The problem with [Sympathetic Catalysis] was, Micah had no idea what mood he would be in two days from now.

He turned the words Mr. Havens had said to him over again as he turned his unwrapped jar of monster crystals over in his hands. And, as if it were an actual gemstone, he turned the idea of the crystals over in his mind, considering each of their facets in kind.

You’re crystals, he thought, eyes locked onto an air crystal. The jar unfocused like a window pane as he glanced at the air essence around him. Air essence doesn’t normally occur in crystal form. Crystals don’t normally occur in animals either.

The essence must have been … compelled … to take this form?

How?

And why did it stay like this?

Micah glanced towerward and found that burning thread again. It felt as though he’d opened a heavy furnace inside of him. A thick scattered bundle of threads snapped into his awareness like heat waves. They stretched to every crystal in the room not smothered by someone’s aura.

Preserve, Micah thought when he plucked at those threads. It was merely an echo of that first flame, but it persevered within each and every one of the crystals.

Why?

If Micah froze a cup of water, it would still melt. If you arranged air essence in a crystal structure, it should fall apart again.

Had its intent somehow been altered? Was there crystal essence woven into it that he couldn’t see?

Even if there was, it shouldn’t change anything! It would have to be chock-full of crystal essence to crystallize itself.

With frustration, he forced himself to put those questions aside. Because, more importantly, what good would igniting that connection even do? Make the crystals even more crystalline?

Micah shut that useless furnace and turned the jar over again. In the cold and dark in the absence of its fire, half of the threads remained, and he followed them to the air and water crystals.

It took him a moment to realize what he was feeling, but igniting these threads would be less than useful, too. What would it do? Liquify, sublimate, ionize?

Good for a water fight in the summer, I guess.

Rather than turn the jar over any further, he tried turning over his brain. He considered its smooth facets. Head empty, brain off, he barely felt any connections at all.

A few, thin lines stretched to some of the more psychedelic crystals in his possession—those that came from the hypnotic butterflies—but the moment he thought, That’s something?, they vanished.

Instead, new threads connected him to the lightning crystals. He grew excited at the prospect of what he might do with those once Mason was done. His excitement only strengthened the connections.

Could he do that in a fight? Purposely think of something exciting?

[Evokers] trained to do that, he knew. They used key emotions and memories to empower their spells. But [Evokers] also swore by the power of friendship and his friends could go suck a bag of dicks.

If Ryan wanted space, that was fine. Micah was annoying. He’d overstayed his welcome. So in the few courses they shared, he’d chosen his seat on the opposite side of the room.

But why then did Ryan have to turn around and hang out with Shala?

The problem with [Sympathetic Catalysis] was, Micah had no idea what mood he would be in ten seconds from now.

He had seen the four of them on his way to the workshop again: Lisa, Anne, Shala, and Ryan. Headed to the library. It almost felt worse to see Ryan hanging out with Shala than it did to see Anne dating him.

His reflection scowled back at him in the glass. Strong lines stretched to venomous crystals. Micah huffed and tried to shake off those thoughts.

“If I feel excited about brewing stuff, I’ll probably feel excited to try them out, right?”

“Sure?” Mason answered distractedly. He didn’t look away from his work. “You are kind of, uh … mercurial. I dunno. Can you use any emotion or only those that are front most in your mind?”

“Good question, next question.”

If Micah had to fight Navid, he’d feel grumpy. Would he feel too grumpy to also feel excited?

He groaned and spun on his swivel stool, searching for inspiration in the projects of his peers. After a full rotation, he found nothing to pique his interest. His eyes drifted back to Mason and his—

Micah jumped. “Focus potions!”

----------------------------------------

How did it go again?

It felt like writing an essay, handing it in, and then trying to remember the words you had written. How could you? Could you even remember most of them?

Micah lugged a duffel to the edge of the ring and uncovered a block of clay he had bought at a craft store last Saturday. Ah, I remember!, he thought with a smile at his private pun. Because he had the Memory [a Battle, a Pact, a Feast].

He squatted in the gym, surrounded by nearly thirty loud classmates. Vague bodies moved in the corners of his vision. Sounds bounced off the walls—shouts of encouragement and friendly insults, clacks of practice weapons, thumping boots, and sparks of spells.

And Micah ran across an island of stone, surrounded by nearly thirty screaming classmates. Wounded bodies fled in the corners of his vision. Panicked voices cried out and a spirit bulged and expanded in bursts of bismuth.

Two events played out at the same time. Two pairs of hands reached down.

How did it go again? It had felt like taking a step back within his mind.

He followed in the footsteps of his history and reached into the clay as the memory Micah ran his hands through the ground. They both gave their mana the opportunity to do something it would want to do anyway: emulate.

[Of the Warrior Path explored!]

[Skill — Golem’s Grasp obtained!]

When he raised his left hand, he wore a massive, blocky gauntlet engraved with square maze patterns.

Thomas whistled.

It almost felt like he’d used [Sympathetic Catalysis]. But only almost. There was no connection. It was his mana in his body, which seemed to imply something in theory, though he doubted that would translate well to praxis.

Micah fastened a pouch and a water bottle to his belt and spoke in a rushed tone, “No magic sword?”

“I outgrew it.”

“Oh. I brewed a strength potion, but—”

“Drink it,” Thomas said. “It’s only fair.”

Micah shrugged. “I’m only gonna do one hand. This is kind of a strain on my mana.”

“I’ll bet.”

He drowned the strength potion and swapped it for a vial of dense blue fog. Micah popped the cork, lifted it to his nose, and took a sharp breath in.

Thomas pursed his lips and furrowed his brows in confusion. “Did you just snort something?”

“Yeah, Mr. Sundberg told me I can’t smoke cigars in class,” Micah replied in a nasal accent. He raised a second vial with a miniature storm cloud trapped inside and snorted it as well.

Woo! Electrifying.

“Cigars, as in, whatever you just inhaled is something you want to exhale again? Is it safe for me to inhale?”

“Course! Don’t worry. I had to run this by like, three different teachers.” He paused and inhaled a red miasma. “And these are the watered-down versions. It’s no different from breathing in— Ahh! You almost got me monologuing!”

Thomas smiled. “You were about to make a comparison to something common, weren’t you? Smoke? Festival dyes? Unmade?”

Micah locked his lips and tossed the key, then snorted a fourth vial through his other nostril. He shuddered at the cold and rubbed his nose.

“Are you ready?” Mr. Sandoval, the teacher’s assistant, asked.

Micah patted himself down with one giant clay hand and one gloved hand. Sword, gauntlet, ammunition pouch, slingshot, dagger, crystals, water bottle.

The alchemical fogs settled into his lungs where he willed their patterns to bind to different ‘branches.’ That was one of the first uses he had discovered: the last time Micah had fought Alexander, he had stockpiled essences in his lungs. This time, he could stockpile entire potions.

He had everything. He left his shield behind and nodded.

After a round of spars with weapons and martial abilities alone, Mr. Sundberg wanted to see them spar with Skills and magic. The assumption was, in their second year, they would have Skills and magic worth practicing.

For the same reason, the school had hired mages to come in and ward them or summon enemies, because the expectation was they were dangerous enough to need the added layer of protection and challenge.

Although that last part was supposed to be common in other schools. Simply for logistical reasons. It took time to travel to the Tower.

Their school had hoped to save on those expenses and offer them the real experience … and then the Changes had happened. At least, they were catching up?

“Good, then listen to me,” Mr. Sandoval said, “both of you. Do not resist the ward, the ward is your friend. I repeat: do not resist the ward, the ward is your friend. Now you repeat.”

Micah rolled his eyes, but with a smile, and did as he was told.

“Perfect. [Twin Cast: Resilient Buffer]. [Twin Cast: Enhance Elemental Resistance].” With a quick somatic incantation, the man swept a hand out toward each of them.

Micah tried not to flinch when the spells enveloped him. Even forewarned, it felt like someone had run up to tackle him into a hug. Normally, that would have been fine, but he didn’t know this stranger. And suddenly, he was wrapped in this blanket of … childproofing magic.

The man made a face that matched his own emotions. “They won’t last long on either of you—I told you the wards are your friends!—but it’ll be good enough for a quick bout.”

He moved on to the duo in the next ring and Mr. Sundberg snapped, “Begin!”

Thomas and Micah shared a look across the ring. Then they moved. Thomas unsheathed his sword with a shimmer of magic. Micah brought his water bottle to his lips.

“Micah, don’t—!”

The thick cloud of white fog that billowed from his mouth consumed the ring.

Instantly, Thomas severed it. A slash of wind bisected the cloud, wind mana spiraling like the strokes of a brush. His second cut was wider, a [Swathe of Wind] that dispersed the upper half toward the ceiling.

His clothes fluttered against his skin. The nets that separated the rings billowed like sails, carabiners rattling, and the peanut gallery complained.

Thomas smirked. “Did you think that would work this year?”

Micah stood with his slingshot half-raised and quietly aped his words, “ … think that would work this year …?” He shot him a friendly grimace with all the force as if he had stuck his tongue out at him, then reached into his pouch and tossed something. “Catch!”

Thomas dodged and raised his weapon at the same time, but it was ‘just’ a light crystal. It wasn’t worth the mana it would cost to cut down.

Micah connected to the crystal with an excited smile and lit its fuse, Show off.

But Thomas wasn’t stupid enough to dismiss it entirely. At the same time, he swiped an arm up as if to shoo away a fly and cast, “[Smokescreen].”

The crystal burst into a blinding flash of light. Thomas ducked behind a curtain of smoke which pooled like dye in water … except, Micah had already switched to his affinity lens. He could see his auras. Like a magnetic field, their lines pointed straight down at their source. He may as well have had blinking arrows over his head that said, ‘Aim here!’

Micah did just that.

His opponent made a noise of surprise when the first paintball pierced the veil. It popped and a spray of connections scattered across the floor.

Thomas tried to dodge, and Micah crooned as he tracked him, “I see you.”

The tint of his aura switched from green to blue and his next shot hit a frozen wall, wisps of smoke captured within the ice.

“How? It’s my smoke.”

“Your aura lines peek out over your head! Why didn’t you conjure a wall right away?”

“Smoke is easier while I’m on wind. I was trying to get some practice in!” His frustrated tone switched to bewilderment. “Is this jelly?”

“Maybe …? But don’t eat it!” Micah hid two light crystals in the remnants of the fog and circled around to get an angle on his opponent.

Thomas didn’t step out from either side of his ice wall. He cut through it.

Finally, there came what Micah had been hoping for: his [Ribbon Edge].

Except, this wasn’t the unwieldy sash of fabric he remembered. Micah saw the tip of his blade slice through his ice like water and then it was there. Half a meter to his left and thrumming with magic like a frozen lamp post in the dead of winter.

He pressed down with his dominion and it slowed from the speed of a whip to a jumping rope. He ducked as if it were one, though it felt like iron.

The lamp post disintegrated before it even passed over his head. The second frozen lamp post sought to carve his arm from its socket, the third to decapitate him, the fourth to disembowel.

Each time, his [Ribbon Edge] disintegrated the moment it reached the border of his domain and reconstructed itself with the next arc of his blade.

Micah sidestepped the second slash and a line of ice like a frozen wave splashed up from the ground behind him.

He punched the second out of the air and spiked hoarfrost skittered across his gauntlet. He felt as though he’d punched a person, not the ethereal mana that flowed through him, but the spell did shatter. Its mana splattered like snow, and Micah reached out with his awareness at the same time as his lens-covered eyes tracked their itty bits.

The fourth slash reached him in the same instant he found their frozen heart.

Micah inhaled. With one breath, he ripped the ice mana from every invading spell within his domain. The ice and snow dissolved like spring water.

The fourth slash still hit him with all the force of a training sword to the gut.

It felt like metal in his awareness, although he couldn’t see any metal essence in it. Thomas had to have gotten a new Skill.

Micah staggered with a frosted breath.

Thomas didn’t let up. He advanced. His strikes came from a shorter distance. Micah had less time to react. And to think that he had hoped to stop those attacks in full, as he had done to Kerataraian’s pillar of stone. Either the slashes carried too much force or there was some other factor he wasn’t aware of.

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He still smiled because he had all he needed.

“Thanks for your donation!” When Micah looked up, it was with a water crystal trapped between his teeth.

Be free, he thought. The crystal liquified on his tongue. Micah infused the ice mana he had stolen into the pattern in his lungs and exhaled a cloud of winter’s morning fog.

The sounds of boots thumping around the gym became muffled within it, though they were still loud enough to distract.

Micah landed another jelly shot on Thomas just before his opponent switched to wind and tried to clear the air.

His wind slash passed through the fog like a stick through a pond. It rolled and spiraled back to where it had been, held in place by invisible roots of water and ice.

This was the watered-down version. Thomas probably could have dispersed it, if he tried, but there was no need for him to know that.

When the fog began to move, Micah connected to it and briefly reinforced it with a suggestion, Be stubborn!

He landed a second shot and ran before Thomas could trace it back to him. When he aimed to take his third shot, a slash of ice scattered across his stone gauntlet as he turtled up.

And then Thomas continued his attacks. He strode forward with confidence despite the fog. And he used his quick slashes. He wasn’t using his full [Ribbon Edge] to attack indiscriminately like he’d done last year.

It was like he knew where Micah was.

“How?”

“You’re not the only one with [Magic Detection], Micah! And if you surround yourself in an anti-magic bubble, it is easy to guess that you will be at the center of it.”

Oh. Oh, shoot! Could Micah reshape his domain? He had done something similar whilst fighting the Pretender, focusing it around his claws but—

Throughout the haze of the fog, a different color flowed down the lines of Thomas’ influence: a far more vibrant shade of blue. That was all the warning Micah got.

The older boy appeared in front of him with a step like lightning. Wisps of fog clung to him. He was surrounded by sinking pools of distortion like inverted stars.

His words had distracted Micah long enough. He was scrambling to holster his slingshot and unsheathe his weapon when Thomas’ blade punched into his shoulder.

Through the ward and his gambeson, he felt it like a pool cue trying to knock his shoulder socket out of him, but Micah was used to pain. Or rather, he had a way to deal with it: he shoved it down like paper in a garbage can until the bottom fell out. And then it wasn’t his problem anymore.

Out of sight, out of mind, like that time I died.

What bothered him were the clicking and buzzing noises Thomas’ sword emitted. They were right below his ears and made his arm feel numb.

Not just numb; it went limp. Paralysis spell. His sword slipped from his hand before he could tighten his grip.

His opponent plucked it from the air and slashed him across the chest with twin blades.

He turned his awareness inward. Like a mountain staring down at the first sparks in a storm, he found the lightning mana—and hints of ice mana—spreading from his dead arm into his chest.

Micah ripped the spell in half. He pumped one half into his strength potion to repeat an old trick: he galvanized the potion and backhanded the [Spellblade].

The other half, he pocketed for later.

Thomas, that prick, deflected his strike with his own stolen sword. The slap of his heavy clay gauntlet sent it tumbling into the fog. It clattered once and skid across a patch of ice somewhere out of view.

Micah followed up with a weak burst of wind to buffet him. Then he fled.

He eyed the blue jelly stains on his opponent’s clothes before the fog obscured them. There wasn’t as much of it on him as he had hoped, but it was enough.

His sword was gone, so he drew his slingshot and pumped both mana and some aero into its enchantment. His gelatin shot began to glow and pulse. Rather than form spikes like it usually did, the glow revolved like weather patterns.

When he loosed, it glanced off Thomas’ waist and erupted into a cloud of dye. Like angry insects, that cloud began to swirl around his chest.

He staggered back from the amplified force, clutched one hand to his waist, and swept his blade in a circle around his head like stirring a pot.

Roots of lightning crackled and popped as they reached out for enemies that weren’t there.

… Had Thomas expected an actual insect swarm?

Well, Micah supposed Delilah might do that. His dye would simply follow him around for a bit and billow against his helmet like a strong breeze—to obscure his peripheral vision and hearing. So he raised his voice when he taunted him, “Yeah, well, your spells are sloppy!”

Thomas was still on his lightning blade after all. He hadn’t switched to wind to disperse the dye or switched to ice to block the shot, though Micah assumed he could have done either with ease.

Was it just a mechanical limitation? As far as Micah understood it, when Thomas was ‘on’ an affinity, he used a spell to temporarily enhance that affinity at the cost of reduced flexibility—and actual mana.

Maybe switching back and forth had tired him out or diluted the effect?

Or maybe he knew what the jelly was for.

Micah supposed that would be a compliment, if he did. And if he did, it would feel nice to be appreciated after slaving away for an hour in the kitchens: his opponent was so afraid of his work that he wouldn’t let his guard down.

But he wanted to see Thomas at least try the jelly. Or rather, try it out on him.

“I thought you were supposed to be good at magic!”

Thomas didn’t lash out in a blind rage at his comments. Obscured by the dye and fog, he leaned forward like a stern old man. “My spells are sloppy?”

Micah took another step back. Gritty ice crunched beneath his boots. The toppled wall of ice lay between them near his feet.

“Course! Or I couldn’t do this—“ Micah popped another water crystal and drew on the third vial he had snorted: this time, he exhaled a noxious red miasma over the ice.

This next part actually took a bit of effort: he cast [Infuse] on the entire cloud at once. Wherever it touched the ice, the cloud vanished and the ice turned red like a blood moon.

Micah’s head swayed with the exertion of infusing so much liquid across an area at once. When he breathed in the red miasma, tension formed in his skull as well and he felt the beginnings of a headache coming on. But it gave him the connection he needed: it was all the venomous anger and jealousy he had felt these last two days, distilled into a focus potion.

[Aimed Shot]. [Sympathetic Catalysis].

Micah punted a chunk of ice at Thomas and flicked a spark down its fuse with a command, Bite back!

The ice exploded.

Thomas flinched.

Micah flinched. He almost slapped himself in the face with his gauntlet when he reflexively clapped his hands over his mouth.

Shards of ice shattered all over their ring and pelted against the nets like fragmentation. One of them landed near his boot. It looked like a fang.

He waved an arm to clear some of the fog between them. “You okay!?”

Thomas was still standing. He wiped something red away from the side of his face and Micah’s heart skipped a beat, but it was too watery and the wrong shade of red. Also, it was rapidly dissipating. Just melted ice.

“I’m fine. The wards did their job.”

Micah sagged with relief. That could have poked out an eye! The reaction had been far more volatile than he had expected.

“Did you just use a potion to hijack my spell?”

The incredulity was heavy in his voice, and Micah instantly knew Thomas had never seen someone do that before.

He nodded hastily.

“And you could only do that because my spells were ‘sloppy’?”

“Well— It’s your intent. It decays faster than your spellscripts do, so I can use potions to imbue them with new intent and—“

A smile began to creep up on his lips, but then Thomas groaned, throwing his arms up at the ceiling. He paced one step and turned back to face him.

“As can any second-rate [Mage], Micah! Intent running out before the rest of the spell is normal. You only use it to get the spell to start doing something. Once it is, the intent can go fuck off for all I care.”

Micah furtively waved a hand to stop some of the wisps of leftover miasma from wafting toward Thomas.

Not that he seemed angry. He was just exasperated and being loud to cover up a moment of insecurity.

Micah didn’t need to switch to his emotion lens to know that. He felt the same.

“Oh.” He wasn’t a [Mage]. How was he supposed to have known that? Here he’d genuinely believed he had found a flaw that might get under Thomas' skin …

“‘Sloppy spells,’ he says. You probably know as many spells as you’ve got hairs on your chest!”

Mr. Sundberg, of all people, saved him from his embarrassment. “Enough chit-chat!” he barked at them. “I want to see a clean exchange from the two of you or I’m putting you on clean-up duty for the next two months!”

“I’m not sure their wards will hold that long,” Mr. Sandoval spoke up.

“I can refresh them,” Thomas said with a reluctant note. Was he low on mana? He tapped his chest and a humanoid bubble of magic flashed into view for an instant.

Before he could offer to do the same for him, Micah spoke up. “Same here!” He snapped his fingers on a whim and shared an idea he was sure the childproofing magic would love, Preserve.

Two actual blue sparks leaped from his hand. He only caught a glimpse of them before they vanished and the wards rippled with magic.

“Did that work?”

“You just bought yourself about forty more seconds. Thirty-four, thirty-three, thirty-two … ”

The man continued to count, and Mr. Sundberg gestured urgently like they were idiots.

Micah and Thomas shared another look. Then his opponent whipped a slash of lightning at him.

Micah ducked low, relying on his blind sense to scoop up another chunk of red ice and chuck it. He breathed in some of the miasma to forge the needed connection and detonated it.

Thomas switched to ice and conjured a thin wall for cover. The ice fang frags tore into it like a hail storm, leaving tiny craters. Sheets of ice sloughed off and sections crumbled in on themselves. It left Thomas exposed.

Micah hit him with an enchanted slingshot round, but he took the hit, holding his sword up high in both hands. It glowed with gathered power. The mists swirled and grew heavy around its blade. When he plunged it down, mana rippled through the ring. Micah heard it almost as much as he felt its intent.

“[Refreeze].”

It was a simple freezing spell, almost the same spell Micah knew, but it had enough force behind it to pierce his domain and, like a swipe of a blade, severed two-thirds of his connections.

He had refreshed the ice affinity and intent in all of his spells.

Micah sighed in relief. He’d been worried for a second there.

The red miasma had run out. He didn’t have enough anger left in him to use the red ice anyway.

He still made a face as if his dastardly plans had been foiled, resisted the urge to snap his fingers in defeat, and ran.

Thomas chased after him and stepped right where Micah wanted him to be.

One of the crystals he had hidden at the start of their fight had tumbled out of the ring during one of their exchanges, but the other remained.

Show off!, he thought and it burst into blinding light. Thomas lifted his elbow to shield his face and Micah used the opening to cast [Shape Fluid]. He made a lump of jelly on the ground leap up at him. He didn’t even have to draw on the miniature storm cloud in his lungs to make the connection. He was excited enough as it was. And he shared that feeling with his creation, Get excited!

The jelly sparked with electricity just before it hit Thomas and clung to his clothes. The jelly wobbled and solidified into a rough dome shape. Two skeletal eye sockets blinked open on its surface, twin points within glowing with distilled excitement.

And then it broke into a sprint.

The … undead slime? Reanimated slime? Alchemical slime? … It zipped around his body without rest, like a cat on coffee at three in the morning. It disappeared behind his back, spiraled up and down his limbs, slipped under his shirt, and shocked him continuously.

Thomas spasmed in fits and bursts as the tazing effect passed from one muscle group to the next.

Whenever the slime passed over one of the stains on his clothes, its energy was refreshed. It grew larger. Stronger.

“So—that’s—what—that was!” Thomas forced through clenched teeth.

With his final two words, he lunged forward through what looked like sheer force of will and sent one last ice slash at him.

Micah couldn’t stop it with his domain alone, but with it, his spiritual reach, and his lungs working together?

He snatched the spell with his clay gauntlet and ripped it out of the air in full: the ice, the kinetic charge, even its metal spine. He couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there. They filled his lungs to the brim as he breathed deeply of the magic. The blade of ice vanished.

With a growing smile, Micah raised his slingshot to tag Thomas one last time when something else entered his domain. Two somethings: a small chunk of ice. And the alchemical slime.

Micah didn’t have time to react. The chunk of ice hit him with all the force of a thrown pillow and he realized it wasn’t just ice. It was jelly.

Then the slime hit him.

The next thing he knew, Micah was on the ground, laughing with tears in his eyes as it tazed him.

Thomas must have cleaned the jelly off his clothes after all and pocketed it away for later. When he had thrown it at him, the slime, as it was designed to do, had jumped off Thomas to chase a food source. Now it was as big as could be and sticking to him because Micah’s aura was the closest food source in its limited perception.

He kept one hand on his ammunition pouch, because that was a disaster waiting to happen, and tried to smush it with his body, slow it with his domain, or even [Freeze] it with the ice mana he had stolen.

It was too quick. It slipped under his shirt and out again to avoid him when he tried to roll over it. He had to use a wind burst to throw it off.

It bounced off the gym floor, righted itself with a wobble, and shot off in a random direction.

Thomas tapped him with his sword. Their teacher called the match.

“If an alchemist splashed jelly on you, would you leave it there?”

“I knew you would try to get it off, so I made it hard to wash out without detergent. Did you use [Shape Fluid]?”

He nodded and reached down. “Well, I only managed to get most of it.”

Micah clasped his arm and hauled himself up.

“Victory: Thomas,” Mr. Sundberg announced.

Thomas jerked as if he'd suppressed the urge to pump his fist in celebration. He did smile.

Micah took in a deep breath and cleared the rest of the fog from the ring, and their teacher’s next words were somewhat more annoyed, “Someone kill that slime!”

His seated classmates began throwing spells and other people’s shoes at the slime that was running up the walls to the ceiling. It was going to tire itself out soon anyway, but Micah didn’t stop them from having their fun.

Mr. Sundberg opened his critique by saying, “Six to eleven.”

Micah startled. “What? I hit him tons of times!”

“You can’t bring jelly into a duel, throw it at your enemy, and expect to get points, Micah. I gave you three points for the slime and that’s generous.”

“But I— And if I had used my slingshot’s enchantment every time?”

“Then it would have been ten to eleven.”

“Oh.” Micah slumped his shoulders. He would’ve had to have used his enchantment and won that exchange at the end to win the fight.

Thomas preened. He put in the bare minimum effort to hide it.

“That was still an embarrassment on both sides. I don’t know why you attempted to draw your sword, Micah. What did you think you were going to do with it once Thomas got in close? He did you a favor by disarming you. I also don’t understand why you wear that clay gauntlet. It looks to me like the worst parts of wearing a shield and fighting with one hand free: minimal protection, limited dexterity, and the added distraction of keeping a spell up throughout the fight. How does it serve you better than wearing an actual steel gauntlet?”

Micah blinked. “Uhm. I mean … the spell reduces the weight of the gauntlet for me, but not my enemies, like my [Water Carrier] Skill? And it increases its durability, I think.”

Mr. Sundberg stared at him and let out a clenched sigh of taxed patience. “Sure. Do you at least have full control over it? Can you change its size, don or doff it with speed, repair it, alter its properties?”

“This is only the second time I’ve used the Skill. I—” He stumbled over his words when the man abruptly walked away.

He waved a hand over his shoulder. “Come. You, too, Mathers. I’m not done with you yet.”

He led them to Micah’s duffel and told him to drop the spell. Micah barely felt the difference when the clay gauntlet dropped from his hand, but he heard the dull thwump of its hollowed shell impacting the smushed remains of the block of craft clay.

“You push mana outward in order to use the Skill, right? I want you to do it again, but limit the size of the mana cloud.”

It felt somewhat unintuitive, because he was relying on the Memory of what he had done in order to use the Skill at all, but it wasn’t difficult per se. And the results were immediate. When Micah ran his hand through the clay, it flowed into the cloud of mana like water and formed a thin, tight glove.

The clay almost looked like a hand wrap rather than clay. Thicker segments protected the largest surface area of his hands and a bar of clay lined his knuckles.

“Still not good,” Mr. Sundberg said, “but better. It’s an option. Do it over again, full size this time, and hand over your slingshot.”

Micah shook out his hand when he had the chance and did as he was told. Before he could run his hand through the mess of clay in his duffel bag, his teacher pressed the slingshot in the palm of his hand so the shaft ran up along his wrist.

Micah thought he knew where this was going. He grew excited to try it out. Holding a dye shot in his palm, he tried to use the enchantment of the slingshot trapped in-between his clay gauntlet and his mundane gloves.

The dye shot began to glow.

“That worked!?” Micah would have expected the gauntlet’s spell to create interference, but it was so preoccupied with controlling the clay that his unstructured mana could just … slip right through. He didn’t feel any sort of dissonance either. Because it was his mana?

“You can have a [Leatherworker] work the enchanted pouch of the slingshot into a glove, and you’ll have one more hand free for your knick-knacks—which, I want to be clear, you have far too many of.”

Micah nodded along up until he remembered, “But then I can’t use unenchanted ammunition?“

“Micah,” Thomas interrupted him with an expression like he was concerned for his intelligence. “You can still carry a mundane slingshot.”

“Huh? Oh— oh!” If he put the enchanted piece of leather into his right hand, he could use its enchantment on any pieces of ammunition he loaded into a regular slingshot! “That could work!“

Mr. Sundberg gave a small sad shake of his head and carried on. “Now try to change the size or shape of your gauntlet while you are wearing it.”

That was a lot harder. Micah had never done something like it before. He tried to gently loosen up the mana keeping the clay in place and his clay gauntlet immediately began to wobble like mud. Trickles of dust and a layer of clay sloughed off.

He aborted the attempt on reflex, like catching a ball he was balancing on one finger the moment it tipped in one direction.

The dye shot sunk into his palm. The clay resolidified … around it.

“Ah!” Micah tried to leverage it out, but the gelatin warped and threatened to pop. It was really stuck in there … “Huh.”

Mr. Sundberg said what he was thinking, “That could be useful. Experiment more with that on your own time. If you want to insist on armoring yourself with stone instead of metal, for whatever reason, you might be able to use that stone hand of yours to at least hold some of your knick-knicks for you.

“One final thing, Micah: if you want to be an anti-mage, learn to use the magic you steal.”

“I do. I use it to top off my potions and augment their effects?”

“That’s unreliable and inefficient. We both know that using mana is the worst way to power potions. You need to learn some versatile spells or get better at using items. You have at least two spells in you right now that you stole and haven’t used, don’t you?”

Micah checked. It was closer to one and two halves—some leftover ice mana, half of the paralysis spell, and an entire ice slash. He nodded.

“You could have fired those back at your enemy like Thomas did to you.”

Micah nodded more seriously this time.

Apparently satisfied, Mr. Sundberg turned to Thomas. “Now you. Why would you throw free mana at an anti-mage?”

He began to lay into him with a mixture of criticism and suggestions as he had done with Micah, and Thomas took it with the reluctant patience of a victor.

… Micah barely listened though.

As fast as he could, he tried to soften the gauntlet, shove a water crystal in, and resolidify it. It worked! The blue crystal remained embedded halfway in the clay.

Micah stifled a squawk of delight and began to bedazzle his hand.

When their teacher let them go, his words actually seemed to have soured Thomas’ mood a little.

Micah poked him in the side with crystal-encrusted clay fingers like some pompous [Gem Lord].

“I want a rematch.”

His smile sprang back up. “You’re on.”