He’d wanted to practice spells after dinner, but Willow waved off with the headache growing behind her temples and went to bed early. In her dreams she swam through water as thick as tar, flailing uselessly as she sank deeper and deeper in the viscous substance. Something was poised above the surface of the water, reared up in a vicious curve. Something that sucked more than air into its gaping maw.

Willow woke sweating to Margaret’s gentle knock at her door.

As much as she didn’t want to, Willow laid her hand on the capacitor at her bedside table as Carl had instructed and focused on her essence. Her hold on the substance was a little shaky with the dregs of sleep, but she channeled it as hard as she could toward the device.

By the time she was utterly exhausted, she’d managed to push her utmost into the capacitor and slowly accept it back five times.

When she got out of bed, she immediately felt weaker than normal, almost as if half the day was already gone. She hadn’t expected her exercise to tire her so—according to her textbook, manipulating your essence was a purely mental exercise, not related to physical exertion at all—but she forced herself through her morning routine anyway, if just to clean herself of the sweat she’d worked up from the exercise. It was strange to be sweating and not aching at the same time from some physical exertion, but she supposed that was how things would be now that she was practicing magic.

In the kitchen Willow found that Margaret had cooked her a double breakfast and she thanked the woman profusely. In return, Margaret gave her a hug that ached all across her back and arms, but Willow didn’t complain. When it was time to head out, Willow picked up her newly-shortened cane from beside the door and pushed through to the cold mist of morning.

The first class of the day was an introduction to the history of magic, where she learned about the Arcana and the cities that grew up around them. Magic had been discovered there, and thusly they were the centers for city-states that then emerged in the light of their increased crop growth and healing. Those Arcana and the cities that surrounded them eventually grew large enough and greedy enough to war with one another, which produced the first warbeasts.

“The warbeasts were incubated in potent essence wombs, starting off as magical creatures that were quickly mutated by their essence-laden environments. This gave them strange powers and a propensity to grow to enormous sizes. A warbeast hasn’t been grown in centuries, though, and those that remain are the more docile of the final waves.”

The portly professor stopped as a student in the back raised their hand.

“Yes, you in the back.”

“How old is Durum’s warbeast?”

“Well, records indicate it first arrived about a hundred and twenty years ago. As to how long it incubated before that arrival, we can safely guess decades. So probably a hundred and fifty-ish, give or take a few years. And I wouldn’t quite call it Durum’s warbeast; it was sent by Raly, so it’s really their warbeast, isn’t it? But regardless, it’s been around for so long that its danger has mostly been neutralized, as long as we use proper precautions when entering and exiting the city. Now, onto the Bloodless Pact, and the prohibition against warbeasts…”

🜛

Luckily Willow didn’t have any spell-crafting classes that day, because she wasn’t sure if she’d have the mental fortitude to manipulate her essence after her morning exercises. Unfortunately, she did have another appointment with metrology, which meant entering the small building with the constellation of inscripted lights and making her way to the back room once again.

Carl was already there waiting with the other students. They had an array of metallic strips and trays of black, crystalline devices laid out on the back table, and a seat for Willow beside them. In the corner were a couple of long staves wrapped in strips of shiny copper.

“Alright Willow, today we’re going to try to track your resistance in wams,” Daniel said, and gestured to the seat beside the long table. There was a device closest to the seat connected to a couple of pads with scripted copper tape. Toward the back of the room Burket already looked upset.

She hadn’t even done anything yet.

“This is our standard wammeter,” Steph said, and picked up the pads. “This one goes on your wrist, and the other goes on your chest above your heart. I’ll let you apply that one yourself.”

The pad was covered on one side with some kind of golden sap—Willow assumed it was some kind of sap that had been imbued with copper powder for essential conductivity. It was a pain to work the pad in between the buttons of her overcoat and through her blouse without getting the sap on her clothes, but she eventually got it adhered to her chest. Steph had long ago gotten the other pad on her wrist.

“So this device is going to send a small—very small—current of essence through your body, and the run of the current it outputs compared to the run it receives will give us your resistance. It’ll be a pretty good gauge of your resistance when casting,” Daniel said. “Are you ready?”

Willow nodded and Burket tapped on his crystal plate. Carl took up vigil behind Burket’s shoulder and watched the display.

Nothing happened for a long time. The room was silent, and Steph eventually walked over and took a quick look at the plate before coming back with her mouth pressed in a tight line. Willow assumed that couldn’t mean anything good.

“Alright, we’re almost at capacity,” Daniel said to Burket, a vague hint of warning in his voice. Willow could feel a slight tingling from the pad on her wrist, almost like a light breeze had brushed the skin there.

“Fine,” Burket said, and tapped the plate. All at once the tickle vanished and Burket huffed in frustration.

“What? What happened?”

“You—” Burket began, but Daniel interrupted him.

“The wammeter isn’t as powerful as the emmeter, and even the emmeter barely got any kind of reading. If we push the wammeter that hard, it’ll definitely burn out. We got reamed out by the head of the department yesterday for breaking so many.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Willow said, the familiar feeling of disappointment and confusion settling over her chest.

“No, it’s not your fault,” Daniel said, and something in his voice made her look up as he swiveled his eyes toward Burket.

Ah, message received loud and clear.

“But, we prepared for this eventuality,” Daniel said, heading over to the corner and retrieving the two wooden staves wrapped in inscribed copper.

“Or, Professor Brandeweiss prepared for it,” Steph said. “He acquired these from the geology department via unknown means.”

“A colleague of mine owes me a favor,” Carl said, and smiled. “Just don’t break them.”

“That shouldn’t be—” Daniel said, then stopped himself, considering. “We won’t.”

Carl nodded and Steph helped Daniel replace the black crystal wammeter on the table with the pair of spikes, both pointy ends facing Willow. They didn’t make her feel particularly safe.

“Um, so what are these,” Willow asked. Close up, they did appear to be wooden all along the shafts, leading down to what was either copper plated or solid copper spikes inscribed with spirals of symbols. Thin copper tape twisted up the wooden shafts, which Steph and Daniel were delicately unwinding and hooking into Burket’s crystal plate and a half-dome that Willow recognized as an essence capacitor.

“These are used to survey ground for copper and silver deposits,” Carl said, walking over and touching the copper tip of one of the staves. “At a set distance, solid rock should have a certain resistance, but if that’s greater or less than usual, it means there’s a deposit in there somewhere messing with the essential flow. Surveyors use them for identifying deposits before the miners go to work on the rock.

“You’re saying that you have to measure my resistance on the same scale as solid rock?”

“It’s worse than even that,” Burket said from behind his plate, tapping frenetically on the surface now that the tape was inserted into the side. “These spikes are supposed to be placed a hundred feet apart. The distance between your heart and your arm is barely what… three feet? A dead body has less resistance than you. A magical creature has less resistance than you.”

“Burket,” Carl warned, and Burket clamped his lips together, clearly wanting to go on about how fucked she was, about how much work she was making them all go through. Gods knew she wished it was just over on exam day.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“This time it might be a little uncomfortable,” Daniel said. “We’ll be pushing a fairly high level of runs into your body, so if you start to feel any pain—”

“I’ll say something,” Willow lied. Daniel finished hooking the tapes leading from her body to the copper ends of the spikes. He looked at Burket and nodded. Burket didn’t nod back, just began tapping on the plate again.

“Okay, we’re starting now. Just remember… be safe.”

“Right,” Willow said, and immediately she felt the tickle on her wrist. It quickly progressed from a tickle to a breeze, then to a pushing weight. She felt movement in her arm, her fingers started to twitch, and it felt as though something was pricking her hand at random. Willow clenched her teeth against the phantom sensations.

Steph and Carl both stood behind Burket and the plate. She didn’t need to look into Steph’s eyes to see that the results were unexpected. Daniel hadn’t joined the others though—he was standing by her side next to the tapes of copper foil, tensed as if ready to pull them at a moment’s notice. For all she knew he would, if she said anything. She clenched her teeth harder against the mounting pain.

“Willow, are you alright,” Daniel asked. The pressure had become excruciating on her wrist and it felt like molten iron was forcing itself up her arm to her shoulder. Her arm was shaking but she couldn’t help that. Her fingers lost control and began twitching like crazy. She grasped them with her other hand to hide the effect, which only caused both hands to convulse in the phantom pain.

“Okay,” Willow managed to hiss through her teeth.

“Burket,” Steph whispered, and Willow heard fear in her voice. Burket’s frenzied eyes bored into the dark crystal plate as he tapped at the surface. Steph whispered his name again, trying to snap him out of it. Carl laid a hand on her shoulder and shook his head, never once taking his eyes off the display plate.

Willow gasped as the molten shaft passed her shoulder and spread into her chest. She felt her heart flutter, skip a beat, and the world became blurry around the edges. Her eyes fluttered.

“Shut it off,” Daniel yelled, then moved to grab the leads.

“No,” Willow screamed, louder than she’d meant to, but it stopped Daniel in his tracks. “I need this!”

“Got it,” Burket yelled, and all at once the infinite pressure lifted. The spreading fire in her chest dissipated, but her arm felt worse than ever. Her fingers were still twitching.

Carl grabbed another capacitor off the table and set it down at her side. “Push the extra essence out into this,” he said, taking her hand and placing it on the domed top, covering it with his own. “It should help.”

If he was surprised at the feel of her squirming fingers, he didn’t show it.

Strangely enough it was easier than normal to push out the injected essence. As it left her arm, she felt strangely better than even after her first test with the emmeter.

“Gods, we finally have it. Finally, her first measurement,” Burket said.

“Wait, what about the one with the emmeter? The runs?”

“That was only a measurement of how hard the emmeter had to push to inject essence into your body,” Steph said. “It wasn’t actually your measurement. Although it should correlate.”

“Well,” Willow asked, and looked at Burket.

Burket smiled at her over the display plate. “Twelve hundred wam. Good going, silver girl.”

🜛

Willow and Carl were back in his office and she had her hand on another capacitor, pushing her essence into it and then letting it flow slowly back.

“Am I really as resistive as pure silver,” she asked, nearing the end of the relaxation cycle.

“No,” Carl said, then sighed. “Almost. Three feet of silver bar at the width of your arm… maybe fifteen hundred wam.”

“I guess that explains why I’m so shit at magic,” Willow said. She felt strangely calm. For her probation she was happy they’d finally gotten a reading, but the number itself didn’t actually change anything. Things were just as hard for her as they had always been. Nothing was worse. Nothing had changed.

“Have you ever heard of anything like that before,” Willow asked, and took her hand off the capacitor. Carl had been watching a small plate hooked up to the capacitor the whole time while she pushed and pulled her essence from it.

“Some injuries have been known to increase the body’s essential resistance,” Carl said, but Willow could tell from the sound of his voice that those increases weren’t even on the same level as hers.

“Silver girl,” Willow said, then chuckled to herself.

“I do wonder if you might have silver compounds in your blood, but I haven’t heard of anything like that before. And you said other people in Bridgewater could cast spells just fine?”

Willow nodded and Carl set the plate down.

“Well,” Willow asked. Carl sighed.

“In just the past day you’ve increased your push force, even after what you went through in the lab. I’m measuring an increase of five milli-ems in the capacitor at its peak from yesterday, which would normally be great news. It shows you have fantastic potential for growth. Unfortunately it’ll be too slow by far to get you where you need to be to produce a magelight by the end of next week. So we’re going to try a different tack.”

“Something different? Do I have to keep practicing with the capacitor at home?”

Willow was surprised at how easily the word had slipped from her mouth. Home. She supposed it felt like it now.

“By all means, keep practicing with the capacitor. It’ll only help you to increase your runs. I’ve got a different idea though. You said you’ve been practicing the magelight spell for five years now, but how long have you been practicing the second layer? The steadfast one?”

“I’ve… never cast it,” Willow said. “The book never said to practice it alone. It said I should just be able to cast it on top of the layer of blazing light. I’ve been trying to do that.”

Carl actually smiled. “Yes, most people should be able to layer pretty effortlessly, but as we saw in the lab you’ve got such a high essential resistance that its taking most of your effort just to get the blazing light layer out. What I would like to try is practicing the steadfast layer, and hopefully you become familiar enough with it that it becomes easier to cast on top of the blazing light.”

“How do we do that? I mean, I can’t keep two layers going at the same time, so what’s it going to keep steadfast?”

“My own blazing light core,” Carl said.

“Different people’s essences can be layered together?”

“They can. It’s an advanced technique, but entirely dependent on the previous layer in the spell to get working, so I’ve got you covered there. It’s called a group cast, and you wouldn’t normally learn about it until next year. But, well, here we are.”

“Here we are,” Willow agreed, and Carl positioned his hands in that oh-so-familiar spell-form. As he recited the concept mantra she noticed each of his fingers begin a little twirling motion, as if he were setting up eddies in the flow of essence. Soon the blazing light core brightened the room, casting their shadows back against the walls.

“Alright, I’ll hold it here and you cast the steadfast layer.”

Willow nodded and moved her hands into position, the tips of her fingers tingling from the nearby essence core. She pointed her fingertips in a form meant to turn the escaping essence back in on itself. As her fingertips approached the blazing sphere, it wobbled slightly. Carl winced.

“Can you cast from that far away?”

“I can try,” Willow said, although her hands were a good three inches away from the core and she’d never tried building up essence from that distance. She concentrated on the essence in her arms and chest and forced it to move toward her hands. As she did so, she muttered the concept.

“Steadfast,” she said, and wove her fingers back and forth like the book described. She’d dreamed of this moment for years—the moment when her blazing light core would be strong enough that she could attempt the second layer.

“Steadfast,” she repeated, and felt a thin trickle of essence leave her hands to encircle the core. She didn’t need to watch, and kept her eyes closed. Her essential proprioception kept her in tune with her essence’s behavior, and the layer she’d just put down encircled the core nicely, linking up on the far side like stitching pulled tight.

“Steadfast,” she whispered, and with a final burst of effort she pushed with the last of her mental fortitude. A small surge of essence washed out and joined the stitching she’d laid down before, encompassing the core completely in a layer as thick as two or three sheets of paper.

Willow opened her eyes slowly, unable to really believe that she’d done it, but there it was. The core, encircled by her steadfast layer, self-sustaining. The light from this core would last for an hour, maybe two, and she’d provided the logic required to keep it self-sustaining. She felt at that moment like anything was possible. Like she might actually have a chance at getting through this probation after all.

One look at Carl’s face was all it took to banish the warmth flooding. His jowels were shaking, wet with sweat and effort, and she noticed that he’d replaced his hands around the blazing core. He was trying to keep it from dissolving and it was taking all of his considerable strength to do it.

“Carl,” Willow asked, and at the minutest twitch of her fingers the magelight bowed inward at the side like an injured beast and the blazing core itself dispersed within the steadfast shell. The shell folded in on itself and reduced to shreds a second later.

Carl panted with effort. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief from his vest, staring deep at the space where the magelight had been, deep in thought.

“What happened,” Willow asked. “Did the group cast not work?”

“It almost worked.”

“Then what happened?”

“Whatever’s wrong… whatever the effect is in your body that makes your resistance so high, affects any essence you come into proximity with. Group casts work on fine adjustments between the various mages to ensure their essence doesn’t interfere with each other, but your very presence in the room would affect all but the simplest of group casts, I’m afraid.”

“Is that what happened that day in class?”

Carl nodded.

“I’m certain I can correct for it. If I overbalance my essence toward stability… yes, yes I think that should work. Come on, let’s try again.”

“Again,” Willow asked. She’d barely recovered from the first attempt. “You mean right now?”

Carl looked at her solemnly. “The clock’s ticking.”

🜛

They group-cast five times before she was too exhausted to continue. Carl looked as though he were on his last legs, but he didn’t have to walk all the way home to the city wall afterwards. Luckily when Willow hobbled out through the door to his office Leopold was already waiting for her, leaning against the wall. He started at her appearance.

“Gods you look wrung out. What have you been doing?”

“Casting magelight,” Willow said, and she found that saying the words lifted her spirits. The last three attempts had successfully resulted in a magelight which remained even after Willow carefully extricated her hands from around the web of steadfast essence. Carl grasped each with his glove-spell and gently tossed them into the ceiling.

“You can do it then? Probation’s over?”

“Not quite yet, I’ll tell you the whole story on the way back, but I might need a hand.”

“Yeah,” Leopold said, and stepped in beside her. Willow cast off her inhibitions and wrapped her arm around his shoulders. He was warm in the chill autumn air, and her tender muscles didn’t protest as she pressed against his padded overcoat.

They walked together down the twilit road as she recounted her day of testing and training.