Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

It wasn’t long before Batak came back with a middle aged woman back in tow. Zorian’s first thought was that she was surprisingly young for a high priestess, but he supposed with the manpower shortage among the priesthood they couldn’t afford to be too picky about such things. For her part, the priestess gave him a long, searching look upon entering the room before giving him a strained smile and sitting down next to Batak, so that both of them were facing him.

"Hello mister Kazinski," she said. "I am Kylae Kuosi, the high priestess of this temple. I hear you’ve wanted to speak to me. Specifically, that you wanted to speak to me about future prediction?"

"About the termination date on the day of the summer festival, yes," Zorian confirmed.

A short exchange followed where they both confirmed they were indeed talking about the same thing and then the priestess leaned back on her chair and gave Batak a mild glare.

"I told you it was not a mistake," she said.

"And I told you it wasn’t you who was the problem," Batak shot back. "I guess we were both right."

Kylae sighed before refocusing on Zorian. "I don’t suppose you could introduce me to your master so I can discuss this directly with her? Not that I have anything against you but you just don’t have the necessary expertise and all your information is by necessity second-hand…"

"Sorry," Zorian said. "I’m afraid my master definitely wishes to stay hidden. I agree she could help you better in person, but this is how things are at the moment."

And it was vanishingly unlikely that would change any time soon. According to current church dogma, aranea were classified as monsters – servants of the Dragon Below, to be precise – and therefore not to be dealt with. Kylae and Batak seemed fairly liberal as priests go, but probably not that liberal. Admitting he was speaking on behalf of a giant sentient spider would have led to him being forcibly expelled from the temple at best.

"If I may ask, though, why has this gotten you so spooked?" Zorian asked curiously. "I mean, I know why me and my, ah, master are concerned, but why do you have a problem with it?"

The priestess looked at him curiously. "And why are you concerned, if I may ask?"

"Trade?" offered Zorian, suppressing a smile in favor of a most innocent expression he could manage. Hook, line and sinker.

The priestess shared a silent look with Batak, somehow communicating without words with her fellow priest. Apparently they knew each other quite well if they could manage that. Maybe they were lovers? If Zorian remembered correctly, priests were forbidden to have relationships with each other, and thus had to look for romantic options outside the church hierarchy, but it wouldn’t be the first time such rules were ignored. In any case, after a few seconds they seemed to reach a decision and turned again towards him.

"We will share our concerns with you, but only if you go first," the priestess said. "And be warned – I can tell when people lie to me. It is a supernatural ability and has never failed me before, so please don’t waste my time with lies and half-truths."

Well. That was kind of inconvenient. Zorian didn’t detect any attempt at barging into his mind, so whatever ability she had probably wasn’t mind-based in nature. Was she instinctively divining the truth of his statements? Peering into his soul? He supposed she could be bluffing, but he somehow doubted it.

In the end he decided to take a risk. He fired off a couple of divinations to make sure they weren’t scried and that there were no cranium rats around and then started to speak when they returned negative.

"Let’s see if this will be a sufficient price for your help, then," Zorian sighed. "The reason we’re concerned is that there is a well-funded, well-organized group of terrorists planning to take advantage of the summer festival to cause trouble. Some parts of their plan – like their usage of artillery spells and war trolls smuggled through the Dungeon – was fairly pedestrian. But there is a more exotic component to their plans – one that wreaks havoc with future prediction by its very nature."

There was a brief moment of silence as the two priests stared at him incredulously.

"That… is not what I expected to hear," the priestess said. "Gods and Goddesses, this is way above my pay grade. I… don’t think I want to know more, to be honest. I don’t want to get involved into such things."

"Probably for the best," Zorian agreed.

"If that is indeed the true cause of the irregularity, though, then my own reasons to panic about it are largely misplaced," the priestess mused.

"I’d still like to hear about it, if it’s not a problem," Zorian said.

"It’s about the angels," Batak interjected. "Ever since the gods have gone silent, angels have sort of taken their place. They can’t grant magical powers to the priesthood or work miracles the way gods could, but they can be summoned in order to provide advice or give aid with their considerable personal abilities."

"And what did they say about the anomaly that got you so spooked?" Zorian asked curiously.

"That’s the thing," the priestess sighed. "We can’t ask them because no one has been able to summon then since about a week ago. We’ve been in contact with churches as far as Koth, and they report the same thing – even the most approachable of celestials are ignoring us. Hell, I’ve even heard rumors that demon worshippers cannot contact their vile masters any more. It is as if something has cut the entire material plane off from the spiritual realms."

Zorian swallowed heavily. A week ago… the start of the time loop obviously.

"Quite disturbing, isn’t it?" said Kylae. "Coupled with the timeline simply cutting off a few weeks from now, well, I must admit it had really gotten me spooked. Finding out the two are basically unrelated certainly makes me rest easier."

There was further conversation after this, but none of it was terribly productive. He promised Batak and Kylae to be discreet about their troubles with contacting the spirit world and left.

Unlike the priestess, Zorian didn’t feel like the conversation had eased his worries.

Following his visit to the temple, Zorian decided to sit down in one of the many restaurants scattered throughout the city and consider this new information with a bit of food and drink. There was no doubt in his mind that the severing of the link between the spiritual planes and the material one was caused by the time loop, but what that meant was less clear. Was the material plane the only one experiencing the time loop, isolated from everything else within some kind of time bubble ? The fact that his current timeline seemed to literally end when the time loop restarted strongly suggested this. Apparently the spell wasn’t snatching up a bunch of souls and putting them into their past bodies like he initially assumed – it was literally rewinding time itself in the targeted area while leaving a couple of souls intact in the process. No wonder the spell was so easily transmissible – compared to reverting everything one month into the past, the cost of looping an additional soul or two was probably utterly inconsequential.

And that, if true, was very disturbing. That was not human magic. A hundred or so mages in possession of a mana well and a whole lot of time to prepare could affect a medium-sized country at most. The time loop must have enveloped the whole continent, at least , for the boundary to have not been noticed after a day or two. News spread fast these days. And frankly, Zorian had a hunch the time loop enveloped the entire planet. This was like something straight out of the age of gods… but if higher beings were involved, why was the time loop allowed to go off its intended course so severely?