“The mage tool ritual is one quite unlike any other that exists,” professor Silverbark said, drifting through the classroom. “I am certain that many of you have used ritual magic before, and to those of you who have, I can say only this: forget what you know about ritual magic. The ritual to create a wand, staff, or amulet is old. There is confirmation it existed in some form during the Age of Sunder, and a great deal of evidence that it existed even during the Age of Pools.”

  I pursed my lips, thinking about it. Professor Silverbark definitely had a flair for the dramatic, since Fable had told me about the archmage’s tools ritual, but even still… To hear that this magic had existed in some form for so long? Even if Magyk had changed some of the underlying structure of reality to get it to conform to her new rules, it was still enough to excite me.

  “There are six factors that go into determining the power of a mage’s tool ritual: three physical, two magical, and one spiritual. The physical components each correspond to specific traits of the staff. Can anyone tell me what they are?”

  “The body, core, and focus,” I said, after raising my hand and getting a nod. “I’m not clear on what they each do, but they all alter the utility and power of the crafted item.”

  I was fairly confident in my answer. Fable had said the wood would make a good body component, while the Erudite had called the crystal Jackson received a good focus, and my foo lion whisker a good core.

  “Yes, indeed. We shall begin with the body. This is usually wood for a staff, metal for an amulet, and either wood or crystal for a wand, though there is no reason it must be any of those. A wand can be made of bone, a staff of stone, an amulet of glass, or any other material. The key to the body is the ability to store vast amounts of ether. That is the job of the body component: it expands your ether pool artifically with the power it holds.”

  “Does that mean that a staff can hold far more ether than either of the others? It’s got more size, after all,” Kybar asked.

  “A reasonable question, but no. The body component of the ritual can take more material to expand, but it hits certain limits that vary depending on what spell you’ve made. Amulets are actually have the highest maximum material, and it’s thought that the material itself actually exists in its own unique plane of Etherius, close to Magyk itself, much like unsummoned grimoires.”

  Kybar frowned at that, but nodded his agreement without any fuss.

  “The next component is the focus, which is most often a crystal, but can also be parts of a magical animal, finely crafted glasswork, or anything else that directs your magic. It increases the effeciency of your magic. I know a healer who focuses his magic through pheonix feathers, and his healing spells do twice the work for the same ether cost.”

  “Does it make the spell stronger, or does it reduce the ether cost?” Wesley asked, frowning.

  “It can do either, and it shifts depending on the spell and component. Battle spells rarely get much cheaper, but usually get much stronger. A summoning spell, on the other hand, will usually just cost less.”

  “This… I… Alright.”

  Professor Silverbark had a moment of annoyance, then continued his lecture.

  “The final component is the core. This is the strangest and most personal of all. Most commonly made of monster parts, but not inherently, it allows you to replace the components of your spells.”

  Yushin frowned and raised her hand.

  “Most spells do not have components?”

  Professor Silverbark grinned at her.

  “I did not say material components. I said components. The words of a spell, the ether manipulation, or the gestures, may be woven into the core of the magic by delicately painting the right runes into the ritual using the core component. I recommend you work on shaving off the longest words and most complex gestures first, to simplify your spells.”

  “Why not put all of them?” someone asked. “And can it replace material components? Or consumed ones?”

  “I’ll answer your questions in reverse: it cannot replace consumed components, but it can replace materials like a leather strip. And each core component has a limit on how many components it can replace in this way, and often has preferences for what sorts of spell components it can bind in easiest. An angelus feather will likely have an easier time replacing the components of a healing or protective spell than an acid bolt.”

  He snapped.

  “Ah, that is something worth noting. All of the materials have differet proclivities. A pearl from an elemental plane of water used as a focus will likely help boost water spells far more than fire spells. If you’ve undergone the ritual to make your ether more in line with the transmutation school, a body component that is aligned with illusion will produce far worse results. So on and so forth.”

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  He paused, tapping his chin for a moment, then added.

  “This is why ether crystal is so prized: it is universally compatable. Now… does anyone know the spiritual aspects of the ritual? Or perhaps the magical ones?”

  “Spiritual Attunement,” Yushin said quietly, and professor Silverbark snapped.

  “Indeed! The more in tune with the item you are, the greater power it can express. How significant is the item to you and to our lady Magyk? Let us say you spend weeks tracking planar movements while trekking the demon wastes in search of a portal, then delved into a world of ice, where you hiked across frozen glaciers and mountains, summited a vast peak, battled a powerful ice elemental, and took its heart. Your attunement to that component would be far greater than if you simply bought the same heart with pocket money from a parent. Then again, if you had to work endless hours in a mine, breaking your back, heart, and soul for the money? It might.”

  Professor Silverbark held up a hand.

  “Acquisition is not the only way to add weight. Attunement is about how aligned the item has become to you. A staff that has been passed from father to son, son to daughter, and then unto you as a symbol of your family might be very well attuned to you. Even a component that you bought without effort can grow to have great attunement. A wand you use every day for years will become attuned to you through fondness, familiarity, and the memories you make while using it.”

  “I don’t mean any disrespect, professor, but that sounds like a villager’s superstitious whispering about how magic works, rather than the precise ether flows, intonations, and gestures that actually make it up,” Wesley said from where he laid back in his chair. “How can we be sure that a wand we’re familiar with actually has this mystical attunement to us? Isn’t it more likely for it to be simple rote understanding combined with nostalgia-fueled placebo?”

  I expected professor Silverbark to respond with a measured and precise example of how we knew, or to at least have a pragmatic retort.

  Instead, he gave a sympathetic smile.

  “This is old magic. You will understand in time.”

  He glanced around and raised an eyebrow.

  “Well, I do believe that by happy accident, we have covered most of the attunement section of the lecture there, save for one last detail… Materials from yourself provide no attunement. A dryad cannot attune to its own wood used for the body component, for example. But what about the two magical aspects? Can anyone tell me about them?”

  “I know one of them is etheric weight,” Kybar said. “I couldn’t use my aunt’s staff very well, because she’s a sixth circle spellcaster, and I was only a first circle the last time I saw her. It was like trying to use a hammer that was too big for me to lift.”

  “Ah, yes, very good!” professor Silverbark beamed. “Indeed, it is often compared to the weight of a weapon. When casting the ritual, you channel the power of your components. It is tempting to channel as much power as the component holds, but that is like making a sword as heavy as you can carry. It is far better to have a less powerful wand you can use easily, than a strong wand that you can barely cast through.”

  I let out a puff of relief at that. For a moment, I’d been worried that I couldn’t use my foo lion’s whisker. Though…

  I raised a hand.

  “Can the components be recycled or later modified to release more power?” I asked. “Say I had a fourth circle riverstone. I’m only a third circle mage. Could I use the riverstone, limiting its power, like you said, then when I reached fourth circle, go back and unlock the rest?”

  “Excellent question, Emrys, and indeed you can. When the ritual is performed on a completed wand, staff, or amulet, you can make adjustments like releasing more power, attuning the core to new spells, or even replacing the parts that you have outgrown entirely,” the professor explained.

  “Can I get them back, to sell them?”

  “You cannot reclaim something once it has been used, but a portion of the attunement to that component will remain even after. So if you later found a fifth circle water-sapphire, and replaced your stone with it, the stone would not come back, as it would break down into raw ether, but you would retain a portion of the attunement power you had from the stone.”

  I nodded and sat back, my curiosity sated for now.

  “Does anyone know the second magical part?” professor Silverbark asked. “No? Why, it’s simple: what do you shape the ritual to be? A wand? A staff? Or an amulet?”

  From there, he went on a breakdown of the spell, similar to what Fable had taught me: you could only have two of them.

  Wands were great for replacing components, okay at improving spellpower, and bad at expanding your ether pool.

  Staves gave a lot of spellpower and stored a decent amount of ether, but were poor at replacing components.

  Finally, amulets gave you a ton of ether, did an okay job replacing components, and only improved spells a little.

  “Why not just use the best components for everything?” asked a student I didn’t know the name of.

  “Simple. The effect of the magical orientation is multiplicitive, not additive. While using numbers in magic is often inaccurate due to the Magyk Uncertainty Principle, it makes a pussient example here. Say you have wood that can store ten hypotherical ether. In a wand, that is all it holds. In a staff, its capacity is multiplied to hold twenty ether. And in an amulet, it is multiplied to thirty ether. You should absolutely use the best components you can, but it should also be used where it makes the most impact. If you have a wand and amulet, and your amulet’s body is a nine, while your wand’s body is a two, it makes more sense to use this new wood to improve the wand. But if your amulet was a five, then replace the amulet.”

  “Ooookay,” the girl who’d asked said. “How do we know what things are worth?”

  “It’s more an art than a science, which is why I detest numbers,” professor Silverbark sighed. “You have to feel it. Compare power to the power of different circles of spells. Attunement can also make a difference. Get to know the wand and amulet. If that’s cleared up, let’s get to examining the spell…”

  He waved his hand, and chalk rose into the air, drawing the three circles of a third circle ritual. It filled in details quickly, and I blinked.

  The ritual was… simple. Dead simple, more than any third circle spell I’d ever seen, let alone a ritual.

  Professor Silverbark caught my look, smiled, then nodded.

  “Indeed. The complexity of the mage ritual comes from its components, not the spellwork.”

  He glanced up, as if to check the time, and smiled.

  “Ah good. We still have an hour left of class. For the remainder of this lecture, as well as the rest of the year, as we move into practical spell applications, we will begin meeting in one of our larger training rooms. Everyone, please, follow me, and I will lead us to our new classroom.”

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