For all that Henry seemed apathetic about most things in life, to the point of treating an invading force of dark cultivators as an annoyance, when he finally started breaking down the spells, instead of just throwing them at us and expecting us to learn them, he was a good teacher. He was able to spot even the most minute of errors in hand gestures or intonation, which would have been frustrating if he’d only called it out, but he also explained how each part flowed into the next, corresponding to parts of the spell’s shape, and thus how it could all be improved.

  When the hour was over, though, he let out perhaps the most relieved sigh that I’d ever heard from him, mumbled something about needing to go kill an aberrant that had just started rampaging in southwestern Cendel, then vanished in a ripple of blue light. Our group headed to lunch and ate together,, then we headed our separate ways for our next course. I actually got to class a bit early, and when I entered professor Gemheart’s classroom, his smoke from his pipe was swirling around the room in an unusual pattern, one that resembled a three dimensional spell. Parts of it were shifting, working to lock into place, and when I entered, the smoke started to disperse, while professor Gemheart dropped his pipe.

  “By the gods,” he sighed, then picked it up and started to clean it. “You startled me. Someone like you has no right to be as sneaky as you are.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “What was that smoke spell, though?”

  “Working on an eighth circle spell,” he said, waving his hand. “I’ve found it's easier to shape my ether into three dimensional patterns if I’ve got a visual reference, so I shape it with my smoke affinity, then use my ether.”

  “Interesting,” I commented. It really was odd. I tended to think of my teachers as static, but that wasn’t true. Each of them was stretching their powers and abilities in their own ways. Maybe they had slowed down, but they’d also gotten to the point where virtually all low hanging fruit had been plucked. Of course they slowed down.

  Before I could say anything else, the door opened again and someone else entered – this time, the large treefolk who I sat with. We made a bit of small talk about the reconstruction efforts at his grove after the war, and then class began. Professor Gemheart stood and animated the chalk with a wave of his hand before greeting all of us and going through the song and dance of hoping we’d enjoyed our break and come back refreshed and ready to work on something new. Once all that was done, he launched into the actual lecture.

  “Alright, alright. As I’m sure most of you have guessed – or, if you read the syllabus, haven’t had to guess at all because you already know – the bulk of this semester is going to be focused around fourth circle spells. They’re potent pieces of magic, though not quite as dramatic as fifth circle, which is the pinnacle of two dimensional ether shaping. But many of them also serve a potent foundation for something greater. For example, if you take the third year course, you’ll learn the spell petrify. It’s a fifth circle spell, and absurdly complex. But if you approach it with your knowledge of animal morph, stone skin, then you’ll find that you have a far better basis. And speaking of stone skin…”

  He turned and gestured to the first spell he’d written on the board, alongside a chart with three columns next to it. I wasn’t sure what the chart was used for, but the spell seemed to be an unusual mix of both physical transmutation properties and the more esoteric application of life force.

  “Stone skin. A simple spell that turns your skin to stone. At least, that’s the way anyone without a solid grounding in material sciences would say. But ‘stone’ is a massive category, and we can use our knowledge of material sciences to do better. Some of you may be familiar with modular spells, and this spell is somewhat like those. Only, rather than simply inputting that you need your spell to defend you from hydra venom, your knowledge of properties of matter and ether shaping skill form the basis of the modularity. Now, let’s look at that knowledge of material sciences: knowing that mobility is handled by the life force, and assuming you have the ether shaping skill, what’s the best substance to turn your body into?”

  Someone raised their hand and answered that diamond, being the hardest non-magically enhanced material, would probably be the best, unless it could also imitate magical stones. Professor Gemheart grinned as if someone had given him a piece of candy, then turned to the three part chart that he’d written next to the spell array.

  “Ah, well, you’ve identified one of the triad of factors. Unfortunately, hardness – or to be more accurate, scratch resistance, is only one of the factors that we’re going to consider. Now, there are countless properties of stones, and we’re going to go in depth in several others, but these three are the core for our quick breakdown. And you’re right that diamond is the hardest known non-magical stone. But it’s extremely easy to break, as there are naturally forming fracture points in diamond. If you turn your skin into diamond, then a single good hit can cause all sorts of nasty damage. In fact, several extremely hard materials are full of these, making them resistant to scratches, but highly brittle. Bearing that in mind, does anyone care to hazard another guess?”

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  “Granite?” I asked. “It’s used to make countertops, so it can’t be quite as easy to fracture as diamond?”

  “Interesting! Well, granite is actually a great choice. It’s not my number one pick, but it’s probably my number two, and it’s what I’d consider the dabbler’s ideal. The leap in ether shaping difficulty to get from granite to my number one pick is fairly large, so unless you’re a true specialist, granite is where you should aim. You’re right that it lacks the fracture points of diamond, which plays into our second factor: stone tenacity. While hardness is all about scratch resistance, tenacity is about toughness, the stone’s ability to withstand breaking. Granite has a much higher tenacity than diamond, despite not being quite as hard.”

  He began to fill in the chart with the hardness and tenacity of a few different materials, showing how many gemstones had high scores on hardness, but were ranked as brittle in regards to tenacity, while granite had a varied hardness based on composition. It tended to be hard but not perfectly scratch resistant, with an excellent tenacity. Then he tapped the third column and smiled.

  “Any more guesses? No? Well, our third factor is stability. How resistant is the stone to things like sudden influxes of heat and cold? Light? Acid? Stability is a very general measurement, made up of many others that we’ll go in depth on in the readings, but it’s still a useful scale to have. Granite is fairly stable, making it a good pick. But my real number one?”

  He filled in a column and I raised an eyebrow, surprised at the result.

  “Jade. Now I am aware there are certain spiritual properties used in cultivation, but I’m not here about those. I care about the material science behind it. And jade has an absurd tenacity, higher resistance to scratching than most granite, and is roughly the same stability. It makes for an excellent material for the spell, and if you can manage it, I highly recommend it. Now, I’m afraid that ramble took longer than I intended, and we must move to our next spell.”

  I looked at it and frowned. While there was clearly some material science application for the spell, it looked to be fairly heavily on the more esoteric and unnatural side of magic. It looked like it used some sort of sympathetic component, life force, mental weavings, and other things that I didn’t understand at all.

  “This spell is called liquid form, though I’ve lobbied incessantly to re-label it to water form,” professor Gemheart said, tapping his pipe against the side of his head. An instant later, his form changed, rippling into water in the shape of the old dwarf. A moment later, he was just a blob of water, rolling around, then split into three streams of water that flowed around the room to the back, where they re-converged into an orb, then shaped back into his body, before changing back into flesh.

  “While it’s not quite as useful defensively as stone skin, given the risk of an enemy evaporating or capturing part of your body, it’s an excellent spell for a variety of reasons. You maintain a proprioceptive sense over your water and can manipulate it, which means dilution isn’t much of a problem. You can use the spell to ride along rivers, to slide through dirt and reach underground caverns, and plenty of other things! I’ve certainly never forgotten the keys to my home and used it to slip under the door, and I won’t have you say that I have.”

  He winked at us, and there was a susurration of laughter through the classroom before professor Gemheart teleported back to the front of the class and tapped the third spell. I frowned as I tried to make sense of it. The spell resembled the improve quality spell, but it was… different. There were elements of time, but they seemed to be sacrificed?

  “Temporary masterwork,” the old dwarf said, retrieving an old, rusty sword from nowhere. He held it out in front of him, tapped it with his pipe, and the blade transformed. In a second it went from looking like it was one good blow away from dissolving into a pile of rust and broken dreams to looking like one of the most perfect blades I’d ever seen, the sort of weapon that the swordmasters of the Sinclair Sword School would have killed for.

  “This spell works on similar principles to the improve quality spell, so I won’t dwell on its exact limitations. Unlike that spell, which was permanent, this one is very short lived. That same short lived nature, however, allows it to reach a level of quality that borders on directly magical. It can also even boost the effectiveness of magical items and mage tools, though admittedly, that effect is much shorter lived.”

  He then gestured to the final spell. It was clearly an air spell, but it was built strangely. It almost resembled an affinity spell or a cantrip, but it was limited in other ways, somewhat like a modular spell, but different in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

  “It’s been said before by many people – probably including myself – that if you have an affinity you don’t like, you should study transmutation. There are transmutation spells so flexible and powerful that they rival affinity magic. We’ll be learning several of these next year, but for right now, this is your introduction. The control air spell allows you to seize control of air within about a hundred feet or so, and then perform a degree of simple manipulation with them. You can increase or decrease the power of a breeze, redirect it to flow in another direction, create updrafts, downdrafts, or even vortexes. You’ll never achieve the fine control and fluid creative power of an affinity… but at the same time, it allows a far more robust command over reality than nearly any other type of magic.”

  The four spells vanished, and a fifth circle spell appeared on the board, this one thankfully fairly simple. It resembled rubblewall, though but I couldn’t make out much more than that.

  “Fifth circle magic is not needed to graduate until your third and final year,” professor Gemheart said. “However, for anyone seeking a challenge, stick around after class and we can talk about this spell. For right now, though, we need to start delving into the material and esoteric sciences! Open Deckard to page ninety-eight, and…”

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