Damien awoke to hues of gray. Faint lines of Ether hung before his eyes, but they were off. Instead of gold, there was ash and soot. They shot off at jagged angles, traveling without direction or purpose.

He blinked and the vision vanished, replaced with his normal room. Sitting up, Damien rubbed his forehead with a frown. Some time during the previous night, he’d been moved to his normal bed.

Shuffling from the training rooms gave Sylph’s presence away. Damien swung his legs out of the bed and threw his coat on before heading over to find Sylph.

Instead of her typical seated meditation, Sylph was engrossed in a mesmerizing dance. The twin scythes on her back arced with her every movement, weaving together with blades that flashed from her legs and arms.

As she leapt and spun around the room, Damien realized that her eyes were closed. He stood silently in the corridor, keeping enough distance to make sure he didn’t bother her.

After a few more minutes, she came to a stop, opening her eyes as she caught her breath.

“That’s new,” Damien said.

“Just some forms I’ve been working on with Delph,” Sylph said, wiping her forehead with the back of a hand. “But you’ve gone and gotten stronger again, haven’t you?”

“You could call it that. I’m not sure it’s the way I would have wanted to get stronger, but it happened nonetheless. It was better than the alternative, anyway.”

“You don’t have any more sudden bursts of improvement planned, do you?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Good. Every time I start getting close to thinking I have a chance of catching up with you, something happens,” Sylph grumbled. “I’d like to feel useful again.”

“What do you mean?” Damien exclaimed. “You were practically fighting Second on your own!”

“Only because we got lucky. It won’t be that easy next time.”

“We’ll be stronger next time.”

“I just hope we’re strong enough,” Sylph said. ‘With all the infighting going on at the schools, I’m not confident any of us will be able to stand up against Second. Everything might implode before he even gets around to attacking.”

“We’ll deal with that as it comes,” Damien said, setting his jaw. “We just need to focus on improving at the things that we can actually change.”

“So… more training?”

“More training,” Damien said with a grin. “I’ll be swinging by the library again to pick up some new books to study. I’ve got a few ideas for new spells that should be really useful, but I need to double check them so I don’t blow someone up on accident.”

“Just on purpose, huh?”

“You got it,” Damien said. They both grinned and headed back into the main room. Sylph went to the shower while Damien stepped outside and sat down at the edge of the plateau.

The sun was just starting to rise over the school below them, casting it in brilliant shades of orange and red. A faint breeze danced in the air, rustling trees ever so slightly.

Damien’s vision flickered again, turning gray and twisted. Dark lines of Ether sprung out from his chest, zigzagging across the sky and over the horizon. Somebody stepped out from their room behind him and his sight returned to normal.

“You lived,” Mark said, thrusting a sword into the ground and leaning on its pommel. His words were, as usual, a statement of fact rather than an observation. He didn’t even sound particularly surprised.

“Apparently so,” Damien agreed. “Forsad didn’t quite turn out the way I was expecting it would, but I’m glad to be alive. It was pretty close for a while.”

“I heard you tackled some monster through a portal,” Mark said. “Did you kill it?”

“No. It got away, lucky for me. I probably would have died if it didn’t.”

“Good. Everyone’s really worked up about that thing, so it means its powerful. I want to fight it.”

“I thought as much,” Damien said, not sure if he should laugh or sigh. “But you’ve got quite a way to go if you want to stand much of a chance against him. Second isn’t like any of the other Corruption. He’s on a completely different level, and I think he’s still yet to truly go all out. If you can’t beat the professors in a fight, you won’t even stand a chance against him.”

“What about you and Sylph?” Mark asked. “You held your own.”

“Mostly because Sylph was able to deal with him. The way she did it is up to her to disclose, it isn’t my secret to reveal.”

“Then I’ll just get stronger than both of you,” Mark said with a shrug. ‘Then I’ll be able to fight him.”

“I mean… technically,” Damien admitted, chuckling. “By that logic, all we have to do is get stronger than Second and we can win.”

“Yes.”

“You know, fair enough. That’s a pretty good way of looking at things.”

“Only if you can actually back it up,” Nolan said. Damien and Mark turned as the noble boy emerged from his own cave along with Reena. Deep bags hung below his eyes and it struck Damien that the boy was considerably thinner than he had been before Forsad.

“You look like shit,” Mark informed Nolan.

“Thank you,” Nolan said dryly. “I’ve been busy.”

“Not with what you should have been,” Reena said, cocking an eyebrow.

Nolan just snorted. “That’s no longer my responsibility. You deal with it.”

“You certainly look rather tired,” Damien said, somewhat more diplomatically. “I’m sure Sylph will tell you once she gets out here, but thank you for helping with Derrod. He was out for blood.”

“I did what I could, but I wish it could have been more,” Nolan said, his lips thinning. “I don’t know why I thought the Queen’s right hand man would be more removed from the political game, but I was clearly wrong. He’s as bad as the rest of them. Sorry.”

“No offense taken,” Damien said. “He’s an asshole, to put it nicely.”

“I’d still like to fight him,” Mark put in.

“We know,” everyone chorused, then broke into laughter.

“It’s funny,” Nolan said once they’d stopped. “I don’t think I’ve ever been more exhausted, but I’ve never felt more free either.”

“That’s just because you dumped all your responsibility on me,” Reena said, crossing her arms.

“I didn’t dump anything,” Nolan replied. “You wanted the job and I stepped down. That means you got it.”

“What happened?” Damien asked, raising an eyebrow. “Is this about House Gray?”

“I talked to my father and convinced him that I would not be the appropriate heir,” Nolan replied with a grin. “Getting replaced as Yui’s consort did a lot to help. He didn’t want someone that the Queen didn’t approve of. It worked perfectly, Damien.”

“Too perfectly,” Reena said with a grimace. “I had no idea how much damn work being the main heir was. You can’t tell me that father was making you do all of this while we were at Blackmist.”

“I told you the last time you asked and I’ll tell you again,” Nolan replied with a shrug. “I did everything you’re doing now and more. You wanted this.”

Reena groaned. “Well, at least I get the inheritance.”

“Assuming he ever dies,” Nolan smirked. “He might live forever, just out of spite.”

“Is he strong?” Mark asked.

Nolan and Reena both pierced him with a flat stare.

“You’re not going to fight our dad,” Nolan said. “Give the thought up.”

“That didn’t answer the question.”

“Nor will we,” Reena said, crossing her arms. “Go find someone else to punch.”

Mark glanced at Damien.

“Maybe in a little,” Damien allowed. “I need to work on some new spells right now. I’m just waiting for Sylph before we head off.”

Right on cue, the stone door swung open and Sylph stepped into the morning sun, squeezing the last of the water out from her hair and tying it up into a bun. She raised an eyebrow at the small crowd.

“Were we planning something?”

“Good to see you out again,” Mark said. “Want to spar?”

“Later,” Sylph said, hiding a laugh. “I’m pretty sure I heard Damien say that we were heading to the library.”

“It was worth a shot,” Mark said with a sigh. “I guess I’ll go find Elania.”

“She’s still here?” Damien asked, blinking. “Didn’t she go back to Goldsilk? The Forsad expedition is over.”

“A few students elected to remain as part of a transfer program,” Nolan explained. “Elania’s friends headed back, but she stayed here. Reva remained as well, while the others all left.”

“Quinlan included?” Damien asked. They hadn’t managed to finish her training for runes, but she’d gotten a fair amount. He hoped she hadn’t done anything rash in the last month.

“She was one of the first to leave,” Nolan replied. “I guess Mountain Hall really doesn’t let their students mess around much.”

“Evidently not,” Damien said with a frown. “Well, we’ll catch you all around. Maybe dinner?”

“Sounds good to me,” Nolan said. Mark nodded in agreement.

“I’ve got a meeting with some duke,” Reena said with a miserable sigh. “Some other time.”

Damien nodded half-heartedly. He and Sylph bid everyone farewell and set off down the mountain for the library.

“Who would have seen that one coming,” Henry said, sprouting from his shadow and rising to float beside Damien’s head. “Nolan actually gave up on becoming the heir of the Gray house. Never would have pegged him for the type on the day we met.”

“People change,” Damien said. “And, in his case, I think it was for the better.”

“He was instrumental at keeping Derrod off my back, if what Delph told me is true,” Sylph said. “I probably owe him something as thanks.”

“I think he’s more than happy to not have to marry Yui,” Henry said with a cackle.

Damien rolled his eyes. They reached the library a few minutes later and he headed down the aisles, making a beeline for where he knew the section on Space magic to be. Once he got there, he pulled down several familiar books and flipped through them.

He nodded to himself and scanned the other titles, picking a few that looked interesting before forming everything into a stack.

“That’s a lot of books,” Sylph observed.

“I don’t want to make a bunch of trips,” Damien replied. “And I need to be really careful with this spell. I think it could be dangerous.”

“What is it?”

“You know how this works,” Damien said, the corner of his lips quirking up in amusement. “You aren’t getting that for free.”

“Bah,” Sylph said, blowing a strand of hair that had escaped her bun away from her eyes. “If you take too long figuring it out, we’re going to have a sparring match.”

“I suspect we’ll have that anyway.”

“We will, but I’ll try a lot harder.”

“Fair enough,” Damien said with a laugh, collecting his pile and staggering back toward the front desk. “Did you need anything here?”

“Nah. I’m focusing on my… special talents more than Dark or Wind magic right now,” Sylph replied. “Human showed me a few tricks since you left, but I still don’t have the Ether to do much there. On the other hand, my other abilities don’t need Ether.”

“They also burn your energy at an incredibly fast rate, if I’m not mistaken,” Damien said. “Unless something changed there too since last time?”

“No,” Sylph admitted. “It still does. But I’ve got more energy than I’ve got Ether, and I can extend how long I can last if I eat high energy foods. It’s still my best bet by far.”

“Not arguing there,” Damien said. He set the stack of books down so the librarian could inspect them. “I’m really curious to see what you’ve learned. A month of training with Delph… that had to be something.”

“Oh, it was,” Sylph said, suppressing a shudder. “I didn’t realize he could get worse, but he absolutely can.”

Damien gathered his books and the two headed out once more. They returned to their rooms and broke off, Sylph claiming the first training room to practice while Damien entered the second to lay out the foundations of his new spell.

Henry watched with a careful eye as Damien set most of the books aside, choosing a few in particular to reference as he started to sketch on the floor.

“Another teleportation spell?” Henry asked. “Why? You want something with longer range?”

“Eventually,” Damien replied, finishing a rune with his stick of chalk and rocking back to inspect his work. “But not yet.”

He started drawing another rune circle, then paused and pressed his lips together. The runes wouldn’t mesh properly in the way he’d set them up. He rubbed the chalk away with the side of his hand and redrew a portion.

“Interesting,” Henry said, forming a nose and picking it with a tentacle. “I see what you’re going for.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me if I’m going in the right direction?”

“Not a chance,” Henry replied with a cackle. “Back to work, kiddo. You’ll need to train that little smooth brain of yours if you want to stand a chance against Second. I’ll just make sure to really double check this one before you go anywhere with it, or you might end up splitting someone’s head off their shoulders prematurely.”

“Why does that imply that there’s a proper time to remove someone’s head from their shoulders?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”

Damien grunted and returned to his work. Hours slipped by as he went from book to book, referencing rune designs and creating his own when he couldn’t find a useful reference. By the end of the day, he had a series of five interconnected rune circles. Not a single one of them worked.

“Well, this is a pile of garbage,” Henry said.

“It’s not done.”

“I’d hope not,” Henry said. “But why does it look like you’re about to stop?”

“I’m running into the end of my rune knowledge,” Damien replied. “I only learned the advanced stuff, not the crazy runework that some of these books are using. Even if its for spells, they’re still runes. Most mages would just copy what the researchers made, not develop their own spells at this level.”

“You aren’t most mages. Get to it.”

“That’s what I’m doing,” Damien said, rolling his eyes. “If I was to try to link these circles as they are, I’d probably end up killing myself. But, if I use them one by one, I think their effects should be safe enough. I want to test each individual one and see where I’ve gone wrong.”

Henry’s form rippled, his tentacles expanding downward as he shed his blobby appearance for his humanoid one. He knelt beside the runes, inspecting them for a few minutes. “There’s an error here that will swap your head with your hand if you cast it. Check again.”

Damien grimaced and went back over his work. About an hour later, he finally discovered the issue – a single, repeated rune that he’d somehow completely missed the first few passes. After removing it and redrawing the circle, Henry gave him the okay to start messing with the magic.

He drew the first circle in the air, but he already knew what to expect from this one. A black circle sprung open at his fingertip, burning with magic for a few seconds before fading away.

“Like Devour, but worse,” Henry observed. “Lovely.”

“I can do without your snark,” Damien said, casting the second spell. A puff of purple magic shot from his fingertips. It dissipated promptly afterword, doing absolutely nothing.

“Magical farts,” Henry continued. “Incredible.”

Damien rolled his eyes and grabbed a rock with telekinesis, flinging it at Henry. His companion cackled, splitting in two and allowing the projectile to fly harmlessly past.

“You’re bored,” Damien said. “What happened to Quinlan’s goats?”

“She took them with her when she went back to Mountain Hall,” Henry said dejectedly. “And there aren’t any other goats in the immediate area. It’s horrible.”

“Really?” Damien asked, pausing for a moment. “That’s a surprise. I guess she got a little attached to them. We should probably check on her at some point, huh? I’m a bit concerned about whatever she wanted to learn runes for.”

“Focus on yourself for now,” Henry suggested. “I’ll let you alone for a little and go check how Sylph is doing. Don’t do anything stupid.”