“Today’s class, as well as the next two, will be focused on internal ether techniques,” professor Silverbark said. “Each one will focus on a core aspect of ether: recovery, power, and control. Who can tell me how long it takes for an ether pool to recover from total emptiness?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, scratching at my stomach, where I’d bound the ether crystal, copper, and blood symbol. The minotaur who was in my ethics course, who I’d learned was named Kybar, raised his hand.

  “Twelve hours on average,” Kybar said. “Though everyone’s innate connection to Etherius is different, so some take more or less.”

  “Very good, you’ve also answered my next question of where the power comes from – our spiritual connection to Etherius. Think of it as a plant, whose roots are in Etherius, and whose branches are in us. Ether recovery techniques stimulate the connection, the trunk of the tree, to allow Etherius to rush into us more effectively. There are many, many techniques out there, but this class will begin with Xander’s massage. Does anyone know why?”

  Yushin raised her hand this time.

  “My auntie began teaching me this when I came here. She said it had the most effective ratio of effort to recovery.”

  “Ah yes, there we have it! There are easier techniques, and if you cannot perform the massage by next week, I implore you to seek them out. There are more effective techniques, like the devil’s spiral, which you’ll learn if you take my ether manipulation course. But the easier ones are much less effective, and the harder ones are twice as hard for only half again as much recovery as the massage. But that’s half. What about the other half?”

  Yushin was silent, so Wesley called out.

  “Depth. Some techniques provide more of a benefit with experience. This is one.”

  “Exactly!” professor Silverbark said. The professor waved his hand, and a bunch of small devices that looked like crystalline bonsai trees appeared on the table.

  “These clever little bits of artifice are built to simulate your ether pool and connection to Etherius. You’ll find pathways to flow ether through inside the trunk, as well as places where you’ll need to press in order to massage. If you do it correctly, the leaves will turn from clear to green. Massage the wrong spot, yellow. Do something that would actively slow down your recovery or harm you? Red. The more leaves you’re able to light, the better – or worse if the light is red – you’re doing the technique. By next class, I want you to be able to turn three leaves green. By the end of the year, I want you to light at least ten.”

  As he spoke, the little crystal trees started floating out to each of the tables, and I picked it up, studying it. There were roughly fifty leaves on the device, and when I passed my ether through the internal pathways. It was vaguely like the shaping of a spell, but instead of geometric patterns, this involved pushing and pulling at the edges of an artificial ether pool inside the device. I did my best to follow the pathway built out and depress where I could feel it, but the leaf turned a light yellow color.

  Yushin tapped the trunk of hers, and after a few seconds, a single leaf lit up in green. A second leaf started to flicker between green and yellow, and she gave herself a small tilt of her head in approval.

  “A reasonable start,” she said, then took the crystal into her lap and closed her eyes, meditating.

  Kybar touched his own device, and after a second, its leaf turned yellow as well.

  All around the room, yellow was lighting up on the trees, save for two other people who managed to turn a leaf green, and a handful of poor saps who got bright red. It gave me a smug sort of satisfaction to see that Wesley, despite his condescending attitude, lit his tree in a deep yellow, bordering on orange. Maybe the smug prick would finally hit a wall when it came to practical application.

  I spent a good amount of time working on the technique, trying to follow the pathways laid out in the device, to push and pull. I was a pretty good ether shaper – water to wine was far and away the most difficult spell array I’d seen outside of affinity magic, and I could consistently cast it – but this was an entirely new skill. Still, by the end of class, I was in the half of people who were able to turn one of the leaves green.

  I glanced at Yushin as the hour came to a close.

  “I’ve got to ask the professor a question, you can go ahead. I’ll meet you at the dining hall.”

  Yushin agreed, and I approached professor Silverbark.

  “Ah, hello Emrys,” the professor said. “Good start on your ether recovery technique so far. If you practice it either during the week, or over the weekend, I’m sure you’ll be able to light three leaves with ease.”

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  “Thank you professor,” I said. “I was wondering, though – you said you taught the ether manipulation course?”

  “I do indeed, for years one and two,” he said agreeably. “Are you having trouble?”

  “Something like that. I need a technique to compress my power,” I said. “My et–”

  “Absolutely not!” the professor said sharply, looking up seriously. “Who put such an idea in your head?”

  “Shé Rui?” I said.

  “I’m not familiar with… him?” professor Silverbark said. I nodded, and the teacher continued speaking. “But he did you a great disservice. I advise you to forget such an idea. Leave it be.”

  “Okay, if you really say it will be dangerous for me, I’ll leave it be, but can I ask why? It doesn’t seem obviously dangerous, or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  I’d compressed my bloodline to an absurd degree, after all, and that compressed power had let me keep up with Gerhard, even if only for a few seconds.

  Professor Silverbark gave me a tired, serious look, then shook his head.

  “You know that Magyk favors the young and bold, correct? Well, that’s a common saying, and it’s true when it comes to growing your power, but not condensation. That’s one reason that we don’t teach it until you’re over twenty-five. The low hanging fruit of expanding your power will have been plucked, so you can focus on application and condensation. Your power also undergoes a fundamental change then, where compressing it no longer shrinks the pool, making it even more important to wait. To say nothing of the fact that your ether will naturally grow to fit your spells better as you cast them.”

  “I understand that–”

  “No, you don’t, because I’m not done,” the professor said irritably. “The other reason is that the denser your power, the harder it is to expand it. Seven hundred years ago, there was a kingdom to the south, the Silverbrand Empire. They thought it was a grand idea to teach the compression of power to all of their children who developed an ether pool, or had a bloodline, or anything of the sort. Do you know what happened to them?”

  “They fell?”

  “Exactly. They raised an entire generation on the principle of compressing their power as much as possible while young, and they were left with soldiers who, even with mandatory training to expand their pools, could barely cast first circle spells. Oh, those spells were potent, but what good is a mage who can only fire a single arcane missile, regardless of how strong it is? They tried to reverse course and hire mercenaries to defend their armies, but it was too late. Their kingdom was overrun with demons within thirty years.”

  I was quiet for a long moment, and professor Silverbark seemed to take that as acceptance.

  “I see you’re beginning to understand,” he said. “You’re in Applied Mage Combat, no? That course should teach you to apply your power well, and application of power is every bit as important as the amount.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I just…”

  I trailed off and started again.

  “I have to enter a –I don’t remember what Yushin called it – but basically an honor duel against my older brother, Gerhard Dreki, if I want to keep attending and not be forcibly dragged back to the isle. I was advised that I might be able to keep up with him, just a little bit, if I compressed my power.”

  Professor Silverbark sighed and ran a hand through his long hair.

  “Well. I can understand why you’d be tempted, in that case, but…”

  He seemed to waffle back and forth, so I applied a bit of pressure.

  “Please, professor,” I said.

  “Fine, fine. Do you know how to layer spell arrays?”

  I shook my head, and the professor let out a huff.

  “It’s closely linked to compression, and might even compress your pool a little, which again, is part of why, even though it’s simple, we don’t teach it until third year ether manipulation. Or postgraduate magical education or military mage training, if you’re not in the ether manipulation courses. But it’s not directly compressing your power – it’s compressing a spell’s power.”

  He held out his hand and a weirlight appeared in his hand, then a second. They drifted together until they fused into a single, much brighter, weirlight.

  “The basic idea is that you cast the spell twice, then layer the arrays on top of one another, and push them together before you cast. It links them and pushes more power through it than the spell could normally hold. One moment.”

  His hand flickered with ether, and he pulled out a pair of plates, which he passed to me.

  “This is a training device for the skill. Run ether through the plates, and they’ll levitate, one on top of the other, and you try to push them together.”

  I was kind of starting to regret not taking the ether manipulation course. And the blood magic course. And…

  Then again, he said this technique wasn’t taught until third year, even though it was easy to learn, so students wouldn’t overly compress their ether by accident.

  “Thank you professor,” I said. “When do you want this back?”

  “Just return it once you’re able to get the plates to touch consistently,” he said, waving me off. “I keep enough of them as is. But don’t only practice it. I’m quite serious when I say you should master Xander’s massage, erosion expansion, and the dancing waves techniques first, and get good with them. A good amount of power that recovers fast and is applied correctly has won far more wars than absurdly potent power.”

  I wondered what he’d think of the fact that I was also practicing detonating my own ether, bottling that explosion, and forcing it back into my pool to expand my power. On one hand, he did teach ether manipulation, so he might approve of my resolve.

  “Thank you,” I repeated, then left to meet Yushin. As I walked, I thought about the implications of compressing my dragonfire so much. It had let me keep up with Gerhard, but it had burnt out quickly.

  If it was true that it would make expanding the fire harder, then that was a serious downside, and one I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to rectify. I’d definitely stop working on compression for a bit, in order to focus on expanding it as much as I could, while I still could.

  It was frustrating. I’d already felt behind people like Yushin, let alone someone who had fully embraced their bloodline, like Gerhard, and my one big advantage had turned out to come with a crippling side effect.

  But it also couldn’t be too horrible, or Shé Rui wouldn’t have let Yushin practice it. He seemed to consider it to be almost as important as the others. Then again, the basic exercises I’d shown off to her had been fairly entry level, nothing compared to the amount I’d compressed my own fire.

  I growled to myself and shook my head. I needed to eat, and maybe talk to professor Alydia about this. By the time I got to lunch, Yushin had already left, so I ate quickly, then walked to Applied Mage Combat.

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