After we went through our explanation to the Erudite about what had happened, he grew rather concerned and placed his hand atop Salem's sleeping form, muttering a couple of words of power and closing his eyes.

"I see," he said finally. "You said he seemed to be in distress when it happened?"

"Yes," professor Violet said, turning a glare onto Sandara's form. "She'd just kissed Emrys, and he seemed to react poorly to that."

"I thought it would be funny," Sandara said sullenly, glaring at everyone. I glared right back – I would have bet a considerable sum that she'd not been doing it as a joke, and even if it was, jumping right to a full on kiss was not the right way to make a joke.

"Psychic thread doesn't work the same way as an ether pool," professor Alydia said, her eyes darting from place to place as she cast divination spells. "Extra threads, and even temporary knots, can be formed under emotional duress. He doesn't seem to have permanently manifested any additional knots. Almost all his psychic power is defensive or oracular, though. Temporary powers should have been the same?"

"It was likely a nightmare attack – he hasn't finished unweaving his excess dreamshields. A dreamsheild fueled with thread can step into the dreams of others," I supplied. "The duress could have caused him to manifest a psychic attacking knot, at least temporarily."

The Erudite and professor Alydia both nodded in unison, as if I was actually able to contribute to the conversation.

"You said he was unweaving his dreamshields?" the Erudite asked, snapping his fingers. "The seals were designed to interact with six dreamshield knots. How many does he have now?"

"Four," professor Alydia said gravely. "That's it. The seals didn't have enough purchase to defend against the psychic vectors of attack with their power unstable like this."

"Why did you make the seals reliant on the number of knots he had?" I asked. "Surely the old seals couldn't have been?"

Until professor Emir had melted the original magic in the seals, he hadn't had an incident in years, according to him. It was possible that meant that he'd just maintained a constant number of dreamshield knots, but I doubted that was the case.

"They weren't, but they were also woven by a nightmare hag with access to psychic powers of her own in addition to wizardry," the Erudite said. "We built ours with the magic of professors Caeruleum, Toadweather, Edgecrest, and Faberfex."

I thought Salem might have mentioned Edgecrest as the person training him in enchantment magic, and I didn't know the last name, but I assumed it was an artificer professor, given the exact state of the seals.

"He's going to have to rebind the knots then," professor Alydia said. "I wasn't aware he was trying to redo his psychic powers. He said he was planning to just continue progressing as he was."

I wanted to let out a groan at that – he had been progressing as he was. Both Salem and the professors had just made assumptions about what that meant and what the other knew.

"Do the knots need to be real?" I asked. That got a strange look from professor Alydia, so I hastened to explain. "He's capable of mimicking knots with his ether, thanks to his affinity."

"That might actually work better for the seals we can produce," the Erudite said, nodding his head slowly. "We don't have many psychics. It's near impossible to become one intentionally. Even Edgecrest only has an enchantment affinity, not a true psychic affinity."

"He also has the rite of centered mind now, which should help serve as an anchor for Caeruleum and Edgecrest's parts of the magic," professor Alydia reported. "It should stop the aberrant taint from leaking if he can mimic the effect of at least one extra knot, preferably two."

"Until Elder Tywyll arrives for the summer festival, it's the best we're going to be able to do," the Erudite agreed.

"Will she agree to reconstruct the original seals?" I asked. "I know Salem's family works for her, but she's already done it once, and hags aren't exactly known for freely handing out magic."

The Erudite winced and ran a hand through his mud-brown hair, sighing as he did.

"She'll do it. I already negotiated for the seals to be looked over and remade with her expertise, since Emir was the one who damaged the originals. It's just a shame this couldn't have happened a month from now, when she'd have already done that, and the seals would be safer. I'll try and temporarily empower the defenses…"

He raised his hand and a spell circle appeared in the air, forged of glowing light. It spun around Salem's body, then sunk into his head, and the Erudite rose from where he'd been leaning over his body to look at me and Sandara.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

"Alright. That's about as resolved as it can be for now. Now we need to determine punishment."

His eyes turned from an earthy brown color to the shimmering blue of ether crystals, which I'd only seen happen a few times before, usually when he started getting emotional. I swallowed, suddenly a bit nervous.

"Sandara, I'm not going to hold you responsible for Salem's rampage. There was no reasonable way you could have known of his condition, nor that he'd created a gap in his seals."

Sandara's face, which had been filled with nerves, slowly relaxed and grew more confident.

"With that said, I absolutely am holding you responsible for kissing another student without consent."

"It was a j–" she started to say, but the Erudite held up his hand and her words cut off. Not in the sense that she stopped speaking – she kept talking just fine, only no sound came from her throat. Her eyes widened and she mouthed what I thought was a curse.

"I don't care," the Erudite said. "You're a twenty-three year old woman, don't act like a fourteen year old with raging hormones."

He turned to me then, and I met his crystalline blue eyes.

"Emrys, you're also partially responsible. Not for being kissed – that's on Sandara. But you then tried to punch her with your bloodline active. If she had been a magicless mortal, that might have seriously injured or even killed her. You need better control over your reactions."

"I… understand," I said. I thought he might be overselling it – if she had been a magicless mortal, I was confident I'd have been able to withdraw my bloodline in time. But he was right that it wasn't a good habit to get into.

"Good. Now that we all understand what we've done, it's time for consequences. Sandara, you're going to need to repair the sound artifice. Professor Violet, how much did the machine cost?"

"We bought it from the artifice department at cost, but it still ran the department around eight hundred silver or so?" the green-feathered professor said.

"Sandara, If you need additional components for its construction, then that's going to be coming out of your pocket. In addition, you're going to be spending at least twenty hours with a mind healer. Thinking you can act however you want, take whoever you want as a lover? That shows signs of the Creep."

He turned to me and sighed, rubbing his nose. The blue crystalline light faded from his eyes, returning them to their ordinary brown color.

"Frankly, I don't know if I should punish you for lashing out violently instead of just walking away, or if I should reward you for managing to assist Salem in regaining command of his senses, and stopping a full blown aberrant-tainted wereraven attack. It seems like you're a magnet for trouble of one sort or another."

I waited patiently for his verdict as he studied me, then shook his head, sighing.

"You're also going to spend twenty hours with a mind healer. You don't seem to have too much risk of falling to the Creep, but you have gone through a lot, and it's the sort of thing that could turn into trauma, which in turn can push you towards becoming an aberrant in a few years if you continue without addressing it. Give me your hand."

I held out my hand, and he shook his head, gesturing for the one where the signet ring of the coven was. I held it up and the Erudite tapped the ring. I felt a vast surge of ether rush into the ring as the older wizard stored a spell within. I felt my eyebrows lift as I realized that the spell storing feature of the ring could be used by others, not just myself. That opened up some rather interesting possibilities. Could it store instances of affinity magic? I had more things I needed to test.

"There. A single casting of the disintegration spell, which is one of my personal favorites. This is both a punishment and a reward, because I'm going to be judging how you use it."

With that, he vanished, and professor Alydia sighed, nodding to all of us, then vanished as well. As she faded away to nothing, I noted that her robes had changed slightly, signifying that she was now a true eighth circle caster, not just a seventh circle who could stretch to cast an eighth circle spell.

"Alright everyone," professor Violet said, letting out a puff of relief. "Let's get to work on cleaning up!"

Sandara immediately started moving to the place where the sound artifice had crashed and exploded to scavenge for parts, and I moved away from her, drawing my staff out of my Etherius locker and beginning a spell. With the staff's low capacity to store components of spells within it, and the nature of this spell as nothing but utility, I had to work through the entire chant, then tapped my staff on the ground, fueling the spell with a massive wave of ether, enough to conjure three of the spirits, rather than just one.

Conjure cleaning spirit wasn't a spell that I'd had much of a reason to cast yet, but in this instance, it was the perfect helper. The spirits resembled four armed humans, partially translucent, and with smoke instead of legs. I glanced them over, then spoke in the bloodline tongue of angelus.

"Thank you for heeding my call, helpers. As you can see, this theatre is quite damaged. I would like your assistance in helping clean it, and if this is amenable to you all, will likely summon you again for this project, as I cannot imagine it being resolved in under an hour."

The spirits weren't fully sapient, not the way Amos was, but they were more intelligent than a cat or dog, and understood the intent within each of the bloodline words. They both turned and buzzed away, getting to work. One conjured four brooms and started sweeping away detritus, while another began lifting chunks of broken chairs and stacking them back where they were supposed to be for mending spells, and the third began placing the broken wood of the stage back into place.

Professor Violet and the rest of the students started moving then, raising artifacts to cast spells. Many of them were just using an ordinary mending cantrip, but the professor, myself, and the tall man who was a part of Sandara's team all started using the greater mending spell to repair large swatches of damage. A few of the students were taking more unique paths as well: one was using what seemed to be wood affinity magic, while another was pouring a strange glue from a vial too small to hold it all, and another seemed to be using telekinesis to lift large chunks of broken wood and set it back in place.

After about half an hour, Salem rejoined us, getting a few nervous looks from other students. He walked over to me as I used a mending cantrip on a chair, and plopped down on the floor across from me, raising his hand and starting to mend it as well.

"So," I said, before trailing off, unsure what exactly to say.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.