Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"Anyway, moving on," Daimen said, coughing into his fist. "I guess I kind of did fail you there. I do admit that. However, to say that makes me responsible for your academy problems, that’s still rubbish. Let’s be honest here Fortov… me helping you out every once in a while wouldn’t have made much of a difference in the grand scheme of things."

"It wasn’t supposed to be every once in a while , you jerk…" Fortov protested.

Zorian stood off to the side, shaking his head as the two continued to argue. As minutes ticked by, it became obvious that this promise thing meant completely different things to Fortov than it did to Daimen. Fortov, it turned out, had understood Daimen’s promise as a commitment to a much heavier form of support. Though Fortov did not phrase things that way, Zorian understood his middle brother’s explanations for what they were: an admission that he expected to be carried along throughout his entire education on Daimen’s coattails. Daimen, on the other hand, probably made that promise without much thought put into it, thinking it a mere formality. He evidently expected that Fortov would come seek him out once every few months to ask a question or two and talk about girls and life and stuff.

Amusingly enough, he ended up not even getting that in the end…

"Can’t you see you’re being completely unreasonable?" Daimen said, gesticulating wildly. "Do you even hear what you’re saying? You basically expected me to do half of your work for you. That’s completely ridiculous!"

"He’s right, it is," added Zorian, nodding sagely.

"I was just describing an ideal case, I would have been happy with even a fraction of it," Fortov shot back. "And it doesn’t matter because in the end I got nothing at all! You gave me a promise and then you forgot you’d ever made it. That’s a jerk thing to do, no matter how you try to spin it."

"He’s right, it is," added Zorian, nodding sagely.

"Shut up, Zorian!" they both said in perfect synchronization.

Zorian pretended to stagger back from the outburst and mimicked clamping his mouth shut.

As for Daimen and Fortov, the two of them shared an uncertain look between each other before quietly deciding to calm down a little and take a step back. Zorian would have liked to claim that this was his plan all along, but truthfully he was just messing with them for his own amusement.

"But seriously, you’re being kind of crazy here," Daimen said to Fortov again, a little more sedately this time. "I get that you’re having problems with your studies, but–"

"Man, you just don’t understand," Fortov complained, cutting him off. "This city, this academy… it’s out of my league. I know this. I’ve always known this. I know my limits. I’m not as smart as you and Zorian…"

"You’re plenty smart, Fortov," Zorian cut in. "You’re just lazy."

Fortov didn’t even try to refute him, but Daimen gave him a sidelong glance.

"I thought you were going to keep quiet?" Daimen asked.

"I lied," Zorian said with a careless shrug.

"Whatever," Fortov said, exhaling heavily. "I’m not as good as you two. Happy now?" Zorian made a circular motion with his hand, signaling him to keep going. "Anyway, my point was that I only agreed to enroll here because Daimen said he would support me. If I had known I would have to do this alone, I would have told Mother and Father to enroll me somewhere else. Somewhere less… prestigious. But they pushed hard for this, saying what an opportunity this is and I thought… well, at least I’ll have my genius older brother there to help me sort things out…"

Zorian didn’t say anything after that, quietly waiting by the side and letting the two of them talk. He didn’t feel much compassion for Fortov’s plight. Daimen may have a cause for feeling a little guilty about how things turned out, but all Zorian saw was the same old Fortov he’d known from his childhood – a lazy, shallow asshole constantly looking for ways to shift his own responsibilities onto people around him. He was darkly amused when the two of them eventually decided to just take a step back and have another meeting in a week or so… something that would never happen, and Daimen damn well knew so.

Oh well, it wasn’t really Zorian’s problem. That is, until Fortov left the scene and Daimen tried to make it his problem…

"No, Daimen, I am not going to delve into the hows and whys of Fortov’s failures and assemble a tutoring program for him," Zorian bluntly told him.

"Why not? You do for Kirielle and even that female friend of yours," Daimen said. "He’s your brother , Zorian."

"Sorry, but you can’t guilt-trip me into doing this. Mother’s antics have made me completely immune to guilt-trips," Zorian said dispassionately. "I am sick and tired of having to pick up after Fortov’s failures time and time again. How about you do it for once in your life? You’re the one who made a promise that you failed to keep, no? Don’t you think it’s in poor taste to try fobbing this off on me so quickly after your little heart-to-heart with Fortov?"

"The restart is just about to end, when else am I going to talk to you about this if not now?" Daimen protested. "And I don’t retain memories over the restarts like you do, that’s why I can’t do it."

"But you can leave yourself notes at the end of each restart and work on the problem that way," Zorian countered. "You are doing that very thing in order to figure out how to get Mother and Father to accept your marriage to Orissa, so I don’t see why you can’t apply it here too."

Daimen frowned, either because he did not like the idea or because he was reminded of how utterly he had failed in his task of convincing them thus far.

"He’s your brother , Daimen," Zorian said, flinging his words back at him.

"Ugh," Daimen grumbled. "You can be such a little shit sometimes… Fine, you win. I guess it has to be me. But I’ll need you to do me a small favor…"

One restart ended and a new one began. At the start of the new restart, Zach and Zorian immediately invaded Jornak’s home, knocking him out, kidnapping him and searching his home. They found Veyers dead in the guest room, just like Jornak’s story in the previous restart suggested they would. Using his brand new soul perception and a couple of soul magic forensic spells he had stolen from Sudomir’s mind (unsurprisingly, necromancers had a very developed tradition of analytic spells meant to be used on corpses), Zorian determined that Veyers was in a virtually identical situation as the soul-killed aranea beneath Cyoria.

Normally, when one’s soul was ripped out of their body, there would be subtle signs left etched into the flesh of the deceased, and these could be used to infer the method of extraction used. Neither the aranea nor Veyers showed such traces, though – it was as if they were merely flesh puppets that had never held any life to begin with.

They had expected such a result, but it was nice to have things confirmed so clearly.

After examining Veyers' body, they moved on to Jornak. Zorian had expected the young lawyer to be absolutely livid at them, but the way they just barged into his home and brutally subdued him must have clued him in to the fact they weren’t here on behalf of regular law enforcement. Or maybe it was their age – Zorian sometimes forgot to account for that little detail, as he felt pretty old these days, but he and Zach still looked like teenagers. Jornak was thus a lot more subdued this time around, too terrified about what they wanted to do with him to put up much of a resistance. Sadly, interrogating him with the aid of truth potions and mind magic yielded very little of note. Everything was mostly as Jornak had said in the previous restart, except that Veyers was also something of an informant for the young lawyer in addition to being a friend – he basically reported anything interesting that occurred in his House to Jornak, who then forwarded the information to the Cult of the Dragon Below. Thus, Veyers was something of an unwitting low-level spy for the Cult.