Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

«Yes, it is criminal how badly the classes are failing our students,» Xvim said. «Such a simple variation of a levitation exercise should not be beyond the grasp of a certified mage. No matter, we shall correct this deficiency before we move on to other matters.»

Zorian sighed. Great. No wonder no one ever mastered the basic three to Xvim’s liking if the man keeps redefining what ‘mastered’ means. There were probably hundreds of ‘small variations’ of each of the basic three, enough to spend decades learning them all, so little wonder no one could exhaust them all in two measly years. Especially considering Xvim’s standards for labeling the skill ‘mastered’.

«Go on,» Xvim urged. «Start.»

Zorian focused intensely on the pen hanging above his palm, trying to figure out how to do that. It should be relatively simple. He just had to affix a stabilization point in the middle of the pen and put pressure on the ends, right? At least, that’s the first think that popped into his head. He had just managed to get the pen to move a bit when he felt a familiar object impact into his forehead.

Zorian glared at Xvim, cursing himself for forgetting about the man’s damnable marbles. Xvim glanced at the pen that was still hovering over Zorian’s palm.

«You didn’t lose focus,» Xvim remarked. «Good.»

«You threw a marble at me,» Zorian accused.

«I was hurrying you up,» Xvim said, unrepentant. «You’re too slow. You must be faster. Faster, faster, faster! Start over.»

Zorian sighed and returned to his task. Yup, definitely an exercise in frustration.

Between his unfamiliarity with the exercise and Xvim’s constant interruptions, Zorian only managed to get the pen to wobble by the end of the session, which was… a little humiliating, actually. His above average shaping skills were one of the few things that set him aside from his fellow mages, and he felt he should have done much better, despite Xvim’s repeated sabotage attempts. Fortunately, a book describing the exercise in detail was easy to find in the academy library, so he would hopefully master it by next week. Well, not master it — not in the sense that Xvim wanted him to — but he at least wanted to know what he was doing before he tackled his next session with Xvim.

Of course, normally he wouldn’t be willing to pour that much effort into a lousy shaping exercise, but he needed a distraction. At the beginning, the entire time travel situation was so patently ridiculous that he found it easy to remain calm and collected. Some part of him kept expecting that the whole thing was a double dream or something, and that he would wake up one day and not remember a thing. That part was becoming panicked and agitated now that it became obvious that the situation he faced was real. What the hell was he supposed to do? Zach’s mysterious absence weighted heavily upon him, inflaming his paranoia and making him reluctant to tell anyone about the invasion. Zorian was not a fundamentally selfless person and didn’t want to save people only to screw himself over in the end. Whatever his future memories really were, they were in essence his second chance at life — he was pretty sure he died at the end of his future memories — and he had no intention to squander it. He did consider it his ethical duty to warn people of the danger threatening the city, but there had to be a way to do it without destroying his life or reputation.

The simplest idea would be to warn as many people as possible (thus ensuring that at least some of them take the warnings seriously) and do so face-to-face, since written communications can be ignored in a way that is not really possible in personal interactions. Unfortunately, that would almost certainly paint him as a madman until he’s eventually vindicated by the actual assault. If there is an assault, that is — what if the conspirators decide to lay low upon having their plans unmasked and the invasion doesn’t happen? What if nobody takes him seriously until it’s too late and then decide to turn him into a scapegoat in order to shift responsibility away from themselves? What if one of the people he tries to warn is part of the conspiracy and has him killed before he can tell anyone else? What if, what if… way too many what ifs. And he had a sneaking suspicion that one of those what ifs was responsible for Zach’s disappearance.

As a result of these musings, the idea of staying anonymous appealed to him more and more with each passing day. The problem was that sending a message to a bunch of people without having it traced back to you was not at all simple when magic got involved. Divinations weren’t all-powerful, but Zorian had only academic understanding of their limitations, and his precautions probably wouldn’t hold against a motivated search by a skilled diviner.