78. Grinding Stone

Chapter 078
Grinding Stone

Airships were not held in very high regard among people who cared about such things. The idea of a flying vessel was something that had captivated mankind since time immemorial, of course, but every concrete design for such a vessel had been disappointing. After all, although magic could make a ship fly easily enough, doing so on a long-term basis was very expensive in terms of mana. Moreover, this cost increased massively if one wanted to not just fly, but fly fast and retain a healthy amount of maneuverability in the process, too. This was why very few mages employed magical flight without a pressing reason to do so, even though flight magic wasn’t that complicated and many mages were capable of it.

As a result of this fundamental issue, most airships couldn’t actually fly around as they pleased, but instead had to follow fixed paths that took them through mana-rich areas that could sustain them in the air. And even so, airship designers still had to ruthlessly keep the vessel’s weight down during construction. This made the resulting product relatively fragile and greatly limited the vessel’s usefulness. They also tended to be rather expensive to build and maintain, as the materials which went into them tended to be on the pricier side and the design of the vessel itself was something that required a whole team of skilled professionals. It also didn’t help that there was no standard airship design available to the public, meaning that most airship construction teams started their projects from scratch and were often the only ones who could truly fix or modify the vessel.

Finally, there was a tiny, yet very important issue of how incredibly lethal an airship crash was compared to, say, the sinking of a sea-going ship. If anything went wrong, it was all too easy for everyone on board to die. There had been a number of high-profile airship accidents over the years, including a rather spectacular one where the Tetran airship Gepid plunged straight into the sea not long after starting its maiden flight. And even if one ignored the possibility of a simple malfunction, there was still the matter of the many flying magical beasts that could easily crash the airship if encountered at an inopportune time.

In light of all that, it was not hard to see why airships weren’t in more widespread use. They were not economically viable for private interests and state militaries generally found flying magical creatures to be more effective as an aerial combat force. Despite that, people stubbornly kept trying to make them viable. There was something about a flying vessel that people found irresistibly captivating.

There were considerable differences between regions, however. The states of northern Miasina, for instance, were the leaders when it came to investment into airship research. Due to the vast stretches of desert that surrounded them, the nations of Xlotic saw more potential in airships than Altazian ones. Building roads and railways in the inhospitable interior of northern Miasina was exceptionally difficult, and there were few population centers big enough to justify an expensive teleport platform. A free-flying, economically-viable airship that could traverse the Xlotic desert would be a huge boon to whoever made it.

Pearl of Aranhal, the airship Zorian wanted to steal, definitely hadn’t been designed with economic viability in mind. No expenses had been spared in its construction. Although Zorian had not been able to find concrete numbers anywhere, the final price tag was rumored to be positively astronomical. The airship’s capabilities, however, were said to be appropriately impressive for something that had so much money sunk into it. It was fast, maneuverable and surprisingly robust for an airship. Most importantly for Zorian, though, it boasted an experimental power core that allowed it to operate independently of ambient mana for long periods of time.

After some discussion with Zach, they decided not to make a move on the airship in this particular restart, however. Half of the restart had already passed and they were already committed on many other fronts. Besides, due to Silverlake’s earlier inquiries, people were still paying close attention to them. Zorian still decided to look around a little to get a feel for what they were dealing with.

Unsurprisingly, the airship was under significant protection. Not so much against thieves, since the idea of someone outright stealing the airship was kind of ridiculous, but against spies and saboteurs. The defenses were tight enough to thwart Zorian’s casual probing, but he was confident he could get through them in time. It might take several restarts, but it would happen. The bigger problem, in his opinion, was that the Pearl of Aranhal required a crew of ten in order to take off and land, which made the idea of two people stealing it somewhat problematic. He would probably have to wait for Zach to be able to cast the simulacrum spell before they could make the attempt. Another problem, though a comparatively smaller one, was that some small but critical pieces of the airship hadn’t been installed, and possibly not even made yet. Zorian was confident he could manufacture and install these components himself, but he would need access to the relevant blueprints first…

‘Once upon a time, one of my ambitions was to examine a train to see how its engines work,’ Zorian thought to himself nostalgically. ‘Now I’m casually planning how to steal and analyze an experimental airship in my free time. Even taking the time loop into account, it’s still amazing how far I’ve come since then. I wonder what my old self would have said to something like that…’

That, of course, was something impossible to answer. He shook his head and focused on more immediate matters. Currently, he was going to meet someone he hadn’t spoken to for a very, very long time – Zenomir Olgai, the old language expert he had once sought out to help him figure out what happened to him. Back then, he had been murdered by the invaders not long after talking to him, so he had reflexively avoided the man ever since, suspecting him a spy. However, none of his investigations of Ibasan collaborators and cultists pointed to Zenomir being one of them. Thus, when Zenomir’s name popped up while seeking out a translator that could help him with some of the documents he had acquired in Aranhal, he decided to pay him a visit. He even intended to drop some hints about the invasion while he was there, just to see if someone would try to murder him again because of it. Who knew, maybe Zenomir was part of some super-secret section of the invaders that other members didn’t normally know about.

As he approached Zenomir’s office, though, he suddenly stopped when he felt a familiar presence.

A bunch of cephalic rats were lingering in the area, hidden inside the walls. The swarm quickly withdrew their telepathic probe when they noticed his mind was well shielded, but Zorian was practiced enough at mental shielding that even the faintest of mental attacks could not escape his notice.

He frowned. If cephalic rats had been loitering around Zenomir’s office back when he had visited the man, it was no wonder that Zorian had ended up being a target. That only raised another questions though: why were the cephalic rats paying attention to Zenomir? The man was somewhat famous as an incredible polyglot and language expert, but that shouldn’t be of much interest to the invaders.

After some thought, he decided to leave the cephalic rats alone for now. He knocked on Zenomir’s office door and waited.

He waited for nearly fifteen minutes. Apparently he had arrived at a somewhat bad time, since the old teacher was talking to someone already. Another student, Zorian eventually realized. He took a quick peek at the student’s mind to make sure he was not connected to the cephalic rats and found out that he wasn’t. He was just a student that had picked Zenomir as his mentor and was now arguing with him over something. Zorian didn’t linger inside his mind long enough to find out what, as he disliked invading other people’s privacy with his mental powers unless it was truly necessary.

Eventually the meeting ended and Zenomir called him in. Zorian gracefully accepted the man’s offer to sit down and went right to business.

“I’m here because I was told you could help me translate a highly technical document written in Aranhal Ikosian,” Zorian told him. “Or at least point me towards someone who is up to the task.”

“Ah yes, Aranhal,” Zenomir said sagely. “They do speak a particularly distinct form of our tongue, don’t they? Can you show me the sample of what you’re working with?”

Zorian took out a few pages of technical writing out of his school bag and handed them to the old language expert. He wasn’t worried about Zenomir recognizing them as illegally acquired. Unless he was inexplicably connected to Aranhal’s airship construction team in addition to his apparent link to invaders, the text should mean little to him.

Zenomir carefully put on a pair of reading glasses and glanced through the papers in silence.

“Lots of unknown technical jargon, I see. Airship construction materials? My, what an interesting topic…” Zenomir mused, before giving Zorian a good-natured smile. “I can see why you were referred my way, though it somewhat saddens me that a student of our fine academy did not think to seek me out right away. At the very least I’d give you my initial opinion free of charge, which is probably more than you got out of whoever sent you here.”

Zorian could tell that the man wasn’t really angry with him for this oversight, merely giving him a friendly warning that he had failed to take advantage of his academy membership to its fullest extent. Sadly, while Zenomir was both friendly and polite, the events that transpired after Zorian had talked to him the last time around and the cephalic rats lurking in the walls had made it impossible for Zorian to really trust him. So he just nodded sagely at Zenomir’s reminder and moved on.

“Let me ask you something first,” Zenomir began. “Is this document that you want translated an isolated thing or are you planning on collaborating with someone from Aranhal on something?”

“The project I’m working on does involve a fair bit of interaction with Aranhal natives,” Zorian reluctantly admitted.

Thankfully, Zenomir seemed to think nothing of Zorian’s admission that he was going to interact heavily with people on another continent. Zorian would think this sort of thing would raise some eyebrows, but apparently not.

They spent the next ten minutes discussing what the translation job would entail. Zenomir asked him a couple of questions about the exact nature of this ‘project’ he was working on, but thankfully he backed off when Zorian told him it was confidential. He confirmed that this sort of translation job was well within his capabilities, though it would take a couple of days and wouldn’t be exactly cheap. None of this was a problem for Zorian, though, and he told the old teacher as much before the man raised another idea.

“I’m going to be a little bold here, but perhaps simply hiring a person to translate this document might not be the best course of action,” Zenomir said. “I think you should invest some time in learning the language itself. You’d be amazed how many layers of communication you lose by relying on external translation and I guarantee your partners will respect you a lot more if you can communicate with them directly.”

“I’m unlikely to interact with people from Aranhal after this project is done, though,” Zorian said, frowning. Plus, he was pretty sure there wouldn’t be too many respectful exchanges between him and the Aranhal airship construction team, language barriers or no. “That’s a lot of wasted effort for one job.”

“Learning a language is never a wasted effort, young man,” Zenomir lectured him. “It develops your mind and expands your horizons! Besides, it’s not as if you’re starting completely from scratch. Aranhal Ikosian is different from standard Ikosian, but not unintelligible.”

“That’s true,” Zorian admitted. It was more like a heavily divergent dialect with a lot of words borrowed from the native language spoken by the people before Ikosian conquest. Much like many of the local versions of Ikosian on Altazia, really. “It would still be a lot of work for someone who isn’t naturally inclined towards languages like you are, though. No offense, Professor Olgai.”

“Hmph. Wait here for a minute,” Zenomir said, quickly springing up from his chair without waiting for his answer, and then entered a nearby side-room in his office and closed the door.

He stayed there for over ten minutes. Judging by the quiet sounds emanating from behind the closed door, the man was shifting around boxes and searching through stacks of paper and books in search of something. Zorian sighed. This was taking way longer than he thought it would…

Finally, the old teacher returned to his office, carrying a tall stack of books, folders and loose sheets of paper. He was carrying so much that he had to use his elbows to manipulate the door handle, which he did with the practiced grace of someone who does things like that all the time. He dumped the pile on the table in front of Zorian and pointed at it.

“Tell you what, young man,” Zenomir said. “This here is a small selection of dictionaries, translation guides and random notes regarding Aranhal Ikosian that I had in my store room–”

“You just happened to have Aranhal-related stuff in your store room?” Zorian asked incredulously.

“Oh, I have all sorts of things gathering dust in there,” said Zenomir dismissively. “Some of the teachers are rarely in their offices, but I pretty much do most of my work here. So it’s handy to have most of my resources close by. Anyway, why don’t you take this and see how much of that document of yours you can translate yourself using this as a guide. If you impress me with your work, I promise I’ll help you translate the rest of your project for free.”

Zorian opened his mouth to point out that he’d rather just pay for translation but Zenomir wouldn’t hear it.

“Free!” Zenomir repeated. “Do you hate money, young man? Don’t be in such a hurry to part with it. I’m not very demanding, don’t worry. Just do your best and I’m sure you’ll do fine. Who knows, maybe you’ll even discover you have a previously undiscovered passion for languages, eh?”

Zorian seriously doubted that, but he could see there was no use in arguing with Zenomir about this. Besides, now that he thought about it a little, it might actually be useful to get some elementary proficiency in Aranhal Ikosian. He might need to interrogate the airship construction crew at some point, and that was going to be really difficult if their language was completely opaque to him. Not even mind reading helped in that case, since people’s thoughts were heavily shaped by the language they spoke.

“Very well, I’ll give it a try,” Zorian relented.

“Excellent!” Zenomir said, beaming at him happily.

“Still, is it really okay for you to just give me all this?” Zorian pointed at the pile in front of him. “Some of this stuff looks… irreplaceable.”

“It’s fine,” said Zenomir, waving him off. “You look like a serious young man. I’m sure you’ll return it all in one piece.”

Zorian didn’t say anything to that. He just stared at the pile of books and paper in front of him, lost in thought, for a few seconds.

“Well,” Zenomir suddenly said, clapping his hands. “Is there anything else you wanted to ask? If not–”

“Actually, yes,” Zorian said. “Are you a member of the Cult of the World Dragon?”

Zenomir eyebrows shot up at the question.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

“They officially call themselves the Esoteric Order of the Celestial Dragon,” Zorian said. “They are one of the newer religious organizations, one dedicated to the worship of the entity that is commonly thought to reside in the center of the world. They have a rather large presence here in Cyoria. Are you a member of the Order?”

“Ah, I think I have heard something about them once,” Zenomir mused, tapping his long white beard with his hand. “But no, I am not a member. Why do you ask?”

“Are you an agent of Ulquaan Ibasa?” Zorian asked, completely ignoring the old teacher’s question.

“Now wait just a minute here,” Zenomir said, finally getting somewhat angry. “What kind of question is that!?”

Hmm. He was being completely honest. He was not knowingly associated with either the Ibasans of the Cult of the World Dragon.

With a small sigh, Zorian reached deeper into Zenomir’s mind, casually brushing aside the old teacher’s rudimentary mental defenses, and modified his short-term memory to erase this conversation out of his mind. The whole process only lasted less than a minute, due to the relatively trivial nature of the memory edit, after which Zorian withdrew from Zenomir’s mind.

The old teacher blinked a few times, gradually shrugging off the mental daze that Zorian placed on him so he could work in peace, before giving Zorian a surprised look.

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“What happened?” he asked.

“Uh, you kind of dozed off for several seconds there,” Zorian said, pretending awkwardness.

“Ah. I guess old age is finally catching up to me,” Zenomir said ruefully, shaking his head. “Where were we, again?”

“Actually, I think we’re kind of done here,” Zorian said. “But first, let me ask you a somewhat strange question. Do you have any idea why someone would want to spy on you?”

“Spy on me?” Zenomir asked incredulously. “Why no, I have no idea why someone would want that. Frankly, I wish more people would be interested in my work. If someone wanted to know more about what I do, why, all they have to do is ask!”

“I’ll cut straight to the chase, then,” Zorian said. “Due to some exotic inborn abilities that I have, I happen to know that there are rats lurking in the walls around your office. And not normal rats either.”

“Ah, now that… is quite concerning,” said Zenomir. He sat down in his chair and frowned. He tapped on his beard a few more times, deep in thought. “Hmm. Rats in the walls…”

After a minute or so, Zenomir slapped his palm against the table, scaring Zorian back into attention.

“Aha!” Zenomir said triumphantly. “I’ve got it, I think. I don’t think these rats, if they are indeed spies as you suspect, are here for me. As it happens, the headmaster’s office is very close to mine. The headmaster is rarely in it, but a lot of visitors and academy documentation passes through the place.”

Zorian had to agree this did make a great deal of sense. As a place of such importance, the headmaster’s office was probably protected by heavier and more sophisticated wards and other defenses… but the corridors approaching it might have been overlooked due to cost-cutting and such. He would have to take a walk through the academy to see if there were other places that cephalic rats linger as they did here.

“Of course, this will have to be reported,” Zenomir’s shoulders suddenly sagged. “I can already sense a headache coming. So much paperwork…”

“I don’t suppose you could exclude me from the report?” Zorian asked. He would mindwipe him again if he had to, but he would rather avoid doing that.

“I might as well,” Zenomir sighed. He apparently didn’t have a single suspicious bone in his body. “No reason for both of us to suffer. Though I have to ask you to keep quiet about this, or else the academy might go after you for ruining its reputation.”