Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

That settled it — he was going to reveal himself to Zach sometime soon, regardless of how this ambush turned out. There was an advantage to anonymity, yes, but it was massively outweighed by the danger of allowing the aranean matriarch exclusive access to Zach. That could end up very badly for Zorian.

[You’ve been silent for a while,] the matriarch noted. [You do know I was just teasing you, right?]

[I was just thinking,] Zorian said, thinking about how glad he was they were communicating through the relays at the moment — it made it next to impossible for the matriarch to read his thoughts unless he specifically sent them to her. It wasn’t really a safeguard he consciously installed, more like a consequence of their shoddy construction, but Zorian was pleased with the end result all the same. [What about the money? I’ll be running out of savings soon, you know.]

[I’ll be able to get you about 20.000 pieces by the end of the week. Will that be enough?]

[For the ingredients? Sure,] confirmed Zorian. [If we have to hire experts, though? I’m not so sure. Good experts are expensive, especially if you’re hiring them on a tight schedule or expect them to be discreet. Hopefully Kael will agree to help us, or else I’ll probably have to hire an alchemist.]

[I’ll leave that to you,] the matriarch said. [You understand the problem far better than I do.]

There was a brief silence as both Zorian and the matriarch considered what to say next, if anything.

[Listen,] the matriarch suddenly said. [Did you know that the aranea sometimes scatter small memory packets into the minds of their males?]

Zorian blinked. What? What did that have to do with anything?

[No,] said Zorian hesitantly. [I can’t say that I did.]

[Well they do,] the matriarch said. [It’s a pretty good way to leave secret messages if you know what you’re doing. If you break the message into sufficiently small chunks and embed it carefully enough into the targets, it’s virtually impossible for anyone without a key to even find them, let alone piece them together into a coherent whole.]

[Why are you telling me this?] Zorian asked.

[Just in case,] the matriarch responded. [Aranea males are far smaller than female ones and very, very cowardly. They’re frightened by fire and loud noises just like any other animal, and most divination spells designed to track aranea do not register them as the same type of creature. Most of the time when an aranean settlement is destroyed, a lot of males will survive the destruction. Leaving messages encoded in their minds is a good way to leave messages from beyond the grave.]

Zorian frowned. So the matriarch did acknowledge that the ambush could go wrong… but why would she leave a message for him in such a roundabout, complicated way?

[Why not just tell me?] he asked.

[It’s probably nothing,] the matriarch said. [And you worry too much as it is. This is really just a precaution in case of the worst outcome. Novelty will give you the key when you see each other next time.]

Before Zorian could continue the discussion, the matriarch cut the connection.

«Very mature,» Zorian mumbled, throwing the disc on the bed beside him. Still, as annoying as the matriarch was right now, she had been nothing but helpful so far, so he would give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she really did have good reasons for her secrecy.

Still, after this restart maybe he should start making his own precautions. Just in case.

At Cyoria’s train station, Zorian waited. It would be a while until Kael and his daughter arrived, and in the meantime Zorian amused himself by messing with the pigeons milling about on the platforms.

Animal minds were paradoxically both harder and easier to affect with psychic powers than human minds. Harder because simpler minds were harder to sense and pin-point, easier because their thoughts were easier to discern and subvert once a psychic finally managed to connect to them.

The pigeons weren’t that hard to sense — not if he had a direct line of sight on one and could devote all his attention on the task — so there was little the birds could do to defend themselves against Zorian’s experimentation. He simply sat on his bench and systematically targeted pigeon after pigeon, practicing his skills. Sometimes he simply tried to make sense of their rudimentary minds without alerting them to his intrusion, other times he tried to flat out hijack their senses or puppeteer their body. Neither task was going terribly well, but it was something to pass the time with and he did have some success. After the 50th pigeon or so, he could distinguish a pigeon that was hungry, sick or in pain from those that weren’t. He could make a pigeon stumble or freeze up for a second, or frighten them until they fled as far away from him as possible.