Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«Well yes. I mean, there are various ‘sending’ spells that simply send a mental message to someone, but you need to cast them again and again every time you want to send something to the target. If you want a proper mental conversation with someone, you create a telepathic link between them and yourself. The main issue being that people often don’t know how to filter their thoughts well and end up sending inappropriate things over the link.»

[Hmm, I guess you could say I continually ‘send’ messages over the link I established between us. I don’t know how to establish a two-way link yet, I’m afraid,] Zorian said contemplatively. The aranea never mentioned anything about two-way telepathic links, and in retrospect it was obvious why — a psychic could use an established link to reply telepathically regardless of who the maker of the link was. Every aranea was psychic, so why would they bother with two-way links? It was something he would have to figure out on his own, probably. [Anyway. Are you ready?]

«Yes,» she nodded. «Feel free to start.»

Unlike him, Tinami didn’t resort to text or numbers, and instead did her best to imagine a random scene out of her life in as much detail as she could make it. The scenes were wholly unexceptional — one of Ilsa’s lectures, an inconsequential conversation between Jade and Neolu as they talked next to Tinami, a walk down the street… it was all very visual, but still very challenging. His little sister was still much harder to read, ironically because she wasn’t trying to hide anything from him — her disjointed, stream-of-consciousness succession of thoughts was next to impossible to figure out unless he engaged her in conversation and made her focus on one particular issue.

«Okay, I’m officially jealous,» Tinami huffed. «I’ve been practicing this for three years with my mother and her friends, and I’m nowhere near this good.»

«Don’t feel too bad,» Zorian said. «I have… an unfair advantage.»

«So do I,» Tinami said. «My family has been dabbling in mind magic for generations, and I have their advice. It’s frustrating to realize just how much raw talent can mean in a field like this.»

«Ah, it’s not just raw talent,» Zorian said. «I too have a teacher with generations of mind magic practice.»

She raised her eyebrow at him. «There aren’t very many of those,» she remarked. «I’m pretty sure my mother would know if any of our rivals adopted a new student.»

«Not many human ones you mean,» Zorian smiled. «Your mother definitely wouldn’t know, not unless she keeps tabs on the many colonies of telepathic spiders scattered throughout Altazia.»

Tinami stared at him in silence for a few seconds, before leaning towards him excitedly.

«Telepathic spiders? You mean… you have actually met one of the legendary aranea?»

Legendary? Zorian almost scoffed, but he supposed that the spiders were very good at hiding themselves. While there were humans who knew about them, very few seemed to be willing to advertise their connections to the aranea colonies. Zorian didn’t think it was because of intimidation on behalf of the aranea (or at least not just because of that) — in all likelihood the mages that were ‘in the know’ simply wanted to preserve their monopoly on the business with the aranea and didn’t want rival mages butting in and demanding their piece of the pie.

«Her name is Enthusiastic Seeker of Novelty,» Zorian said. «Would you like to meet her?»

Chapter 026 Soulkill

The temple was just as imposing as it had been the last time Zorian had visited it — the same guardian angels glaring down at him, the same deserted feel to the building and the same creation story carved into the heavy wooden doors. This time he studied the carvings on the door with more interest than he had done the last time, however, since some of the images were rather interesting in light of things he had discovered after his first visit. Specifically, some of the bottom carvings depicted monsters that sprang up from the World Dragon’s flaking heart and these monsters were clearly primordials. They had the whole ‘impossible patchwork creature’ look that seemed to be the primordial’s one defining feature, and they matched the descriptions of well-known primordials he had read about in the books.