Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

As Zorian trudged towards his classroom, half an hour before any of his fellow classmates, he reflected on the fact that life was rarely ideal. In practice, a lot of work given to apprentices consisted of chores that their mentor thought beneath them or various busywork. The duties of the class representative, for instance, were largely one giant waste of time. In the previous restarts, this fact didn’t bother him all that much — the job was fairly easy so long as you didn’t take it as seriously as Akoja did — but this time he had so many things vying for his attention that he resented this additional duty being piled up on top of it all. Maybe he shouldn’t have talked Ilsa into taking him as her apprentice this restart but, well, what’s done is done.

He yawned. He supposed he was just cranky today since he had gotten very little sleep last night. His conversation with Kael literally took hours since the other boy wanted to know absolutely everything and kept asking for details. While Zorian didn’t begrudge the other boy for wanting answers and considered the time well spent, he kind of planned to use that time to read through the research assignments he had collected from his classmates on behalf of Ilsa. Assignments he had to give to Ilsa today, complete with corrections and grade recommendations. He had thought his knowledge from previous restarts would make the task a child’s game, but apparently something about their massive changes to this restart caused Ilsa to give out completely different topics for research and he had to actually read everything from scratch. He ended up spending most of the night dealing with those stupid things and then had to get up half an hour earlier than usual too because he was class representative to boot.

Peering into the classroom, he saw that Akoja was already inside. He rolled his eyes at her excessive punctuality and marked her down as present on his little attendance sheet. The blackboard was full of horrible drawings, love confessions and other garbage, but he knew better than to wipe it clean right now — a clean blackboard was utterly irresistible to some of the idiots in his class, and they would no doubt make a mess again by the time the teacher finally showed up. Who knew, maybe if he left it alone long enough Akoja would take care of it on her own initiative, as she was sometimes wont to do.

The first to arrive were, surprisingly since they weren’t normally early birds, Aneka and Armie — the (in)famous Ashirai twins. The Ashirai family consistently produced soul-bonded twins as their descendants, and the two sisters he shared his class with were no different. Zorian had considered asking them for help back when he thought he was soul-bonded to Zach, or at least questioning them about the mechanics of soul bonds, but eventually decided it would be a bad idea. For one thing, mage families tended to jealously guard their family magics, and it was obvious that the Ashirai family was trying to become an official House with their own magical specialty centered around their soul bonds. Asking too closely about their family style could have ended up blowing up in his face spectacularly, and Zorian hadn’t been willing to risk it, time loop or not. A second concern was that the twins were unreliable. Benisek-level unreliable. They were giggly little twits who took nothing seriously and wouldn’t keep quiet even if he paid them.

No, it had definitely been smart of him to stay away from them.

Next to arrive was Kael, who apparently couldn’t sleep very well after yesterday’s revelations, and eventually decided to just come early. They didn’t talk much before the morlock boy decided to retire to his seat, but Zorian could already see there would be more questioning in the near future. Lovely. He had forgotten how inquisitive and interested in the time loop Kael had been the last time he had been aware of it.

Briam, Naim and Edwin were marked down as present next. Briam gave him a wave as he passed by him, his other hand holding his fire drake familiar close to him, while Naim and Edwin were too absorbed into their conversation to take notice of him. Zorian didn’t really mind, it wasn’t like he knew either of them all that well. Naim was a first generation mage, much like Zorian and Akoja — a child of some soldier that rose to the rank of general in the wake of the disruptions caused by the Splinter Wars. Edwin had golem makers as his parents, and they clearly passed on their enthusiasm for the craft to Edwin — he was always tinkering with various mechanisms and making blueprints, even during lectures or other times during which he should have been concentrating on something else.