Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"You just got to Cyoria, didn’t you?" Benisek prompted excitedly the moment Zorian sat down beside him.

Zorian nodded hesitantly. Benisek was only ever this excited when talking about a particularly hot girl or when he got a hold of particularly juicy gossip material. Hopefully it was the latter, because there was no way Zorian would be staying otherwise.

"You’re so not going to believe this!" Benisek said excitedly. "You know Zach? You know, Zach Noveda, last scion of the Noble House Noveda? He went to class with us these last two years."

Of course it’s Zach. He really should have known.

"Of course I know him," Zorian said. "He is… very memorable."

"He is?" blinked Benisek. He shook his head. "I mean, of course he is. I kind of didn’t expect you to know, though, since he’s kind of a failure as a mage and you never interacted with him much."

Zorian shrugged. Truth be told, it was very rare for him to forget someone’s name, regardless of how often he had interacted with them or how long it had been since he last saw them. Even before the time loop, Zorian would have instantly known who Benisek was referring to.

"Anyway," Benisek continued, "Zach escaped from his family mansion yesterday."

"Err, what?" asked Zorian incredulously. "What do you mean escaped ? Why would he need to escape from his own mansion?"

"Well that’s the question, isn’t it?" Benisek said. "Apparently he had an argument with his guardian that eventually descended into a full-blown magical duel. A duel which, get this, Zach won ! Half of the mansion was trashed, and Zach fled into the city and has yet to be found. They’re searching for him everywhere!"

"Um, wow," Zorian said, honestly at a loss for words. What the hell was that about?

"You said it," Benisek agreed. "I’m not sure I believe the official story, though. I mean, there’s no way Zach could have taken on his guardian in a magical duel! Tesen Zveri is a 7th circle mage or something, and Zach barely passed his own certification! Then again, something sure demolished Noveda mansion…"

"How do you know this?" asked Zorian.

"It’s all over the newspapers," said Benisek. "Besides, everyone is talking about it. I can’t believe one of our classmates would be involved in something like that. What do you think, Zorian?"

"Ben… I honestly don’t know what to think about that," said Zorian.

And he really meant it. He didn’t doubt for a second that Zach could beat the stuffing out of his guardian, 7th circle or not – the man was a politician, as far as Zorian knew, not a battlemage – but why would he want to do that?

"I suppose he won’t be coming to class this time, then," mused Zorian out loud. Then again, he would not have put it past Zach to just walk into class one of these days as if nothing was wrong.

"I doubt it," Benisek laughed.

"Did he kill anyone?" asked Zorian. Benisek shook his head in the negative. "So basically he didn’t do anything that serious. What’s the worst that can happen to him if he simply turns himself in?"

"Well, Tesen must not be too happy with him now, and he’s too influential to brush off, even for someone like Zach," said Benisek. "Attacking one of the Elders of Eldemar is actually a fairly serious crime, and Tesen could really ruin Zach’s day if he was inclined to pursue satisfaction. Not that I think he would, since that would just draw even more attention to what happened. This whole thing is a giant political scandal for him. I’m guessing Zach will come back after a month or so, after he cools off a bit, and Tesen will magnanimously forgive him everything."

Zorian was silent. Zach had told him that it was rare for him to spend a restart in Cyoria, and even rarer for him to attend classes. In light of that, it had been foolish of him to expect Zach to be around in this restart. Zach may have found Zorian interesting in the previous restart, but probably not that interesting. Still, this was more than a little strange. If he had wanted to leave and do his own thing, couldn’t he have just walked out of his mansion one day and kept going? Who would have stopped him? His guardian? Why would Tesen do that? The man was clearly very hands-off in his dealings with his charge, as evidenced by Zach’s frequent absences from school during the last two years, as well as Zach’s abysmal performance prior to the time loop.

There was no obvious answer, and Zorian didn’t feel like trying to track down Zach. He probably couldn’t find him, even if he tried, and he had more attainable goals to pursue.

Like getting out of Xvim’s merciless clutches. What could be more important than that?

The rest of the restart was pleasantly uneventful. There was no Zach, since the boy never showed up in school and couldn’t be found by anyone. After a week or so, the newspapers stopped covering the story because there were no new developments to justify the articles, and the rumors making rounds across the student body died down soon after. For his part, Zorian threw himself completely into mastering the exercises in Ilsa’s book. He neglected virtually everything else, often skipping classes when he thought he could get away with it. Akoja was furious, since he was apparently ruining the attendance record of the class, and got Ilsa to corner him one day about it. Fortunately, Zorian’s ability to get top grades on every exam, despite his spotty attendance, blunted the impact of Akoja’s criticism, and Zorian managed to convince Ilsa he was working on a personal project that was taking most of his time… not skipping classes for the heck of it as Akoja claimed. He assured her the project would be finished within a month, and that he would resume attending classes regularly after the summer festival. She made him promise that he would show her what he was working on when he was done, and he enthusiastically agreed with her.

His single minded focus gave results quickly – he mastered both vertical and fixed position levitation by the end of the restart. He didn’t bother showing these advanced skills to Xvim, who was still having him work on the pen-spinning exercise, since he doubted he’d get a worthwhile reaction. Nothing seemed to please that guy.

He hadn’t been present in the city when the invasion came, of course. Without Zach’s ring, he was even more useless in combat than he was in the last restart, so it was doubtful he could have lasted for very long in the midst of it all. He did make sure to practice with combat invocations he learned from Zach each day, hoping to hone them into the same reflexive state that Zach displayed. That would take years of practice, of course, but that just meant he’d better start as soon as possible. He also didn’t just leave via train like he usually did – he traveled by foot to one of the hills overlooking the city and observed the city from there.

Watching the invasion unfold from such a high vantage point was not only a lot easier on Zorian’s nerves than being in the thick of it – it was also rather informative. It was interesting to see how the invasion played out in broad terms. It seemed to have several stages, the first of which was, of course, the disguised artillery magic barrage. The explosive flares mostly targeted three crucial areas – the city hall, the local military base, and one cluster of buildings that Zorian didn’t recognize. The academy didn’t appear to be a primary target, possibly because the invaders wanted it reasonably intact. Aside from the initial blast, the impact zones seemed to spawn scores of fire elementals that had to be dealt with. Fortunately, a lot of buildings in Cyoria were at least moderately warded against fire, because Zorian didn’t doubt for a second that the entire city would’ve been aflame within minutes otherwise. Once the fire elementals had a few minutes to make a nuisance of themselves, monsters poured out of the sewers, and after they rampaged across the city a bit, the spellcasters finally arrived.