A new slide appeared, once more headed by the word ‘Active’. Underneath was an icon of a non-descript human figure on their hands and knees, pushed down by a purple power. It was a pretty accurate representation of what happened when gravity magic was used on enemy combatants.

“You should all know the active magic application of gravity magic. That is what we have been practicing the past few weeks, after all. Via contact with a medium that you have charged with your mana, typically your hands or your Artefact, you infuse the target with a short-lasting gravity-manipulating effect. This effect can be prolonged and strengthened through repeated application. Gravity magic is almost unique in the fact that this repeated refreshing of the effect continuously amps up the effect without further cost. A point of note is that it is much easier to weigh targets down than to make them lighter. In any case, it enables us gravity mages to pursue some unusual strategies. Wearing down our opponent through repeated engagements becomes exponentially more effective. This is not the only point where gravity magic is different from the standard evocation elements.”

The slide switched to ‘Wild’, this time showcasing the non-descript humanoid standing sideways on a wall, much to the surprise of the crowd underneath him. Just the insinuation filled me with anticipation and Smithson showcased the reality of what was depicted. One foot, then the other, he carefully placed on the wall and casually strolled up. He wandered all the way to the edge of the ceiling and then, shortly hesitating, up to it as well. None of his clothes reflected that he was now upside down.

“Afflicting other people with a total change of gravitational direction is difficult, but for ourselves it is possible to ask naturally occurring gravity to pull us in other directions. Like most pure elements, such as fire, water, air, and rock, gravity is predictable wherever you go. Fundamental elements are simple in their character. Gravity mages can use this wild magic to walk on a surface no matter its angle or the direction it faces. More advanced uses…” Smithson jumped underneath the ceiling and was yanked off to the side. Gracefully, he landed on the wall to our left. “…allow for three-dimensional manoeuvering. It’s not the same as flying and if you’re not careful you will break your bones.” He jumped back down to floor level. “For that reason, this three-dimensional manoeuvering and hovering are kept for more advanced classes. I will only teach you the basics of gravitational re-orientation this semester.”

‘That is so cool,’ I thought to myself. I was already a mobile fighter, having portals and teleportation, in the repertoire of my space-bending Artefact. Walking on walls in addition to that would be hilariously annoying for my enemies.

“Getting back to the proper order, passive magic offers little for gravity mages. There is no inner fire that keeps you warm in all environments or using the wind to create a sphere of universal awareness around you. At best you will be able to notice gravitational anomalies. Not a useful sense.

“Gravity enchantments, on the high end, are highly sought after in societies that have highly sophisticated machinery. Manipulating the weight of certain parts in the machinery enables marvels of engineering that are otherwise impossible. However, to reach grades of efficiency that make this worthwhile, one has to pursue it with mastery in mind. If you want to become rich, this is a path to follow.”

The two slides were skipped over with these short explanations. Then we reached the ‘Ritual’ part of the presentation. Depicted was a black hole above a circle of runes. From the left side, it drew in a flame from a torch, from the right side, one flickering above a person’s hand.

Smithson walked to the corner of the room, where several large scrolls extended from a large container. They were made from thick, yellowish parchment, the kind that lay in the background of every artistic representation of a mage tower. He checked a few of them, then grabbed one bundled up with a purple band. He unfurled it on the teacher’s desk, only to stare at it, displeased.

“Why can’t they pick a more distinct colour between shadow and gravity?” our teacher grumbled and rolled it back together. About a minute later, he had the correct scroll and weighed the corners down with iron cubes.

Me and my two female peers stood halfway, inspecting the contents of the scroll. Three layers of circles, each filled with their own runes, surrounded a symbol that looked close to a black sun. Rather than rays, the central, pitch-black sphere was surrounded by a vortex of swirls.

Smithson put his hand above the representation of a black hole. Deep purple mana was drawn from him and absorbed into the swirls. First, they sent the magical power into the outside runes. Once they were filled up, the magic instead gathered in the centre. After a minute of constant development, a pitch-black sphere, the size of a marble, hovered upwards. After five minutes, it had swollen to the size of a tennis ball.

Carefully, Smithson turned his hand around. The conjured black hole followed the direction of his palm at equal distance. “We call this a Spell Siphon,” he told all of us. “As with all ritual magics, it is something that could be achieved by purely active means, but realistically exceeds the capacity of almost all mages. Every Spell Siphon is created either with physical or magical matter in mind. This is a weak, physical one.”

Smithson got a lighter from inside his suit and held it up to the Spell Siphon. A flame was ignited. Immediately, it started to stretch. In a large curve, it was pulled into the supernatural black hole. It was a fascinating display, a localized cosmic development. As the golden fire was drawn into the superdense void, it turned crimson, then vanished entirely past the event horizon. A similar fate befell the lighter. The moment Smithson let go, its greater mass was sucked straight into the sphere. A moment later, Smithson dismissed the spell. Down dropped a pebble-sized marble of metal and plastic, condensed into one object.

“Much like black holes in reality, the destructive power of these is highly concentrated. Do not underestimate them. Spell Siphons can be adjusted in their range and destructiveness. A quite common application for physically-aimed Spell Siphons is to use them to shred through mountains or fortified areas. Magic-aimed Spell Siphons are good to make ranged magic combat unfeasible. The largest advantage of Spell Siphons is that, once created, they only require concentration to wield. You got all of that?”

All of us nodded and Smithson rolled the scroll back up. As he put it aside, he continued. “I lack the power to showcase the divine variant of gravity magic. It primarily serves to create actual centres of gravity that typically attract mass until their initially magical effect becomes purely physical. Gods use it to consolidate asteroid fields into planets.”

The last slide was put on the screen and then swiftly put away. While Smithson got his Ashod out of the socket in the wall, we were left to ponder the possibilities of what we had just heard.

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I had always imagined that walking on walls and hovering may have been part of what I could do, but having that confirmed made it all the more interesting. The Spell Siphon was entirely new to me, particularly the anti-magic variant. Learning all of this would be quite interesting and broaden my toolbox considerably. Ranged attacks were one tactic I considered myself vulnerable to. I had ways to close the gap, which still offered the opportunity for enemies to strike or reposition in their own time.

If I could figure out a way to quickly and reliably put a Spell Siphon together, that would neuter those who aimed to take advantage of my most glaring combat weakness.

Walking on walls was way cooler though.

“For the rest of today’s lecture, I will teach you the basics of shifting the direction of a gravitational pull on you.”

____________________________________________________________________

“Embarrassing Karitas, can you walk with me?”

I understood Esther’s demand, but I just could not help myself. Like an overenthusiastic skater, I saw an opportunity to test my newfound abilities on every slanted surface. Carefully, I walked along the ridge of a knee-high brick wall whose slanted top contained a raised flower bed. My feet were planted firmly on the flat, 45-degree angle surface.

Also like an overenthusiastic skater, I inevitably made a mistake. One hesitating step and suddenly my sense of perspective reminded me that my surroundings were not meant to be crooked. Vertigo broke my concentration and I slipped. Gravity was no longer convinced I was worthy of an exception. I was not worried about falling, considering what my face would plant into.

With a swift step, Esther put herself between me and the stone floor. By design, I was most certain, my field of vision was filled with the red of her shirt. Arms and boobs caught my fall. As a well-endowed superhuman of athletic figure, she most certainly made for the best landing pillow a lover of well-endowed women of athletic figures could ask for.

For a few blissful seconds, I allowed myself to remain with my face between her twin hills. The presence of her bra did little to dissuade me. It was almost more about the psychological gratification of being allowed to bask in the glory of her rack in broad view of the public, than it was about the soft sensation of her breasts under my facial features. Almost.

I felt Esther’s deep inhale in how her chest surrounded me, before I heard her sigh. That was my signal to go from full-face-plunge to chin-on-boobs. “Your sigh is a note hypocritical. It was you who deemed this was the way to catch me, knowing full well who I am and who I will continue to be.”

“You are, indeed, my Karitas,” Esther responded and puckered her lips. That was a way to get me off her boobs. I kissed her red mouth, then straightened up and wrapped my arm around her waist.

“I will walk with you.”

“How generous,” she responded, sarcastically, and we continued our path down the flower-rimmed walkway. It was a little divergence from the usual route we took to the Astral Cultivation Class. Tuesdays were great days. Not only did I get to sleep in, we also got to go to class together. All three of us. Aclysia had just taken a different corner a few minutes ago. She had Servant Class in this bracket. “How will I repay you, spouse?”

The way she said that, snarky and sharp, made me giggle. “You are repaying me plenty just with the proximity of your heavenly curves, lady of my love.”

“You should repay me then.”

“Hmm, I think I do every morning. Be it that our activities at dawn are never to anyone’s loss, I do know that you enjoy them quite fervently. Like a hummingbird craving nectar, you do keep craving… well, there is no way to put in flowery words what you know I want to say.”

“The nectar of your loins?” Esther suggested mockingly.

“That’s so crude,” I complained, the philosophizing tone in my voice dropping. “I could probably come up with a way to put it nicely if I thought about it for a bit.”

“All your time is invested in thinking about the female physique. Come up with a nice way to say breasts, immediately.”

“Heavenly mounds - their jiggling about - making flow the waters of my mouth.”

Esther made a tossing gesture, not honouring me with a verbal response. I did hear the tiny chuckle though. Just as I did see the raised eyebrow from another female student we were passing. She did seem amused, but only in the ‘someone said something weird in public’ way.

That we made for an odd couple, I fully accepted. Outwardly, our personalities may not have meshed that well, but I had long come to believe that what mattered more about whether two people got along was what values they shared. The philosopher and the stoic could see eye to eye, if they both worked towards a similar goal. Ideas were like language in that way. Following wholly different ones would ultimately lead to a total breakdown of communication. There was wiggle room, of course. When it came to ideas, a lot more than in many other regards.

Esther and I got along splendidly because, for all our differences in expression, we ultimately were aligned about what we wanted this relationship to look like. We had been talking about our future and our faults. Not to the degree that we were certain yet which neighbourhood we wanted to raise our kids in, just enough to have an idea of if and under which circumstances either of us would like to have kids. Certainly, it helped that we were exceptionally compatible sexually. Erotic love and friendly love went hand in hand when it came to relationships.

The back and forth of our banter continued as usual, as we entered the Magic branch of the campus. A faint tingle greeted us, the mana of generations of practitioners filling the air, along with the pleasant fragrance of incense. The walls were covered in mystical symbols, some stylistically distorted runes, others wall-covering depictions of fantastical creatures.

A statue stood still in front of a picture of a busty goblin woman, the sun behind her as she lounged on a half-bed. It was by far the most erotic picture around, considering the goblinette was wearing little more than silk strips. I actually had to wonder how I had never seen that picture. ‘Something like that would certainly catch my eye,’ I thought.

Which was proven all too true when I suddenly realized that the statue I was happily ignoring was actually a person – and not just any person at that. Omnius Magnari, Master of Magic at Welldark, pulled his hands out of his wide sleeves. Like always, he wore a particular, dark blue and grey mixture of oriental robe and suit. All manners of little trinkets adorned him, some seemingly video game related, others more representative of the mystical arts, like enigmatic, rusted keys or an unsolved puzzle made out of metal pieces. The moment he opened his eyes, golden and glowing even in the summer light, any likeness of a statue fell off the brown-haired man.

“Karitas, a word if you may?” he greeted me casually. “…Between the two of us,” he added when Esther and I stopped.

“I don’t think we’ll talk about anything I won’t tell her anyway,” I dared to suggest.

“I think we might talk about something you should tell her anyway,” the Master of Magic stated, clueing both me and Esther in what variety of topic this was.

My raven-haired lady glanced at me, then distanced herself from me. I tightened my hold on her waist and pulled her back. “Perhaps we should carefully peel at that band-aid.”

Esther saw fit to remind me, “That is the opposite of the recommended method.”

“And I’m more comfortable with it nonetheless. Will you accept this small offer?”

“…I shall,” Esther nodded.

Omnius clapped his hands and made both of our attention return to him. “If that is quite sorted out, follow me.” He turned around and, while doing so, lifted one foot above the lower rim of the wall painting. First his leg, then the rest of his body, disappeared through the depiction of the female goblin. The art piece rippled for a moment, like the surface of a pond, then reverted to its ‘solid’ state.