Taiven waved her hands in the air in a frustrated gesture and promptly collapsed on his bed, and for a moment Zorian actually thought she was accepting defeat. Then she sat up and folded her legs under her until she was sitting in a lotus position. The smile on her face was giving Zorian a bad feeling.
"So," she began cheerfully. "How have you been?"
Zorian sighed. This was not how he intended to spend his weekend.
- break -
Two days later, Zorian was well settled into his new room and it was Monday morning. Rising early was pure torture after he had gotten into the habit of sleeping in, but he managed. He had many flaws, but a lack of self-discipline wasn't one of them.
He had managed to fend off Taiven after three hours of verbal wrangling, though he was in no mood for anything after that and put off reading for another day after her visit. In the end he spent the entire weekend lazing around, actually somewhat impatient for the classes to start.
The first class of the day was Essential Invocations, and Zorian wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to teach. Most of the other classes on his schedule had a clear subject of study visible from the very name of the subject, but 'invocation' was a general term. Invocations were what most people thought about when someone said 'magic' – a few arcane words and strange gestures and poof! Magic effect. It was actually more involved than that – a lot more involved – but that was the visible part, so that's what people focused on. Clearly the academy felt the class was important, because they had a period scheduled for it every day of the week.
As he approached the classroom, he noticed a familiar person standing in front of the door with a clipboard in her hands. This, at least, was a familiar sight. Akoja Stroze had been the class representative for his group since their first year, and she took her position very seriously. She gave him a harsh look when she noticed him, and Zorian wondered what he had done to annoy her now.
"You're late," she stated when he got close enough.
Zorian raised an eyebrow at this. "The class doesn't start for at least 10 more minutes. How can I be late?"
"Students are supposed to be in the classroom and ready for class 15 minutes before the class starts," she stated.
Zorian rolled his eyes. This was ridiculous, even for Akoja. "Am I the last person to arrive?"
"No," she conceded after a short silence.
Zorian walked past her and entered the classroom.
You could always tell when you walked into a gathering of mages – their appearance and fashion sense gave them away unerringly, especially in Cyoria where mages from all over the world sent their children. Many of his classmates came from established magical families, if not outright Houses, and many mage lineages produced children with noticeable peculiarities, either because of bloodlines passed down from parents or because of secret enhancement rituals they subjected themselves to… things like having green hair, or always giving birth to soul-bonded twins, or having tattoo-like markings on their cheeks and forehead. And these were real examples exhibited by his classmates.
Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he went towards the front of the classroom, throwing polite greetings to those few classmates he knew a little better than the rest. No one really tried to talk to him – though there was no bad blood between him and anyone in the class, he was not particularly close to any of them either.
He was just about to sit down when frantic hissing interrupted him. He glanced to his left, watching his classmate whisper soothingly to the orange-red lizard in his lap. The animal was staring at him intently with its bright yellow eyes, nervously tasting the air with its tongue, but didn't hiss again when Zorian carefully lowered himself into the chair.
"Sorry about that," the boy said. "He's still a little uneasy around strangers."
"Don't worry about it," Zorian said, waving the apology away. He didn't know Briam all that well, but he did know his family bred fire drakes for a living, so it wasn't that unusual for him to have one. "I see your family has given you a fire drake of your own. Familiar?"
Briam nodded happily, scratching the lizard's head absent-mindedly and causing the creature to close its eyes in contentment. "I bonded with him over the summer holidays," he said. "Familiar bond is a little strange at first, but I think I'm getting the hang of it. At least I've managed to talk him out of breathing fire at people without permission, else I would have to put a fire-suppressant collar on him, and he hates that thing."
"The school won't bother you about bringing it to class?" Zorian asked curiously.
"Him," Briam corrected. "And no, they won't. You can bring a familiar to class if you've reported them to the academy and can get them to behave. And, of course, as long as they're reasonably sized."
"I hear fire drakes can get pretty big," Zorian remarked speculatively.
"They do," Briam agreed. "That's why I wasn't allowed to have one till now. In a few years he'll get way too big to follow me into the classroom, but by that time I'll already be finished with my education and back at the ranch."
Satisfied the creature wouldn't try to take a bite out of him during class, Zorian let his attention wander elsewhere. He mostly spent his time studying the girls as covertly as possible. He blamed Benisek for this, since he usually wasn't in the habit of ogling his classmates. No matter how cute some of them were…
"Hot, isn't she?"
Zorian jumped in surprise at the voice behind him and cursed himself for being caught so unawares.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said quickly, turning as calmly as possible in his seat to face Zach. The cheery, smiling face of his classmate told him he wasn't fooling anyone.