Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"Must have been pretty expensive," Zorian remarked.

"Made it myself, actually," Zach said with a grin.

"Still, that’s a pretty valuable thing to give away to someone you’ve met less than a month ago," said Zorian. "Why do I get the feeling I’ll be needing this in the near future?"

Zach’s smile disappeared and he suddenly became more subdued. "Maybe. I’m just making sure, you know. You never know when an angry troll might get a jump on you or something."

"How… oddly specific," noted Zorian. "You know, you’ve been getting steadily more nervous as the summer festival approaches. And you seem oddly interested in making sure I attend the dance."

"You will, right?" Zach prompted.

"Yes, yes, I told you I will half a dozen times already," huffed Zorian. "What’s so important about the dance, anyway? What’s going to happen there, oh great traveler from the future?"

"You have to see it to believe it," Zach sighed. "It’s possibly even more implausible than time travel being real."

"That bad?" asked Zorian, privately agreeing that an invasion of that scale was something he would have had trouble believing in if he had not lived through it.

"Just… try to survive, okay?" Zach sighed. Before Zorian could say anything else, Zach suddenly donned a mask of fake cheerfulness and spoke in a voice loud enough to be heard by Ibery. "Wow, Zorian, I’m sure glad we’ve had this talk but I should really get going now! Have to be well rested for tomorrow! Bye, Zorian! Bye, Ibery! I’ll see you both at the dance!"

And then he left. Zorian shook his head at the other boy’s exit and walked up to Ibery, who was now free of purple rash that once covered her face and neck.

"Well, I guess we should go too," Zorian said. "The academy normally doesn’t have anyone patrolling after dark, but that idiot’s shouting may have alerted someone to our presence."

"Oh. Um, right."

Zorian watched Ibery as they filed out of the workshop and he used his magic trick to re-lock the door again. She seemed strangely subdued for someone who got what they wanted.

"What’s wrong?" he finally asked after a while.

"Err, nothing’s wrong," she said. "Why do you ask?"

"You don’t seem very happy to be cured," he noted.

"I am!" she protested. "It’s just…"

"Yes?" he prompted.

"I don’t have anyone to go to the dance with," she said. "The boy I was hoping to go with already has someone by now."

If her unnamed boy was Fortov (probably, considering her obvious crush on him), then yes, he most certainly did. In fact, he probably had one weeks in advance, so there was never much chance of her going with him in the first place, but he didn’t feel the need to crush her dreams like that.

"Then you’ll just have to do the same thing I will and go to the dance all by yourself, won’t you?" concluded Zorian.

She suddenly stopped and gave him an appraising glance.

"You don’t have anyone to go with, either?" she asked.

Zorian closed his eyes and swore in his head. He really walked into this one, didn’t he?

Zorian was nervous. Ever since his very first restart, he had been studiously avoiding the city on the day of the festival, not willing to get caught up in the invasion again. Being present within city limits could easily result in his grisly death, after all, and back then he wasn’t sure whether his current restart would be his last. That wasn’t an option anymore, unless he wanted to clue in Zach that there was something wrong with him (he didn’t).

Bottom line was, he was stuck attending the dance, with the unexpected addition of Ibery as his date for the evening. He wasn’t exactly happy with that, actually. He didn’t really have much of a plan for the evening, except to wait and see what would happen, but Ibery’s presence at his side would no doubt limit him. Not to mention that he still remembered his disastrous evening with Akoja, and had very little desire to live through a repeat performance, consequences-erasing time loop or not.

Speaking of his evening with Akoja, Zorian had to admit one thing about Ibery: she was a lot more reasonable and considerate than Akoja was. She didn’t drag him out of his room 2 hours before the event, or make him wait smack in the middle of the huge throng of people gathered at the entrance, or drag him off to chat with a bunch of people who only cared about him being Daimen’s and Fortov’s brother… She was also more interested in scanning the crowd for any trace of Fortov than paying attention to him, but that was okay – he was under no illusion that she had asked him out because she was actually interested in him. After a while he decided to have mercy on her and informed her that Fortov was already inside, preparing for tonight’s performance along with the other members of the academy music club.

Naturally, Zach’s entrance was in the boy’s usual flamboyant style. He had caught everyone’s attention when he had shown up with not one, but two dates for the evening (Zorian didn’t recognize either girl), and then further wooed people by demonstrating some very impressive – and attention-grabbing – dancing. Apparently Zach had learned more than magic during these restarts. Zorian clapped with the others when Zach finally finished showing off, and considered the merits of sinking some time into a non-magical skill. Not dancing, though. Or any other high society skill, for that matter – honing those beyond the elementary level he had already grasped would require him to construct a mask so thorough he wasn’t sure he’d be able to take it off afterwards. The benefits weren’t worth selling his soul over, even metaphorically.

"This is a lot fancier than I thought it would be," Ibery noted, fingering the lacy tablecloth in front of her.

"It’s obviously more than just a school dance," agreed Zorian. "I’m guessing the Academy was organizing some kind of event for foreign dignitaries this year and then decided to simply merge it with the school dance for whatever reason."

"I guess," Ibery said. "They did invest a lot into making everything look good this year, and I doubt they did it for our sake." Ibery looked at the far end of the table, where Zach was entertaining a small crowd around him, his two escorts nowhere to be seen. After a few seconds of this observation she turned to Zorian and stared at him strangely.

"What?" Zorian said, a little unnerved by her stare.

"I’ve been meaning to ask you…" she began hesitantly. "What is it between you and Zach? I mean, I know you’re friends with him, but how did that come about? You seem very different from one another."

"It’s a recent thing," said Zorian. "And it was mostly Zach’s doing, to be honest. All I did was escort him home after he got sick in class one day, and he decided we were best friends after that. I sort of went along with the flow."

"So you don’t know about… um…"

"His sudden growth in skill?" guessed Zorian. He was actually surprised she hadn’t questioned him about that sooner. Almost everyone else did. Of course, she would get the same shameless lie that he fed to everyone who questioned him about it. "I have no idea how that happened, but I can tell you it’s real and not some kind of a trick like many people have been suggesting. He has been tutoring me in combat magic for a while now, and he really knows his stuff."

"Yeah, I heard you were doing that," Ibery said, causing Zorian to frown. Being associated with Zach had made people disturbingly interested in his activities, no matter how mundane or irrelevant they may be. Having people scrutinize his every action like they had been doing for this past month was a novel experience. Novel and unwelcome. "Kyron has been kind of impressed with your growth, you know?"