Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«Well, this is it,» Zorian said out loud, standing in front of the entrance to the sewers. The matriarch didn’t tell him where exactly in the sewers she hoped to meet with him, but he knew where he had met the spiders the last time he had been down there, so he intended to start from there. «The point of no return. I once again offer you the chance to turn back. You don’t have to risk your life with me, Kael.»

He gave a pointed look to the morlock following after him, trying to use his newly found (newly recognized?) empathic abilities to gauge the other boy’s mood. Sadly, the boy’s emotions were too well controlled at the moment and his control over his empathy sucked. Regardless of how Kael truly felt about this trip, he was clearly determined to see it through. Why, Zorian didn’t know. When he told Kael about the aranea matriarch’s ambush and the resulting conversation, he did it because he wanted to have someone to bounce ideas from and Kael seemed like the best choice (he already knew about the time loop and he was clearly very intelligent), not because he had wanted Kael to come with him. Kael, on the other hand, insisted that coming alone on such a meeting was the height of idiocy and that Zorian needed a partner to cover him. Zorian reluctantly agreed, not entirely comfortable with risking someone else’s life in this thing, no matter how logical it was. Kael seemed amused that Zorian cared more about his safety than his own, considering that Kael would be restored to normal once the loop restarted and Zorian might not be, but Zorian’s moral sense had yet to adapt to the implications of the time loop and he was horribly bothered by the idea of leading Kael to his death in the tunnels and leaving his daughter all alone in the world… even if it was only for a week or so.

«I told you to drop it,» Kael sighed. «I’m definitely going with you. If nothing else, then so this ‘aranea matriarch’ and I can have a conversation about ethical uses of mind magic.»

Oh right — Kael was still kind of bitter that the spider searched through his memories in her quest to piece together what Zorian’s motives were.

Finally, they descended into the tunnels, Zorian leading the way. He chose his way carefully, occasionally leaving a magical trap behind them in the form of stone cubes covered in spell formula. If they had to flee, the traps should be able to surprise any pursuers by backtracking where the traps were. Most of them simply erected a forcefield to delay the attackers, but a couple had more… aggressive effects. At the very least it should force the pursuers to slow down in order to deal with the cubes and give them enough time to reach the surface.

Kael, meanwhile, was their anti-mentalist support. He had put a mind shield spell on himself, and would remain under the spell’s effects constantly. If the meeting at any point turned sour, Kael would immediately cast the spell on Zorian as well. Kael seemed sure that the spiders had a method of communicating with humans other than telepathy and suggested that they both use the spell right from the start, but Zorian knew he had to keep his mind ‘open’ if he wanted these talks to be in any way productive. His instincts, which Zorian now recognized as his uncontrolled empathic abilities, were telling him that aranea placed great significance on mind-to-mind communication. Shutting them out completely would be seen as an insult, even if they did happen to have alternative methods of communicating.

As they approached the spot where Zorian had first met the aranea during his romp through the sewers with Taiven and her group, he felt a telepathic contact brush against his mind. Like the first time he had met the sentient spiders, this one was cruder, more forceful than the feather-light touch the matriarch had displayed during her ‘visit’ to Imaya’s home.

A stream of psychedelic images and alien emotions hit his mind like a sledge hammer, causing him to stumble back in shock. Kael immediately shifted into defensive posture but Zorian signaled him to stand down. He was pretty sure at this point that the aranea he was in contact with had no hostile intentions. Apparently the minds of humans and aranea were different enough that telepathic communication was difficult, and this particular one never learned how to do it correctly.

As suddenly as it came, the ‘communication’ stopped. The presence remained, however, and Zorian soon felt another aranea connect with him, using the first one as a sort of telepathic relay.

[Ah, so you’ve managed to find us in the end,] the distinctive mental voice of the matriarch spoke in his mind. [Good, I was beginning to fear I should have left instructions on how to find us. Stay where you are, please, I will be with you shortly.]

«She’s coming,» said Zorian to Kael, who nodded gravely.