«People were asking for you,» she said finally, having tired of abusing his toes for the moment.
«Well I was around,» Zorian said with a small smirk. «All they had to do was look for me.»
«No reason why you can’t seek them out now, though,» Akoja remarked.
«But Ako, we’re dancing. There is no way I’d leave a beautiful girl like you for anything. I’ve left you unattended for too long as it is,» Zorian said, not a trace of mocking in his voice. It was a practiced skill.
She glared at him, but Zorian could see she liked the compliment.
Sadly, it didn’t stop her from dragging him off to meet one group of people after another soon afterwards. Zorian hated being put on display like that, but he suspected Akoja was under orders from Ilsa, so he didn’t snap at her. He was surprised his stalling had worked for as long as it did, really. Zorian found himself memorizing various faces, names, and titles, despite not caring much. It was instinctive to him by now, and he did it even when he didn’t mean to — the legacy of his family’s failed attempt to turn him into a party animal.
«Kazinski? Oh, are you by chance related to—»
«Daimen and Fortov Kazinski, yes,» Zorian said, doing his best to keep the annoyance out of his voice.
«Oh my, how fortunate,» she said. «I must say your brother isn’t half bad with the violin.» She gestured towards the stage, where the academy music club was playing a slow, relatively quiet song. Fortov was officially an ordinary orchestra member, but was obviously the most prominently placed musician on the stage. His presence, as usual, attracted attention and comments. «What instrument do you play?»
«None,» Zorian deadpanned. His family had tried to teach him how to play an instrument, since it was a fashionable thing to learn among the rich (and those pretending to be), but were thwarted by the fact that Zorian was almost entirely tone-deaf. He had no ability to play music at all. Truth be told, he wasn’t particularly interested in it either, though he could certainly feign interest when doing so was polite. It was one of his mother’s bigger disappointments that he had no talent in this area, since Daimen and Fortov were both relatively decent at music — Daimen at playing the piano and Fortov at playing the violin. They weren’t prodigies by any means, but they were skilled enough to impress the kind of people that frequented events like this. «I don’t have much of an ear for music, unlike my brothers. Personally, I’m more interested in how the orchestra fills the entire hall evenly with sound, with everyone hearing them at the right volume, regardless of how near or how far they’re sitting in relation to the stage.»
Sadly, neither the woman nor anyone else gathered around them could answer that question — apparently nobody else even noticed it until he mentioned it. In fact, Zorian got a distinct notion that people felt it was an irrelevant detail and that he was weird for even mentioning it. Bah — no appreciation for magic from these people. Why were they attending a dance at a mage academy, again?
Thankfully, Akoja decided to have mercy on him at this point and led them to a nearby table to get something substantial to eat. A couple of other students from their class joined them and a casual conversation settled in around them. Zorian didn’t contribute much, since he found the conversation to be mostly aimless drivel that was of no interest to him. He still nodded and chuckled at appropriate times, of course, brushing off an occasional comment about him being ‘too quiet’ and needing to ‘lighten up’.
He was just about to dig into the piece of cake in front of him when Akoja nudged him with her knee. He glanced at her with an unvoiced question.
«Wrong fork,» she mumbled.
Zorian looked down at the fork in his hand and realized he was supposed to use the tiny fork reserved for desserts. He shrugged and stabbed the cake with the giant fork in his hand anyway.
«I know,» he mumbled back.
That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
«Zorian,» she burst out, her voice carrying a pleading note in it. «Why are you being so difficult? It’s just one night. I know I’m not what you wanted for your date…»
«It’s not that,» Zorian interrupted her. «It’s not like I wanted a date, anyway. I was going to come alone to this thing.»
She stared at him in shock. She seemed emotionally crushed, and Zorian didn’t understand why.
«Y-You’d rather go alone than with m-me?» she asked.
Aw crap.
All this time he thought Akoja was roped into this to keep an eye on him, but what if she had wanted to go with him? That…
She fled before he could figure out something to say.
He swore under his breath and buried his face in his hands. This is why he hated these kind of events.
An hour later he was pretty sure Akoja was no longer in the dance hall and that she wasn’t going to come back. He didn’t really want to chase her through the streets in the middle of the night, so he refrained from following her outside. Besides, what was he supposed to say to her? He wouldn’t know where to even start. He thought about going home himself, but in the end he simply climbed up onto the roof of the dance hall and observed the stars. He wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight, anyway.
To keep his mind occupied, he silently named all the stars and constellations he could see. Due to his interest in the topic as a child and the Astronomy class they had in their first year at the Academy, he knew quite a bit. It was a full hour before he ran out of things to name and describe.
Monday was going to be awkward. Zorian had no doubt their little drama was overheard and would be the topic of conversation for several weeks to come. Considering that Akoja was a bit of a teacher’s pet in most of the subjects, the teachers could very well decide to make his life more difficult in the days to come as well.
Damn it all.
It was the sound of fireworks that broke him out of his thoughts. It was midnight apparently, and the festival had officially started. Zorian relaxed a little as he watched various fireworks blossom against the night sky, each exploding in its own unique way. It was beautiful. Most of them dissolved into quickly fading motes of light after the initial explosion, but a couple of them remained whole and consistently bright, more like flares than fireworks. They arced through the sky before dipping down and falling back to earth like falling stars. He frowned. Weird. Shouldn’t they be exploding by now?
The flare falling closest to him slammed into the nearby academy residence building and detonated. The explosion was so loud and so bright that Zorian was momentarily blinded and deafened, stumbling back and collapsing to his knees as the entire building shook beneath his feet.
Blinking spots out of his vision, his ears still ringing from the sound of the explosion, Zorian scrambled back to his feet. He stared at the spot where the stricken residence building once stood. Virtually the entire building had been leveled to the ground, everything flammable in the vicinity of the impact site was burning, and strange flaming shapes were emerging from the epicenter of the destruction.
Wait a minute… that’s his residence building!
He collapsed to his knees again as the implications of this hit him. If he had opted to stay in his room like he had originally planned, he’d have been dead right now. It was a sobering thought. But what the hell was happening here!? That was no firework, that’s for sure! It looked and sounded more like a high level artillery spell.