It was small, very small, but it did grow.

  I could feel the absurd rush of power flowing in, but my fire was so dense and potent that the intense flow was forced to compress itself to match me. I suspected that if I’d had a bloodline with a more normal density, that it would have worked a lot like Summers’ inversion, and expanded my power more.

  Even still, this was more growth than I got out of an entire day’s worth of training with the normal method of spewing fire out.

  I grabbed my grimoire and began excitedly jotting down notes while I waited for my spirit to recover, including some of my questions: why had the bloodline spellcraft ritual reacted when I’d done this? Could this technique be done by someone without an ether pool, or was it reliant on the ritual changing the shape of my spirit? Why did a bloodline require me to reach into myself, rather than into Etherius? If it was entirely reliant on my own internal power, then why had my connection to Etherius tied itself into a knot? Was my hypothesis about a normal bloodline’s density correct, or was that just a random instinct? And most pressingly of all, could I use other techniques, like Xander’s massage? Oh, and how did this interact with the normal strain the inversion caused?

  I paused. I could test that one on my own, actually.

  I reached into my ether pool and tried to start the inversion, only for my spirit to buck and rebel against me. I let it go, and then jotted that down as well. Even though I could only use an inversion on my ether pool or on my bloodline, this was still phenomenal progress.

  It supported the idea of what Shé Rui had said, though. If strain on my spirit applied across all sources of power, then it was natural that two was the normal limit for the average person to be able to actively use and practice with. If I also had to use some sort of life enforcement cycling technique that put strain on me, on top of my bloodline and spellcraft, I’d struggle to be able to make any advancement at all.

  Though… that did raise some interesting possibilities on its own. Could someone intentionally learn the basics of as many types of power as possible? Even if they were only a rank beginner in all of them, would the sum of all those parts be greater than the whole, or would they be a chaotic mess of different abilities?

  It seemed like it should be possible, but I didn’t know nearly enough about all the different types of magic in the world to truly say one way or the other.

  I shook off the thought process. Theories about intersecting and overlapping magical powers were great and fine, but as professor Silverbark had pointed out, it was easy construct wild hypothetical situations and ideas, but they weren’t the reality that we lived in.

  I had a bloodline, I had an ether pool, and I’d undergone a ritual that connected the two. There was an entire course on bloodlines, which meant I couldn’t be the first person in history to ever discover a technique like this. Besides, some bloodlines directly intersected with the ether pool, even without rituals like I’d used. I just hadn’t really encountered them.

  A thought popped into my head, and I felt like throwing my book at the wall. Both professor Caeruleum and professor Toadweather had bloodlines. I’d noticed the angelus magic flowing through Caeruleum, and Toadweather was quite literally a creature from Etherius. If anyone knew, it would be them.

  I was tempted to go barge back into the party, but while professor Toadweather had been happy to play along as part of coursework, it was late now. Plus, there were rumors and myths about those who joined in faerie parties after dark, and they rarely ended well for the humans.

  Would professor Caeruleum still be in their office? Probably not, but I had to check. I grabbed my bag and scrambled through it until I pulled out the syllabus, then scanned it until I spotted their office. Their office hours were on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I worked. Good, that should be able to serve as an excuse if they were in.

  I leapt out of my bed, grabbing my pouches of components and tying them on my belt, then dashed out into the common area. Wesley was sitting there, his ether flowing into six different ether manipulation devices at once, though I noted that none of them were the device for layering spells. He barely even eyed me as I walked in, but the moment I got to the door, it was flung open.

  On the other side of the door, Salem stood, panting. He looked disheveled, his glowing green eyes leaking black light at the edges, and his silver piercings were glowing faintly with the same strange, black light.

  “Salem, are you–”

  “Room,” he growled. His voice had an actual growl in it, not just low undertones. As he stepped forwards, I caught the scent rolling off of him.

  Salem had always smelled strange. I’d chalked that up to him growing up in Hydref, where faeries were everywhere, and their bloodline magic leaked into everything. It would explain things.

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  Now, though, he smelled… bestial and angry. His scent roiled with darkness and death, a being made of shadow and bone, a creeping hunger and hate that would end me.

  And it was strong. Every bit as dense as mine or Gerhard’s, but far larger. This bloodline was stronger than Shé Rui, and maybe even stronger than Gerhard. Not quite as strong as members of the first or second generation, but close enough that it caused me to take a step back.

  He raced across the room, leaping over the couch in a surge of strength, and threw open his door to reveal the mist that would transport him to the other side.

  Salem’s body started to shudder, and his shirt exploded off of him. Though I couldn’t say I would be upset about the view under more normal circumstances, this wasn’t a particularly fun instance. His back was covered in black tattoos of wings, which began to writhe and twist as they shaped into three dimensional shapes. There was a soft plink as his jewelry, bent, burnt, and broken, hit the stone floor and he doubled over.

  I reached within me and seized my fire, then drew on it. I raced to Salem and shoved him through the wall of mist, stepping through myself.

  The inside of Salem’s room was similar to mine, with a bed, bathroom, and even a painting of all roughly the same size. Salem had put up some trinkets out, stuff I didn’t have, but that wasn’t the main difference.

  Salem had an extra room, one that looked uncomfortably like a jail cell. The bars were made of silver and etched with runes, clearly meant to contain this monstrous transformation.

  I was mostly confused. I’d met werewolves before, and they could usually contain their transformations. Even if Salem wasn't able to control himself, I had never met a werewolf with strength that could hold a candle to my dragon blood. But at the same age, Salem dwarfed me in quantity, and matched me in quality.

  Salem’s body warped further, his arms melting into the wings, and I launched myself across the room, throwing open the door to the jail cell, then whipping around to grab him.

  Salem – or the beast that had been Salem – exploded across the room to meet me. It resembled a raven, but it was grotesquely overgrown, easily twice as large as an adult human male, its claws leaking black energy that made me think of graveyards, and eyes full of the same hunger and hate I’d smelled when Salem had entered the room.

  I threw myself aside from the talon strike, grabbing for its leg and throwing it back. I’d matched Gerhard for a moment, I just needed to throw this overgrown raven into the jail cell.

  Its wings spread back, and the entire room was drenched in shadow so thick that even I could barely see through it. I layered my dragonfire through my body and punched out where I expected it would rush me. My fist hit flesh and the raven let out a screech that was so deep and resonant that it was more like the thunderous call of a dragon.

  Then the light in the room returned, and the bird melted through the door. I burst after it, but the thing was fast, too fast. It lashed out with spears of darkness that coursed through the common room, and Wesley barely had an instant to react. Even for all his endless practice, he couldn’t throw a shield up in time, and the shadow ripped through his stomach, leaving a horrifying wound. I turned and slammed my fist into Jackson’s door.

  The thick wooden door exploded into splinters under my blow, and Jackson came barreling through an instant later, his eyes glowing golden with the power of his divine light. It raced from his hands, and Wesley’s body began knitting back together while circles of white and gold fire rushed around the overgrown were-raven. Jackson began calling out, and his voice sounded like two people speaking in unison.

  “And the light shone round about them, and the–”

  Jackson – or maybe something else using his body – couldn’t complete the prayer as the raven ripped through the flames, shadows smothering them. It slashed out with its deadly talons, going for Jackson’s throat. I gripped my bloodline and squeezed, compacting it even further, and moved.

  I was in between Jackson and the bird, and I’d caught the bird’s attack by the talons. They burned with darkness, but my own hands burned with flame, and I was stronger. I crushed the bird’s talons with raw strength.

  Then my bloodline ran dry. I’d compressed it so much that I’d burnt every bit of it, just doing that.

  And it was for nothing.

  The were-raven healed in a second, but when I stepped forwards and raised my hand to begin a spell, it turned and fled. I cursed and spun to Jackson, who was shaken, but whole. One of his eyes was glowing white, while the other was the same sparkling normal eye.

  “Can you heal Wesley? He’s a prick, but I don’t want him to die.”

  “We can,” Jackson and whatever was inside of him said in unison.

  “I’m getting help,” I said, then turned and sprinted down the hall. The raven had begun flying outside, so I manifested Orla, who was glowing with blue divine power of her own.

  “We’re splitting up and finding people. Professors, if you can, but protect and heal who you can if not,” I told her, speaking the bloodline tongue of celestials. She let out a bark of agreement and rushed away, her wings flaring out and glowing with blue light.

  Then I began drawing on my ether pool and casting spells. I summoned three packs of celestial rats, then two gadhars, then eyed my remaining pool of ether.

  I debated casting peacecharm, but the powerful spell only worked with peaceful intentions, and I doubted that wanting to hunt down and lock something in a cage would count.

  No, arcane armor was the right choice. And I’d just learned a technique too. No time like the present for a little stress testing, right?

  I shaped the spell array for arcane armor with my ether, then began waving my hands and muttering the incantation. As I did, I formed a second array of arcane armor, and pushed the two together.

  The technique merged flawlessly, and the armor formed around me. It wasn’t quite as potent as when I put dragonfire into the spell, but it was still much stronger than normal. More than just adding the two spells would have suggested, but not quite enough to be multiplicative.

  I commanded the rat swarms to go seek help, then focused on the two gadhars I’d summoned, calling them into the fight with me.

  Then I sprinted outside, clapping as loud as I could to draw the attention of the were-raven.

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