I started with the Etherius locker spell, drawing the ritual's spell array out on the ground, then placing the spell components down in their required spot. There was the wood from an elemental plane of earth, of course, but there was also a flower of stone, a plant that wasn't actually made of stone, but rather was able to return to full bloom even after weeks or months without any water. That was joined by three circles of salt – ordinary white table salt, pink salt, and black salt. Finally, the ritual was topped off with the use of a cube of lapis lazuli, carved into a rather peculiar shape.

With the components set, I picked up my grimoire and began to slowly read out the chant, letting my ether flow into the spell. Unlike most rituals, this one didn't require several days of exacting, repeated casting, nor any specific time of the day. It didn't even take especially long, since it only required a three hour and thirty-three minute long chant.

That didn't seem short, but given my bloodline spellcraft ritual had taken the better part of a week to complete, and my bloodmark ritual had taken even longer, I was happy to do it. The only rituals I knew that were shorter were familiar compact and lesser planar compact.

It was slightly interesting that all three of the rituals I knew that were fairly quick were also the rituals that were intended to be cast repeatedly throughout a person's life. Had that been intentional on the part of Magyk when she changed the way magic worked? A way to give all the power of ritual casting, without punishing someone for needing to cast it multiple times? Or was it simply a coincidence?

I was forced to start over once, as I'd let my mind drift and had stumbled over a word, but that – as well as a conjured coffee – was the impetus for keeping me focused through the entire second attempt at casting the spell.

As I neared the end, I reached out for my dragonfire. I hadn't wanted to experiment with my organs, nor with mage tools, but this would be a good time to see if I could use it to amplify the effects of the spellcraft. It had sort of worked with Seren, after all.

I let the dragonfire flow into the ritual, where it quickly broke down, transforming into ether and speeding along the filling of the sigils beneath my feet. It forced me to speed up my incantation in order to keep up, and I cut off the flow of power quickly.

Being able to speed up the spell was nice, but not as dramatic as I'd hoped. A small part of me had admittedly been wishing that I'd be able to double or triple the available space.

Ah, well. It still wasn't bad. I turned my attention fully back to finishing the magic.

The moment I was done, all of the components began to glow with a bright blue light that matched the color of my ether pool, and then flashed bright white. The spell and all of the components melted away, and a sensation similar to when Orla or Seren joined with my ether pool swept over me. I could suddenly feel the locker that the school had provided, connected to me, completely empty.

Well. Time to test it, I supposed.

I picked up the broom I'd bought and sent it into the locker. It vanished from my grip instantly, and I felt it in my mind's eye, sitting placidly within the locker. I willed it back into my hand, and it appeared.

I couldn't help it – I let out a laugh of delight.

Throughout my time with Yushin and in school, everyone had pulled things out of nowhere left and right. No longer would they be the only ones, though! Now I, too, could call things in and out of spatial storage! Hah!

I set about filling the locker. My staff and wand both went in, followed by the entire stack of papers that were marked with spellglyphs, the two bottles of healing potion, and the hydra knife. The broom would eventually join, but I needed to finish it first.

Speaking of the broom, I turned to it, pulled out my staff, and began the chant for improve quality. The broom I had was already good, but with close to a hundred silver, and my dragonfire going into it…

When I finished that spell, the broom glowed brightly before fading as well, leaving me with a beautiful piece of art. Its handle was large and dark, with slight indents in the wood here and there that provided reasonable spots for me to put my hands when riding facing forward, sideways, or to put my feet while surfing. The wooden twigs that had been the head of the broom had somehow been groomed and grown into a neat, tight, almost polished bundle that came to a neat point at the end, giving the sense of speed and elegance. Gold filigree marked the metallic band holding the head in place with the symbols for the flyte spell. A glossy protective coat had been laid over every twig, as well as the handle, making it shine in the light.

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I let out a soft whistle and thanked Magyk for making it so impressive, then pulled out the lump of chalk again and started drawing the spell on the floor.

It was a bit strange to draw out something so simple as a ritual, but I trusted the process that professor Silverbark had described in class.

I placed the broom into the center of the circle, then placed the ether crystal underneath it. In the first circle area of the spell, I laid out the hyssop leaves, followed by the flower in the second, and the scales from professor Toadweather's wings in the third and final circle, then took a deep breath and checked the time on the painting.

This was the hard part. I had to repeat the incantation for the Flyte spell one hundred and eleven times during the eleventh hour of the evening, without using a wand to speed it up. Considering that most third circle spell incantations were a paragraph or more long…

Well, maybe I should get some more coffee before I began. It wasn't quite eleven.

After the cup was drained, and the painting marked the time, I started chanting over and over again, shaping ether through the spell and flicking my hands out in the gestures.

Given that I now had two rituals where I had been able to use dragonfire relatively harmlessly, though not extremely dramatically, I decided to pour it into this spell as well. As I did, the power began to manifest, forming sparkling motes of light in the third circle, alongside the pixie dust.

I wasn't sure exactly what that did, but given that professor Silverbark had said to use as much pixie dust as you possibly could, I poured all of my flame into the spell to create more motes.

When I finally finished the one hundred and eleventh incantation, the pixie dust and motes swirled up into the air, followed by the flowers and leaves, then the broom and ether crystal. All began to glow with golden light, streaked with the blue of my ether, and then there was a flash of gold, leaving only the broom behind, hovering in place.

It was a touch late, but I took the broom and walked out through the common area, where Wesley was working with some sort of ether manipulation device that I didn't recognize. I nodded to him, and he eyed the broom curiously, but didn't speak up.

I walked out onto the campus green, straddled the broom like a horse, and willed myself up into the air.

A sensation of weightlessness came over me as wind and force changed, and I was suddenly rocketing upwards, the nose of the broom slowly shifting to point up. Even when it – and I – was completely vertical, the magic of the imbuement stabilized me, stopping me from even feeling remotely at risk of falling.

I leveled out and shot across the sky, blurring at a speed that was far faster than I'd ever been able to fly in my draconic form. I soared over the Shadesilk Forest, and even past the cave of the dragon that was supposedly the familiar of the Erudite.

In less than a minute, I was over the city, climbing higher in order to avoid striking the buildings, weaving between those rare few towers that were exceptionally high. The entire process of control came easily to me, and I felt like I could match even the fastest of racing pegasi.

It was exhilarating. I had been in my human form for a decade, and hadn't been able to take to the skies in all of that time.

In many ways, the human form was the better one, at least to me. It had taken years of effort to get me to look the way I did now, and it was a far better match for who I was. The human form was more dexterous, could go more places, and was frankly more attractive to me.

But if there was one thing that I had missed about my draconic form, it had been the wings. It had been so long without them that I'd entirely forgotten the feelings that came with flying, and being on the broom, moving though the city brought them all rushing back.

I let out a whoop of pure joy as I poured on speed, pushing the broom to the limit of its enchantment, only slowing as I came to the edge of the massive cloud that supported the entire Citadel of Ether, then deciding that I could keep going.

As I soared over the ocean, old memories resurfaced. Flying was the source of some of the only fond ones that I had of my family. Elias, a member of the second generation, teaching us to fly, how he had picked two of us up with his bare hands, leapt into the air, and dropped us. Even as he fell alongside our forms, he'd instructed us on flaring our wings, sensing the whorls and eddies of air currents.

Then bad memories came as well, the memories of running away, diving beneath a ship, and sneaking aboard. I normally tried pushing them away, but for the first time in a very long time, I let them flow through me, and I began crying.

I didn't know if they were tears of joy at getting to fly again, or if they were from my past, or some mix of both, but when I finally stopped, I felt more whole than I had in a very long time, and I slowly brought my flight to a stop, hovering over the ocean, the cloud of the Citadel already much smaller in the distance.

How long had I been flying? An hour? Half that? Twice that?

It was exhilarating to fly, but… I needed to head back. It was already late, and even if I wanted to spend all night flying, I still had to meet Salem in the morning.

I turned the broom around and began flying back towards the bronze spires of the university. I took it a little bit slower this time, the emotions still running through me in both good and bad ways, though they were more numb, less of a weight pressing down on the back of my mind. The burden wasn't gone entirely, but it held much less sway over me.

When I finally got back to my room, I flopped onto my bed and was out in an instant.

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