Alex returned to experimenting.

He cast the Summon Small Water Elemental spell carefully, slowing down where the spell array touched the elemental plane of water. The strange power always emerged there, right at that part of the magic circuit, eager to assemble the circuitry and reach across the planes.

In some ways, it was as if that part of the circuit had developed a mind of its own and was trying to put itselftogether.

So, maybe he should just let it.

Every time he cast the spell, he cut it off right before it finished to preserve mana and avoid having a room completely overrun by an army of water elementals. Things probably wouldn’t go well if that happened.

Alex recorded his observations, noting how long it took to cast the spell, how much of the magic circuit the strange power tried to finish, and any abnormalities with it.

Once he finished his notes—and made sure nothing undesirable had happened—he jumped into the spell again, deciding to release increasing degrees of control to the strange power.

It…was difficult, but not necessarily surprising.

Just the thought of giving up control, especially to the unknown, was sending surges of anxiety through him; it went against his every instinct. Alex had learned to cope with the Mark interfering with his spells by using meditation techniques and control. The techniques calmed his mind, letting him reject negative memories the Mark brought up to bind him to the past.

But that was only part of the problem the Mark posed.

Because of it, he’d had to study every single spell down to the finest detail of each magic circuit until he knew them better than his own name. If he wanted to guide himself through its interference and gain control over spells, following that routine had been essential. Controlling details was key.

So, letting go, even just a little bit, could have meant a mana reversal or worse for Alex if the spell went wrong. At least, that’s how it had been, but now, it was looking like such a strict level of control was actually getting in his way.

He understood what he needed to do, but it still wouldn’t be easy giving control over to that strange power. He kept wavering between controlling the spell, and letting go. Alex exhaled, clearing his thoughts. He took a deep breath, let it out, then began the spell again. Like an arrow from a bow, memories of the first time he’d cast Summon Elemental Beetle slammed into his thoughts, courtesy of the Mark: it shoved images of that ‘failure’ in his face, replaying the event in seemingly self-satisfied detail. The imagery of the deep sea-devil he’d accidentally conjured surfaced, like the creature was right there, poised to spring on him. Instinctively, Alex went back to full control mode, fearing the spell would go wrong and summon something worse than the sea-devil. The Mark didn’t have to show him images of it tearing out his guts and drinking his soul: his imagination did that very well all by itself.

He stood, stretching his limbs, back, and neck, and clearing his mind.

“Let’s try this again.”

For this to work, the young wizard realised there had to be a compromise, one he’d be comfortable with: he’d keep control of the section of the magic circuit where he chose what was summoned. No soul-sucking demons for him today.

Feeling more settled, Alex sat down, re-focused his thoughts, took some deep breaths and slowly cast the spell, being aware of each part, gradually easing away from rigid control, allowing that strange power more freedom. As he allowed himself to relinquish control, what became clear was that whatever the power was, his connection to it seemed to have grown stronger the more he used spells that activated it. There was no way he would, or even could, have handed over so much control even a few months ago; their connection just felt stronger now. With every bit of control he released, he was casting faster and faster.

His excitement was threatening to explode, but Alex tamped it down, repeating the experiment over and over until his mana was close to running out. He finally ended the session covered in sweat, filled with elation, and with his stomach feeling like it was ready to start doing cartwheels. He was all smiles when he returned to his notetaking. Today, Alex had practised, experimented, replicated conditions, tried to change different variables to produce rigorous results. Professor Jules would be proud.

And so, he noted his final observations.

The power accelerates the section of any magic circuit I cast that seems to reach across planes or great distances. Concluded this from how it interacts with multiple summoning and teleportation spells. Confirmed with Summon Lesser Water Elemental: the power touched no other part of the spell array and caused no other changes.

Hypothesis: it’s less a power I direct, and more something…autonomic.

“Like breathing,” he said, as he continued writing.

Letting this power handle parts of summoning and teleportation spells seems to decrease my casting time by up to 30% with Summon Small Water Elemental. Will need to test other spells to see how generalizable this is.

Call Through Water should be next. Then Call Through Ice and other summoning spells will follow.

He rapidly tapped his pen, gathering his thoughts then abruptly stood. He stretched out both arms, turning them back and forth, then raised each leg and did the same. He pulled his shirt off—illusionary patch was still obscuring the Mark—and examined his torso, then felt his head and neck. Next, he tested his mana and began replenishing it before sitting back down to make another note:

No apparent ill-effects to mana or physical well-being.

Alex could barely resist the urge to whoop in triumph.

‘This is it. This is my path.’ He thought, a giant smile spread from his lips to his eyes.

If he used this power—which seemed to be a part of him—he could learn summoning spells a lot faster than other spells, and if he focused on learning summoning spells and any second-tier teleportation spells he might want to learn, he could not only expand his growing bank of spells, but also increase the size of his mana pool a lot faster.

Mana pools grew from use, allowing a wizard to incorporate higher-tier spells—each level had larger, inter-connected magic circuits—into their mana pool. A pool grew faster if a wizard varied spells that had large magic circuits. Alex had been casting plenty of spells up to now, but the variety had been limited since it took him so long to learn new ones.

So far, he was meeting the university’s expectations for the rate at which he was supposed to advance in spell tiers, but he couldn’t really exceed them like he had in alchemy. But, if he let the power handle portions of a summoning spell’s more complex magic circuit, he could start learning summoning spells so much faster than spells from other disciplines. He was almost salivating at the idea.

“So, I’ll learn a variety of summoning spells, use them to break through to third-tier, then catch up with my other spells. That’ll let me learn and cast more spells, which’ll make my mana pool grow faster. Maybe that means other types of spells might lag behind, but that’s what I’m making my wizard’s staff’s for.”

“I’ll need to really specialise my spellcasting,” he acknowledged to himself. “The downside is by the time I can cast fifth-tier summoning spells, I’ll still be on lower tier spells in other casting magics. But…that’s still a hell of a lot better than being stuck at the lower tiers for all my spells.” Alex suddenly realised something.

He’d been able to learn Summon Small Water Elemental in a day.

Sure, it had taken a lot of tries, but even so, it had happened much faster than it should have. Professor Mangal had allotted two weeks for the class to learn each Summon Small Elemental spell. And a lot of his classmates had been working on them, but no one had completed one so far.

“That’s strange. That’s so strange…” he muttered. “Is it that power? Is it giving me some kind of weird affinity for summoning magic?”

He couldn’t be sure.

“In any case…” He glanced at the timekeeper. “Maybe I can ask Baelin.”

He and the chancellor were due for another ‘summoning demons and interrogating them for information about Burn-Saw and Hannar-cim’ session. They’d only been able to meet twice so far, but that was understandable; as busy as Alex was, he definitely hadn’t had time, and Baelin’s schedule was something he couldn’t even begin to imagine.

“Maybe he’ll have some insights into all this,” Alex said, packing up while continuing to regenerate his mana. “C’mon, let’s go, Claygon.”

He was nearing his daily limit for how much mana he could regenerate, but that was okay. He just needed to demonstrate what he’d done once.

Baelin’s eyebrows rose as Bubbles appeared in Alex’s summoning circle. “How remarkable.”

Watching the little water elemental burble as it examined its surroundings, the chancellor ran his fingers through his beard-braids. “Well, well, well. Most interesting.”

“What do you think?” Alex asked, bringing out a potion to feed Bubbles. He was starting to see why Kybas enjoyed giving Harmless body-enhancement potions so much. The little water elemental sucked the potion in like a sponge.

“Well you were correct on one account: this is by far the fastest I have seen you cast a spell…aside from perhaps your forceball.” The chancellor watched as Bubbles absorbed the potion, burbling in delight. Baelin made a noise of disapproval. “You will spoil them if you keep that up, you know.”

“Sorry, what was that?” Alex asked, part way through feeding another potion to Bubbles.

Baelin stared at him before shaking his head, muttering something that Alex was sure had the word ‘children’ in it.

“Nevermind. You say you noted no changes or ill-effects to your body or mana?”

“No, none at all.”

“Good.” The chancellor leaned over, examining Alex like a healer. “And you never…felt any peculiar urges when you used this power? Or heard strange voices or felt that something was calling to you?”

“Nothing like that,” Alex said. “Why?”

“Hmmmm, sometimes such powers indicate outside influence…but you claim to have not felt anything out of the ordinary. Aaaaand…” He cast a spell over Alex, assessing him more thoroughly. “I detect no magic influencing you. Now, it is possible that someone could elude my senses, but they would have to be very subtle in their spellcraft. Let us see now…”

The chancellor’s eyes moved back and forth, seeming to scan images that Alex couldn’t see. While the young man waited, he finished spoiling Bubbles then let the little spirit return to the elemental plane of water.

At last, the chancellor’s goat-like eyes re-focused on the young wizard. “I think your strategy of taking advantage of this power is a sound one, as long as you monitor yourself frequently. Inform me if anything goes awry, of course, but if mortals cowered in fear of every mysterious power or energy they discovered, then wizards would not exist today.”

“Yeah,” Alex sighed in relief. “I’m glad you think so. Any guess what this…thing might be?”

“I would think that The Traveller is likely involved. Now, that could be more easily confirmed had I examined you before you were in direct contact with her power—I could have done a before and after comparison—but I can only work with what we have. Now, as to your plan to specialise in summoning: I believe that is also a good one. Ignoring such an advantage would be as foolish as a wizard with an elemental affinity ignoring their affinity: they would forgo an incredible amount of power by doing so.”

Alex thought of Selina, but didn’t bring her up.

“That said,” Baelin continued. “Do not make the mistake of over-specialization. Leave that to insects, not young wizards who bear my charm-pendant of apprenticeship. But as long as summoning and teleportation become a path to greater power and not your only source of greater power, then you should do well.”

“Right…” Alex said. “And…there’s another thing I found unusual. I learned the spell really fast, like in less than a day.”

“Indeed.”

“Do you think that was also because of this power?”

An amused smile crooked Baelin’s lips. “No, I do not think so. Not completely.”

“Then…what is it?”

“Instead of answering, I will ask you these questions: what is the source of ingenuity? From what does creative thinking arise? Why are new roads of knowledge paved at all? Let me put it another way.” Baelin nodded at the four-armed golem standing by the door. “Why did you decide to bet everything you had on building Claygon? What spurred you to do that?”

“Honestly?” Alex said. “I needed to have a way to defend myself in case the Ravener or another mana vampire attacked me. Early in first year I was pretty defenceless, so I kinda needed a bodyguard.”

“I see.” Baelin stood a little taller, the twinkle of amusement grew in his eyes. “Would you say you would have built Claygon had you not needed to defend yourself?”

Alex thought about it. “No…I probably wouldn’t have, actually, even if I’d gotten the dungeon core substance under different circumstances. Uh, no offence, Claygon. I kinda pushed to analyse it because I was worried about Thameland…and myself. If I didn’t have stuff hanging over me and I’d found out about its properties, I probably would’ve used it to make something else…or maybe just waited until a higher year before using it.”

“I see.” Baelin nodded. “So you analysed the dungeon core specifically out of a need, and built Claygon out of that same need. Due to those decisions, you sparked an expedition that might lead to a revolution of sorts. Now, analyse your successes today. You had a personal revolution. What might have occurred—aside from the help you received from that power—that would result in you having this breakthrough? What necessity and choices lead to this?”

Alex thought about casting the spell, his analysis of how the power had helped him, and his close attention to the magic circuitry.

A logical answer began to dawn on him. “Could it-”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

There was a tapping against one of the giant windows in Baelin’s office, startling Alex, and drawing his and Baelin’s attention.

A brass messenger construct hovered outside—shaped like a giant butterfly—and was using its wings to tap on the window.

“Ah, Professor Jules’ messenger construct.” The chancellor waved a hand and Alex felt a surge of teleportation magic.

The glass pane disappeared an instant later.

“Really?” Alex asked as the construct flew into Baelin’s office. “A butterfly?”

“Oh yes,” Baelin chuckled as the construct fluttered before him with a piece of parchment sealed to its legs. “She tries to make her potion garden butterfly friendly. Absolutely adores the creatures. It’s why she still uses this construct, despite having plenty of options for faster means of communication. It is an affection, so to speak.”

“I never would’ve expected that.”

“Ah, well the world is filled with surprises, is it not?”

He unfolded the piece of parchment, studying its contents. His eyebrows rose. “Case in point. It appears that on your next trip to your homeland, we will have guests in the encampment.”

“What kind of guests?” Alex asked.

“The heroic kind,” Baelin said.