"If you turn your attention to the sheet of paper your team was given, and then up to the stage!" the announcer for the treasure hunt said, and I glanced up at the stage. The announcer was a tall dark man in a uniform indicating he was fifth circle, but could stretch to sixth.

Behind him was a massive hourglass, easily six feet tall and with a base the size of a barrel. It was filled with layers of bright, gemstone-like sand. The top and thickest layer was ruby red, followed by powdered emerald about half the size of the red one, then a smaller sapphire layer, before ending with a tiny layer of amethyst powder.

"The moment my telekinetic spell turns this hourglass over, the one hour timer will begin – thirty minutes for the ruby sand, fifteen for the emerald, ten for the sapphire, and one minute for amethyst. An illusion of the hourglass, along with the list of items to be collected, will appear on your sheet."

He continued on, going through some of the rules of the competition – no attacking competitors, only one of each item could be collected, and the item had to be turned in to him in order for it to count. As he wound down, he asked if there were any questions.

I glanced at Salem, Jackson, and Yushin, but they shook their heads. A few other teams asked questions, including Sandara's team, but most of the questions were either utterly inane, or else some variation on trying to get hints, which didn't work at all.

Salem took the opportunity to draw his staff from his locker and began mumbling out a chant. I sensed power flow out and tap into my mind, and an instant later, I could hear my entire team's voices in my mind. A few moments after that, illusions began to overlay themselves onto vision, golden circles of light that flickered and fuzzed strangely.

"The divination spells should lock on as soon as I know what I'm targeting," Salem's voice said into my mind. "It's also got a rather complex effect that should allow it to automatically re-target to the next item on the list, if the one being searched for isn't available. It's going to be pretty ether-intense to boost the range of my spells, show them to three of you, and coordinate our voices, though. Can I use your broom?"

I nodded and withdrew it, tossing it to Salem, who slipped on top. I drew out my own staff and began to mutter and mumble my way through the incantation for the flyte spell, while Jackson and Yushin did the same.

"Go!"

As soon as the word rang out, the sheet of paper changed, and the world exploded into action.

Most teams, like my own, lifted into the air with brooms, carpets, mortars, and flight spells. Others burst into action with speed enhancement and haste spells, and a few more transformed into bird or cheetah forms. A handful of others used even more unique methods.

Sandara's team exploded into living thunder clouds and began to whip by on a conjured wind, which I thought might have been a spell from the member of the group with a storm magic affinity. In a blink they were racing off into the air, still in the form of a group of storm clouds.

Cyprus Luone, the third year with a twilight hare bloodline, began to emit sparks of gold and black, swirling around him and his pair of teammates as they started to walk away. Despite the fact that they were clearly just walking, they seemed to cross dozens of feet with every step, and trying to watch them between steps made my eyes ache.

One group who looked a bit older than us, probably either entering their third year or about to graduate, began distorting time. That, in and of itself, wasn't too shocking – the haste spell could speed time up for the user. The shocking amount was the degree to which they had advanced it. The group blitzed past a group that was combining a running enhancement spell, haste spell, and rune-covered speed enhancing boots as easily as a galloping horse could pass a tortoise on the roadside.

Frankly, it was a somewhat humbling reminder of the fact that I had a long way to go, even with how much I'd grown.

I spotted Salem's lips moving as he mumbled into his spell, completing it, and the golden sparks shifted, pointing off in the direction of the observatory. Text written in golden flame appeared before my eyes: two inch diameter crystal focusing lens.

I poured ether into the flyte spell, and we started skirting over the grassy field where we met for Applied Mage Combat. We were about halfway to the observatory when the sparks shifted, and the words 'shadespider silk' appeared in my vision. Yushin grinned fiercely, then her voice rang out in our heads.

"There is a trick to collecting the silk. Salem, your spell will lead us to it, and I will collect it."

She immediately started mumbling a spell as we turned and zoomed off, rising into the air to float over the treetops of shadesilk forest. I half expected our request to immediately change again, but instead we were able to land in a deeper part of the forest that I'd never explored before. It was fairly close to the dryad grove and the home of the headmaster's familiar, and the trees were taller than they'd seemed from the entry to the forest. Every tree was absolutely coated in sticky black goo that smelled strongly of spiders, shadows, and nothingness. It was potent stuff, and a part of me wondered if it would be worth looking at using it as a component for my tools, but I dismissed the thought.

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A couple of other students had clearly tried to collect a sample, but they were covered in webbing now. The more they fought it, the more the silk expanded, and I thought I could hear the chittering laughter of the spiders. It was more amused than predatory, much to my relief.

Yushin's hand extended, and an illusion of a sword appeared in her hand. It was obviously fake, not even being a fully three-dimensional image, and also being translucent, but she whipped it at the silk. Where the illusion touched, the blade cut, and the silk curled off before dropping into Yushin's hand.

Then we were off again, as some of the other students who had learned illusion spells started to try and copy her message down. We turned in the silk and set off to find wormwood apples.

Wormwood didn't grow apples, so I assumed that had to be an alchemically modified plant of some kind. I raised my wand and summoned a minor wind and plant elemental, then told them to head to the alchemical gardens and look for a wormwood apple, before bringing it back to us. The air elemental lifted the little wooden one up, and they streaked off.

The next item on our list was a bottled cloud, which immediately vanished. We cycled through several items that others had turned in already before landing on a match of perpetual flame, which Jackson claimed he could create with ten minutes of work.

"Easier way – can your affinity steal some from the seer's pyre?" I asked, and Salem's spell immediately started pointing us this way.

"I don't know. I've never tried before."

Seren burbled up, sending me the impression that it would be easy, and he could show Jackson how. As it turned out, with Seren as a coach, coaxing a piece of perpetual flame onto a match was well within Jackson's abilities.

We left to turn it in, and quickly met up with my elementals, but someone had already turned in a wormwood apple, so it didn't count. I sent them off to try and find a whole, living blasteroot, and Salem sent a thought out.

"Maybe nex' time, I'll be able'ta handle a group large enough 'at we can include your summons in it. 'At would really let us move faster."

"It would be useful to be able to loop them in," Yushin agreed.

"It would, but don't stress," I said, shrugging. "We don't have to win."

Yushin said nothing, but I sensed a dry sort of amusement at the thought emanating from her, while Jackson sent me his full agreement.

We flew off again, this time looking for a mirror that reflected images without mirroring them, a rather paradoxical sounding item. Salem's spell led us through the shining brass towers until we reached a room full of glimmering crystalline mirrors.

The room was easily four times the size of the dorm common room, and nearly every wall was covered in mirrors. Pillars were scattered throughout the room, with shelving built out in rings around them, and every layer was stacked with mirrors. Between all the reflections, and all the pillars, the entire room felt even larger than it really was while also somehow being even more cramped.

"Normally, 'ere's a test ta' take 'em, but it's suspended for this," Salem said, his path of golden sparks scanning the room. He started sprinting toward one of the mirrors when sparkles of black and gold filled the room. Cyprus Luone flowed in, snatching the mirror an instant before Salem could. He winked at us, and then was gone an instant later.

I quickly rifled through my mental list of spells, but nothing I could think of would be that effective for us, forcing us to retreat. We met with my elementals outside, and the wooden one tried to pass me a plant. It looked rather like a crimson-stemmed and blue-flowered sunflower, and as I reached for it, Yushin mentally shouted for me to wait.

It was too late. The plant shifted, releasing a concussive wave of force, and I only managed to divert it at the last second with a well-placed shield spell. The shield cracked, and even the partial wave was enough to slam me into the brass building behind us. If I'd been human, it would have caused serious damage, but I was just going to be bruised.

"My back will be sore in the morning," I grumbled. Salem snickered, and I rolled my eyes at him.

"They attack anything with a heartbeat larger than an insect," Yushin explained. "Normally, they also resist being uprooted – the wood elemental magic must have helped. Have your elementals carry it."

I nodded and we flew off, turning in the blasteroot, then were off again for our next item. I conjured one more pair of elementals, this one an earth and air combination, and set them to looking as well. They might not be part of Salem's spells, but they'd proven their use.

We continued to fly around, scouring the castle. Jackson managed to collect a left shoe made out of solid gold that would transmute back into wood at midnight, and I even managed to use my status as a member of the grotto to dip into the library and retrieve one of the requested books faster than others could, and Yushin was able to locate some of the antitoxins from the mess of unlabeled potions hidden behind anti-divination wards.

We collected a few more as the list continued to add new items – it never told us when an item was turned in, of course, but it did keep adding new things, until at last the amethyst sands run down. Our sheets went blank, and we flew back to the meeting point.

"An excellent turnout this year!" the announcer shouted, smiling down as he raised his hand, projecting an illusionary list into the air. "In first place is the team captained by Cyprus Luone!"

There was a round of applause, but it quickly died down as the announcer moved onto second place, which went to a team I'd not heard of, but who I recognized as being the ones who'd been able to dilate time to such an extreme degree. Sandara's team came in third, while we came in fourth, and the group that had been using the magical boots came in fifth.

Perhaps I should have been upset that I'd not gotten in the top three. That I hadn't even beaten Sandara's team. That I wasn't going to be getting any reward larger than a participation trophy.

I wasn't.

The world was wide. I wasn't a speed focused mage, nor was I a diviner. We only had one on our team. I was confident we'd have done better in a combat bracket, though I still doubted we would have won. There were plenty of other powerful people in Cendel, in my home.

Besides! I still had the faerie fire fight…

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