«Eh!? Where did you hear that?» protested Zorian.
«Kyron told the rest of the teachers, the teachers told the administrative staff, the administrative staff told the janitors and other low paying workers, they told the students, and the students told me,» finished Zach. «What does it matter? What matters is that I’m very good at combat magic thanks to the reverts, and that I’ve decided to teach you. Think of it as a reward for believing me.»
Zorian gave Zach an incredulous look. He was going to help him out on his own free will? Just like that? No need for any plotting or subtle maneuvering?
Almost disappointing.
«What?» Zach protested. «It’s true, I really am good at combat magic! In fact, that’s the field I’m most talented at!»
Oh, now that’s a wonderful opening…
«Not that I don’t believe you, but how exactly did you get so good at combat magic?» asked Zorian. «I mean, mages are really stingy about sharing combat magic. Even with these… reverts… why would they share them with an academy student like you? Especially since you’re… uh…»
«Known to be irresponsible,» Zach finished for him. «To be honest, I didn’t get the spells I know legally. I wouldn’t recommend my methods of acquiring combat magic to anyone who isn’t a time traveler. You tend to die a lot.»
«Oh.»
«Yeah. But you have me, so there’s that.»
Quietly wondering what he was getting himself into, Zorian followed after him.
Chapter 008
Perspective
«Here we are!» said Zach happily, twirling around with his hands outstretched. «What do you think?»
Zorian studied the meadow in front of him, his eyes darting back and forth with suspicion. At first glance the area was just a large patch of grass surrounded by a ring of trees, but Zorian couldn’t help but notice signs of obvious neglect. The grass was too wild and tall, and the space between trees was full of young saplings fighting for their own place under the sun. It was a good place to practice combat magic at, but also a good place to hide a body in. In an even remotely normal situation, Zorian wouldn’t be caught dead following a complete stranger into a creepy, isolated place like this one. Oh how far his perspective had shifted…
«I wonder what’s keeping the saplings confined to that ring of trees,» wondered Zorian aloud. «This meadow should be a copse of trees by now.»
Zach blinked. «I never thought about that,» he admitted. «You notice the strangest things, Zorian.»
«I also wonder how a place like this can exist at all,» Zorian continued. «I mean, we’re in Cyoria. Land is very expensive here. Why is someone letting this place deteriorate like this instead of selling it?»
«Oh, that’s easy,» Zach said. «It’s my land. Or rather, it’s part of the Noveda family estates. It’s supposed to be a private garden for the Head of House, or something like that, so no one could do anything with it unless they had my explicit permission. But since I hadn’t even known this place existed before the reverts… yeah.»
«Hm,» Zorian agreed. «I guess I should have expected something like that. Your home is pretty close from here, isn’t it?»
«You know where I live?» Zach asked, surprise evident in his voice.
Crap. What to say, what to say…
«Of course I know where you live,» Zorian said, looking at Zach like the boy was an idiot for asking. «Who doesn’t know where the Noveda estate is located?»
A lot of people, probably. Zorian himself certainly hadn’t known, not until he tried to track Zach down in one of the restarts.
«Heh. I’m pretty famous, aren’t I?» Zach said, grinning widely.
Note to self: Zach is easy to distract by appealing to his pride.
«Yeah, yeah,» sighed Zorian. «So is the great Noveda going to help me learn combat magic like he promised or not? Daylight’s burning.»
Zach snapped his fingers, apparently remembering just why they came here in the first place. His hands blurred into a sequence of gestures, and several humanoids made of earth rose from the ground on the other side of the clearing.
Zorian gaped. Now that was impressive. Zach didn’t even have to chant anything to cast that spell, and he went through the gestures with such speed Zorian had trouble remembering what they even were. Plus, those earthen constructs weren’t just immobile statues — they moved. It was in times like this that Zorian remembered he was dealing with a vastly superior mage that had him beat in virtually every conceivable way. It was humbling, to say the least.
«Wow,» he said out loud.
«It’s not as impressive as it looks,» Zach said. «They’re nearly useless in actual battle. They make good targets though, since they’re pretty resilient and reform each time you mess them up.»
Zach fired a quick magic missile at one of the statues to demonstrate, hitting it square in the chest. The earthen construct took a step back from the force of the bolt, and a web of cracks erupted from the impact point, but the cracks quickly sealed themselves shut and the construct otherwise completely ignored the attack.
«I don’t believe this,» Zorian stated incredulously.
«What do you mean?» Zach asked. «They’re just animated earth so it’s—»
«Not them,» Zorian protested. «The magic missile! No chant, no gestures, no spell formula, no nothing! You just pointed your finger at the target and produced a magic missile!»
Which, admittedly, was a gesture. Not one that should be sufficient to produce a magic missile, though.
«Oh, that,» Zach said, waving his hand dismissively. «That’s not terribly special either. That’s just reflexive magic. When you cast a spell enough times—»
«Mana shaping becomes instinctive and you can start leaving out spell components,» finished Zorian for him. Any serious mage had at least a couple of spells they knew so intimately they could leave out a couple of words and gestures and still get it working. «But getting a spell to work with something as simple as pointing a finger would take years!»
Zach simply grinned from ear to ear.
«Which, uh, I guess you had,» Zorian concluded, feeling rather stupid. «This time travel thing is really convenient, isn’t it? How many reflexive spells do you have, anyway?»
«You mean, how many are as reflexive as the magic missile I just showed you? Shield, hurl, recall, flamethrower, and a couple of other easy combat spells. There are a lot of spells I’m familiar with, but I can’t exactly throw fireballs by pointing my fingers.»
«Right,» said Zorian sourly. He was getting way past ‘humbling’ and straight into ‘feeling mightily inadequate’ territory. Better steer the conversation back to the lesson before Zach completely demoralized him. «So where do we start?»
«Kyron gave you a spell rod and told you to practice magic missile, didn’t he?» asked Zach.
«Yeah,» confirmed Zorian.
«Well, let’s see how that’s working out for you first,» said Zach, waving his hand in the direction of the earthen constructs. «Fire a couple of missiles at the mud people.»
«Mud people?» asked Zorian incredulously. «Is that—»
«Probably not,» Zach admitted. «I kind of forgot the official name of the spell, so I just refer to it as ‘Create Mud People’. It doesn’t matter all that much since the spell is obscure and obsolete, and virtually no one except me uses it.»
«I guess,» agreed Zorian. He was tempted to ask more, but figured he would never get to actual spell practice if he kept distracting Zach with his questions. He pointed the spell rod Kyron gave him at the closest… ‘mud person’… and fired. He was a bit surprised when the construct tried to side-step his magic missile instead of soaking the spell like it did when Zach targeted it, but that didn’t save it — he had enough control of the spell to alter the missile’s flight path accordingly, even if he couldn’t get the bolt to home in on the target on its own. Of course, the bolt did very little actual damage to the construct, and even that repaired itself quickly. Undeterred, Zorian kept firing. His next shot was a piercer aimed at the head of the construct, which succeeded in hitting it squarely in the forehead but failed to actually punch through the animated earth. He tried to shape the next bolt into a cutter, but all he got was a diffuse blob of multicolored light that popped like a soap bubble half-way to the target. The next two were regular smashers, one of which missed when its target leaned to the side at the last moment before the bolt hit him.