Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

A month went by with little to show for it. Summer festival came, and Zorian once again boarded a train out of Cyoria, awake and alert as the night deepened and minutes ticked away. He brought a pocket watch with him this time, and kept glancing at it every once in a while, silently praying that he wouldn’t have to start over once again but wanting to know exactly when he got thrown back in case he did. Sure enough, his prayers wouldn’t be answered. Somewhere around 2 past midnight he blacked out and woke up with Kiri on top of him, wishing him a good morning.

He probably should have admitted it to himself right then and there. He was a fairly smart person, after all, and not prone to deluding himself. Instead it took 4 more restarts before he accepted the truth of his predicament: he was stuck in some kind of a time loop, and it wasn’t going to end any time soon.

He didn’t know how it was possible. Maybe the spell was powered by Zach’s seemingly inexhaustible mana reserves instead of being limited to a fixed amount at the moment of casting. Maybe it was one of those rare self-sustaining spells. Hell, maybe it reached into the Heart of the World and drew power from the Dragon Below itself! It didn’t really matter how it did it, only that it did.

But that’s retrospect – at the time he just refused to accept it, and instead tried to live like he normally would. It was rather boring, yes, but what if this particular restart was the one where it ended? The restart where the consequences of his choices would not magically disappear at 2 past midnight on the night of the festival (He checked and yes, it was consistent across all 4 restarts).

He was through with that though - he couldn’t go on like this. Excluding the invasion bit, the month had been a bore even thefirst time around, and he had lived through it 8 times already. He knew the first month curriculum well enough by now to get near-perfect scores in all subjects, even warding. It had little effect on how people treated him, as he found out. He was known to be capable, and his grades had always been very good, so people weren’t really surprised if he aced all the exams or effortlessly performed a perfect magic missile on their very first combat magic class. It was within the realm of people’s expectations, unlike Zach’s sudden improvement. The only people whose behavior changed in response to his improvement were Akoja and Xvim. Akoja had gotten twice as annoying now that she apparently found a kindred soul, always insisting that they check each other’s work and asking him for help whenever she didn’t understand something. Zorian had thought she’d be green with jealousy that he was beating her scores, but it seemed she was a lot less bothered to be outdone by him , as opposed to by the likes of Zach and Neolu. Xvim took his superb scores as an indication that he should be held to an even higher standard. As such, not only did he not declare his pen-spinning good enough to move on to something else, he had demoted him back to the regular levitation exercise . In all honesty, Zorian wasn’t terribly bothered by that – even if he did master the pen-spinning exercise to Xvim’s satisfaction, no doubt he’d get nothing more than another minor variation of the basic three to practice.

So all in all, going through another boring month like that was out of the question. He took different electives this time – Astronomy, Architecture, and Geography of the Global Mana Flow – and he fully intended to bring down his academic scores back to normal so Xvim and Akoja would remain their normal, more tolerable selves. He also intended to skip quite a few time-consuming homework projects to focus on his own personal studies, and he was going to spend a sizeable portion of his savings on alchemical supplies. Should this restart be the final one, he was going to be seriously inconvenienced, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world, and he suspected the disruptions following in the wake of the invasion would render many of the normal concerns moot.

Then he walked into the essential invocations classroom on the first day of school and realized his plans would have to be adjusted.

Zach was finally back in class.

At first, Zorian hadn’t even noticed him. That was noteworthy by itself, as Zach wasn’t an easy person to overlook. The boy loved attention and seemed to have trouble staying still and quiet, something that remained consistent even after Zach suddenly turned into some kind of a weirdo time traveler. Today, however, the normally loud and exuberant boy remained eerily silent. He also eschewed his typical tactic of sitting in the back of the classroom to occupy a seat near the front. If his out of character behavior hadn’t caused people to glance at him a bit too often, Zorian would have probably overlooked him.

He was so shocked to see the boy finally present in class that he momentarily halted in his tracks, standing like an idiot in the middle of the classroom. Then, after a moment’s thought, he set off towards the likely cause of his predicament.

His first instinct was to immediately march up to the boy and drag him away into some forgotten corner to clear everything up, but Zach’s subdued appearance gave him pause. Zach’s skin was pale and bloodless, and he was breathing a little too quickly and shallowly for a healthy person. He looked sick. Thinking about it a little more carefully, approaching the boy so directly would be a reckless and possibly dangerous course of action. His loss to the lich aside, Zach was vastly more powerful than Zorian, and Zorian had no idea how the other boy would react if he knew there was another person tagging along in his time traveling adventure. He’d need to confront him sooner or later, though, so he fully intended to make at least tentative contact with the boy. He scanned the front of the classroom, looking for a free seat near Zach that would allow him to study the boy during the lecture.

He didn’t have to look hard – Zach was sitting very close to Briam, and every seat around Briam was empty. The cause was easy to divine: people were reluctant to get close to the angry-looking fire drake he was holding. As someone with future knowledge, Zorian knew their fears were well founded. While the young fire drake didn’t torch anyone (and sometimes Zorian wondered how much of that was thanks to the drake’s youth and lack of ability, as opposed to having self-restraint) it didn’t hesitate to bite and scratch, and it was hard to tell what would set it off. Fortunately, it seemed to tolerate Zorian better than most people, so he simply plopped down into the seat next to Briam, silencing the lizard’s hissing with an annoyed glare. He stared at the fire drake’s slitted yellow eyes until the reptile turned its head and left him alone.

"Wow, you shut him down in an instant," remarked Briam. "I wish I could control him that easily."

The fire drake snapped its jaws at the air in front of Briam’s face, causing the boy to flinch back. Briam huffed in annoyance and apparently let the matter drop. Not for the first time, Zorian wondered just how smart that creature really was.

Then, doing his best to appear natural, Zorian turned to Zach sitting a bit further away from him.

"You look like hell," Zorian remarked.

Zach groaned and buried his face into his hands. "I feel like hell," he moaned. "What did that pile of bones do to me?"

Zorian’s heart quickened. Zach no doubt expected his comment to be disregarded as a weird metaphor, but to Zorian it was definite confirmation that Zach was also a time traveler. No points for guessing who or what the mysterious pile of bones was.

Now… how could he get Zach to talk more without revealing that he knew more than he should?