“Bloodline suppression,” I said, seated across from Yushin. I’d promised to teach her about it as a part of the original deal, but in the excitement of the Alastor incident, and with me repaying my debt, it had gotten away from us both.

At least until we started approaching Panath.

The Panath Hold was the metaphorical head and heart of Cendel, and thus, absurdly busy. It’s three regions – Ocean Spires, Grand Trees, and Tall Mesa – each housed vital aspects of Cendel’s home and culture.

Ocean Spires was obvious, as that was our destination, and home to the Citadel of Ether.

Grand Trees contained the royal court and palace of the high king, as well as the great oak where the king was elected each year by the representatives of each region.

Tall Mesa’s value was both a lot more, and a lot less, than its fellow hold regions, as it was the only spot in Cendel, and one of only four in the world, where ether crystal naturally grew.

All of which meant more and more ships on the water, and more and more days where we needed to enshroud ourselves, and thus, my freely given lesson to Yushin.

I think Jackson was under a different impression, given this wasn’t the first time we’d locked ourselves in Yushin’s room, and I was happy to let him believe whatever he wanted, if it meant he wasn’t suspicious of us.

“What is your bloodline like within your spirit?’ I asked. “I’ll go first. Mine is like a blazing bonfire, crackling with flames that I can reach out and channel in various ways. The coals at the bottom are where those abilities lie.”

Yushin frowned as she reached within.

“I would say mine is like… a pool.”

I looked at her and grinned.

“Sure that’s not just your ether pool?”

She rolled her eyes at me, but continued.

“It’s like a pool, with deep cracks at the bottom I can pour the p– pour the water through.”

Yushin wasn’t nearly as slick as she thought she was being, since given that she had admitted to a demonic serpent bloodline, and had started a word with a p, I’d have bet several silver on her saying poison. Technically, serpents had venom, but Ceyish was clearly Yushin’s second language, after Hua-Long, so I wasn’t sure if she’d have known that. Plus, depending on the serpent, it might also have poisonous flesh.

“Right,” I said. “So, how do you normally suppress it?”

“I just slow and still the… water, so it’s not forming a vortex.”

“Right,” I said. “That’s the basic suppression, no fancy tricks. For me, it’s snuffing out the fire. The more advanced technique… Feel my bloodline.

I reached within myself and let my control relax to a normal level. Yushin studied me, then nodded.

“I can feel it.”

The moment she spoke, I disjointed the fire from the coals, lifting it up into the air. Yushin let out a little gasp, and I grinned at her.

“What did you do?” she asked.

“I lifted the fire off the coals,” I said. “For you, I would imagine that it would be somewhat similar. Lift the water. But that’s not the end.”

I set the ball of flame rotating within my spirit, then froze it, then spun it the other way. I shaped it into a dragon, then a phoenix, then a sword, then an angelus. I split it into two balls of fire and set them spinning.

“Controlling your bloodline while it’s disjointed is much harder than normal bloodline manipulation training,” I told her. “Which in turn makes it excellent training.”

“This can’t be all, though,” Yushin said. “Disjointed, I can barely feel you, but when you took the tests, it wasn’t even a whisper. A normal veil is a one, this is a two, but you were at a… four. Five.”

In response, I compressed the ball of fire in my spirit from a roaring bonfire the size of a person, down to a white hot orb the size of an apple. Yushin’s eyes flicked, her nose took in a deep breath, and her tongue flickered out.

“I’m not sure how it will work with your… water…” I said. “But I just condensed my bloodline. I’ve got a lot less power to draw on, but the power I do have is much more effective.”

“Then why am I having such trouble feeling it?”

“A solarsteel dagger is much more effective than an entire room full of scrapped iron hinges, but it’s still easier to hide the dagger,” I said. “Also, there’s a benefit to doing disjointed compression. It trains your bloodline to adapt to this new level of concentration.”

I held up a hand.

“Don’t go thinking that just because you compress it down to a certain strength that it becomes the new default. It takes time and effort to adapt, and that concentrated power in turn becomes harder to concentrate again.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

It had certainly come as a shock to me. The tortoise-blood who’d taught me the technique hadn’t forewarned me, and I had been briefly convinced he had been trying to kill me.

“So how strong are you?” Yushin asked bluntly. “You’ve been compressing your bloodline all day, every day, for…”

“Years,” I admitted. “And it’s hard to say. How do bloodlines grow in size?”

“Use,” Yushin said, and her eyes narrowed. “But you never use yours.”

“But I’m constantly concentrating it,” I said, then sighed and shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m also not used to weilding my power.”

Once, I had been hailed as an expert, but while I was certain my shaping skills and concentration surpassed anyone my age, I was out of real practice. I was like a swordsman who only ever trained in forms and never sparred.

“You defeated Greta well enough,” Yushin said wryly, and I shrugged.

“I tricked her and played to her pride. Nothing more. Now, lift your water!”

Yushin did as I said, straining, and I felt a few tiny droplets of her bloodline wick away into the air, before falling back to her poisoned pool.

“You… didn’t say… it was so hard!” Yushin gasped, sweat having broken out on her brow.

I had to stop myself from laughing, because it would have been terribly rude. I honestly had forgotten that it was hard, because the last time I’d struggled with it was as a kid. To me, disjointing my bloodline was as easy as breathing.

“You can do it,” I said encouragingly. “And think about how much stronger you can get with these techniques. In theory.”

“Emrys, I will –” Yushin started to say, but was interrupted when Jackson entered the room.

“Who’s Emrys?” Jackson asked, a plate of food in his hand.

“Me,” I said, brain whirling. “Emrys Anders Velcer of White Sands. Is that cheese?”

“Yeah, I brought it to share since you two were probably nerding out over a book and no gonna get lunch,” Jackson responded, accepting my lie with complete ease. “So which do you prefer?”

“Huh?”

“Name,” he said, extending the platter to Yushin, who picked up a carrot and bit into it.

“Oh,” I said, then shrugged. “Whatever, really. I swap between them without any real care one way or the other. I think I used Emrys for testing, so that’s what I’ll be called at school. You were clearly a divine follower though, so I defaulted to Anders, since it sounds more formal.”

“The divine realms of Etherius are no joke,” Jackson said, “but I’m a little hurt you never told me.”

“Sorry,” I lied, putting on a mask of innocent chagrin. “I meant to, then it just… slipped my mind.”

“No harm done,” he said. “So what spell were you working on?”

“Arcane missile,” I lied. “I can make my armor and shields invisible, but the mossile is harder. I can’t do it.”

“I can, but only if I am focusing and releasing a single small missile,” Yushin said. “It takes too much concentration for combat use.”

“It’s all the ether packed into such a small container,” Jackson said, nodding. “I never understood the point, though.”

“Why’s that?” I asked, curious despite myself. “The practice in perfectly shaping ether is helpful with casting any spell.”

“Oh sure,” Jackson agreed. “But in a fight, I can assume whatever mage I’m fighting has thrown up a shield spell, and has arcane armor. Having them invisible isn’t much better than having them be a shimmer. And the missiles are so ether dense that even most skilled mages have to really focus to make them invisible.”

“Yes,” Yushin agreed. “But the practice you get with ether shaping assists.”

“It does, but I prefer to take another route: power,” Jackson said. “My arcane armor, missiles, and shield might be visible, but all the time you spent shaping, I spent expanding my ether pool.”

“Oh?” I asked curiously.

“Sure,” Jackson agreed. “Now, far as I know, there’s no perfect way to measure Ether.”

“There is not,” Yushin agreed. “The Magyk Uncertainty Principal. Plus other factors like spell familiarity, etheric compatibility, intraplantar ether disruption, and more.”

“But there’s the old standby of spell comparison,” I pointed out. “Far from perfect – plenty of people can force out an extra spell when they’re fighting for their life that they can’t in practice, or blow their power in a panic. But it’s something.”

“Right,” Jackson said. “I can fire somewhere in the vein of fifty or so missiles.”

I stared at him, and even Yushin raised a delicate eyebrow. I could maybe fire half that amount before my ether pool was dry.

“And this is a spell you don’t practice to have perfect etheric efficiency?” Yushin asked.

“Just power,” Jackson said with a relaxed grin.

I wondered if Jackson could cast a fourth circle spell. It seemed likely that he had enough raw power, but with his lack of focus on ether shaping, he might not have the skill to do it.

That wasn’t a trade that I would make, but I couldn’t deny that it would have its uses. But Yushin pointed out something a moment later that made me reconsider.

“Your fire affinity,” she said. “It’s a simple base channeled spell with few modifications, isn’t it? You don’t need to have strong ether shaping to cast it, but it drains your ether rapidly.”

Jackson nodded.

“Yep. The amount of fire I can create and control has a scaling continual ether cost.”

That changed things. If his affinity magic relied on strength over finesse, and he was looking to do combat magic…

“Are you looking to fight in the demon wastes?” I blurted out.

“Maybe?” Jackson said. “It would be good, no? We can always use more farmland. But I might join a hunter guild or the military.”

A frown crossed his lips.

“If the war with Dreki Island is still ongoing, then the military feels like the more important one.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t fight the Dreki. There’s a reason the king limited the fight – they can’t be stopped. Only made to think that winning isn’t worth the money.”

Jackson opened his mouth to argue, but Yushin cut him off.

“We’ve gotten far afield. Jackson, how do you focus on power? I drain my ether pool dry casting spells every day, but it’s still nowhere near that size.”

“Well,” Jackson hedged. “Effervesce has some methods that are… Uh… I don’t want to be rude, but…”

“No need to reveal church secrets,” I said, waving my hand.

“I can show you some basic shaping exercises designs to expand your pool, instead of your finesse. I can also share one… trick,” Jackson said, sounding concerned. “It’s not secret, just uncommon. And painful. Really painful.”

“Did you use it?” Yushin asked.

“I do,” Jackson said, shifting.

“We can handle it,” I said confidently.

“You know spell backlash? When you mess up a spell circle so badly it explodes in your ether pool and sends your ether exploding out of you?” Jackson asked.

I shuddered. I hadn’t backlashed in years, but I remembered it. It was one reason a lot of people never learned more than cantrips, which had no circle to break and cause backlash.

It wouldn’t kill or cripple you, but it did hurt. It was the spiritual equivalent of being kicked in the groin, repeatedly, by an eight foot tall half-giant.

It was also a horrible waste of ether, often exploding out with ten times as much ether as it would have taken to just cast the spell right.

“This technique is called bottled backlashing,” Jackson said. “It captures the explosion and re-condenses most of it into your ether pool, though some does still escape. The only problem is it makes the pain even worse.”

“Oh no,” I muttered under my breath.

“So you can, by putting yourself in extreme pain, effectively spend several times more ether in your pool in a single day than you normally could,” Jackson continued. “Backlash after backlash after backlash.”

I gritted my teeth and prepared myself for the pain that this technique was going to give me.