Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Zorian stared dumbly at the blade sticking out of his chest, his mouth opening in an unvoiced scream. He had just enough time to look at his assailant – a short figure dressed in loose black clothes and a faceless white mask – before the blade was painfully wrenched out of his body and then immediately inserted again into his chest cavity. Again and again and again…

When darkness consumed his vision he was actually glad he was dying. Being repeatedly stabbed in the chest hurts .

Zorian’s eyes abruptly shot open as sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

"Good m-!"

Kirielle was cut off as Zorian shot upright, eyes wide in fright, gasping for breath. He was killed! They killed him! He told someone about the attack and he was killed that very evening! How the hell had they even found out that fast!? Was Zenomir in on the attack or were they just that well informed!?

"Nightmare?" Kirielle asked.

Zorian breathed deeply, ignoring the phantom pain in his chest as he did so. "Yeah. Definitely a nightmare."

Zorian knew he should focus on what Ilsa was saying, but for the life of him his mind wouldn’t stop dwelling on what had happened. In retrospect, he shouldn’t be so surprised at that particular turn of events – an invasion of that scale cannot be kept secret without some hefty inside help, so of course they’d find out about anyone raising an alarm about them! And besides, if stopping the invasion had as simple a solution as notifying the law enforcement, surely Zach would have already done it and Zorian wouldn’t be repeating this month for the third time.

Although, he was starting to develop a healthy dose of respect for these… restarts. This was the second time he died and he only went through this month thrice. He seemed prone to dying. Didn’t Zach say something about him always getting blown up in that initial barrage unless he did something about it?

He snapped back into the real world when he realized Ilsa had stopped talking and was looking at him intently. He gave her a questioning look.

"Are you quite alright?" she asked, and Zorian noticed her glancing at his hands. Why would she-

Oh.

His hands were shaking. He was probably quite pale too, if the skin on his hands was of any indication. He rubbed his hands together a few times and then balled them up into fists to reassert control over them.

"Not quite," Zorian admitted. "But I will be. You don’t have to worry about it."

She stared at him for a second longer and then nodded.

"Very well," she said. "Do you want me to teleport you to the Academy? I can’t imagine riding the train in the state you’re in is going to be very pleasant for you."

Zorian blinked, at loss what to say. He disdained train travel at the best of times, so an offer like this was a godsend at the moment, but… why?

"I don’t want to inconvenience you…" he tried.

"Don’t worry, I was going there anyway," she said. "It’s the least I could do for getting to you so late and taking the choice of your mentor away from you."

Well, that much was true. Xvim really was a horrible, useless mentor.

Zorian excused himself to tell mother he was leaving – which took way too long in his opinion, since mother wouldn’t stop bombarding him with questions about teleportation, suddenly concerned about his safety – before picking up his luggage and following Ilsa outside. He was actually a little excited, since he’d never teleported before. He’d have been even more excited, but the memory of being stabbed to death was still uncomfortably fresh, dampening his enthusiasm somewhat.

"Ready?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Don’t worry, the rumors about the dangers of teleporting are mostly exaggerated," Ilsa said. "You can’t get stuck inside solid objects – the spell doesn’t work that way – and if something goes wrong I’ll immediately know it and collapse the spell before dimensional ripples tear us apart."

Zorian scowled. He already knew that, but saw no point in pointing that out – she obviously heard his little exchange with mother.

Ilsa started chanting and Zorian stood straighter, not wanting to miss-

The world rippled, then changed. Suddenly they were both standing in a well lit circular room, a large magical circle carved into the marble floor they stood on. There was no disorientation, no flash of colors, no nothing – almost disappointing. He studied the room they were in a little more closely, trying to understand where they were.

"This is the teleport redirection point," Ilsa said. "The academy wards shunt every incoming teleport into this place for security reasons. Of course, that’s assuming you’re properly keyed in and have sufficient authorization to teleport in at all." She fixed him with a penetrating gaze. "Teleporting into a warded space is just one of the many dangers of the spell. Don’t experiment with it on your own."

"Err… I’m pretty sure teleport is far above my access level," pointed out Zorian.

She shrugged. "Some students are capable of reconstructing a spell after seeing it performed only once. Once you know the chant and gestures, 80% of the work has already been done for you."

Zorian blinked. Now why didn’t he think of that?

"Would you mind casting that spell one more time?" he asked innocently. "Strictly for academic purposes, you see…"

She chuckled. "No. If it makes you feel any better, I doubt you have enough mana reserves to cast the spell even once."

As a point of fact, it didn’t make him feel any better. He didn’t care how dangerous it was, he’d learn the teleport spell as soon as he was able. He just shaved off an entire day of train travel from his journey in an instant – the ability to do that kind of thing at will would be worth quite a lot of trouble to acquire. He let out a sigh and left Ilsa to her own devices to get settled in.

"I could get used to this kind of travel," Zorian mumbled to himself as he unlocked the door to his room and dropped his luggage to the floor in relief. "Too bad I could never fake distress convincingly enough, or else I’d convince Ilsa to take me along at the beginning of every restart."

He froze mid-step. He shouldn’t be thinking like that. That was dangerous thinking. He had no proof that that the restarts would keep happening indefinitely. In fact, everything he knew about magic told him it couldn’t be true – whatever spell had been put on him was going to run out of mana at some point and then there’d be no restart, no second chances… no return from the dead. He had to treat every restart as if it were his last, because it might very well be.

Though he had to admit that, despite it ending with him getting stabbed to death, the previous restart wasn’t a complete disaster – at least he had all but confirmed it was Zach, and not the lich, that was responsible for this. Instead of researching unknown languages and time travel, it would probably be wiser to find out where Zach keeps disappearing to every time.

But not right now. He deserved a little rest after being brought back from the dead.

He really should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. The moment he tried to track down Zach, he was reminded of why he didn’t do that in his very first restart. Zach was not only an heir of Noble House Noveda – he was the only still living member of that House, the rest of his family having been killed in the Splinter Wars. Zach stood to inherit a sizeable financial empire and a legacy of several generations of mages once he came of age, so everything about him was scrutinized closely by a great number of interested parties. Consequently, his disappearance was a Big Deal, and a lot of people wanted to know where he went. Zorian was just one of these people, and if those people (and the people they hired) hadn’t managed to track him down, he had very little chance to do so. Needless to say, he didn’t get anywhere. Like he suspected, the two girls Zach hung out with during Zorian’s original month were nothing special without the Noveda heir there to help them out and hang out with them (and asking people about them led to some pretty annoying rumors being spread around; honestly, can’t a guy ask about a girl without everyone assuming he’s got a romantic interest in her?), his house was sealed with some pretty heavy ward-work, his legal guardian could not be reached, and if he had any close friends they weren’t among his classmates. Zorian wasn’t a detective, and had no idea what else to look for. And considering that many professional detectives had already failed (and continued to fail) to track the boy down, he suspected it wouldn’t help even if he did know a thing or two about tracking people down.