Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  "But the main part of the thing works?"

  "In a sense. It does everything it is supposed to, consulting the core of your soul, but for some reason it is still stuck on the same value it had while it was still inside Zach. It's broken, but it's broken in your favor."

  "Huh," said Zorian lamely. What was he supposed to say to that? "Honestly? This isn't such a huge surprise. I always suspected that the marker was in some way defective. After all, I highly doubt that its makers intended for someone like me to enter the time loop the way I did. Does this really change anything?"

  "Depends how you look at it," Kael said. "You are in no danger of being suddenly dropped out of the loop, so I suppose from a personal perspective this doesn't change much. But look at it from a wider perspective. If I'm right, then whatever convergence of circumstances aligned to pull you into the time loop along with Zach was a fluke. A fortunate fluke, but a fluke all the same. It is not consistently reproducible."

  Zorian frowned. What was he…

  Then it hit him.

  "Wait. How did Red Robe end up time looping, then?"

  "Yes, that is the question, isn't it?" Kael said, his fingers drumming on his work table impatiently. "I'm afraid I don't know how to answer that question. But he clearly didn't use the same method you did."

  "Yeah," Zorian agreed. "I had strongly suspected that, but I couldn't be sure. Him having some other method of joining the time loop would explain why he never used his own marker to track me down the way I did Zach. He doesn't have the same marker as me and Zach, if he indeed has one at all, so he would have to capture Zach and use him as a key to locate me that way."

  "And if he's indeed a master soul mage like you seem to think, he probably 'knows' you could not possibly have an identical marker as Zach, so there is no reason for him to try that in the first place," Kael said.

  They bounced theories and ideas off one another for the next half an hour, but it was all just hollow speculation at the moment. They had no way to confirm or discard any of the possibilities. Kael thought that Red Robe was in some way piggy backing on Zach, either by leaving portions of his mind in Zach the way the Cyorian matriarch did with Zorian, or by having some kind of soul link with Zach. Zorian discarded the possibility of a mind package immediately. The logistics of that kind of setup didn't add up – Red Robe was active within hours of the start of the loop, if his quick arrival to the ruins of the aranea colony in that one restart were of any indication, and processing a large amount of memories took more than a day. Not to mention that Zach didn't start every restart by going to the same location, so it was questionable how Red Robe would have even gotten a memory package in every restart. No, Red Robe definitely wasn't using memory packages. And really, Zorian didn't think he was linked to Zach's soul either – if he was, he would have checked Zach's soul for additional connections when he'd read his mind and found out there were additional time travelers running around. Instead, he immediately ran off to confront the aranea. The thought of someone being connected to Zach's soul didn't seem to occur to him.

  Personally, Zorian thought Red Robe did have a marker of some sort. It was entirely possible, he felt, that there was a way for people who knew what they were doing to enter the time loop 'properly' – to get their own marker and all. Though that did raise a question about why he didn't just off Zach and went on with his life free of interference.

  What was so special about Zach?

  "Right. I don't think we're getting anywhere with this," Zorian said. "Anything else I should keep in mind?"

  "Nothing that Lukav and his priest friend didn't already warn you about – avoid any magic that could alter your soul substantially. We don't know what caused the marker to get stuck on its current identification value, and there is no telling what will push it off the edge so take care," Said Kael.

  "I was afraid to do that even before now, and for that exact reason too," Zorian said, leaning back on making a deliberately dramatic sigh. "Pity, though. I guess my dream of turning that stupid grey hunter Silverlake sent me to deal with into my very own familiar or becoming a grey hunter shifter is doomed to remain just a dream…"

  "Didn't you know? There is a reason why most shifters are made from normal animals," Kael warned him. "Being a shifter means you get instincts from the other part of the soul, and magical creatures always have very strong souls… the more magical the creature, the stronger. And they tend to be extremely violent and territorial. With regards to grey hunters, I'm fairly certain they don't tolerate even their own kind, much less anything else. Such an attitude would bleed over to you if you became a grey hunter shifter. And there is also the matter of inheritance to consider - even if you are able to master a grey hunter's soul and not let its urges rule you, there is no guarantee that your children will be similarly strong-willed, especially since they'll have those urges from the day they are born. I'd strongly recommend against that course of action. As for making it your familiar, keep in mind that it takes a long time for the soul link to mature and that you need to be close to it the whole time. There is no guarantee that the creature won't kill you during the process. And if you do manage to slave it to your will, it could still be dangerous to everyone around you who is not protected by the soul bond."

  "There was no need for a lecture. I was just joking," said Zorian flatly.

  "Good."

  "Even if its abilities would have been so very useful…" Zorian said wistfully. "Extreme toughness, speed and magical resistance? Yes, please!"

  "Just kill it, chop it up for parts and make an enhancement potion out of them," suggested Kael. "You can ask Lukav to help you do it, I'm sure he'd jump at the chance. Not many people are crazy enough to go after one of those monsters, after all, so I'm pretty sure he never had a chance to work with grey hunter parts."

  "You know, that actually sounds like an interesting idea…"

  "Glad I could help," Kael said, peering into a slowly bubbling metal pot on the table in front of him and scowling. "Well, my current experiment is not going too well. And I thought I had it this time, too. Time to try batch number four." He gave Zorian a speculative look. "Say, do you think you can help me out here? Some of the steps are pretty simple, and observing my work will ensure you don't forget what I talked about as easily as you did last time."

  "Yeah, I'll help, and holy gods will you stop reminding me of that!?" Zorian whined. "It was more than a year, and I had a lot on my mind, it was natural I would forget a lot of things. Besides, I'm already working on side-stepping my faulty memory somehow."

  "Hmm, I wish you luck about that," Kael said. "Nonetheless, we both know you'll remember my work a lot better if you understand what I'm doing instead of just blindly memorizing recipes and dry instructions. Think of this as free alchemical lessons."

  Well. He did use a fair amount of alchemy in solving the problems he encountered, so getting some advice in the field might actually be useful.

  "Alright. Where do you want me to start?"

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  The next day, Zorian decided to make good on his own internal promise to find some solution to the 'forgetting things' problem. Well, he had to organize another one of Kirielle's magic lessons first, but there were no issues with that. Her progress was much faster than it had been in the previous restarts he had tried teaching her, since he had already been through this several times and was therefore getting better at motivating her and explaining the subject matter in a way she intuitively understood. His obligations done for the day, he quickly excused himself and went out for a walk, lest Kael or Imaya find some other job to dump in his lap.

  In the long run, Zorian knew he already had a perfectly good solution for remembering things with perfect clarity – he could just make memory packets like those of the Cyorian matriarch, storing them in his mind for future recall. The map of Cyoria's underworld that the matriarch had left him was still as crystal clear in his mind as it had been the day he had assembled it from the scattered re
mnants left in the minds of the male survivors of the colony. It served as a shining example of what was possible for one who could master the procedure of creating such things. And it wasn't like learning how to do that would be an additional time sink, either – learning how to handle memory packets was something he was already working on. It was his current priority, in fact.

  The problem was, it would be a while before his effort there bore any fruit. Could be a couple of months, could be a couple of years… well, hopefully not years, since the matriarch's memory package could decay into uselessness by then, but the point remained: it was not a quick solution to his immediate problem. Fortunately, human mages were quite good at making quick solutions to immediate problems, and surely some of them had at one point needed to memorize a map down to the very last detail, or recite a book word for word? Zorian would be shocked if the spell to do such a thing didn't already exist somewhere out there, it was just a question of whether he could find it.

  He decided to try at the academy library first. A bit unimaginative, but it was the best place to start his research and it had been a while since he'd spent some time browsing its shelves. He kind of missed that during his long absence from Cyoria.

  Three hours later, he was torn between smiling in satisfaction and the urge to find something flammable to take his frustration out on. The bright side was: he found what he was looking for. There were no less than five different spells that could do what he wanted, mostly by allowing the caster to record what they see and hear for a brief period of time and storing that record in their minds. They differed in details, such as whether it was possible to pause the recording or not, but the core was the same. One even claimed it could form a clear memory retroactively, allowing the caster to remember what they had forgotten.

  The bad news was that these spells were only available in the restricted section of the library.

  Specifically the mind magic section of it.

  Zorian leaned back in his chair, precariously balancing it on its back two legs and taking his glasses off to massage his eyes. To say that the academy was reluctant to give permission to random students with regards to doing mind magic would be a severe understatement. He needed a better library pass if he wanted to get what he wanted, and there was no way he was going to get it through legal means.

  He narrowed his eyes while staring at the library ceiling. There was no helping it. He would just have to steal one.

  "What has gotten my best student so gloomy on this fine day?"

  Zorian jumped in his seat, startled, the poorly balanced chair almost giving up on him and pulling him to the floor. After finally stabilizing himself enough, he turned around to give Ilsa an unamused look.

  "Sorry," she said, but her smile and the emotions he felt off of her told Zorian she was not sorry at all. "I didn't think you would react so… explosively."

  "You just surprised me a bit," Zorian said. He had detected a person passing by him with his mind sense, but that wasn't exactly something unusual in this place. It wasn't like the library was empty, after all. "What can I help you with, Miss Zileti?"

  "Nothing, really – I am already done with what I came here for. You didn't notice it because you were so absorbed into your reading, but I had passed through this section twice before now. I just didn't want to interrupt you then, since you looked quite busy. I was just leaving now when I noticed you trying to burn a hole in the ceiling with your eyes, so I wondered if I can help you with whatever is troubling you."

  "I appreciate the offer, Miss Zileti," Zorian said. "I really do. But I don't think you can help me with this."

  Helpful though she may be, Zorian was pretty sure that asking her to help him with committing a crime was a terrible idea. Amusing, but terrible.

  "What are you working on, anyway?" she asked, peering at the open book in front of him. "Memory preservation spells? Why would you need that?"

  "I need a way to quickly and flawlessly memorize a notebook or two," Zorian said truthfully.

  Ilsa gave him a searching look.

  "If this is about class work…"

  "No, I think I'm doing quite well in my classes," Zorian said, shaking his head. If anything, he thought he was doing too well – he was at the top of his class in terms of grades, despite his efforts to avoid standing out. "It's personal. All I can say is that I'll be going on a trip soon, and I won't be able to bring anything with me. Anything but my memories, that is. And while my memory is quite good, it is not good enough to memorize, say, a word-for-word transcription of a book of potion recipes."

  "Sounds ominous and suspicious," Ilsa noted.

  "I'm not planning anything illegal," Zorian assured.

  "I'm sure," Ilsa deadpanned. "That's why you're looking up spells that I know you're not authorized to learn."

  "Hence me being gloomy when you approached me," Zorian countered. "I'd thought I had found a solution to my problem, but it turns out it's beyond my reach at the moment."

  "I see," she said. "Out of curiosity, how important is it that you be able to access the information in the book while it is stored inside your mind?"

  "I'm not sure I understand," Zorian frowned. "What would be the point of holding a book in your head if you couldn't read it?"

  "To create a copy of it, of course," Ilsa smiled. "It's a trick that some alteration experts use if they want to be able to create complex objects without carrying the originals with them. They use a spell to record the blueprint of an object, storing it inside their heads, then simply use that blueprint to create copies of the object whenever it strikes their fancy. Well, provided they have the correct raw materials. In your case, that would be a blank book of similar dimensions to what you're trying to copy and a bottle of ink."

  "And… you know how to do this?" asked Zorian hopefully.

  Ilsa hummed. "Well, I am an alteration expert… but even if I was willing to teach you, this is not exactly an easy spell combination. It requires a great deal of alteration expertise and great shaping control. It would take-"

  Zorian concentrated for a second and pulled at the heavy, metal lined book on the shelf next to him with his magic, not bothering to make a single gesture or hand motion. The book smoothly slid out of its shelf and floated in front of Ilsa, startling her. Before she could say anything, the book opened itself and started turning its pages, slowly at first but then speeding up until the last half of it passed in a blur and the book slammed itself shut. His point made, Zorian smoothly slotted the book back to its previous place on the shelf.

  "I can't think of a proper way to prove my alteration expertise right now," said Zorian in the resulting silence, "but I'm perfectly capable of restructuring a metal pan into a fully functional metal watch. How much harder would this be compared to that?"

  "Not exactly harder," Ilsa admitted, still staring at book on the shelf with a frown. "But certainly different. You'd have to practice for a few days before you can get it right." She shook her head and tore her eyes away from the book to stare Zorian in the eyes. "We're going to have a talk about this on Monday, mister Kazinski."

  "Does that mean you agree to teach it to me?" he asked.

  "Not yet. I'll need to run some tests on you to see whether you can handle the spells safely."

  Ilsa soon left, leaving Zorian alone to his own thoughts. He closed the book in front of him, setting it aside. Ilsa's spell combination wasn't exactly what he had been looking for when he searched for a quick and dirty solution, but it could work. In fact, it was even better than his original idea in some regards. Much less annoying to use, for instance. Plus, he wouldn't need to painstakingly transcribe the information from his head every time he wanted to add or change something. He would give Ilsa's method a chance.

  But he was going to steal a better library pass anyway.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Two weeks passed in a blur of activity. Most of it was routine, like him accompanying Taiven and her team to the Dungeon, teaching Kirielle or helping Kael w
ith his alchemy (and having his soul occasionally scanned by the other boy, with little results thus far). It helped that Kirielle actually had a friend her age this time so she monopolized his time a lot less. Whatever dark secret her mother harbored, Zorian had to admit Nochka's presence made Kirielle a lot more manageable than she usually was, so he was definitely going to visit that bridge in future restarts as well.

  Two main things stood out from the rest. The first one was that he had managed to learn the spells Ilsa had talked about, and they worked just as she said they would. He was happy that he could finally keep written notes on what happened in the time loop, since he now had a method of effectively transferring his notebooks into the next restart. Kael was happy too, since he could now be much more liberal about the amount of information he was sending over to his future self – he promptly gave Zorian four fully filled-out notebooks to store the blueprints of, with a promise of one more by the end of the restart. Zorian really hoped Kael wouldn't accumulate notebooks so rapidly in future restarts, because Zorian could only hold about 15 blueprints in his mind. The matriarch's memory packet didn't leave much room for anything else, really.

  The second interesting thing was that he had all but confirmed that Xvim had his mind shielded at all times. He had barged into the man's office three different times, and the shield had always been active. Sadly, his unannounced visits seemed to have finally provoked the unflappable man somewhat, so now Zorian had 5 different shaping books on his reading list for their next session. Depending on which book Xvim decided to focus on, their next lesson would consist of Zorian making detailed shapes out of sand, telekinetically dismantling a watch without breaking any of its parts, playing around with candles and matches, trying to apply paint on canvas without using any brushes or carving glyphs into stones with his fingers. Or maybe all five if Xvim was feeling particularly vindictive.