I spat the last word of the incantation and swept my hand inwards, rapidly shrinking. In the same instant, I drew on my bloodline, surging forward in a burst of inhuman speed and tackling Emir’s now-larger form.

  If I hadn’t done either, I’d have lost there and then. Emir’s hand flicked and half a score of arcane missiles tore from his wand, but he’d been aiming for my head. Where I’d moved and shrank, they flew over my head, ruffling my hair.

  I struck Emir’s arcane armor, but he must have been able to pack a lot of power into it because even though I spotted cracks running across it as the stress caused his ether manipulation to slip and let it become visible, it didn’t shatter. His armor also looked far more ornate and powerful than any others I’d seen, but I didn’t have time to dwell on that as I dove underneath his legs.

  I hit the ground and rolled, then sprung upwards and dashed across the drawbridge and into the faerie castle.

  “I’ve come to talk to professor Toadweather!” I called out, announcing my intentions as clearly as I possibly could.

  I wasn’t an expert on faerie lore – we hadn’t gotten to that part of the class in Conjuration One, but it was on the syllabus for next semester – but I knew a few things. First and foremost among the fae was their adherence to rules and rights of hospitality.

  I was putting myself in somewhat of a vulnerable position by declaring I’d come to talk to professor Toadweather, since if I didn’t have anything to say, I could be held as taking advantage of them. Luckily for me, I had plenty of things I wanted to ask her about.

  I strolled deeper into the castle, headed towards the ballroom where professor Toadweather held classes. This wasn’t her office hours, so I had no idea if she’d be there or not.

  Emir stepped next to me then, flashing his stole.

  “I am here as a professor of the Citadel of Ether,” he announced before turning to look at me. “Well then. You escaped me, but you’re far from out of danger.”

  “Did the others escape?” I asked curiously.

  “Yushin, Wesley, and Eliza did,” he asked, then when he saw my confusion at the last name, he clarified. “She’s a second year.”

  I nodded and stepped into the ballroom. Much to my chagrin, people were whirling around in dances. I froze, uncertain what the right move would be.

  On one hand, if I joined the dance, I could be called a poor guest, forcing myself into situations where I didn’t belong. On the other, if I left, it could be viewed as an abuse of their role as host.

  I firmed my jaw and scanned the field until I spotted the giant toad that was the professor’s familiar. The frog was crouched near the refreshment stand.

  I stepped in, hugging the wall as I walked towards the familiar, then heard a voice.

  “Care to dance?”

  I turned to see a very pretty looking young pixie woman. She looked to be about my age, though with a faerie that was essentially meaningless. For all I knew, she could be as old as my mother, or she could have just sprung into existence two minutes ago.

  She studied me with a placid smile on her face, but she didn’t even seem to notice Emir’s existence.

  “If you want me to dance, I would be happy to spare a few mortal minutes. Would five be amenable? I simply wouldn’t want to impose as a self-invited guest,” I carefully said. “I came to speak to professor Toadweather, after all. I didn’t realize she was occupied. I was going to leave a notice with her familiar, so she might respond at her convenience.”

  I was very careful to ration the time. I’d heard the stories, like everyone had, of those who went for a single dance and wound up trapped for the rest of their mortal lifespans. As a dragon, spending eighty years doing something wouldn’t kill me, but it would be supremely inconvenient.

  I was also careful to not apologize. I wasn’t sure if it was true that faerie bloodline magic could entrap people’s minds for apologizing, but I certainly wasn’t going to risk it.

  The pixie pouted, then grabbed my hands. I tensed for a second, then let myself be guided out onto the dance floor for a moment, before I shifted to keep the lead.

  I wasn’t the best dancer. I’d learned as a kid, but my life drifting from town to town meant that most of the time when I’d run into a dance, it had been a completely informal country affair. Still, I had enough dexterity and control to not make a total fool of myself.

  I stuck to the edges, slowly making my way towards the toad, while keeping an eye out for professor Toadweather.

  The dancer released me after the five minutes was up, and I started heading towards the refreshments again.

  “Emrys!” a cheerful voice called, and I turned to see professor Toadweather buzz up, her wings flittering a dozen times a second. She looked at Emir and cackled. “And my dear fellow professor! Emir, how are you?”

  “Dewrose,” Emir said, bowing his head slightly. “I am doing well, and yourself?”

  “So formal,” professor Toadweather sighed, draping her hands on top of one another, then looking back and forth. A grin spread over her face. “Oh, I see. He’s doing his little death-test, huh?”

  “I am,” Emir said stiffly.

  “And you decided to run to me for help?” my conjuration professor asked, looking curiously at me.

  “I escaped his blackfire attacks, and thought to ask you a question with the remaining time,” I said, carefully not lying, but also not agreeing with her. Professor Toadweather let out a cackling laugh and bopped me on the head.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Naturally, naturally,” she agreed. “Well, what question did you have?”

  “I wanted to ask about using conjuration spells in conjunction with the spellglyph spell. I know that when we summon a creature, it tends to summon the same one, as long as they don’t refuse the call. But what if I were to have three spellglyphs with summon gadhar on them?”

  “A fair question,” professor Toadweather smiled. “It’s simple. It just works its way down the chain of creatures willing to take the call, including random ones. I advise you to input a good bit of ether into the glyph, though. They’ll be able to sense what power is in it, and any excess will take the place of the normal extra you send when dismissing a creature.”

  “That makes sense,” I agreed. “Is the summon set when the spell is cast, or when the spellglyph is activated?”

  “Ohh, I think I see where you’re going with this. It’s set when it’s activated, which does mean if you get used to casting summon gadhar three times, and thus have three you work with, you can loop all three in. It can be somewhat worth it.”

  I nodded rapidly.

  “And the use of blood components wouldn’t alter things, would it?”

  “It depends. If you’re using your own blood, even most celestial beings won’t object. If you’re using one of the nastier blood spells, the ones that harvest from children to power spellcraft and stand in as components? Maybe don’t summon an angelus.”

  “Alright, then I should be able to summon a gadhar or some of the elementals that we’ll be learning to summon?”

  “If you’ve looked ahead in the syllabus and noticed that we’ll be learning to summon a greymalkin, chrysaor, and wadjetktt, then each of those should be fine with it too,” professor Toadweather said. “The wadjetktt might be more innovatively divine than a gadhar, but they’re guardians and well used to bloodshed.”

  “I see. I did read ahead, but I don’t know enough about any of those three to recognize what they are.”

  “Ah, of course,” the professor agreed. “Well, I won’t spoil the surprise too much, though you could find them in most bestiaries. Was there anything else?”

  “Well, I have endless questions, but I wouldn’t want to waste the time of either of my professors,” I said, glancing between Emir and Toadweather. Emir sighed and nodded.

  “You’ve passed, don’t worry,” he said. “It’s clear you could keep talking about conjuration magic until class was over. If I want to have a chance to catch the others, then I’ll need to leave.”

  “I’ll show you out then,” professor Toadweather agreed amenably.

  When we stepped outside, Emir clapped my shoulder.

  “That was a risk, but you handled it reasonably well. There’s nothing wrong with hiding behind a higher power, and running in the face of overwhelming power is a smart strategy. Better than your friend Jackson.”

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “He tried to fight me,” Emir sighed. He flicked his staff and lifted into the air, this time without the explosive currents of wind. Noticing that I had noticed, Emir shrugged.

  “It’s a waste of good ether, but it’s a good effect for intimidating foes who don’t know any better. Makes me look visceral and powerful. Now that I’ve passed you, though, there’s no sense in that.”

  With that he exploded across the sky, moving fast enough that he could have almost matched Gerhard or Shé Rui for speed. I let out a whistle and walked back to the rooms.

  When I stepped into my room, I froze.

  The entire place had been slowly but surely transforming over the month or so I’d been in classes, from a drab, stark gray place to put my head, to the kind of place that I expected when I thought of a dorm. After successfully passing the test with Emir, it had changed even further.

  My bed had expanded out to queen size, and the room had grown to accommodate the extra size, and on one of the walls there was a portrait of the view overlooking the campus greens, enchanted to match with exactly the same time outside. The cramped shower, sink, and toilet, which had slowly been expanding outwards, had practically exploded in size. The shower was now large enough to hold two of me, and a claw foot tub had been added to the side as well.

  It might not have been absurd opulence by the ideals of most people. Compared to the memories I had of my old bedroom back on the Isle of Dreki, this would be considered rustic at best, and downright pathetic at worst.

  But… I had earned this, and when it was contrasted against the years I’d spent on the road, this was incredible.

  I flopped down onto my bed and sprawled out, then grabbed the disc-like device that professor Silverbark had given me. I hadn’t gotten a lot of time to practice with it, since I’d been constantly working on getting my other schoolwork done, but I felt like I was finally making some headway there.

  The twin disks were designed to teach layering spell arrays, something I’d never run into before. I was a touch wary of it, since I didn’t want to overly compress my ether, not until I was past the twenty-five year old mark, but Silverbark had said this should be mostly safe.

  I funneled ether into the top disk, then the bottom one. The two disks flowed my ether into an identical, familiar pattern – it was the same array that was used to cast the weirlight cantrip.

  That left me wondering if it was possible to make some sort of spell training device, but I put that thought aside. I might be making a living hourly wage at Charm and Fable, but that wasn’t the same as making enough to spend on frivolities, and I was still only a part time worker.

  I focused and tried to crunch the two disks together, like I did when I veiled my bloodline, and… Nothing happened.

  I frowned, having honestly expected that to work. I tried again, and this time, I noticed the disks did wobble, but they didn’t combine. I shifted my focus, and instead of trying to crunch down, I spread the force out through each of the arrays, then pushed them together with a slower, more even application of ether manipulation.

  The disk’s came together with a satisfying click, and I grinned. This might be a little different from manipulating my bloodline, but the skills weren’t so far apart that I wasn’t able to see some benefit.

  Not so far apart…

  I dropped the disk and fumbled within my spirit, reaching for my bloodline powers. When I’d been practicing with them earlier, I’d expelled streams of dragon’s breath, since the Dreki family had espoused that was the fastest way to use and expand your fire.

  But though the family were dragon supremacists, they weren’t actually mages. I’d aced every single Dreki record that I’d tried my hand at as a kid, but looking back, a lot of those came down to using the bloodline as fire, rather than looking at it through a magical lens. The techniques to get the fire to burn hotter, to shape and move it, to project it out through the mouth or hands, and to take on a human form were all advanced applications I’d learned from there, but they were also entirely focused on my bloodline.

  The same was true of most of the bloodline manipulation and compression techniques that I’d picked up while travelling. They focused on unique parts of the person I’d learned them from. The layering of patterns in the muscle of giants hadn’t been very effective for me, but I’d gotten better at moving my fire through my arms by practicing it.

  But none of the people I’d learned from, neither my family nor fellow travellers, had connected their spellcraft and their bloodline. Most hadn’t even been mages at all.

  Charm had said some dragons were once much more magical, hadn’t he? And I’d found several bloodline related spells in my grimoire, even if I couldn’t cast them yet.

  It took several tries, because even though all power came from Etherius to some degree, all powers were different. The connection of my bloodline to Etherius was far more ingrained into me than my ether pool, and I’d done irreparable damage by compressing it so much while still so young.

  But as the sun began to set in the enchanted portrait, I finally got results. I needed to flip the connection to run deeper into me, rather than into Etherius, while still stimulating that innate connection, almost the opposite of how Summers’ inversion worked, but it was a result. It was something, finally.

  The channel created by the bloodline spellcraft ritual vibrated like a plucked string, the connection to Etherius twisted itself into a knot.

  And the tiny core of flame within me grew ever so slightly larger.

  Patreon Here!

  Discord Here!