Mother of Learning Chapter 68

Historically, Koth had been a frequent target for Ikosian expansionism. The jungles that covered the region were dangerous to traverse and hard to clear, but they held valuable resources that couldn’t be found anywhere else. This made Kothic societies developed and wealthy enough that nobody would scoff at conquering them, yet left the region as a whole politically disunited and fragnted. Thus, Ikosian rulers often tried to bring the region under their thumb, reasoning that a bunch of bickering city-states and small kingdoms could not possibly unite together in ti to repulse them.

But such initiatives were never successful. Koth was very far from Ikosian heartland, over rather inhospitable terrain, and fielding significant armies there was very hard. Additionally, the states of Koth proved quite willing to temporarily set aside their differences in order to resist Ikosian incursions into the region.

One of these unsuccessful campaigns, one that failed particularly dramatically, was the one launched by Awan-Temti Khumbastir. He was one of the more successful Ikosian emperors, but his success was built upon many small successes and the gradual prosperity of the empire under his reign. He had no grand feats to his na, and he feared his rule would be forgotten as soon as his corpse cooled. Thus, he set his sights on the one thing he felt would immortalize his rule for all ti. By conquering Koth – sothing that his predecessors had repeatedly failed at – he would acquire the glory he craved and prove himself an emperor worth rembering.

It helped that Koth was being increasingly united by the rapidly growing League of Sawosi at the ti, fueling fears that Koth might coalesce into a real competitor to the Empire if allowed to develop unchecked.

The campaign was a failure. Sure, the Ikosian armies had their successes in the beginning, and most historians agree that the war was a close one until the very end. But what does that matter when the last battle had been such a spectacular loss for the Ikosians? Frustrated by the slow progress of the campaign and by the very real possibility he would be returning ho in failure, Awan-Temti assud personal command of the army and led it straight into a trap the League of Sawosi had set up for him. The resulting battle was a total rout for the Ikosian army, which was then forced to retreat deep into the dangerous jungles that made up the interior of the continent. Most of the force perished there, picked off by diseases, wildlife or environntal hazards. This included Awan-Temti himself, who would vanish without a trace sowhere in the trackless jungles. His corpse and belongings were never found, and the uncertainty of whether he was really dead or just missing would cripple attempts of his successor to assu the throne for quite a few years, leading to a period of great instability and turmoil for the empire. In a strange way, Awan-Temti had actually achieved the fa he had sought when he went to Koth – the campaign of conquest would beco a popular cautionary tale against arrogance and glory-seeking, his na never to be forgotten.

As for the League of Sawosi, they only had a short while to celebrate their victory. In order to fuel their war machine, they had taxed and arm-twisted their vassals and mber states to such a massive extent that they revolted against the League the mont the Ikosians had left. Its armies devastated by the war and its treasury empty, the League was unable to respond to this challenge against its authority, and quickly fell apart. No other power would ever co as close to unifying Koth as the League of Sawosi had co before the war.

Zorian was getting a little off-track in his musings, though – the important thing was that Awan-Temti had been carrying quite a few imperial treasures on him when he disappeared, and this possibly included the imperial orb. This was not actually stated anywhere in official Ikosian history, which was very quiet about the fate of the orb, but several historians had noted that imperial chroniclers mysteriously stopped ntioning the orb in the aftermath of the campaign. It was likely that Awan-Temti’s successors had been unwilling to admit that one of the artifacts of the first emperor had been lost in that campaign and had done their best to quietly sweep the issue under the rug by ignoring the orb’s existence from that mont onward. In any case, attempts to locate Awan-Temti’s final resting place were not exactly a rare occurrence. The orb aside, the rest of the treasures he had been carrying were a tempting prize on their own. None of these attempts were successful, but Zorian was ard with sothing none of the previous treasure hunters had had in their possession – an infallible way to detect the presence of the orb when at a considerable distance from himself, regardless of any wards or other obstacles that may be foiling mundane divination.

“You have an in-built artifact detector,” Dain summarized, giving him a jealous glare.

“Only in regards to a certain type of artifact, but yes,” confird Zorian smugly. “I still need soone to point in the right direction, of course. I was originally going to ask you for help in that regard. I an, you’re supposed to be this famous treasure hunter and all…”

“I am a famous treasure hunter,” Dain pointed out.

“Right,” Zorian nodded. “So I figured that you might be able to help narrow down the search region faster. Give a few tips, connect to the right people, maybe even get personally involved. If you’re already searching for the orb yourself, though, then everything just got a lot easier.”

Zorian was also reassured that soone had independently co to the sa conclusion he and Zach had regarding the orb’s location. It ant they probably weren’t pursuing a fake lead.

Dain gave him an indecipherable look, staring at him in silence for a mont. Finally, he slowly shook his head and spoke.

“I don’t know whether I love you or hate you right now,” he told Zorian. “On one hand, I have been stuck with this thing for months now, and it’s driving crazy. My own team had begun to lose faith in and had started complaining about wasting ti on this. You swooping in with a solution in hand is exciting, but a part of is incensed that sobody else is going to hand a solution to this search. It feels like you’ve just stolen so of my thunder, you know?”

Oh, Zorian knew that feeling very, very well. But no matter, the really interesting thing was that Dain’s own team was starting to mutiny. That explained a lot about what was happening, honestly. Such as why Dain was currently inside the Taramatula estate instead of out there in the field, trying to find the orb as soon as he could.

“Is that why you decided to take a break from everything for a while?” Zorian asked. “To give your team a chance to calm down a little?”

“Ugh,” Dain said, grimacing. “Sotis you’re too perceptive for your own good, Zorian. Yeah, I wanted to keep going but they were being a big bunch of babies and complaining about sleeping in the jungle for several weeks and whatnot. Eventually we got into a bit of an argunt and things got too heated for my liking, so I decided to give everyone so rest until I could rethink my approach.”

Hmm. From what Dain had told him and Zach earlier, Dain had had his team focus on one specific area of the jungle for a while now, since he was sure he’d had the right spot identified. aning that he was probably telling them to comb through the exact sa area over and over again with no results. Zorian wasn’t surprised that they’d eventually lost their patience.

“Anyway,” continued Dain, “give a few days to gear up and organize everyone again, and we can go see if that detector of yours is as good as you say.”

“Wait, you’re taking your entire team with you?” Zorian said, frowning. “Why? Can’t we just pop over there quickly and check things out?”

“No, because it’s a huge area covered in dense, monster-infested jungle,” Dain told him. “I can only teleport us to a few places there in a safe and reliable manner. The rest of the way we’ll have to walk, and I don’t feel safe doing that with only three people. I’m good, and I’m guessing you and Zach are too, but that’s not enough. Even the best mage is vulnerable to surprise attacks, and there is plenty of opportunity for that here.”

“I thought you said you had it narrowed down to one spot,” Zorian pointed out curiously.

“Well, relative to the huge swathes of jungle that cover the entire region? Yeah, I did,” Dain said, a little defensively. “It’s still a lot of ground to cover, though. Why do you think I’ve been stuck on this for this long?”

Zorian was about to try and argue that everything would still be so much faster if it was just the three of them, but Dain cut him off with a warning stare.

“Look,” Dain said, “I know you’re on a ti limit here, but be reasonable. It’s a dangerous land full of chaleon drakes, devourer mantises, howlers, thorn swallow flocks and gods know what else. Stumbling about in haste will see us all killed in a matter of hours. Besides… Orissa is going to kill if I try to do this without her, and my team will be waiting for their turn right behind her. They were a part of this from the start. I would end up looking like a petty glory hound if I cut them out of the endeavor just before we claim the prize. I’m not wrecking my reputation like that. I’m sure you can spare a day or two on this.”

And that was how Zach and Zorian found themselves searching for the orb of the first emperor with Dain, Orissa and 15 other people.

* * *

When Zorian had conceded to Dain’s request to organize a full-fledged expedition for the orb, he’d known the whole endeavor was bound to turn into sothing of a spectacle. He had been absolutely right about that, but he had also completely misjudged what would cause it. He had thought the situation would gradually develop as he and Zach were forced to reveal their capabilities, piece by piece, during the course of the expedition. What actually happened was that Dain outright told people that his little brother was secretly a master mage that rivaled him in skill, that Zach was similarly talented, and that the two of them had found so kind of imperial seal that let them detect other imperial artifacts nearby.

This wasn’t really what Zorian had had in mind when Dain had told him that he would handle explanations and that Zorian needn’t worry about thinking up an excuse for his powers. He was tempted to ask Dain why he didn’t tell them all about the ti loop too, but he was afraid that the madman might actually go for it. How the hell did Dain think this was a good solution to the problem?

Dain also decided, without even bothering to consult with Zorian, that field deploynt would happen via gate usage. Dain would teleport to the target area on his own and then coordinate with Zorian to open a dinsional passage between the Taramatula estate (where the rest of the team would be waiting) and their destination. This would admittedly speed things up considerably, since not everyone in the group could teleport and there were a lot of supplies to transport as well… but it ant revealing to the whole group that Zorian could open gates. Dain saying that Zorian was a master mage is one thing, and might be passed off as Dain being biased in favor of his family, but a mage that could open gates at Zorian’s age naturally raised a lot of eyebrows.

Annoyingly, everyone seed to quietly accept that Dain could cast the gate spell, even though the only reason he had that capability was because Zorian had taken the ti to teach it to him in this restart. He normally wouldn’t have bothered with that, but entering a Black Room had severed him from his simulacrums outside of it, dispersing them in very short order. This ant that he would have to keep sending simulacrums on a multi-day journey to Koth every ti he erged from one, which was annoying and quite impractical. As such, he decided to try and teach the gate spell to Dain so he could open the gate to Koth with his help.

Fair is fair, though – it took only two days for Dain to learn the spell, which was kind of amazing. He was already extrely good at dinsionalism, it turned out, having done the relevant shaping exercises and practiced with various types of teleportation. He had simply never found anyone willing to teach him the actual spell. Experts that could cast the gate spell were very rare and they didn’t share that kind of magic with others lightly. Not even if the person was a famous treasure hunter like Dain.

In any case, Zorian was more than a little annoyed at how Dain had handled the expedition preparations and thus decided to vent a little by showing off more than he had initially planned. He took four of his combat golems, which he had been mass producing in preparation for the assault on the Ibasan gate beneath Cyoria, and brought them with him to the expedition as his bodyguards. He probably didn’t need them, but the look on Dain’s face when he stomped into the Taramatula estate with four golems in tow was priceless. It would also serve as a useful test of how his golems handled unfamiliar environnts, he supposed.

Finally, the gate was opened and 19 people (plus four golems) entered the area that supposedly held the orb – a dense, shadowy patch of jungle known to the locals simply as ‘Dai Hurna’. Green Hell.

“A simple, but apt description,” one of Dain’s team mbers told him. He was an older, weathered-looking man that served as the group’s main ward expert. Both in making and breaking them. “I’ve been in more dangerous places, but this one is near the top of the list. Try to stay near the center of the group. You and your buddy may be good, but so things can only be acquired with age.”

Zorian had been rather dismissive of the man’s words at the ti, since the weathered old mage obviously did not know the full story about him and Zach, but he would soon learn there was so wisdom to be found in the old man’s words. The vegetation alone was a huge obstacle to exploring the area – there were no jungle trails crisscrossing the place, and the lack of sunlight made the area shadowy and dim, making it hard to spot dangers and navigate through the foliage. Zorian’s mind sense helped there, allowing him to sense the minds of predatory animals with relative ease, but not every danger had a thinking mind behind it. So of the vegetation was mobile and predatory, for instance, but not especially intelligent. Zorian found that out the hard way when a tangle of jungle vines wrapped themselves around him and tried to drag him off into a pit when he got a little careless. Thankfully, his golem bodyguards managed to fight them off long enough for Zorian to clear his head and ignite the air around himself, forcing them to back off.

“You are lucky,” the weathered mage told him afterwards. “That fisher vine was a young one. Older ones grow razor-sharp thorns along their length. I’m sure you can imagine what would have happened to you if one of those got ahold of you. Though admittedly, older fisher plants are easier to spot than young ones…”

How embarrassing. Still, at least he knew that he had made the bodyguard golems correctly – they had reacted quickly and precisely to the crisis and managed to keep the plant from dragging him off without breaking his bones in the process. Making golems that knew how to hold back their full strength like that was pretty hard, Zorian had found.

Zorian conceded the man’s point after that and did not stray from the main group too much. Zach, on the other hand, did not let that incident scare him off. He wandered around the area freely, unconcerned with the various dangers crawling about the place. Zorian supposed that Zach had a good reason to be so fearless, considering he had literal decades of experience at adventuring in dangerous environnts, unlike Zorian.

“Stop!” Zorian called out to the group. They all obeyed him. He knew that so of the people gathered here looked down on him because of his age and perceived nepotism, but nobody doubted his ability to detect danger anymore. He pointed at the area slightly to the right of the group. “Two chaleon drakes up ahead. Big ones.”

Chaleon drakes were the primary danger of the area. They were tough, agile, fast, could change the color of their hide so rapidly they were virtually invisible to the human eye, and routinely reached about 3.5 ters in length. They also sotis hunted in groups, and had no compunctions about preying on humans. Green Hell was absolutely crawling with them for so reason.

Fortunately for the group, they had Zorian and his mind sense. Chaleon drakes might be a huge danger to most travelers, but to Zorian, their highly developed minds stood out like glittering stars in the night sky. The chaleon drakes were equipped with more than just speed, size and virtual invisibility; they were also quite intelligent by animal standards. On the verge of sapience, in Zorian’s estimation. Maybe even there, to an extent. This was no doubt a boon against most opponents, and did much to explain how they could give seasoned mages so much trouble, but it made their ambushes painfully obvious to a psychic of Zorian’s level.

Upon hearing Zorian’s warning, three people changed their stances and focused their attention on the area he indicated. One was Orissa, another was a young woman in bright blue clothes nad Kirma and the third was a burly bearded man nad Torun. These three were the scouts of the group, scanning their surroundings for dangers, obstacles and even the orb itself. A bit pointless, that last one, but being told that Zorian can simply detect the presence of the orb from a considerable distance seed to have awoken so kind of competitive spirit in the three.

Each of the three had their own thods of gathering information. Orissa’s was through her bees, which she had scattered throughout the jungle around them. She carried on her back a huge backpack-looking thing that was actually a portable beehive. A constant stream of bees was constantly leaving the backpack under Orissa’s direction or returning to it to report their findings. It looked pretty heavy, but Orissa was carrying it with practiced ease. Zorian was unsure whether that was because Orissa was stronger than she looked, or if the hive was lightened in so way.

Orissa’s bees looked fairly mundane to Zorian’s amateur eyes. They didn’t have any special ntal signature either – Zorian had initially thought that maybe they were unified into so kind of collective, like the cranium rats, but he found no evidence of that. He asked Orissa about them, and she admitted that the Taramatula couldn’t actually access the senses of their bees directly – instead they had so thod of ‘talking’ to the bees and getting usable information in the process.

Zorian could tell that whatever thod the Taramatula used to direct and talk to their bees, it wasn’t a structured spell. Orissa never did any chanting or gesturing, nor did she use any obvious spell aids. The process seed to be almost like breathing to her, as evidenced by the fact she could direct her bees and talk to Zorian at the sa ti without any visible strain.

Kirma, the blue-clothed woman, was probably the most mundane of the three scouting mages. She was clearly using classical scrying and other divinations for her work. What was noteworthy about her was the divination compass she was using. It was a large, heavy looking, multi-layered contraption of brass and silver, its shape vaguely reminiscent of a lotus flower. The ‘petals’ were densely inscribed with mysterious glyphs and shapes that Zorian found hard to puzzle out through casual inspection.

The lotus device seed to be highly effective, because Kirma was cycling through so rather complicated divinations with a speed that even Zorian would struggle to match.

Finally, there was Torun. Torun was constantly surrounded by a swarm of eyes that floated around him, twitching to-and-fro as sothing caught their attention. Each one was different, differing in size and internal structure of the eye from the others, and they looked very lifelike. To be precise, they looked like they had been extracted from corpses of various magical beings famous for their visual powers and then preserved in so fashion. Which was probably exactly what happened.

Zorian was about 90 percent sure that Torun couldn’t actually see through all of his eyes. In fact, he suspected that the man was limited to rapidly cycling between them instead of being able to process visual information from multiple eyes at once. There also seed to be so severe distance limitations involved, because he never sent them too far into the jungle to scout things.

“You are once again correct,” Orissa remarked after a while. “If I may ask, how are you detecting the drakes from such a distance? Is this also the work of this mysterious imperial inheritance you stumbled upon?”

“No, it’s just mind magic,” Zorian said. He could tell most people suspected as much by now, so there was no need to be all secretive. A bunch of them had already cast so kind of ntal defense spell on themselves when they thought Zorian wasn’t looking. “It’s sothing of a specialty of mine.”

“I see,” Orissa said, nodding. “I did suspect this was the case.”

“Hey, little Kazinski,” Torun called out to him. Zorian gave him an annoyed glare. That seed to be the newest na Dain’s group had given him, and he hated it. “How good is that mind magic of yours? Do you think you could snare one of those drakes and bring him over?”

Hmm. An interesting question. Chaleon drakes had considerable magic resistance, but it was nothing absurd. He just might be able to subvert one and puppeteer it for a while. However, after he did so subtle probing of their minds…

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Not these ones, at least. They’re a bonded pair, and would never abandon one another. I could dominate one of them perhaps, but the other would follow after them and defend them.”

“Unnecessary fights will only slow us down,” Dain stated. “Leave the drakes alone, Zorian. Torun has enough eyes to play with, anyway.”

“You can never have enough eyes,” Torun said. “But actually, I was after the beast itself this ti. Chaleon drakes, much like their more mundane cousins, have the curious ability to move each of their eyes independently of one another and thus focus on multiple things at once. And they have four of them. I suspect I could learn… interesting things from them.”

“There is no shortage of chaleon drakes around here,” the withered old mage from earlier said. “The kid can get you one later. Preferably a young one, so it does less damage when it inevitably breaks out of its bindings and rampages throughout the camp.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Dain told him. “Anyway, we’ll just go around them, I g-”

“No need,” said Zorian. “They’re leaving. They’ve noticed that we’ve stopped walking for too long and found it suspicious, so they’ve called off the ambush.”

“Even better,” Dain said, pleased. “Onward we go, then.”

After a few minutes, Zach stopped his wandering and approached him.

“I’ve thought of sothing,” he said. “What if you shapeshifted into a bird and simply flew around for a bit? I bet you could cover ground pretty fast that way.”

“I’d be dead in a matter of minutes,” Zorian said, shaking his head. He’d thought of that idea already and discarded it imdiately afterwards. “The trees are pretty high here, and full of things that prey on birds. If I fly high enough to be safe, the ground would be beyond the marker’s detection radius. If I fly low, I probably get eaten by sothing.”

“Ah,” Zach winced. “Yeah, I didn’t think of that. And now that I think of it, the orb could easily end up being underground. Probably the best place to get so safety in a place like this.”

“That’s it!” Dain shouted, hitting himself in the forehead. He had evidently been eavesdropping on their conversation, the jerk. “That’s what I’ve been missing all this ti. Underground! We should have been looking for the damn orb underground instead of simply searching through the foliage! I’m such an idiot…”

After that, Dain called for everyone to stop and make a base camp so they could discuss things for a while. With this done, the group quickly ca up with a plan to perform so kind of geomantic ritual spell that would map out the basic shape of the underworld and narrow down their search on that basis. Honestly, Zorian was feeling a bit lost there – he had studied many things over the course of the ti loop, but ritual spells involving more than one caster were not one of them. He mostly kept to himself while the rest of the group was setting up the ritual. He thought about striking up a conversation with his fellow ti traveler, but Zach seed to be trying to hit on Kirma, so Zorian left him alone for now.

Eventually, his solitude was broken when Dain pulled him to the edge of the camp, where Orissa was already waiting, so that the three of them could have a conversation about sothing. Zorian already had a pretty good idea what this was about.

“You’re interested in my mind magic, aren’t you?” Zorian asked Orissa, giving her a shrewd look.

“Ah, well…” Orissa fumbled slightly. “Was I that obvious? Yes, I must admit the topic intrigues .”

“It’s a personal secret,” Zorian told her bluntly.

“Zorian!” Dain protested, jumping to his fiancée’s aid.

“But I might be willing to share so of it if Dain agrees to honestly answer a few questions for ,” Zorian said, turning towards Dain with a cheery smile.

“What kind of questions?” Dain asked hesitantly.

“Questions about your own mind magic,” Zorian told him, his smile turning into a frown. “Questions like why you never told I was a natural mind mage when I was a child. You had to have known, as a fellow natural mind mage, but you never said anything and left to suffer alone.”

“W-What?” Dain said, erupting into a burst of outraged laughter. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know you’re like , Dain,” Zorian told him. “I can sense it. And you can sense as well.”

“No, I can’t,” Dain protested, shaking his head vigorously. “Maybe I have a potential for the sort of ntal bullshit you’re capable of, but I was never taught how to do that. They told I was an empath and taught how to turn the ability on and off, and that’s it, okay? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re saying you never noticed anything unusual about ?” Zorian asked, frowning.

“Well…” Dain laughed nervously. “I noticed you were very easy to read… but hell, that could have ant anything!”

“You suspected the truth,” Zorian accused.

“Okay, so I did!” Dain admitted. “But I couldn’t be sure, and why out myself for a re suspicion? Especially to a brother that hated and constantly got into trouble! And really, what if it was true? What of it? If you really were an empath like , that only made your actions more baffling and annoying.”

“What good is empathy like that with no control?” Zorian snapped at him. “I couldn’t even walk into a crowd without consequences! If you had taken a bit of ti to teach how to turn it off, or at least told what to watch out for, I wouldn’t have been nearly as ‘baffling and annoying’ as you thought I was!”

The ‘discussion’ then degenerated into several monts of incoherent shouting and accusations before Orissa decided to act and stopped the argunt by interposing herself in between them.

“Why don’t we all take a break for a mont and calm down,” Orissa said. Her bees synchronized their buzzing into an ominous hum. “You two are just talking past each other at this point. You’re making assumptions about each other that clearly aren’t true.”

Zorian scoffed, and almost snapped at her as well for trying to use such petty intimidation tactics on him. As if he were afraid of a bunch of bees. Still, she kind of had a point that he and Dain would probably be better served to sit down and have a more… sedate discussion about the issue.

Dain backed down even sooner, too smitten with Orissa to really stand up to her on the issue.

Having successfully defused the situation, Orissa then excused herself, claiming this was sothing they had to work out on their own and that she didn’t want to intrude. Dain tried to protest and keep her there, but Zorian was grateful for her action and gave her a small nod as she left.

After a while, they started talking. As it turns out, Dain had been empathic for as long as he could rember. His empathy was nothing like Zorian’s, however. Dain’s empathy was weaker than Zorian’s had been, but far more controllable. He never suffered any headaches in crowds, and he could focus it on specific people at will. He realized early on that this ability was sothing unique to him, and that he could get far more out of it if nobody knew he had it. Thus, he kept it a secret from everyone. During his ti in the academy, he had realized that he was an empath and secured himself instruction from an older empath who had taught him how to turn his ability on and off and so minor tricks to improve its sensitivity and selectiveness.

Dain had never developed a proper mind sense, and couldn’t identify other Open people on sight like Zorian could. Even his empathy was crude and unsophisticated by Zorian’s standards.

“I suspected you might be like ,” Dain said. “But then again, your actions were kind of strange for soone who could sense people’s emotions like I could, and that gave pause. It never even occurred to that your empathy might not work exactly the sa as mine did. I still don’t understand what went wrong in your case when my empathy was such a boon to . Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I did,” Zorian said. “Mother and Father said they would throw in a madhouse if I didn’t shut up about that topic.”

“Ah ha ha…” Dain laughed nervously. “I’m sure they were just joking around. You are way too sensitive about these things, Zorian.”

Zorian did not attempt to argue with him. Since their parents had always fawned on Dain so much, he had a very skewed image of them. There was probably no helping that.

“Look on the bright side, though,” Dain continued, trying to change the topic. “Since you had no preconceptions about your ability being empathy and thus limited to sensing emotions, you developed it into sothing far more amazing. I’m really jealous of that, to be honest. I didn’t know there was more to my ability until I t Orissa and the Taramatula.”

Hmm. If the Taramatula knew about Dain’s innate mind magic talent, it was no wonder they were so understanding about Orissa wanting to marry him. He was famous, good looking, a mage prodigy and a natural mind mage? Truthfully, if Zorian was in Dain’s place, he would be wondering if Orissa ever actually loved him or was simply going after him out of sheer opportunism.

“What did Orissa want to talk to about, anyway?” Zorian asked.

“Oh. Well, I think you kind of already gave her an answer to that,” Dain said. “She wanted to see if the ntal ability you were using is the sa one I have.”

“Ah, I see,” Zorian nodded. “The Taramatula are hoping it’s inheritable, I’m guessing.”

“Is it?” Dain asked.

“Probably,” Zorian shrugged. “I’ve heard that abilities like that never just spring out of nowhere in a child, and it’s a bit of a stretch that the two of us have the sa ability through luck alone. There is clearly so kind of inheritance thing going on, but it’s hard to say whether your children would be guaranteed to inherit it.”

“A lot of bloodlines aren’t guaranteed for children to inherit in their raw state,” Dain said. “There are often artificial thods of ensuring inheritance involved, such as specialized potions and rituals. I doubt the Taramatula will care much.”

Any further discussion was interrupted when one of Dain’s teammates ca up to them to notify them the ritual was ready, and that they were only waiting for Dain.

“Alright, we’ll continue with this topic so other ti,” Dain said. “For now, let’s focus on finally tracking down that damn orb.”

* * *

Like many places, Green Hell had an extensive network of underground tunnels running beneath it. Indeed, the local underworld was unusually complex, which helped explain why the area was so rich in ambient mana and why it was so abundant in dangerous wildlife. Even if one limited themselves to surface layers of the Dungeon, reasoning that Awan-Temti wouldn’t have wanted to descend too far, that was a lot of tunnels to cover. Thus, when Dain’s team presented them all with a three-dinsional illusion of the local underground, Zorian could only stare at it in confusion. How the hell does this information help them narrow down their search? They would still have to walk through most of the area to cover all the tunnels reasonably close to the surface.

However, Dain seed to see sothing important in the floating image, because he soon pointed his finger at five places on the map.

“Here, here, here, here and here,” he said, poking the illusion in five different places, causing it to waver for a second before correcting itself. The spots looked completely random to Zorian. “We should focus on these areas to start with.”

“I don’t understand,” Zorian complained to Zach. “On what basis is he picking those five places?”

He had been hoping that Zach, having decades of experience in adventuring, would see sothing in Dain’s choices that he missed. His hopes turned out to have been misplaced, however.

“No idea,” Zach told him. “That map is a total ss to . He’s probably just bullshitting to make himself look more knowledgeable and experienced. I used to do that a lot when I ended up in charge of sothing. Never let your peons know you actually have no idea what you’re doing.”

“I can hear you two just fine, you know,” Dain told them in an annoyed tone.

“I wasn’t trying to be quiet,” Zach pointed out.

Dain didn’t reply. Instead he simply pointed them towards the nearest of the five places and motioned for everyone to start moving.

They were only halfway to the first spot when Zorian suddenly stopped. He had been spamming Key detection requests to his marker on a regular basis as they walked and now it actually reacted to sothing.

He found the orb.

“It’s here,” Zorian said excitedly.

“What? What’s here?” Dain asked in confusion.

“The orb, of course,” Zorian said. Was he intentionally being stupid? “It’s here, I can sense it.”

“Do you an it’s right below us, or…?” asked Zach, speculatively looking at the ground beneath his feet. Probably considering how best to excavate the huge amount of dirt between them and the nearest tunnel.

“No, but close,” Zorian said, pointing towards the north-east.

The group stared in the indicated direction for a while, as if that was going to help them see the orb through all the dirt and vegetation that was in the way.

“Is there anything notable in that direction?” Dain asked Kirma. She was the one who kept detailed maps of the region, stored in her lotus device.

She quickly consulted her device for an answer.

“Actually… yes, there is,” she said hesitantly. “There is a chaleon drake nesting ground over in that direction. Because the place is so relatively prominent, it was one of the first places we checked.”

“I rember now,” Dain said. “Chassanah insisted we check it out. Said that ofcourse the orb is in the most dangerous place in the area, how could it be anywhere else?”

He pointed at the weathered old man who had advised Zorian caution earlier.

“And I was right, see?” Chassanah said. “We should have looked harder.”

“But I don’t understand,” Kirma protested. “We searched that place. There is nothing there.”

“We never actually set foot in the place, though,” Torun pointed out. “We just checked it out remotely.”

“We were thorough,” Kirma insisted. “There was nothing there. Awan-Temti was traveling with his entire entourage when he disappeared and was carrying a hefty supply train. We saw no evidence that a group of that size perished there.”

“It’s been a long ti since Awan-Temti walked the earth,” Torun said, shrugging. “And it’s possible the fool got separated from his entourage and perished there alone. Maybe the orb is buried under so rock in one of the caves, and is protected against divinations.”

“I… suppose,” Kirma reluctantly conceded. She seed unwilling to admit she may have missed the orb in her earlier search. She probably saw it as a blow against her personal pride.

A decision was made to make another attempt at searching the place. The group approached the nesting ground as close as possible without provoking the chaleon drakes into swarming them and then systematically scried the place.

The place was actually not that big. Neither the cenote itself nor the caves dug into its walls were connected to the Dungeon, so there was only so much ground that their spells had to cover. Despite that, no amount of divinations, remote scouts and other information gathering thods could find the orb. There was no evidence of any kind of treasure there.

“It’s definitely there,” Zorian insisted stubbornly. He knew what his marker was telling him. “It’s right there in that biggest cave near the bottom of the cenote – the one that looks natural instead of being artificially dug up by the chaleon drakes.”

“We already searched that one a million tis with everything we could think of,” Kirma said, sounding very annoyed with him. “Torun even risked sending one of his rarer eyes in there, the one that can see through solid objects. There is nothing there, okay!? Your legacy is malfunctioning.”

Zorian sighed. There was no point in arguing about this, anymore.

“I need to get physical access to that cave,” he told Zach. “I’m sure I can find it, but I need to be actually there, not watching things through a divination screen or a remote sensor.”

“Got it,” Zach said, rising to his feet and dusting himself off. “I’ll deal with the lizards, you just stay behind and keep them from flanking or sothing.”

“Not so fast, you two,” Dain told them. “Do you honestly think we would just stay on the sidelines and watch you either get horribly killed or claim the orb for yourselves? That’s a lose-lose proposition. We ca here together, and we’ll execute this assault together as well.”

“This is stupid,” Kirma complained.

“We’re doing it anyway,” Dain said. “If Zorian says the orb is there, it’s there. However, let’s not charge into the cenote like idiots. I’d rather induce them to swarm out and blunder into a trap. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

* * *

In the depths of the Kothic jungle, a fierce battle was raging. On one side there were nearly a hundred chaleon drakes charging in defense of their hos and young, and on the other side was a group of 19 people that had brazenly thrown irritating gas into the cenote to flush them out. Though the chaleon drakes looked brutish, they were not dumb. They knew they were being provoked, but they also knew they had to answer this challenge. This wasn’t the first ti soone had tried to take their cenote habitat away from them, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Dain’s group had set up a minefield between themselves and the cenote when they had provoked the chaleon drakes, but they had underestimated their opponents. Rather than launch a frontal charge at Dain’s group, the chaleon drakes split their group into two halves and charged at them in two wide arcs, aiming to hit their flanks from both directions.

One might think the drakes had spotted the trap and reacted accordingly, but Zorian could peer into their minds and knew they hadn’t. Cold, hard experience had taught this particular group not to face their enemies head on if they could avoid it, especially if they were human.

The two groups crashed into each other and the chaleon drakes ca out for the worse in the process. They were impressive beasts, fast and strong, but their strengths were most pronounced when attacking from an ambush. Their virtual invisibility did not work well if they were constantly on the move and the lightning-fast tongue attack they liked to use as an opening strike was less effective on a creature that expected it.

It didn’t help that Dain’s group had several powerful mages, including Zach.

With a practiced movent, Zorian fired a glittering orange star at the chaleon drake in front of him. The large reptile reacted with impressive agility, throwing itself to the side to avoid the projectile and folding its front claws over its face to protect its eyes from the imminent explosion. And the explosion did co, just like the chaleon drake predicted, singeing its scales but not doing any truly critical damage.

It landed right on its feet with the nimbleness of a housecat, its four conical eyes whirring around, each in its own direction, in an attempt to reorient itself. Finally, it fixed its front two eyes on Zorian, the other two eyes twitching about for any hint of an attack from behind and it opened its large, toothy mouth wide open.

It was the mistake that Zorian had been waiting for. He launched a force lance at the chaleon drake and then imdiately followed it with a double-layered shield around himself, casting them so quickly that it almost appeared as if he cast two spells simultaneously. The chaleon drake shot its spear-like tongue at Zorian, punching through one layer of his shield but failing to penetrate the second. Before it could retract its tongue for another go, however, the force lance hit it straight in the throat through its open mouth, bypassing the tough scales that protected its body.

The drake dropped on the ground imdiately, kicking and thrashing about like it was having a seizure, kicking up plus of dust in its death throes. Zorian spent a second to make sure it was down for good and then turned his attention to the rest of the targets.

He was just in ti to see Chassanah stumble over an ill-placed rock and fall to the ground so distance away from him. His opponent, one of the slightly smaller chaleon drakes that only barely reached 3 ters in length, imdiately took advantage of this to try and pounce at him.

Fortunately, Zorian had his golems scattered through the entire group, and one was nearby. The golem, devoid of self-preservation and acting under Zorian’s telepathic orders, launched itself at the chaleon drake with a full-body tackle. It crashed into the chaleon drake’s flank, causing it to veer off-course and giving Chassanah enough ti to recover and get back to his feet.

“You okay, old man?” Zorian asked him, running up to him to make sure he didn’t hit his head in the fall or sothing. The chaleon drake seed to be busy slamming his golem repeatedly into the ground, outraged that its interference had costed it its kill.

“I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head. “How embarrassing. Here I am, lecturing the younger generation about the need for modesty and caution and whatnot, and then I make a stupid mistake like this. Bah! It’s true as they say, you learn things all your life and still die a fool.”

Looking around the battlefield, Zorian realized that the chaleon drakes were getting beaten back at every front. On one side, Orissa was using her bees to attack the sensitive eyes of the drakes, making them flail around in panic as they attempted to dislodge such tiny opponents from themselves. Dain and other mbers of his team then finished off the blinded drakes by focusing their fire on them one at a ti. On the other, Zach disdained any sort of fancy tactics and simply used a pair of floating black swords to slice any chaleon drake that ca close to pieces. The swords seed to pass through the beasts’ tough hide without resistance, killing them instantly. The drakes eventually grew fearful to even approach him, choosing instead to pursue other targets.

Soon, the chaleon drakes seed to collectively realize that the confrontation wasn’t going well for them and started to retreat. Amusingly, so of them chose to retreat directly through the minefield that they had missed in the initial charge, which resulted in another couple of fatalities among their number without Dain’s group needing to do anything to make it happen. Only a few died before the rest learned to stay clear of that area, however.

Taking stock of the situation after the battle, Zorian noted that no one in Dain’s group died in the fighting, so this could be safely described as a resounding victory. Even though things could have gone a lot smoother than this, in his opinion.

However, there was a problem. While the chaleon drakes retreated, they did not flee entirely. They simply withdrew towards the cenote and then stopped. They seed unwilling to give up their ho, even if they knew they were beaten.

They started hissing loudly in their direction, puffing themselves up to look bigger and making threatening movent towards them.

“Are… are they trying to intimidate us or sothing?” Dain asked incredulously.

“I think so, yeah,” Zorian said.

“They lost a fight and now they’re resorting to threats instead? That’s amusingly outrageous,” Torun said. “I guess there is no harm in trying, from their perspective. If it works, great. If it doesn’t, eh… it was worth a try.”

The threatening display didn’t dissuade them from advancing, of course. The orb was down there, so getting access to the cenote was a must. However, when they started moving towards the cenote again, the chaleon drakes changed their behavior. They stopped trying to intimidate them and instead threw their heads into the air and started to… wail.

Zorian did not know how to describe it. It wasn’t really a wail in the human sense, but the sound was loud, repetitive and pitiful. And all the chaleon drakes were doing it in unison. It was like the entire group in front of them was cursing the heavens for abandoning them.

“Damn, these things are actually making feel sorry for them a little,” Dain complained. “I kind of feel like a villain here.”

“They’re not crying,” Zorian said, a terrible realization growing in the back of his head. “They’re calling for help. Summoning assistance.”

“They’re what?” Dain frowned. “Kirma, can you check–”

The entire group stumbled as a tremor shook the earth beneath them, centered on the cenote.

“What the hell was that!?” Dain demanded. It wasn’t clear who he was talking to, but it was Kirma who eventually answered, after consulting her lotus device.

“The water in the cenote,” she said. “It’s churning…”

Then Zorian felt it. Before, the cenote felt mostly dead to his senses, and even scrying from the group failed to locate anything of interest. Now, however, Zorian could feel a mind dwelling there. Sothing big, an…

…and hungry.

“Okay, tactical retreat, tactical retreat,” Zorian said gesturing everyone to start retreating from the cenote. He noticed that the chaleon drakes had stopped wailing and instead looked rather expectant and… almost gleeful. “We have sothing seriously big and hostile coming up from there. I think–”

He didn’t have ti to think. Sothing huge and dark blue unfolded itself out of the cenote. At first Zorian thought he was looking at so kind of animated tree or a giant sea anemone, but then the ‘branches’ stilled for a second and it beca obvious what he was looking at.

It was a hydra. A really, really big one. Eight draconic-looking heads observed the world around it with interest, eventually zeroing in on the group of humans in the distance. Its eight mouths opened up slightly, exposing rows and rows of dagger-like teeth, and began to salivate.

“Oh,” said Zach happily in the resulting silence, his eyes shining with a fire that Zorian rarely saw in him. “Looks like I might have so actual fun here after all!”

As if reacting to his statent, the hydra opened all eight of its mouths and let loose a deafening roar.