Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Unfortunately, convincing Silverlake that they were onto something had one major unfortunate side-effect: she was suddenly extremely interested in them. She wanted to know everything about them – where they came from, who their family was, where their allegiances lay, what their skillset was, how much money they had at their disposal, everything . And when they had refused to cooperate with that, she started to spy on them. And then mobilized some of her contacts (apparently she wasn’t as much of a total hermit as it appeared at first glance) to gather information on them when it turned out they were too good at evading and foiling scrying attempts and other magic-oriented methods of spying. This would be very annoying even at the best of times, but what made this especially problematic was that Zach and Zorian were already doing all sorts of eye-catching things, arranging all kinds of high-value trades and throwing around ridiculous amounts of cash. This worked just fine as long as nobody was focusing on them, but the moment a bunch of nosy people were told to specifically look into what Zach Noveda and Zorian Kazinski were doing… well, suddenly they had a lot bigger reasons to be interested than one witch’s curiosity. Even if Silverlake backtracked and told these people that she changed her mind and no longer cared for the information, they wouldn’t stop their investigation now.

Ugh.

Caught off guard by this change in their routine and forced to temporarily lay low, Zach and Zorian turned to other things to amuse themselves with. In Zorian’s case, that something was the study of divine artifacts.

Sitting around in a secret, warded house, Zorian stared at the small collection of items in front of him. There were seven of them in total: a small silver pyramid, a dark brown wooden staff, a golden bell, a pitch black disc covered in seemingly random scratches, a large green gem with several light motes trapped within, a large bronze compass and a plain-looking iron dagger. The dagger had been recovered from the ruins inside the portal palace orb, while the others had been shamelessly stolen from private collections and treasuries of small countries. Although it looked unremarkable, this pile of items would likely inspire greed in even the richest of individuals living on the continent.

"You know that it’s almost impossible to find something useful by studying divine artifacts, right?" Daimen said, staring intently at the gathered items. Zorian had reluctantly invited Daimen to join him in this task, seeing how he had much more experience with this sort of thing than he did. "Entire groups have dedicated their lives to studying one specific divine item and came out empty-handed in the end."

"Yes, I know," said Zorian, picking up the dagger they had found in the orb and flipping it in his hand. They still had no idea what it did, other than being supernaturally sharp. Divine artifacts were immune to divination magics so the only way to discover their uses was to either use trial and error or search through historical records to see if there are any descriptions of the item’s powers in ancient texts. "But I have something most of those groups don’t – a willingness to destructively study the item in question for any clues and have it come back intact at the end of each month."

Daimen made a sour face at him.

"This feels so wrong," he said uneasily. "These are priceless, irreplaceable relics. It’s sacrilege ."

"Yet you agreed to come here and participate in it," Zorian noted lightly.

"Well… I can’t say I was never tempted to do something like this," Daimen sighed. "Are you sure they’ll be back to normal?"

"I’m sure," Zorian confirmed, pointing at the dagger in his hands. "I already dismantled this dagger in the previous restart and it’s back to normal now. However mysterious divine abilities are, the Sovereign Gate clearly has no issues in duplicating these items over and over again."

"That’s both reassuring and terrifying," Daimen noted.

Zorian wondered what his brother would say if he told him that they were currently stuck inside some kind of weird primordial thing that may or may not be alive and just waiting for a chance to devour them all. Alas, as funny as it was to fantasize about his reaction to that, it wasn’t worth the drama to actually go through with telling him about it.

"So, before we begin, I’m kind of curious…" Zorian began. "How did Fortov react to that illusion disc I made for you?"

The disc was something the Daimen of the previous restart had come up with. In order to help him convince Fortov to open up and talk to him, Daimen came up with the idea of a disc that would, when activated, project an illusionary scene of their talk in the previous restart. Zorian was skeptical of the idea; why would seeing such an illusion convince Fortov of anything? But Daimen insisted it would work so Zorian humored him. He tapped into his memory of the evening and constructed the most realistic illusion of the event he could before binding it to a disc that he left in Fortov’s mail. Strictly speaking, that was the end of his obligations in regards to the matter, but he kind of wanted to hear what the outcome of that stunt turned out to be.

"Well, you could say it sort of worked," Daimen said with a small grin.

"Oh?" Zorian asked with a raised eyebrow.

"He’s talking to me, at least," Daimen shrugged. "That’s all I really wanted out of that disc, so I have no reason to complain."

"How did you explain the contents of the disc?" Zorian asked curiously.

"I didn’t," Daimen grinned. "I used the mystery as an incentive to talk to me. I said I would explain everything in a month."

Zorian rolled his eyes at him.

"Anyway, I also have something to talk about before we dive into all this," Daimen said, sweeping his hands over the gathered divine artifacts. "I’m pretty sure I have narrowed down the location of the Key piece that was lost in Xlotic."

"You have?" Zorian asked, leaning forwards with anticipation. He had to say, his brother’s help was proving itself invaluable when it came to jobs like this one. If Zach and Zorian had to locate all the missing pieces of the Key all by themselves it would have taken them much, much longer than this. "Where is it? Is it the Tower of Hylos-Na? I hope it’s–"

"It’s the Ziggurat of the Sun," Daimen interrupted him.

Zorian leaned back into his chair with a groan. Out of all the possible options, the Ziggurat of the Sun was definitely the worst one. It was situated deep into the interior of northern Miasina, in an area that was once lush grassland, but was now located deep within the Xlotic desert. There were no major human settlements nearby, just an endless expanse of desert. Simply approaching the ziggurat required a lengthy, difficult trek through these parched, desolate lands.

And any expedition that reached the ziggurat itself would be faced with the tiny issue of the ziggurat’s current inhabitants: sulrothum, a species of giant sapient desert wasps that had taken over the structure when the deserts had claimed the whole area. Sulrothum were almost three meters long, possessed incredible strength and toughness and there were hundreds of them living within the ziggurat. As for their friendliness, well… sulrothum was a local human word roughly translating to devil wasp . Zorian kind of doubted they would allow them to peacefully search their base for ancient magical artifacts.

"Sorry," Daimen said. "I know how you feel, but I’m pretty sure I got it right. The imperial ring is there, provided the sulrothum haven’t already found it and taken it elsewhere."

"Which is a distinct possibility," Zorian noted.

"At least you have that in-built Key detector, so we’ll know if the ring is no longer there before we waste too much time on securing the place," Daimen shrugged.