Mother of Learning: ARC 4

3

All he had to do now was find someone to help him cast it. Because he was currently incapable of doing it himself.

Gods, he hated this restart so much…

The room was silent. Zorian was supremely calm and collected, staring Xvim right in the eyes despite the look of annoyance present on his mentor’s face.

“So let me see if I understand correctly,” Xvim said. “You are a time traveler, you fought a millennia-old lich with Zach in the previous version of this month that I can’t remember, your soul has been damaged so you conveniently can’t demonstrate any of this amazing magic you apparently know, and now you want me to help you rescue Zach from the evil clutches of Tesen—his legal guardian who is secretly behind his recent disappearance, despite organizing a nationwide search for the kid.”

Zorian considered it for a second.

“Yes, that’s pretty much what I’m saying,” he said, nodding.

“Get out of my office.”

Ilsa carefully studied the stack of papers in front of her, propping up her chin with one hand while using the other to slowly tap her finger against the desk in a steady rhythm.

Zorian patiently waited for her to finish reading. If this didn’t work, he would have to take a risk and seek magical assistance through black-market channels. Dealing with criminals while being essentially powerless would be quite a risk, but there was nothing he could do. He needed to know what was going on with Zach.

“So all I need to do is cast this spell on you and tell you what the results say?” Ilsa eventually asked, giving him a suspicious look.

“That’s right,” Zorian nodded.

“It looks like a tracking spell,” she noted.

“It is a tracking spell,” Zorian confirmed.

Ilsa raised an eyebrow at him.

“Dare I ask what it’s supposed to track, then?” she asked.

“It’s kind of personal,” Zorian said, doing his best to look depressed and desperate. “I’m afraid my friend has gone missing. Please, Miss Zileti. You know I’m not a troublemaker student, and I don’t ask for much. It… it would mean a world to me if you did this for me!”

Ilsa snorted derisively at him.

“Hmph! You need to work on your acting skills, Mister Kazinski,” she told him. “That aside… I had Professor Chao tell me about a strange little visit from you recently.”

Ugh. He was still kind of annoyed that Xvim was so unwilling to entertain his claims. Being implausibly good at magic was apparently really important for convincing the man there was something to his crazy time-traveling claims. Well, convincing him quickly, in any case. Zorian could probably wear down the man’s skepticism with a lot of time and effort, but he didn’t want to wait that long to tackle this problem.

“Is this friend of yours Zach Noveda, perhaps?” Ilsa tried after he didn’t say anything for a while.

Zorian shrugged. “He could be.”

“Zorian…” Ilsa sighed, folding her fingers into a triangle in front of her. “Putting aside that I have never really heard of you interacting much with Mister Noveda in the past… what if you’re right? What if Zach has really been kidnapped by his caretaker and taken somewhere? I cast the tracking spell and give you the location. What do you do with it? How can an academy student like you handle the guards and the security measures that this place would undoubtedly have and rescue Zach?”

Zorian internally debated the merits of explaining to her that his plan was to simply hire black-market mercenaries to do the parts he himself could not, but eventually decided it was a bad idea. He had no real excuses in regards to where he got all the money needed to hire such people or why he thought he could judge their skills and character well enough to identify which of them were worth hiring and which weren’t.

“You don’t have to worry about it,” he told her, giving her a reassuring smile. “I’m just trying to find a friend. I’m sure it won’t be all that difficult.”

She gave him an unamused look. Yeah, he probably should have just gone to the black market right from the start instead of bothering with this…

Contrary to his expectations, though, she didn’t just throw him out of her office immediately.

“Give me two days, okay?” she eventually told him. “I need to speak with the academy leadership about this.”

“Huh?” Zorian said, surprised. “I’m not sure I understand. Why would you need to kick this up so high? It’s just a tracking spell…”

“And let you get in over your head and disappear as well? I don’t think so,” Ilsa said. “If we’re going to do this, we may as well go all the way. Besides… Mister Noveda is a student of our institution. It is well within our rights to try and locate him if he goes missing.”

She pushed the stack of papers towards him and tapped it a couple of times for emphasis.

“Now…” she said, “explain to me how exactly this tracking spell works and why you think it can find Mister Noveda when so many professional diviners have tried and failed to do the same.”