. It took them two hours of frustrated tinkering before they realized they had to use their marker as a sort of bridge, simultaneously connecting it to both the Sovereign Gate and the orb. Only then did the Guardian recognize it.

"This is indeed a legitimate piece of the Key," the Guardian decided.

"Finally," Zach huffed. "So what does this get us?"

"Nothing on its own," the Guardian responded. "You need the entire key to unlock higher authorization than you have now. However, you can now ask me for information about it like you wanted earlier. Keep in mind that I have no knowledge of the object’s mundane functions. I can only give you information about it as it relates to the time loop."

"So if we asked you about the pocket dimension contained in the orb…" began Zorian.

"I couldn’t help you," the Guardian said. "I didn’t even know there was a pocket dimension encapsulated within the Key piece until you told me."

There was a second of silence as both Zach and Zorian frowned at the information. This was not completely unexpected. It had been very obvious during their previous visit that the Guardian did not perceive the world in the same way humans did and often just plain disregarded things not related to its job. Still, this was disappointing to hear.

"Alright," said Zach eventually. "So what can you tell us about the orb, then? What are its capabilities as it relates to the time loop?"

"It contains a memory bank that the Controller can use to store and organize their important memories across restarts," the Guardian said.