Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

He was quiet for a few seconds, lost in thought, before shaking his head and focusing on Spear of Resolve again. She was quietly studying him with her large, pitch black eyes, still standing on the stack of wooden boards that the staff of the restaurant placed on her chair.

The nearby waitress asked her if she wanted something to drink, undaunted by the fact she was talking to a giant spider, but the matriarch politely refused her.

"Anyway," Zorian suddenly said, sweeping his hand around them. "What do you think about all of this?"

"What, the city and the restaurant?" Spear of Resolve asked. Zorian nodded. "It’s nice. Novel."

"Nothing jumps out of you?" he asked with interest.

"You mean, other than the fact people around us are ridiculously accepting of me?" the matriarch asked rhetorically. "Well, there are a few minor details here and there. The vibrations I’m sensing through my feet do not quite match up with what I’m used to, and it’s sometimes obvious that the conversations in the background are pure gibberish if you listen to them closely, but otherwise it all looks very convincing."

"Recreating exotic senses like your tremor sense is a pain in the ass," Zorian admitted. "I did my best, but I’m not surprised I didn’t quite succeed."

"I’m honestly shocked that you managed to make all this so convincing to my aranean senses," the matriarch said. "It’s not just a matter of mind magic skill – you must have a very firm grasp of our perspective of seeing the world to succeed at this. I’m guessing you read many, many aranean minds inside the time loop."

"I actually shapeshifted into an aranea a bunch of times, just to really see what it was like," Zorian said.

"Ah. Maybe I should try that and be a human for a day," Spear of Resolve mused. "I’m betting it would be an unforgettable experience. Anyway, why don’t we stop here for today?"

"Fine," Zorian agreed. "Truthfully, I’m starting to get a little mentally tired from maintaining this for so long."

Without warning, the world around them blurred and melted, like it was falling apart at the seams. In only a few moments, the two of them found themselves sitting on the cold stony floor of a small cavern in Cyoria’s underground.

The city and the people in it were gone, like they never existed.

Indeed, that was what happened. Everything they saw had literally happened all in their heads. It was nothing but a mental illusion that Zorian had summoned around them.

"It’s still going to need some work if you really want to use it in the way you hope to," Spear of Resolve remarked.

"I know," Zorian agreed. "I’m going to need your help with this."

"That won’t be a problem," the matriarch said. "Maybe I’m not powerful enough to directly confront our enemies, but this is exactly my sort of problem. I assure you, I am very good at mind magic."

They talked for a few more minutes before Zorian decided it was time to go home for the day. It had been a long day and he had to sleep on things before he could consider how to go forward.

"One moment, please," the matriarch said before he could leave. "I understand the logic regarding my vulnerability to enemy action and I agree it is wisest for me to stay in the safety of our settlement for now… but I am a little unsatisfied with a current state of communication. No offense, but I’m not entirely comfortable being totally reliant on you for all contact between us."

"So…?" Zorian asked curiously.

"So I decided to assign you a liaison," she said.

"A liaison?" Zorian repeated. "I… guess that’s fine, yes."

"Great. I’ll go call her right now. I’m sure you’ll get along perfectly," Spear of Resolve said with a trace of humor in her voice.

Why…?

Before he could say anything, a smallish aranea excitedly skittered into the room, jumped right next to him and then excitedly started circling around him, thoroughly checking him out.

[Hi, hi!] A cheerful, bubbly voice suddenly sounded in his mind. [I’m Enthusiastic Seeker of Novelty, but you can just call be Novelty! Do you want to be my friend?]

After the two groups of time travelers agreed to the shaky truce, the daily fighting stopped and the situation in Cyoria stabilized. Zach and Zorian no longer sent their simulacrums to raid invader bases and assassinate their leaders, and the invaders seemed to have no interest in testing their luck with them. Zorian had been worried that their enemies would try to strike at them indirectly, perhaps by sending the law enforcement after them or by attacking targets technically unrelated to them, but fortunately, they did no such thing.

Not that the two groups were entirely ignoring each other just because they weren’t fighting, of course. Zach and Zorian were constantly monitoring invader movements, trying to figure what they were doing and what their secrets were. Where they had placed all those wraith bombs Red Robe was threatening them with, for instance. Red Robe and his allies were similarly spying on them in return. Although both groups were clearly aware of each other’s surveillance, there was an unspoken agreement that this was perfectly acceptable and the truce continued.

Even though this was just calm before the storm, Zorian found himself kind of enjoying it. Too many things had happened recently, barely days apart from each other, and he had never really had time to sit down and process it all properly. They’d failed to get their group physically out of the time loop, and he ended up killing his old self after entering the real world. Zach had almost died at the start of the month, and he was certain to die at the end of it if they couldn’t find a solution to the angelic contract he was working under. He doubted he would figure out something insightful about that just because he spent a few days mulling things over, but it would make him feel a little better, at least.

Of course, he couldn’t really justify wasting a time right now, truce or no truce. Things still needed to be done, preparations made. Thus, he decided to simply spend more time in his workshop, building up his arsenal of bombs, golems, and magical devices. Something that was both useful and relaxing. He had actually wanted to set aside more time for magical artifice for a while now, but the frantic pace of their activities in these past few days made that all but impossible. Just building enough simulacrum bodies and equipping them for the daily skirmishes was challenging enough.

In any case, Zorian was currently sitting in his workshop – a spacious room in the Noveda Mansion that Zach had generously donated for his purposes – and staring at a shiny metal plate in his hands, considering things. The large wooden table in front of him was an absolute mess of tools, half-processed materials, technical reference books, and hastily drawn blueprints that probably only made sense to him and no one else. The rest of the room was not much better. Tall, dangerous looking golems stood lined up next to one of the walls, some of them with gaping holes in their chests, still missing critical components before they could be completed. A stack of small metal cylinders densely covered in glowing lines and magical glyphs lay seemingly forgotten in one of the corners.

Zorian glanced at the half-finished construction on the table in front of him before returning his attention to the metal plates in his hand. The device he was building was still barely formed, but a perceptive onlooker would be able to puzzle out that it was a fairly large and very complicated cube. The center of it consisted of several rare and expensive crystals, which was then surrounded by a plethora of gears and interlocking pieces of metal, wood, and stone. Most of it was already done, just waiting for him to put it all together and cast the necessary spells, but he still had to make the outer chassis of the cube.