Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Finally, after everyone in the room had run dry of mana, the fuzzy ectoplasmic form in the center of the summoning circle condensed itself into glowing white ball and then erupted into an explosion of fire.

A brief moment of panic surged in Zorian’s heart when he realized there was a wall of flames coming at them and that he was entirely out of mana and practically defenseless. Thankfully, the explosion of flames suddenly reversed itself before it reached them and collapsed into a writing ball of fiery ectoplasm before suddenly sprouting black branches and metallic surfaces.

Eventually the angel’s form stabilized and Zorian finally got his first look at an angel.

It wasn’t human-looking in the slightest. Most old, powerful spirits weren’t, but somehow Zorian didn’t expect an angel to look so… strange.

The angel was shaped like a black, floating, cross-shaped tree with four sets of branches and no roots. Or maybe it would be more accurate to imagine four trees that had their lower half cut off and were then glued together through their trunk into a cross-shaped pattern. The branches were leafless, and burning orange eyes grew on them instead. The eyes were animated, constantly moving and taking in everything around the angel. Translucent orange flames enveloped the branches, coiling around them like a multitude of snakes and releasing crackling sounds reminiscent of real branches burning in flames.

Floating behind the tree of eyes was a gently spinning ring of silvery metal. The ring was densely covered in tiny golden characters that Zorian didn’t recognize, and which seemed entirely alien to his eyes, unlike anything he had ever seen. Behind it, several ghostly ribbons of multicolored light extended in all directions from the angel, straining Zorian’s eyes and blurring the angel’s form. If one squinted and tilted their head the right way, they kind of looked like six pairs of wings.

Zorian felt some of the eyes swivel in his direction, and he suddenly felt naked and exposed. It was as if the angel’s eyes has seen right through him and peered straight into the depths of his soul, observing, analyzing, judging…

Zorian instinctively took a step back from the angel, and then suddenly realized the entire hall was unnaturally quiet and still.

Only he, Zach and the angel remained in the hall. Everyone else was just… gone.

Zorian was getting uncomfortable flashbacks to his first meeting with Panaxeth.

" Do not be afraid,"the angel said. Its voice was booming, and resonated painfully in Zorian’s ears and chest. "I have come to help."

"What… where is everyone?" Zach asked in confusion.

" They should not hear this,"the angel responded.

"So you just… shunted us off to some private space?" Zach frowned. "Also, can’t you talk a little more quietly?"

" My time here is limited,"the angel cautioned. It made no attempt to lower its voice for them. It was still uncomfortably loud and resonant, and Zorian thought he could faintly hear additional voices repeating its words whenever it spoke. "You must not waste time."

Zorian supposed the angel had a point there. Even though it had taken all their mana, a spirit of this level probably couldn’t stay manifested on the material plan for very long. They had to make the most of it.

"Did Zach enter into a contract with you?" Zorian asked.

" Yes,"the angel immediately confirmed.

Zorian waited for a second, but the angel seemed disinclined to clarify more than that.

Ugh.

"My enemies made me completely forget about that," Zach said with a frown.

" They did not,"the angel countered.

Zach made a strange face.

"Yes they did," he said, laughing in a frustrated manner. "Why would I lie about it to you of all people?"

" They did not make you forget because you never even knew you had made a contract with us,"the angel said. "If they do know that you have made a contract with us, it is because they have guessed correctly."

"Zach… never knew he’d made a contract with you?" Zorian asked incredulously. "How would that work?"

" We went through a great deal of effort to mask our involvement,"the angel said. "Our current interference… is already overstepping certain boundaries that we would rather not cross. It would have been best for everyone if nobody had realized our involvement."

"But how would I make a contract with you without realizing it?" Zach insisted. "That doesn’t make any sense!"

" We contacted you through a dream,"the angel told him. "You had no idea who was making the offer when you accepted the contract."

Zach’s face went through several different expressions as he processed that.

Zorian just buried his face into his palms and took a deep breath.

Zach…

"That’s… that’s slander!" Zach protested. "I’d never do something stupid like that! Even I know it’s dumb as hell to accept spiritual contracts from mysterious people that contact you in your dreams!"

" You being foolish enough to take the offer was one of the reasons we chose you as our champion,"the angel told him bluntly.

"Well, uh…" Zach fumbled. "You know what? Forget it. Even if what you say it’s true, I still ended up mind wiped of critical information inside the time loop. I didn’t even know how to return to the real world! You included so many thing in this… contract I made with you, so why didn’t you include some basic information like that in there as well?"

" We did,"the angel responded. "You simply never satisfied the conditions necessary to access the information."

What?

"What?" demanded Zach. "What do you mean by that?"

" You had a goal, did you not?"the angel challenged. "You had to stop the invasion without informing anyone about the time loop. Had you ever succeeded at that, the contract would have given you information about the time loop and how to leave it."

"You never explained to him how the time loop worked to begin with," Zorian realized. "Giving him the exit method right from the start would mean he could leave at any point he wished, even before he was capable of stopping Panaxeth’s release the way you wanted him to."

" The hearts of men are weak and fall easily to temptation,"the angel confirmed. "If he could not handle the relentless weathering of time and become the savior we need, it would have been better for him to never emerge from the Sovereign Gate at all."

"You…" Zach began.

" You chose this,"the angel reminded him, completely unrepentant. "And with that in mind, I would like an explanation. What happened in there?"

"You don’t know?" Zorian asked curiously.

" Would I be asking if I did?"the angel asked rhetorically. "The inner workings of the Sovereign Gate are opaque to us. Much like the Black Rooms you are familiar with, the Sovereign Gate is completely isolated from the rest of the world once activated. We have inferred some things, but we would like an unambiguous answer."

Zach and Zorian gave the angel a quick summary of what had occurred inside the time loop, taking pains to emphasize Panaxeth’s interference with the normal operation of the time loop and how Red Robe’s and Silverlake’s presence in the real world made the entire task of stopping the invasion very difficult. Finally, they explained Zorian’s situation and how his presence made the idea of eliminating all knowledge of the time loop outside of Zach basically impossible.