Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"It’s a good thing for Novelty to receive a much-needed reality-check from time to time, so I’m not really concerned about her being bored out of her mind there," Spear of Resolve said, ignoring their interaction. "Besides, I didn’t mean for this to become a regular thing. I just want to have the students see an aranea walking around and interact with them a bit. It’s a publicity stunt more than anything."

"Oh, so this is kind of like what we’re doing right now," Tinami said. After all, it wasn’t like they had to have this conversation in the middle of a street where random people could see them. They could have just as easily met in a private room inside the Noveda Estate, or even inside one of the many Aope properties, but Spear of Resolve insisted they had to do this this way.

"Yes, exactly," Spear of Resolve said.

"I have to ask… why Novelty?" Tinami asked suddenly. "Not that I dislike her or anything, but I get the notion that you’re pushing her pretty hard, and I can’t figure out why. She is not exactly someone I would pick for an ambassador if I had to choose. Surely you have aranea that are more… solemn than her."

"Enthusiastic Seeker of Novelty is more suited for the role than you might think," Spear of Resolve said after a short pause. "You have to understand that the number of aranea living beneath Cyoria is… not that great. We must hunt to survive, so we can’t support large populations. Of the people I do have, many have no interest in learning how to interact with humans, or even downright look down on them."

"Ah. The flickermind thing," Tinami said, sniffing disdainfully.

"Yes, that. The point is that I really don’t have all that much to work with, and Novelty is one of the few aranea who is downright enthusiastic about going out into the city and meeting humans face-to-face. Besides, while her antics might not be exactly professional, I’ve noticed they put many humans at ease better than a solemn, respectful approach. They often perceive her as a harmless clown, or an innocent little girl, which never fails to amuse me. She’s an adult aranea specializing in interactions with humans. She’s far more dangerous to a human than your average, less excitable aranea."

"Oh. I didn’t think of it like that," Tinami admitted.

What Spear of Resolve didn’t say, but what Zorian strongly suspected, was that she was pushing Novelty partly because she knew Zorian liked her. It was clear to him that the Cyorian web was determined to build a closer relationship with him and keep him as close to them as possible, so it made sense to have Novelty talk to him.

After a few more circles around the center of the city, the three of them separated and went about their own business. Zorian never went home, however, instead choosing to continue wandering the city, lost in his own thoughts.

He picked up a couple of newspapers as he walked, and idly flipped through them. As he expected, most of the news were still dedicated to the attack on the city, even a whole month after it happened. An article about the sulrothum warriors that had helped the defenders during the attack caught his eye, if only because of the detailed drawing of a flying sandworm hovering above the city. He remembered that one… the devil wasps had refused Zorian’s offer of simply gating them back home to their ziggurat and had decided to instead have their giant flying sandworm pick them up and slowly fly them back to their continent. Some kind of power play, probably. Thankfully, no one in Eldemar had been in the mood to pick a fight with a giant flying sandworm, so they let them leave without incident.

Leafing through the articles more thoroughly, he also found subtle clues that the people who had received his gifts had already started to make waves with the knowledge he provided them with. In all honesty, Zorian had yet to hand out even a fraction of the stuff he owed to people for their help. It would take him literal years to finish paying back his debts this way, but he would persist. In any case, he was glad people were starting to make use of the knowledge they had been given. It assured him he wasn’t doing all that in vain.

He had also started writing a book on mind magic, but that was still in its early stages, and nowhere near to completion. Publishing anything related to mind magic on a wide scale was going to be difficult, but he would find a way.

Hours passed, and the night began to fall. Zorian still continued to wander the streets of the city, restless. Though he had no real emergency to worry about, it somehow felt wrong to him to just lay around and do nothing. He had spent so much time constantly on the move, constantly tackling one crisis after another, that he felt like he had to do something with himself… even if that something was basically wandering the city with no clear aim in sight.

His mind wandered to the couple of issues he still hadn’t dealt with. For instance, Princess. The giant divinely-enhanced hydra had survived her fight with Oganj’s apprentice, and Zorian had no idea what he was going to do with her. There was no way to transfer ownership of her to Zach, so he was stuck with her. Thankfully, she doing just fine for now, lazing around in the Great Northern Forest, but he knew that couldn’t continue forever. He had to figure out what to do with her one of these days.

Another complication was the giant iron beak flock. Zorian had simply released them into the northern wilderness when he had been checking up on Princess, thinking they would simply scatter and continue on with their own lives from now on. Instead, they decided to stick around Princess and now followed her around everywhere, helping her hunt and feeing on the remains of her prey when she had her fill. It made Princess far more noticeable and eye-catching than she would have otherwise been, and made the question of what to do with her all the more pressing.

He also didn’t know what to do about Mrva. He had managed to get the golem colossus out of Cyoria before the army could move in and confiscate him, but his precious construct was still completely non-functional and the place where he was storing him was not really as secure as he would have liked.

Annoyingly, he was probably going to have to tolerate this state of affairs for quite a long time. Restoring Mrva back into combat condition and making a properly secure place to house him in would both take a large amount of money… and money was annoyingly hard to get out of the time loop. There were no more invader caches and bank accounts to steal from, so unless he wanted to prey on innocent citizens he had to find other sources of funds… and vastly scale down his expenses.

He had a bit of a problem, in all honesty. During the time loop he’d gotten into the habit of spending money like water, and though he was mindful of it after their victory, he still struggled to keep his expenses under control. He still had a sizeable stash of funds to draw upon, but it was constantly getting smaller by the day. He had tried to get large sums of money by selling some of his creations, but that had drawn way more attention than he had thought it would, so he was forced to stop with that for the time being. The only thing he could do was, ugh… spend less .

At least until he found a convenient way to make a lot of money without it making huge waves or being traced back to him.

He stopped walking and looked at the full moon shining bright in the skies above. For some reason, the sight of the night sky, accompanied by the warm night air, helped put his mind at ease.

"Well Zorian, you wanted a normal life," he said out loud to himself, "Now you’re having money problems. What could be more normal than that?"

"You said it, brother!" an unknown man shouted at him from his left. It wasn’t anyone Zorian knew – it was just some drunk that happened to be close by. Drunk enough to be spouting nonsense, but sober enough make himself understood. "I too am comp-le-tely penniless! I spent every-thing I had tonight… and there is nothing wrong with that! What could be more normal than that? Yes in-deed, yes in-deed, yes in-deed…"