Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

With Silverlake’s cooperation secured, the restart ended uneventfully, the only notable difference being the larger number of notebooks that Zorian was transferring into the next restart. Considering that the orb’s memory bank was practically limitless in size, this was not a big deal.

The next several restarts were somewhat routine. They were learning pocket dimension expertise from Silverlake, looking deeper into Veyers' ties with the Cult of Dragon Below, figuring out the activation procedure of the Bakora Gates and the construction methods of the Ibasan ones, doing small preparations for the airship theft, experimenting with divine artifacts and sifting through the ruins inside the portable palace orb. Zorian was messing around with mental enhancements while Zach was steadily getting closer to being able to create his own simulacrums.

Their various other operations, such as hiring various experts to do research and development for them, also continued at a steady pace.

Just like that, another six restarts had gone by.

Although Aranhal widely advertised their new airship to their own populace and neighboring countries, actually seeing the Pearl of Aranhal took a bit of effort. It was located next to an important industrial town, but wasn’t actually in it. Instead, the construction site was placed outside the settlement itself, close enough to be supplied with relative ease but far enough to foil casual visitors.

The airship was currently grounded in an oval-shaped holding structure and surrounded by extensive scaffolding. Ringing that was a collection of storehouses, barracks, watchtowers and temporary housing for workers and overseers. Finally, the entire work camp was surrounded by a warded, alteration-made stone wall that stopped minor magical creatures or petty criminals from simply waltzing into the place. Neither this, nor any of the other, more subtle defenses could stop Zach and Zorian from infiltrating the place without being seen, of course. They were currently standing on one of the observation platforms attached to the ship, observing it.

Zorian had to say, the Pearl of Aranhal was a beautiful construct. Airships were often depicted as floating sea-going ships – an image that stemmed from the earliest known models, which really were simply modified sea-going ships. Ancient airship creators were working with a lower technological base and less developed economic infrastructure, forcing them to pick an already constructed vessel as a base for their project. Most modern airships, on the other hand, were built from the ground up as dedicated aerial vessels, so they rarely looked anything like a mundane ship. They tended to either have long cylindrical hulls covered in stabilizing fins or be some manner of a triangle. The Pearl of Aranhal bucked the trend there, in that it had a relatively flat, rhombus-like shape. It kind of gave Zorian an impression of a giant leaf. It certainly looked like it should be fast and maneuverable, but it made Zorian somewhat skeptical of the claim it was especially robust and durable by airship standards. Well, no matter. They wanted the ship because of its speed and flight endurance, not combat ability.

In any case, the airship’s name seemed particularly fitting in light of its current coloration. Its hull was painted in dazzling, pure white, with no overt markings or identifying patterns. This was meant to be only temporary, however. Aranhal intended to decorate the ship further before unveiling it to the waiting public, but they had yet to settle down on what kind of color scheme and decorations to put there. The question seemed quite trivial to Zorian, but was apparently an intensely divisive political question that caused many bitter arguments in Aranhal’s halls of power. The current overseer was continually kicking the can down the road in regards to the issue, fearful that whoever lost the dispute would try to cut the project’s budget out of spite.

"What do you say?" Zach suddenly said, rocking in place on his heels. He looked quite bored. "It’s about time, no?"

"Yeah, I guess," Zorian answered. He was a bit nervous, he realized, so he may have been stalling a little. "I’ll go tell my copies to set the monkeys loose."

He reached to his simulacrums through his soul, his ability to use his soul as a telepathic conduit as natural as breathing by now, and gave them a simple go signal. They already knew what to do.

Golden triclopses were monkey-like magic creatures native to the area. They had bright yellow fur, two small horns on top of their heads and an extra eye in the middle of their forehead. Their third eyes gave them the ability to perceive magic in some strange, hard to understand way, which made them quite interested in magic items. Of course, being only as smart as regular animals and somewhat aggressive, their interest tended to be unhealthy for the magic items in question and the humans that owned them. Zach and Zorian had captured several groups of these beasts earlier to set loose as a distraction. They were particularly good for this because the construction team had already had a number of smaller clashes with the local triclops communities, and thus having a bunch of them making trouble in the base wasn’t immediately suspicious. They had tried this already in the three previous restarts to test the waters, and they knew that the guards would first move to contain the situation before wondering if someone had sent this unusually large group of them here intentionally.

By then, of course, it would be too late.

After the golden triclopses were set loose upon the unsuspecting base, Zach and Zorian remained in their current spot for a while, waiting. It would take a while before the creatures were discovered, the severity of the problem became obvious, and before the majority of the base’s guards were mobilized to deal with them. Zorian monitored the situation through his simulacrums, whose senses he could tap into with ease. His studies of the cranium rat swarms and the god-touched hydra living in the portable palace orb had done much to improve his ability to coordinate with his simulacrums. They weren’t quite a single mind yet, but he probably didn’t want that to begin with.

Zach also had simulacrums present in the base. He had only managed to get them working recently, so they tended to have far more quirks and differences from the original than Zorian’s own did. However, they needed those simulacrums if they wanted to steal the ship and it was pretty unlikely any of them would go insane and try to kill them, so whatever.

"There," Zorian eventually said. "Everyone who was going to get pulled to deal with the monkeys is gone. It’s now or never."

"Finally," Zach said.

He didn’t say anything else, instead opting to jump down from the platform. Zorian followed after him with a sigh, giving the simulacrums the signal to drop whatever they were doing and converge on the ship. Even Zach’s simulacrums, since his fellow time traveler seemed to have forgotten about his copies in his hurry to get to the action. Or maybe he just expected Zorian to take care of that for him – it was actually easier for Zorian to coordinate Zach’s simulacrums than it was for Zach himself, due to his lack of easy telepathy. Though, since Zach and his simulacrums were largely identical in mind, it should be quite possible for him to use telepathy to communicate with his copies with ease, even if he wasn’t a natural mind mage like Zorian. He made a mental note to talk to Zach about that later…

Zach, Zorian and their simulacrums surged forward, pushing past the shocked technicians and civilian staff and disabling any armed resistance they encountered. Zach and his simulacrums broke down the scaffolding and the anchor beams that were holding the airship locked down while Zorian and his simulacrums went about installing the missing airship components and ejecting anyone that remained inside the ship.