Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"Actually, they’re very much above average now, and it’s almost entirely due to Xvim pushing you further and further every time he comes here," Zorian pointed out.

"Teacher’s pet," Kiana accused him with a huff.

He was pretty sure Kiana was coming here only because Raynie was too, not because she was honestly so dedicated to improving her magic skills… but to her credit, she really did try to keep up with the rest of the group, unwilling to be left behind. Thus, whenever Xvim criticized her and pushed her to try for more, she reluctantly did her best to rise to the challenge.

She didn’t appreciate it right now, but Zorian was sure she would eventually understand that Xvim was doing her a huge favor. Most people had to pay a fortune to get personal instructions from an archmage.

After a while, Ilsa excused herself and left. The group continued interacting and helping each other for a while after that, but eventually people started leaving and the group was becoming smaller. The table, so crowded and busy earlier in the morning, started to clear up and fall silent.

In the end, the only ones left sitting there were Zorian and Raynie. Zorian had originally wanted to leave as well, but he could see from the glances Raynie was sending him and the emotions radiating off of her that she wanted to talk to him, so he remained patient and stayed in his seat.

The invasion had been thwarted. Panaxeth remained sealed. There was no more urgent danger constantly occupying his attention. He could finally waste an hour or two of his life and not feel bad about it in the back of his head.

"I just realized it’s been a whole month, and I never thanked you for helping me find my little brother," Raynie eventually said, her tone hesitant.

Zorian didn’t know what to say to that. Since she hadn’t mentioned any of this in all this time, he kind of figured she wanted to pretend the whole thing never happened.

"Sorry," she said, fiddling with her hands awkwardly. "I know this is very late and-"

"I didn’t take it against you," Zorian assured her. "I didn’t do much, really. I just put you into contact with the right people. You did the rest, by organizing the other shifters into a rescue mission."

"You already heard about that?" she asked, surprised. Then she shook her head. "Wait, of course you heard about that, what am I even saying? After what I’ve seen that evening, it would be a bigger surprise if you didn’t know anything about what happened."

"I hear you rescued your brother successfully," Zorian remarked.

"The cat shifters and pigeon shifters rescued my brother successfully," she corrected him. "I just helped the police contact them and talk them into helping me. Then I just stood by the side and waited to see if they would succeed. Though yes, the newspapers have been crediting me for the whole thing. The city police insisted I should be the public face of the whole operation. I don’t really understand it."

What was there to understand? She was a beautiful teenage girl with an emotional story of trying to save her little brother. The police probably didn’t want to release details about what was really going on before Eldemar’s forces finished their investigation, and this was a nice way of distracting the public. Plus, it was a story with a happy ending, and Eldemar really loved pushing those to the forefront right now.

He didn’t say that at loud, of course.

"I’m pretty sure talking those two groups of shifters into cooperating wasn’t easy at all, so don’t put yourself down so much," Zorian told her. "That aside, I get the feeling you’re not really mentioning this because you’re bothered by the newspaper exposure. What’s got you so depressed?"

"I’m not depressed, it’s just… my family has invited me to come back home," she admitted with a sigh.

"Ah," Zorian nodded. He paused for a second, considering. "Is this a problem? You were instrumental in saving your younger brother, no? They should give you a hero’s welcome."

"They might," she admitted. "Or maybe they’ll accuse me of overstepping my boundaries when I promised our tribe’s help in exchange for help in the rescue mission. I really don’t know what’s going to happen when I get there, and it scares me."

Zorian was silent.

"I don’t know why I’m telling you this," she admitted after a while. "It’s not like I expect you to help. You’ve done more than enough already. I guess I just wanted to complain to someone other than Kiana for a change. She’s getting a little annoyed with me lately, I think. She things being praised in the newspapers is great, and that I’m being a baby."

"The newspapers are using you as a distraction and would turn on you in a second if it suited their purposes, so it’s good you’re not letting it get to your head," Zorian remarked. "Still, I don’t think you need to worry. I bet your family also doesn’t know what’s going to happen when you get there. They probably just want to see where they stand with you, since you surprised them so badly."

Further conversation was interrupted by a large buzzing sound from a stone disk tied around Zorian’s waist. Zorian glanced at it, somewhat annoyed. It was a communication device House Aope had given him so they could contact him, though Zorian hardly thought it deserved to be called a device. It was just a stone that vibrated when told to by a second stone the Aope were in possession with, and did nothing else. Rather than convey useful information, the stone disk merely told him that House Aope representatives wanted to see him as soon as possible. He badly wanted to make real communication stones for this kind of use – something small and discreet and capable of facilitating actual two-way telepathy between holders – but doing that would be extremely suspicious and attention grabbing.

"I’m going to have to cut this meeting short," he old Raynie.

"The aranea?" Raynie guessed.

Zorian nodded.

"I still can’t believe that’s what you’ve been doing this past month you’ve been absent from classes," Raynie said. "Learning mind magic from giant underground spiders…"

"There was no other way," Zorian said. "My empathy was running out of control and they were the first ones to realize what was happening, and stepped up to help me. I’m really grateful for their help."

Sadly, although Zach and Zorian had been successful in keeping their involvement in the invasion itself a secret, there was no way to keep Zorian’s involvement with the aranea as secret. This was because the Cyorian web had no way of hiding itself from Eldemar’s authorities in the wake of the invasion, and asked Zorian to help them broker some kind of agreement with the city authorities. A hard task, and one that had given Zorian many headaches during this past month, but thankfully they had the support of Noble House Aope in this endeavor. It would have probably been an impossible task, otherwise. Zorian might be a master mind mage, but there was no way he could compel the entire royal bureaucracy to acknowledge a group of scary telepathic spiders as an ally against their will. Nor would he want to be that forceful, even if it were within his power.

Sadly, this also meant that knowledge of Zorian’s innate mind magic was gradually becoming more common. People thought he was a complete beginner at mind magic, yes, but he had already noticed mages starting to raise their mental shields when he was around, and his empathy told him some people were scared of him on sight.

He dreaded to think what would happen if the full extent of his abilities became known.

"Well," said Raynie. "Don’t let me keep you from your duties. I should really get going as well."

"I guess I won’t be seeing you in our group meetings, then?" Zorian guessed.