Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Crap. What to say, what to say…

"Of course I know where you live," Zorian said, looking at Zach like the boy was an idiot for asking. "Who doesn’t know where the Noveda estate is located?"

A lot of people, probably. Zorian himself certainly hadn’t known, not until he tried to track Zach down in one of the restarts.

"Heh. I’m pretty famous, aren’t I?" Zach said, grinning widely.

Note to self: Zach is easy to distract by appealing to his pride.

"Yeah, yeah," sighed Zorian. "So is the great Noveda going to help me learn combat magic like he promised or not? Daylight’s burning."

Zach snapped his fingers, apparently remembering just why they came here in the first place. His hands blurred into a sequence of gestures, and several humanoids made of earth rose from the ground on the other side of the clearing.

Zorian gaped. Now that was impressive. Zach didn’t even have to chant anything to cast that spell, and he went through the gestures with such speed Zorian had trouble remembering what they even were. Plus, those earthen constructs weren’t just immobile statues – they moved . It was in times like this that Zorian remembered he was dealing with a vastly superior mage that had him beat in virtually every conceivable way. It was humbling, to say the least.

"Wow," he said out loud.

"It’s not as impressive as it looks," Zach said. "They’re nearly useless in actual battle. They make good targets though, since they’re pretty resilient and reform each time you mess them up."

Zach fired a quick magic missile at one of the statues to demonstrate, hitting it square in the chest. The earthen construct took a step back from the force of the bolt, and a web of cracks erupted from the impact point, but the cracks quickly sealed themselves shut and the construct otherwise completely ignored the attack.

"I don’t believe this," Zorian stated incredulously.

"What do you mean?" Zach asked. "They’re just animated earth so it’s-"

"Not them," Zorian protested. "The magic missile! No chant, no gestures, no spell formula, no nothing! You just pointed your finger at the target and produced a magic missile!"

Which, admittedly, was a gesture. Not one that should be sufficient to produce a magic missile, though.

"Oh, that," Zach said, waving his hand dismissively. "That’s not terribly special either. That’s just reflexive magic. When you cast a spell enough times-"

"Mana shaping becomes instinctive and you can start leaving out spell components," finished Zorian for him. Any serious mage had at least a couple of spells they knew so intimately they could leave out a couple of words and gestures and still get it working. "But getting a spell to work with something as simple as pointing a finger would take years !"

Zach simply grinned from ear to ear.

"Which, uh, I guess you had," Zorian concluded, feeling rather stupid. "This time travel thing is really convenient, isn’t it? How many reflexive spells do you have, anyway?"

"You mean, how many are as reflexive as the magic missile I just showed you? Shield, hurl, recall, flamethrower, and a couple of other easy combat spells. There are a lot of spells I’m familiar with, but I can’t exactly throw fireballs by pointing my fingers."

"Right," said Zorian sourly. He was getting way past humbling and straight into feeling mightily inadequate territory. Better steer the conversation back to the lesson before Zach completely demoralized him. "So where do we start?"

"Kyron gave you a spell rod and told you to practice magic missile, didn’t he?" asked Zach.

"Yeah," confirmed Zorian.

"Well, let’s see how that’s working out for you first," said Zach, waving his hand in the direction of the earthen constructs. "Fire a couple of missiles at the mud people."

"Mud people?" asked Zorian incredulously. "Is that-"

"Probably not," Zach admitted. "I kind of forgot the official name of the spell, so I just refer to it as Create Mud People . It doesn’t matter all that much since the spell is obscure and obsolete, and virtually no one except me uses it."

"I guess," agreed Zorian. He was tempted to ask more, but figured he would never get to actual spell practice if he kept distracting Zach with his questions. He pointed the spell rod Kyron gave him at the closest… 'mud person'… and fired. He was a bit surprised when the construct tried to side-step his magic missile instead of soaking the spell like it did when Zach targeted it, but that didn’t save it – he had enough control of the spell to alter the missile’s flight path accordingly, even if he couldn’t get the bolt to home in on the target on its own. Of course, the bolt did very little actual damage to the construct, and even that repaired itself quickly. Undeterred, Zorian kept firing. His next shot was a piercer aimed at the head of the construct, which succeeded in hitting it squarely in the forehead but failed to actually punch through the animated earth. He tried to shape the next bolt into a cutter, but all he got was a diffuse blob of multicolored light that popped like a soap bubble half-way to the target. The next two were regular smashers, one of which missed when its target leaned to the side at the last moment before the bolt hit him.

Zorian stopped at this point, not wanting to completely deplete his mana reserves. He demonstrated pretty much everything he achieved so far, anyway.

Zach clapped overdramatically, completely ignoring the mild glare Zorian sent his way.

"You’ve only been practicing, what, for a couple of days?" asked Zach. Zorian nodded. "And you can direct your bolts already? You’re a lot better than I thought you’d be."

"Oh?" asked Zorian, a hint of warning in his voice. "And why is that?"

"Let me ask you this instead: how many magic missiles can you cast before you run out of mana?" asked Zach.

"10," answered Zorian. He didn’t see what that… oh. "Ah. Normally learning time corresponds to mana capacity, doesn’t it?"

"Yup! The bigger your mana reserves, the longer you can train each day," confirmed Zach. "It means mages with larger reserves tend to learn faster than their less gifted compatriots."

"Assuming everyone is equally dedicated and equally good at shaping mana," noted Zorian.

"Assuming that," agreed Zach. "Though the difference in mana reserves tends to overshadow almost everything else. Do you know how many magic missiles I can cast before I run out of mana?"

Zorian hadn’t forgotten Zach’s seemingly inexhaustible mana reserves that he demonstrated during the invasion, and was aware that the number must be pretty high. Still, there was a limit to how big your mana reserves could get. The booklet Kyron gave him said average mages can fire somewhere between 8 to 12 magic missiles before running out of mana, while very gifted ones could manage as much as 20 or 30. Furthermore, while mana reserves increased with age and practice, they were not unlimited in potential – most people’s maximum was roughly 4 times the amount of mana reserves they started with, and usually less. Assuming Zach was in the above average range (something his comments and attitude strongly suggested), and that he achieved his maximum due to the time loop…

"50?" he tried.

"232," said Zach smugly.

Zorian almost dropped the spell rod in shock, but in the end settled for staring at Zach like he just swallowed a live chicken. 232? What the hell!?

"Admittedly I’m at the extreme high end when it comes to mana reserves," Zach said. Understatement of the century! "And unlike you, I’ve spent years building them up, so they’re as high as they’re ever going to be. Still, even if you had a lifetime of practice, you’d probably never go over 40. That would make my reserves almost 6 times larger than yours. Quite a disadvantage to make up for."