Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Eventually, three days later, they were summoned by one of the local kings from a river city-state deeper in the continent’s interior. The emissary brought with him a very lifelike drawing of a Bakora Gate as proof that they were telling the truth, which was good enough for Zach and Zorian to immediately set out towards the place.

This was why, at the moment, the two of them were standing in a luxurious stone throne room of a lizardman king, curiously observing their surroundings while they waited for the king to actually arrive and talk to them. Lizardmen rulers seemed to be fond of mosaics made out of gems and colored stones, and this one was not an exception – the walls were dominated by some kind of epic battle scene between two lizardmen forces. One of the two sides, which Zorian presumed to represent the forces of the city they were currently in, was clearly dominating their opponents, boldly advancing forward, while the other was in the process of being pierced by spears, clubbed over the head by heavy clubs or down on their knees and begging for mercy. An absolutely giant lizardman floated in the sky above the scene, curiously observing the battle. Probably a representation of one of the lizardman gods…

Zorian’s idle musings were interrupted by the loud entrance of the lizardman king. A procession of musicians playing some kind of annoying flute-like instruments came first, playing ear-splitting whistles while a bunch of lizardmen children ran around and threw petals on the ground in front of the approaching king. The lizardman throne guards, which had been leaning on their spears and chatting amongst themselves in their incomprehensible lizardman tongue, quickly assumed a proper posture and pretended they had been alert and battle ready all this time. They also banged their spears against the floor a few times and let loose a keening wail that was probably some kind of salute.

As for Zach and Zorian, they just stared at the spectacle, not sure how to react. Perhaps because they had arrived so unexpectedly or because those rulers had not been so wealthy and powerful as this one, but this was not the way the other lizardmen kings had behaved in front of them.

"Uh, what’s the proper procedure for greeting a lizardman ruler again? Are we supposed to bow or shake hands or something?" Zach whispered to him uncertainly.

"Why are you asking me?" Zorian protested. "You’re nobility, not me. You should be the one who knows things like this."

"Please," Zach scoffed. "You’re the one who is constantly interacting with various talking monsters. This is totally your area of expertise!"

Zorian turned his attention to the approaching king. He was surprisingly short compared to the warriors scattered around his palace, though the massive gem-encrusted headdress and glittering golden jewelry hanging off of him immediately marked him as the ruler regardless. In one of his hands he carried a black staff with a large, glowing, amber stone affixed on top. Four particularly massive lizardman warriors flanked him on both sides, which made for a somewhat amusing contrast between them and their king. What was not so amusing was the look in their eyes and the emotions they were radiating. Unlike the normal palace guards, these four took their jobs very seriously and their yellow, slitted eyes followed them with a threatening intensity – if they made so much as a threatening movement, they were ready to shove a spear through their throat without warning.

Also accompanying the king was another lizardman with lots of jewelry and an elaborate headdress, although one less impressive and of slightly different type and color scheme. Zorian suspected that she (he was pretty sure it was a female lizardman) was the high priest of the city.

And though she wasn’t as overtly hostile as the king’s honor guard, she clearly did not like them. At all.

Zorian inwardly sighed. Of course nothing could ever be easy…

Zach and Zorian had already managed to claim the imperial ring from the Ziggurat of the Sun in the past. Since they now knew that it was held by the sulrothum high priest, getting it was slightly easier than it had previously been, when they had yet to even locate where it was. However, easier didn’t mean easy. The sulrothum high priest resided in the innermost, most heavily defended portion of the ziggurat. Getting to him still required a large-scale assault on the sulrothum settlement, which was… non-ideal.

Rather than organize another assault on the Ziggurat of the Sun in this restart, Zorian agreed to try something different this time around. After establishing a base near the ziggurat using Bakora Gates, they brought over a dozen or so aranean mercenaries and instructed them to spy on sulrothum guards and patrols. Although sulrothum minds were as alien to the aranea as they were to Zorian, the aranea were far more experienced with making sense of alien minds than he was. They did it all their lives, after all.

At the same time they began ambushing and killing sulrothum hunting parties and patrol groups leaving the ziggurat, in the hopes that doing this continually would eventually force the high priest to confront them directly or at least motivate to sulrothum to try and negotiate with them. After all, the colony would surely starve if they couldn’t send anyone outside without them disappearing, right?

Unfortunately, the sulrothum didn’t behave like they hoped they would. Rather than investigate the problem, they simply barricaded themselves inside and no longer tried to leave the ziggurat. It was baffling. Either the colony had sizeable stockpiles of preserved food and felt certain they could last for a while under siege or there was a Dungeon entrance somewhere below the ziggurat and they decided to brave the tunnels to feed themselves instead.

Either way, it was annoying. Thankfully, the aranea were somewhat successful in their information gathering.

"So," Zorian asked the aranea in front of him. "I don’t think the damn wasps are going to poke their heads out of their turtle shells any time soon. Do you have something useful to report?"

"I think so, yeah," Storm Dream, the aranea in question, answering him through a voice spell so Zach could hear her too. "First of all, the ring you’re after? It’s not an accident that the high priest has it on him. He knows what it does and is actively using it."

Oh.

"Now that I think about it, that does make sense," Zorian mused. "I could tell the last time we met that he’s a soul mage. That was a bit unusual, since sulrothum aren’t exactly known for their magic abilities, but I thought nothing of it at the time. Since he’s wearing a ring that grants soul sight, though, I guess it’s to be expected he became interested in that type of magic. We’re fortunate he didn’t populate the ziggurat with undead guards or something."

"Probably wouldn’t happen, even if he knew how to do that," Storm Dream said. "They’re very religious and they seem to attach great importance to being cremated upon death. Some nonsense about returning to the sun mother and whatnot."

"Well, they should be happy about all those patrols we fireballed to death recently, then," Zach said cheekily. "They got a proper burial as they died."

"Yes. Well," Storm Dream said after a second of awkward silence. "If you want to lure the high priest out of the ziggurat, I have only two ideas. One is to wait for him to come outside on his own to perform one of his periodic land blessings and reading of the signs . The next such occasion should be about two months from now and–"

"Too long," Zach immediately said, shaking his head.

"I don’t understand why you’re in such a hurry about this… the ring has been in the high priest’s hands for years now. It’s not going anywhere," Storm Dream said, with no small amount of exasperation. "But fine. The other option is to try and ally yourself with the nearby sulrothum tribe that this particular bunch has a rivalry with. I’m not entirely sure, but I think he would come out of the ziggurat and support his warriors if he thought it was a rival tribe attacking them instead of scary human mages with their unfair, mysterious magic and thunder sticks."