As it turned out, Salem had gotten the spell guide for a ritual, called the rite of the unbroken mind.

  It was a third circle ritual, and created a permanent mental barrier around the caster, helping them resist foreign psychic influences, and could be fueled with ether to repair itself from mental assault, strengthen the defense, and even help heal some minor mental damage.

  I let out a low, slow whistle.

  “Thousand hells, that’s strong. You don’t need to let me copy it. You could probably get a really good trade.”

  “A promise made is a promise kept,” Salem said firmly. “Besides, it’ll be a while before either of us can cast it. Look at the components.”

  He gestured to the list of components needed for the spell. Half a pound of salt, four ounces of iron filings, and two ounces of sage would be easy to source.

  Five hundred silver coins was simple, as was the weight of oudh wood incense that would cost about three hundred silver and two hundred or so worth of precise, jeweler crafted lenses. None of them would be easy or cheap, but they would at least be straightforward.

  The third ring of components was where things got tricky. The tail feather of a were-raven for wisdom, three drops of blood from a dragon for power, and the horn from a powerful humanoid demon that the caster had personally killed for courage.

  Finally, the materials for the rite had to be placed into the rirual’s designated spots by a true psychic. At least that part would be easy enough…

  “Well,” Salem finally said after several long beats of silence. “When people say that wizardry gets expensive the higher up in circles you go, they weren’t kiddin. Don’t suppose the blood price spell will make this a walk in the park?”

  “No, unfortunately,” I said. “The false components made by blood price last a short time, about ninety seconds. Not long enough for the ritual.”

  “Well, it was worth a shot,” Salem said, then sighed. “Can we get out of here? The reading room’s better than the library, but it’s still freaking me out a little.”

  We checked that the quartet of students in the reading room would be there for a while before we left, heading into the door frame to get to the mess hall, where we were both served a flavorless oat mash with dried meat. As we ate, both of us worked on scribing our spells into our grimoires.

  Salem’s grimoire was bound in dark leather, soft, rather than my hardback blue book. The leather was embossed with spiky green runes, glowing the same unnaturally vibrant shade as his eyes.

  “What affinity did’ya get, if you don’t mind too terribly much?” Salem asked, breaking our silence.

  Our silence, not the silence, because there were dozens of others in the mess hall eating and chatting away.

  “Curse magic,” I said, glancing up at Salem. His eyes widened fractionally, the piercing on one of his brows catching the light and glinting. “How about you?”

  “Well, remind me never to piss you off,” Salem said with a dry chuckle, a second too long. The curse magic had thrown him somehow, but I wasn’t entirely sure how or why. “My affinity was for mind magic. I’ve only just got the grimoire at the sunmonin’, but it looks like it’ll let me empower my psychic abilities, as well as use ether and the spell to mimic others.”

  “Ether and the spell? Do psychic abilities not rely on ether to work?” I asked. I knew a bit about psychic powers, but not a whole lot.

  Salem screwed up his face at my question, before making a so-so gesture with his hand.

  “It’s more like a bloodline or life enforcement, to my understanding,” he said. “All magic comes from Etherius, be it spellcraft or not. And there are interactions between all types of magic. But my psychic powers have their own node of power in my head, just like how an ether pool is in the heart, or how a bloodline is supposedly at the base of the spine.”

  “That makes sense,” I said with a nod, then took a bite of the horrible porridge and a sip of water before I returned to writing in my grimoire.

  The following day was an off day, and as I was exiting my room, Jackson gave me a broad grin and clasped my shoulder.

  “Hey, Emrys! I was planning on leaving campus to look at the rest of the citadel. Maybe grab some food, do some shopping… Care to join me? Yushin’s going to be there, though apparently her relative is going to be keeping an eye on us.”

  “I need to practice magic,” I said with a shake of my head. “Sorry. Maybe once I’ve got a bit of a better hold on my affinity, I can join you.”

  “Shame,” Jackson said, shaking his head and sighing. “Well, I can’t blame you. What affinity did you get?”

  We had a brief discussion about my affinity, and when I described the spell, Jackson let out a low whistle.

  “Hundred hells, Emrys, that sounds annoyingly complex. My spell’s only about as complicated as a cantrip…”

  “Must be nice,” I said, though in all honesty, a plain, unadorned fire affinity that relied on nothing but pure power didn’t appeal to me that much. Maybe if it was something like phoenix fire, but plain fire? Eh.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Jackson and I spent a bit longer talking about affinities before he left to go head to the city, and I took a seat in one of the rickety chairs and cracked open my book.

  When I’d skimmed it before, I’d been able to identify that there were four primary functions within the spell that could be used or interwoven, but I hadn’t been able to identify just what the functions were. I could make a guess, of course, given some of the examples of the spell, but I couldn’t truly say. I could also see that there were aspects of the spell for limits and break conditions, but I didn’t really understand them either.

  As I read through the book more thoroughly, I thought I was able to get a bit better of an idea about my spell.

  The first application of curse affinity magic was misfortune, which was exactly what it sounded like. It directed its magic to manipulate probabilities in a way that the target of the spell wouldn’t want. Limiting the curse was distinctly possible, but only up to a point.

  Everything in the world was, to an extent, random chance, and while I could nudge things, I couldn’t inherently direct them – my grimoire used the example of cursing a rich person. I could make their fortune around money worsen. I could even narrow it down to giving them misfortune around gambling to make them more likely to lose, or when handling money to make them more likely to drop coins, or things like that.

  What I couldn’t do was curse them so that all of their money came to me. That was trying to manipulate the result, which I couldn’t do.

  Furthermore, the more intense, broadly applied, harder to break, or long lasting the misfortune was, the more ether it took.

  Trying to curse someone with awful luck at everything for their entire life, with the only way to break it being something obscure and unrelated – like hopping seventeen times backwards while balancing a pigeon feather on your nose on the night of a full moon – would take more ether than I had, several times over. I didn’t even have a good estimate for how much ether it would take. Enough to cast a seventh circle spell? Eighth? Ninth? It was so far above my current skill level that it may as well not exist.

  Reading about the breaking conditions were interesting, as they had multiple factors that went into them as well – themes were surprisingly important to the process, which made some sense. Magyk loved her themes. The same breaking condition could have radically different costs, depending on why the curse was laid, what the curse was about, and more. A break condition of donating to charity might be very cheap if I was cursing a rich person because they were greedy, but if I was laying a curse on someone for arrogance, the same break condition would cost a lot more.

  I spent a while looking over the spellform, then used the silk ribbon to mark the page, and flipped to the blank section of the grimoire, then started writing out an attempt at an example spell that I could actually cast.

  I would be going into Applied Mage Combat at the end of the week, so I decided to make a combat spell. I started with the basic spellform, then defined the time of the spell to only be a couple of seconds. In a fight, that should be more than enough. I could have gone for a minute, but that would have started ballooning the cost – worth figuring out how to do once I was able to more frequently cast third circle spells, but not worth it for now.

  I started with no limit, simply general misfortune, then paused and limited it to luck in combat. That reduced the cost by a good bit, enough that I almost went back and made the spell last longer, but I held off. I would figure out the break condition first.

  I spent a while thinking about a break condition, then eventually decided that the curse would break if the target stopped trying to fight me at any point. That was a very cheap condition, so long as I laid the curse on someone after they started threatening or attacking me, but it would cost a lot more if I tried to lay the curse on someone being peaceful. That was fine, though. My goal wasn’t to curse a bunch of people, just to keep myself safe in a fight.

  I tinkered with the spell for a little bit, and was confident that I’d created two versions. The first was very cheap and fast, cheaper and faster than an arcane missile, but it only lasted a few seconds. The second version lasted longer, about a minute, but the much longer words of power, gestures, and ether amount was more in line with a third circle spell.

  I worked on memorizing the versions of the spell, but I thought that in the long run, that would actually be a hindrance to me. I needed to get skilled enough with my affinity that I could compose curses to fit the situation, rather than relying on a selection of pre-engineered, memorized spells.

  For now, memorization would need to be enough.

  My stomach let out a low rumble of protest, and I paused. How long had I been reading and working? I wasn’t sure.

  As it turned out, it was well past lunch, so I scarfed down some more of the horrible gruel, then went back to reading.

  The second variation of curse magic was called suffering, and it was significantly more complex to activate those portions of the spell than it was to cast misfortune. Even the most basic suffering spells would be as complex as something like enshroud.

  In terms of effects, though, suffering and misfortune were similar-yet-distinct concepts.

  While misfortune made things go poorly, suffering made things get worse. It was, in essence, a negativity amplifier.

  By layering on a curse to amplify pain, the sensation of stubbing a toe could become as excruciating as having a bone snapped in two. By cursing someone’s injuries to fester, a papercut could turn into an infection that needed a healer. By cursing someone’s negative thoughts, a bad turn in life could drive them to a mental break.

  I shuddered. That was… dark. While each of those were extreme cases, they still showed where the magic of a suffering curse could go.

  Thankfully, the spells were so complex that I would struggle to cast even a basic one right now, and the basic applications were nowhere near as extreme.

  There were also some other major limits. The first was the same as with misfortune – I couldn’t just make their fate exactly what I wanted. Sure, I might curse someone’s wounds to worsen, but I wasn’t able to curse someone to die of infection next Tuesday.

  The second was that while I could amplify negativity, I couldn’t make something out of nothing. If I wanted to try and kill someone with a bloodletting curse , I couldn’t just wave a hand and curse them with a sword stroke to the chest. They still needed to be stabbed manually to start bleeding.

  Finally, the scale mattered in the cost. Amplifying a papercut’s pain to feel as painful as a hot iron brand might be possible, but it would take an absurd amount of ether to amplify something so small into something so big.

  But even still, being able to amplify the negative parts of a person’s state of being was terrifying. Could I force the progression of the Creep until they became an aberrant?

  Probably, and that was more than a little chilling.

  By the time I felt I had a thorough understanding of the suffering part of the spell, it was well past midnight, and I realized I skipped dinner.

  Even with that. And even though I still was far from understanding the spellcraft suffering curses, just the ideas behind that part of my affinity. And even though I’d need at least an hour to compose a new misfortune spell, probably more. And even though I hadn’t even scratched the concepts of the final two types of curses or how to mix them.

  Even with all that.

  I was happy.

  I was in the third greatest university of magic in the world. I could enshroud myself in safety. And I had learned two new affinity spells.

  This was going to be great.

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