Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"You should probably grab a night stand or a wooden board or something, just so you have a surface to write on," Edwin told him. "The table is a little crowded right now."

Resisting a sigh, Zorian went about securing himself a chair and then carving out a place for himself at the table. This took a considerable amount of pushing and arguing, but eventually he managed to squeeze himself between Kael and Naim. Imaya immediately plopped down a plate of food in front of him and immediately walked away, not giving Zorian a chance to tell her he wasn’t hungry.

"You really need to learn how to be more assertive in life," Naim advised from his left.

Zorian raised his eyebrow at him.

"Weren’t you the one who just tried to chase me away from your side of the table?" Zorian asked.

"Well yeah, you need to be more assertive towards others, not me," Naim responded, laughing slightly.

"Whatever. Where is Zach?" Zorian asked.

"Your friend already left," Ilsa said, glancing from her clipboard for a moment. "He said he had a court meeting scheduled soon, and couldn’t wait for you to wake up."

"He said you already know how to contact him," Kael added.

Zorian nodded slowly, giving the food in front of him a tentative bite. After their victory over Jornak and the invasion, Zach had wasted no time in filing a lawsuit against his caretaker. Zorian had advised him back then to wait a little for the circumstances to calm down a little, but Zach would have none of it. This decision had both positive and negative consequences. On one hand, the spotlight was still firmly focused on the failed invasion on the city, meaning Tesen was free to try and shut the whole things down without too much outcry from the public. On the other hand, this was probably the worst time for Tesen to be accused of something like this, considering the royals were looking for someone to publically make an example out of, due to the debacle that had happened and all.

Zorian mostly stayed out of the whole thing. He trusted Zach to know what he was doing. He claimed he didn’t need any help with this, and he had clearly been prepared for this a long time.

"Aren’t you worried, at least a little?" Akoja said, frowning. "I mean, Tesen is a powerful man, and he surely knows you and Zach are friends. What if he decides to get back at him by going after you ?"

Zorian smiled slightly. He found it interesting how pretty much none of their classmates thought Zach was lying about his accusations. He had expected that at least some of them would have thought Zach was making things up, but even Akoja, who definitely wasn’t a fan of Zach, absolutely believed him when he publically stated Tesen had robbed him of his family legacy.

"I’m not worried," Zorian said. "This is the worst time to try and attack people in Cyoria. The whole city is crawling with soldiers and investigators. Tesen would have to be mad to go after me right now."

This was not entirely true, of course. Tesen had already tried to set people to scout Imaya’s house and see if they could ambush him when he left the place, but these people had simply vanished into thin air before their mission was done.

After that, Zach’s caretaker hadn’t bothered sending anyone else.

"Indeed," Ilsa said. "Plus, I had the academy secure this house with additional wards, since we are effectively using it was a makeshift classroom. Anyone trying to infiltrate the place is in for an unpleasant surprise. And with that, I propose we start our usual lesson now. As you can imagine, an alteration expert like me is in high demand during this time of reconstruction, so I can only spare so much time here."

Everyone immediately gave their assent for the idea, some more enthusiastically than others, after which Ilsa started giving short demonstrations to the gathered students. Even Kirielle, Nochka, and Kana paid close attention when Ilsa was casting spells, not having many opportunities to witness magic spells like this in their daily lives.

The academy was temporarily closed. It had been closed for a month now, ever since the failed invasion. Not only had many sections of the academy been damaged in the attack, but most of the teachers had been recruited by the city to help deal with the aftermath as well. The place was scheduled to reopen in a week or so, if only to stop angry parents from demanding the money they had paid for attendance fees back, but for now, the student body was told to simply wait.

A large number of students did just that, treating the whole thing as a sort of vacation, but not everyone was willing to simply waste a whole month or more when they had already paid to learn how to do magic. These students self-organized into study groups and continued their education on their own.

Zorian was one of the people leading the charge on such things, at least when it came to his own class. He knew there were at least a handful of people in there that were serious about becoming a proper mage, and finding a study group that was not just an excuse to play cards every other night or some egoist’s attempt to gather underlings was bound to be hard. This sort of initiative was admittedly not something Zorian was used to, and he had been absent from classes for most of the previous month, so his announcement that he was starting a study group had definitely raised some eyebrows. However, the fact that he had managed to talk Ilsa and some of the other teachers to occasionally give demonstrations and lectures – something few others could boast about – made others more willing to trust him.

The fact Akoja had decided to give up on her own study group in favor of choosing his own probably helped too. Akoja was well known for her serious attitude and work ethic – if she was willing to join Zorian’s group, he probably wasn’t just messing around.

He even got quite a few requests from older students and students from other classes about joining the group, though Zorian had to refuse most of them due to time constraints. He didn’t want to spend most of his people teaching people and managing groups. It just wasn’t something he was seriously interested in.

"I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong with this spell," Kael complained.

Zorian glanced at the morlock and at the open book where the spell was detailed.

"You’re not doing anything wrong," Zorian told him. "You’re casting the spell perfectly. Your shaping skills simply aren’t good enough to pull it off. I can show you some more shaping exercises if you want."

"Great," Kael mumbled. "More shaping exercises. You really remind me of that Xvim guy you occasionally bring here to teach us."

"That guy is his mentor, so it kind of makes sense," Kopriva said. "Based on what I heard about the guy, you kind of have to go all the way with your shaping skills if you’re assigned to him."

"As if Zorian is suffering here," Edwin grumbled. He was, like Zorian, one of the people who had been assigned to Xvim against his will, and still hadn’t gotten over it. Probably because he really only cared about magic if it could help him with golem making, and shaping skills weren’t high on the list of requisites for that. "He’s probably the only guy in the history of our academy that likes the guy and what he’s teaching."

"You’d be surprised to know how many people speak highly of Mr. Chao’s teaching skills," Ilsa remarked with a teasing smile. "Though most people don’t appreciate his genius, there are always one or two students that have what it takes to thrive under his tutelage. He didn’t keep his job at the academy all these years for nothing, you know?"

"We understand he’s good at what he does, but does he really have to be so mean about it?" Kiana said, pouting. "The last time he was here he said my shaping skills are completely inadequate . I’m pretty sure my shaping skills are average at worst."