Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"Shame," said Zach. "The orb does a pretty good job of isolating the space inside from the rest of reality, though. That’s kind of what the Black Room is meant to accomplish, only better. What if, instead of trying to bring the orb inside the Black Room, we simply ditched the Black Room altogether and retooled the entire facility to apply its temporal acceleration effect on the orb itself? I know the space inside the orb is much more massive than the Black Room, but maybe the effects of a better dimensional boundary overshadow that? And really, even if it produces less drastic acceleration, I’d rather spend half a month inside a palace than a full month inside a tiny cramped room…"

"An interesting idea," Zorian admitted. "We’d need to get willing cooperation from the staff of the facility to pull something of that scale, though. No way could we pull this off ourselves, especially not on a super-secret research facility financed by the Eldemarian government."

Zorian still made a mental note to revisit the idea later. Perhaps it wasn’t very feasible at the moment, but they needed every advantage they could get.

On one unremarkable Sunday morning, Zorian woke up to find Imaya’s house under siege.

Well, not a literal siege, but the throng of people gathered around the entrance was impressively large and thoroughly blocked anyone’s ability to get in or out of the house. Zorian was quite mystified by this, since he couldn’t think of anything he had done that would cause such an occurrence.

Zorian joined the other inhabitants of the house, who had awoken far sooner than him, in staring warily through the window at the mass of people surrounding the house. They seemed to be quite a diverse bunch, ranging from simple curious neighbors that had gathered to see what was happening to groups of healers, mages, various guild recruiters and newspaper reporters.

"Dare I ask what this is about?" Zorian asked Imaya, who was nervously wringing her hands as she eyed the gathered crown with a wary eye.

"It’s my fault," Kael spoke up in an embarrassed voice. "I’m sorry."

"What do you mean it’s your fault?" Zorian asked curiously. "What did you do exactly?"

"Well, you know how I keep working on better medicines? And how I’ve been recruiting other alchemists and healers in my work? Well, the results of that effort are getting… kind of impressive. Impressive enough to cause a stir. Especially when they come from someone as young as me with no real backer," Kael explained. He shuffled in place uncomfortably and Kana squeezed herself closer to him, disturbed by the fearful, awkward atmosphere in the room. "I’m really sorry. I hadn’t considered this possibility at all."

Zorian shook his head, not really angry at the boy. Part of the blame rested on him too – he should have paid closer attention to what Kael was doing and what kind of attention it was garnering. Though in all honesty, this was just a mild inconvenience for him. He could teleport in and out of the house at will.

"They were initially much more aggressive about trying to get in," Imaya told him. "But those wards you placed on the house stopped them cold so they’ve been more restrained since then. The wards themselves drew some people here, though. I’m not sure, but I think some people from the Mage Guild are here to talk to you about that…"

It was only then that Zorian remembered that raising heavy wards around a residence required a special permit from the city’s mage guild. A permit that Zorian didn’t have. He had been warding places so often these days, with zero regard for local laws and customs, that he had almost forgotten that this sort of thing was regulated in most places.

Okay, maybe this was more than just a mild inconvenience…

In the mountains of southern Altazia, there was a fairly famous cave system that surrounded an ancient volcano. The volcano hadn’t been active in over a century, but the caves still held spacious caverns and winding corridors full of lava that never cooled. This was a magically powerful place heavily aligned with fire, and it was absolutely teeming with fire elementals.

And one of those elementals was Kilnfather, the elder fire elemental that Zach and Zorian were currently visiting.

Kilnfather wasn’t the oldest of the elder elementals living in this place, but he was the only one even remotely interested in talking with humans. The others lived deep in the lava fields of the volcano cavern system – simply reaching their strongholds would be a monumental task, considering the incredible heat and the omnipresent poisonous fumes of their home environment, and convincing a taciturn elemental to talk with you was a notoriously futile endeavor. So Kilnfather it was.

They met Kilnfather in a wide, spacious cavern of black basalt stone. Steam and poisonous fumes billowed up from the cracks in the floor and walls, but the air was entirely breathable with the aid of the right air filtering spells. As for the temperature, well… it was hot, but not unhealthily so. They could endure it for the few hours the talks would last.

The only thing Zach and Zorian really had to watch for was not to hurt any of the Kilnfather’s 'children'…

Kilnfather looked like a giant gecko made out of cooling lava. He was black, with cracked skin that pulsed with inner fire, dimming and brightening in a regular rhythm. His eyes were big, yellow, slitted and shining. Surrounding him was a small throng of smaller black geckos that looked like tiny copies of him. If one looked at the smaller geckos closely enough, however, they would notice they were not elementals like Kilnfather. They were actual living beings.

The black geckoes had been, as far as anyone could tell, just regular animals until Kilnfather had implanted some of his elemental spirit into them, causing them to swell in size and develop powerful fire-based magic. Kilnfather loved his creations with all his heart, to the point where he styled his entire appearance after them, and some people speculated he was trying to shape them into a legitimate sapient species as time went by. He did not tolerate any violence towards his beloved children and would immediately start hostilities with anyone who hurt so much as a scale on their back… and call the rest of the domain’s fire elementals for help if he thought he was outmatched.

The trouble was, sometimes these children started hostilities, forcing people to defend themselves… but the Kilnfather didn’t care. No matter the circumstances, his children were always in the right.

"Welcome, guests," Kilnfather said, his voice deep and resonant. "Come closer, come closer. Mind my children, please. They can sometimes get a little… overzealous in their welcome, but they always mean well."

"Kilnfather is as welcoming as stories say," Zorian said politely. "Hopefully these two guests will be found worthy of your hospitality. Please accept our gifts."

They directed the floating field of force that carried a small basalt chest towards Kilnfather, forcing it to stop at a respectful distance from the elemental. It opened on its own, revealing a plethora of rare stones and materials that were said to be attractive to fire elementals.

"Oh my, you shouldn’t have, you shouldn’t have," Kilnfather said, his large, bright yellow tongue darting out his mouth to lick his eyes one by one. "But it would be impolite of me to refuse a gift. What was it that you said you came here for?"

"Well…" began Zorian. "We were wondering if you ever heard of any of the locations where the primordials were imprisoned…"

House Letova was a fairly important House in Falkrinea. They were a new House, having achieved their status due to their knowledge of certain unique potions that nobody else could figure out how to make, but their future looked rather promising. Their potion business was booming, giving them plenty of money to throw around to make themselves heard and boost their political influence in Falkrinea and elsewhere.