Mother of Learning 2 - Outside World

by nobody103

  At that point the rest of the household got involved, with Kael freaking out and trying to convince Kopriva to keep Kana's existence a secret, Kirielle repeatedly trying to apologize to Kael, Kopriva being visibly amused, and Imaya trying to run damage control. Amusingly, it turned out that Taiven hadn't known Kana was Kael's daughter either – she just sort of assumed she was Imaya's daughter, despite her having the same sort of vivid blue eyes that her father had, and never sought confirmation about it from anyone.

  Sadly, everyone was too caught up in the drama to pay attention to the packet of alchemical ingredients that Kopriva had brought over… well, everyone except Nochka. She decided that this mysterious packet was very interesting and worthy of examination. Unfortunately, either Kopriva had failed to secure the ingredients properly or Nochka had examined the package too enthusiastically, because she managed to breathe in a bit of hallucinogenic dust from the package and started losing control over her form. Her eyes became slitted like a cat, she grew a tail and claws and started hissing at people who tried to examine her to see what was wrong.

  That started the second round of drama, with Rea being upset that her daughter was basically outed as a shifter and that Kopriva had left a 'dangerous substances' within reach of children, Kopriva trying to defend herself, Kirielle assuring Rea that it's okay because she already knew her friend can 'turn into a kitty', Rea being angry at Nochka for being so indiscreet, and poor Imaya playing peacemaker for the second time that day.

  At this point Zorian had come back from his talk with Tinami and was told what happened in his absence.

  "I was only gone for a couple of hours," Zorian complained. "Damn, you people work fast."

  He was immediately faced with a plethora of unamused looks.

  "Okay, look," he said placatingly. "I think you're all making mountains out of molehills here. First of all, I'm pretty sure Kopriva has no intentions of spreading rumors about Kana amongst the student body…" Mostly because he'd read her mind to make sure. "…and I don't think anybody here really minds Rea and Nochka being shifters, either."

  "What makes you think I'm a shifter as well? She could have inherited it from her father for all you know," Rea protested, folding her hands over her chest.

  Zorian ignored her remark.

  "Really, the only semi-serious issue was that Nochka ended up drugged," said Zorian.

  "I swear I secured the package properly," Kopriva mumbled.

  "Nochka probably punctured something with her claws," Rea admitted with a sigh. "She likes to use her claws to remove wrappings and such."

  "Nevertheless, the package was here because of me… and Kael, but that's beside the point. The point is, I feel somewhat responsible for what happened. What do you think would be an appropriate compensation for this?"

  "Oh, there is no need-" began Rea, only to get cut off by her own daughter.

  "I want a doll," Nochka slurred. The effects of the alchemical dust she breathed had faded, but were still far from gone. "Like the one Kiri has. She said you made it."

  "I made a doll for Kiri?" Zorian asked, before he realized what Nochka was referring to. "Oh wait, you mean Kosjenka. That's technically not a doll, but whatever. Assuming your mother agrees, I don't see the problem with that."

  "Is this 'doll' going to explode if treated roughly?" Rea asked suspiciously.

  Not an unreasonable fear. Some magical items held a substantial amount of mana inside of them and could thus easily detonate if handled roughly. In this particular case, though, that would never happen. He didn't trust Kirielle around explosives any more than Rea trusted Nochka around the same.

  "No, it will just stop being animated," Zorian said. "The golem is powered by ambient mana and made mostly out of wood, so there is nothing in there that could explode if it breaks."

  "Then no, I have no objections," Rea shrugged. "Though really, this is quite unnecessary. Nochka is just milking this for all it's worth and I wouldn't blame you at all for simply telling her off."

  "Mom!" Nochka whined. "You're supposed to be on my side!"

  Zorian was distracted from the spectacle by a burst of emotion coming from Kana. The little girl was fidgeting like crazy in Kael's lap, clearly waging some internal war with herself. Though she was as silent as ever, Zorian could feel through his empathy that her attention was squarely on him. She wanted to… tell him something?

  "Let me guess, you want a doll too?" Zorian said, taking a wild guess at what was bothering her.

  Kana nodded so fast her head looked like it was going to fall off.

  A round of laughter from everyone present followed that exchange.

  "Alright, alright," Zorian sighed. "I get it. Two new golem-dolls coming up. I'll be busy in the near future, but they should be done over the weekend."

  Now that he thought about it a little bit, this sort of development wasn't that surprising. Kirielle had been making both girls jealous of her new toys for a whole week now, so it made sense that they'd want one of their own if they thought they could get away with it. They were probably just too polite to ask for one in previous restarts, or simply couldn't think of a good way to ask.

  "Damn it, now I'm getting a little jealous," Kopriva groused. "Why don't I get a doll too?"

  "You're too old to play with dolls," Zorian told her, rolling his eyes.

  "You can play with Kosjenka when you visit," Kirielle offered.

  "Aww," Kopriva grinned, ruffling Kirielle's hair. "You're a sweet kid. It's hard to believe you're related to someone like Zorian."

  Hey…

  "Brother is really great," Kirielle protested, pushing Kopriva's hand away from her hair so she could straighten it back into place. "He's like a hedgehog. He gets nice once you get past his prickliness."

  Ugh. And they were just getting started, too. After completely defusing a tense situation and promising to make expensive toys to a couple of little girls? Truly no good deed goes unpunished.

  ✦ ✧ ✦

  Friday came, and with it Zorian's next meeting with Xvim. This time, however, Xvim didn't want to hold their session inside his office – instead, he led Zorian to a restricted training ground he had reserved for the day. They would be doing 'serious magic', Xvim claimed, so his office was no longer sufficient for their purposes.

  "I have talked to some astronomers since we last met," Xvim began, unlocking the door of the training ground and shooing him inside. "I have nothing conclusive yet, but the results thus far are not encouraging. There have been no significant deviations among the celestial bodies. Additionally, the planets in particular are being closely watched because of the upcoming planetary alignment. It is unlikely they are illusionary – the affected area likely includes the entire solar system."

  "Provided it is, in fact, limited by area," Zorian pointed out.

  "Yes," Xvim agreed easily. "That is true. However, while my forays into astronomy have met with rather disappointing results, I've found something interesting while researching time magic. Tell me, have you ever heard of Black Rooms?"

  "What, the ones that let you spend several years inside while only a day passes outside? Those actually exist?" Zorian asked incredulously.

  "No, those ones are definitely fake," Xvim said, shaking his head. "But ones that can stretch a day into a month do. And the interesting thing is how they achieve that kind of extreme time dilation effect. Time magic has sharp limits in how effective it can get – even the most powerful hasting effects can only speed up time four to five times before they hit a wall. At that point, no matter how powerful and skillful the mage is, the boundary between two temporal flows starts to unravel."

  "So how can Black Rooms speed up time by a factor of thirty, then?" Zorian frowned.

  "By isolating them from the rest of the world," Xvim said. "That's why they're called Black Rooms. They have to completely enclose the area and seal it off. This greatly lessens the stress of the temporal boundary, but it also makes it impossible to interact with people outsi
de while the Black Room is working. Once the time dilation is engaged, nothing goes in or out until the effect is broken. Material supplies, magical communication… nothing goes through. Even contact with the spiritual planes is blocked."

  Zorian frowned. "I see. So there is precedence for powerful time magic to require an enclosed area to function properly. But from what I understand, the principles behind the Black Rooms would require the affected area to be literally enclosed in a physical box."

  "The time loop is clearly a more advanced piece of magic than the Black Rooms, so it's likely it uses a more subtle method of sealing off the area of effect," Xvim responded.

  "I suppose," Zorian said, acknowledging the possibility. "I'm curious, though – how come Black Rooms are such a mystery? I only knew of them as rumors up until this point. Surely Eldemar would not hesitate to use them openly if they're so effective?"

  "In addition to needing tremendous amounts of mana, Black Rooms are very difficult to use properly," Xvim said. "Due to the way they're cut off from the outside, one has to plan each use very carefully – if the organizers failed to account for something critical, the whole operation is essentially ruined, and a lot of time and mana has been wasted. Black Rooms cannot be turned off and on at will, and the mana cost of an operation has to be paid in full at the start. I understand there is a lot of controversy surrounding the Black Rooms, with many people disputing their actual usefulness and claiming they're a huge waste of money. Some of the more spectacular failures associated with them do not help their reputation."

  "Oh?" Zorian asked, intrigued.

  "Initially, Black Rooms could not prematurely terminate the time dilation field once it was turned on," said Xvim. "Once the Black Room was on, whoever was inside was stuck until the spell wore off."

  Zorian winced. Yeah, that had been bound to end poorly.

  "At least one group died of thirst after an administrative mix-up caused the organizers to stockpile too little water into the area before activation. Another group almost died of starvation after some form of insect snuck into the food supply and managed to ruin most of it before the infestation was detected. Even if everything was done properly, you are still essentially imprisoning several people in a small, cramped space where they have no privacy and little to entertain themselves with. Fights were common, with several experiments culminating into a bloodbath. In one memorable case, the entire group managed to mutually kill each other off – there were literally no survivors once the Black Room finally opened."

  "What about sending individuals?" Zorian asked.

  "Most people can't handle total isolation for long," Xvim shook his head. "Besides, it costs exactly the same to run a Black Room for one person as it does for several of them, and the more people you send in, the more work can get done."

  After that, Xvim asked Zorian to demonstrate some of his flashier magic – mostly combat magic and landscape alterations, but also teleportation, which actually worked unimpeded within the training ground, unlike in most of Cyoria. It made sense, considering Xvim had told him during their last meeting that he intended to teach him dimensionalism.

  After a while, his mentor decided he'd seen enough and motioned him to stop.

  "You seem to have no specialty that I can see," Xvim said.

  "Well, I guess my specialty are spell formulas," said Zorian. "But that is not exactly something I can demonstrate quickly and at whim."

  "Just as well," Xvim said. "I know comparatively little about spell formulas and would be ill-equipped to evaluate your skill in the field."

  Wait, Xvim actually didn't have expertise in something related to magic? Some of Zorian's amusement and surprise at the notion must have shown on his face because Xvim actually decided to provide an explanation.

  "I understand why so many mages are fascinated with spell formula, but I always found them to be somewhat distasteful myself," Xvim said. "They are a crutch, most of the time. With a proper mastery of a spell, you wouldn't need them."

  "Right," Zorian scowled. He understood why someone obsessed with perfection in mana shaping would have low regard for magical aids that sidestepped the need for that, but there was more to spell formula that making spell rods and such…

  "I'm not criticizing you, mister Kazinski," Xvim said. "Just explaining my lack of interest in the discipline. You can go far if you really master your specialty. But enough of that – when I said you don't seem to have any specialty, I meant in regards to mana shaping fields. You seem to be a generalist when it comes to those, yes?"

  "I seek out whatever magic is relevant to me at the moment," said Zorian. "But yes, in general I try to master a little bit of everything. As far as I can tell, the main reason people specialize is time constraints. I'm not quite immune to that, but I'm pretty sure I can get good at several fields instead of just one."

  "The path of an archmage," Xvim nodded. "I approve. For someone in your situation, aiming for anything less would have been a waste. I'm glad I don't have to convince you of that, at least."

  Huh. Did Xvim just praise him for something? In any case, this reminded him of something he had been wondering for quite a while…

  "Are you an archmage?" Zorian asked Xvim.

  "An archmage is not an official rank that someone assigns to a person," Xvim said. "It is simply a term for a mage who has mastered several fields of magic to such an extent that they could outdo a typical specialist mage when it comes to those fields. I suppose the term could be applied to me, but it would be shockingly arrogant of me to claim it on my own. One is only ever a real archmage when other people start referring to you as such, and not many people use that term to describe me. Then again, not many people know about me in the first place, and I prefer it that way…"

  So that would be a yes, basically. Surprising that a person like that would be willing to work as a teacher at the academy – people like Xvim were incredibly rare and in high demand. Then again, Xvim did say he liked being an unknown, so perhaps a relatively quiet job like this one was just what he wanted.

  "Do you have a specialty?" Zorian asked. He figured that since Xvim was in a relatively good mood at the moment, he might as well milk it for all it's worth and try to find out more about the man.

  "Defense against magical attacks of all sorts," Xvim said. "I actually teach an advanced class on the topic in your fourth year of education. Of course, if one aims to defend against something, they must first get to know it. And thus, I have become familiar with many a type of magic. But let's get back to you, shall we? I have to say, for one aiming to become an archmage, your way of going about it is somewhat… suboptimal."

  "How so?" Zorian frowned.

  "For instance, your way of choosing which mana shaping exercises to practice," Xvim said. "While practicing a wide selection of different exercises like you've been doing is certainly useful, it is not really the best avenue of approach for a generalist mage. You would have been better served by focusing on raw mana manipulation and sensing. Such basic shaping exercises are time consuming and give no short-term benefits, but the cumulative effect of their mastery decreases the learning time of every spell and improves spellcasting in general."

  "I haven't really heard about such shaping exercises," Zorian said, feeling a little lost.

  "It's not something a specialist mage would care much for," Xvim said. "And most people who write books are specialists. Your age works against you here – most people don't start dabbling in those exercises until they're much older, no matter how talented they are, so the people you spoke to probably didn't think you'd be interested in those. Young mages like you have plenty of low-hanging fruit with much faster payoff to amuse themselves with."

  "Right. So what are we talking here exactly?" Zorian asked. "I'm drawing a blank as to what sort of 'raw mana manipulation' I could be doing as an exercise."

  "Well, one major deficiency I noticed in your skills is that you don't seem to perceive mana around you to any appreciable extent," Xvim s
aid. "And I'm guessing your ability to perceive your personal mana flow is hardly any better than that of the rest of your classmates. For someone of biological age, that would be entirely adequate, if rather disappointing. In your case, it really is inexcusable."

  Zorian was tempted to ask whether it was inexcusable by Xvim's standards or the more sane standards of the rest of the world. But he didn't. This was absolutely fascinating and he had largely gone numb to Xvim's barbs by now.

  "From everything I've read, mana sensing is a rather advanced skill that even long-time mages struggle with."

  "Yes, but you seem to be rather bad at it, even accounting for that," Xvim noted. "I'm guessing this is a consequence of spending so many years in Cyoria, which is awash in ambient mana. It's good for training, certainly, but it instills a certain amount of… wastefulness in young mages."

  Zorian didn't need empathy to notice the distaste on Xvim's face when he said that.

  "On top of that, it is very difficult to practice perception exercises in a place like this," Xvim continued. "The ambient mana suffuses everything, dulling your senses. It would be far better to practice mana sensing somewhere outside the city to start with. This training ground is specially warded to keep the majority of the ambient mana out of it – did you notice that?"

  "No," Zorian admitted with a frown. Though now that Xvim mentioned it…

  "This is what I meant when I said your ability to sense mana is deficient," Xvim said. "You should have noticed it right away, the moment you stepped into the training ground. But no matter, that's why I'm here – to help you overcome your many flaws and become the best you can be. In any case, while the exercises I'm about to teach you would be normally rather hard to practice outside of this training ground, you are capable of teleportation. I suggest you simply teleport into the countryside outside of the city when you want to work on your ability to sense mana. Now pay close attention to what I'm about to do…"