Mother of Learning: ARC 2

Cast Adrift Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind. “Good morning, brother!” an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. “Morning, morning, MORNING!!!” Relief immediately flooded his mind, closely followed by despair. He had done it—he had kept his soul safe from the third time traveler and survived the encounter entirely unscathed. But his allies… “Zorian? Are you all right?” Zorian stared at his sister for several long seconds, a million thoughts racing through his mind. She looked uncomfortable with his blank stare and silence, but Zorian couldn’t really bring himself to care at the moment. His mind was still stuck on his desperate escape from Red Robe. On almost being captured by a mass murdering psychotic necromancer with an untold amount of time-looping experience. On the fact that said necromancer now knew there were other human time travelers running around and could be coming after him this very moment. On the fact that the aranea were dead. Dead and never coming back. He absentmindedly pushed Kirielle off of him, put on his glasses, and started pacing around the room. Killing a soul was impossible. They could not be destroyed, only modified. Everyone said so—the teachers, all the books he had read discussing the topic, Kael the amateur necromancer… hell, even the goddamn lich had said so in one of his offhand comments back when Zorian was first brought into the time loop. How, then, did Red Robe manage to kill the souls of the aranea? Zorian supposed the simplest explanation would be that Red Robe had simply discovered something other mages hadn’t. He was a necromancer with a huge amount of time available to him and an easy way to avoid the usual consequences of various grisly experiments. Perhaps he had succeeded where other necromancers had failed. But Zorian didn’t think this was likely—the lich seemed to be a better mage than anyone he had met thus far, Red Robe included, and the lich had certainly considered a soul-killing spell impossible. But that just might all be wishful thinking on his part. He didn’t want the aranea to be gone for good. Dammit, he had grown to like the stupid spiders! Sure, they’d had their disagreements, but he had really never wished them ill, and he didn’t think they had wished him ill either. Novelty certainly hadn’t, and she couldn’t lie to save her life. If… if he was being perfectly honest with himself, he had practically thought of Novelty as a second little sister. But now she was gone, just like the rest of the aranea beneath Cyoria. And the worst thing? He had let it happen. He had spent the whole evening gathering the matriarch’s last message, oblivious and uncaring to what was really happening, while Red Robe was hunting down the aranea across the city. He had known he was dealing with another time traveler, and he had never once considered that the man might have developed countermeasures against others of their kind. Gods, he felt so stupid now. Although it was strange… First of all, if Red Robe could permanently get rid of anyone who bothered him, why hadn’t he used that spell more often? Surely the invasion would be a lot easier if he got rid of a couple of key stumbling blocks. Yet Zorian hadn’t heard of any notable people waking up dead at the start of each restart, and he had access to the extensive information network maintained by the aranea. There was an obvious answer to that, of course: there could be a significant cost associated with the spell which Red Robe was unwilling to pay. But the fact that he had gone out of the way to remove every single aranea in Cyoria made Zorian doubt that. If there was a serious cost associated with it, he would have made sure to investigate more thoroughly and soulkill only those he had to. Secondly, the aranea weren’t actually time travelers, so the spell shouldn’t have worked! Zorian was quite sure the time loop didn’t pull every soul back in time—if that was the case, every mage would feel the difference after a dozen or so restarts as their shaping skills miraculously increased overnight. Plus, there were traditional necromantic killing spells that forcibly banished the soul from the body, and Zorian had occasionally seen them in use during the invasion. If every person whose soul was banished from their body ended up dead at the start of the time loop, the number of inexplicable corpses showing up at the start of the time loop would have started to pile up quickly, and everyone would have realized something was very wrong by the time Zorian was brought in. So all in all, clearly the souls of regular people who were not time travelers weren’t affected by anything that happened to them in previous time loops. The fact that Red Robe’s spell affected normal people in future time loops was strange, to say the least. Zorian stopped pacing and frowned, idly noting that Kirielle had left the room at some point. He was getting the feeling that Red Robe was exploiting the very nature of the time loop to somehow get the desired effect. Zorian himself had no idea how the time loop really functioned, but presumably Red Robe did. Without that knowledge, he was going to just keep going in circles. Like always, he needed more information. …Except his main source of information—the aranea—had been utterly wiped out by the enemy, leaving him with nothing except a cryptic, incomplete message. Dammit. Over the next few hours, Zorian simply went through the motions, trying to hide the frustration, shame, and panic he was feeling and to appear as normal as possible. He had failed to keep his inner turmoil strictly to himself, if Mother’s worried questions were any indication. In the end, she accepted his explanation of being slightly shaken from a recent nightmare and stopped bothering him, so he took that as a win. And what a nightmare it was! Aside from losing the aranea, there was a non-negligible chance that Red Robe had managed to figure out his identity and was going to assault the house at any moment. True, he had hidden his face behind a scarf and remained silent, but there were ways nonetheless… He didn’t even think about trying to immediately leave the house in panic, though. The first and main reason for that was that if Red Robe had identified him and was coming to Cirin, then his family was in danger of being permanently killed, just like the aranea, and he wasn’t willing to let that happen. Kiri had grown on him over the course of the time loop, and while he didn’t like his mother very much, he wouldn’t let some psycho murder her. No, it was bad enough that the aranea had paid the ultimate price for his mistakes—he’d be damned if he’d leave his family to save his own hide. The second reason was that, while it was certainly possible that his identity had been compromised, it was only a possibility, not a certainty. Yes, it would be easy to track him down by noting which students from Zach’s class were missing and then checking them out one by one, but it was entirely possible that Red Robe wouldn’t think of this. After all, as far as Red Robe was concerned, the mysterious human time traveler was associated with the aranea, not Zach. There was no reason to search among Zach’s classmates. And while Zach probably knew that Zorian was a time traveler by now, Zorian strongly suspected he would be out of Cyoria when Red Robe came knocking. If Zach had even a smidgen of common sense (not a certainty, admittedly), he would skip town first thing in the morning upon starting a new restart. Considering Red Robe thoroughly trounced Zach during the invasion by bringing the lich as his backup and that Zach actually remembered it happening this time, Zorian felt that even Zach wouldn’t be crazy enough to stay where the clearly superior enemy could find him. It was an uncomfortable number of assumptions to rely on, but what else did he have left? He was backed into a corner. All he could do was wait and hope Red Robe wasn’t a master detective on top of being a scarily good necromancer and gods knew what else. In any case, his plan was quite simple at the moment—board the train as normal, then promptly disembark upon leaving Cirin. He had no intention of going back to Cyoria in the near future. Red Robe was bound to pay attention to Cyoria for a while, trying to catch any time travelers the aranea may have brought in, so going there so soon would be just begging for trouble. Any minor misstep could blow his cover, and he didn’t trust himself to be able to lay low for multiple restarts at a time. No, best if he avoided the city for a while. He would have to return there at some point, of course, but he had to be a lot stronger and a lot better informed before he could show himself in the city again. But aside from his determination to avoid Cyoria at all costs, his plans were virtually nonexistent. He felt rather lost. All emotional attachment aside, the aranea were also his best allies, and losing them effectively pulled the rug from under his feet. What the hell was he supposed to do now? He needed some time to calm down and come to terms with what had happened. Think up a new way forward. He would probably end up just wandering around the country for a restart or two. Or maybe a dozen restarts. Yes, now that he thought about it, the time loop was the perfect opportunity for him to go on a country-wide tour, maybe even continent-wide. Just… exploring and sight-seeing. Very relaxing. Admittedly, the matriarch’s last message mentioned something about the time loop gradually decaying, but she hadn’t named any concrete deadlines in the fragments he had managed to piece together, and he believed she would have put greater emphasis on that part if the timetable was particularly tight. No, that statement was there just to let him know he did not have an infinite amount of time to work with—and time was steadily ticking. At least he hoped. He was quite doomed otherwise. Less than infinite he could work with, but if he had only a handful of restarts left? It didn’t bear thinking about. “Mister Kazinski?” Ilsa said, breaking him out of his thoughts. Just as well, his thoughts had taken a dark turn again, and he was tired of feeling depressed. “Are you listening to me?” “I’m listening,” Zorian lied. He wasn’t really listening, of course, but that was because he’d had this conversation with Ilsa a million times by now.