I felt like I was finally starting to understand just why I'd been warned so often that I was overloading my course schedule, and why all of my friends were taking fewer classes than I was. I was only halfway through the week, and I had six second circle spells that I needed to learn, two ether manipulation skills that I had to reach passing competence with, my continued work on the buckler ritual as well as the five names technique, and I wanted to get a bit more practice in with the transmutation-specific ether techniques so I didn't fail them on the midterm.

If all of those weren't enough, I also wanted to continue working with my affinity. While it was undeniable that there was a great deal of utility with just suffering and misfortune curses, sealing curses were a classic of faerie stories for a reason, and my affinity was a pathway to power that was entirely unique to me.

So, I worked that evening and throughout the night. I already didn't sleep as much as I should, so I was well used to a lack, but it had still been a long time since I'd pulled an all-nighter. If it weren't for the coffee cart in my room, I doubted I could have done it at all, and as the time came for me to change and go to work, I found myself cursing Wesley and his self-improvement affinity that let him cut down to only two hours of sleep a night.

Still, the results were worth it. While it was possible I could have knocked out one of the tasks by sitting and focusing on it, I had shifted from task to task whenever I hit a block in an attempt to make more overall progress. I was up to fifteen strands of ether on Kirtle's braid, as it was remarkably similar to some of the techniques that I'd learned for improving bloodline shaping control, and the skill had largely transferred over. While I hadn't completed Maugrim's surge, I'd made good progress. There wasn't really a true complete or incomplete for the transmutation technique, but I was able to complete the cycles without losing ether due to breaking them, even if each loop took me the better part of a minute to complete.

I'd also made progress in the spell department, and could now successfully cast lockpick and sharpen senses. Using the latter in conjunction with actively fueling my bloodline was borderline painful, and I didn't foresee myself ever doing it in a fight, though if I was ever required to eavesdrop on someone, it could come in handy. Lockpick was a nice spell, and fairly ether efficient, but most of the time I also could just use lockpicks and not waste the ether, so I wasn't sure how often it would come in handy.

I paid the price for the progress, however, as the instant I was done with my shift at the Charm and Fable, I crashed into my bed and passed out, only waking up to Salem knocking on my door for a study group with Yushin and Jackson.

With their tips, I was able to nail down the invisibility spell… mostly. I was more than capable of casting the spell on command, but the gentle molding of the blanket of light that it formed was difficult. I could get nearly completely invisible when standing still, but movement was well beyond me. It did a lot to put into perspective how much effort Yushin's branches of magic took, even if she was able to partially cheat thanks to her affinity magic.

Salem was able to pick up the spell easily enough once he got over the initial learning curve, as there were apparently some visualization techniques involved in divination that could be carried over. He thought he could probably work out a way to use his affinity to improve the light-based invisibility spell, but right now, the best he could manage was simply layering both magics at once, an expensive cost for minor gains.

To my chagrin, Jackson was able to mold the spell much faster than I was, and when moving, he was almost entirely invisible, with only a slight blurring around the eyes. Even Yushin admitted that the eyes were the hardest place to layer the magic, as it was easy to not pull the mesh in tight enough, leaving them a blurry visual, but also easy to pull too tightly, which would cause the caster's vision to warp or even cut off entirely.

We made okay progress on knockout ray as well. The internal half of the spell was similar to sleep, which we'd all learned in our first year, and Salem was plenty capable of helping us with his psychic affinity like how professor Caeruleum did with abjuration magic. He even learned how to use his affinity to supercharge the spell, expanding the amount of power the spell could take in a far more efficient manner than layering the spell. Jackson was also able to help in a less magical sense, particularly with the pronunciation of some of the words of power common in obliteration magic that the rest of us were less familiar with, and all of us picked up the spell without too much trouble, though Yushin had the worst time of it.

When it came time to the lockpick spell, I helped everyone out the best I could, and finally felt a bit of pride in my skills returning. I'd been so thoroughly trounced when it came to learning the last two spells that I'd started to feel a bit of doubt creep in, but seeing all three of my friends struggle to master the ether shaping of the spell form was an odd sort of satisfying. That felt rather nasty of me to admit, though, so I crushed the emotion down and focused on helping them.

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Salem was the first one to learn how to cast the spell, followed by Jackson, then Yushin, but the order was almost directly reversed when it came to learning to actually use the magic. Yushin had a bit of experience in picking locks, though not as much as I did, and once she'd mastered how to actually pull off the ether manipulation parts, she'd surged from the worst at the spell to almost as skilled as I was. Neither Salem or Jackson had ever practiced picking locks, but Jackson was surprisingly skilled at picking up the basics, while Salem struggled to interpret the tactile feedback of the magic. When Yushin had pointed out that he should be the best at getting mental feedback from spellcraft, he'd just grumbled that the responses from all of his other spells was entirely mental, not the quasi-physical sensations of lockpick.

Before I passed out for the second time, I headed out to continue the buckler ritual. With that done, I came back inside and cast the mage tools ritual, then set about unleashing more of the power contained within my wand and staff, to middling success. The core of my wand, the foo lion's whisker, had plenty more magic to give, but it was heavily tuned to replacing the words and gestures of protective spells. I was able to add some of my new magic into the wand, but I didn't have the defensive power at which it excelled.

The wand's focus, the eight-phase moonstone, had more power to give as well. It was rated for fourth circle mages, and I was a third circle mage who could stretch to cast a pair of fourth circle spells, though with all of my work, I was getting close to crossing the barrier for real. I unlocked the full power of the wand, which was a weight on my spirit, but it wasn't unmanageable, and it should reduce as I grew.

It was the body material where things started to go awry. The wood that made up the shaft of the wand was only rated for third circle, and low third circle at that, meaning it had nothing more to give. That wasn't the worst, given that wands already had only a weak ability to expand a caster's ether pool, but the material was still falling behind the potential power I could let it express, and there was no sense in intentionally having something weaker than I could use.

A similar, yet different, story played out with my staff. While my wand's core had plenty of growth yet to give, the hydra horn that had gone into my staff was in the middle of third circle, and couldn't take on any more spells. Staves weren't meant for fast casting, so it wasn't horrible, but still meant I wasn't reaching the maximum potential I could handle.

The dappled-radiant hawthorne wood that Charm and Fable had gifted me as my holiday bonus was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't sure if it was a matter of affinity, the connection I had to the store and its proprietors letting me draw more from the wood, or if I'd just held back too much at first, but the amount of extra ether that the full weight of the fourth circle component added to my pool was shockingly large.

The slowstrength opal, on the other hand, which significantly strengthened the focusing ability of the staff in exchange for further slowing casting times, was fairly mediocre. Unleashing a third component rated for fourth circle mages brought the strain on my spirit to enough that I knew there was no way I'd be able to use my staff and wand at the same time, but I didn't usually do that anyways. The problem should clear up as I grew, and the power would keep me well suited for the rest of the school year.

As I completed the rituals, however, I found myself contemplating. I'd nearly reached the maximum potential for all the components except for the foo lion's whisker, meaning that I'd need to replace them next year, when classes began delving more seriously into fifth circle spellcraft.

When the time came, I'd be delving with one of my friends into the crystal caverns of the school, which should let me replace one of the focusing components, maybe two if we could handle both fifth and sixth circle. But for now, my focusing components were in a good spot.

The body and core components were harder to replace. The school was covered in magical creatures, plants, and phenomena, which should have made it easy, but the dryad grove had made it clear I wasn't welcome back unless I was undergoing the trial for the grovemother's fruit. Fair, but it made the first impulse for the body components – wood – untenable.

I did have an affinity for the water, not in a magical affinity sense, but just in a personality sense. Would it be possible to trade with one of the naiads for a core component? That seemed plausible, and if I could trade with one strong enough to provide a fourth or fifth circle component, then it could potentially be used to replace the hydra horn.

That still left the problem of the shambling wood making up my wand's body.

If I liquidated my bonds, I could purchase two fifth circle components, which could be a serious upgrade, but it felt like a waste. There had to be something I could do to find better materials without spending an inordinate amount of money. If I learned the process body spell and cast it on a demon, I could potentially harvest demonic components and use them.

A wand made of bone or horn wasn't exactly pleasant, but if it worked, it worked. Metal and crystal were also semi-common as bodies for wands. Was there anywhere I could get my hands on those?

I couldn't think of anything for metal, but the faeries in the castle seemed fond of glass and wood. Glass wasn't crystal, but it might be usable as a body, and wood definitely was.

My last thought before I passed out for a second time that day was resolving to ask professor Toadweather about potentially sourcing a body component for my wand.

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