Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«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 three 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 for 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 five 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.

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

He had managed to fend off Taiven after three 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 around, 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 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 had done 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 walked into a gathering of mages — their appearance and fashion sense gave them away unerringly, especially in Cyoria where mages from all over the world sent their children. 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.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he went towards the front of the classroom, throwing 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 of them either.