Mother of Learning. Arc 3 Incomplete

Zorian excused himself to tell mother he was leaving — which took way too long in his opinion, since mother wouldn’t stop bombarding him with questions about teleportation, suddenly concerned about his safety — before picking up his luggage and following Ilsa outside. He was actually a little excited, since he’d never teleported before. He’d have been even more excited, but the memory of being stabbed to death was still uncomfortably fresh, dampening his enthusiasm somewhat.

«Ready?» she asked.

He nodded.

«Don’t worry, the rumors about the dangers of teleporting are mostly exaggerated,» Ilsa said. «You can’t get stuck inside solid objects — the spell doesn’t work that way — and if something goes wrong I’ll immediately know it and collapse the spell before dimensional ripples tear us apart.»

Zorian scowled. He already knew that, but saw no point in pointing that out — she obviously heard his little exchange with mother.

Ilsa started chanting and Zorian stood straighter, not wanting to miss-

The world rippled, then changed. Suddenly they were both standing in a well lit circular room, a large magical circle carved into the marble floor they stood on. There was no disorientation, no flash of colors, no nothing — almost disappointing. He studied the room they were in a little more closely, trying to understand where they were.

«This is the teleport redirection point,» Ilsa said. «The academy wards shunt every incoming teleport into this place for security reasons. Of course, that’s assuming you’re properly keyed in and have sufficient authorization to teleport in at all.» She fixed him with a penetrating gaze. «Teleporting into a warded space is just one of the many dangers of the spell. Don’t experiment with it on your own.»

«Err… I’m pretty sure teleport is far above my access level,» pointed out Zorian.

She shrugged. «Some students are capable of reconstructing a spell after seeing it performed only once. Once you know the chant and gestures, 80 % of the work has already been done for you.»

Zorian blinked. Now why didn’t he think of that?

«Would you mind casting that spell one more time?» he asked innocently. «Strictly for academic purposes, you see…»

She chuckled. «No. If it makes you feel any better, I doubt you have enough mana reserves to cast the spell even once.»

As a point of fact, it didn’t make him feel any better. He didn’t care how dangerous it was, he’d learn the teleport spell as soon as he was able. He just shaved off an entire day of train travel from his journey in an instant — the ability to do that kind of thing at will would be worth quite a lot of trouble to acquire. He let out a sigh and left Ilsa to her own devices to get settled in.

«I could get used to this kind of travel,» Zorian mumbled to himself as he unlocked the door to his room and dropped his luggage to the floor in relief. «Too bad I could never fake distress convincingly enough, or else I’d convince Ilsa to take me along at the beginning of every restart.»

He froze mid-step. He shouldn’t be thinking like that. That was dangerous thinking. He had no proof that that the restarts would keep happening indefinitely. In fact, everything he knew about magic told him it couldn’t be true — whatever spell had been put on him was going to run out of mana at some point and then there’d be no restart, no second chances… no return from the dead. He had to treat every restart as if it were his last, because it might very well be.

Though he had to admit that, despite it ending with him getting stabbed to death, the previous restart wasn’t a complete disaster — at least he had all but confirmed it was Zach, and not the lich, that was responsible for this. Instead of researching unknown languages and time travel, it would probably be wiser to find out where Zach keeps disappearing to every time.

But not right now. He deserved a little rest after being brought back from the dead.