Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

Zorian mostly kept out of the conversation, alternating between listening to their conversation (when they were saying something interesting) and studying the device they retrieved from the aranea (when they weren’t). It was, as the matriarch said, a magical item of some sort — shaped like a pocket watch, but not one. The hands didn’t move, and the screw that should have allowed a person to wind it was fused with the casing and seemed to be simply an ornamental bump put there to make the illusion superficially convincing. He tried to channel mana into it, but that didn’t result in anything substantial — the device probably required the user to channel mana in a very specific manner. Many complex magical items did.

The lessons in divining the secrets of magical items that Haslush gave him really paid off here. Considering its purpose, the device yielded its purpose surprisingly easily — to put it bluntly, it was equipment for burglary. More specifically, it was a ward scanner, designed to guide and enhance divination spells meant to seek out weaknesses in complicated warding schemes so they could be broken or bypassed more easily. Their employer had probably been trying to identify a hole in aranean defenses.

Still, while the purpose of the device was readily apparent to his divination spells, its method of operation stubbornly remained a mystery. After several unsuccessful attempts to pry the casing open without damaging the device, he finally decided to try something… experimental. He extruded a mana cloud from his hands, the way he did when picking locks, and directed it to trickle into the device’s insides through the gaps and misaligned seams. The resulting information was fuzzy, but told him that the insides were filled with brass gears and crystals. They were probably not meant to be pried open. How then…

Ah, so that was the trick! The hands of the clock weren’t just static — they were nothing more than an image painted over a glass cover. Zorian pressed his finger against the glass cover and pushed it into the casing. There was a soft click from the inside, and when Zorian released the pressure the cover immediately flew open, revealing a complicated interface full of dials and sigils. Very complicated interface… he wasn’t going to figure this out in the hour or so they had until they reached the client.

He was so taking this thing apart to see how it worked in one of the future restarts.

Finishing the job was done without complications. Zorian opted not to put a tracking spell on the device, since he didn’t know how sensitive the device was and didn’t want to ruin it. That turned out to be a good choice, as the man immediately cast several diagnostic spells on the device once Zorian handed it over, one of which Zorian knew to be a spell designed to detect simple tracking spells. Once the transaction was done, Zorian insisted they shake hands, claiming it was traditional in his village to do so after a successful business deal. The man rolled his eyes and mumbled something about yokels, but humored him anyway. Mission accomplished.

After they all shared a drink in a nearby tavern (Taiven insisted and wouldn’t hear no from anyone), the group separated. Zorian immediately descended to the sewers again and went back to the aranea.

[A ward reader, you say?] the matriarch asked. [It makes sense. He and his friends had been hanging out at the edge of our territory for a while, trying to stay hidden. I’m surprised he hired a bunch of students to get it, though.]

«Yeah, I’m not sure what he was thinking,» Zorian said. «Seems like a stupid idea to me.»

[We’ll find out in a few days, if all goes well,] the matriarch said. [That said, there are other things we must discuss. I believe I told you in the previous restart that I happened upon some pretty important information.]

«You did,» Zorian agreed. «I was wondering what that was about.»

[It’s about the invaders. First of all, your guess was right — they are indeed from Ulquaan Ibasa.]

«I knew it,» Zorian scowled. «What was it? Are they out for revenge or is this just sheer opportunism?»

[A bit of both,] the matriarch said. [They resent you for their exile and they think you’re weak, now that the Splinter Wars and The Weeping wiped out most of your battlemages. But that’s not the important part. The important part concerns a question so basic I’m honestly not sure why neither of us thought of it. Namely, why exactly did the invasion think they could conquer Cyoria in the first place?]