I spent much of the weekend studying, in particular making sure that I had nailed down all of the spellcraft that I'd been given. It was all second circle magic, which meant it wasn't particularly difficult to learn, but it…

My thoughts trailed off as I realized just what was happening. During the first year, everyone had been expected to be able to pick up first circle spells more or less within a day. There had been different methods for helping students reach this state, with professor Caeruleum espousing a more intuitive view of learning spellcraft, while professor Toadweather took a more scientific approach.

Now, the same thing was happening, but with magic that was much more difficult to master in such a short time. Adding an additional circle didn't double the complexity of a spell, after all, it was worse than that. The area of a circle expanded exponentially based on the radius, and thus, the amount of spellcrafting components that could fit into a second circle spell was closer to four times as many.

When I'd eventually pointed out that it was possible for students to not really learn the spells, but instead to just do a lot of cramming, I'd been told that was true, and fine. Because learning how to teach yourself to cast spells was more important than learning any one specific bit of magic.

And it had worked. Through last year, I'd reached the point where I could learn a second circle spell at about the same speed it had once taken me to learn a first circle spell. And I'd bet that, as the year continued, and I was introduced to more spells and magical theory in order to expand my skill further, I'd keep growing. I was willing to bet nearly every silver I'd stashed away that next year, we'd be skipping first and second circle spells entirely, and would jump right to learning how to cast third circle spells within the span of a day or so.

That didn't sound all too impressive, but third circle spells were powerful stuff. A solid chunk of the magic I'd used to defeat Gerhard had been third circle, and for all that professor Caeruleum had a point about higher circle magic not always being better, there was a reason that they'd needed to argue that point – most of the time, higher circle magic was just better, if more expensive.

When I'd joined the college, I'd focused on the fact that graduates needed to be able to demonstrate a handful of fifth circle spells, and just how potent those were. Teleportation spells that traversed hundreds of miles. Scrying spells that could look nearly anywhere on this plane not specifically protected against them. Telekinesis, a spell so flexible and powerful it rivaled many affinity spells. Permanency. Just… permanency.

I was certain that was still a major draw for the government. Being able to access such powerful magic was a boon, and there was a reason that Cendel, with its abundance of wizards, had one of the most – if not the most – robust portal networks.

But I was willing to bet that when it came to maintaining the portal networks, any sort of military use, and most other mage-focused jobs, Cendel found it much more important to have mages capable of learning relevant, standardized spells than anything else. And a graduate of the academy should, if my guess was correct, be capable of learning a third circle spell in a day, a fourth circle spell in a week, and a fifth circle spell in a month. That allowed for incredible standardization, and optimal use, even without taking affinities into account.

All this wasn't to devalue people like the Erudite or Alydia. Having powerful individuals was great and useful, and even flat out needed when it came to smacking down threats like dangerous aberrants and preventing an opposing superpower from simply wiping out anyone below them. But Henry had said it himself – he could check the Divine King. In a hundred death matches between the pair, he might only win forty of them or so, but that was enough of a risk to push back the Divine King, and had been enough to force the Matriarch to agree to rules and limitations around her attempted invasion.

But it did put into perspective why so many of the courses were focused on learning how to learn, rather than learning something specific.

My revelation, while interesting, didn't change most of what I spent the weekend doing. I worked at the Charm and Fable, mastered the spells that I'd been given, and finally managed to complete Maugrim's Surge. Once I'd gotten either a cast of the spell, or a completion of the ether technique under my belt, it usually didn't take me too long to have a second one, and once I had two, a third took even less time, then it was pretty solidly easy for me.

"Kirke's surge, is it?" Fable asked when he entered to find me practicing with the well-shaped glass ether device. I paused, then shook my head.

"Maugrim's surge. Is Kirke's surge a different technique?"

"Ah, no, that makes sense. Maugrim was from Hydref, and Kirke was from… Well, never mind. Regardless, there are a thousand different variations on ether restoration surges like that. Let's see it, then?"

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I nodded and placed my finger on the device, then channeled ether within. An instant later, I completed the pattern, and it lit up green. I looked up to see Fable smiling in his kindly, old man way, and shaking his head.

"Not what I meant, but that's on me for not being clearer. I meant for you to actually practice it. Those training devices are fantastic, they make learning ether manipulation much safer than when I was first going at it, but they have smaller, and much more diminishing, returns when compared to actually practicing within the spirit."

I was about to protest that I was just waiting for class, where professor Silverbark would be able to watch me and make sure I didn't injure myself, when Fable held up his hand.

"No, I understand why you'd want to wait. But I'm here, and I'm more than capable of casting spiritual healing magic if you mess it up. Go ahead! Give it a go."

I nodded and closed my eyes, then reached for my connection to Etherius. I formed a shell of ether, which I sent racing down the connection. Unlike when I'd practiced via device, I could feel the raw, chaotic energy of the infinite rushing through that shell, permeating it and filling it up. I hauled the power up into my ether pool, and felt it rush in, restoring the magic I'd spent on casting my spells and practicing. At first, the chaotic, raw magic struggled to settle down and merge with my ether, but the longer it was separated from Etherius, the calmer it became, and after a few seconds, I could no longer tell where one began and the other ended. I opened my eyes to see Fable giving a soft, restrained clap, like the kind people gave at operas.

"Well done. You'll want to avoid over-use – too much of the raw power of Etherius can damage your spirit – but it should help you quite a bit. Now, here's a tip you might not have realized in class: you don't have to use it for ether restoration."

"What do you mean?" I asked, frowning slightly at him.

"The raw power of Etherius is useful for more than just restoring a bit of ether to your pool. It's undiluted sparks of the infinite that your spirit regulates to transform into your own power. For you, as someone with a bloodline, you should be able to send it down the channel and restore your fire, as long as you do it before it settles in to match what you've pulled it into. And, when you combine your pools together into one, its effect should be greater than it seems, as it will match both the fire and the ether, despite being fused, so long as you take care to leave them… Layered, shall we say."

"Hold on, what do you mean layered? It's a merging, they can't be layered."

"Can't they? A cake is still a cake, even when it has layers. Sandstone is merged together sand and sediment, and it has layers. Consider carefully what you want your baseline to be when you merge them together. Sometimes nature demands things swing one way or the other, especially with bloodlines and divinities, but this is a case where you get to choose."

"Can you be a little less cryptic?" I grumbled, and Fable opened his mouth, closed it again, then gave me a contemplative look before he finally answered.

"I could, but I won't. I haven't studied the Dreki bloodline in-depth, nor is bloodline magic my area of specialty. If I tell you exactly how you should merge your magic together, I might improve things, but I also run a very real risk of making things go worse. Trust yourself. You're a bright young man. Just don't push yourself too hard for the sake of a drop of extra power."

I was tempted to grumble again, but it was honestly fair. I couldn't advise a songcaller on how to merge together wizardry and songcalling, even though I was a wizard. Any advice I gave might wind up causing them to severely curtail their songcalling abilities, or even backlash into their wizard ones. I didn't love lacking guidance, but I understood it. Instead, I changed the track of my questions, withdrawing the Kirtle's braid ether manipulation device and placing it on the counter.

"Can you check Kirtle's braid?"

At Fable's nod, I reached within myself and took hold of my ether. I lifted it from my pool and began to split it into threads. I quickly formed fifteen threads that I could in the device, but to my surprise, I found that to be far easier than I'd expected. I kept splitting, forming eighteen, then twenty-one, then twenty-four. I managed to get a twenty-fifth, and barely formed a twenty-sixth, but failed to form a twenty-seventh, so I dropped back down to twenty-four and began to weave the threads together in a braiding motion, then braided those braids, on and on. When I opened my eyes, I saw Fable raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"That's the first time you've done the technique?"

"Yes. Well, within my ether. I have a similar technique with my fire, but I didn't experience the same level of ease with the device," I said, then paused for a second and continued. "I guess that's kind of what you were saying about diminishing returns from using devices instead of practicing within the spirit, huh?"

"It wasn't the intended message, but it is applicable to this as well," Fable agreed. "But with braiding techniques like this, it's also largely a matter of self-improvement. There's not an endpoint, like there is with many techniques. You can have as many threads as your skill level provides. Just don't be satisfied and think you're already at the top."

"I won't," I said seriously, nodding along. We spent a little more time talking about the theory behind ether manipulation, before I clocked out and Fable took over. Most of the rest of the weekend passed by smoothly, with me continuing to chip away at all of my work. I even got to experiment with combining the levitation, windshield, and flyte spells together. When used as one cohesive whole, they allowed me to move incredibly fast, though admittedly, it was fairly taxing on my ether to maintain it for that long. Still, the speed was staggering. I moved fast enough that I thought that if I was able to maintain this speed, I'd be capable of easily outpacing even the supercharged artificed carriages that Salem and I had taken to Tall Trees.

Before long, though, Monday rolled around, and it was time for class again.

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