Mother of Learning: ARC 3

5

“Oh, you’ll see unfair when we get to Cyoria,” Zorian told her. “There’s an hour walk from the train station to where we’ll be staying, and I heard it’s going to rain too…”

When they finally reached the train station, they found Fortov already there, talking to his friends. Mother insisted on introducing Zach to him, which annoyed Zorian far more than it probably should have.

“No offense, Zorian, but your family seems pretty nice thus far,” Zach told Zorian later, when he finally managed to excuse himself from Fortov’s group. “Maybe I’m a little biased, since my family all died and I wish I actually had a family… but I honestly can’t figure out your animosity for them.”

“It’s personal,” Zorian told him in a clipped tone. “There’s a lot of history that you aren’t aware of. Just drop it.”

“Fine, whatever.” Zach sighed. “I don’t want to start a fight. I actually want to apologize.”

Zorian gave him a strange look.

“Apologize?” Zorian asked. “What for?”

“Well, you mentioned last time how I keep up a mind blank around you at all times and how it means I don’t trust you…”

“You don’t have to apologize for that,” Zorian told him, shaking his head. “I also told you I would have done the same in your place, remember?”

“No offense, but I don’t want to be like you, Zorian,” Zach said, shaking his head. Well screw you too, Zach! The feeling was mutual! “The point is, you were right. We don’t trust each other, and we’re not going to get anywhere if we have that constantly hanging over our heads. We need to work together if we want to have any chance of getting out of here.”

Well, that wasn’t quite what he had said, but since Zorian actually agreed with the sentiment, he didn’t interrupt.

“So anyway, I think you already noticed I’m not under the effect of mind blank,” Zach said.

Zorian nodded. “Of course. I do notice your mind is still shielded, though.”

“Well yeah,” Zach said, rolling his eyes. “Trust your neighbors but lock your door, you know?”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Zorian said. “I was just going to notice the shield doesn’t feel like a spell. That’s a non-structured mental defense, yes?”

“Of course you already tested it.” Zach sighed. “Goddamn mind readers. But yes, it’s non-structured. I got it a long time ago, back in the first decade of my looping.”

“It’s… kind of rough for something you’ve been practicing for decades,” Zorian said. “I mean, I know it’s hard to practice non-structured mind magic when you aren’t psychic like me, but I’ve seen other regular mages with similar defenses, and theirs were a lot better than this.”

“I never really refined it much since… well, I never needed it for anything more complex than resisting casual mind reading and the like,”

Zach said. “This isn’t just me being lazy, mind you. This is pretty much conventional wisdom about non-structured mental defenses among mages.

Or at least that’s what the various magic instructors I learned from told me.

Get just enough skill in the ability to foil casual attacks and deal with anything more severe with proper defensive wards and the like. If you don’t have time to set up those, locate the source of the mental attack and go on the offensive. Or just outright flee from the scene. Most mages agree that fancy non-structured mental defenses are more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Well, I’m kind of biased, but I don’t agree,” Zorian said.

“Yes, I feel a bit stupid now for just accepting conventional wisdom when it comes to that,” Zach admitted. “I’ve been stuck in a time loop for decades, it’s not like I didn’t have the time. I’ve honed far more useless skills to perfection just for bragging rights, so I really shouldn’t have skimped out on something like this. But enough of that. I have a request for you.”

“Go ahead,” Zorian nodded, motioning for him to continue.

“Don’t mess with my mind without my express permission,” Zach said.

“Even if you catch me without any mental protection or something.”

“Well, okay,” Zorian agreed. “I can respect that. What if I suspect you to be under the influence of another mind mage already, though?”

“I… have to think about that,” Zach fumbled. “For now, no. Don’t mess with my mind even then. Just knock me out and wait for the effect to wear off.”

Zorian wanted to point out that some mind effects didn’t ‘wear off’, but he could see that Zach was still very uncomfortable around mind magic and decided to postpone this talk for some other time.

“All right. I’ll leave your mind alone. I will only use my mind sense and empathy on you, since they require no mental invasion to use and it’s almost impossible for me to not use them on someone. Anything else?”

“Yeah,” Zach said. “The fact you can sense and manipulate the marker placed on us and I can’t really burns, you know? I can accept you’re a better

mind mage than I’ll ever be since it’s your special ability and all, but this personal soul sense of yours is something I could have easily acquired myself if I knew about it. Do you think you can teach me how to do that?”

“I think I’ll have to set you up with one of my teachers to do that.”

Zorian frowned. “Alanic has access to potions I have never even encountered elsewhere and knowledge of how to help if something goes horribly wrong. I don’t think it’s going to be too much of a problem, though. He’s a pretty helpful person, despite initial appearances.”

Eventually the train arrived, and they were forced to cut their conversation a little short. Since they were going to share a compartment with Kirielle for the rest of the ride, any sensitive conversations would have to wait.

Even if they had wanted to talk about something arcane, though, Kirielle wouldn’t have let them. Any apprehension she felt towards Zach melted away during the first twenty minutes of the train ride and the resulting boredom. She started asking Zach questions about Cyoria and the academy. Later on, Zach would remark how surprised he was at the way Kirielle treated him, as Kirielle had been rather more unfriendly towards him in the previous restart. But, as Zorian explained to him, that Kirielle had a far worse impression of Zach… and that bad first impression had never really left her for the rest of the restart. The way Kirielle was treating him now was actually far closer to her true personality.

“Kind of strange that you don’t like most of your family but you’re so close to your little sister,” Zach remarked. “Was it always like that, or…?”

“I always did like her best out of all of them,” Zorian said. “But no, I did not have this good of a relationship with her before the time loop. There was a reason why I had never brought her along before I started retaining my awareness across restarts.”

“Ah. I figured it was something like that,” Zach said. “So do we have a plan for this restart or what?”

Zorian sighed. “I was hoping we could take a break for a restart or two.

I need to think about things and come to terms with all of this. It’s a lot to take in.”

“Hmm… fine,” Zach said eventually. “I guess we should spend some time getting to know each other anyway. You can still introduce me to that Alanic fellow who teaches personal soul sensing, right?”

“Absolutely,” Zorian confirmed. “You can work on your soul sense while we decide what to do. It’s not like I intend to literally do nothing, you know.”

“Oh? What do you have in mind for yourself?” Zach asked.

“I’ve been pursuing lessons from my mentor, Xvim, but I could never really properly focus on them thus far. Now that I don’t have the decaying memory packet in my head demanding most of my attention, I figure I should finally be able to give him all my attention and see what the results are. I’m still not sure how much to really tell him about the time loop and how it functions, though. I mean, I’m freaked out by how it works, and I’m actually aware of the restarts… I’m not sure it’s a good idea to explain to Xvim what’s really going on.”

“I can’t help you there.” Zach shook his head. “I never had much luck in convincing people about the time loop, and that was before I knew all this crazy stuff about it that I do now. I have no idea how you even convinced Xvim to take you seriously about time travel, considering he never believed me when I tried to do the same.”

“You tried to tell him about the time loop?” Zorian asked. “I guess you really meant it when you said you went to just about everyone with the story.”

“Do you think it might help you convince him you’re telling the truth if I came with you? I can do some pretty crazy magic on demand, by now…”

“I don’t know,” Zorian said. “I didn’t mention you when I talked to him previously, but that was mostly to minimize any links between the two of us in case Red Robe somehow caught wind of Xvim’s investigation into the time loop. Now that we know Red Robe is gone, it might be a good idea to include you in the story.”

Zorian considered things for a few seconds.