Before I was ready, the tests that marked the end of first semester were here, and the chill of winter had set in. Winters in the Ocean Spires were warm and wet, though still slightly cooler than back in White Sands, where even the deepest winter only resulted in the kind of weather that still had people out and about in short sleeved tunics.

  With the coming of winter was the coming of midterms. The Citadel of Ether, unlike most colleges, had year-long classes that started in the autumn and ended in the spring, marking winter as a midterm, rather than just as the end of classes.

  I did well enough on my core class tests, which were mostly just a series of practical questions about economics, politics, math, and history. There were certainly some things that tripped me up, so I wasn’t the top mark of the class, but I had a good enough showing.

  Ethics class with professor Emir Blackflame went similarly, though I took a bit of pride in the fact that I actually scored higher than Wesley there. I knew that I had because Emir had written everyone’s grades on the blackboard, which wasn’t something I normally thought to be a good teaching tool, but it did give me a bit of satisfaction.

  The rest of my classes had their midterms broken up into two parts: written and practical examinations.

  The written portion of Fundamental Magecraft had been easy, as it was essentially just writing a review of the three ether manipulation techniques, the mage tool ritual, and the spells we had learned. We could describe what upgrades we had done to our tools since that class, so I wrote about the challenge of the crystal caverns I took part in for a better focusing component. I passed the test with flying colors.

  The written exam for Applied Mage Combat had been tactical in nature, discussing what we would do in different situations, working with assorted team members who had specific capabilities. Sometimes the test had given a lot of intel on the mission, sometimes a little, and sometimes it gave false intel that it only revealed during the next section, forcing us to write about how we responded to the false information. The entire thing was actually quite fun in my opinion, and I was satisfied with my solid A result.

  Introduction to Abjuration’s written final had been strange, and entirely unlike any class final I’d ever partaken in, or even heard of. We had been given a blank sheet of paper, and told to write what grade we thought we deserved, and why we thought that we did. Professor Caeruleum then responded to each of them, telling us what grade they thought we had earned, working with us to find what the midterm grade would be.

  I’d actually only put that I thought I deserved an eighty-five on the paper, but Caeruleum had pointed out that I was one of only three students across their two sessions of Introduction to Abjuration who had figured out the affinity use, and had been consistently applying it to my own learning to boost my understanding and abilities with the spells. I hadn’t fallen behind the deadlines for learning the spells, and had consistently pushed myself. They wanted me to have a ninety-eight, and we settled on a ninety-two, because I thought I could do better.

  The hardest written midterm by far, though, was for Conjuration One. Professor Toadweather’s penchant for breaking down the minutiae of spell diagrams, gestures, and incantations was on full display. We were given assorted spells that we had to identify the component parts of, paired spells that we were required to identify why they operated differently to summon a ball of goop versus summoning a river stone, and a section to fill in with information from our real world use of conjuration spells.

  That portion, at least, had been easy for me. Between Practical Mage Combat, fighting in the caverns, and the standoff against Salem’s beast form, I’d gotten plenty of chances to use summoning in real world applications.

  The practical parts of the exam had each taken a bit longer to schedule out, since each one involved a one on one meeting with the professors in order to test what we’d learned. Fundamental Magecraft had once again been a breeze, with me simply demonstrating the spells, showing off my wand and staff, and then performing each of the ether manipulation exercises. When I’d finished, though, professor Silverbark raised a hand.

  “I did give you one other ether manipulation practice tool,” he said. “You’ve already gotten near perfect marks, only stuttering once on your sleep spell incantation, so this is for bonus points. Have you learned it?”

  I nodded and quickly shaped the ether in my pool for a weirlight. With a single word, it flared to life.

  “A normal weirlight, just for reference,” I said, before quickly constructing the cantrip’s structure a second time, then a third. I pressed these two together, layering them as I did in the technique, and their overlap clicked into place. With another quick word of power, a blazing ball of blue light joined the first, this one much larger and brighter.

  “I’ve actually practiced it a fair bit,” I said. “I’m beginning to reach a point where the speed at which I recover blood is more of a limit to my ability to create spellglyphs than my ether pool. So I’ve been using the technique to fit more ether into the spell for a single casting of blood price.”

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  “Well done!” professor Silverbark exclaimed. “Very well done indeed. I’ll add five bonus points for going above and beyond the curriculum. And for whatever it is worth… Good luck.”

  I thanked him, then headed off to study. The next practical exam I had scheduled happened to be for abjuration magic the following morning, so I spent the rest of the day working on practicing my magic, creating my daily sheet of paper inscribed with a spellglyph, and reading up on some of the textual materials about alteration magic that I’d somewhat skipped out on, focusing on practical spellcraft like coinshot and telekinetic volley.

  The following morning, I arrived in professor Caeruleum’s office to see that they’d set up a humanoid dummy on the table between us. I glanced at it and arched an eyebrow.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Part of the testing,” they said cheerfully. “Why don’t we start out with showing off the first circle spells that we studied in class? You can place the sigil on the dummy.”

  I shrugged and began to smoothly make the gestures, shape the ether, and chant out the incantation. All of my abjuration spells had been built into my wand, but that wouldn’t show that I’d actually learned to cast the spell well. After all, I could have just barely mastered it enough to do the motions for the wand, rather than truly learning it.

  Luckily for me, that wasn’t the case. I’d actually practiced the spells, and so completed them with no issue. First I wove the ward of hidden conversation around us, then placed the allies’ sigil on the dummy, before layering myself in a peacecharm. When I finished, I lowered my hands and let the ether fade from all the spells.

  “Excellent,” they said, nodding to the dummy. “I’m going to attempt to use an enchantment spell to enthrall the mind of this very real person who is totally not wood, fabric, and ether testing dummy. Stop it from killing you.”

  They began to cast a spell of their own, and I began doing the same, casting the suppress enchantments spell over the artificial mind of the dummy. It must have been designed to allow the magic to take hold, because after a few moments, the head of the dummy glowed a familiar, bright green. Professor Caeruleum cut off their spell and nodded.

  “Great! Now I’m going to set the person to start bleeding out. Keep them alive until a healer can arrive.”

  They flicked a finger, and red light began to spill from the torso of the training dummy. It took me a moment to complete shielded vitality, since it was still entirely unlike any other spell I’d ever cast, but when I finished, the etheric bindings sank into the red light, attempting to chain the life force to the body. It tensed for several long seconds before finally snapping into place, and causing a green glow to emanate from the torso.

  “Well done,” they said. “Next, I’m going to hit it with the arcane missile spell. Try to dampen the impact as much as possible.

  As soon as the professor finished, I began to weave an energy barrier. Knowing that I was going to have to protect from arcane force was useful, and knowing the specific spell was even more useful. If I hadn’t known arcane missile, I’d have needed to give some guesswork at the structure from components of general force magic, but since I did, I was able to neatly slot the spell into the energy barrier spell, attuning it to only protect from those.

  A moment after the shimmering blue sphere appeared over the dummy, an arcane missile streaked in. The moment it crossed through the shell, its power was weakened by the energy barrier spell until it struck the dummy with only the force of a light slap.

  Even knowing the spell to calibrate the barrier to, energy barrier wasn’t a shield spell. It couldn’t stop a direct attack entirely. Its entire purpose was to reduce the amount of incoming energy that could get to a target.

  “Six for six, shall we see if you can manage a perfect score? A summoned demon is going to attempt to interfere with this poor man’s healing using their bloodline. Protect them.”

  I began casting planar protection, weaving it to defend against power from the demonic planes. I wasn’t sure which plane in particular, so the warding magic that flowed over the dummy wasn’t as precisely calibrated and powerful as it could have been, but it was enough. A tiny imp appeared on the table, smelling of soot, longpepper, and pain, and tried to suck away power from the training dummy, only to be blocked by the defenses.

  Planar protection spells, much like energy shield, were meant to supplement and improve defenses, not act as an outright block, but the imp was so weak it didn’t matter. I was pretty confident even a lone member of the rat swarm would be able to take it out. It vanished a moment later, and professor Caeruleum leaned forward.

  “Well done, and I do mean that. You might not have an abjuration affinity, but it’s frankly a little hard to tell sometimes.”

  I blushed slightly at the compliment, then thanked them. We made a bit of small talk, with them asking after Salem, before I was dismissed due to them having another student to test.

  I ate a quick lunch, which was much more enjoyable now that my grades had gone up considerably and I was given actual food rather than just porridge, and then headed to the pixie ballroom to meet professor Toadweather for my Conjuration One final. She buzzed excitedly as I entered.

  “Heyhey! Welcome in, welcome in! Though… Wait one second. You wanted to summon a second familiar, didn’t you?”

  I paused. I did have the materials, but given that the familiar compact spell was a ritual, I’d somewhat assumed it would just be skipped over in the practical. But if the professor was implying it wasn’t…

  “I do,” I said. “But they were back at my dorm.”

  “Oh,” professor Toadweather said, then clapped. “Run! Run! Begone! Go fetch them, and when you return, we can do your practical examination.”

  I nodded to her, before turning and sprinting out of the pixie castle, engaging my bloodline ever so slightly as I ran out of the forest, across the greens, and to the dorms. I shoved everything in my backpack as quickly as I could before turning and fleeing back to the ballroom for the practical.

  “You didn’t need to run all the way!” professor Toadweather said, laughing so hard that she was almost bent over.

  “You told me to!” I protested.

  “Yeah, but I’m just a professor! You’re not supposed to listen to everything I say!”

  That seemed ontologically incorrect to me, but I didn’t argue, letting her get enjoyment out of the moment. More peals of pixie laughter erupted through the ballroom before professor Toadweather finally managed to wipe away tears – literal tears.

  “Alright. Let’s begin.”

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