Baka-Tsuki - User contributions [en]

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 002

2015-06-19T08:42:23Z

76.21.95.209: /* Life's Little Problem */

===Life's Little Problem===

Although the academy loved saying they are an elite institution thanks to the excellent quality of its teaching staff, the truth is that the main reason for their supremacy came from 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 was missing on 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 skipped breakfast and was getting awfully hungry, and that it was past noon. Reluctantly, he checked out a couple of books to pore over at 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 outward in 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 the 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 eyes at him. Only Benisek would think that coming a couple of days earlier 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 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, didn't Kirielle ask 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 half expected him to drop out immediately following certification, yet here he was, just 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…

"Oh, that. Of course I'm excited. Thought I must admit I never knew you actually cared about your education."

"What are you talking about?" asked Benisek, eying him suspiciously. "The girls, man, I'm talking about the girls. The younger ones ''love'' upperclassmen like us! The new batch of first years will be all over us."

Zorian groaned. He should have known.

"Anyway," said Zorian, recovering quickly, "since I know you're always gossiping around-"

"Informing myself about the current state of things," Benisek cut in, his voice assuming a mock-lecturing quality.

"Right. What's with the academy being all sparkly and clean all of a sudden?"

Benisek blinked. "You didn't know? Oh man, people have been talking about this for months! Just under which rock do you live, Zorian?"

"Cirin is a glorified village in the middle of nowhere… as you very well know," Zorian said. "Now spill."

"It's the summer festival," Benisek said. "The whole city is getting ready for it, not just the academy."

"But there is a summer festival every year," Zorian said, confused.

"Yeah, but this year is special."

"Special?" Zorian asked. "How?"

"I don't know, some astrological bullshit," Benisek whined, waving his hand dismissively. "Why does it matter? It's an excuse to have an even larger party than usual. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, I say."

"Astro-" began Zorian with a quirked eyebrow when something occurred to him. "Wait, you mean planar alignment?"

"Yeah, that," Benisek agreed. "What that anyway?"

"Do you have a couple of hours?"

"On second thought, I don't want to know," Benisek quickly backpedaled, chuckling nervously.

Zorian snorted. So easy to scare. The truth was that Zorian knew very little about planar alignments, and probably couldn't speak about them longer than 30 seconds.
It was a pretty obscure topic. Zorian strongly suspected that Benisek was right, and that it was being used simply as an excuse to have a bigger party.

"So what did you do over the summer?" Benisek asked.

Zorian groaned. "Ben, you sound like my elementary school literature teacher. 'Now, children, for your homework you will write a short essay about what you did during the summer holidays'."

"I'm just being polite," Benisek said defensively. "No need to snap at me because you wasted your summer away."

"Oh, and you spent it productively?" Zorian challenged.

"Well, not voluntarily," Benisek admitted sheepishly. "Father decided it was time I start learning the family craft so I spend all summer helping him and acting as his assistant."

"Oh."

"Yeah," Benisek agreed, clacking his tongue. "He also made me choose estate management as one of my electives. I hear it's a really tough class too."

"Hm. Can't say my summer was particularly stressful. I spent most of my time reading fiction and avoiding my family," admitted Zorian. "Mother tried to dump my little sister on me this year, but I managed to talk her out of it."

"I feel for you," Benisek said with a shudder. "I've got ''two'' younger sisters and I think I'd die if they came to live with me here. They're both utter nightmares! Anyway, what did you take for your electives?"

"Engineering, Mineral Alchemy, and Advanced Mathematics."

"Eh!?" Benisek blanched. "Man, you're really taking this seriously, aren't you? I guess you're gunning for a spot in one of the spell forges, huh?"

"Yeah," Zorian said.

"Why?" Benisek asked incredulously. "Designing magic items… that's a tough, demanding job. Surely your parents could find you a spot in their business?"

Zorian gave him a strained smile. Yes, no doubt his parents already have a spot all planned out for him.

"I'd rather starve out in the streets," Zorian told him honestly.

Benisek raised an eyebrow at him, but then simply shook his head sadly. "I think you're crazy, personally. Who did you choose as your mentor?"

"I didn't get to choose," Zorian scoffed. "The academy assigned me one by the time it was my turn to choose. I'm mentored under Xvim."

Benisek actually dropped his spoon at this, staring at him in shock. "Xvim!? But that guy's a nightmare!"

"I know," Zorian said, releasing a long-suffering sigh.

"God, I'd probably transfer if I got assigned to that asshole," Benisek said. "You're a lot braver man than I, that's for sure."

"So who did you choose?" Zorian asked curiously.

"Carabiera Aope," Benisek said, immediately brightening.

"Please don't tell me you chose your mentor based on appearance?" begged Zorian.

"Well, not ''just'' based on appearance," Benisek said defensively. "They say she's pretty tolerant…"

"You don't want to do any extra work," Zorian surmised.

"This whole thing is like a vacation to me," Benisek admitted sheepishly. "I get to postpone employment for two years and have some fun in the meantime. You're only young once, you know?"

Zorian shrugged. Personally he found learning about magic and gathering knowledge in general to be fun all by itself, but he knew all too well that very few people shared this opinion with him.

"I suppose," Zorian said noncommittally. "So is there anything else that everyone knows that I should be familiar with?"

He spent another hour or so conversing with Benisek, touching upon a variety of topics. It was particularly interesting to hear which of their classmates would be joining them this year, and which ones wouldn't. Zorian had thought the certification exam was a bit on the easy side, but apparently he was mistaken, since roughly a quarter of their classmates would not be joining them. He did notice that most of the failed students were civilian-born ones, but this wasn't terribly unusual – mage-born students had parental support when learning magic, and a reputation to live up to. He was pleasantly surprised that one particular asshole wouldn't be joining them this year – apparently Veyers Boranova lost his temper on his disciplinary hearing and got himself expelled from the academy. He wouldn't be missed. Honestly, that boy was a menace and it was a disgrace they hadn't expelled him sooner. Fortunately, it seemed there were some things that just couldn't be overlooked, even if you were a heir of Noble House Boranova.

He left when Benisek started discussing pros and cons of various girls in their class, not willing to get dragged into such a discussion, and went back to his room get some reading done. Only he hadn't even opened the first book properly when he was interrupted by a knock on the door. Very few people cared to track him down to his room, so he actually had a pretty good idea of who it was before he even opened the door.

"Hi Roach!"

Zorian stared at the grinning girl in front of him, contemplating whether to take offence at the insulting nickname before shooing her inside. In the past, while he was still crushing on her, the nickname had kind of hurt… now it was just slightly annoying. Taiven promptly ran inside and jumped on his bed like a little kid. Really, what did he ever see in her? Beside a beautiful older girl that was fairly nice to him and had a propensity to wear form-fitting clothes, that is.

"I thought you graduated," he said.

"I did," she answered, taking one of the spellbooks he borrowed from the library into her lap to leaf through it. Seeing how she had already taken over his bed, he sat down on the chair in front of his work desk. "But you know how it goes – there's always too many young mages, never enough masters willing to take them under their wing.
I'm working as a class assistant to Nirthak. Hey, if you took nonmagical combat you're going to see me all the time!"

"Yeah, right," Zorian snorted. "Nirthak blacklisted me in advance, just in case I get any ideas."

"Really!?"

"Yeah. Not that I would ever sign up for a class like that anyway," Zorian said. Except maybe to watch Taiven all sweaty and puffed up in that tight training outfit she always wore whenever she trained.

"Pity," she said, seemingly engrossed in his book. "You really should put on some muscle one of these days. Girls like boys who exercise."

"I don't care what girls like," Zorian snapped crankily. She was starting to sound like his mother. "Why are you here anyway?"

"Oh calm down, it was just a thought," she said with a dramatic sigh. "Boys and their fragile little egos."

"Taiven, I like you, but you're really treading on thin ice here," Zorian warned.

"I came here to ask if you would join me and a couple of others on a job tomorrow," she said, throwing the book aside and finally getting to the point of her visit.

"A job?" Zorian said suspiciously.

"Yeah. Well, more like a mission. You know those job postings people tack onto the big board inside the administrative building?"

Zorian nodded. Whenever a mage in the city wanted to do something for cheap, he posted a 'job offer' there for interested students. The payout was generally miserable, but students were obliged to collect 'points' by doing these, so everyone had to do a number of them. Most people didn't start doing these before their fourth year, unless they really needed the money, and Zorian fully intended to follow this tradition.

"There is a pretty nice one there," Taiven said. "It's actually just a simple find and retrieve in the tunnels below the city that-"

"A sewer run!?" asked Zorian incredulously, cutting her off. "You want me to go to a sewer run?"

"It's good experience!" Taiven protested.

"No," said Zorian, crossing his arms across his chest. "No way."

"Oh come on Roach, I'm begging you!" Taiven whined. "We can't apply until we find a fourth member of the team! Would it kill you to make this tiny sacrifice for your old friend?"

"It very well might!" Zorian said.

"You'll have 3 other people to protect you!" she assured. "We've been there hundreds of times and nothing really dangerous ever happens down there – the rumors are mostly exaggerated."

Zorian snorted and looked away. Even if they really did keep him safe, it was still a trek through smelly, disease-ridden tunnels with three people he didn't really know, and who probably resented having to bring him along for the sake of a formality.

Besides, he still hadn't forgiven her that fake date she invited him on. She may not have known he was crushing on her at the time, but it was still a pretty insensitive thing she did that evening.

Also, he might feel a little more inclined to help if she stopped calling him 'Roach'. It was not nearly as cute as she thought it was.

"Okay, how about a bet?" she tried.

"No," Zorian promptly refused.

She let out an affronted cry. "You didn't even hear me out!"

"You want to fight," Zorian said. "You ''always'' want to fight."

"So?" she pouted. "You chickening out? You're admitting you'd lose to a girl?"

"Absolutely," Zorian deadpanned. Both of Taiven's parents were martial arts practitioners, and they had taught her how to fight since she could walk. Zorian wouldn't last 5 seconds against her in hand-to-hand combat.

Hell, he doubted anyone in school would do much better.

Taiven waved her hands in the air in a frustrated gesture and promptly collapsed on his bed, and for a moment Zorian actually thought she was accepting defeat.
Then she sat up and folded her legs under her until she was sitting in a lotus position. The smile on her face was giving Zorian a bad feeling.

"So," she began cheerfully. "How have you been?"

Zorian sighed. This was ''not'' how he intended to spend his weekend.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

2 days later Zorian was well settled into his new room and it was Monday morning. Rising early was pure torture after he got into a habit of sleeping in, but he managed. He had many flaws, but self-discipline wasn't one of them.

He had managed to fend off Taiven after 3 hours of verbal wrangling, though he was in no mood for anything after that and put off reading for another day after her visit.
In the end he spent the entire weekend lazing off, actually somewhat impatient for the classes to start.

The first class of the day was essential invocations, and Zorian wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to teach. Most of the other classes on his schedule had a clear subject of study visible from the very name of the subject, but 'invocation' was a general term. Invocations were what most people thought about when someone said 'magic' – a few arcane words and strange gestures and poof! Magic effect. It was actually more involved than that – a ''lot'' more involved – but that was the visible part so that's what people focused on. Clearly the academy felt the class was important, because they had a period scheduled for it in every day of the week.

As he approached the classroom, he noticed a familiar person standing in front of the door with a clipboard in her hands. This, at least, was a familiar sight.
Akoja Stroze had been the class representative for his group since their first year, and she took her position ''very'' seriously. She gave him a harsh look when she noticed him and Zorian wondered what he did to annoy her now.

"You're late," she stated when he got close enough.

Zorian raised an eyebrow at this. "The class doesn't start for at least 10 more minutes. How can I be late?"

"Students are supposed to be in the classroom and ready for class 15 minutes before the class starts," she stated.

Zorian rolled his eyes. This was ridiculous, even for Akoja. "Am I the last person to arrive?"

"No," she conceded after a short silence.

Zorian walked past her and entered the classroom.

You could always tell when you walk into a gathering of mages – their appearance and fashion sense gave them away erringly, especially in Cyoria where mages from all over the world sent their children to. Many of his classmates came from established magical families, if not outright Houses, and many mage lineages produced children with noticeable peculiarities, either because of bloodlines passed down from parents or because of secret enhancement rituals they subjected themselves to… things like having green hair, or always giving birth to soul-bonded twins, or having tattoo-like markings on their cheeks and forehead. And these were real examples exhibited by his classmates, not something he made up on the spot.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he went towards the front of the classroom, throwing a few polite greetings to those few classmates he knew a little better than the rest. No one really tried to talk to him – though there was no bad blood between him and anyone in the class, he was not particularly close to any one of them either.

He was just about to sit down when frantic hissing interrupted him. He glanced to his left, watching his classmate whisper soothingly to the orange-red lizard in his lap.
The animal was staring at him intently with its bright yellow eyes, nervously tasting the air with its tongue, but didn't hiss again when Zorian carefully lowered himself into the chair.

"Sorry about that," the boy said apologetically. "He's still a little uneasy around strangers."

"Don't worry about it," Zorian said, waving the apology away. He didn't know Briam all that well, but he did know his family bred fire drakes for a living, so it wasn't that unusual for him to have one. "I see your family has given you a fire drake of your own. Familiar?"

Briam nodded happily, scratching the lizard's head absent-mindedly and causing the creature to close its eyes in contentment. "I bonded with him over the summer holidays," he said. "Familiar bond is a little strange at first, but I think I'm getting a hang of it. At least I've managed to talk him out of breathing fire at people without permission, else I would have to put a fire-suppressant collar on him and he hates that thing."

"The school won't bother you about bringing it to class?" Zorian asked curiously.

"Him," Briam corrected. "And no, they won't. You can bring a familiar to class if you've reported them to the academy and can get them to behave. And, of course, as long as they're within reasonable size."

"I hear fire drakes can get pretty big," Zorian remarked speculatively.

"They can," Brian agreed. "That's why I wasn't allowed to have one till now. In a few years he'll get way too big to follow me into the classroom, but by that time I'll already be finished with my education and back at the ranch."

Satisfied the creature won't try to take a bite out of him during class, Zorian let his attention wander elsewhere. He mostly spent his time studying the girls as covertly as possible. He blamed Benisek for this, since he usually wasn't in the habit of ogling his classmates. No matter how cute some of them were…

"Hot, isn't she?"

Zorian jumped in surprise at the voice behind him and cursed himself for being caught so unawares.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said quickly, turning as calmly as possible in his seat to face Zach. The cheery, smiling face of his classmate told him he wasn't fooling anyone.

"Don't be so flustered," Zach told him happily. "I don't think there's a single boy in class who doesn't occasionally daydream about our resident red-headed goddess."

Zorian snorted. Actually, he wasn't looking at Raynie at all, but at the girl she was talking to. Not that he was going to correct Zach about that. Or anything, really – Zorian had mixed feelings about Zach. On one hand the raven-haired boy was charming, confident, handsome, and popular – and thus reminded him uncomfortably of his brothers – but on the other hand the boy was never mean or inconsiderate to Zorian, and would often chat up to him when everyone else was content to ignore him. As a result Zorian was never quite sure how to act around him.

Besides, Zorian never discussed his tastes in women with other boys. The academy rumor mill breathed rumors about who likes who, and Zorian knew all too well how even relatively innocuous rumors can make your life miserable for years to come.

"From your wistful tone, I'm guessing she's still immune to your charm," Zorian said, trying to shift the focus of the conversation away from him.

"She's tricky," Zach agreed. "But I've got all the time in the world."

Zorian raised an eyebrow at that, not sure what the other boy was implying. All the time in the world?

Thankfully, he was saved from further conversation when the door noisily opened and the teacher entered the classroom. Zorian was honestly shocked to see Ilsa walk into class with a huge green book that all teachers carried, thought he really shouldn't have been – he already knew Ilsa was a teacher at the academy, so there was nothing unusual about her teaching this class. She gave him a smile before setting the book down on her desk and clapping her hands together to silence those students who were too engrossed in their own conversations to notice the teacher in the room.

"Settle down everyone, the class has started," Ilsa said, accepting the list of present students from Akoja, who remained standing beside Ilsa in a ramrod position, like a soldier in front of a superior officer.

"Welcome, students, to your first class of the new school year. I am Ilsa Zileti and I will be your teacher for this class. You are third year students now, meaning you have passed your certification and joined us in our… illustrious magi community. You have proved yourself to be intelligent, driven, and capable of bending mana – the lifeblood of magic – to your will. But your journey is just beginning. As all of you have noticed, and many of you have complained about, you have only been taught a handful of spells so far, and all of them are mere cantrips. You'll be pleased to know this injustice ends now."

A cheer erupted from the students, and Ilsa allowed them to go wild for a second before gesturing them to be silent again. She certainly had flair for theatrics.

Much like the students, really – that cheer certainly wasn't because they were honestly unable to contain their excitement.

"But what exactly are spells?" she asked. "Can anyone tell me?"

"Oh great," Zorian mumbled. "A review session."

Hesitant mumbling erupted in the classroom until Ilsa pointed to one particular girl, who repeated her answer of 'structured magic'.

"Indeed, spells are structured magic. To cast a spell is to invoke a particular mana construct. A construct that is by its very nature limited in what it can do. This is why structured spells are also called 'bounded spells'. The shaping exercises you did for the past two years – the ones that you all think are a useless chore – are unstructured magic. In theory, unstructured magic can do anything. Invocations are simply a tool to make your life easier. A crutch, some would say. To cast a bounded spell is to sacrifice flexibility and force mana into a rigid construct that can only be modified in minor ways. So why does everyone prefer invocations?"

She waited for a few moments before continuing. "In an ideal world, you would learn how to perform all your magic in an unstructured manner, bending it your will as you please.
But this is not an ideal world. Unstructured magic is slow and hard to learn, and time is precious. And besides, invocations are good enough for most purposes.
They can do amazing things. Many of the things you can accomplish with invocations have never been reproduced with unstructured magic. Others…"

She took out a pen from her pocket and placed it on the table before casting what Zorian recognized as a simple 'torch' spell. The pen erupted in soft light that illuminated the room. Well, at least now he knows why the curtains were closed in the classroom – it's hard to effectively demonstrate light spells in broad daylight. The spell was nothing new to Zorian though, since they were taught how to cast it last year.

"The 'torch' invocation is one of the simplest spells, and one that you should already know by now. It is comparable to the light emitting shaping exercise that you should ''also'' know by now."

Ilsa then launched into an explanation about the relative advantages and disadvantages of the 'light' spell compared to the shaping exercise, and how it relates to the structured vs. unstructured magic in general. For the most part, it was nothing that Zorian hadn't known from books and lectures already, and Zorian amused himself with drawing various magical creatures on the margins of his notebook while she talked. From the corner of his eye he could see Akoja and a number of other people furiously writing everything down, even though this was just a review session and they almost certainly had all of this already written in their last year's notebooks. He didn't know whether to be impressed with their dedication or disgusted with their single-mindedness. He did notice, however, that some of the students had animated their pens to copy down the entire lecture while they listened. Zorian personally preferred to write notes himself, but he could see how such a spell would be useful, so he quickly jotted down a reminder to find the spell they used to do that.

Ilsa then began discussing dispelling – another topic they had covered exhaustively during the previous year, and also one of the key areas they had to be proficient in to pass the certification process. To be fair, it was a complex and vital topic. There was no one-fits-all solution to effectively dispelling a structured spell, and without knowing how to dispel your own spells, experimenting with structured magic could be disastrous. Still, one would think the academy would assume they knew it by now and moved on.

Somewhere along the line Ilsa decided to spice up her explanation with examples and performed some kind of summoning spell that resulted in several stacks of ceramic bowls popping into existence on her table. She told Akoja to distribute the bowls to everyone and then had them use 'levitate object' spell to make the bowls hover over their tables. Compared to levitating that little girl's bicycle out of the river, this was insultingly easy.

"I see you've all managed to levitate your bowls," Ilsa said. "Very good. Now I want you to cast the de-illuminator spell at it."

Zorian raised his eyebrows at this. What would that achieve?

"Go on," Ilsa urged. "Don't tell me you have already forgotten how to cast it?"

Zorian quickly made a couple of gestures and whispered the word 'shu' while concentrating on the bowl. The item in question wobbled in the air for a second before finally dropping out of the air like any normal heavier-than-air item. A plethora of clattering sounds informed him that this wasn't an isolated occurrence. He glanced towards Ilsa for an explanation.

"As you can see, levitate object spell can be dispelled by the de-illuminator spell. An interesting development, don't you agree? What does a spell designed to snuff out sources of magical light have to do with hovering objects? The truth, my young students, is that de-illuminator is simply a specialized form of a general-purpose disruptor spell, which breaks down the structure of a spell in order to make it go away. While not designed with levitate object in mind, it is still capable of affecting it if you supply it with enough power."

"Why don't you tell us to just dispel it normally, then?" one of the girls asked.

"A topic for another time," Ilsa said without missing a beat. "For now, I want you to take notice of what happened when you dispelled the spell on the bowl – it dropped down like a rock, and if it had not been magically strengthened, it would have probably shattered upon impacting the table. This is the main problem inherent in all disruptor spells.
Disruptor spells are the simplest form of dispelling, and virtually every spell can be disrupted if you put enough power into the disruptor, but sometimes disrupting the spell can have worse consequences than letting it run its course. This is especially true for higher-order spells, which almost always react explosively to disruption because of vast amounts of mana that goes into their casting. Not to mention that 'enough power' can be vastly more than any mage can provide. Place your bowls on the table and put a few torn pages out of your notebook into it."

Zorian was somewhat surprised by Ilsa's sudden request, but did as she said. He always found tearing paper to be somewhat cathartic, so he filled the bowl with a bit more paper than necessary, and then waited for further instruction.

"I want you all to cast the 'ignite' spell on the paper, followed immediately by the de-illuminator on the resulting fire to dispel it," Ilsa said.

Zorian sighed. This time he had caught on to what she was doing, and knew the flames would not be dispelled by the de-illuminator, but he did as she said anyway. The flames didn't even flicker, and the fire died out on its own when it ran out of fuel.

"I see all of you can do the ignite spell perfectly," Ilsa said. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised – heating things is something that is very easy to do with magic. That and explosions. None of you managed to dispel the flames, though. Why do you suppose that is?"

Zorian snorted, listening to several other students trying to guess the answer. 'Guess' being the operative word, because they seemed to be throwing random answers around in hopes of making something stick. Normally he never volunteers for anything in class – he disliked the attention – but he was getting tired of the guessing game and Ilsa didn't seem willing to supply the answer herself until someone figures it out.

"Because there's nothing to dispel," he called out. "It's just a regular fire, started by magic but not fueled by it."

"Correct," Ilsa said. "This is another weakness of disruptor spells. They break down mana constructs, but any fundamentally non-magical effect caused by the spell are unaffected. With that in mind, let us return to our immediate problem…"

Two hours later, Zorian filed out of the classroom with his fellow classmates, actually a bit disappointed. He learned precious little during the lecture, and Ilsa said she would spend an entire month rounding up their basics before moving on to more advanced stuff. Then she gave them an essay project on the topic of dispelling.
It was shaping up to be a relatively boring class, since Zorian had a pretty good grasp on the basics, and they had essential invocations 5 times a week – that is to say, every day. Joy.

The rest of the day was uneventful, since the remaining 4 classes were purely introductory, outlining what the covered material for each class would be and other such details.
Essential alchemy and operation of magical items looked promising, but the other two classes were just more of the same thing they've been having for the past two years. Zorian wasn't sure why the academy felt they needed to continue learning about history of magic and magical law into their third year of education, unless they were deliberately trying to annoy everyone. This was especially true because their history teacher, an old man by the name of Zenomir Olgai, was very enthusiastic about his subject and gave them an assignment to read a 200-page history book by the end of the week.

It was a poor start of the week in Zorian's opinion.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

The next day opened with combat magic, which was taught in a training hall instead of a classical classroom. Their teacher was an ex battlemage named Kyron. It only took one look at him for Zorian to realize this was not going to be your average class.

The man standing in front of them was of average height, but he looked as if he was chiseled out of stone – bald, grim-faced, and very, very muscular. He had a rather prominent nose and he was completely shirtless, proudly displaying his rather developed chest muscles. He carried a combat staff in one hand, and the ever-present teacher's green book in the other. Had someone described the man to Zorian, he would have thought it funny, but there was nothing funny about facing this person in flesh.

"Combat magic isn't really a category of spells as such," Kyron said in a loud, commanding voice, more like a general talking to recruits than a teacher talking to students.
It was probably the quietest class Zorian had ever been in – even chatterboxes like Neolu and Jade were silent. "More like a way of casting magic. To use spells in combat, you need to cast them fast, and you need to overcome your opponent's defenses. This means they inevitably require a lot of power and require that you shape the spell in an instant... which means that classical invocation like you learn them in other classes are ''useless''!" He slammed his staff into the floor for emphases, and his words reverberated throughout the training hall. Zorian could swear the man was empowering his voice with magic somehow. "Chanting a spell takes several seconds, if not longer, and most of your opponents will kill you before you finish. Especially today, in the aftermath of the Splinter Wars, when every fool is armed with a gun and educated in ways to effectively combat mages."

Kyron waved his hand in the air and the air behind him shimmered, revealing a transparent phantasm of a minotaur behind him. The creature looked quite angry, but it was clearly an illusion.

"A lot of old combat spells used by mages of old relied on people being awed by magic, or unfamiliar with its limitations. Today, every child that went through elementary school knows better than to be scared away by an obvious illusion like this one, much less a professional soldier or a criminal. Most of the spells and tactics you will find in the library are hopelessly obsolete."

Kyron stopped and rubbed his chin in thought. "Also, it is somewhat hard to focus on spellcasting when someone is actively trying to kill you," he remarked offhandedly. He shook his head. "As a consequence of all this, nobody casts combat spells as classical invocations anymore. Instead, people use spell formula, like the one imprinted on my staff, and then use these focusing aids to cast specific spells quicker and easier. I won't be even teaching you how to cast combat spells without these items, since teaching you how to use classical invocations effectively in battle would take years. If you're really curious, you can always browse the library for the right chants and gestures and practice on your own."

Then he handed them each a rod of magic missile and had them practice firing the spell at the clay dolls on the other end of the training hall.

Currently, Zorian was studying the spell rod in his hand, waiting for his turn. Kyron had them fire upon the dummies until they ran out of mana, and the girl in front of Zorian still hadn't ran out. It was a perfectly straight piece of wood that fit well into Zorian's hand and could grasped at each of the two ends without any change in effect – that being a bolt of force emerging from the tip of the rod pointing away from the caster.

When it was finally his turn, he realized that casting with the aid of a spell formula was almost insultingly easy. He didn't even have to think about it much, just point the rod in the desired direction and channel mana through it – the spell formula in the rod did almost everything by itself. The real problem was that magic missile took a lot more mana than any other spell that Zorian had encountered, and he had burned through his mana reserves in only 8 shots.

Drained of mana and a little disappointed in how quickly he ran out, Zorian observed Zach as he fired magic missile after magic missile with lazy confidence. Zorian couldn't help but feel a bit envious of the boy – the amount of mana Zach had to have used by now was easily three or four times bigger than his maximum.
And Zach didn't appear to be slowing down at all, either.

"Well, I'm going to let you all go, even though the class isn't officially over yet," Kyron said. "You're all out of mana, with the exception of mister Noveda here, and combat magic is all about practice. As parting words, I must caution you to use your newly acquired combat magic with restraint and responsibility. Otherwise, I will personally hunt you down."

If it was any other professor saying this, Zorian would have laughed, but Kyron just seemed crazy enough to really do that.

Then it was time for spell formula class, which was the very branch of magic that was used to build focusing aids they used in their combat magic class. Their teacher, a young woman with gravity defying orange hair that stood up like a flame of a candle, reminded Zorian of Zenomir Olgai with her enthusiasm for the subject. Zorian actually liked spell formula, but not quite as much Nora Boole thought was appropriate. Her 'recommended reading' included 12 different books and she immediately announced that she will be organizing bonus lectures each week for those interested to learn more. Then she gave them 'a short test' (it had 60 questions) to check how much they remember from their last two years. She then wrapped up the class by telling them to read the first 3 chapters from one of the books on her recommended reading list for the next class (which was tomorrow).

After that, the rest of the day was like a relaxation period in comparison.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

Zorian knocked on the door in front of him, nervously fidgeting in place. The first week of school was rather uneventful, aside from finding out that advanced mathematics was also taught by Nora Boole, and she was similarly enthusiastic amount that subject as well, giving them another preliminary test and more 'recommended' reading. Still, it was now Friday, and it was time to meet his mentor.

"Come in," a voice sounded from room, and Zorian swore he could feel the impatience in the voice already, like the man felt Zorian was wasting his time before he even saw him. He opened the door and came face to face with Xvim Chao, the notorious mentor from hell. Zorian could tell straight from the man's facial expression that Xvim didn't think much of him.

"Zorian Kazinski? Sit down please," Xvim ordered, not even bothering to wait for an answer. Zorian barely caught the pen the man threw at him the moment he sat down.

"Show me your basic three," the man ordered, referring the shaping exercises they were taught in their second year.

He had heard about this part. No one had ever mastered the basic three enough to impress the man. Sure enough, Zorian had barely begun levitating the pen when Xvim interrupted him.

"Slow," Xvim pronounced. "It took you a full second of concentration to snap into a proper mindset. You must be faster. Start over."

Start over. Start over. Start over. He kept saying that, again and again, until Zorian realized it had been a whole hour since they started with this. He had completely lost track of time in his attempt to focus on the exercise instead of his growing desire to ram the pen into Xvim's eye socket.

"Start over."

The pen immediately rose in the air, before Xvim was even done talking. Really, how can he possibly get any faster than this with the exercise?

He lost focus when a marble collided with his forehead, disrupting his concentration.

"You lost focus," Xvim admonished.

"You threw a marble at me!" protested Zorian, unable to quite accept that Xvim really did something so childish. "What did you expect would happen!?"

"I expected you to maintain focus on the exercise ''anyway''," Xvim said. "Had you truly mastered the exercise, such a minor disturbance would have not impeded you. It seems I have once again been regretfully proven right: the inadequacy of current academy curriculum have stunted the growth of another promising student. It seems we have to start with the very basics of mana shaping. We will go through each of the basic three until you can do them flawlessly."

"Professor, I had those exercises mastered a year ago," Zorian protested. He was ''not'' wasting his time with basic three. He already spent too much time refining those in his opinion.

"You did not," Xvim said, sounding as if he was affronted Zorian would even suggest such a thing. "Being able to perform the exercise reliably is not the same as mastering it. Besides, doing this will teach you patience and how to control your temper, which is ''clearly'' something you are having trouble with. Those are important skills for a mage to have."

Zorian's lips pressed themselves into a thin line. The man was intentionally pissing him off, Zorian was sure of it. Apparently the rumors were right and these sessions are going to be one giant exercise in frustration.

"Let's us start with the levitation exercise," Xvim said, oblivious to Zorian's musings. "Start over."

He was starting to hate those two words.

<noinclude>
==Author's Notes and References==
<references />

{{MotherofLearningNavbar
|[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_001|Chapter 001]]
|[[Mother of Learning:Volume_01_Chapter_003|Chapter 003]]
}}
</noinclude>

Mother of Learning:Volume 01 Chapter 001

2015-06-19T08:19:37Z

76.21.95.209: /* Good Morning Brother */

===Good Morning Brother===

Zorian's eyes abruptly shot open as a sharp pain erupted from his stomach. His whole body convulsed, buckling against the object that fell on him, and suddenly he was wide awake, not a trace of drowsiness in his mind.

"Good morning, brother!" an annoyingly cheerful voice sounded right on top of him. "Morning, morning, ''MORNING''!"

Zorian glared at his little sister, but she just smiled back at him cheekily, still sprawled across his stomach. She was humming to herself in obvious satisfaction, kicking her feet playfully in the air as she studied the giant world map Zorian had tacked to the wall next to his bed. Or rather, pretended to study – Zorian could see her watching him intently out of the corner of her eyes for a reaction.

This is what he gets for not arcane locking the door and setting up a basic alarm perimeter around his bed.

"Get off," he told her in the calmest voice he could muster.

"Mom said to wake you up," she said matter-of-factly, not budging from her spot.

"Not like this, she didn't" Zorian grumbled, swallowing his irritation and patiently waited until she dropped her guard enough. Predictably, Kirielle grew visibly agitated after only a few moments of this pretend disinterest. Just before she was about to blow up Zorian quickly grasped her legs and chest and flipped her over the edge of the bed. She fell to the floor with a thud and an indignant yelp, Zorian quickly jumped to his feet to better respond to any violence she might decide to retaliate with. He glanced down on her and sniffed disdainfully. "I'll be sure to remember this the next time I'm asked to wake ''you'' up."

"Fat chance of that," she retorted defiantly. "You always sleep longer than I do."

Zorian simply sighed in defeat. Damn the little imp, but she was right about that.

"So…" she began excitedly, jumping to her feet, "are you excited?"

Zorian watched her for a moment as she bounced around his room like a monkey on caffeine. Sometimes he wished he had some of that boundless energy of hers. But only some.

"About what?" Zorian asked innocently, feigning ignorance. He knew what she meant, of course, but constantly asking obvious questions was the fastest way of frustrating his little sister into dropping a conversation he'd rather not have.

"Going back to the academy!" she whined, clearly aware of what he was doing. He needed to learn some new tricks. "Learning magic. Can you show me some magic?"

Zorian let out a long suffering sigh. Kirielle had always treated him as something of a playmate of hers, despite him doing his best not to encourage her, but usually she remained within certain unspoken boundaries. She was downright impossible this year, though, and mother was wholly unsympathetic to his pleas to rein her in. All he did was read all day long, she said, so it wasn't as if he was doing anything ''important''… thankfully the summer break was over and he could finally get away from them all.

"Kiri, I have to pack. Why don't you go pester Fortov for a change?"

She scowled at him unhappily for a second and then perked up, as if remembering something, and quickly ran out of the room. Zorian's eyes widened when he realized what she was up to a second too late.

"No!" he yelled as he ran after her, only to have the bathroom door slammed into his face. He pounded on the door in frustration. "God damn it, Kiri! You had all the time in the world to go to the bathroom ''before'' I woke up!"

"Sucks to be you," was her only answer.

After hurling a few choice curses at the door, Zorian stomped off back to his room to get dressed. She would be inside for ages, he was sure, if only to spite him.

Quickly changing out of his pajamas and putting on his glasses, Zorian took a moment to look around his room. He was pleased to note Kirielle hadn't rummaged through his stuff before waking him up. She had a very fuzzy notion of (other people's) privacy.

It didn't take Zorian long to pack – he had never really unpacked, to be honest, and would have gone back to Cyoria a week ago if he thought mother would have allowed it. He was just packing his school supplies when he realized with irritation that some of his textbooks were missing. He could try a locator spell, but he was pretty sure he knew where they ended up – Kirielle had a habit of taking them to her room, no matter how many times Zorian told her to keep her sticky little fingers away from them. Working on a hunch, he double-checked his writing supplies and sure enough, found they have been greatly depleted.

It always happened – every time he came home, Kirielle would raid his school supplies. Putting aside the ethical problems inherent in breaking into your brother's room in order to steal his things, what on earth was she doing with all those pencils and erasers? This time he specifically bought extras with his sister in mind, but it still wasn't enough - he couldn't find a single eraser in his drawer, and he bought a whole packet of them before coming home. Why Kirielle couldn't simply ask mother to buy her some books and pens of her own was never really clear to Zorian. She was the youngest and the only daughter, so mother was always happy to spoil her - the dolls she talked mother into buying for her were 5 times more expensive than a couple of books and a stack of pencils.

In any case, while Zorian had no delusions about ever seeing his writing supplies again, he really needed those textbooks. With that in mind, he marched off into his sister's room, ignoring the 'keep out!' warning on the door, and quickly found his missing books in the usual location – cunningly hidden under the bed, behind several conveniently placed stuffed animals.

His packing done, he went downstairs to eat something and see what mother wanted from him.

Though his family thought he simply liked to sleep in, Zorian actually had a reason for being a late riser. It meant he could eat his food in peace, as everyone else had already had their breakfast by then. Few things annoyed him more than someone trying to strike up a conversation while he was eating, and that was precisely the time when the rest of his family were the most talkative. Unfortunately, mother wasn't willing to wait for him today, and immediately descended upon him when she saw him coming down. He didn't even finish descending down the stairs, and yet she had already found something about him that she didn't like.

"You don't really intend to go out looking like that, do you?" she asked.

"What's wrong with this?" asked Zorian. He was wearing a plain brown outfit, little different from the ones other boys wore when they were going into the city. It seemed just fine to him.

"You can't go out looking like that," his mother said with a long-suffering sigh. "What do you think people will say when they see you wearing that?"

"Nothing?" Zorian tried.

"Zorian, don't be so difficult," she snapped at him. "Our family is one of the pillars of this town. We're under scrutiny every time we leave the house. I know you don't care about such things, but appearances are important to a lot of people. You need to realize you're not an island, and you can't decide things as if you were alone in the world. You are a member of this family, and your actions inevitably reflect on our reputation. I will not let you embarrass me by looking like a common factory worker. Go back to your room and put on some proper attire."

Zorian restrained himself from rolling his eyes just long enough to turn his back on her. Maybe her guilt trip would have been more effective if this was the first time she tried it on him. Still, it wasn't worth the argument, so he changed into a pricier set of clothes. It was totally excessive, considering he would be spending the whole day in the train, but his mother nodded approvingly when she saw him coming down the stairs. She had him turn and pose like a show animal for a while, before pronouncing him 'fairly decent'. He went to the kitchen and, to his annoyance, mother followed after him. No eating in peace today, it seemed.

Father was thankfully on one of his 'business trips', so he wouldn't have to deal with him today.

He entered the kitchen and frowned when he saw a bowl of porridge already waiting for him on the table. Usually he made his own breakfast, and he liked it that way, but he knew his mother never accepted that. This was her idea of a peace gesture, which meant she was going to ask something he won't like out of him.

"I figured I would prepare something for you today, and I know you've always liked porridge," she said. Zorian refrained from mentioning he hadn't liked it since he was about 8. "You slept longer than I thought you would, though. It's gone cold while I've waited for you."

Zorian rolled his eyes and cast a slightly modified heat water spell at the porridge, which was instantly back at a pleasant temperature.

He ate his breakfast in silence while mother talked to him at length about a crop-related dispute one of their suppliers was involved in, dancing around whatever topic she wanted to breach. He effortlessly tuned her out. It was practically a survival skill for every child in the Kazinski family, as both mother and father were prone to protracted lectures on every subject imaginable, but doubly so for Zorian, who was the black sheep of the family and thus subjected to such monologues more frequently than the rest. Thankfully, his mother thought nothing of his silence, because Zorian was always as silent as possible around his family – he had learnt many years ago that this was the easiest way of getting along with them.

"Mother," he interrupted her. "I just woke up via Kiri jumping on me, I haven't had a chance to go to the bathroom and now you're pestering me while I'm eating. Either get to the point or wait a couple of minutes while I finish breakfast."

"She did it again?" his mother asked, amusement obvious in her voice.

Zorian rubbed his eyes, not saying anything, before surreptitiously pocketing an apple from the bowl on the table while his mother wasn't looking. There was a lot of annoying things Kirielle did again and again, but complaining about it to mother was a waste of time. No one in this family was on ''his'' side.

"Oh don't be like that," his mother said, noticing his less than pleased reaction. "She's just bored and playing with you. You take things way too seriously, just like your father."

"I am nothing like my father!" Zorian half-yelled, glaring at her. This was why he hated eating with other people. He returned to his breakfast with renewed vigor, eager to finish this as soon as possible.

"Of course you're not," mother said airily, before suddenly switching the subject. "Actually, this reminds me of something. Your father and I are going to Koth to visit Daimen."

Zorian bit the spoon in his mouth to prevent himself from making a snide comment. It was always Daimen this, Daimen that. There were days when Zorian wondered why his parents had three other children when they were clearly so enamored with their eldest son. Really, going to another continent just to visit him? What, were they going to die if they didn't see him for a year?

"What's that got to do with me?" Zorian asked.

"It will be an extended visit," she said. "We'll be there for about 6 months, most of it spent traveling from one place to another. You and Fortov will be at the academy, of course, but I'm worried about Kirielle. She's only 9 and I don't feel comfortable bringing her along with us."

Zorian paled, finally catching on to what she wants of him. Hell. No.

"Mother, I'm 15," he protested.

"So?" she asked. "Your father and I were already married when we were your age."

"Times change. Besides, I spend most of the day at the academy," Zorian responded. "Why don't you ask Fortov to take care of her? He's a year older and he has his own apartment."

"Fortov is in his fourth year," his mother said sternly. "He's going to graduate this year so he has to focus on his grades."

"You mean he said no," Zorian concluded out loud.

"And besides…" she continued, ignoring his remark, "I'm sure you're aware of how irresponsible Fortov can be at times. I don't think he's fit to raise a little girl."

"And whose fault is that?" Zorian grumbled quietly, loudly dropping his spoon and pushing the plate away from him. Maybe Fortov was irresponsible because he knew mother and father would simply dump his responsibilities onto Zorian if he just played dumb long enough, didn't that ever occur to her? Why did it always fall to him to deal with the little imp? Well he wasn't going to get saddled with this! If Fortov was too good to take care of Kirielle, then so was Zorian!

Plus, the little tattletale would undoubtedly report everything he did back to mother without a second thought. The best thing about attending a school so far from home was that he could do whatever he wanted with his family being none the wiser, and there was no way he was going to give that up. Really, this was just a transparent ploy by his mother to spy on him, so she could lecture him some more about family pride and proper manners.

"I don't think I'm fit for that either," continued Zorian a little louder. "You said only a few minutes ago that I'm an embarrassment to the family. We wouldn't want to corrupt little Kiri with my uncaring attitude, now would we?"

"I didn't-"

"No!" Zorian shouted.

"Oh have it your way," she huffed in resignation. "But really, I wasn't suggesting-"

"What are you talking about?" Kirielle called out from behind him.

"We were discussing what a rotten brat you are," shot back Zorian immediately.

"No you weren't!"

Zorian just rolled his eyes and rose from his seat, intending to go to the bathroom, only to find an irate little sister blocking his path. There was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it!" said Zorian quickly, knowing that mother would demand that one of them open the door and that Kirielle wouldn't budge from her spot any time soon - she could be very stubborn when she wanted.

That was how Zorian found himself staring at a bespectacled woman dressed in expensive-looking khaki-colored clothes and cradling a thick book in her arm.

The woman gave him an appraising glance, adjusting her glasses. "Zorian Kazinski?"

"Uh, yeah?" he said, unsure how to react to this development.

"I am Ilsa Zileti, from Cyoria's Royal Academy of Magical Arts. I'm here to discuss the results of your certification."

Color drained from Zorian's face. They sent an actual mage to talk to him!? What did he do to warrant this!? Mother was going to skin him alive!

"You aren't in trouble, mister Kazinski," she said, smiling in amusement. "The Academy has a habit of sending a representative to third year students to discuss various matters of interest. I confess I should have visited you sooner, but I have been a tad busy this year. You have my apologies."

Zorian stared at her for a few seconds.

"May I come in?"

"Huh? Oh!" said Zorian. "Forgive my manners, Miss Zileti. Come in, come in."

"Thank you," she accepted politely, stepping into the house.

After a quick introduction to his mother and sister, Ilsa asked him if he had somewhere they could discuss school matters privately. Mother quickly decided she has to go to town market and took Kirielle with her, leaving him alone in the house with the mage, who promptly scattered various papers across the kitchen desk.

"So Zorian," she began. "You already know you passed the certification."

"Yes, I got the written notice," Zorian said. "Cirin doesn't have a mage tower, so I was going to pick up the badge when I got back to Cyoria."

Ilsa simply handed him a sealed scroll. Zorian inspected the scroll for a few seconds and then tried to break the seal so he could read it. Unfortunately, the seal was quite tough to break. Unnaturally so, even.

He frowned. Ilsa wouldn't have given him the scroll like this if she didn't think he had the ability to open it. A test of some sort? He wasn't anyone terribly special, so this would have to be something pretty easy. What skill did every recently-minted mage possess that would…

Oh. He almost eye-rolled when he realized what this was all about. He channeled some mana into the seal and it promptly snapped itself in half, allowing Zorian to finally unroll the scroll. It was written in very neat calligraphy and appeared to be some kind of proof of his identify as a first circle mage. He glanced back at Ilsa, who nodded approvingly, confirming to Zorian that he just passed a test of some sort.

"You don't really have to pick up your badge until you finish school," she said. "The badge is pretty expensive and nobody is really going to bother you about it unless you plan to open a shop or otherwise sell your magical expertise. If they do bother you for whatever reason, just refer them to the academy and we'll clear things up."

Zorian shrugged. While he did intend to break away from his family, he'd prefer to wait until graduation, and that was two years away. He motioned on for her to continue.

"Very well, then. The records say you lived in the academy housing for the past two years. I assume you intend to continue with that?"

Zorian nodded and she reached into one of her pockets and handed him a rather strange key. Zorian knew how locks in general worked, and could even pick simpler ones with enough time, and he couldn't figure out how this key is supposed to work – it had no 'teeth' to fit in with the tumblers inside the lock. On a hunch, he channeled some mana into it, and faint golden lines immediately lit across the surface of the metal. He looked at Ilsa in a silent question.

"Housing for third years works differently than you are used to," she told him. "As you're likely aware, now that you are a certified first circle mage, the academy is authorized to teach you spells of the first circle and above. Since you'll be handling sensitive material, greater security is required, so you'll be moving into a different building. The lock on your door is keyed to your mana, so you'll have to channel some of your personal mana into the key like you did just now before it will unlock."

"Ah," said Zorian in understanding. Idly he spun the key in his hand, wondering how exactly they got a hold of his mana signature. Something to research later, he supposed.

"Normally I would be explaining to you in detail what it means to be a third years student at Cyoria's magical academy, but I hear you have a train leaving soon, so why don't we jump straight to the main reason I'm here. Your mentor and electives. You can ask me anything you wish to know afterwards."

Zorian perked up on this, especially the mention of 'mentor'. Each 3rd year was given a mentor that they met with once a week, who was supposed to teach students in ways not possible in a standard class format, and otherwise help them reach their maximum potential. A choice of one's mentor could make or break one's magical career and Zorian knew he had to choose carefully. Fortunately, he had asked around among older students to find out which ones are good and which ones are bad, so he should at least be able to get an above-average one.

"So which mentors can I choose from?" Zorian asked.

"Well, actually, I'm afraid you can't," Ilsa said apologetically. "Like I said, I was supposed to get to you sooner. Unfortunately, all but one of the mentors have filled their quota of students at this point."

Zorian had a bad feeling about this… "And this mentor is?"

"Xvim Chao."

Zorian groaned, burying his face in his hands. Of all the teachers, Xvim was widely agreed upon as the worst mentor you could possibly get. It just had to be him, didn't it?

"It's not that bad," Ilsa assured him. "The rumors are mostly exaggerated, and mostly spread by students unwilling to do the kind of work Professor Xvim requires of his charges. I'm sure a talented, hard-working student such as yourself will have no problems with him."

Zorian snorted. "I don't suppose there is any chance to transfer to another mentor, is there?"

"Not really. We've had a really good pass rate last year, and all of the mentors are swamped with students as it is. Professor Xvim is the least burdened of the available mentors."

"My, I wonder why," Zorian mumbled. "Alright, fine. What about electives?"

Ilsa handed him another scroll, this one unsealed, containing a list of all elective classes offered by the academy. It was long. ''Very'' long. You could sign up for practically anything, even things that weren't of strictly magical nature: things like advanced mathematics, classical literature, and architecture. It was to be expected, really, since Ikosian magical tradition had always been inextricably connected to other intellectual pursuits.

"You can choose up to 5, but no less than 3 electives this year. It would be a lot more convenient for us if you did it now, so that we can finalize the schedules over the weekend before the classes start. Don't be too intimidated by the sheer size of the list. Even if you choose something that doesn't appeal to you, you can switch to a different elective during the first month of school."

Zorian frowned. There was a lot of electives and he wasn't quite sure which ones he wanted to take. He already got shafted in the mentor department, so he really couldn't afford to screw up here. This would take a while.

"Please don't take this the wrong way miss Zileti, but would you mind if we take a short break before we go any further with this?"

"Of course not," she said. "Is something the matter?"

"Not at all," assured Zorian. "It's just that I ''really'' need to go to the bathroom."

Probably not the best way to make a first impression. Kirielle was so going to pay for putting him in this position.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

Zorian trailed after his family in silence as they entered Cirin's train station, ignoring Fortov's exuberant greeting of some 'friends' of his. He scanned the crowd on the train station for any familiar faces but, predictably, came out empty. He didn't really know all that many people in his home town, as his parents loved reminding him.
He felt his mother's gaze on him as he unsuccessfully searched for an empty bench, but refused to look back at her – she would take that as permission to initiate conversation, and he already knew what she would say.

'Why don't you join Fortov and his friends, Zorian?'

Because they're immature jackasses, just like Fortov, that's why.

He sighed, looking at the empty train tracks with annoyance. The train was late. He didn't mind waiting as such, but waiting in the crowds was pure torture. His family would never understand, but Zorian hated crowds. It wasn't any tangible thing, really – it was more like large gatherings of people projected some kind of presence that weighed down on him constantly. Most of the time it was annoying, though it did have its uses – his parents stopped taking him to church when they realized that dragging him into a small hall packed with people resulted in vertigo and fainting in a matter of minutes. Fortunately, the train station wasn't currently crowded enough to produce such intense effects, but Zorian knew prolonged exposure would take its toll. He hoped the train wouldn't take ''too'' long, because he didn't relish spending the rest of the day with a headache.

Fortov's loud laughter broke him out of such gloomy musings. His older brother didn't have such problems, that's for sure. Like always, he was cheerful, sociable, and had a smile that could light up the world. The people he was surrounded with were clearly enthralled with him, and he stood out among them at first glance, despite having the same thin build that Zorian did. He just had that kind of presence around him. He was like Daimen in this way, only Daimen had actual skills to back up his charm.

He scoffed, shaking his head. Zorian didn't know for sure how Fortov had been accepted into a supposedly elite institution like Cyoria's magical academy, but he strongly suspected father had greased a few hands to get Fortov in. It wasn't that Fortov was stupid, so much as lazy and completely unable to focus on a task, no matter how critical. Not that most people knew that, of course – the boy was charming as hell, and very adept in sweeping his inadequacies under the metaphorical rug.

His father always joked that Fortov and Zorian each got a half of Daimen in them: Fortov got his charm, and Zorian his competence.

Zorian never liked his father's sense of humor.

A whistle pierced the air, and the train entered the station with a high-pitched squeal of metal wheels breaking against the tracks. The original trains were steam-powered machines that billowed smoke wherever they went and consumed unholy amounts of coal to keep going, but this one was powered by the newer techno-magic engines that consumed crystallized mana instead. Cleaner, cheaper and required less maintenance. Zorian could actually feel the mana radiating off the train as he approached, though his ability to sense magic was too underdeveloped to tell him any details. He had always wanted to look around the engine room of one of these things but could never figure out a good way to approach the train operators.

But that was a thought for another time. He gave a brief goodbye to mother and Kirielle and entered the train to find himself a seat. He intentionally chose an empty compartment, something that was surprisingly easy to find. Apparently, despite the gathered crowd, few of them would be taking this particular train.

5 minutes later the train gave another ear-splitting whistle and began its long journey towards Cyoria.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

There was a sharp crackling sound, following by the sound of a bell ringing.

"Now stopping in Korsa," a disembodied voice echoed. A crackling sound again. "I repeat, now stopping in Korsa. Thank you."

The speakers crackled one last time before turning silent.

Zorian released a long sigh of irritation and opened his eyes. He hated trains. The boredom, the heat, and rhythmic thumping sounds all conspired to make him sleepy, but every time he finally drifted off to sleep he was rudely awoken by the station announcer. That this was the very purpose of that announcer – to wake up passengers who would sleep through their destination – was not lost on Zorian, but it was no less annoying because of it.

He looked through the window, only to see a train station like any other. In fact, it was completely identical to the previous 5, down to the blue outline on the big white tablet saying 'Korsa'. Apparently the station builders were working off some kind of template these days. Looking at the station platform they were stopping at, he could see a large crowd of people waiting to get on the train. Korsa was a major trading hub, and a lot of newly-minted merchant families lived here, sending their children to Cyoria's prestigious academy to become mages and mingle among children of other influential people. Zorian found himself wishing that none of his fellow students join him in his compartment, but he knew it was an idle dream – there was too many of them and his compartment was completely empty aside from him. He did all he could to make himself comfortable in his seat and closed his eyes again.

The first person to join him in his compartment was a chubby, glasses-wearing girl in a green turtleneck. She gave him a cursory glance and started reading a book in silence. Zorian would have been ecstatic with such an agreeable traveling companion, but soon enough a group of four other girls came in and took the remaining four seats for themselves. The four newcomers were very loud and prone to giggling fits, and Zorian was sorely tempted to get up and find himself a new compartment to occupy. He spent the rest of the trip alternating between looking through the window at the endless fields they were passing and exchanging annoyed glances with the green-turtleneck girl, who seemed similarly irritated by the other girls' antics.

He knew they were getting close to Cyoria when he could see trees on the horizon. There was only one city on this route that was this close to the great northern forest, and the trains otherwise avoided getting close to so infamous a place. Zorian picked up his bag and went to stand by the exit.The idea was to be among the first to disembark, and thus avoid the usual crowding that always occurred once they got to Cyoria, but he was too late – there was already a crowd at the exit when he approached. He leaned on the nearby window and waited, listening to animated conversation between three first year students beside him, who were talking excitedly amongst themselves about how they were going to start learning magic and whatnot. Boy were they going to be disappointed – the first year was all theory, meditation exercises, and learning how to access your mana consistently.

"Hey you! You're one of the upperclassmen aren't you?"

Zorian looked at the girl talking to him and suppressed a groan of irritation. He ''so'' did not want to talk to these people. He had been in the train since the early morning, mother had given him a nasty lecture because he didn't offer Ilsa something to drink while she was in the house, and he was in no mood for anything.

"I suppose you could describe me as such," he said cautiously.

"Can you show us any magic?" she asked eagerly.

"No," said Zorian flatly. He wasn't even lying. "The train is warded to disrupt mana shaping. They had a problem with people starting fires and vandalizing compartments."

"Oh," the girl said, clearly disappointed. She frowned, like trying to figure something out. "Mana shaping?" she asked cautiously.

Zorian raised an eyebrow. "You don't know what mana is?" She was first year, yes, but that was elementary. Anyone who went through elementary school should know at least that much.

"Magic?" she tried lamely.

"Ugh," grunted Zorian. "The teachers would so fail you for that. No, it's not magic. It's what powers magic - the energy, the power, that a mage shapes into a magical effect. You'll learn more about it in lectures, I guess. Bottom point is: no mana, no magic. And I can't use any mana at the moment."

This was misleading, but whatever. There was no way he was explaining things to some random stranger, especially since she should already know this stuff.

"Um, okay. Sorry to bother you then."

With a lot of squealing and steam-letting, the train stopped at Cyoria's train station, and Zorian disembarked as fast as he could, pushing past the awed first-years staring at the sight before them.

Cyoria's train station was huge, a fact made obvious by the fact it was enclosed, making it look more like a giant tunnel. Actually, the station as a whole was even larger, because there were 4 more 'tunnels' like this one, plus all the support facilities. There was nothing like it anywhere in the world, and virtually everyone was stupefied the first time they saw it. Zorian was too, when he first disembarked here. The feeling of disorientation was amplified by the sheer amount of people that went through this terminal, whether they're passengers going in and out of Cyoria, workers inspecting the train and unloading luggage, newsboys shouting headlines, or homeless people begging for some change. As far as he knew, this massive flow of people never really ceased, even at night, and this was a particularly busy day.

He looked at the giant clock hanging from the ceiling and, finding out he had plenty of time, bought himself some bread from the nearby bakery and then set course for Cyoria's central plaza, intending to eat his newly acquired food while sitting on the edge of the fountain there. It was a nice place to relax.

Cyoria was a curious city. It was one of the most developed and largest cities in the world, which was at first glance strange, as Cyoria was dangerously close to monster-infested wilderness and wasn't in a favorable trade location. What really catapulted its way to prominence was the massive circular hole on the west side of the city – probably the most obvious Dungeon entrance ever and the only rank 9 mana well known to exist. The absolutely ''massive'' quantities of mana gushing out from the underworld have made the spot an irresistible magnet for mages, who flock here to this very day. The presence of such a huge number of mages made Cyoria unlike any other city in the continent, both in the culture of the people living there and, more obviously, in the architecture of the city itself. A lot of things that would be too impractical to build elsewhere were routinely done here, and it made for an inspiring sight if you could find a good spot to watch the city from.

He froze in his tracks when he noticed a swarm of rats staring at him from the bottom of the stairway he was about to descend. Their behavior was strange enough, but his heartbeat really sped up when he took notice of their heads. Was that… were their brains exposed!? He swallowed heavily and took a step back, slowly retreating from the stairwell before turning around and fleeing in a full sprint. He wasn't sure what they were, but those were definitely ''not'' normal rats.

He supposed he shouldn't be so shocked, though – a place like Cyoria attracted more than mages – magical creatures of all breeds found such places just as irresistible.
He was just glad the rats didn't pursue him, because he had nothing in the way of combat spells. The only spell he knew that could be used in a situation like this was the 'spook animals' spell, and he had no idea how effective that would have been against such clearly magical creatures.

Somewhat shaken but still determined to get to the fountain, he tried to circle the rat gathering by going through the nearby park, but luck just wasn't on his side today. He promptly walked in on a little girl crying her eyes out on a bridge he had to cross, and it took him 5 minutes just to get her to calm down enough to find out what happened. He supposed he could have just pushed past her and left her there to cry, but not even he was that cold-hearted.

"T-The b-bike!" she blurted out finally, hiccupping heavily. "It f-fell in," she wailed.

Zorian blinked, trying to interpret what she was trying to tell him. Apparently realizing she's not making any sense, the girl pointed towards the creek running underneath the bridge. Zorian looked over the edge of the bridge and, sure enough, there was a children's bicycle half-submerged in the muddy waters.

"Huh," Zorian said. "Wonder how that happened?"

"It fell in!" the girl repeated, looking as if she was going to cry again.

"All right, all right, no need for waterworks, I'll get it out okay?" Zorian said, eying the bicycle speculatively.

"You'll get dirty," she warned quietly. Zorian could tell from her tone of voice that she hoped he would get it out anyway.

"Don't worry, I have no intention of wading through that mud," Zorian said. "Watch."

He made a few gestures and cast a levitate object spell, causing the bike to jerkily rise out of the water and into the air. The bike was a lot heavier than the objects he usually practiced with, and he had to levitate the bike a lot higher than he was used to, but it was nothing outside his capabilities. He snatched the bike by its seat when it was close enough and placed it on the bridge.

"There," Zorian said. "It's all muddy and wet but I can't help you there. Don't know any cleaning spells."

"O-Okay," she nodded slowly, clutching her bicycle like it was going to fly out of her hand the moment she let go.

He bid her goodbye and left, deciding his relaxing time at the fountain just isn't meant to be. The weather seemed to be worsening pretty quickly too – dark clouds were brewing ominously across the horizon, heralding rain. He decided to simply join the diffuse line of students trudging towards the academy and be done with it.

It was a long way from the train station to the academy, since the station was on the outskirts of the city and the academy was right next to the Hole. Depending on how physically fit you were, and how much luggage you had to drag around, you could get there in an hour or two. Zorian wasn't particularly fit, what with his skinny physique and shut-in ways, but he had purposely packed light in anticipation of this journey. He joined the procession of students that was still streaming from the train station in the direction of the academy, ignoring the occasional first year struggling with excessive baggage. He empathized with them because his asshole brothers didn't warn him to keep the luggage at minimum either and he was like them the first time he arrived at the train station, but there was nothing he could do to help them.

The threat of rain and bad luck aside, he felt invigorated as he drew closer to academy grounds. He was drawing on the ambient mana suffusing the area around the hole, replenishing the mana reserves he spent levitating that girl's bicycle. Mage academies were almost always built on top of mana wells for the express purpose of exploiting this effect – an area with such high ambient mana levels was a perfect place for inexperienced wizards to practice their spellcasting at, since anytime they run out of mana they could supplement their natural mana regeneration by replenishing their mana reserves from their very surroundings.

Zorian took out an apple he still carried in his pocket and levitated it over his palm. It wasn't really a spell, so much as raw mana manipulation – a mana shaping exercise that was supposed to help mages improve their ability to control and direct magical energies. It looked like such a simple thing, but it took Zorian 2 years before he mastered it fully. Sometimes he wondered if his family was right and he really was ''too'' focused on his studies. He knew for a fact that most of his classmates had a much more tenuous control over their magic, and it didn't appear to be inhibiting them too much.

He dismissed the mana construct holding the apple in the air and let it fall down on his palm. He wished he had some kind of rain protection spell – the first drops of rain were already starting to fall. That, or an umbrella. Either would work just fine, except an umbrella didn't require several years of training to use.

"Magic can be such a rip-off at times," said Zorian gloomily.

He took a deep breath and started running.

<div style="text-align: center">- break -</div>

"Huh. So there ''is'' a rain protection spell," mumbled Zorian as he watched raindrops splattering upon an invisible barrier in front of him. He extended his hand over the edge of the barrier, and it passed unimpeded. He retreated his suddenly rather wet hand back into the safety of the barrier and followed the boundary as far as his eyes could follow. From what he could tell, the barrier encircled the entire academy compound (no small feat, as academy grounds were quite extensive) in a protective bubble that stopped the rain – and ''only'' rain - from penetrating it. Apparently the academy upgraded its wards again, because they didn't have this feature the last time it was raining.

Shrugging, he turned around and continued towards the administration building of the academy. It was too bad the barrier didn't also dry you out when you passed it, because he was soaking wet. Thankfully, his bag was waterproof, so his clothes and textbooks weren't in any danger of getting ruined. Slowing down to a leisurely stroll, he studied the collection of buildings that made out the academy. The wards weren't the only thing that was upgraded; the whole place looked… prettified, for a lack of a better term. Every building was freshly painted, the old brick road was replaced by a much more colorful one, the flower patches were in full bloom, and the small fountain that hadn't worked for years was suddenly functional.

"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 relatively quickly.

'Quickly' turned out to be a relative term – it took him 2 hours of wrangling with the girl working at the administration desk before he took 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 mentioned the same thing. Before he left, the girl gave him a book of rules that third year students were expected to familiarize themselves with 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 very unpleasant experiences with it, but it was free and apartment space was severely overpriced in Cyoria. Even children of nobles often lived at 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 start, so he decided to postpone unpacking for tomorrow. Instead he remained motionless on the bed, wondering for a moment why he couldn't hear the rain drops 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 of rectifying that this year. As a certified first circle mage, he had access to parts of the academy library he didn't have before, and he planned of raiding them for spells they contained. Besides, this year's classes were supposed to be much more focused on practical spellcasting now that they've 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.

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==Author's Notes and References==
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