Professor Silverbark led us through the halls of the brass tower and into a large room that almost resembled a warehouse, with sheets of brass on the walls, and a gray stone floor. Stacked against one wall were stuffed straw practice mats, and on the other side of the room were low tables and a large chalkboard.

  Professor Silverbark walked to the tables as everyone trickled in. He waved his hand and blocks of wood, ranging from pale pine wood, to yellow poplar, to spotted cypress started appearing on the table. They were followed by rounded glass marbles and polished stones in every color, and finally, an assortment of fur tufts, shed feathers, nail clippings, baby teeth, and other monster parts.

  Nothing on the table smelled too terribly powerful, but from this distance, I couldn’t get a great sniff in.

  “Our alchemy, artifice, botany, and monster taming departments are kind enough to provide us with a few basic supplies. Most of these aren’t anything spectacular, only able to channel first or second circle spells and not with a great deal of depth to them, but they are a start. I advise you to make a simple tool to start, and upgrade it quickly as you grow.”

  He waved his hand and the spell began to draw itself on the board in the room, while lumps of chalk shimmered into existence in front of each of us. While most others started drawing the spell, I moved to the table.

  I had a large piece of powerful wood that would make a good staff body, and a whisker that would make for a good core, but I was hesitant about throwing everything into a staff. Professor Silverbark had described the effects as multiplicative, after all.

  No, I was sure it would be better to use the foo whisker as a component for a wand, and the wood for a staff. Even if that left me with two things only a quarter built.

  I glanced at professor Silverbark. In the short run, I could get away with using a poor body for my wand, since it didn’t have much power to expand the ether pool anyways.

  The same went for core components and the staff. Staves already weren’t great at replacing components, so using a poor quality material would be negligible.

  “Can I take two focus components?”

  “Unfortunately, if you want more, you’ll have to find it yourself,” the professor said, and he sounded amused. I grunted in agreement, then went to analyze the table.

  I took a deep sniff, letting my draconic senses take in the power of the items on the table. It wasn’t perfect, but I figured if I could gauge the relative weight and type of the bloodline the creature had, I could pick out something suitable for a staff. After all, just because a staff wasn’t great at it didn’t mean I wanted to just grab the first thing I saw

  My eyes snapped to the core components. Most of the feathers, claws, and teeth had weak, thin bloodlines. Young creatures who only had a drop of power. That made sense.

  But one of them…

  My hand drifted to a bundle of gryphon feathers, and I shoved several aside until I found the one that had caught my nose.

  The gryphon who’d molted this feather had still been young, but the comparative power of its bloodline was much more invested in this feather than the other feathers. The component was still only roughly second circle, yet there was simply… more… of it.

  Sure, it might not be able to manage to replace the components of a third circle spell, but it could replace far more first and second circle components than the others.

  Professor Silverbark raised an eyebrow, and working on a hunch, I cast ethersight before I moved onto the stones, crystals, and glass marbles.

  Sure enough, much like on the table of core components, everything there was clearly meant to work with first and second circle spellcraft, but the degree to which that first and second circle spellcraft could be enhanced varied wildly.

  I let my eyes roam over the options before I selected a smooth ball of smokey quartz.

  There were other components on the table that seemed like they would provide more of a boost, but they were all more specific.

  For example, a rune covered glass marble seemed like it would give an immense boost, but all of the runes were for fire. That would be great for Jackson, but I was too much of a generalist.

  This quartz might not be the most powerful overall, but it was the strongest of the options that seemed relatively balanced between schools of magic.

  Professor Silverbark’s eyebrows crept higher, and I grinned at him, then moved onto the woods that had been laid out for body components.

  This had me curious. It made sense to me how a focus could provide different amounts of a boost while still only operating within a circle of spellcraft, but ether pools were ether pools. I didn’t see how that would work here. Either a component would provide a enough ether to cast more second circle spells, or it wouldn’t. No tricks.

  The moment I began to pick through the wood, I revised that opinion, at least a little.

  I was right in part. None of the blocks had much larger ether pools in them than any of the others, so they would all give roughly the same amount of power – enough for a few second circle spells.

  The difference came in the connection to Etherius that would restore and fill the pool, and presumably change how fast the mage’s own ether recovered. The pine had a thin, spindly connection along which power flowed into it. The poplar was better, and the spotted cypress was better still.

  But there were a few blocks of maplewood that had far thicker, stronger connections than anything else. I plucked a block up, and professor Silverbark’s lips curled into a smile.

  “Interesting choices,” he commented.

  “I try to be observant. Though I do have a question about how the expanded pool works with density?”

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  “The pool and connection is subsumed into your own,” he responded easily. “It won’t alter your ether density at all.”

  I nodded and thanked him, then headed back to my lump of chalk, a plan forming in my mind.

  I failed.

  Intentionally.

  After all, if I’d actually constructed a wand using the three tools I had been given, then gone to my room to replace the feather with the foo whisker right away, I would have wasted the feather entirely. I might have gotten a tiny bit of attunement from it, but not nearly enough to be worth it.

  No, I needed to fail on purpose. Then I could use the feather in the creation of a staff, once I had a suitable focusing component.

  And I thought I had a lead on that. Fable’s comment about the school, the comment from Silverbark about finding components, and the hidden test for finding components had given me an idea.

  When I’d first arrived, I had noticed all sorts of places on the map. Snapping gardens. Healing pools. The shadesilk forest.

  And the crystalline caverns.

  I was willing to bet that I could find something there, something at least as good as the smokey quartz. If I could, then I’d have a decent staff, and a decent wand. Neither one would be incredible, but it would be enough for now.

  Instead of heading to lunch with Yushin, I dashed to my room. I didn’t have a huge space for ritual spells, but I grabbed a stick of chalk from my bedside table and began drawing on the floors – they were now wooden, rather than slate stone, which was nice in an aesthetic sense, but I took extra care to not scratch them.

  Once I’d drawn out my circle and the runes, I pulled out the drawer where I’d hidden the foo lion whisker, and untied it from the screw that it had been wrapped around.

  For a moment, I debated taking the dappled-radiant hawthorne. Fable had given me enough for a staff, and said it should be strong enough to get me through this year and most of next year. To me, that implied that it was probably able to hold enough power to cast a fourth circle spell, but… No.

  I held firm in my conviction. Using it for a staff would let me get so much more out of it. I placed the block of ether enriched red oak down in the spot within the ritual circle, then the orb of smokey quartz, followed by the foo lion whisker, then started casting.

  The incantation flowed from my lips, and it came with an ease that was entirely unlike any spell that I’d ever used before, as if I was singing a song that I’d known and sang every day of my life.

  Flowing my ether through the chalk was smoother and more precise, requiring less effort to control than ever before, like I’d been living with only two fingers my entire life, and just realized that I had eight others I could use.

  My hands started dancing through the motions of the spellcraft like someone had tied strings to them, and was dancing me around like a puppet. But unlike when I’d received the power from Jackson’s god, there was no invasion, no force. I was the puppet and the puppeteer.

  It was almost as if Magyk herself was urging me on, giving me encouragement to complete the spell, while still letting me run the show.

  My focus turned to the body component first, and ether rushed out of my pool. The etheric weight that professor Silverbark had talked about began to settle onto me, like someone had tossed a blanket onto my ether pool. I shifted my ether around, examining the weight. It was there, yes, but it didn’t change my casting much. The metaphorical blanket was a thin silk, easy to ignore.

  I supposed that made sense. It didn’t actually add much to my ether pool, after all. I accepted it, and felt its power come under my control. My ether pool expanded, and I felt my connection to Etherius thicken.

  I turned to the next component, the focusing crystal, and again my ether flowed deep into the ball of smoky quartz, and a second thin sheet was layered over my ether pool. The combined weight of the crystal and red oak was a little more noticeable, but it was far from anything I couldn’t handle. As I accepted it, I felt my magic form a dot, cantrips. Cobalt blue ether floated out, forming a circle, and then a second circle. A few lines tried to form into a third circle, but it collapsed. The quartz could only enhance and focus second circle spells, but I was a third circle caster.

  Ah, well. I’d see about replacing that as soon as I could.

  I turned my attention to the final component, the foo whisker, and weight slammed into my ether pool. If the first two had been sheets of thin silk, then this was a heavy blanket that had been soaked in sea water and tied around my neck. I gasped and rejected all of the power, pushing it away.

  Once I had a firm hand over my own ether pool again, I reached out for the whisker a second time. This time, I slowly metered the power, letting it gently leak out, and I began using it to brush runes into the air that correspond to gestures and to words of the incantation.

  I started with the shield spell. I could already spit out the incantation fairly quickly, but it was a useful spell to be able to cast with just a flicker, so I began shaving away gestures and words, until I was left with only a single quick incantation and flick of the wrist to manage it. That single first circle spell added even less weight than the other components, only a single patchwork square of silk, compared to the full blankets of the body and focus.

  When I moved onto the arcane missile spell, it required me to draw out more power. The foo lion was a guardian spirit, a being of protection, and it took to abjuration and protective spells far easier than it did to offense. Sure, offense could be a part of defense, but it wasn’t the same.

  I began working my way through the list of spells I knew, prioritizing spells that would be beneficial to be able to cast quickly, like arcane armor, allies’ sigil, orb of air, summon gadhar, summon goo, summon rat swarm, coinshot, and glittersands. And, of course, a few from spellglyph.

  I folded in my curses as well, both the short lived combat curse and the more powerful, longer lasting version. To my surprise, many parts of the spell carried over. I supposed that made some sense – they were both applications of the same core spell, after all – but I had expected that it would almost act as if they were two entirely different things. Instead, each one seemed to cover a sliver of my curse affinity’s core spell, which caused me to change my method, and focus on imbuing as much of the core affinity spell as I could.

  I wasn’t able to get all of the spells I added down to a single word and gesture. Well, that wasn’t quite right. I could have. The whisker had more than enough potency to have effectively reduced all those spells down that far, then kept going besides.

  The problem was the weight it put on my ether pool. Each spell didn’t add much, but it did add some, especially the non-abjuration spells.

  I continued to improve some things, while backing off some of my improvements on others, and eventually, I was left with a reasonable weight on my ether pool. It was definitely there, putting pressure on me, but it wasn’t enough that I thought I would struggle to cast spells or learn new ones. I accepted the power that flowed into the whisker.

  All three components began to float into the air and glow with the blue light of my ether pool. They touched one another, and in a flash of light, formed into a wand.

  It was long and smooth, about twelve inches long, and a medium red color that reminded me of the oak. It had a nob a few inches up the shaft, creating a clear space for me to hold it, and the ball of quartz had affixed itself to the bottom, almost as if it were a pommel on a sword.

  I grabbed it from where it was floating in the air, and I felt it settle onto me. I could feel all of the components working together – deep within the wood forming the body, the whisker sang with power yet to be unleashed, and the crystal gathered and focused ether before it shot from the tip of the wand. The tool was distinct, forming the properties of a wand, and layering into my ether pool with its etheric weight. And I had a fair amount of affinity for it.

  This was my first wand, after all, and I’d earned the whisker for battling against Salem’s curse. I might not have a deep connection to the wood or the quartz, but they still held a spot in my soul, as the first steps on a path to magic.

  I raised the wand and swished it through the air, muttering a single word while shaping my ether. A shield burst into life in front of me, and I let out a laugh.

  It had worked! The shield was stronger, the incantation reduced to a single word, the gestures to a single motion.

  I had created a wand.

  I glanced at the painting, and my eyes widened.

  I had created a wand. And I had taken a lot longer than I had expected. If I didn’t hurry, I was going to be late to Applied Mage Combat.

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