NOVEL NEXT Chapter Forty-Two:
As with before, when I arrived at the castle's solarium there were several of the fae lounging in the sun, sprawled out almost like cats, and I took a seat to work on Maugrim's surge until professor Toadweather arrived. She began poking at the other faeries, kicking them out of the sun room, and made a 'hmm' sound when she saw me.
"Are you going to make a habit of getting here early?"
"Might, might not. Are you going to be upset if I do?"
"Hmmm," she repeated, then muttered the not-quite-spell that was used for the summoning of items from her school locker. This time, I paid rapt attention, forcibly committing the words to memory to try out later, while Seren just watched in curiosity. Toadweather watched me watching her, and tilted her head.
"Well, go ahead and ask whatever it is that's burning you up. And if you're thinking about unlocking access to your locker with the ring, I don't think that's how it works."
"Two things, actually. And it's worth a shot," I said, before sounding out the incantation and pushing ether into my ring. As she'd said, nothing happened, and I focused back on her, lifting Seren from my shoulder and extending him in her direction, then focused on speaking in Flametongue.
"First, Seren has recently learned how to speak. It takes a lot of effort for him, but he's capable of it. I thought you might find that interesting?"
"Hello…" Seren crackled, and professor Toadweather perked up, flittering over to me. She poked and prodded at the small fire elemental, then flew from chair to chair, starting to get them set up as she wanted for the class.
"Interesting! You've fed him on a diet of dragonfire? Like a tasty, tasty potato, being fed with boiling water to become a part of mashed potatoes?"
"I would hope that analogy doesn't hold true, as I don't plan to crush Seren's body up and blend him with other elements. But I have been fueling his flame with my own, as well as using it in the familiar compact spell."
"Analogies aren't real," professor Toadweather said, before bursting into a round of giggles. "But that makes sense. He's probably going to be the faster of your two due to that base compatibility. It will be interesting to see how he grows! Some fire elementals go for size, some for corporeality, some for blue!"
She leaned in and whispered something in flametongue into Seren's ear, too soft for me to hear without flaring my bloodline. Before I had the chance to draw the power through my coals, she'd finished and stood back up, grinning at me in a way I found distinctly unnerving.
"Right… Well the other thing I wanted to ask you was if there was a way to get my hands on components for the mage tool ritual. Particularly those that could be made into the body material."
I lifted my wand, then rolled it between my fingers and tapped the wood that made up its shaft.
"The focusing component should be good until halfway through next year, and the core will be good until I graduate, but I've already outgrown the wood."
"Hmm. You could try a shop in the city. Some of them, like your own Charm and Fable, sell components. Others curate specific wands, staves, amulets, and more with specific empowerments in mind. Some mages even keep a cadre of wands! This is a healing wand! This is a bomb wand!"
I blinked, having not even considered that last one before. I knew that professor Silverbark had mentioned it was possible to pass the tools along in a family, and thereby improve affinity, but the idea of someone crafting wands with the complete components had never crossed my mind for some reason.
Of course, using multiple had the problem of needing to cast the ritual to set whichever one your spirit was connected to at any given time. The ether pool could only handle two tools at a time, and they had to be of different varieties. Keeping that in mind, as well as my goal of archmage status, it was probably best to keep using generalized wands.
Besides, there had to be a reason that the Erudite only used his staff, and didn't swap between tools at a whim. I might not know exactly what it was, but I suspected that both elements of personal tool affinity and higher circle magic came into play.
As interesting of an aside as that was, though…
"That didn't answer my question," I said, and the pint sized pixie winked at me.
"You know that we can't make deals with students! We can't even hold 'thank you' against you. If you want to come back and negotiate after you graduate, you'd be welcome! But if you're looking for secretive tests for components, then they're supposed to be secret, aren't they?"
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
I mentally filed away that welcome. It wasn't of any use to me right here and now, while I was under the aegis of studenthood, but in the future…
"The grove mother of the dryads didn't exactly make her test secret," I grumbled. "But I take your point. If there wasn't a secret competition or test here, though…"
"I'm not bound to tell you where they're not!" the professor said before pointing at the blackboard. "Now, if you're going to keep getting here early and getting little tidbits outside of my office hours, you're going to work! Clean the board! And I do mean that either as 'clean', the transitive verb, or as a linguistic shorthand for casting the clean spell. Punished person's choice!"
I sighed and rose to begin wiping the board down, even as I mentally started to compose a version of clean that would work on chalk dust. She probably couldn't actually force me to do it, since I hadn't actually broken any school rules, but if she wanted to pawn off wiping down the board on me in exchange for advice in an informal deal, I could handle that. It wasn't worth the opportunity cost of annoying her by refusing.
Before long, the rest of the class trickled in, and Toadweather animated a stick of chalk with the wave of a hand in order to begin drawing out four spells onto the board. The first two spells were obviously summoning spells, and I even recognized one of them: summon gadhar. The other one was similarly designed, but had certain parts in common with the spell to summon a chrysaor. Some kind of demonic summoning spell, more than likely.
The next spell on the board was somewhat similar to etherstep, but far more constrained. The areas of the array that created the vessel to traverse Etherius were… tiny. Even shrunk as I was, I wasn't confident that I'd be able to fit within the boundaries. There was math I could do to check, and I knew she'd likely make us look, but at a glance, I wouldn't have risked wasting my ether on it.
The final spell was another summoning, but it lacked any of the portions of the spell to manage a contract, any sort of ether repayment, and any of the other things associated with calling a creature. That probably meant it was an object conjuration spell, like summon stone or conjure lesser storm. It didn't call out to the elemental planes, though, which was the oddest part of it.
Before I could start dissecting them any further, professor Toadweather clapped, buzzing her wings, and slapped her hands on the two creature summoning spells on the board.
"Who knows what these are?"
"Summon Gadhar," I said, as at the same time another student said, "summon hellhound."
"Yes and yes! It's a spell to summon dogs! One of them has wings and defensive bloodline, the other has very sharp claws and a bloodline of attacking. Most of you know one or the other. Well, a large part of this semester is going to be focused on rounding out your summoning arsenal. Both offense and defense are needed if you want to survive when an angry mob shows up at your door with pitchforks and your wife's head on a platter!"
She giggled as if she'd said something hilarious, then suddenly grew more somber and squinted around the room.
"For those of you who don't know either one of the spells, pick one to be tested on. But I'd recommend learning the other in your free time, or else you might lose your head. Now! The next spell."
She waved her hand, and her wand appeared in it, then teleported in front of me, then in front of the treefolk next to me, then onto the woman who claimed to have a dragon bloodline, and so on and so forth. When it completed its circuit around the room, it teleported back into her hand.
"Teleport small object! A useful little spell. It can only move things that are less than around twenty-five pounds, and no bigger than a loaf of bread, but it's still incredibly important. Some people who have potion or artifice affinities use it to teleport their potions around in combat. Out of combat, it's a great way to grab things on the other side of the room, much better than a levitation cantrip, even though the cantrip costs so much less ether and… Hmm, well, maybe it's not much better. But I maintain that it is better!"
"What's the range?" I asked, trying to get back on track.
"Oh, 'bout a few. Ya know. Here and there and thither and hither and maybe exactly thirty feet just like etherstep."
"Why?" asked the treefolk beside me. "The spell has a much lower weight limit than casting an entire person through space. Is it that much more ether efficient?"
"It is more ether efficient, but no, not that much. The issue comes down to nuggets! Metal ones, of teleportation alloy. Etherstep consumes the alloy to reinforce the barriers while traversing Etherius. This doesn't. Which means you either need a lot more power – like with arcane passage – or you have to give up something like cargo capacity."
"That makes sense," the treefolk said, and I found myself nodding along. I was honestly relieved that it didn't consume any of the alloy. I rarely ever used Etherstep due to the high monetary cost, and this spell felt too useful for me to leave it on the shelf in the same way.
"Now, the third and final spell is your first entry into the darkest, most dangerous, most depraved, deadliest, and debased form of spellcasting known to many of humankind…"
She paused, letting the tension build, and I felt a smile crack on my face. Toadweather had a flair for the dramatic, and I was all but certain she was building this up in the name of drama. Not lying, exactly, but certainly being very picky with what one considered to be all of those things.
"This is your introduction to spider magic. The spell? Create webs. Yes, it is true! Do not fear! The webbing that you summon will not have any living spiders attached. It is imported directly from the faerie realms, especially in the realm of tir-prye-cop, and the Spider Queen of Faerie!"
She waved her hand, and as she did, webbing began to spew from the end. It covered the window she aimed at in moments, and then cut off.
"The webbing is stronger than most people anticipate. Few warriors who aren't magically enhanced can rip out of it. For those of you who are more pyromaniacally inclined, the webbing is older, the spell harvesting from spiders no longer using it. That makes it less sticky than fresh webbing, but it makes it burn, burn, burn! You can roast a human corpse in it! Or a fly. Or a lovely bit of steak. It does impart a strangely sweet flavor, though. Almost milky…"
On that particularly horrifying note, she waved and summoned sheets of paper, setting us to breaking apart each section of the spell arrays.