Seth examined the crutch Duvessa handed him. It was completely clear and smooth. There were no apparent carvings on it at all. There had to be some somewhere, Seth knew. How else would they be able to put spells on an item? But however it was done, Seth couldn't see it.

Feeling self-conscious, Seth glanced around at the others. Duvessa was back next to Blaise, and Blaise was asking her if she could find clams. Booth and Owen were chatting to each other, too. Selendrith was watching Seth with clinical curiosity while Isaac stared at him suspiciously.

Seth tucked the crutch inside his shirt collar where it would be out of sight and put his amulet in the bowl. He didn't want Isaac to see it, even though he'd probably seen it before. Seth didn't want any questions about it.

He wasn't sure if he had established an attunement to the mana in the amulet. He'd used it, and Saben had gone over instructions for it when he first got it, but Seth couldn't remember everything that they did. He mostly remembered being amazed at such a powerful gift and surprised at what Saben had done with the enormous leopard's horns.

Not sure what would happen, he tried to feel for the mana in the amulet through the crutch. The crutch worked almost exactly like the wussticks and it made using and channeling mana easier. In this case, the crutch was facilitating the connection from Seth to the amulet. But that connection wasn't exclusive.

Seth's own mana was still present, and perhaps by habit, the first and easiest to reach for.

Using mana had been uncomfortable to the point of pain since the mountain. The more he used his talent, the more it hurt. Structured spells relied less on his talent and so hurt less.

He explored the feeling a little more and tried to sort out what was going on. His talent hurt. Whatever the berries had done, his talent felt wounded by it and was more unruly than usual. It wasn't as bad as it had been, but the mana provided by the talent was still achy.

But with the crutch there, he could feel the other source of mana, one that didn't hurt to use. He could pull on that mana, but then… nothing. He made the motions and said the incant, but couldn't move the mana into the spell.

It was as if Seth's talent normally cast spells, and not Seth himself. But that was a ridiculous thought, because his talent was himself.

Well, talents could be stolen. So maybe the talents were something that could cast spells that people could call on. Just like you could do things with your hand, and your hand could be severed.

So then, a vault was like a second hand. The off hand, that was never quite as skilled as the dominant hand.

One of the things that Professor Laur often repeated in the Structured Magic class was the need for clarity of thought and intent. Maybe Seth just wasn't being clear enough with what he wanted for the 'off hand' mana to function?

Seth thought about that for a bit. When writing with an off hand, you had to think about each line as you drew a letter. With your main hand, you just had to think of the letter and your hand drew it. And spells were more complicated than simple letters. So if he needed to go through each little piece of the spell in order, wow. He'd need to know the spells way better than he did. He realized there was a lot of wiggle room in the accuracy of most of the spells he knew. That was probably why these were all cantrips. The only higher tier spell he knew was the Copy Spell, and even that was on the lower end of medium.

He decided to try the Breeze spell. It was simple, it was well aligned with his talent, and it was the first spell he'd ever learned. Saben had taught it to him when Seth first discovered his talent had manifested. Most of the students in the Wind Tower had learned it from scratch in under half an hour, compared to two weeks of study for the Copy spell.

Normally when he cast it, he'd just think about where he wanted the air to move to. He didn't normally think of where the air was coming from, or where it would go after. The time he'd tried to get fancy with moving the air, he'd been trying to use it to keep the rain off. But instead, he'd just been cycling wet air back at himself. That had been both painful and embarrassing.

Then he also needed to consider timing the gestures with the cadence of the words. A big part of casting spells was putting the mana into the gestures. In Seth's mind, casting cantrips was the same as writing a sigil in the air with mana and speaking a command. That was the way most people thought of spells, and how they were described in the cantrip book.

Saben had described casting as a song and dance of mana. It was sound and movement with purpose and cadence. He was always telling Seth to listen. While Seth understood, he never really got it.

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Professor Isolde often scolded students for tracing spell geometry in the wrong order even when they got the shape right. That got Seth thinking about the star charts he'd studied with his father. The stars were always named in order through a constellation. Seth traced the sigil for Breeze, imagining it as a constellation and hitting each star in order. That felt right. Okay, next piece. He traced through the spell, thinking star, syllable, star, syllable, star.

That wasn't quite right, but it felt close. Then he remembered intent. He needed to have the right intent at each spot in the spell. He practiced it again. It was too jerky to work that way. He practiced it slower until it felt smooth. Then he turned his attention back to the crutch and the amulet.

Seth reached out for the mana in the amulet. He could feel the crutch acting as an avenue for the mana to travel. He concentrated on the difference in avenues for mana in the crutch. He found reaching past his talent mana easy because it was so sensitive. He paid attention to how the crutch was connecting from the vault to the spell as he cast it.

The mana obeyed his call. Tiny, steady sips of mana at the points of the stars, flowing into the words and the next star, and becoming the shape of Seth's intent. It was the very thing he'd been fighting with his talent over since his power manifested.

And a soft whisper of air moved, ruffling Mau's fur and tousling Selendrith's hair.

"You did it?" Selendrith was incredulous. "Already?"

"How did you know that was from my vault?" Seth asked.

"Because the crutch prevents it from working the other way," Selendrith said. "Unless you were not using it?"

"No, I was. I think that's the only spell I can get to work. It's the only one I know well enough," Seth said.

"How did you do that?" Blaise demanded. "I've been practicing all week. I've spent hours on this, and you get it in what, ten minutes?"

"Here, try it again," Seth said and handed over the crutch.

"Show off. You're gonna try it without the crutch," Booth said. He was smirking.

Mau meowed at Blaise and tried to take the crutch.

"Oh, that's so cute!" Duvessa declared. "Little kitty wants to cast magic too!"

Mau growled. Seth knew that Mau didn't think she was being cute, and she was actually mad she wasn't being granted a turn.

"How were you able to get that to work?" Blaise demanded as she put her pendant in the crutch. She completely ignored the cat who was still growling.

"Your own mana is much easier to reach for, and the first thing you'll feel. You have to go past it to the vault, or like Selendrith says, it won't work. You also have to be really, really precise with the spell. Talents let you cast so sloppily. I think they help out even with structured magic, making all magic somewhat unstructured. If you try to cast sloppy it won't work," Seth explained. He described what it felt like to reach past his talent to the vault and then how to move through the spell a bit at a time.

"Talents do make casting easier," Selendrith said. "I told you form was important."

"You never explained how important," Blaise complained. "I thought I could just cast any spell I'd cast before the same way, because they've always worked before. I thought my hangup was only connecting to the pendant, not casting the spell entirely."

If Seth's talent hadn't been so sensitive, he might not have noticed the difference either.

Selendrith just shrugged. "I explained it to you how it was explained to me."

Seth gave them all a lesson on casting Breeze, and they both got a chance to practice with the crutch. Blaise was finally successful in using the crutch, but only Seth was able to cast without it. Duvessa still struggled with the crutch. At Seth's request, Mau did get a turn to her delight. She didn't cast any spells, to no one's surprise. But she was happy anyway.

"Since we're wrapping up now," Isaac said, "I wanted to talk to you, Duvessa."

"I've already heard this conversation," Booth said. "Catch you later."

"Don't forget your roommate was looking for you," Isaac said. "You leaving too, Seth?"

That was a very unsubtle hint. "Sure. I'll head out with Booth. You're done Mau, come on." Seth handed the crutch back to Selendrith. "Thank you for the lesson."

"You took to it really easily," Selendrith said.

"Just lucky, I think," Seth said. There were a lot of things he didn't want to mention in front of Isaac. The others were friends with him, but Seth didn't feel that comfortable. Maybe if things settled down between Seth and Arnold, things would be friendlier for him with Isaac too.

Seth followed Booth towards the dorms. He wondered for a moment if Mau was going to follow him or stay with the others, but she trotted after him. Apparently, she wasn't worried about what Isaac had to say, or she expected Duvessa to just tell them later.

The boys chatted a bit on their way back to their rooms. Seth was hoping to get to use the desk for a bit before Isaac returned. Booth said he was going right to bed because he was tired and didn't get good sleep.

Sitting on the top stair at the landing to Booth's floor was Booth's roommate.

"Man. I've been looking for you all over, and waiting for ages." The boy stood up and backed out of the way so Booth could pass.

"You didn't look that hard. I've been on campus all day," Booth said.

"I was supposed to tell you that you've got a message. In the room. You should go alone."

Seth didn't like how shifty the boy looked. "What kind of message?"

The boy looked at Seth. "The kind that means trouble."