The Ether twisted and churned as Damien pressed down on the mote, constricting it as he envisioned the sand growing in size. It reached the inside of his palm and floated there, unmoving. The boy picked up a grain of sand and placed it in his open hand.

Damien tried to urge the Ether into the grain of sand, but the energy was no longer responsive. In fact, it started to inch back towards his chest, reluctant to leave his body.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Henry said. “You’re forcing your will over the Ether. You don’t simply request it. You command it. Requests are made by weak fools with no control over their magic. If you don’t tell it exactly what to do, then your spells will be weak.”

Damien swallowed. He narrowed his eyes and focused harder on the grain of sand. The Ether inched back towards his palm. The boy tuned out Delph’s observant gaze and tried to do as Henry instructed.

“Not enough,” Henry said, his words dripping with disgust. “After all that desire to learn magic, you sit here and beg pathetically for the Ether to bend to your will. Command it! A coward can never become a mage. If this simple spell actually causes you difficulty, I might be better off returning to the void and finding a new host.”

Damien’s brow furrowed and he bared his teeth, slamming Henry back into the depths of his mind with a blast of mental energy. The lines of Ether around Damien warped. The boy’s shadow twisted on the ground behind him, but it was so slight that neither Sylph nor Delph noticed it.

The grain of sand bulged, pushing Damien’s fingers back as it ballooned outwards until it was the size of a small rock. It remained that way for a few more moments before snapping back to its original form and falling to the ground.

“Color me surprised,” Delph said, scratching the back of his head. “That was definitely the first time you cast that spell. It was clumsy and you wasted a good portion of the Ether. It would be quite difficult to fake that. You really did learn a cultivation method in a single day, didn’t you?”

It took Damien a moment to calm down enough to answer the professor. He suppressed the fury he felt at Henry’s words and nodded, forcing his face to return to a mask.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Damien said.

“Good. The enlarge spell isn’t much more complicated than releasing the Ether normally, so feel free to practice it in your free time,” Delph said, giving Damien a small nod. “The class will be meeting normally tomorrow, but you’ll receive information about that later. I expect you to continue practicing in the mornings. I’ll be in touch.”

He gave Sylph a small nod before wrapping his cloak around himself. It folded inwards and he vanished, leaving them alone in the arena.

“Is everything alright?” Sylph asked, pushing away from the wall with a weary yawn.

Damien realized his hands were still clenched. He relaxed them and nodded, reaching down and scooping up a small pile of sand.

“Yeah. I just got a bit distracted,” Damien said. His legs felt wobbly from all the running he’d done, but at least he didn’t have to drag Sylph back to the room over his back this time. “I’m going to get some breakfast before I put the rune circles on Mark and the Grays’ rooms, if you want to come.”

“Sure,” Sylph said. The two of them slowly walked out of the arena, both doing their best to look as if they weren’t one stiff breeze away from falling over. As they headed towards the mess hall, Damien reached out to the Ether surrounding them.

He ran his hand along the strands of energy like strings on a harp, syphoning it off and storing it within himself. Once he’d gotten eight motes of energy, he raised the hand holding the pile of sand and focused on it.

The Ether resisted his will again. Damien’s eyes narrowed and he wrapped mental energy around the mote, crushing it into submission and forcing it out into the sand as he focused on his desired result.

One of the grains transformed into a large rock. Immediately, Damien channeled another mote of Ether into it. The rock wavered, growing larger for an instant before it snapped back to its original form.

Damien continued testing the spell as they walked. Sylph watched him out of the corner of her eye.

“How are you still doing that?” Sylph finally asked.

Damien glanced up from the enlarged sand. It shrunk the moment his attention left it and he tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been casting a spell you just learned for nearly ten minutes straight,” Sylph said. “How can you still channel more Ether?”

“I’ve got no idea what you mean. I’m just getting more Ether from the lines.”

“And you aren’t getting tired?”

“Not really. Why would I be?”

Damien reached out, plucking a mote of Ether from the air as if to demonstrate his point. Sylph pursed her lips.

“That’s insane. I can barely manage to get enough Ether to cast fifteen spells in an hour, but you can just keep going. How is that fair?”

“I’m making a piece of sand get bigger. You teleport around and cut things with shadows,” Damien pointed out. “I think there might be a difference there.”

“Not in terms of Ether usage. My spells are more difficult than yours are, but that’s a matter of skill and experience, not power.”

“Well, maybe you need to cast more magic?” Damien offered. “My companion said magic is just like a muscle, so maybe you just have to train yours in a different way.”

“Like I haven’t tried that,” Sylph muttered. “But casting in a different way… Hm. I might have been lax in my training recently. Perhaps you might be right.”

Damien caused the grain of sand to expand again. Sylph’s eye twitched and she turned away to hide her jealous expression.