As it turned out, the older students knew the cantrip to animate a pen, and it didn’t actually take them all that long to copy out their spells, which meant I could spend the weekend on my spells, working, and practicing the combination of Xander’s massage and Summers’ inversion.

  Coinshot was a fairly straightforward spell, and shared many parts in common with arcane missile, lifeberries and, surprisingly, summon stone, making it easy enough to get a handle on casting. I might not be relying on it in a fight yet, but I could at least repeatedly cast it without error. A part of that, I gave to my breadth of spellcasting knowledge now.

  When I’d started out, it would have taken me weeks to learn to cast this sort of spell, but I was beginning to see the underlying logic that Magyk had used when creating spells. I didn’t think it was a science, but rather, more like… live art. Like performing poetry on a stage, casting a spell required me to read my situation and focus on the right parts for that situation. There wasn’t an objective perfection I could seek out, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t things that worked better than others – reading a poem in Hua-Long to a bunch of people who only spoke Flametongue would always struggle to convey the same meaning, after all.

  My increased speed was slightly noticeable when learning spellglyph, but to a far less extreme degree. I was definitely struggling less than I had when I’d first learned water to wine or enshroud, but spellglyph was much more complicated, and I didn’t have as much understanding of spells at that level of complexity.

  This was further bogged down by the fact that spellglyph was absurdly complex, even among third circle spells.

  The spell was slow, taking an entire hour to cast, as it required inking out the spell diagram in exacting detail, and layering the magic into each of its three circles. It only lasted for a year and a day once it had been cast, after which it faded away. And it ate up bucketfuls of ether, enough that I wasn’t sure I had enough ether to be able to cast it once, especially not after taking a familiar. I’d need to keep working with the inversion to expand my ether pool. And on its own, the spell did nothing, and in order to do anything, I had to dump ether crystal dust and more ether into it. Not a small amount of dust, either. Even with my ability to purchase goods at cost, it would run me about a hundred and eighty silver per cast.

  I was, however, able to determine why professor Caeruleum had recommended it to me.

  After I’d written out the spell, I just had to place the ether dust into the created glyph, then cast the spell I wanted in. Instead of activating, the spell would be stored within the glyph, waiting until a trigger – which I included as a part of the spell when writing it out – was set, at which point the stored spell would be released.

  The possible triggers reminded me somewhat of the flexible possible conditions for laying a curse, and after all my reading on my curse affinity, grasping that part was easy. It wasn’t quite as flexible as affinity magic, but there were still more than enough ways I could cast it.

  Better yet, since I provided the ether dust after inking the spell, I could use blood price to cast it, which shaved off a major downside.

  It was still far from perfect. If I dedicated myself to nothing but casting this spell day in and day out, I might be able to bury Gerhard in spells, but even if I was willing to drop out of school, I wasn’t immune to blood loss, nor was I able to take out a massive loan. With no banking history, and going up against the richest family in the world, there wasn’t a bank alive willing to lend me the kind of money I’d need.

  No, the spell wasn’t a perfect fix to all of my problems, but it was a spark of hope, a small way to help me level the playing field against an opponent I couldn’t beat.

  I was able to also get a quick copy down of circle of alarm and arcane seal into my grimoire before I had to return them to the library, even if I wasn’t able to cast arcane seal yet, and would be learning it later in my spellcraft courses. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever reached a point where I had more spell guides than I could reasonably learn, and it was a strange feeling.

  Between all of the copying work, the shift at Charm and Fable, and practicing with my spellcraft, the weekend flew by, as did my core courses and ethics course. The ethics course was admittedly more interesting than I’d expected, with a lot of meditation practice, and a frequent need to examine our actions and identify when we may have been acting under the influence of the Creep. If we claimed that there was nothing, we completely failed, and I suspected that it resulted in us getting even more observed.

  During my Tuesday shift at the Charm and Fable, Fable wound up wandering in while I was restocking the powdered iron. He smiled genially, patting at his tweed suit pocket as if feeling for something, then removed a pipe and began to fill it before lighting it with a word of power.

  “My boy, I’ve noticed, you tend to wear your university uniform while you’re working here. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all, but I wanted to ask why?” Fable asked once he’d finally finished.

  “They’re the best clothes I have,” I admitted without shame. “Most of my other clothes are pretty ratty from years on the road and constant mending.”

  “I see,” Fable said, nodding slowly. “Well, I know that being a wizard is expensive, and most spend endless amounts on their wand, staff, or amulet, but if you’d like to begin shopping, I can point you to a variety of proprietors, from secondhand shops that are far from the main boulevards where the wealthy live, and thus have reasonable prices, to bespoke tailoring.”

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  I blinked, caught off guard by the sudden surge of emotion that the offer gave me.

  “Thank you,” I finally said, then raised a hand. Fable tapped his nose.

  “This isn’t a class, no need for that. Ask away.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about wands, staves, and amulets, but what do they actually… do?” I asked.

  “Ah, you’ve not gotten to that part of your magic lore class yet, have you?” Fable asked rhetorically. “Well, the short of it is that they’re tools with their own connection to the ether that lets them handle some of your spellcraft for you. They can hold components for you, increase the efficiency of your spellcraft, and have their own pools of ether that merge and expand your ether pool – one of the few ways in this world to do such a thing once you’ve aged out of the barrier.”

  “Really?” I asked, resisting the urge to tell him that the class was fundamental magecraft, not magic lore.

  “Indeed they do – but ever heard the expression ‘good, fast, or cheap, pick two’? Well, the same is true with the magus tools ritual,” Fable explained. “You can only create two tools, and each tool has its good and bad points. Wands, for example, are amazing at replacing the components in a spell, decent at improving your efficiency, and do very little to expand your ether pool.”

  “That explains a lot, actually,” I said. “I’ve noticed that the older students with wands seem to be able to throw magic around with just a flick, while those with staves still need to chant and gesture.”

  “Exactly! A staff gives a large boost to your efficiency and does a reasonable job with expanding the ether pool, but doesn’t have the best component factor, while amulets contain vast amounts of ether and can replace a fair few components, but fall short when it comes to improving your casting efficiency.”

  “I see,” I said, nodding vigorously. “That makes a lot of sense, but… what about the others? Is there anything that has a high component factor, medium pool expansion, and low efficiency boost?”

  “The spell to produce those is a fifth circle ritual that allows you to add one additional tool, either the one you missed out on in the standard magus tools ritual, or an athame, hat, or orb. Then there’s also the seventh circle ritual that fuses all three into a single, absurdly potent tool – I do believe Henry fused his old staff, wand, and athame to produce his current staff, though I won’t pretend to know the details.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and Fable gave a warm, grandfatherly smile.

  “Anytime, my boy. Learning is to be encouraged. Now, I did need to pick up some ether-enriched steel from the shop for a project…”

  After Fable left, I continued my practice on Summers’ inversion, the massage, and spellcraft, but found myself daydreaming about the magus tools ritual. I definitely wanted to craft a wand and staff for myself. Maybe that desire would be different if I were on the edge of turning twenty five, and needed to worry about my ether expansion slowing, but with my current pair of techniques and practice, I was already making up lost ground from my familiar ritual, and could keep expanding after that.

  No, for my current needs, it would be better to have a staff and wand. The staff could help me in my preparations for the duel against Gerhard, the spells I cast before the fight, like arcane armor and any spellglyphs I created. Then, during the fight itself, the wand could help speed my casting to a pace that actually allowed me to use magic in the fight.

  Before I knew it, Wednesday rolled around, and it was time for another Fundamental Magecraft course. I showed my ability to complete Summers’ inversion, then sat with Kybar the minotaur and Yushin. When Wesley showed his ability to use the inversion, he lit the rod, as normal, but when the professor started to shuffle him off, Wesley held up a hand. It took almost fifteen seconds, but then the glass lit itself up a second time, and Wesley smirked.

  “Incredible!” professor Silverbark said, eyes widening. “To be able to get your spirit back in order so quickly… My goodness.”

  He started clapping, with the course half-heartedly joining in. Wesley smirked and headed to his table, while I glowered at him. He met my eyes, and I was surprised that I didn’t see anger or even smugness in them, just a steely determination. I glared at him, and Kybar snorted.

  “If you like him so much, just go to his table,” the big minotaur said. I flushed and snapped my gaze over to Kybar, while Yushin put a hand over her mouth to hide her laughter.

  “It’s not like that!” I said. “I just want to know how he’s doing it. I’m practicing non-stop, at work, at home, even in the halls between classes, but he’s still beating me.”

  “Wait, you practice in the hall?” Kybar asked. “Lettilee’s blood, man, even I don’t practice that much.”

  I grunted and shrugged, but Yushin lowered her hand and gave me a serious look.

  “Maybe he is simply better than you. It is common in life enforcement practitioners. Anyone can practice, and even reach the tip of the first stage. But beyond that, talent, luck, and money are the three greatest factors in success.”

  “Maybe,” I relented. “But it’s pretty galling.”

  “I do not know that word,” Yushin said, but before I could explain, professor Silverbark finished with the last student and clapped to draw attention.

  “Well, class, congratulations for making it this far. Today we begin our third and final ether exercise, this one designed to give fine control.”

  He waved his hand, conjuring a set of what looked like glass balls, filled with a maze of tiny internal pathways, each one barely large enough for a poppyseed to fit through. It seemed like there were over a hundred different possible entry and exit points, and the whole thing was somewhat mind bending to look at.

  “This technique is known as Willow’s path,” professor Silverbark said. “It’s often seen as the ideal technique for teaching students, but does anyone know why?”

  This time, the class was entirely silent, and professor Silverbark glanced around, then finally looked at Wesley and nodded.

  “Growth,” Wesley said. “The technique becomes more difficult the larger your ether pool, and increases your ability to do fine etheric control in turn. If we begin now, we can build our control alongside our ether pool expansion, allowing us to continue to reap greater and greater harvests. When I become an archmagus, the technique will help propel me through sixth, seventh, eighth, and eventually ninth circle spellcraft as I continue to expand my pool and practice manipulation.”

  “Quite a lofty goal… but a correct point!” professor Silverbark agreed. “This is why we must start now, though. If a fifth circle mage with a massive ether pool was to try it, they’d have an incredibly hard time. Practice now, and keep it up as you grow, and you’ll rarely need to worry about finding spells too complex for you.”

  He picked up one of the glass spheres and one pathway lit up.

  “Your goal will be to light two pathways by next class,” he said, “though if you can manage a third, all the better. Same color rules as before. Now, come get a sphere!"

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