Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«Zorian, what the hell are you talking about?» Taiven asked, thoroughly baffled at his actions. «And who are you talking to, anyway? There is no one here.»

Zorian said nothing, choosing to wait in silence for a while. Seconds passed in utter silence as Zorian patiently waited for a response from the spider. Taiven seemed to be torn between feeling irritation at his behavior and agitation at the potentially dangerous situation. Eventually, the aranea decided to re-initiate contact…

…by stepping into the open right in front of him and Taiven.

Taiven gasped in shock at the appearance of the huge hairy spider and immediately moved to draw her spell rod, only for Zorian to snatch her by her wrist and motion her to stand down. She gave him a baffled look before glancing at the spider in front of them. The aranea stood motionless, observing them silently with its huge pitch black eyes but not making any threatening gestures. Taiven seemed to realize that the spider was no threat at the moment and relaxed, moving her hand away from the spell rod attached to her hip.

«Zorian…» she began, radiating a mixture of anger and worry at him.

«I’ll explain later, I promise,» Zorian said with a sigh before turning to deal with the aranea. «And you! Couldn’t you have been a little more discreet? Why couldn’t you have stayed in the shadows and contacted me telepathically?»

The aranea reconnected to his mind and sent a burst of amusement at him. [If you wanted to speak to me telepathically, why haven’t you called out to me telepathically to begin with? Aren’t you psychic yourself?]

Zorian grimaced. If only it was that easy. Finding information about mind magic from his fellow mages was like pulling teeth, since the mage guild took a very dim view on mind magic of any sort, no matter how benign. Nobody could tell him what being ‘psychic’ meant, much less teach him how to telepathically contact someone. He did track down a spell that allowed a mage to establish a telepathic connection with someone, but the spell was painfully crude — it worked only on other humans, the target had to be willing and able to lower their spell resistance, and the link only allowed word communication devoid of emotional and other connotations.

[I am untrained,] admitted Zorian. [I don’t know how to contact someone telepathically. I only know how to piggyback answers on a connection someone else made.]

He wondered about that, actually. Nobody taught him how to do that, yet the concept seemed to come naturally to him. Is this what it meant to be ‘psychic’? Perhaps being psychic simply meant he was some sort of instinctive mind mage with inborn skills in the field.

[That’s so sad,] the aranea said. [You are incomplete. But I suppose it could always be worse. You could be a flickermind like your friend there.]

Zorian glanced at Taiven, suppressing a snort of amusement. It was a good thing he was talking to the aranea telepathically, because he could just imagine how Taiven would react if someone called her a ‘flickermind’.

«What?» Taiven asked, apparently having noticed his look.

«Nothing,» Zorian mumbled, shaking his head. [Miss aranea, I- err, you are a miss, right?]

It was hard to tell, but he was pretty sure the aranea he was talking to had a ‘female feel’ to her. Plus, the aranea were led by a matriarch, so it would make sense for outsiders like him to mostly meet the female members of the species.

[All aranea are female,] the spider said.

[What, really?] Zorian asked. [How on earth does that work? Do you just divide like microbes or spontaneously get pregnant or what?]

[Nothing that exotic. It’s just that our species is extremely sexually dimorphic, and the males are both smaller in stature and pretty much subsentient. We don’t consider them real aranea,] the spider explained. [If you talk to one of us and they’re smart enough to talk back, they’re female. The males would probably attack you in lieu of conversation, though you’re unlikely to ever meet one unless you somehow gain access to one of our settlements.]

Zorian digested that information for a few moments and then decided not to ask any further questions on the topic. It was interesting, but not really relevant at the moment, and he didn’t know how long he had before Taiven snapped from the pressure and started throwing around spells and demanding answers. She wasn’t exactly a paragon of patience.

[I’m sorry to be inconsiderate but I really need to speak to the matriarch.] Zorian said, doing his best to reproduce and send the weird aranea ‘spear of resolve’ concept that the matriarch said was her name instead of calling her ‘the matriarch’. Hopefully this would help convince the aranea to take him seriously when he told them about memory packets from another timeline.

[I have been listening to your conversation with Watchful Eyes That Miss Nothing of Importance for a while now, Zorian Kazinski,] the familiar presence of the matriarch announced.