Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"No, not that!" Zorian snapped. "You’re seriously naming a hydra Princess ?"

"Why not?" Zach challenged. "What’s wrong with that name?"

The newly named Princess focused three of her heads on him, as if daring him to say anything.

Stupid reptile. It didn’t even understand what they were talking about but felt the need to side with Zach anyway…

"It’s a stupid name," Zorian told him bluntly.

"It’s a great name," Zach disagreed. "A royal name for a very royal girl. She’s a divinely empowered guardian of an imperial item… that’s pretty high-ranked if you ask me. Plus, you know how royals like to refer to themselves in plural? We this and we that… well, Princess here can talk about herself in plural and be completely factual! So there. It’s actually very clever and you were just too judgmental to figure it out."

"Ugh," Zorian grunted. "If that’s your logic, why not call her Queen instead?"

"Because Princess is a more ironic name for a giant hydra," Zach admitted.

Zorian spent the next fifteen minutes trying to argue the issue before giving up. It took another hour after that to coax Princess back into the imperial orb for transport – she wanted to follow around after Zach like a puppy, and was confused why he wanted to abandon her in the orb so soon after their bonding.

Zorian had to say, watching Zach awkwardly try to convince a clingy hydra that he would be back and that she should stay put was kind of amusing.

Perhaps it was a good thing that Zach ended up winning that bet after all.

After recovering the imperial orb and tentatively subduing the hydra guarding it, Zach and Zorian turned their attention towards the sulrothum at the Ziggurat of the Sun and the imperial ring in their possession. They already knew they could steal their ring if they launched a big enough attack on them, but that took a great deal of time and effort. Well, the presence of Princess on the battlefield would probably make an all-out assault a little easier this time around, but it would still be a major undertaking that would consume a lot of their time and resources that would be better spent elsewhere.

"It’s a pity Princess is too big to fit in the ziggurat corridors," lamented Zach. "Otherwise we could just climb on top of her and charge in, trampling and brushing aside any sulrothum that got in our way."

"If our attack was that unstoppable, the sulrothum would probably just pick up whatever they can and flee," pointed out Zorian. "They’d probably flee underground, and it would be an utter pain to track them down then. Not to mention they have a massive sand worm on their side. We don’t want to get in an underground battle with them, I think, even with Princess on our side."

"Hmph," Zach mumbled unhappily. "How about we just infiltrate the ziggurat through this underground connection, then? We might be able to avoid a massive battle that way."

"They have their pet sand worm constantly guarding that," Zorian pointed out, shaking his head sadly. "I bet we’re noticed instantly through whatever exotic senses that thing has… and then it collapses the whole tunnel on top of us before we can do anything. Considering the layout of their Dungeon entrance, I think it was made by the worm in the first place, so they probably have no qualms about destroying it. They can always command the sand worm to create another one later."

Zach was silent for a while.

"How about… just soul-killing the entire colony?" Zach finally asked. "I mean, it makes me a little uncomfortable to use tactics like that, but this is pretty much what the damn knife was made for."

"It’s definitely an option," Zorian said after a short pause. "However, we probably wouldn’t be able to get all sulrothum with this and we don’t know how many of them know about the ring and its importance. If we kill most of the colony but one of the survivors takes the ring and runs, things could get really bad. Right now we know where the ring is. If a shattered group of sulrothum survivors takes the ring and spends a day or two running around in the desert or, gods forbid, the depths of the Dungeon…"

"Yeah, you’re right," Zach said. "It’s too risky. Even if we get them all, there are neighboring sulrothum tribes and other denizens of the desert to consider. If they discover the state of the ziggurat and loot the ring before we reach it, we would still have a problem on our hands."

"Speaking of the neighboring sulrothum tribes, do we still go forward with the idea of arranging an alliance with them?" Zorian asked. "The idea is nice, I admit, but it may very well take more time and effort to do it that way than to just send our own army at the ziggurat."

"Not if we use Princess!" Zach declared triumphantly.

"You want to use the damn hydra for everything these days," Zorian scoffed. "You’re like a little kid who just got himself a new toy and now wants to show it to everyone. How the hell will that thing help us convince the sulrothum faster?"

"There is no need to be jealous, Zorian," Zach chided. "You lost the bet fair and square. In any case, I think you greatly underestimate the impression of power we will project when we show up with a giant menacing hydra in tow. I bet those tribes will be tripping over themselves to stay on our good side after seeing that."

"Or they’ll be too scared to even talk to us," Zorian pointed out.

"Then we just smash them until they’re willing to listen," Zach shrugged.

"This is starting to sound a lot less like arranging an alliance and a lot more like us bullying the neighboring tribes into being our reluctant army," Zorian pointed out.

"Eh, I think of it more as an aggressive demonstration than bullying," Zach said dismissively. "We would have had to prove our strength for them to take us seriously, anyway. But really, so what if we end up cowing them into submission forcefully? We’re already attacking the ziggurat tribe without any provocation. We lost the moral high ground a long time ago, I think."

True.

"Alright," said Zorian. "Let’s try to make them willing allies if possible, though. I have another task I want to give them, and they probably won’t try very hard if our overwhelming force is all that keeps them in line."

"Oh? Something important?" Zach asked.

"Maybe," Zorian answered. "There is a magical creature called a tunneler toad, which lives deep within the Xlotic desert. They live in a series of hidden worlds left by some forgotten ancient civilization, called Ishmali Reservoirs by the ancient Ikosians, because they seem designed primarily as water reservoirs. They’re basically large caverns full of water, enclosed in their own pocket dimensions. The reservoirs are largely uninteresting, but the tunneler toads themselves have a curious ability to detect pocket dimensions and enter them with ease. In their natural habitat they use this to pass in and out of the Ishmali Reservoirs as they please, using them as a hidden nesting ground, but the ability is said to be usable on any pocket dimension they come across."

"Ah, I see, this is for that blood magic initiative you want to set up," Zach said. "Why do you need the sulrothum’s help for this, though? If the toads live only around these reservoir things, they should be easy to find. It’s not like the reservoirs can move, right?"

"They’re static but I’m afraid the records of where the reservoirs are located have all been lost in the Cataclysm, and no one had bothered to track them down again as far as I can tell," Zorian said, shaking his head. "With much of the interior now covered in desert and taken over by sulrothum tribes and worse, the reservoirs have become extremely isolated. Not to mention that most people are neither master dimensionalists nor tunneler toads, so they would be unable to track down and enter these hidden worlds even if they wanted to. Thus, if we want to find tunneler toads, we must find a desert native that has heard about strange toads that sometimes seemingly vanish into thin air, only to just as suddenly reappear later."