Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"Probably," Zach said. "I hope this becomes a thing in the future. This would go so much smoother if the surrounding tribes started coming to us instead of the other way around."

As they grew closer to Princess and the humans accompanying her, the sulrothum group eventually slowed down and landed in the area in front of them. The sulrothum chose a spot that was a fair distance away from their own, trying to make their entrance seem less threatening, but in the end they did effectively block their path and Princess instantly became outraged at the temerity of these newcomers. If Zach hadn’t hurriedly calmed her down, she would have already been charging at them, heads roaring a battle cry.

In the end the two groups silently agreed to meet in the middle and negotiate. Zach, Zorian and Ibak ordered Princess to stay in the back and loom over the meeting threateningly, while the apparent sulrothum leader took two bodyguards with him and ordered the rest to similarly stay in the back and look intimidating.

Zorian was kind of biased, but he felt that Princess decidedly won the aggressive posturing competition.

For the next ten minutes, Ibak and the sulrothum leader exchanged words while Zorian took the chance to study the group that sought them out. They were pretty impressive by sulrothum standards, he realized. They were all armed with iron spears and decorated with plenty of war paint, trinkets and various magical charms . The only person that wasn’t armed was their leader, who carried a plethora of metal rings and chains but no weapons. He also had a particularly large number of charm bundles hanging off of him, some of which actually looked like they might be doing something. Zorian immediately pegged him as a priest.

After a while the talking died down and Ibak turned to them awkwardly. Zorian could immediately tell that he didn’t have good news for them, though the sulrothum themselves remained non-aggressive. Curious.

"What is it?" Zach prompted.

"This group here comes from the Ziggurat of the Sun," Ibak said slowly.

Oh.

He did think those spears were kind of familiar. However, weapons like that were hardly unique to the ziggurat tribe, so he thought nothing of it.

"They know we want to attack them, huh?" Zach mused out loud.

It wasn’t that unexpected, Zorian supposed. It wasn’t like they were being low-key in their alliance building. Quite the opposite, really. With that in mind, it was probably inevitable that the ziggurat tribe would detect their plans long before the actual attack was executed. Since their goal was to lure the high priest out of the ziggurat and not to catch the sulrothum by surprise, this wasn’t something they cared much about.

Still, they hadn’t expected the ziggurat tribe to seek them out for a friendly chat. Try to ambush them, maybe, but not this.

"Yes," Ibak confirmed. "They want to know… what it would take for you to call your attack off."

"What, no threats?" Zach asked curiously.

"No," said Ibak, shaking his head. "Just questions about your motives. Not that I know much about that myself, of course."

Zach ignored the accusatory tone in Ibak’s last sentence. While he probably wouldn’t betray them to the sulrothum, it wouldn’t make them look any less crazy or mysterious if they told him they were doing all this for a magic ring.

"How do they know we don’t want to simply take away their ziggurat?" Zach asked. "Ask them that."

"That’s… are you trying to start a fight with them?" Ibak asked incredulously.

"I want to see how they react," Zach said. "Just do it."

Ibak muttered something that sounded like a curse in his native language and then started conversing with the sulrothum priest again. Interestingly, the sulrothum did not visibly react to the question at all. It wasn’t long before Ibak turned to them again.

"They say three of us are not enough for that," Ibak said. "That you would have brought an army with you if you wanted to occupy something." The sulrothum priest made another series of hand gestures. "They think you want something smaller. Something portable . They acknowledge your strength but wonder if a trade wouldn’t be preferable to bloodshed."

"What we want they would never trade away," Zorian said, shaking his head.

Should they tell them they were after the ring? No, that might make it harder to lure the high priest out of the ziggurat later… but maybe he would actually agree to hand it to them if he thought it would ward off a catastrophic attack on his tribe? The ring was important, but it wasn’t like they were asking him to hand over the sandworm control dagger or something.

"Tell them this is not something they are qualified to negotiate about," Zach suddenly said. "We want to talk to their high priest."

Zorian raised his eyebrow at Zach. Did he really think it would be that easy?

A furious exchange of hand gestures occurred between Ibak and the sulrothum priest, after which Ibak turned to them again.

"They say they are also not qualified to bring strangers before their elders," Ibak said. "They are here merely to find out what you’re after and if the conflict can be averted. After that, they will report back to their tribe and receive further orders. They say meeting the leaders of the tribe may be possible, but you have to give them something to bring back if you wish for that to happen."

Zach and Zorian looked at each other briefly. A quiet exchange of telepathic communication occurred between them and they quickly came to an agreement.

"I guess that makes sense," Zach admitted out loud.

Zorian reached into his pocket and retrieved a metal watch from it. Using a quick alteration spell, he melted the portion of the casing and shaped it into a replica of the imperial ring before handing it over to Ibak.

"Tell them to hand this over to the high priest as our response," Zorian said.

"He’ll understand," Zach added.

Ibak raised his eyebrow at them but did as he was told. The sulrothum priest hesitantly accepted the ring, turning it in his chitinous hands. He seemed rather dubious about the explanation he was given, staring at both Zach and Zorian with his large faceted eyes in a searching manner, antennae nervously twitching in all directions.

After a while, he carefully placed the replica ring in one of the many leather pouches hanging off his body and nodded to them in a very human manner. He then waved towards his bodyguards, signaling they were done here. Apparently he realized this was all he would be getting out of them. A few minutes later the entire sulrothum group lifted into the air again and rapidly flew away in the same direction they came from.

The humans silently watched their retreat for a while, before Ibak decided to speak up.

"You brats are too damn mysterious about everything," he groused. "I don’t even know why I agreed to this."

"You’re getting paid handsomely for this," Zach pointed out.

"Yet I’m still starting to regret this," Ibak said. He looked towards the sulrothum settlement in the distance. "Incidentally, there is another group of sulrothum incoming. This time for the settlement we were going to visit before we got interrupted by this one."

Zorian looked towards the settlement and noticed that Ibak was correct. The local sulrothum did not dare interrupt the ziggurat tribe emissaries while they were talking to Zorian and others, but now that they were gone, they seemed to be hurriedly assembling their own emissary group to intercept them.

"Are we still going to talk to them about allying against the ziggurat tribe?" Ibak asked.

"I don’t see why not," Zach said, shrugging. "There is no guarantee that the high priest will accept our message in good grace. If we thought it would be that simple to get what we want, we wouldn’t have started down this path to begin with. We’ll keep gathering forces, putting pressure on him while he considers what to do."