Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Zorian nodded and activated the keystone in his hands. Nothing visible happened, but Zorian was sure he had performed the action correctly. Now they could only wait.

They had to wait a surprisingly long time, longer than they had to the last time they had come here. Zorian suspected this was because Silverlake was studying them from inside before deciding to come out, and this time they had come more heavily armed and visibly dangerous. Eventually, however, she decided to greet them anyway. The fact that Zach had gotten bored at some point and started building a giant statue of himself via alteration spells right outside her home might have motivated her to hurry up.

"How the hell did you activate that old piece of junk?" She immediately demanded, squinting at each of them suspiciously. "I never gave anyone a matching keystone. Hell, I never even made any matching keystones. Suspicious. Very, very suspicious. Who are you two?"

"To answer your last question, I am Zach Noveda and this is Zorian Kazinski. We are but humble academy students coming here to pay our respects to a living legend," Zach flattered shamelessly. Silverlake snorted derisively at him, saying nothing. "And also to arrange for a trade, I guess. Or should I say… re-negotiate our existing one? After all, this is the second time we’re meeting like this."

"I don’t think so?" Silverlake said curiously. "I don’t remember you. I may be old, but I’m pretty sure I’d never forget a couple of brats as brazen as you two. I mean, I kind of like that kind of attitude, but only when it’s directed at other people…"

"That’s just because your memory of our meeting has been wiped clean from your mind," Zorian said in a carefree manner. "Nothing to worry about. Anyway, here is a gift."

Zorian reached into his backpack and withdrew a bottle of brandy and a box of sweets from it, which he then handed to a surprised Silverlake. She made no move to claim them, looking at both objects like they were poisonous vipers.

"A gift?" she asked emotionlessly.

"It is customary to bring gifts when visiting someone," Zorian said sagely. "It’s an important tradition."

Silverlake made a sour face at that explanation. She spent a few more seconds scrutinizing the two objects before finally deciding they were probably harmless. She took them both from his hands and immediately stuffed them into one of her jacket pockets. Even though the heavy bottle and the large box of sweets shouldn’t have possibly been able to fit into that tiny jacket pocket, they somehow did.

What a casual use of pocket dimension creation… Zorian couldn’t help but feel a little jealous. He wouldn’t be able to duplicate that feat, and in fact didn’t even know how to go about achieving it. He could only extend the space of rigid containers right now, and had no idea how to use something as flexible as a pocket as a base for a pocket dimension. He knew it was unreasonable to expect to be as good as Silverlake after only a month of instruction, but this was a pretty stark reminder of how far he had to go to match the old witch’s expertise in that regard.

Silverlake grinned at him in triumph, savoring this little victory for all it was worth.

"Let’s back up a bit, shall we?" she asked, a little more confident this time. "You said something about my memory being wiped?"

"Yes," Zach nodded. "You see, about a month ago we came to you with a certain offer…"

And Zach started giving Silverlake the summarized version of what happened in the previous restart, though they took pains to temporarily omit any mention of the time loop itself. They figured it would immediately make Silverlake disbelieve anything else they had to say if they started with that. Instead they just narrated the general terms of their deal and the way she had instructed them in the art of pocket dimension creation and occasionally sent them on random errands.

And they used plenty of props in their explanation. When they spoke of how they offered the previous version of Silverlake grey hunter’s eggs, they took the eggs they obtained in this restart out of the portable palace orb and showed them to her. When they spoke of how Silverlake told them she also needed an ancient giant salamander to complete her youth potion, they took out the living salamander they captured and showed it off as well.

Silverlake’s eyes shone brightly when she saw the two alchemical ingredients she wanted the most laid out in front of her, but she remained silent and motionless as she listened to their story in a rapt manner.

When it came time to move the story into Silverlake’s home dimension, though, her expression fell and turned grave. This was because Zorian started using illusionary scenes from his memory to illustrate his points. Normally these kinds of illusory images weren’t worth much as a proof. After all, nothing stopped the illusionist from fabricating things, and people’s memories tended to be kind of fuzzy in even the best of cases. However, Zorian had the ability to remember a scene down to the tiniest detail and it wasn’t like one could randomly invent a detailed layout of Silverlake’s dimension and be correct. He could replicate the image of her favorite cauldron down to the tiniest scratch and replicate the exact number of dried onions and mushrooms hanging from the hooks on her wall. It was a pretty damning proof that he had at least been there at some point, even if he wasn’t telling the truth about anything else, and Silverlake clearly knew it.

"Stop, stop," she suddenly told him, waving her hand in a forceful manner. She looked honestly shaken at the sight of these images. "I… I need to check something."

Zach and Zorian stood by the side while Silverlake started casting one diagnostic spell after another on herself. Occasionally she would stop and mutter to herself in some alien Khusky tongue that neither Zach nor Zorian had ever encountered, before shaking her head and continuing with her self-diagnostics.

After that she started examining the entrance to her dimension before wordlessly disappearing inside. Zach and Zorian still waited patiently, not saying anything. She returned twenty minutes later, looking more disturbed than ever.

"It doesn’t make sense," she loudly proclaimed. " None of this makes sense. My memory is fine. It hasn’t been tampered with. I know it hasn’t, because there are always, always traces left when one does so and my mind doesn’t have any. But you’ve clearly been inside my home long enough to dig up that old stone and puzzle out a matching keystone for it, long enough to memorize every corner of it down to the smallest detail. Except there is no trace of illegal entry, not even the faintest whiff of it, and there is no way in all the hells and all the heavens I’d ever forget letting someone like you inside. And your story! What a bunch of rubbish! You say you sold me grey hunter’s eggs a whole month ago, yet I see no evidence I’ve ever processed them! And now you come here with a new sack of grey hunter’s eggs, as if those can be acquired just by going into your neighborhood store or something. Who are you people and what is happening here!?"

She punctuated her statement by making a sweeping hand gesture, causing two huge, hulking humanoids of earth to suddenly coalesce out of the soil around them.

Earth elementals, and not minor ones either. However…

"Should we…?" Zach mouthed.

Zorian quietly nodded and made a sweeping gesture of his own, though his one was mostly for show, not because he actually needed to make it. Then again, maybe it was the same for Silverlake. In any case, he made use of the time needed to make the gesture to reach out into the ever-useful orb, causing a bunch of equally huge and hulking war golems to pop into existence next to them.