Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

"Wonder what that’s all about," he mumbled.

After a few minutes of contemplation, he decided he didn’t care much. He would find out sooner or later, if it was of any importance.

The administration building was, predictably, mostly empty of students. Most of them took shelter from the rain instead of pressing on like Zorian, and those that didn’t often didn’t live on academy grounds and thus had no reason to come here today. That was perfect as far as Zorian was concerned, as it meant he could be done here quickly.

Quickly turned out to be a relative term – it took two hours of wrangling with the girl working at the administration desk before he had taken care of all the necessary paperwork. He asked about his class schedule, but was told it wasn’t finalized yet and that he would have to wait until Monday morning. Come to think of it, Ilsa had mentioned the same thing. Before he left, the girl gave him a book of rules with which third-year students were expected to familiarize themselves before sending him on his way. Zorian idly flipped through the rule book while he searched for room 115, before putting it into one of the more obscure compartments in his backpack, never to be looked at again.

Academy-provided housing was pretty terrible, and Zorian had had very unpleasant experiences with it, but it was free and apartment space was severely overpriced in Cyoria. Even children of nobles often lived on academy grounds rather than in their own apartments, so who was he to complain? Besides, living so close to the lecture hall cut down on the travel time each morning and put him close to the biggest library in the city, so there were definitely good sides to it.

An hour later, he smiled to himself as he entered a fairly spacious room. He was even more pleased when he realized he had his own bathroom. With a shower stall, no less! It was a welcome change from having to share a cramped little room with an inconsiderate roommate and sharing a single communal bathroom with the whole floor. As far as furniture went, the room had a bed, a closet, a set of drawers, a work desk, and a chair. Everything Zorian needed, really.

Dropping his luggage on the floor, Zorian changed out of his wet clothes before collapsing on the bed with relief. He had two whole days before the classes started, so he decided to postpone unpacking until tomorrow. Instead he remained motionless on the bed, wondering for a moment why he couldn’t hear the raindrops hitting the glass plane of the window next to his bed, before remembering the rain barrier.

"I’ve got to learn how to cast that," he mumbled.

His spell collection was extremely limited at the moment, consisting of about 20 simple spells, but he had plans to rectify that this year. As a certified first circle mage, he had access to parts of the academy library he didn’t before, and he planned on raiding them for spells contained within. Besides, this year’s classes were supposed to be much more focused on practical spellcasting now that they’d proven themselves capable, so he should be learning plenty of interesting things in class too.

Tired from the long journey, Zorian closed his eyes, intending to take a short nap. He wouldn’t wake up until tomorrow morning.

Although the academy loved saying they were an elite institution thanks to the excellent quality of its teaching staff, the truth was that the main reason for their supremacy was their library. Through contributions of its alumni, generous budget allocations by a number of former headmasters, quirks of local criminal law, and sheer historical accident, the academy had built a library without equal. You could find anything you wanted, regardless of whether the topic was magical or not – there was a whole section reserved for steamy romance novels, for instance. The library was so massive it had actually expanded into the tunnels beneath the city. Many of the lower levels were only accessible to guild mages, so it was only now that Zorian was allowed to browse their contents. Fortunately, the library was open during the weekend, so the very first thing Zorian did when he woke up was descend into these depths to see what he’d been missing these past two years and maybe fill out his spellbook a bit.

He was pleasantly surprised at the sheer number of spells and training manuals available to a first circle mage. There were more books and spells than he could master in a lifetime. Most of the spells were either highly situational or minor variations of each other, so he didn’t feel the need to obsessively learn all of them, but he could already see this place would keep him busy all year round. A lot of them looked surprisingly easy and harmless, and he couldn’t help but wonder why they were kept on the restricted level instead of being available to everyone. He could have used these during his second year.

He was right in the middle of trying to find the rain barrier the academy incorporated into its ward scheme when he realized he had skipped breakfast and was getting awfully hungry, and that it was past noon. Reluctantly, he checked out a couple of books to pore over in depth in the safety of his room and went to get something to eat.

There was no kitchen in his room, sadly, but the academy had a pretty good cafeteria available to students – the food they offered was cheap yet surprisingly edible. Still, it was something of a poor man’s option, and most of the richer kids ate in one of the many restaurants in the vicinity of the academy. That’s why Zorian was a bit shocked when he entered the cafeteria and realized that changes to the academy weren’t only in exterior appearances – the cafeteria was positively sparkling, and all the tables and chairs were brand new. It was weird to see the place so… clean.

Shaking his head, he quickly loaded a couple of plates on his tray, idly noting the cooks were a lot less stingy with the meat and other expensive parts of the dish all of a sudden, and then started scanning the eating students for familiar faces. Clearly something was happening here, and he hated being left outside the loop.

"Zorian! Over here!"

How fortunate. Zorian immediately set off towards the chubby boy gesturing for him to come over. Zorian had learned over the years that his exuberant classmate was firmly plugged into the academy gossip network, and knew pretty much everything and everyone. If anyone would know what was going on, it would be Benisek.

"Hello Ben," Zorian said. "I’m surprised to see you in Cyoria so soon. Don’t you usually come with the last train?"

"I should be asking you that!" Benisek half-shouted. Zorian never understood why the boy had to be so loud all the time. "I came here so early but you’re already here!"

"You came back two days before classes start, Ben," Zorian said, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at him. Only Benisek would think that coming a couple of days early is some great feat worth mentioning. "That’s not all that early. And I just got back yesterday."

"So did I," Benisek said. "Damn. If you had contacted me, we could have arranged to travel together or something. You must have been bored out of your mind here, all alone for a whole day."

"Something like that," agreed Zorian, smiling politely.

"So are you excited?" Benisek asked, suddenly changing the topic.

"About what?" Zorian asked. Funny, hadn’t Kirielle asked him the exact same question?

"The start of a new year! We’re third years now, that’s when the real fun starts."

Zorian blinked. To his knowledge, Benisek was one of those people who weren’t terribly concerned about their success in the arcane arts. He already had a guaranteed post in his family business, and was here simply to obtain the prestige of being a licensed mage. Zorian had half expected him to drop out immediately following certification, yet here he was, just as excited as Zorian to finally start delving into the real mysteries of magic. Now he felt pretty bad about writing him off so quickly. He really shouldn’t be so presumptuous…