Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"Ah," nodded Zorian. The thought of seeing if the tribe had any local enemies and allying with them had honestly didn’t even occur to him. A silly mistake, in retrospect.

Zach and Zorian discussed the merits of the idea for a while, before Zorian noticed that Storm Dream was shifting in place uncomfortably and looked like she wanted to say something more.

"What?" he asked her.

"It’s… probably just a stupid coincidence, but the sulrothum high priest has the same kind of knife you do," she said.

"My knife?" Zorian asked incredulously. Since when did he even carry a kni– "Oh! Oh. You mean this?"

He tapped the knife hanging from his backpack. It was the divine artifact they had recovered from the palace orb – the one they had no idea what it did. Zorian sometimes liked to inspect it, staring at it while futilely hoping he would finally succeed in unlocking its mysteries.

"Yes, like that one," Storm Dream said. "I know you humans churn out thousands of identical objects as a matter of course, but I thought it was strange that a sulrothum high priest on another continent carries the same kind of knife like you do. Especially since their one is of immense religious importance to them and has an impressive magical ability."

"Oh? Do tell," Zach prompted. "What magical ability?"

"The high priest can use it to command a sand worm of immense size hidden beneath the sands of this place," Storm Dream said. "It could be just more superstitious nonsense, I guess, but I don’t think so. Maybe the sulrothum are overstating the worm’s real size, but they seem pretty certain of its ability to repel all intruders, so it should be pretty impressive. If your knife is the same, then… maybe you can control it too?"

Zach and Zorian were silent for a moment.

"I knew it was stupid," Storm Dream said. "Just… forget I said anything."

Zorian thought about the gigantic flying sand worm they had faced in their last assault on this place. The creature was an immense threat, only kept manageable by Zach’s incredible combat prowess and their extensive preparations before the battle. And the way its mind had completely stopped Zorian’s mental abilities like a brick wall, unlike any other mental defense he had ever seen…

"Are you thinking what I’m thinking?" Zach asked him quietly.

"I doubt our dagger can really control the sulrothum sand worm," Zorian said. "But it’s too bad that we already killed the giant hydra guarding the palace orb, I’ll say that much."

It was just a suspicion, but Zorian felt it was likely that each knife was keyed in to a different creature. Assuming that the strange flying sand worm was the divinely-enhanced guardian of the imperial ring, it made sense that a knife that the sulrothum probably found near the ring was keyed to it. By the same logic, the knife Zorian currently held in his hand was probably meant to control the hydra instead, since it normally seemed live in and guard the orb.

"Next time, then," said Zach dreamily. "I like the idea of having my own pet hydra, you know? We could pit it against the stupid sand worm while we tackle the sulrothum ourselves. Or we could throw him at Quatach-Ichl, just to see the look on that stupid bag of bones when a massive hydra starts screaming and charging at him… or just take it on a walk through Cyoria like some kind of oversized dog and just soak in the people’s reactions… lots of potential there…"

Zorian looked at the dagger in his hand and then grasped it tightly.

Next time, indeed…

As the end of the restart began to approach, Zach and Zorian turned their attention to something they had been gradually building up to throughout the entire restart – raiding the royal vaults for the dagger again. They sought out Quatach-Ichl for help again, too – partially because they still hadn’t grasped the details on the inner wards, so his help in getting inside was still critical, and partially because they still had designs on his crown.

Zorian had to admit he was more morally conflicted about betraying Quatach-Ichl this time around. After all, the ancient lich had been nothing but helpful throughout the entire restart. It felt wrong, dishonorable , to just stab him in the back like this in the end…

Then again, didn’t Quatach-Ichl indicate during that initial negotiation they had with him that he would return to interrogate them after his little invasion business was over? Perhaps he was just looking for excuses to make himself better, but seen in that light this attack could easily be viewed as pre-emptive defense on their part. Plus, the lich clearly intended to invade Cyoria as normal – a fact he sometimes cryptically alluded to during his lessons, but one which he never actually made clear to them. In a very real way, that was betrayal as well.

He supposed in the end it didn’t matter. Quatach-Ichl once again agreed to help them steal the dagger from the Eldemar’s royal vaults. They once again achieved their goal, successfully fought their way out of the capital city and then kept running from the Eldemar military until Quatach-Ichl figured out the nature of the tracking device that was used to track them. They again opened a dimensional gate to Xlotic and stepped through it…

The moment Quatach-Ichl followed after then they shut off the gate and attacked him with no warning.

There was no talking. They attacked silently and without hesitation, and Quatach-Ichl took their ambush entirely in stride. As an endless barrage of incinerating rays, impossibly sharp dimensional blades and disintegration blasts suddenly rained down on him, he quietly blocked, dodged, teleported and retaliated in return. He did not rage at their betrayal or try to talk to them to find out their reasons. Perhaps he had been expecting it. Maybe he was just that used to sudden ambushes. Whatever the case, he silently accepted their challenge and met their attack head on.

The desert quaked. Sand was melted and turned to glass over and over. Several hidden wards and traps that Zach and Zorian prepared in the area in advance activated, only to be shattered and neutralized by Quatach-Ichl. The ancient lich summoned a bunch of skeletal undead giants from some internal storage space on his person and Zorian responded by throwing his combat golems at them to keep them busy. Zach managed to shear off Quatach-Ichl’s leg with one of his attacks, but the lich simply reattached it in the next moment. Three of Zorian’s simulacrums sacrificed themselves to keep him alive when facing Quatach-Ichl’s counterattacks, their inhumanly tough metallic bodies unable to withstand the ancient lich’s attacks.

It was then, right in the middle of the heated battle, that several hidden devices revealed themselves in the distance, blanketing the whole area with small, fast-moving silver discs.

Most of the silver discs were completely mundane, meant purely to mask the real threats. Some of them were infused with specialized magic meant to stress and overload typical force shields that protected mages against physical projectiles.

And finally, a small number were special. They were infused with the same sort of soul severing magic that was once used by Kael to make the coin that ended up banishing Quatach-Ichl back to his phylactery.

In order to make sure Quatach-Ichl couldn’t simply push away all the discs with a simple wave of his hand, Zach and Zorian immediately intensified their attacks. Despite that, Quatach-Ichl took the little silver projectiles as a deadly threat, never letting a single one touch him, raising the ground as walls and pillars to keep them at bay when the shield disruptors started to eat away at his magical shields.

But the silver discs did their job of occupying his attention anyway. So busy was he with avoiding them, dealing with Zach and Zorian’s normal attacks and trying to counterattacks that he overlooked a far larger silver disc hidden in the sands nearby. This disc was also imbued with soul severing magic, and with a much more potent form of it, too.