Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  Finally, there were three more shifter groups that stood out from the rest for a couple of reasons. First, there were the eagle shifters, who couldn't accept being ruled by anyone, autonomy or not. They simply transformed and flew off in the direction of the Winter Mountains, where they somehow survived till modern times. How they dealt with such hostile, monster-infested environment nobody was quite sure, and they wanted nothing to do with the rest of humanity. Not even the other shifters. The second one were seal shifters, who got on the wrong side of Eldemar during the Necromancer's War and were mostly killed off as a result. The survivors left for Ulquaan Ibasa along with other losing groups, and were never heard from again. Raynie suspected they wouldn't want to talk to other shifters, even if they still survived in their new home. Finally, there were the pigeon shifters, who were never a tribe to begin with – they were a product of an eccentric mage that managed to get ahold of a shifter transformation ritual and was dedicated enough to create his own shifter clan with it. They were mocked and looked down upon by the other shifters, but Raynie admitted (after some prodding) that they were actually doing quite well for themselves. Being able to turn into a flying animal at will had its uses.

  "I'm surprised there aren't more attempts like that, to be honest," Zorian said.

  "There are," Raynie said. "They just tend not to go anywhere. They start well, but then run into problems when the first generation shifters start having children. If not handled properly, shifter children tend to grow up somewhat… dysfunctional. Established shifter groups have centuries of tradition to draw on in this regard – new, experimental shifter are stuck with no guidance and must tread with utmost care for the first few generations. Something that a lot of new shifters have no patience for."

  The conversation drifted away from the topic of shifters after that, shifting to a discussion of the recent monster invasion of the city and how it affected them. Zorian largely deflected Raynie's questions about what exactly he did in 'his' team whenever they went hunting, as he suspected Raynie would be a lot less willing to just accept Zorian's implausibly high skills than Taiven was, and she didn't push the issue too much. He was rather surprised how big of an effect the monster invasion had on her, though.

  "Honestly, this whole monster crisis is making me very self-conscious," Raynie revealed. "I was sent here to learn magic and become an asset to the tribe, and I thought I was doing fine in that regard… but now I know that many of my classmates are good enough to go after real dangers already and I'm… not. I thought I was among the top of the class, but it seems that's true only academically. I don't like it. I should have been among those of you going out there to fight those things."

  He had no idea how to respond to that, so he just kept silent. The conversation died down after that, and they went their separate ways. There was no mention of a second meeting, but she did mention he was welcome to ask her more questions if he thought of anything else. That was more of an approval than he'd expected to get, really.

  And yes, she did indeed expect him to pay for both of them.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Zorian turned his new library pass in his hands, idly studying the identification glyphs etched on its surface. The name on the pass was not his, of course, since he'd brazenly broken into someone's house and stolen it… but the chances he would get confronted over that were, surprisingly enough, negligible. As he quickly learned when he tried to use his new pass, the higher passes weren't just a slip of inert paper like his old one was – they were small wooden panels imprinted with a magical identification array of glyphs. To use them, one just had to walk up to the doors leading to the restricted section of the library, and then insert the panel into the depression next to the door. If the pass authorization was high enough to access that particular section, the door would unlock and the visitor could walk inside. No interaction with the librarians was necessary, and nobody asked to see his pass when he tested it, even after he'd spent several hours in the mind magic section.

  Honestly, he was feeling rather foolish at the moment. He expected the restricted sections to be guarded by some fiendish bit of security and identity checks around every corner, and instead he found a security system a child could break. If he knew it was this easy, he would have done this far earlier. As far as he could see, the only danger was the man he'd stolen from might realize he'd been robbed… and Zorian really wasn't worried about that. He had picked his target carefully, took nothing except the library pass from the house he'd broken into, and had done his best to leave no evidence of his entry. Even if the man suddenly started caring about the library pass he hadn't used for months and noticed it was missing, Zorian really doubted he would conclude somebody stole it. Who the hell breaks into people's houses in order to swipe their library passes?

  All that said, Zorian suspected that if he tried the same trick to access some really deeply restricted section, he would be stopped cold by firmer security. He would have to acquire a top level pass at some point and test it out near the end of a restart.

  Right now, though, he had to see just what Xvim had in store for him. He pocketed the library pass and approached… the door…

  He frowned. What the hell was happening? This was where Xvim's office was located, he was sure of it – had been here countless of times, and everything else was exactly where it should be. He just…

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting the mental shield snap shut over his thoughts. The compulsion to ignore the door to Xvim's office melted away, and his eyes finally stopped skimming over it like it didn't exist. No, now that he thought about it, it was more like he had dismissed it as irrelevant. As obviously not what he was looking for. If he'd been less sure of himself, who knows how long he would have looked for the door before figuring it out.

  Opening his eyes and forcing down his annoyance at Xvim's antics, he knocked on the door and then immediately entered without waiting for permission to do so. He found Xvim calmly staring at him, fingers steepled together.

  "Pitiful," Xvim declared. "That such a crude trap managed to snare you, even for a minute, shows how woefully unprepared you are for the dangers of mind magic."

  "Yes, sir," agreed Zorian easily. He was too inured to Xvim's attitude to really get worked up by them anymore. "That is why I professed a desire for a training partner to Miss Zileti."

  Xvim waved his hand through the air once, as if warding away a particularly annoying fly, wordlessly letting him know how little he thought of that idea.

  "I understand, from talking to Ilsa, that you are a natural mind mage, yes?" Xvim asked. It was apparently a rhetorical question, because he didn't wait for Zorian's response before continuing. "It is commendable that you are trying to correct your deficiencies on your own initiative. Too many mages with such natural talents mistake their inborn advantage for actual mastery, wasting their potential and putting everyone around them at risk. Even themselves. Especially themselves."

  Wow, was that actual praise from Xvim?

  "Sadly," Xvim continued, "your attempt, much like the shaping skills you displayed at our session last Friday, falls embarrassingly short of achieving actually worthwhile results. It is up to me, as your mentor, to mould you into something resembling a competent and responsible spellcaster."

  Ugh. Never mind.

  "I see," he said, somewhat sourly. "Please forgive my impertinence, but I was not aware that you were an expert in mind magic. I thought you taught advanced shaping exercises for fourth-year students."

  "I also do private lessons for particularly talented first and second years," Xvim said, a ghost of a grimace flickering over his face for a moment before he smoothed it into his usual impassiveness. Xvim probably didn't think much of their 'talent'. "And, more relevantly, I teach a fourth year elective dealing with defense against hostile magic. Obviously, this includes mind magic as well."

  "Ah," said Zorian. That did a lot to explain Xvim's constant mind shield. Still… "I feel I should point out th
at my innate ability grants me a very powerful and flexible mental shield."

  "Oh? How interesting," Xvim said speculatively. "Tell me, is your ability purely defensive or can you reach out and touch other people's minds too?"

  "The second one," Zorian admitted. "That's why I asked Miss Zileti for help – I needed a willing target that would let me practice telepathy and mind reading on them."

  "In that case, you probably already know about the mental barrier I'm currently sporting," Xvim stated.

  "Well yes, but not because I tried to access your mind or anything," Zorian lied. "It's just that the base form of my talent is a passive form of empathy that tells me what other people are feeling, and I cannot sense anything from you. As far as I can tell, that only happens when they are shielding their mind somehow."

  "I am certain that is the only reason why you know of it, and that you have never even entertained the thought of getting revenge on your insufferable mentor by taking a quick peek at his mind," Xvim said indulgently. "As it happens, though, I want you to try and invade my mind. Please do your best to get past my mental barrier and tell me how it compares to your own."

  Oh, this was absolutely perfect. A chance to attack Xvim and get away with it? How could he refuse? Still, as annoying as his mentor was, he didn't really want to hospitalize the man, so he didn't immediately launch the strongest mind spike he could form into his unprepared defenses. No, instead he first ran some light probing attacks to see if he could find any obvious imperfections (he couldn't) and then launched a quick succession of weak attacks to gauge the strength of Xvim's shield.

  It was a very solid thing, comparable in strength to what Zorian and the aranea could create, which surprised him a great deal. On the other hand, that meant he didn't really have to hold back. He powered up his strongest, most focused mind spike and slammed it directly into the mental barrier.

  Though outwardly calm and composed, inwardly Zorian grinned in savage glee as he felt Xvim's mental shield crack and buckle under his sudden onslaught…

  …and then the moment passed, and Xvim's mental barrier immediately snapped back into place, as perfect and unyielding as it was at the start.

  Zorian's eyes involuntarily widened in shock. N-No way… he repaired it!? How? He wasn't a psychic, he was sure of it, and no spell he knew of could repair itself. Certainly not that quickly. Zorian couldn't fix his mind shield that quickly. Hell, the aranea he practiced with couldn't make their defenses snap back to an intact state that quickly.

  He launched three more powerful attacks in quick succession with the exact same result: the attacks did damage to Xvim's mental barrier, but it was repaired so quickly and thoroughly that a lesser attacker could have been fooled into thinking it had never been damaged at all.

  He narrowed his eyes. No. No, he was not going to be foiled in this. Brute force wasn't working, but he hadn't been trained by the aranea for nothing – he had far more than that at his disposal. He started executing basic attack patterns taught to him by Mind Like Fire, treating Xvim like a fellow psychic instead of a mage using a structured spell, and slowly the limits of Xvim's defenses revealed themselves to him. For one thing, Xvim, did not seem to feel his probing attacks – anything not strong enough to crack his mental barrier was effectively undetectable to him. Secondly, his barrier was completely uniform – he never reinforced a spot he was attacking, even if he repeatedly targeted the same place over and over again.

  When he next attacked, he did not use a powerful but momentary mind spike – he picked one part of Xvim's mental shield and started crushing it. He didn't let up, and slowly it began to crack under his mental pressure. No repair was possible – his attack was overwhelming the shield's regeneration, widening the cracks and bringing it closer and closer to total collapse. He diverted a few tendrils of power from the main attack into the widening holes in Xvim's defenses, causing the man to visibly flinch as telepathic forces seared his surface thoughts…

  "Stop!" Xvim ordered, raising his hand into the air in a halting gesture.

  Zorian immediately withdrew, letting Xvim recreate his mental defenses and regain his composure.

  "Well," his mentor said, massaging his sinuses. "An afternoon headache, just what I needed today. I supposed that will teach me to tempt my students. Nonetheless, it was a fascinating experience. Less classical mind magic, and more akin to something a memory moss, an azure sea hermit crab or a cranium rat swarm would employ."

  "That wasn't a spell you were using to shield your mind, was it?" Zorian asked.

  "No, it was not," Xvim confirmed. "It was unstructured magic, much like your own abilities."

  "But how?" Zorian asked. "I can tell that you aren't… well, a natural mind mage like me."

  "Mind magic shaping exercises," Xvim said simply, as if that explained anything.

  "There are shaping exercises for mind magic?" asked Zorian, surprised.

  "There are shaping exercises for every field of magic," Xvim said. "They are essential for building a proper foundation around which you can base your spells around."

  Right, stupid question. What he should be asking was how doing shaping exercises allowed Xvim to do a reasonable impression of a full-blow psychic. He was a bit of a one-trick pony, but to be fair, it was a very nice trick.

  "I was not aware that doing shaping exercises can give you unstructured magical abilities," Zorian remarked.

  "Really?" Xvim asked him curiously. "What did you think shaping exercises were, if not unstructured magical abilities? Do enough of related ones over the years, and they're bound to build up to something greater than the sum of its parts. In case of mind magic, the ability to defend against it is so universally coveted that countless training regimens for gaining mental defenses have been devised over the centuries. What I displayed is not a common skill by any means, but is not particularly rare either."

  Zorian frowned. Come to think of it, a fair number of people he'd encountered in the past had some form of mental defense that didn't really feel like a structured spell. Alanic for instance, as well as Rea. Zach also had some sort of mental shield, according to the Spear of Resolve – one she did not feel comfortable tampering with. He really should have suspected something like this earlier.

  "Can you also use telepathy and mind reading in unstructured manner, too?" he asked Xvim, acting on a hunch.

  "Me, personally? No. I've never had an interest in anything other than defending myself," Xvim said. "But if you're asking whether it's possible, the answer is yes… with caveats. It requires great dedication for rudimentary results – such an aspirant would never be able to duplicate the attack you just casually did, for instance, even after a lifetime of honing their skills."

  He knew it – it was just like soul sight. Getting a reduced version of the ability that affects only yourself was doable with a lot of work, but reaching out and applying it to someone else was all but impossible.

  "So?" Xvim said impatiently, breaking his contemplation. "The comparison?"

  "Err, right. Your shields seems to give you far less feedback than mine do, it's too uniform in composition and your response to attack is very predictable and exploitable for someone who knows what they're doing," said Zorian, relishing the chance to make Xvim on the receiving end of criticism for a change. Xvim simply nodded, giving no indication that his pride was wounded by the barrage. "On the other hand, your shield has far fewer imperfections and you can repair it a lot faster than me."

  "Well then," Xvim said, leaning back on his chair. "I guess we know what you'll be practicing today, then, don't we?"

  "Alright," said Zorian. He was fine with the idea, really. Improving his mental defenses was always welcome in his mind. "How is that going to work, though? I don't think any classical mind spell can do much to me, barring surprise attacks like that trap you put on the door."

  "Surprises come in many forms, mister Kazinski," Xvim said, reaching into his drawers and retrieving a spell rod, which he promptly pointed a
t Zorian's face. "Allow me to demonstrate."

  Zorian hurriedly strengthened his mind shield, determined to weather the incoming mental attack Xvim was launching at him, but what hit him wasn't a mind magic spell. It was some sort of dispelling wave, and his mental shield evaporated upon contact with it like a raindrop hitting a burning oven.

  Then the knockout spell hit him.

  He resisted. He may have been stripped of his mental shield and caught off-guard, but he was still an experienced mage and he went through Kyron's 'resistance training' too – the relatively minor spell Xvim used could not subdue him. But the point was made, regardless.

  "A proper mind mage," Xvim said, "would have reconstructed his shield before the second spell had been even cast."

  Zorian sighed. Of course they would have.

  "Start over?" he guessed.

  "Start over," Xvim confirmed.

  In a scene that Zorian would rapidly begin to hate with every fiber of his being, Xvim once again pointed the spell rod at his face and blasted his mental shield into oblivion.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Following their Monday session, Xvim largely replaced their regular sessions with mind magic related ones, constantly pushing his defenses and giving him long lists of mind magic shaping exercises to try. Most of these exercises were absurdly easy for Zorian, teaching things he already had an instinctive grasp of, but searching the restricted section of the library with his brand new pass yielded some less intuitive ones that actually taught him something new.