Martha’s wand flashed, and she muttered several words of power. Blue-white light washed over us, and we were moving through Etherius then, before we emerged in what looked like a broom closet. A moment later, another teleportation caught us, and we arrived within a graveyard. The air was warm and faintly salty, familiar in a deep way to me. Jackson noticed not long after, taking in a deep breath.

  “Home,” he said.

  “White Sands,” I agreed.

  That got an eyebrow from Martha, but Shé Rui nodded.

  “It is the graveyard belonging to the church of Nedvis. His church was attacked by your errant family, so he laid a divine working on the graveyard, hiding it from those who seek to harm. Though the war is over, the miracle’s aftereffects still linger. I bargained with other priests and received permission to do our work here, where we will be free from the eyes of other divines, save those who Nedvis is allies with and allows in, such as your friend’s god.”

  I groaned and whipped out my papers, trying to remember what I could of Nedvis. I was fairly certain he was a protector of children, whose priests primarily served to stave off childhood illnesses and complications in delivery that could kill the parent or the child.

  “What?” Shé Rui asked, crossing his arms at my groan. “Will such a thing not further empower the ritual?”

  “Well, you’re right that it helps, but it’s not as simple as that. Now I have to make last second alterations. Jackson, what’s the right liturgy for this here?”

  Jackson raced over to my side, and we set to work. The fact that the grounds were soaked in protective magic against harm was undeniably helpful, and integrating the fact we were casting in such a spot was easy enough, merely drawing a few extra symbolic lines. But the issue arose with the fact we were casting on sanctified soil, a god’s domain. I had factored in the soil Jackson had provided, but not for it to be everywhere at once.

  And of all the gods of protection to work with, Nedvis was perhaps the worst. Oh, as a god, he was fine. I didn’t have any major issues with him, as far as I knew. But the spirit that formed within a perpetual core was, in essence, both a clone and a child. It was a more idealized version of the self, soaked in powerful and pure chi, fed on the insights and personal wisdom of the cultivator, until it could eventually break free and make them immortal. If this ritual did what I suspected it would do, then Nedvis’ domain’s power to protect the children might just protect the Avatar, allowing it to grow within Yushin. But it would also attempt to protect Yushin, and stop her from dying. Doing both was impossible, so we had to make sure that the magic was slanted in Yushin’s favor. But we were struggling.

  “Contraceptive magic,” Salem cut in. “We learned a bit earlier this year, an’ his priests sometimes provide it. Sometimes the best way to ensure a healthy child is to ensure that the child only arrives when the parents are ready.”

  “Blessings of contraception, interwoven with that ritual,” Jackson said, before turning and bolting out of the graveyard and to the church. He began hammering on the door until a priest arrived, and the pair stepped inside. While he did that, I set to work furiously adding the ritual I’d learned earlier this year into the already inordinately complex ritual, and my head snapped up to Martha.

  “Bring me fennel, rue, and the flower of a tangle frogfruit,” I said. “And quickly now. I don’t have time for arguments.”

  To her credit, Martha began chanting teleportation magic immediately, and vanished. Jackson returned with a priestess and pages of written scriptures, and we immediately set to working on adding them together, and then I was handed a round berry by the elderly old priestess.

  “This fruit contains the miracle of contraception. I understand you need it to help your friend in some regard?”

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the berry. “What do I owe you?”

  “My child, when working to save another’s life, the work itself is a reward,” she said. “No payment is needed or expected.”

  I fished around for a moment, then pressed a single platinum coin into her hand.

  “Then take this as a donation, and as thanks to you and your god.”

  A smile broke out across the elderly woman’s face, and she pulled me into a hug. I tolerated it for a long second before gently extricating myself and turning back to my work, muttering my excuses as I did.

  Half an hour passed, and we finally finished. With a ritual of this level of complexity and power, I was shocked we had been able to get it done so quickly, but I knew the magic inside and out, with the same thoroughness as a simple shield spell. As soon as I was finished, I cast scribe’s friend and began passing out papers, then handing various components to people, barking orders all the while.

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  “Rui, a hair’s breadth further left. Martha, two inches forward. Salem, re-pour that line, it’s not straight enough. Jackson, those prayer beads are almost a foot too far west. Yushin, why are you just standing around? Start placing things!”

  Even as I spoke, I was using levitation cantrips to adjust things, dashing from one place to another, and cross-referencing the flows of magic with my ethersight. Yushin snapped out of her melancholy and began to move, slowly putting things around. I walked over and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Are you okay?” I asked in a low whisper. She glanced at me, then nodded.

  “It is nothing.”

  It was clear nerves or something else had gotten to her, but I didn’t have time to spare on trying to force her to talk, not if she didn’t want to. Instead, I turned my attention to fixing mistakes, drawing sigils, and placing components. As soon as we were finished to my satisfaction, I checked it over again. Then a third time. Despite the time it took to do the double-check, nobody complained. This ritual needed to be perfect. If it wasn’t, then there was no telling if Yushin would survive.

  “Alright,” I said, letting out a slow breath. “Places, everyone.”

  Shé Rui floated over to a spot buried deep in the formation flags, where he’d be able to pour chi into them and get them to start working. Jackson took up a spot amongst the written hymns and prayers, ready to begin calling on his god. Martha took a spot where she could do some of the supplemental casting, within the mimicry of the wizard spell already there. Salem took up a spot near me, prepared to help with the handful of minor psionic components the spell had. Yushin stepped near the bloodline materials, preparing to feed her bloodline and chi – not that there was much of a difference anymore – into them. And I stood in the center of the ritual, extending threads of ether into the dust all around me, prepared to call down magic. I summoned my staff into my hand, the cursed runestone glowing faintly purple as I set it into the dirt, then gripped it with both hands.

  “Three. Two. One.” I called out. Then I began to chant.

  Words of power cascaded from my lips, and my ether pool began to drain precipitously. I was already using Xander’s massage at full tilt, and I poured all of that power into the spell, but the connection to Etherius was thinner here. Within minutes, my pool was entirely dry. All of my fire flowed in, followed a moment later by all of the fire that Seren could provide.

  But the ritual kept draining, begging for more power, screaming for it, and I tapped into the ether dust. One symbol that had been carved in the dirt and filled with dust began to glow, the curse melting into the spell as the ether dust was transformed into ether, powering itself. That magic flowed into me, and back out again, directed by my will. More runes began to light up, and power started to stream into me, then returning to the world as fast as I could shape it with words, gestures, and all of my ether shaping skill.

  With each additional rune, the power built, until I was channeling my entire pool’s worth of ether every second. I was shaping and chanting as fast as I could, but this magic was just entirely too great for me. It began to crash into the edges of my pool, and I let out an ear-shattering scream as my spirit began to tear. Tears stung my eyes, but the tears of a dragon were components, and the spell consumed them too, despite them not even being integrated. My ether pool continued to rip and tear at the edges, expanding by force to help channel the vastness of the magic I commanded. But if it kept this up, I’d break. I’d just… die.

  No. I wouldn’t allow that. I set my feet and continued to work on the spell, while my mind raced for a solution. That was when it came to me: Jadis’ remodel. The ether manipulation technique tore at the edges of the pool as well, but it avoided spiritual damage by re-integrating the torn off pieces at the edge of the spirit, expanding the spirit in conjunction with the ether pool. I didn’t need the first part of the technique right now, but I’d practiced both halves independently, thanks to the bowl.

  Though it felt like I was tearing my brain in two, I began to use the restorative portions of Jadis’ remodel, bringing the chunks of spirit that the ritual was tearing off to the edges, then fusing it together. Managing that while under this deluge of power would have been hard enough, but I had to keep the spell going, keep shaping the power into the seal. But that was a momentous task as well. I couldn’t do both.

  Salem reached out, and psionic power flooded me. His mind seemed to join with my own, his willpower with mine, and he reached for where I was using Jadis’ remodel, lending his mental focus to the task. He’d learned the same technique, after all. I couldn't tell him thank you, I couldn’t nod, I couldn’t do anything without risking breaking the spell, but I felt the gratitude rush through me nevertheless.

  With Salem using his magic to lend me a second mind that could focus on the remodel, I was better able to turn my attention to wrangling the flow of power as it continued to build and explode out of me. Magic splintered down from the sky and up from the earth like bolts of electricity, an entire storm of ether, divinity, bloodline magic, and more. The vial of destiny liquid, or whatever it was called, vanished. The holy relics of the Traitor Wyrm and the sanctified soil dissolved into ash that was swept up in the storm of power, despite there being no wind. The vials of blood and poison exploded, spraying into patterns that seemed entirely foreign and intimately familiar.

  The ritual began to call for something else then, and something within me answered. My bloodline began to quake, as one of the functions that had been hidden within me by the Dreki Matriarch unlocked. Ever since I’d taken Effervesce’s boon, I’d felt a sort of gap in my spirit, an empty spot where divine power could go. I’d also heard from Elaine of the Loud Crackle that I was kindling, meant to burn to give others divinity. As my bloodline unlocked, I understood what that truly meant.

  My mother had planned for me to be the last of the children. I had been the kindling to ignite her ascension to godhood, after consuming me and all of my siblings as one. I could do the same for anyone with sufficient power. There was a reason Tywyll had called me tasty. And right now, the ritual was demanding that I turn it into a god.

  All I needed to do was die.

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