Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

He had to mess with their memories slightly. Mostly to make it look like they won in a convincing manner – a process that took some trial and error, since Zorian didn’t have a perfect understanding of their capabilities and habits. Thankfully, any mistake could be covered up by simply wiping away their short-term memories and letting them relieve the battle again and again until he got it right. He also had to adjust Zach’s perception of what happened to Quatach-Ichl, since his contract couldn’t be fulfilled unless the lich was seemingly dead. He made it look like his chrysanthemum weapon actually managed to suck out Quatach-Ichl soul and kill him for good, which Zach thankfully accepted as actually possible. Zorian took it as a compliment that Zach had that much faith in his artifice.

Then there was the matter of Zach going around reading people’s minds. Zorian had known that Zach would try that. After all, how else was he going to confirm that people did not know anything about the time loop? Unfortunately, the boy was right that Zorian couldn’t really create convincing fake minds. Even the dumbest, most boring person in existence had a mind more complex and intricate than anything Zorian could conjure purely from his own imagination. So he didn’t even try. Though his network of sigils around the city, Zorian was potentially connected to every person who was still alive there. He could act as a mental bridge, allowing Zach to connect to any person in the city through him. The minds he was reading were very much real.

Sadly, that also meant that when Zach checked people’s mind and saw they didn’t remember anything that had happened during this past month, this was in no way faked. They really didn’t remember anything. Zorian was forced to strip them of their mind blanks through dispelling and wiping away their memories of the month. He had thought about being more selective about it, but he wanted things to be absolutely convincing to whatever evaluation mechanics Zach’s angel contract employed.

He had gifted people like Xvim, Alanic, and Daimen memory crystals containing their deleted memories for later perusal, but he knew that wasn’t nearly the same as having their real memories. They weren’t trained psychics like he was, so digesting their memories from such a source would be a struggle.

As for the aranea, deleting their memories of the whole month was kind of tricky, since they were helping Zorian run this whole illusion, and he needed their help right now. Obviously, them not having any memories of all this would be a bit of a problem. Thus, only the aranea that Zach actually deigned to talk to deleted their memories, and Zach was never overly fond of the giant spiders. Thus, the damage to the integrity of the illusion was minimal in the end. Even better, Zorian didn’t have to provide the aranea with anything to make them recover after this. They had their own well-developed system of storing their memories and had lots of practice of integrating stored memories into their minds later, so it shouldn’t be a big chore for them to recover quickly.

Zorian was never as thankful for Zach’s disinterest in learning about aranean society as he was at this moment. If Zach had known anything about them, he would have known that the only reliable way to make sure they forgot something was to murder them all. Which, admittedly, wouldn’t have been that hard to fake, but still. Zorian suspected the aranea would have forever borne a grudge against the boy if they had all collectively been butchered by the guy they were trying to save, even if it was understandable in their current circumstances, and done entirely in pretend fashion.

As for Jornak, the main reason he was trapped in his own private illusion was because Zorian wanted to find all the dead-man switches the guy had scattered all over the place. He knew Jornak would make them suffer from beyond the grave if they just let him die. He needed to find out what he had in store for them and how to disarm his traps and contingencies.

He tried to simply get their fellow time traveler to simply talk about his plans. It was a good thing he did. He had done a basic search of his memories, of course, but searching someone’s memories for information depended on knowing what to look for, and Zorian knew that Jornak was a lot more devious and experienced in this kind of cloak-and-dagger bullshit than he was. It only took a few conversations with Jornak, in various guises, to understand that he would have missed many, many things if he simply tried lifting things out of his mind. However, even this wasn’t enough. Jornak had no real friends. His closest emotional attachment was to the damn imperial dagger, of all things. Thus, he was understandably cagey around other people, even when Zorian prodded him with subtle suggestions and emotional manipulation to make him more talkative. Eventually Zorian resorted to messing with Jornak’s perception of time, making him believe days or weeks have passed in order to learn what he would have done, and what he expected to happen.

Meanwhile, the invasion of the city was being beaten back all over the city. All of the invasion leaders except the upper echelons of the Cult of the Dragon Below were gone now, and they were unable to rally the disparate forces around their leadership. Eventually the higher echelons of the Ibasan forces found out that Quatach-Ichl was no longer present on the battlefield, and sounded a retreat. Iasku Mansion was mostly demolished, but Sudomir had somehow managed to survive the angel’s wrath by protecting the core of the mansion through particularly powerful wards. The surviving Ibasans hurriedly gathered around the ruin, after which Sudomir translocated it out of the city.

Annoyingly, Zorian had no option but to let it go. He was too busy to chase after them, his most powerful allies were incapacitated, and the other city defenders couldn’t get through the gathered Ibasan forces fast enough. He would later find out that Sudomir translocated his mansion two more times after that, eventually landing on Ulquaan Ibasa, where he was granted refuge by the natives.

Great. If Eldemar had any doubts as to who to blame for the attack, they were unambiguously sure now. Not that Quatach-Ichl, the instigator of the attack, cared about that. If Zorian had learned anything from Jornak’s mind, it was that Quatach-Ichl was likely quite happy with this outcome.

Kirielle and Kana were alive and well, despite the attack on them. Zorian breathed a big sigh of relief when he found that out. Sadly, Kosjenka joined Mrva in the hall of heroic golems by sacrificing herself to save his little sister. An event that caused many tears on Kirielle’s part and prompted Zorian to consider if he should perhaps delete her memories of the whole incident and quietly replace Kosjenka’s remains with an unharmed copy…

…but no, that was a bad idea. He shouldn’t be that casual with memory wipes. And besides, Kirielle didn’t know anything about golem theory, so she shouldn’t see anything wrong with Zorian fixing Kosjenka into pristine condition.

Overall, things had turned out great. He had to give away the imperial orb to get rid of Oganj, Quatach-Ichl and Sudomir were still alive and would probably make moves against them in the future, and there was a high chance of another continental war brewing in the near future, but it could have been worse. His friends and family were all alive, Zach was alive, and he was alive. The only thing that kind of worried him was that he found Silverlake’s empty skin back where he left her fighting with her original self. It was clear that the spider not just killed her, but ate her as well.

Which was strange. Grey hunters primarily ate powerful magical creatures. To his knowledge, they though humans tasted vile . The flesh wasn’t magical enough for their tastes. Why was Silverlake eaten, then? Was it because of all the primordial essence Silverlake’s body contained?