He lifted the stone and put his hand over it, ready to make the first mark, then set the stone aside. Rifling through the grass, he picked up a normal pebble instead. Let’s test engraving things with qi. That’s the absolute last step that I need to practice, and then we should be good to go.

Oz put his finger to the surface of the pebble and pushed qi into it. In his mind’s eye, he pictured the fey word for ‘take,’ one of the shorter words on the list. Qi flowed out of his hand and settled into the surface of the stone in the shape of the word, easily shaping into the organic forms of the fey letters.

Oh. I understand. Humans use runes, because runes are easy to carve manually, but fey use the fey language because it’s shaped the way qi wants to flow. Then, to carve the stone…

Oz pushed hard with his qi, imagining a chisel striking stone. A tiny flake of stone fell away, but almost no mark remained in the stone. He wrinkled his nose. No wonder. It really would be easier to carve runes by hand—

Unless I’m thinking of it wrong again.

Flow. Qi circulates and flows, like air or water. Air and water can carve stone. It takes years and years, but eventually, the stone gives way to the river’s flow. Chiseling at the stone, fighting it, that’s the human way. From everything I’ve seen of the fey method of handling qi, they’re all about flow, the shape of nature, the natural way of things.

Then, should I instead try it like this?

Hovering his hand over the stone, Oz circulated his qi over and over, forming the pattern of the fey word thousands of times in the space of a second. The qi ground into the stone. At one pass, nothing happened. Two, three, even ten or twenty, still no sign. But thousands of times later, the word began to take shape. Faint at first, but steadily growing darker, the fey word ‘take’ eroded its way into the stone.

Oz grinned. He pumped his free first. “Yeah!”

Linnea looked over. She raised her brow at him.

Oz waved his hand. Don’t worry about it, don’t worry.

He turned to the actual stone and pearl. Taking a deep breath, he checked the words one last time. I know how to do this. I’ve practiced everything. Let’s put it all together and make it happen.

Starting with the stone, from the shortest word to the longest, Oz inscribed the words in a circle around the circumference of the stone. With that done, he turned to the pearl. There, he hesitated yet again. Such a big pearl. It feels like a waste.

He shook his head. No. Precious materials make enchantments stronger and last longer. It’s good that I managed to find such a valuable thing.

How the hell I managed to reach into the frozen realm and grab a giant pearl, now, that’s a different question. A question for another day. For now, I’ll just be thankful that I received such a valuable item.

Putting his hand over the pearl, Oz inscribed the same words in the same order around its circumference. He held the pearl in one hand and the stone in the other, hesitated, then swapped which sat in which palm.

I should use the pearl for the me-part of the possession spell, and the stone for the Fflyn-part. I don’t know if I can reuse parts of this spell in the future for other possession spells, but for now, let’s assume I can. It might come in handy in the future.

He settled his core and took a deep breath, adjusting his qi into its smoothest circulation. Qi hitched a little at his wrist, where the poison sat, but aside from that, it spun efficiently. He followed the technique he’d seen in the manual and began to cast the spell. All around him, qi rose up. It swirled wildly around him, the now-familiar sensation of qi beyond his control tingling his fingertips. The qi built and built, whirling wildly, building far beyond the strength of all the flight spells combined. Oz held completely still, almost afraid to breathe, all his attention on circulating his qi evenly and maintaining the balance of the spell.

The air around him trembled. Magic stormed, thick and heavy. Strange lights danced around him, even more vivid in his strange eye. Flickering in blue, green, orange, white, yellow, and a thousand other colors, sheets of light flowed and spun. One light vanished, only for another to appear a dozen feet away. The sheets changed and morphed, growing horizontally and vertically. At the very edge of the mass of qi, they grew jagged, vicious and sharp, almost fanged. Colors flickered wildly that far out, scintillating through the entire rainbow and back again in the space of a blink.

Buffeted by the storm, Oz’s body trembled. It battered him left and right, the magic itself physically shaking him where he sat. He looked up at the wild mess of magic and swallowed, nervous, giving the still-untouched pearl and stone a look. It hasn’t even started to ground itself yet.

With a breath, he put aside his dread and lifted his chin, gazing off into the distance where Linnea practiced. Purple and green overlaid Linnea’s body. He turned his eyes to the silk bundle. Barely any light emanated from it, its qi fluctuations far weaker than Linnea’s.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

He squinted, focusing harder. Lights flickered around him, obscuring his vision. It all rushed together, crashing into itself, then parted, for one brief, shining moment.

Oz’s eyes widened. He focused, staring with all his might.

From the depths of the bundle, a faint light shone.

Gold! Fflyn’s qi signature is gold! Oz flicked the fingers of the hand that held the stone, intentionally disturbing the storming qi over his head. Out of the wild magic, glimmers of light appeared. Black. Green. Orange, in two shades, one dark and bursting with sparks, the other pure but thin. Purple. White. Gold.

Oz hooked his finger toward himself, calling the gold qi trace toward the stone. It slipped inside, swirling into the stone’s depths. At the same time, he inserted his own qi into the pearl, grounding the other half of the spell to himself. As he drew the personal qi inside, he likewise drew the spell downward, toward the enchantment mediums.

On one hand, fey magic and enchantment are naturally opposed: wild fey magic naturally rejects being chained down. On the other hand, fey magic and enchantment are uniquely suited for one another: fey magic requires mediums, and so does enchantment, Oz mused, as the magic vortex closed in on him. I wonder…

And then the storm was upon him, and there was no time for thinking.

Magic poured into him. It slammed into the stone and pearl. His arms trembled, the force pushing them down. The further his arms dropped, the more the spell raged. Oz bit his lip, cold sweat dripping down his back. Minutes passed, and still the spell raged. His shoulders ached ferociously, biceps struggling, arms slowly going numb, sagging further and further from the outstretched pose they’d started in. He gritted his teeth. Come on. Hold on. Just a little more!

A blast of magic rushed in. His right hand slipped, and the entire spell lurched. The storm swallowed him up, thrashing his body. Winds slashed his flesh. Lightning sizzled past, crackling with a terrifying boom. Bolts of qi pounded him like heavy rain or sleet, bearing down on his shoulders. His body absorbed them automatically. Struck by the riotous wild magic called forth by the fey spell, his core wobbled.

All the qi within him ran wild, out of his control. Oz shook uncontrollably, fighting the urge to brace himself against the ground. With effort, he kept his hands in the air, right hand still low, left one high, his right wrist pounding as if nails sunk home one inch at a time. His stomach lurched. The urge to vomit welled up, and he spat, but blood struck the ground instead.

Shit. If this falls apart, I’m dead.

Forcibly, Oz pushed his hand back to its starting pose. As his arm lifted, so did the spell. He pushed not only his hand, but the entire storm back into the sky, the resonance of the mediums restored. His arms burned, but he pushed it to the back of his mind. Go numb already. I’m not moving until this spell is done!

Oz took a deep breath. He watched the storm for a moment, ensuring it stabilized, then turned his attention inward. That qi I absorbed—I need to push it out! If I finish enchanting the mediums with that qi inside me, the rest of the qi will rush in, and this time, there’s no one to save me. I’ll die!

He swept his awareness through his qi passages, searching for the stormy qi inside him. His senses met his own qi, glowing a pale blue, and mixed in, hints of the rainbow-colored stormy qi. Looking at the two, Oz frowned.

Looking back on it, Madame Saoirse charged me with taking on the Universal Theory of Magic because I was colorless, and hadn’t taken on any color of qi. But now I’m mostly blue… wood-elemental, at a guess. I’m not the bright orange of Sachairi or Aisling, or the brilliant gold of Fflyn, or even Linnea’s purple-green, but I’m no longer colorless, either.

But if I take on qi, I have to take on qi with color. All qi has color. Even this wild stormy qi has color, even if the seven colors are mixed like this. It isn’t possible to remain colorless.

Is there some way to remove color later? Or have I already stepped off the path of the Universal Theory of Magic?

Oz shook his head. I can’t waste time worrying about some theory when my life is threatened in the real world, right now. If I’ve ruined the Universal Theory of Magic for myself, then I’ll do my best to refine the method and pass it on to the person who comes after me, after I create a far more stable foundation for them than the rickety one Madame Saoirse left behind for me!

Not that I’m abandoning it. It’s an intriguing idea. I’ll continue to study it and attempt to follow its path. It’s just that there’s no point obsessing over it. If I obsess over it now, and let it stop me from taking the first step into magehood, the consequences are simple: the library will be destroyed, and I will die.

With a breath, he attempted to expel the stormy qi, but it refused to move. Stubbornly, it sat within his passages. He dragged at it, pulling it along, but it ignored his calls, sitting stagnant instead.

Oz chewed his lip, terror chilling his heart. As his heart raced, the storming qi outside grew more vicious, the storm on the verge of breaking. He forced himself to stop panicking, steadying his heart. Okay. I can’t exude it like usual. Something else. There has to be another method!

His brow furrowed. Inspiration struck, and his eyes widened. Qi passages are tunnels. What if I clean them like a tunnel?

He gathered his qi, hardening a lump of it into a disk the diameter of his qi passages, then pushed it through his qi passages, using it to gather the stormy qi into his right wrist, totally filling the qi passage that had been corrupted with poison with the stormy qi. The concentrated stormy qi ripped at the corrupted passage, tearing open what had already been injured.

The second his qi passage ruptured, Oz pushed with all his might, exuding the stormy qi back out into the world. His qi leaked out after it, bleeding out with the stormy qi. He let it flow, waiting until the last bit of stormy qi left his body. The stormy qi moved like tar, sticky and thick, while his qi swam past it like water. For every drop of stormy qi, he bled an ounce of his own qi.

Come on. Come on! Oz pushed harder. His qi surged out, but so, too, did the stormy qi, dropping out in thick chunks. At last, the final piece of stormy qi fell out. He slammed the disk of hardened qi into the ruptured passage, closing off the gap.

Oz shivered, suddenly cold. Weakness flowed through him. His arms shook even past the numbness, his qi too low to hold on. Overhead, the storm quieted, but his weakness grew at the same pace. Looking up, he steeled himself, eyes narrowing.

It’s you or me. Who gives out first?

Come at me, storm! I’ll take this blow! I won’t die here!

As if it heard his voiceless taunts, the storm swirled, condensing into two bolts of qi. They twisted around in the air, then hurtled down, one piercing toward the stone, the other flying for the pearl. Oz held on, his eyes wide, teeth bared.

This is it! The final attack! If I can hold on, it’s all over!