Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

The attention had the unfortunate side-effect of wrecking any chance he had of befriending Kael. Associating with Zorian would surely bring great scrutiny on the morlock, something the boy was understandably concerned about, so Zorian wasn’t surprised the other boy never sought him out. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he could befriend the boy even in normal circumstances – the morlock had a daughter waiting for him at home, and thus probably wouldn’t want to spend his time after class socializing with friends.

Akoja was extremely pleased with him, though. Zorian couldn’t really understand why, but she was.

And then it happened. Suddenly, without any warning, there was a wrenching sensation and everything went black. He woke up, as usual, with Kirielle lying on top of him, looking smug.

There were two possibilities that Zorian could think of to explain this occurrence. The first one was that something or someone had killed him so fast he was dead before he realized it. He was skeptical of this, as he had done nothing to warrant an assassination, and he couldn’t think of any natural force that could kill so suddenly and thoroughly. He hadn’t even felt any pain before he died.

The second possibility was much more likely, and also much more worrying. While he was minding his business, learning spell formulas in Cyoria, Zach was off somewhere in the world, doing insanely dangerous things. Zach died. When he did, his soul was dragged into the past to start over… and it dragged Zorian’s soul back with it.

Which would make Zorian soul-bonded to Zach.

Damn it.

Zorian stomped into his room, closing the door behind him with way more force than necessary. He should have known he wouldn’t find out anything about soul bonds that he hadn’t already known, but it was still annoying to come back empty-handed after spending an entire day in the library.

The books all repeated the same warnings he received back in his first year: soul bonds were a dangerous and poorly understood branch of magic, capable of causing some pretty horrifying side-effects if used recklessly. Every once in a while, some ill-informed couple decide that soul-bonding themselves together would be the most romantic thing ever, only for everything to end up in tears and lawsuits a few months later when complications surface. The main issue was that one of the participants usually started to mentally and spiritually dominate the other, making them more like themselves in mind and soul, not to mention disturbingly obedient and deferential. This was a good thing when binding animals as familiars, since it was almost always the animal that got dominated by the human, and animals actually tended to benefit from such domination by developing higher intelligence and better control over their magical abilities (if they had any). Sentient beings usually had issues with someone magically subverting their entire personality and worldview, however. At least until the soul bond finished, turning them into a servile clone, that is.

Zorian ran a trembling hand through his hair and started to clean his glasses with the hem of his shirt to calm himself down. He really, really hoped he was wrong and that there was no soul bond between him and Zach. Zach had 6 times larger mana reserves than Zorian’s theoretical maximum, was naturally more outgoing and confident, and – thanks to being in the time loop far longer than Zorian – was probably decades older than him too. No points for guessing who’d be the dominant one between the two of them!

The worst thing about it was that he couldn’t even go to someone for help. He was pretty sure the soul bond, or whatever it was, was responsible for him looping around along with Zach. If he asked someone for help, they’d insist on severing the bond (an understandable sentiment and something he’d eagerly agree to in normal circumstances), which would cause him to lose everything he had gained inside the time loop, memories included, once Zach started over at the end of the month.

Yeah, he was totally screwed.

He took a couple of deep breaths and put his glasses back on. Maybe he was looking at things too fatalistically. Considering the sheer size of disparity between him and Zach, he should have experienced some pretty massive personality shifts by now, and he didn’t notice anything of the sort. He certainly wasn’t feeling submissive towards anyone, least of all Zach. Obviously things weren’t as bad as they seemed. He could very well be overreacting and overlooking some other, perfectly reasonable explanation for the unscheduled restart…

Someone was knocking. Who could possibly-

Oh. Right. Taiven.

He sighed heavily. Just what he needed right now. The knocking turned into banging, prompting him to finally open the door.

"Hi Roach!"

"Hi Taiven," Zorian said in a slightly suffering tone. "How nice of you to visit me. Do you want to come in?"

Taiven promptly did what she always did once he let her inside – she jumped on his bed and made herself comfortable. Zorian shrugged and went after her. Best to get it over with quickly.

"Didn’t you graduate?" he asked. "You said you were going to go into exploration after you graduate, what happened to that?"

She gave him a sour look. "It’s not that simple. No expedition is going to take a complete beginner like me with them. I need an established explorer to take me as an apprentice. I’m working on it."

"Funny, I heard you’re working as a class assistant to Nirthak," Zorian remarked. "Isn’t that going to interfere with searching for another master?"

"Well, sort of," she admitted. "But I’m not literally searching for another job at this point. I’m actually trying to build up my reputation and get people to notice me by doing missions and such. In fact, that’s what I came to talk to you about – I’d like you to join me and a couple of others on a job tomorrow."

"Sounds suspicious," Zorian said. "What could a measly third year help you with?"

"Um, fill out our numbers?" Taiven answered. "We can’t take the job until there are 4 or more of us, and we’re one short of that."

"Well, why does the job require four people?" asked Zorian, knowing from previous restarts that this was the fastest avenue to shut down Taiven’s excuses. "Surely the employer didn’t put that there just to be mean to groups like yours."

"It’s supposedly dangerous," Taiven huffed, folding her arms across her chest. "The old man is overreacting. The spiders aren’t even that big from what he told us."

"Spiders?" prodded Zorian.

"Yeah," Taiven said hesitantly, apparently realizing she probably shouldn’t have mentioned that. "Spiders. You know, hairy eight-legged-"

"Taiven," Zorian warned.

"Oh come on Roach, I’m begging you!" Taiven whined. "I swear its not as dangerous as it sounds! We’ve been in the tunnels hundreds of times and it wasn’t that dangerous at all! We can protect you easily!"

"Hundreds of times?" asked Zorian dubiously.

"Well, a dozen times at least," she relented.

Zorian was just about to tell her no, like he usually did at this point, but then he stopped himself. He probably wouldn’t be able to do anything remotely productive for at least a week, what with the possibility of a soul bond between him and Zach weighting heavily on his mind and all. A nice distracting stroll through the sewers might be just what the doctor ordered, so to speak.

"Sure," he said.

"Really!?" she squealed.

"Yes, really," confirmed Zorian. "Just tell me where to meet you tomorrow before I change my mind."

A few minutes later Taiven left, thanking him profusely and kissing him on the cheek for being a friend before running off to… wherever she had been going, he supposed. He didn’t ask, being too shocked by her kiss, innocuous as it may have been. He was a bit angry at himself for being so affected by a silly kiss on the cheek, but he supposed he shouldn’t be too hard on his subconscious. She was his former crush, after all.