I stepped up next to the toad and began preparing. As a ritual spell, there was a little more to do than just waving my hands around and mumbling. Instead I withdrew some chalk from one of the bags that I had tied around my belt, alongside a bit of string. I tied the string around the chalk, then stepped on the loose end, holding it down, before turning with the chalk in hand.

  The resulting circle was far from perfect, but much better than I could have managed to do freehand. The gestures used in casting might have taken a degree of manual dexterity, but that didn’t make me any good at doing artistic stuff.

  Across from me, the treefolk who I’d been paired with had picked up a bit of chalk in one of its roots and rotated around in a circle, creating a near-perfect circle in seconds. Each of the mortal races had their advantages, and apparently for treefolk, drawing large circles on the ground was one of them.

  I laughed at my own mental joke as I slipped the chalk out of its bindings before tucking away the string, then started writing the shapes that the ether would flow along inside and outside of the circle.

  The components for a familiar binding ritual were, thankfully, quite cheap. The incense of a fir, maple, and spruce tree, alongside a blue candle and a pile of salt, so purchasing them at the Charm and Fable had been cheap. I began to place them down when the frog let out a ribbit, opening its portal-mouth, and spat up a bundle of materials.

  I paused. I should have realized that there wouldn’t be a need to purchase them. Hadn’t I been told about how willing they were to put in the work for first years?

  Then a new thought came to me, and professor Toadweather seemed to materialize from nothing, as if summoned by my thoughts.

  “What is it?” she asked curiously.

  “I was just thinking… how many familiars can you have at any given time?”

  “As many as you can devote your ether pool to holding,” she said. “I already told you, though. That way lies stupidity. If you devote too much of your ether pool to forming familiar bonds, you’re just going to wind up with no power of your own.”

  “I know,” I said, tossing my salt, incense, chalk, and candle back into my bags. “I just wanted to check, especially since I’ve already bought the components for another bond.”

  “What can you summon right now?”

  “Goo, the rat pack, a stone, and a gadhar,” I said. “I was planning on making the gadhar my familiar. I’ve worked with him for a good while now.”

  “A good choice, if you’re able to sustain the relationship with one,” professor Toadweather said. “We’re going to be learning a few more foundational spells, but the meat of the course until winter break will be on learning to summon minor elementals and faeries. If you do decide to form a second familiar bond, I recommend that it be to one of those, and that you have no more than those two. Understand?!”

  “I do,” I said. “Though what do you mean by ‘if you’re able to sustain a relationship’? I’ve never had problems summoning a gadhar before.”

  “Well, gadhar are angelus. One of the least naturally powerful breeds of angelus, true, but it means that taking too many actions that go against the rules imposed on them by their bloodline will force them to abandon you, or even turn against you.”

  “Oh. That’s it? That’s essentially the same risk as when summoning a faerie, like in your story.”

  “Yes, but it’s why I recommend having an elemental as your first familiar. Usually, they’re less intelligent, and less able to follow and judge you based on creed. And what you do with your knowledge is your responsibility.”

  “I appreciate the double warning,” I said, though truthfully I was just wondering how often people in this course were abusing their power enough that she felt the need to re-remind me.

  “Now, summon, summon, summon!” Toadweather clapped, darting over to the treefolk, who was laying out his components in the circle.

  “Not yet,” I grumbled, and raised my hands. I began the motions of the ritual, working through them slowly and methodically, while channeling the ether in half of the patterns on the floor. I let the incantation resonate, the words of power filling the air around me.

  This also took me a few tries, the multitude of exacting gestures turned into a series of pitfalls, but once I got it right, all of the components vanished into Etherius, consumed by the spell.

  The next part of the ritual was easy enough.

  I cast Summon Gadhar. The golden-furred hound, with dark brown feet and a brown patch on his chest, with sparrow-like wings appeared, standing within the circle. I examined it, then cleared my throat to speak. This, too, was part of the ritual. The offer wasn’t made in the words of power, but rather, needed to be made in the bloodline tongue of whatever you were making the offer to.

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  “I offer this compact to you, so that my magic and your blood might entwine, and for companionship.”

  That was all. The gadhar studied me, then pressed its nose into the chalk beneath its feet. There was a flash of blue and white light, and I felt a presence fill my ether pool, absorbing a chunk of the power I used for casting spells. It expanded to fill a considerable amount, about an eighth of my entire pool, before it finally stopped.

  I felt the connection between the gadhar and myself snap into place. A sense of genuine cheer and happiness seemed to radiate from the winged hound as it bounded forward, jumping up on me. It was strong, much stronger than a normal dog, and I let out a little ‘omph’ as it pushed me back, but scratched its head.

  “Hey there. Do you have a name?”

  She – because I was suddenly aware that she was a she – sent a wave of happy impulses into my head, a sort of mix of colors and lights and sounds, alongside a word in the celestial tongue. I frowned.

  “I’m not sure that ‘dog’ is a name, so much as just your species.”

  There was a moment of hesitation before she suggested something else.

  “Orla works,” I agreed, patting her head. “Now, I know that you can enter my ether pool. Would you be more comfortable there, or would you rather?”

  Orla’s jaws unhinged, and she let out a big yawn before dissolving into a stream of blue light, slipping into my ether pool, where I was struck by the sudden powerful feeling that she was curling up, tucking her head under her tail, and extending her wings to wrap them around herself, before closing her eyes and drifting off.

  Well, that was simple enough. If she could discorporate and recorporate herself at will, then I didn’t have to worry about letting her in and out of my ether pool when she wanted.

  I let out a sigh as professor Toadweather buzzed back over to me, clapping.

  “Well done! You can leave early, if you’d like, or you can stay and watch.”

  I glanced around. Getting a couple more instances of casting summon goo or rat swarm wouldn’t really make much of a difference, so I just nodded.

  “Thanks for the class,” I told her, then ducked out. I used another casting of Summers’ inversion, then started up Xander’s massage while heading to the campus greens near the massive animated water fountain, where I plopped down on a bench and opened my grimoire, continuing to read through the information on my curse affinity, working to compose spells in my mind while I allowed my ether to restore itself. I was about thirty minutes into my studies when I heard a voice.

  “Oi, Emrys! What’cha doin’ here?” Salem asked, walking across the campus greens toward me, wavving. He’d come from the opposite direction of the spidershade forest where my classes were held. Raking my memory for what lay over that way, I thought I remembered that the entry to the crystalline caverns and seer’s bonfire were there?

  “Got out of class early,” I said, jerking my thumb in the direction of the pixie castle inside the forest. “How about you?”

  “I just got out’a my oracle class, an’ I was ‘bout’a head into the library. Want to come along?”

  I snapped my grimoire shut and tucked it into my bag.

  “Definitely,” I said. “I have a bunch of books that I need to get. Some of them I can get from a library in the city, but the spell guides I need here.”

  When it came to the spells that professor Gemheart had given me, I’d actually made okay progress for it being on such a backburner. The growth and shrinking spell had been needed for my conjuration course, and I’d already known lifeberry going into the class.

  If I was going to keep it on roughly the same pace as my other courses, though, I’d need to get the spell guide for the cantrip, coinshoot, and scribe’s friend, and start working on mastering them. I could probably let it lag behind a little bit, since I would be able to catch up a bit in the summer, but that was only if I beat Gerhard in the duel.

  Then there was the spell professor Caeruleum had recommended, spellglyph. I had to get my hands on that one way or the other, but I wasn’t entirely confident in delving for third circle spells.

  And on the topic of third circle spells…

  “Before I forget,” I said, pulling a handkerchief from my pocket, as well as a knife. I pricked the back of my hand, squeezed it to let three drops fall onto the cloth, then passed it to Salem.

  “Here. For the rite of centered mind. I know that the other components are expensive, but I’m working at a component shop now. The oudh wood incense and lenses I can buy at cost, which should save us a decent bit, if you can just pay me back for your share. That leaves the were-raven feathers and humanoid demon bits. There are some humanoid demons out in the wastes, but they dissolved back into their realm.”

  “Ya’ve got ta’ separate the horn firs’,” Salem said. “That’ll leave it in our realm. Thas’ prolly why it’s for courage, given it’s stupid to cut the horn off a livin’ demon.”

  I made a ‘tsk’ sound, annoyed at the missed opportunity.

  “An’ I can source the feathers,” Salem continued. “I know a’ few were-folk back’n Hydref, I can prolly get some tah’ hand over the feathers. But I didn’t want’a expect ya’ tah hand over your blood.”

  “It’s no problem,” I said, waving my hand. “If you wanted to use it to do something nasty, I’d just send a curse through the same link the instant I feel anything happening to my blood. Besides, I trust you to not to do that.

  That was half bluff, half truth. Cursing someone for abusing the tools I’d given them was definitely within my wheelhouse, and if someone did try to throw nasty magic at me that way, I was confident that I could design a curse to hit them with a huge amount of bad luck – It would just take a while. I’d have to design the spell, since I was still far from being able to adapt to new conditions and entwine them into the spellcasting on the fly.

  But if I’d learned anything in my wandering, it was that placebo was almost as good as spellcraft, and that selling placebo required confidence. A witch I’d worked with for a while had sold a vast array of fake cures mixed in with her real potions, and they’d worked wonders. She’d laid false curses, which people had genuinely feared. And she’d threatened them with magic that I now knew she couldn’t perform, but had seemed all too real at the time. It was all about delivery.

  Salem, and anyone who might be eavesdropping, didn’t know how skilled or unskilled I was with my curse magic, and they didn’t need to. I’d helped take down Gerhard with a curse, and though that had only been tilting almost even scales, nobody had to know that.

  And it worked. The thin, almost invisible, black hairs on Salem’s arms burst into gooseflesh at my casual threat, and he gave a nervous smile.

  “Ah, that makes sense. Thank’ya for trustin’ me anyhow.”

  “Of course,” I said. “So, what did you need from the library? I’ve got a list of spells, but there’s no pressure to get them all with me if you just need to do a quick dart in and out.”

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