Selling the meat and rendered hydra fat netted us a decent amount of coin, at least in my opinion, though Yushin seemed dissatisfied with the amount. She had expected to see thousands of silver for the meat alone, rather than the roughly two hundred silver that we each received. That seemed a bit overambitious to me, but watching her barter down to the last copper for the overall price had been amusing at least. And on that Saturday, after a shift at the Charm and Fable, I was able to visit the student market with Salem.

"An' ya've never been here? Really?" Salem asked, arching one of his silver studded eyebrows at me.

"I never saw the need to, honestly," I said, shaking my head. "I assumed that it was mostly for people who are taking crafting courses. I don't know how to turn a bundle of herbs and some troll urine into a potion of regeneration, and never had anything like that to sell, at least not that I'd also be comfortable selling."

Salem snickered at my joke, and then shook his head.

"You're na' wrong, exactly. Tha's what we'll be doin' for sure, sellin' tah the artificers an' alchemists an' such. But it's not jus' a place for them to buy, it's also a place for them to sell wit-out needin' a license."

"Is that… safe?" I asked, arching an eyebrow. I might have a higher constitution than the average person, but I didn't want to get killed by a half-baked potion attempt before I even got the chance to fight Gerhard for my freedom.

"They're only allowed tah sell what they've already had a professor check over a' leas' three times before," Salem responded with a shrug. "We're here."

As we stepped through the door, I felt the now familiar sensation of space warping around me as we appeared in a massive courtyard. Beneath our feet were cobblestones, the path stretching out and breaking off into different sections, separated by rows of green space and old, gnarled trees, dappled with old mans beard, the rough, spiny yet soft moss that grew all over trees in Summerbone and most of White Sands. I hadn't seen any since I'd come here, and thought the climate was probably too cold for it, but the air here was pleasantly warm, far more so than any other part of Ocean Spires.

Scattered throughout the green spaces were booths, set up by various students. Several of them were displaying large versions of different crests, not unlike the hunter crest that had been rewarded to us for killing the hydra. In fact, I even spotted one stall with that exact crest proudly displayed, an older student who looked to be going for a postgraduate degree lazing back in a chair, surrounded by piles of assorted hides and jars.

Elsewhere there were booths decorated in a thousand other ways. I spotted one with clusters of brightly colored vials, each giving off a different scent, from licorice to blood to sweetened apples to vomit. There was a stall with clothing in a half dozen different cuts, each style marked with glowing purple runes that had been artfully blended into the style to augment, rather than detract. A table with different glass trinkets like the training tools that we used in Fundamental Magecraft sat beside a stall selling assorted magical wands, staves, and amulets. I assumed that they were pieces of artifice, rather than the mage tools, given that several of them bore glowing runes, and they all smelled overwhelmingly of leather, ink, and sweat.

The entire place was an amazing cacophony of scents, sounds, and sights, and it took me a few moments to take it all in. I was pulled back into myself when Salem gently touched my hand, causing me to jolt.

"Sorry," I said sheepishly, rubbing at my arms. "It's a lot."

"No worries," Salem replied. "Let's go see if we can trade these hydra bits, aye?"

We wandered around the market for a while, stopping at various stalls and bartering around. The alchemists were more than happy to buy a load of the blood in exchange for three completed healing potions apiece. We stopped by one of the component shops in order to trade the bones and horns from the hydra for something a little more useful. The horn, with its tendency to boost affliction spells, went for a decent price, but given I'd already used most of it in my staff, I didn't have a lot left over to sell.

The corrosive power of the bones made them a harder sale. In the end, I walked away with enough third circle shambling shrubbery wood to upgrade my wand, as well as a couple of silver coins. The wood wasn't the highest quality component, but it was still more ether dense than my current red oak, so I considered it an improvement.

The real treasure of the day came from visiting one of the artificer stands. The woman who worked there had bright pink hair and a fairly powerful faerie bloodline, enough that I thought she might have been a changeling, along with deep mauve eyes. When she saw the hydra skin and teeth we had yet to unload, she stretched and popped her neck, then nodded.

"Alright," she said, smacking her lips as she did so. "I assume you both want a self-replenishing poison dagger made out of the bones? We got a wave of this the last two years from the fools who take the Applied Mage Combat course."

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"Aye, we do," Salem said, not dignifying the fool remark. "What'd'ya wan' for it?"

She glanced over the teeth we had collected. Each head had contained two large fangs that actually stored the venom, so between Salem and I, we had roughly enough material for four daggers.

"Tell you what," she said thoughtfully. "Gimme the other two fangs, and enough of the scales to make leather wraps for all four, and I'll mount, shape, and add the magic to restore its toxin. You'll get a pair of free daggers, and I'll get a pair to sell. But the real thing I want is the rest of those scales."

She drummed her fingers on the table, leaning forwards.

"If I purchase some forceflush, and lay the right runes in, I could probably make it into a pair of scale shirts that are empowered with a self-repairing force effect akin to arcane armor. But you all will want both shirts, right?"

I could smell the greed rolling off of her at that, and understood where she'd come from. She'd opened with a reasonable deal to lure us in, maybe even one she'd take a slight loss on, then used our lack of product against us to make the bigger sale. That was fine – I'd just flip it on her.

"I don't need it," I said, waving a hand. "Salem, you can have one, if we wanted to do the trade, or–"

"Wait–" she started to object, but I pushed through, steamrolling.

"Or we can see about working out a deal for you to buy the scales off us if you don't want it."

"Sure, I could use it," Salem said. "Unlike you, I canne just cast uber-armor cuz of my magic."

I resisted the urge to laugh at his name for the fire enhanced arcane armor, and instead locked eyes with the artificer. I plastered a too-wide smile on my face while I spoke to her.

"That's fine, then! Two daggers for each of us, and one set of defensive mail."

"Fine, fine," she said, looking away. "I'll have it done by the time the new semester starts."

We passed over the materials, and she shook each of our hands. For a moment, I was worried her faerie bloodline was going to engage, but no, she was just working here like any other person. I made sure to remember her name and stall, though, just in case she tried anything funny.

Salem and I wandered around the market for a while longer, before I eventually got overwhelmed by the smells of all the potions, and had to duck out.

The winter break turned into a routine after that. There were no classes, no home that was worth returning to, and nothing to do but study spellcraft. As such, I spent a good bit of time working at the Charm and Fable. The pay was well worth it to me, especially since when there weren't any customers or work to be done, I was able to look over my grimoire or other spell guides that I brought in.

With Yushin staying in the city to be under the protection of Shé Rui, Jackson staying in the dorms due to the temple of Effervesce in White Sands being a war zone, and Salem staying due to the fact that reaching Hydref and returning in two weeks was all but impossible without high circle teleportation magic, the other thing that ate into my time was delving in the library.

Each of us were confident enough in delving through for cantrips and first circle spells alone, and as a group, we were able to navigate the traps and monsters to delve deep enough to start finding second circle spells without risking it. I personally thought we could have pushed for third circle as a group, but Jackson didn't want to risk it, at least not until he had expanded his offensive arsenal beyond a single element.

Though there were third circle spells waiting for us on the table during our first entry into the library on the break. Just like Anna of Endless Fields had suggested, the library seemed to have acknowledged our growth through the semester, and had chosen to reward us.

The spells on the table were fairly obviously matched to each person. The first spell guide, vital sacrifice, was perfect for Jackson. The spell sacrificed a portion of the user's vital energy to heal someone else, amplifying the sacrificed energy twofold. Jackson could heal himself with his boon, letting him get far more out of it at a lower risk than most.

There was an invisibility spell obviously meant for Yushin, since unlike with the basic second circle version, which broke completely if the person strained the spell through fast movement, spellcasting, or attacking, this one simply shut off for those actions and re-activated after it was stable enough to do so. It wasn't the same as a greater invisibility spell, whose weave was tough enough to keep a person invisible no matter what, but it was the next best thing, and with her affinity, she might be able to stretch it beyond its limits.

The next spell was for Salem, and it was slightly disconcerting. I wasn't sure if the library had misjudged him, if I'd misjudged him, or if it was just being prejudiced against Salem's powerset, but it gave him a copy of the spying coin spell. It imbued a piece of currency with magic that allowed the caster to hear through the coin for the next twenty four hours.

Finally, there was a copy of the rearrange organs ritual spell. That had been on the list of spells that professor Gemheart had required me to learn, and looking it over, it was a lot less horrifying than I had expected it to be. The spell did rearrange the user's internal organs, just as the name suggested, but the way it did so was by warping space around the organs to make their positioning change and exist slightly outside the bounds of normal reality and into Etherius. The relocation and warping provided a variety of benefits, like making the user less likely to get a concussion, having better bloodflow, and making it harder to hit a vital area like the heart.

Unfortunately for me, it was a fairly expensive spell, requiring ether crystal, herbs, the heart of a space-warping carp fish, the pharynx of a phase spider, and the liver of a baobhan sith. I hadn't even heard of space warping fish before, so I wasn't able to accurately estimate the cost of the ritual until the next time I went into the Charm and Fable, where I learned all of the components would cost close to four thousand silver. Far too rich for my blood – hah – especially having just bought the moonstone for my wand.

During some of the time off between working and delving, I set up an appointment with professor Gemheart for after the break. I'd hoped to be able to visit him sooner, but he was visiting his home in the Purple Mountains region, and thus wasn't available during the winter break.

That was fine. It just gave me more time to spend with my friends, delving into the library, working, studying, preparing for my duel with Gerhard, or doing some combination of all of them.

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