Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"This should be enough, no?" Zach suddenly said. He hopped onto a nearby rocky outcropping and quickly scanned their surroundings. "I think we’re far enough into their territory. Any further and they might attack us on principle. Though really, I still think we’re going about this the wrong way. Sulrothum are famed for their savagery, no? I bet smacking them around a bit until they’re ready to talk would produce better results than just approaching them peacefully. Show them we’re serious, you know?"

"You might yet get your wish," Zorian said, performing a brief sweep of the area with his mind sense, soul perception and his plain two eyes. There was some sort of snake hiding beneath a nearby patch of thorny bushes, but it was absolutely terrified of them and had no intention of attacking them, so Zorian ignored it. "If the wasps attack us immediately or refuse to even entertain our offer, we’ll go with your plan."

"Ha. Great," Zach grinned, before retrieving a water bottle from his backpack and emptying it on top of his head. He sighed in relief. "Ahh, I needed that…"

After some thought, Zorian decided to follow his example and did the same.

It did make him feel a lot better, he had to admit.

A minute or so of comfortable silence ensued.

"Shall we?" Zorian eventually asked.

"Yes," Zach nodded. "Fire away."

Zorian performed one of the many spells that produced a signal flare in some fashion – in this case, a brilliant red star that released a high-pitched scream as it flew through the air – and fired it straight into the sky above him, announcing their presence to everyone for miles around.

They didn’t have to wait long. Not even fifteen minutes after Zorian had fired the flare, a trio of black dots appeared on the horizon. Their features were kind of hard to discern because they were approaching them from a direction that let the sun illuminate their backs, but Zorian was pretty sure he was looking at an incoming sulrothum patrol.

Soon, this suspicion was proven correct.

They were louder than Zorian thought they would be. The drone of their wings, beating several times a second to keep their large bodies aloft, was audible from a considerable distance. It kind of made Zorian wonder why they even bothered to try and mask their approach when anyone who wasn’t deaf could hear them coming. Regardless, as the sulrothum patrol got closer, Zach and Zorian shifted their posture in preparation for a possible attack. They didn’t think the sulrothum would just attack them with no provocation – if nothing else, they’d have brought more tribe members if they were going to be hostile right off the bat – but it was best to be prepared for everything.

Their landing was anything but graceful. Instead of gradually slowing down, the sulrothum dropped to the ground with reckless speed, impacting the gravel-covered earth in front of Zach and Zorian with considerable force and kicking up dust and loose stones in every direction. The shockwave even reached the place where Zach and Zorian were standing, though the weather shields they had protecting them simply deflected these stray irritants to the side with no action required on their part.

Well. The meeting had barely even begun and already Zorian was starting to dislike the damn wasps.

In any case, with the sulrothum right in front of them, Zorian could finally take a good look at one. He had seen the descriptions and illustrations of them in the books, naturally, but that sort of thing really couldn’t compare to seeing something in person. They were big – smaller than the three meter long giants that the books described, but not that much smaller – but also very spindly and fragile-looking. That impression was misleading, he knew – sulrothum were said to be strong enough to tear a man limb from limb with their bare hands and tough as coffin nails. Black, glossy chitin covered their wasp-like forms, and their faces were very much insect-like – alien and inscrutable. Their eyes, as black as their bodies and multifaceted like those of most insects, gave away nothing of their inner thoughts. They had a pair of short antennae on top of their heads, though, and these twitched madly in their general direction, revealing their agitation. Zorian had trouble interpreting their thoughts and emotions, alien as they were to his sensibilities, but he could tell that the trio was feeling twitchy and paranoid, ready to either attack them or flee at the slightest sign of aggression.

All three of them carried spears. They were appropriately sized for a creature of sulrothum size and strength, which meant they were pretty gigantic by human standards. The size and weight alone made those spears a significant danger, even though they looked somewhat crudely made. In addition to these close-quarters weapons, each sulrothum also carried a handful of smaller spears strapped to their backs. These were the notorious heavy javelins that sulrothum used as their ranged attack method. Generally, every sulrothum raid opened with them hurling a storm of these javelins at their targets before closing in to clash with their foes face-to-face. Sulrothum bodies were strong and durable, and they did not fear close-quarters combat… but even so, they did not balk at softening up their targets a little before closing in.

Somehow, the spears and javelins made the sulrothum trio far more threatening than they should appear. Objectively speaking, the three devil wasps in front of them did not pose a significant threat to Zach and Zorian, but seeing them clutching those spears in their hands was a stark reminder that they were dealing with creatures that were not just sapient, but tool-users as well. As a rule, sapient monsters did not employ tools much – other than lizardmen and a few other species, most of them basically lived like animals. Their innate abilities were potent enough that technology largely seemed pointless to them. Why use a spear when your claws are sharper? Why build a house when the cold and the rain hardly hurt you? Sulrothum, though, went to the trouble of creating tools and homes that made use of their natural advantages and made them more potent than they would otherwise be. They shouldn’t take them too lightly.

"Hello," Zorian greeted with as much friendliness as he could manage, when standing in front of a trio of giant, sapient, aggressive wasps. "Do you understand me?"

He really hoped they did. Sulrothum tribes usually made sure they had at least a couple of members that could understand the local human language, but this tribe lived quite a distance away from any major human power so it was possible they felt no need to bother. If they were ignorant of any human tongue, or only understood a dialect that Zorian himself did not speak, they were in trouble. Telepathic communication between entities that did not speak a common language was a crude and often unpleasant thing, doubly so if the people involved were as different in their perception of the world as humans and sulrothum were.

The three sulrothum erupted into a storm of chattering, punctuated by an occasional buzz of their wings and mad flailing of their antennae. However, they did not bother to face each other to do so, their attention on Zach and Zorian never wavering and their spears pointed firmly in their direction. Finally, the sulrothum on the left stepped forth towards them before twirling his spear theatrically and stabbing into the ground. He thrust all four of his hands towards them, palms open, in a gesture that was probably supposed to prove that he really was unarmed.

Then he made a series of hand gestures before leaning back and expectantly waiting for a response.

Zorian frowned. Was this how the sulrothum usually communicated with humans? It would make sense, he supposed. Most mages weren’t as proficient in mind magic as Zorian, and Ikosian spellcasting language already employed a lot of hand gestures so this method of communication wouldn’t be totally alien for a lot of people. Plus, sulrothum hands were remarkably similar to human ones, despite being giant wasps.