Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

Just to make sure he activated the next two barrier traps as well, but the two cubes holding explosive traps he simply scooped up and took with him. They were weapons of desperation, truth be told, and he wasn’t sure if he could activate them without blowing himself up along with the target. Besides, he was pretty sure they didn’t have enough power to seriously damage a troll, being designed to handle much squishier targets.

Zorian was worried about how they were going to smuggle a trio of giant spiders past the entrance guards, but he needn’t have worried — the aranea seemed to be able to edit other people’s senses in real time, effectively erasing their presence to the victim. Zorian had to admit he hadn’t thought the aranea’s mind magic was quite so… subtle. It would appear he was still taking them far too lightly.

But anyway, they were back on the surface and totally safe. Huh. He hadn’t expected the whole thing to end so… favorably. When he realized a pack of trolls was coming after them, he fully expected he was heading for an early restart. It seemed good things did happen to good people occasionally. Still, as happy as he was at his current fortune, his talk with the aranea wasn’t finished yet, so the four of them quickly relocated themselves in a deserted alley to continue their conversation.

«We should be safe enough to talk here,» the matriarch said in her magically-assisted voice. «I can’t sense the presence of any minds that don’t belong here. Not even those blasted cranium rats.»

«The what?» asked Zorian.

«Another psychic creature we’ve recently come to share this city with,» the matriarch groused. «They look much like regular rats, except the top of their head looks like it has been sawn off, leaving their brains visible.»

«Oh,» Zorian said. «I actually saw something like that once, back in my original live-through of this month. I never went down that street in any of the subsequent restarts, though.»

«Probably for the best,» the matriarch said. «It is likely they are working for the invasion forces. They only appeared recently and the trolls started harassing us when we tried to exterminate them.»

«Are the rats intelligent?» asked Kael. «You seem to be implying they’re some kind of spies, yes?»

«They are psychic, like us,» the matriarch said. «Their minds are telepathically linked to one another, forming a collective intelligence. Individually, they are little more than particularly cunning rats, but the more of them group together, the smarter they get. And the stronger their telepathic abilities become. They’re small enough to get anywhere and the death of any particular rat is inconsequential. Each one acts as a relay for the full power and intelligence of the entire swarm. They’re almost perfect spies, better than even us aranea. As I said, we tried to get rid of them before they could muscle in on our territory… but we failed to account for the fact they weren’t working alone.»

«Crap,» Zorian said. «With those things running around the city, it’s no wonder the invaders are so well informed. They could be pulling information straight out of people’s minds without anybody realizing it. All they need is to find one person that is privy to sensitive information and whose mind is unprotected, and they can blow a hole in the whole system.»

«Yes,» the matriarch confirmed. «Aranea can do something similar, but not nearly to the same extent. We’re too big to move as freely through human settlements as cranium rats do, and our individual members are not as expendable as individual cranium rats. They can get into many places where we can’t, especially warded ones — giant spiders trip defensive wards in ways that a couple of funny-looking rats do not.»

Zorian frowned as he suddenly realized something. With these cranium rats on the loose in the city and working with the invaders, there was no way the invasion organizers remained ignorant of the time loop in every single restart. Zorian himself had not advertised his situation much, but Zach did. Sometimes very visibly and explicitly, if Zach hadn’t been speaking in hyperbole when Zorian talked to him. So whoever was controlling the cranium rats knew about Zach being a time traveler in at least some of the restarts… and never did anything about it. Zorian found that difficult to explain. Did they just refuse to believe what their agents on the ground were telling them? That sounded uncharacteristically sloppy considering how well the invaders seemed to be organized otherwise.

«An interesting point,» the matriarch said, breaking him out of his thoughts. «I’m beginning to understand why you’re so reluctant to deal openly with this Zach. But we’re getting distracted here, dancing around the real issue. You heard my offer, Zorian. I have been very generous about my information thus far, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to put my foot down now. I want a straight answer — will you let me send a memory packet through you or not?»