Домагой Курмаич - Mother of Learning

Kirielle looked as if she was about to argue but then just grunted and melted back into her chair.

"Where is he?" she said after a minute of silence.

"I don’t know, Kiri," sighed Zorian. "Be patient. He isn’t even late yet."

"Maybe we should start without him?" she tried.

"No we should not!" snapped Zorian. The snail wobbled in the air, its eyestalks swinging wildly as it sensed its bonds weakening and redoubled its efforts. "Honestly, Kiri, you can be so callous sometimes. The only reason I’m even doing this is because Kael asked me to. You should be thanking him for letting you participate."

"You’re the one to talk about callousness," Kirielle grumbled. "You’d rather help a stranger you met a week ago than your own little sister. And I am grateful, I just-"

"Then be nice and wait." Zorian interrupted her, slowly lowering the snail into his hand. He clearly wasn’t going to get any more work done today. "He’ll be here soon enough. If you want something to do, go release the snail back into the garden."

"What? No way!"

Zorian raised an eyebrow. "Weren’t you just advocating its freedom?"

"Well yeah, but I’m not gonna touch it or anything. It’s slimy and disgusting and eww."

Zorian rolled his eyes and put the snail into a small box by his side. He would release it outside later. A sound of door opening signaled Kael’s arrival.

"I’m here," Kael said. "I’m not late, I hope?"

"How did you know he was coming?" Kirielle asked suspiciously, turning to Zorian.

"Alarm spells," Zorian said dismissively. "And no, Kael, you’re not late. Though Kirielle was impatient like usual. Anyway, you said you need my help to catch up to 3rd year curriculum, right? Which part do you need help with?"

"I really don’t know," Kael said. "As I said, my education was somewhat spotty so even though I know a lot of things, there are things that formally trained mages take for granted that I’m not even aware of. Why don’t you give me a brief overview of your first two years and we’ll see where to go from there? Ilsa said she will test me three months from now, so there is plenty of time to work with."

Zorian gave his sister a knowing look, but she was avoiding his eyes. He was sure that Kael knew exactly where he was deficient knowledge-wise, but Kiri had probably asked him to play along for her, being largely ignorant about magic herself. He really didn’t know why she was so adamant to learn magic Right Now, as opposed to later, in a proper school environment.

Honestly, as much as he cared for his sister and liked Kael, he probably wouldn’t be taking Kirielle with him to Cyoria too often. He spent most of his time in the house dealing with Kirielle, Imaya or Kael (and occasionally Kana), leaving little time for his personal self study. Relatively speaking, of course – Kirielle already complained he spent too much time studying and not enough having fun or paying attention to her.

But all things considered, he could take it easy every once in a while. He could set aside a few hours on helping Kael study for his test, even if he would never actually live to take it during the time loop, and if Kirielle wants to listen in then so what?

He gave them both a brief explanation of the first two years in the academy. Magic-wise, most of the first year was spent on teaching students how to consciously and consistently draw on their magical core, mostly by making them activate various magical objects. There was even a first year class called Operation of Magic Items , which was exactly what it said in the title. They also worked on their memorization by doing increasingly complex strings of gestures and chants shown to them by teachers, a practice for later study of invocations. The rest was theory: introductions to various magical traditions and disciplines, learning how to understand the basics of Ikosian language, biology, history, geography, law and mathematics. Not all of it was strictly related to magic, but- wait, who’s that?

"We’ll have to postpone that for the moment," he said, looking at the door. "Someone is-"

Before he could say anything, the door slammed open and Taiven barged into his room in her usual aggressive manner. She scanned the room quickly and immediately stalked towards him when she noticed him.

"…coming here." He finished with a long-suffering sigh.

"Roach!" she exclaimed excitedly. "You’re just the man I… wait, am I interrupting something?"

"Yes?" Zorian tried.

"Never mind, it will only take a minute." She shoved a newspaper into his face. "Did you see this?"

He sighed and snatched the newspapers out of her hand so he could put them on the table. There, now he could actually see what she was taking about. Let’s see…

Academy Student Kills Oganj!

Yesterday morning Zach Noveda shocked the world when he announced in front of gathered reporters that he had slain Oganj, the feared dragon that had terrorized northern Altazia for more than a century. Naturally, such a bold claim requires suitable proof, and the young Noveda heir had certainly delivered when he summoned the dragon’s corpse for inspection. Alliance officials invited in for the occasion have confirmed the body almost certainly belongs to the infamous Terror of the North, although further examination is necessary before they are willing to present Zach with the promised bounty for killing the beast…

Zorian read the article in stony silence. He was dimly aware of Kirielle and Kael staring over his shoulder so they could see what had captivated his attention like that, but he didn’t let that distract him.

Was this the reason for all those short restarts? Because Zach wanted to kill a dragon? Zorian wasn’t sure what to think about that. On one hand, the mage dragon was a menace, and killing him was an impressive feat. On the other hand, it seemed like a waste of time and effort – what did Zach really gain from this, other than combat experience? Dragon magics were of no use to humans, and Zach was already so rich that he wouldn’t gain much from Oganj’s hoard.

Whatever game Zach was playing, Zorian couldn’t figure it out. Or did the other time traveler just do whatever popped into his head at any particular moment?

"Hey, Roach, you went to class with this guy, right?" Taiven prodded after a while.

"Yeah," he confirmed. "He was supposed to be in my class this year too, but failed to show up when the classes started."

"He ran away from home," Taiven said. "There was a recent scandal about that a week ago. They asked him about it in the article but he kind of dodged the question there."

Zorian nodded. Zach simply told the reporters he had a great number of disagreements with his former guardian and refused to elaborate. There was an interesting story in there, Zorian was sure, but if the newspapers hadn’t managed to dig something up on the whole thing then Zorian definitely wasn’t going to accomplish much by poking his nose where it didn’t belong.

Zach also told the newspapers he intends to go back to school for a few months when he was prompted for his immediate plans. Great. He would have to lay low during the next few restarts, until Zach got tired of the academy again.

"Isn’t Oganj the dragon that annihilated an army sent to kill him?" Kirielle asked. "Or was that mother just trying to scare me?"

"A small army, and Oganj lured it into a trap," Kael said. "The general seemed to think Oganj would wait in his lair while the army approached. He instead decided to do something about it before it reached him. He carved exploding runes into the walls of a canyon and lured the army inside. The only reason anyone survived is that some of the mages teleported out before the whole thing collapsed on top of them."