Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Uh… wow. Zorian didn’t know what to say to something like that.

"I made quite a lot of progress on that front, if you permit me to be a little immodest here." Kael said. "But… well, it’s complicated. We can talk later, if you’re still interested. Me and Kana are rather tired from the journey and I’d like to retire for the day. Kana especially."

Zorian suddenly noticed Kana was starting to doze off on Kael’s shoulder. She had been so quiet throughout his entire interaction with Kael that he had almost forgotten she’s there. If only Kirielle could be that docile.

"Yes, sorry about that," Zorian apologized. "I got carried away, I guess. I’ll have to give you a tour of the city some other time, then."

They spent the rest of the walk in comfortable silence.

"You were absent yesterday."

Zorian gave Akoja an annoyed look. She wasn’t going to give him grief over that, was she?

"I was excused," he noted.

"I know," Akoja said. "I was just wondering where you were."

Zorian was about to tell her it wasn’t her damn business where he went in his free time, but then he reconsidered. He was getting strange vibes off Akoja, almost as if she was… concerned about him. Very strange. Normally he would write it off as just another weird thing Akoja did from time to time – the girl seemed to have logic all of her own sometimes, one that not even her obsession with rules could explain – but his recent conversation with Kael stopped him. Was he too dismissive of other people? Up until yesterday, Kael was simply that morlock transfer student to Zorian… It brought back memories of his conversations with Zach, and the other boy’s remarks about Zorian’s behavior in previous restarts, before he became aware of the time loop.

"I was doing a favor for Ilsa," Zorian said. "Showing our newest transfer student around the city and such."

"Oh," Akoja said, glancing at Kael for a moment. The white-haired boy was sitting several rows behind Zorian, silent and aloof as always. He gave virtually no indication that he knew Zorian was in the classroom, but Zorian could feel the morlock’s eyes on him from time to time. "Who is he anyway?"

"Kael Tverinov," Zorian answered.

"I didn’t mean his name," Akoja huffed, realizing, after a few seconds of silence, that he wasn’t going to say anything else.

"Not sure what else to tell you," Zorian shrugged. "He sounded like a good person to me."

"He looks kind of arrogant," Akoja remarked. "And girly."

"Well how judgmental of you," Zorian remarked with a frown. "You come off as a bit arrogant yourself, you know?"

Well, so much for being nice to Akoja! She stomped off soon after that, shooting him a nasty glare.

Resolving to be more understanding towards people was hard.

It took Nora Boole only 2 days to organize their first lesson, and the moment Zorian stepped into the classroom Nora had reserved for them he realized Nora was taking this very seriously. It was a professional-looking workshop, the sort that students normally couldn’t access without special permission from the teachers. Nora beckoned him forward, positively radiating excitement and enthusiasm. Suddenly he remembered why he had been pensive about getting instruction from her. Considering the amount of homework and additional reading Nora assigned as a matter of course during her classes, Zorian dreaded finding out what she considered an appropriate workload for an actually talented student.

"Ah, you’re too quiet!" she complained. "Courage, Zorian, courage!"

"Right," agreed Zorian half-heartedly.

"We’ll make a proper crafter out of you yet, just you see!" huffed Nora. "But first, let me just wrap up our discussion from last time. I was a little long-winded, but what I had been trying to build up to was that spell formula are… support magic. Magic affecting other magic. By itself, even the most elegant spell formula is merely a theoretical exercise. You need to actually cast the spells and anchor them to the spell formula before it’s of any use. I note this because Ilsa seemed to think your skill in invocations would do you no good in my subject, which annoyed me because it revealed a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the discipline. Which is very disappointing, coming from her, since she is… well, you know…"

"A teacher," finished Zorian.

"Yeah," Nora agreed, a little awkwardly. Teachers rarely spoke ill of one another, in Zorian’s experience, so it was no wonder why she was uncomfortable criticizing Ilsa in front of a student. They did have to work with one another on a regular basis, after all, and undermining other teacher’s authority like that could get ugly very quickly. Fortunately, only Zorian was present in this case, and he didn’t intend to make trouble for her. She seemed to realize it too, after a moment, because she smiled and continued as if nothing had happened. "Anyway, I guess we should get you started on the beginner’s cube."

As it turned out, the beginner’s cube was a perfectly cubical block of grey stone, each side roughly 10 centimeters long. The one Zorian was given was completely blank and smooth, but Nora showed him a couple of finished ones as a demonstration. They did things like heat up, shed light, or float in the air when activated, or when certain conditions were met. Basically, each finished cube was a crude magic item that used a couple of simple spells and a whole lot of spell formula to produce a neat little toy. They were a standard training tool, according to Nora.

Zorian wanted one the moment he had laid his eyes on them. Giving such a blatantly magical toy to Kirielle would probably keep her out of his hair for hours . It would be his secret weapon against her! Besides, a small floating cube would make a much more challenging target for his magic missile practice than the boulders and tree trunks he usually practiced on. Especially if he could somehow get it to dodge…

He wouldn’t have to wait long to acquire one, as it turned out – crafting one was the idea behind today’s lesson. And not just any beginner’s cube, either. Zorian had expected Nora to give him something easy for a start, but apparently she had something a little more… ambitious… in mind.

"But those ones are too easy for you," Nora concluded. "No, I have something much more fun for you to work on. Here."

She handed him another cube, though this one was positively covered with spell formula. Zorian noted with rising dread that he couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Hell, many of the sections looked like mere placeholders instead of working spell formula, being little more than stylized pictograms. Wait…

"As you may have noticed, I compressed the spell formula somewhat," Nora said. "Partially it’s because there wasn’t enough space on the cube to represent it fully in its raw form, and partially to stop you from simply copying the entire thing line by line on the blank one I gave you earlier."

"Isn’t that the whole point?" Zorian asked. "For me to study a working example to see how it’s done, that is?"

"Absolutely. But I’m afraid blindly copying the spell formula from one cube to another won’t teach you what I want you to learn. If I thought you needed to practice memorization and precision, I’d have you copy a dozen or so easy ones to start with, but I’m sure you’re already beyond that. No one spends as much time on spell formula theory as you have without trying out some practical examples."

"Err, I never encountered anything like those cubes in the texts I read," said Zorian. "But yes, I have been using spell formulas from time to time. Mostly to establish an alarm perimeter around my bed during my second year – I had a really nosy roommate – and also to make some free lamps and heating plates."