Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

Zorian growled as he roughly pushed Kirielle away from him. Fifth time! This was the fifth time the restart terminated after only a handful of days! How many times would Zach need to die before realizing he should back off for a while and try again later? Honestly, Zorian would have reconsidered his approach after the second attempt…

He snatched his glasses from his bed post and stomped off towards the bathroom before Kirielle could gather her wits. The short, irregular restarts were ruining every plan he cared to make, not to mention disrupting his concentration. He really couldn’t do anything substantial while this was going on, other than browsing the library for helpful texts and hoping Zach would quit killing himself on a regular basis. What the hell was the boy trying to do anyway?

He shouldn’t get so worked up over it, though — after all, how much longer could this possibly go on for? 10, 15 restarts?

Yeah. Yeah, that sounded about right…

«Hi Roach!»

Zorian wordlessly gestured for Taiven to come inside before slowly closing the door and shuffling after her. He could feel her impatience at his sluggish pace, but he paid it no heed. He was deliberately stalling, trying to decide what to do.

He fully intended to have a chat with the weird telepathic spiders that inhabited the sewers, but it would be lunacy to go there at this point. There was no guarantee they would be as friendly as they were the last time, and their mind magic made them dangerous even within a time loop. He needed a way to protect his mind before venturing into Cyoria’s underworld, and so far he had only found one ward that protected the caster’s mind in the academy archives. Unfortunately, that particular ward blocked everything related to the mind, mind-based communication spells included. He needed something more selective than that.

But just because he was unwilling to descend into the Dungeon didn’t mean he was content to let Taiven get herself killed by going there either. He wasn’t sure why he cared, exactly — pragmatically speaking, he shouldn’t be bothered, since everything would be reset in a couple of days and she’d be fine again. Still, he was bothered, and since he was forced to have this conversation repeatedly every few days, he could as well find a way to talk her out of going.

He didn’t think for a moment it was going to be easy. Taiven was possibly even more stubborn than Zach.

«So, Taiven, how is life treating you?» he began.

«Eh, so so,» she sighed. «I am trying to secure an apprenticeship but it’s not going all that well. You know how it goes. I got Nirthak to take me as his class assistant this year, so there is that. You wouldn’t happen to have taken non-magical combat as one of your electives?»

«Nope,» Zorian answered cheerfully.

«Figures,» Taiven rolled her eyes. «You really should have, you know? Girls—»

«…love boys who exercise, yes, yes,» Nodded Zorian sagely. «Why are you here, Taiven? You tracked me down here even though I only moved in yesterday and never told anyone which room here is mine. I suppose you used a divination to find me?»

«Uh, yeah,» Taiven confirmed. «Pretty easy thing to do, really.»

«Aren’t these rooms supposed to have some sort of basic warding scheme placed on them?» Zorian inquired.

«I’m pretty sure it’s just rudimentary stuff like fire prevention and basic detection fields to warn the staff about fighting in the hallway and attempted demon summonings and what not,» Taiven shrugged. «Anyway, I’m here to ask you to join me and a couple of others on a job tomorrow.»

Zorian said nothing, patiently listening as she said her sales pitch. It was actually on Monday, not tomorrow — Taiven’s definition of ‘tomorrow’ differed greatly from the standard definition — but other than that, she was actually fairly honest in her explanation of the situation. She even mentioned that there was a small chance they might encounter something very nasty in there, but empathized that she and her friends were totally capable of confronting anything they may find there. Right.

«Anything?» Asked Zorian suspiciously. «You know, I happen to have read up on magical spider breeds, and they can be pretty powerful. A single grey hunter has been known to wipe out entire hunting parties of mages, and they’re no larger than a human at their biggest. Phase spiders can literally jump on you out of nowhere and drag you off into their own private pocket dimension. Some of the breeds are even sentient and have mind magic at their disposal.»

The last one was a joke in more ways than one. Dungeon ecology was a giant mystery, even to mages that specialized in it, and information about monsters that made their home there was very scarce. As such, it was probably not surprising that he could find nothing on sentient telepathic spiders in the academy library, even after conscripting Ibery and Kirithishli on the effort.