Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

He took a deep breath but resisted the urge to sigh. They had informed the whole group about their second encounter with Panaxeth and what it meant for Zorian. Strangely, the group took another bout of bad news in stride. In fact, the knowledge that Zorian now shared fates with them seemed to significantly improve the mood of the group. He was one of them now, and the fact that he didn’t panic and break down after finding out this was his last chance to live seemed to inspire them somewhat and calm their fears. They worked harder, grumbled less, and were less dubious about his motives and logic.

For a while, he thought that would be enough… that with some renewed enthusiasm and some clever workaround they would be able to make up for Silverlake’s absence and proceed as planned. However, Xvim and Alanic were right. This wasn’t going to work.

They needed a new plan.

"What are you suggesting?" Zorian asked them.

"First of all, we should tell Krantin and his team that we’re time travelers," Xvim said.

Zorian cocked his head to the side curiously. Not really what he was expecting to hear.

"Wouldn’t that be rather counterproductive?" Zorian asked. "Krantin and his team have been remarkably cooperative with us, all things considered. If they knew the truth, I imagine their enthusiasm for helping us could only plummet as a response."

"I said we should tell them we’re time travelers, not the full and total truth," Xvim said. "Truthfully, they already suspect this. The documents we are providing them with are too similar to their own existing work for that to escape their notice. They have been talking amongst themselves about our identity for a while now, and the most common theory is that we’re literally from the future. It isn’t that far from the truth, really."

"They actually hit upon such a crazy theory as the most likely one?" Zorian asked, surprised.

"They’re working in a time magic research facility," Xvim said. "Even though actual time travel is said to be impossible, the topic is likely to come up with some regularity among the staff. They are being paid to push the boundaries of time magic as much as they can, after all."

Zorian stayed quiet for a few seconds, mulling things over. He supposed the idea was workable, all things considered, and it might eliminate some of the inefficiencies they’d encountered when working with Krantin and his team. However…

"Although this would be useful, I’m not really sure it would do that much," Zorian said finally. "The facility staff is already working hard on the project of turning the imperial orb into a Black Room. Even with their limited information, they seem appreciative enough for the funding and opportunities we’ve given them. I doubt we could drive them to work harder with this."

"No, probably not," Xvim agreed, propping his elbows on the table and folding his fingers into a triangle shape in front of him. "This is merely an attempt to make them fine with the second step of the plan."

"Which is?" Zorian prompted, feeling just a little bit apprehensive all of a sudden.

"Kidnapping everyone skilled and possibly useful and forcing them to work for us," Xvim stated calmly, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.

Must resist the urge to sigh. Must resist the urge to sigh. Must resist…

Zorian rubbed his chin in a frustrated manner before focusing back on the two people in front of him. Alanic was still not saying anything. They were both staring at him and waiting for a response.

"And just how–" Zorian began.

"Through any means necessary," Xvim said, cutting him off. "Blackmail. Threats of death and bodily harm. Rampant use of mind magic."

"My mind magic is not that capable," Zorian said, frowning. "The kind of work we need from them has never been done before. They would need to work with us to invent entirely new spells and rituals."

"I know," Xvim said.

"I can’t force someone to perform creative work for me with mind magic," Zorian pointed out. "I don’t think anyone can. At best we’d get a bunch of dazed zombies."

"They don’t know that, though," Xvim said. "Mind magic is terrifying, even for mages, and few people are experienced enough to guess your limits. Ignoring that, what you can do is already terrifying enough for most people. If you demonstrated your memory manipulation abilities, most people would be very intimidated. Even I’m afraid of you sometimes, and I’m both familiar with your limitations and relatively certain you will not target me with your abilities. Finally, even if someone is not intimidated by your ability, you can always use your memory modification abilities as a limited retry button for convincing people. You’ve used your powers in that manner before, I am told."

"But only on enemies," stressed Zorian.

"And I’m very grateful you retain that sense of morality and restraint in regards to your powers," Xvim said patiently. "But we’re running out of time and desperate times call for desperate measures. Don’t think we’re just selfishly asking you to discard your ideals. This is a burden we’re all willing to take upon our shoulders."

Zorian gave him a surprised look.

"Somebody will need to keep this mass of resentful, forcibly recruited mages in line and focused on their duties instead of plotting our downfall," Xvim said. "That’s going to be our job. Your job is simply to gather the people we need and intimidate them into cooperating with us, however reluctantly."

Zorian stared at the man for a while, considering what he had been told. Xvim was essentially saying that all or most of the other temporary loopers already agreed that this was an acceptable course of action. That they were just going to… kidnap random people and force them into working for them. And here Zorian was thinking he was being too carefree about reaching for the darker, unethical methods to tackle their problems.

"Well," he said. "I see we’re turning into a proper villainous organization. All we need now is a mystical artifact that will allow us to remake the world in our image and we’re set to go."

Xvim’s lips twitched slightly.

"If you really think about it," he said, "a large group of people armed with knowledge of things to come and all the things we’ve gathered in the time loop would be more than enough to–"

"Please don’t," Zorian implored him. "Just… tell me once again how this is supposed to work."

"Alright," Xvim said, reaching into his bag and handing him a map with a bunch of locations marked on it. Colorful paper notes densely filled with text were pinned next to each of the indicated locations.

"Our main problem right now is that we don’t have enough time," Xvim continued after Zorian had a chance to glance at the map. "The only way we’re going to get that is by pushing our Black Room modification project to its utter limit. Therefore, we should drop virtually everything and focus on that. However, the biggest problem the project has is the lack of qualified mages to work on it. Most of us are not really qualified to help with it. However, this facility is not the only one of its kind. There are other facilities in other countries, and though they have not gotten as far as the one in Eldemar, their staff is no less qualified than Krantin and his researchers – they just suffer from a lack of funding and opportunities."

The places on the map marked with blue upturned triangles were locations of all known Black Room projects in Altazia, Zorian realized. He knew about these, of course. They had been making use of their facilities for quite some time now. Not just in the sense that they were using them to extend their time in the restarts, either. They had long ago raided these places for any information about time magic, as well as handed them collected research notes from other facilities to see if they would come up with something novel when presented with such information. Although these initiatives were moderately successful, they had stopped yielding results by now, and so they no longer bothered with them. They simply made use of the facilities in each restart and then left them alone.