Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

Zorian nodded. There were two main forms of mana available to the mage: his personal mana and the ambient one that emanated from the underworld. Personal mana was something that all things with a soul possessed in varying amounts, and it was attuned to the person producing it — it bent easily to its creator’s will, and was innately more malleable and controllable than anything else they might use to power their magic, since it never resisted the caster’s efforts to shape it. Ambient mana, on the other hand, was both harder to control and toxic to living beings. Not enough to kill a mage just for using it once, but any substantial, prolonged use resulted in sickness and insanity. The mages of old believed that ambient mana was tainted by the World Dragon’s hate for humanity and shunned its use, but modern mages had discovered a few tricks to making use of it. One was by using it to power items, which had no minds to corrupt or bodies to sicken. The other was to assimilate the ambient mana into their personal reserves, negating its toxic properties. While the process of assimilation was too slow to power actual spells, being able to regenerate personal reserves faster was useful enough that the skill spread far and wide. These days, every student of magic was taught how to do it along with the other basics of spellcasting.

«I’ll get sick,» Zorian said. «And possibly mad, if I keep using it constantly.»

«Right,» Taiven said. «Using raw mana on a regular basis is pretty stupid, but if you’re in a real bind… well, it’s better to spend a few days bedridden with a fever than end up dead.»

«You’ve used it before,» guessed Zorian.

Taiven gave him a surprised look, like it was unexpected he figured it out. «Uh, maybe once? Or twice?» She shifted her stance, looking uncomfortable. «But keep quiet about that, will you? Most combat mages have done it a couple of times in their life, but Guild inspectors don’t accept ‘everybody’s doing it’ as an excuse.»

Zorian made a gesture over his mouth, indicating that his lips are sealed. It’s not like she didn’t know plenty of things to get him in trouble with, anyway.

«Let’s just get back to the lesson, oh great teacher,» Zorian said. «Since you’re so intent on teaching me mana-intensive fire spells, how about that fire vortex I heard you can cast…»

When the time came, Taiven and her two friends let Zorian take point as he led them towards aranea territory. They had already tried and failed to divine the location of the watch, which wasn’t terribly unusual if it really was taken by the aranea — the aranea had been engaged in a shadow war with the invaders for a while now, even before the time loop started, and their anti-divination wards were top-notch.

[We meet again, Zorian Kazinski,] the matriarch spoke telepathically to him. She was surrounded by 6 honor guards, though only 2 were actually visible while the other four hung from the ceiling while under some kind of invisibility spell. Zorian only knew they were there because he could sense their minds. [And once again you bring additional guests with you. Three of them this time. If this pattern continues, we’ll have to find a more spacious area to house them all after a few more restarts.]

[Funny,] Zorian sent back. [But actually, this is the group I was a part of when I first met the aranea. We were looking for a watch supposedly in your possession then, same as we are now. Sounds familiar?]

«What’s going on?» asked Taiven. She and her two friends were hanging in the back, looking apprehensively at the three spiders in front of them. «Why are you just staring at them?»

Before Zorian could say anything, the matriarch started waving her front four legs in the air for a while and then spoke.

«What’s this about a watch I hear?» she asked, turning her two biggest, forward-facing eyes at Taiven.

It took a few minutes of explaining and clarifications, but in the end the matriarch finally seemed to remember the event in question.

«Oh, now I remember,» she said. «Though the man in question certainly wasn’t any kind of innocent passerby, and the ‘watch’ is no simple time-keeping device — he had assaulted our web with a couple of other thugs and ended up dropping his bauble when we chased them off.»

[He’s one of the invaders,] the matriarch told him telepathically, so only he could hear. [Or at least he works for them. You say you saw him? Excellent, we finally have an entry point into the organization. A face, a name and face-to-face contact should be enough to divine where he lives… you know his name, don’t you? Excellent. Hopefully he gave away his real one. Did you shake hands with him when you accepted the job? No? Try to shake hands with him when you give him the device. Maybe put a tracking spell on it if you know how…]