I spent that Thursday after work buying a gallons of water and some dust, then casting Water to Wine on the jugs, before finally dropping them off at the Naiad's pond. When I did, Stream grinned and pointed into the pool.

"Where else would it be? You've got to get past our attempts to drown you, then swim wayyyy down."

"Your attempts to drown me?" I asked, suddenly growing a touch more concerned.

"Oh, bah. You're going to be fine. We're bound to stop us from killing students. The moment you start panicking and pulling away, you'd be spat out and have your lungs cleaned out."

I nodded to her, debating if it would be worth attempting it now, using the orb of air spell, before deciding against it. It was possible that a simple first circle spell would be enough to allow me to get down there, but I suspected the command over water that the naiads had would be enough to pop the bubble of conjured fresh air and drown me. It was best to just do this once I'd gone through the ritual, not before.

I said a few more pleasantries with Stream before I left to experiment.

The ward tome imbuement was entirely too useful for me to throw away, and unlike with the buckler ritual, I wouldn't risk losing out on a month of effort if dragonfire messed up the spell somehow. I'd still experiment with a normal book first, since I did not want to risk my grimoire, then we'd see about using some components from work on my grimoire.

I spent a bit of time drawing out the spell in my small adjoining ritual room, then set out the ether crystal, feathers, spider silk, the marble, and placed a book in the center. I raised my hand and began to incant. As I did, I slipped a touch of dragonfire into the spell.

As it had with some of my other rituals or imbuements, all this did was accelerate the speed of the imbuement. The full spell took almost an hour, but each drop of flame funneled in sped it further. With that disappointing, but unexpected, revelation, I stopped the spell, intentionally letting the ether burn away to nothing. I removed the cheap paperback book from the center, and placed my grimoire down, then started again.

As soon as I finished, my throat was slightly sore, and the components vanished in a flash, leaving my grimoire sitting there. I cast ethersight, and sure enough, I could see an aura of abjuration magic around the book.

With that done, I went to spend the evening working on the haste spell. It was complex in a manner that I'd never seen before, and many of the discussions around temporal flow in the texts we were told to read went from reasonable and practical into complex mathematics within two pages. Salem spent the evening working on a particularly tricky spell that could mimic the effects of an aura of dragonfear, and I offered a few pointers, while a morose Jackson moped about not being able to spend any time with Yushin and attempted to study the naiad's kiss ritual.

The following morning, I split off to go to my abjuration class, only to find professor Caeruleum waiting outside to check people's work. They weren't usually the kind of person to do that, so I was a touch surprised to see them. As I approached, they raised a felt ball and tossed it at me. I slid out of the way on instinct, and they let out a small chuff of amusement.

"Not quite what I was hoping for, but dodging is a useful reflex. I was hoping to test your buckler."

"Oh," I said, bending down and tossing the felt back to them. They caught it and tossed it at me again, and this time I spun my buckler to take the hit, then caught the ball out of the air and tossed it back again.

"Good job. How's progress on your second circle spells?"

"Used the shield from arrows spell to help burn down three pirate ships, and put the ward on the tome," I said. "I've also cast windshield in conjunction with levitation and flyte."

"Ah, that old combination? Yes, it gets you flying quite fast, but it's a drain on the ether."

"It is," I agreed. We had a moment where we stood there awkwardly before they gestured in, and I went to go take my seat. After a bit, professor Caeruleum headed in and the chalk began to float into the air behind them.

"Welceome everyone, and congratulations to everyone who has successfully completed the buckler ritual! For those of you who didn't, don't fret. Come talk to me in my office hours, and we can get a bit of work done on your shield spell. Now! For the rest of the semester, we're going to be working on some third circle spells."

They flicked their hand out to the first spell on the board, even as the chalk continued to write out the next few, and I examined it. It was nearly identical to energy barrier, but third circle, with new components. Those components looked static, though, unlike the highly modular ones of the first two circles.

"Mass energy barrier," professor Caeruleum explained. "You tune up its internals in virtually exactly the same way as the ordinary spell, but the extra portion allows it to be extended to protect up to four other people. It's an excellent ether saver for protecting a group."

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That was apparently all they had to say on the topic, because they moved onto a spell that looked vaguely like spellglyph, but was less… dramatic. The spell was heavily streamlined and none of the sections that stored another spell were inside. Instead, it had a few runes for force, but I wasn't sure what it was. Professor Caeruleum's face grew serious as they started to talk about the second spell.

"Protective rune is a useful one, but also a dangerous one. It's legal to know without registering, but its use is heavily regulated. It's the kind of spell that's easy to get tossed in jail for manslaughter for. Consider this my warning: do NOT mess around with this spell for fun."

"What does it actually do, though?" someone asked.

"The spell creates a glowing rune on a door, window, chest, or a few other things. If anyone who doesn't have an ether signature that matches the person who cast the spell approaches, the rune detonates. The force it releases is just shy of a fireball going off. For some of you, that may not seem that impressive. You have powerful energy barriers and greater arcane armor. Let me remind you that force would be enough to instantly kill most non-magical people."

"That seems stupidly dangeroussss," hissed a serpentfolk student a year ahead of me said. "Why would that be legal?"

"As I said, the spell is heavily regulated. Putting it anywhere that's deemed to be a risk of going off on an innocent person is at best manslaughter, and at worst can get you charged for murder. I know that I'm not normally one for quizzes and tests. I feel like most of the time, they hinder the actual learning environment with undue stress. This is one I'm serious about."

They waved a hand and a sheet of papers appeared in front of everyone.

"This is the legal code, as well as some text to break down the more dense legal terminology. Each of you needs to memorize it. You'll have a test on it soon, and it will also be on the final. Read it as if your freedom depends on it, because it does. Now, while we're on the topic, we're going to learn another spell that can be dangerous as our third spell: elemental cloak. This falls into the same standard use as most battle spells, but it's worth reminding you, as people get in trouble for casting battle spells in public areas more than you'd think."

"Trying to regulate battle spells is a bunch of bull–" the half-giant in the class started to say, and professor Caeruleum muttered one word, flicking their hand out. The half giant continued to speak, but no sound came out of their mouth. That seemed to get them angrier, and they tried to shout, to no avail.

"I don't care if you think you should be allowed to fireball in public or not," professor Caeruleum said. "These are Cendel's current laws, and we're going to respect them. If you have an issue with that, take legal courses and appeal at the next convening of the court."

The half-giant leapt down from the stands, looming over the much smaller professor, and snarled. Caeruleum simply clapped, the scent of angelic magic blending with potent ether surging through the room. The massive man vanished, leaving a floating white orb covered in spinning spellforms in his place.

"Please remember that attempting to threaten a teacher is against school policy," professor Caeruleum said mildly, waving their hand and making the orb vanish. "Now, elemental cloak. The spell creates a spinning vortex with tongues of fire, lines of frost crystals, or forking lightning bolts around you. You are protected from the spell, but it can harm your allies, so be careful of that. You're also not immune to the incidental effects."

They paused as the room kept murmuring and whispering about the spell they'd cast, and after a few moments, when things had calmed down, they repeated themselves. One student asked about the incidental effects, and they explained.

"Take the fire variation of the cloak. It can and will start fires. If you walk into a coal mine with the cloak around you, you're protected from the cloak of flame, but you won't stop the explosion of all the coal dust lighting up. If you electrify a metal ladder while you try and climb it, you're likely to end up getting shocked."

They paused, then made a so-so gesture.

"Acutally, I'm not sure on that last one. I've seen people use armor and a sword with the lightning cloak, as the ether shell protects them, and I've seen people use it in the rain and in a puddle. On the other hand, I've seen people shock themselves by leaping into the ocean with it active. It's possible it could go either way. My advice is to use the spell in combat, and deactivate it when it's not needed."

They gestured to the fourth and final spell, which I knew from the syllabus to be dreamshield. It was an oddly constructed spell, very clearly abjuration, but also clearly tapping into powers and effects that I didn't really understand. I knew it was an imbued spell as well, but I couldn't tell just from looking at it.

"Dreamshield," the professor said. "Cast normally, the spell prevents you from having any dreams for the next ten hours. A useful spell for those of you who have nightmares, and a perfect defense against certain types of demons and other magical creatures that use dreams, like hags."

"Demons?" I asked. Nightmare hags weren't exactly news to me, but I'd never heard of demons that attacked in dreams.

"Dream demons can infiltrate your mind and haunt them with nightmares, eventually manifesting into the real world and sucking the life out of you," professor Caeruleum explained. "They're fortunately rare, and usually need to be summoned by someone to enter this world, but when they do enter, they can be deadly assassins."

I shuddered and thanked whatever deity might be listening that the Divine King hadn't used dream demons to go after my friends and me.

"Now, the interesting thing about this spell is that it is also an imbued spell. It can be cast on a pillow, sleeping bag, blanket, or mattress. Some upscale hotels use it to subtly prevent bad dreams. It's a fairly simple ritual to create it, but it does need almost five hundred silver worth of moonstone, amethyst, rose quartz, hematite, and lepidolite. It also needs a handful of dried lavender stalks, chamomile, and skullcap."

They paused as if trying to think of anything else that needed to be talked about before gesturing to us.

"Read the legal texts at least once, and after that if you want to take a space on a mat to practice mass energy barrier, elemental cloak, or dreamshield, you're welcome to."

I picked up the papers and started to read.

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