Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"I would not!" she huffed, swinging her legs in an attempt to hit his knees. He shifted his legs out of the way a few times and she eventually gave up on the idea.

By the time the train arrived in Cyoria, the whole group was so absorbed in their conversation that they kept together and continued conversing even when it was time to disembark. When the train began to approach Cyoria, the whole group left the compartment and went to stand by the exit… along with so many others. Usually Zorian led Kirielle with him to the exit early enough to seize a place right next to the exit, but he had lost track of time this time, and they ended up in the middle of a literal throng. Somewhat tired from socializing and put off by the throng of people pushing and shoving all around him, Zorian leaned on the nearby window and simply observed the people around them.

It had been a while since he had been stuck in a crowd like this. With his great magical skills and ability to simply teleport from place to place, he usually had no need to use normal transportation methods to get to places. A confusing, erratic mess of emotions and mental signals washed against his mind sense, but he was far too good at controlling his psychic powers these days to be bothered by that. His mind was like a rock in the sea, battered by the winds and violent waves, but solid and unmoving.

"Hey, you! You’re one of the upperclassmen, aren’t you?"

Zorian looked at the girl talking to him, curious as to what she wanted from him. She was part of the group of first years next to him, and had completely ignored him up until now. Her whole group was kind of amusing, talking excitedly amongst themselves about how they were going to start learning magic, and become famous mages, and similar stuff. He kind of wished he could see their faces when they realized the first year was all about theory and repetitive mana exercises.

"I am," he confirmed. "So?"

"Can you show us any magic?" she asked eagerly.

Wait… this sounded kind of familiar…

"He can’t!" Kirielle, who had apparently been listening in on their conversation, piped in. "The train has a magic field that stops people from doing magic."

"It’s because some of the students would set fire to the seats or etch their names and crude drawings into the walls of the train," Zorian confirmed.

"Oh," the girl said, clearly disappointed.

"I know," Kirielle agreed with, sadly. "It sucks. Some jerk always has to ruin it for the rest of us."

Yeah, this whole situation was really familiar to him for some reason.

Oh well, it probably wasn’t anything important.

Zorian became a little concerned about things after the group disembarked at Cyoria’s main train station. This was because Bryn had a habit of following after them, and Zorian had plans that would be rather inconvenienced by that. He was just debating whether it was justified to use mind magic to nudge his thoughts in the right direction, when Bryn regretfully informed them that he had to stay behind at the station for a while. Apparently his parents were disturbed enough by the recent attack on the Noveda Mansion that they had asked a friend of theirs that lived in the city to pick Bryn up from the station and escort him to his dorm. Thus, Bryn would have to stay behind and wait for the man to show up.

Zorian found it curious that Red Robe’s attack on Zach had such far-reaching consequences. Bryn wasn’t even from Cyoria, yet the attack changed the way he went through the month so quickly and radically. Zach and Zorian knew that Tesen and the city authorities would have a strong reaction to the Noveda Mansion being suddenly attacked like that, but he didn’t expect the ordinary people to care so much.

In any case, Zorian simply said goodbye to Bryn and Ibery and was on his merry way with Kirielle in tow. He did exchange contact methods with Bryn and Ibery in case they wanted to get in touch later, but he wasn’t sure if anything would come out of that. Neither of them had been particularly inclined to seek him out when they had done similar things in the time loop. With the world lasting longer than a month, though, perhaps that would change. Only time would tell.

Zorian didn’t take Kirielle immediately towards Imaya’s place, though. Instead, he took her to a familiar bridge in one of the city parks. There, a small black-haired girl was crying her eyes out over a bicycle that had fallen into the creek below.

Kirielle watched quietly from the sidelines as Zorian slowly calmed Nochka down and got her to explain why she was crying. This done, he placed his hand over the bridge and telekinetically lifted the bike out of the water. He also casually cleaned it up a little, ignoring the chorus of complaints from his simulacrums that he was being frivolous in his mana use. The jerks had been on the lookout for something like this for a while now, most likely.

"It isn’t frivolous," he told them telepathically. "What did you expect me to do, exactly?"

"You could have waded in through the muddy water on foot," a simulacrum helpfully explained.

"It’s just getting a little wet, there’s no harm in that," another one added.

"All it would take is a bit more time. Gods, why are you so impatient?" a third one scolded.

"All of you, shut up and mind your own business!" Zorian told them grumpily.

He had the worst simulacrums.

"There," Zorian told Nochka. "Your bike is clean, intact, and out of the creek. You can stop crying now, okay?"

"Okay," she sniffed, rubbing her eyes. "Um. Thank you."

"Well, if that’s that, I guess we should get going now," Zorian said. "Though… I think it’s going to rain soon. Do you have an umbrella?"

"N-No…" She said, shaking her head. "But, um, I’m going to be fine…"

"We should help her get home," Kirielle suddenly said. She quickly got into Nochka’s personal space and introduced herself. "Hi, I’m Kirielle! Kirielle Kazinski, and that’s my brother Zorian. What’s your name?"

After some back and forth, Nochka agreed to have them accompany her home. The walk was a short one, but Zorian paid close attention to everything around him along the way. He found no evidence of cranium rats or other invader agents along the way. Even the cranium rat swarm he usually encountered while traveling through this part of the city was not here this time – he had chosen the path that led to Nochka on purpose, not because he was trying to avoid the rats. The aranea were fighting a pretty intense war with the cranium rats at the moment, so this turn of events wasn’t particularly surprising. They were too busy to spy on people much, and could no longer move freely through most of the city.

Still, while Rea and her family seemed free of invader schemes at the moment, he knew that wouldn’t last forever. Assuming Red Robe did not find some kind of alternative method of unlocking Panaxeth’s prison, shifter children like Nochka remained a critical component of primordial’s release plans. Thus, evacuating them out of the city through means fair or foul was probably the most certain way of sabotaging the ritual at Zach and Zorian’s disposal. Shifters were not that numerous and there were only so many shifters available in the area.

Though, if he were going to be honest with himself, wanting to befriend Rea and her family wasn’t purely because of pragmatism. Rea had no special influence over her fellow shifters and would be of limited help if he wanted to talk them into going along with the evacuation. He just had a soft spot for the little girl that had befriended his little sister and the sight of her stripped naked and waiting to be drained of all blood for some messed up blood ritual was vividly burned into his mind. He had promised to himself that he would make sure Nochka survived the month out there in the real world, and he still meant that. He meant to save all the shifter children, of course, but making sure Nochka was safe had a personal dimension for him.