By the time that they took a break, every member of the class was breathing hard and had sweat rolling down their face. Jeb was no exception, and he flopped down the moment that Aquam told him that he could. His work the previous day with Glyphs had reminded him that he was never more than a little bit of effort away from Conjuring Water. However, he was too mentally and physically exhausted at that exact moment to focus even the scrap of attention he needed to Conjure it. Aquam took mercy on the class and started passing around cups full of water.

The moment that Jeb took a drink from the cup, he felt more energized. He looked at Aquam with a questioning expression, but Aquam just shrugged as though denying any knowledge of what had happened. The fact that he seemed to know what Jeb was implicitly asking made Jeb doubt the Dean’s innocence. As Dean Aquam walked away, though, Jeb had to admit that he didn’t really mind the energy.

A few minutes later, everyone’s breathing had returned more or less to normal, and a few people had started chatting. Dean Aquam surveyed the room and nodded.

“It looks as though everyone is ready to attempt the Ritual?” he asked.

There were a couple of good natured groans, but everyone got to their feet and stood in a loose clump. Aquam looked at the misshapen blob and the class wordlessly formed a perfect circle. How, exactly, the class was able to do it, Jeb was not entirely sure. Within a few moments, however, the class was standing in a perfect twelve pointed shape with everyone staring into the center.

“Begin,” Aquam called as a drum started beating somewhere.

Jeb stepped to the left, noting that his two neighbors had done the same. Even after just a single step, the Ritual began to thrum with power. By the time that they had gone through the first six beats of the unknown Ritual, Jeb lost himself to the music and the beat. He found himself briefly at the end of the first full loop of the dance, when he was back where he had begun. The music did not pause, however, and so Jeb kept going, only the slightest bit late on his next step.

He felt a whip of Magic snake out, reminding him of his experience with Mana Backlash. One of the other dancers seemed to catch it before it could hit Jeb and forced it back into the steadily building mass of power. Now that he was back inside of his own mind, Jeb spared a little bit of attention for the roiling Magic in the center of the circle. Unlike with the Light Ritual, the different Attunements that each dancer brought were not turning into some unified whole. If anything, it appeared as though they were actively separating from each other, each signature becoming more and more distinct from the others with each passing beat.

Before he could focus on it too much, Jeb started falling back into the siren song of the beat. As the second lap came and went, he noted, just for a moment, that the power inside the circle had grown even more vicious over the lap. It almost seemed as though the different Magics inside of it were fighting each other. With a shudder, he let the Ritual claim him again.

Halfway through the third lap, someone misstepped. Jeb knew that it wasn’t him who made the mistake, but that was all that he could say. The Magic inside of the circle pounced on the weakness. Like a trapped lion, it broke out of the restraints that the Ritual had placed on it, shooting into the air of the room.

Jeb was momentarily blinded as he was once again battered by the winds of Magic. He had a flashback to the time that his Enchantment had gone wrong, and began to shudder. Even as he grew more terrified, the small part of him that remained sane tried to call out that no one was harmed by this Magic. The Essences and Attunements in the air, however potent, were not generating Mana Crystals or trying to cause harm. Instead, they were twisting around each other, briefly taking form to strike at another Magic, before dispersing into a cloud.

Jeb missed most of the light show, too focused on trying to regain his breath. Dean Aquam came over, tearing his own eyes from the display, and touched Jeb on the shoulder.

“Is something the matter?” he asked kindly.

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Jeb couldn’t breathe, and barely managed to shake his head. Aquam finally seemed to notice what was going on around them and grimaced. “I had not considered the way that this Ritual might affect someone who had just gone through an Alchemical Storm.”

Jeb had the brief sensation of floating through a cloud before he found himself in the Emporium. Declan and Catherine were cheerily setting up for the evening, chatting amiably as they did. Now that he was removed from the situation, Jeb found it possible to breathe in again. With great gasps, he refilled and emptied his lungs. By the time that he was able to control his breath again, Declan and Catherine had rushed over to him, concern etched on their faces.

“I’m alright,” Jeb forced out, plastering a smile on his face. It was plain that neither of his friends believed him, but they nodded slowly, letting him walk away.

On the hallway back to the classroom, Jeb grew mad at himself. His memory was hazy, to say the least, but he could piece together brief flashes of what he had been taken from. It seemed as though all of the students’ Magics were fighting in some fantastic show. Jeb picked up his pace, wondering whether his own beast had already been destroyed.

He stopped outside the door to the classroom. Even though he wanted to see what had happened, he did not want to lose himself to panic again.

I’ll open the door, he rationalized, and if I cannot handle looking at what’s inside, I’ll close the door and go back to the Emporium. When he tried to pull the handle, however, his hand refused to move. He grit his teeth, noticing that his heart had started to race again.

“I refuse to be bound by myself,” Jeb said, unsure who he was trying to convince. Gripping his wrist with his other hand, he forced it to turn and pull the door open. The smallest sliver of darkness entered the hallway, reminding Jeb that the space he currently occupied did not have any sense of light. Focusing on his breath, Jeb closed his eyes and pulled the door open wider. When he heard a roar, he opened his eyes.

The show had calmed down considerably while he was gone. At this point, eight of the Magics had given up and were wrapped around their creators like a colorful cloud. Two of the Magics looked to be on the edge of giving up themselves, hardly able to form a single talon or claw to slash. The other two, however, were locked in fierce combat.

A great shark, so strong as to be nearly opaque, twisted in the air, biting at a small bird. The bird flapped its wings, narrowly avoiding the shark. As it turned around to counter the attack, the shark shifted, morphing into a wave that spoke of drowning anything in its path. The bird wrapped its wings around itself, dropping down into the wave of water.

When the wave passed, Jeb almost thought that the battle had ended. Looking closer, he saw that the bird had shifted as well, taking the form of a small stone. It was strange. The wave called attention to itself, making Jeb doubt his own knowledge that it was Magic, rather than actual water. The stone, by contrast, seemed to fade into the background. It seemed almost obvious that there would be a stone glowing an electric rainbow of colors floating in the middle of the air. Jeb found that he had to try to keep his focus on the rock.

The wave crashed against the far wall of the room, rebounding into a swarm of fish. The rock shifted as well, becoming a hive of large bees. These bees did not fade into the background. They demanded that Jeb watch them as they speared towards the fish.

Each place where a bee’s stinger collided with a fish, both dropped to the ground, fading into two pale clouds of Essence. The clouds continued to grow as the swarms continued to shrink. As the fight continued, Jeb realized that the bees were going to lose. There were almost a dozen fish for every bee. Even though they were occasionally able to spear two or even three fish with their long stingers, the fish were simply too numerous.

As the last bee fell, Jeb watched the electric cloud surge towards him. Unlike the uncontrolled Magic that had first broken out of the Ritual, this Magic was his. Or, at least, this Magic claimed him as creator. Jeb felt it steadily dissipate as it clung ever tighter to him, somehow merging itself with his soul. As the last wisps of power drained away, Jeb looked around, noticing that all of the other clouds were gone as well.

All of the other students looked as lost as he felt. They stared at their hands or arms, as though trying to understand what about them had changed. Jeb closed his eyes and looked deep into himself. It was subtle, but he felt as though he could tell the difference.

His soul had always been something nebulous. It had never been weak, but Jeb realized that he had always struggled to find the place where his soul met the outside world. Now, however, it seemed as though he had defined a boundary for himself. To be sure, it was not inviolate. He could break it down with hardly a thought, and he did not expect that it would be much more difficult from the outside. Even so, Jeb felt as though he had become that much less connected to the River of Fate. It may have only been a single small stream blocked off, but the tide seemed weaker.

Dean Aquam clapped his hands, and the room suddenly grew bright again. The class swarmed him, everyone demanding answers.